This Bitter Earth (13 page)

“You turn ‘round and sit right back down.”

The old man had moved from his seat just as quick and smooth as the fan blades in Ed’s Diner. The old man pressed his Bible hard against Young Buck’s chest. His hand, the Bible and his forearm trembled against the heavy breaths and quick pace of Young Buck’s heart.

“Sit. Down,” the old man said again and shoved Young Buck backward.

“Get outta my way, old man. Don’t let me knock you down,” Young Buck yelled.

“Please, Nathan, please,” his new wife cried.

“Sit down, I said,” the old man said again and gave him another shove that rocked Young Buck back on his heels.

“They will take you, beat you and hang you.” The old man spoke matter-of-factly.

“He pulled out his privates in front of my woman! He dis respected my wife!”

The old man’s head nodded and every tired line he carried on his face cut deeper into his skin.

“She ain’t the only woman on this bus, not the only woman and not the only wife. But you the only fool who think that he can make a difference by trying to beat some ignorant white boy that probably can’t even spell his own damn name.”

The other men on the bus mumbled.

“Sit down,” the old man said again and Young Buck backed off.

“Chicken nigger!” the white boy sang after he watched Young Buck take his seat again.

Sixty-five minutes and a truck rolled up with six white men with rifles. Sixty-five minutes and the old man began to recite, out loud, the Lord’s Prayer.

“Hey, well, what we got here?” The bus driver was surprised to see that nearly thirty people had encircled the bus. Gloria’s baby was screaming at the top of her lungs and was still unable to drown out the prayers that spilled from the old man’s mouth.

The passenger windows had been defiled with saliva, dirt, and manure. There were three tiny cracks in the front windshield, from the rocks the small children had been encouraged to pelt.

The bus driver stepped in closer and saw that two boys, about twelve and fourteen, were about to go at the bus tires with the hunting knives they were given for Christmas last year.

“Whoa-whoa!” the bus driver yelled.

“Oh, you know we don’t get niggers through here. Them boys just having a little fun is all,” Ed said as he slapped the driver on the back and let out a hearty laugh. The white women smiled nervously, but their faces could not conceal the horror they felt at the sight that lay before them.

The women looked up at the rows and rows of dark brown eyes that stared back at them and they suddenly felt ashamed of their race.

The white women swallowed hard and brushed at the wrinkles in their skirts.

They had been concerned for their safety since they boarded the bus, had avoided the dark faces that sat behind them and had raised their eyes and smiled expectantly whenever the bus came to a stop and its doors swung open to receive another passenger. They held their breath, hoping, wishing and praying that another one that looked like them would step on, hand their ticket to the driver and joyfully greet them.

But none ever came and their expectant smiles melted away with every blue-black, black and brown face that stepped onto the bus.

Yes, they had been concerned for their safety, but now, now they were afraid for it and their hands began to flutter about their waists and midsections like nervous birds.

“Well, uh, well ...” The driver stumbled over his words. He couldn’t get over what these people had done to his bus, to the people inside of the bus. All he needed was for one of them Negroes to report this, just one and his job would be over and done with. He wasn’t even supposed to stop in Jamison for more than twenty minutes. A rest and food stop, that’s what his schedule stated. Twenty minutes, not a minute less or a second more.

He had planned to blame the delay on the flat tire, but now the lie would have to become more elaborate, accommodating the cracked windshield, the waste, human and animal he was sure, that slid brown and stinking down the side of the bus.

Seventy minutes.

Seventy minutes and Sugar could wring the sweat from her dress. Seventy minutes and she had sat stone-faced, mentally blocking out the obscenities, spit, shit and stones the people of Jamison had hurled at her and the rest of the passengers.

The driver could see her face; black, hard and still. His food turned over in his stomach and he suddenly felt the heat of the sun peeling at the skin around his neck.

“Well, thank y‘all for your ...” His words seemed to escape him when he looked at the bus again. “... your uhm, hospitality, but we got to be pulling out now,” he said and started to move toward the bus. The white women followed close behind.

The crowd parted to let them through. The young men hissed and howled at the women and lifted their skirts with the double-barreled tips of their shotguns. They snatched at their delicate elbows and begged them to stay a while longer so they could all get ... familiar.

“Must be like hauling animals,” Vera said before they could get out of earshot. “Wild, black animals,” she added with disgust.

The silence was uncomfortable and more suffocating than the heat.

The old man got off in Missionville, bidding everyone a good night and safe journey. Young Buck, his wife and a few others discharged in Tannery. The white women, two men and an aged aunt stepped off in Briar.

Those who remained onboard included Sugar, Mercy, Gloria, her baby and a young man that had spent the entire trip with his derby pulled down over his eyes.

Gloria rocked her baby in her arms; she needed so desperately to speak to someone, to ramble on about the heat, the stink, anything at all that would remove the dryness fear had left inside her mouth.

She turned around and her eyes found Sugar.

Gloria considered her for a moment, the black skin and stone-cold eyes, and decided that she would hold her thoughts a while longer.

It was dusk when the bus blew past the rows of hackberry trees that stood like soldiers on either side of the road.

Sugar turned her head and saw the old cotton-storage building and then the long gliding stems of the old willow tree and recognized that spot as the two-mile mark to Bigelow.

The phoebes and warblers rustled their feathers in annoyance at the hole the bus made in the silence. They took flight, abandoning the trundle beds that the knotted and bent joints in the tree limbs had provided for them.

Sugar straightened her back and leaned forward in her seat, straining to see the slight curl of smoke that climbed out from chimneys. Closer still, she was able to hear the searing sounds of heat against metal and knew that Black John, the blacksmith, was still alive and working.

The bus was suddenly invaded with the unmistakable scent of sweet potato pie set out on a windowsill to cool and Sugar wondered if Pearl knew she was heading her way.

Sugar’s chest heaved when the bus moved past the weathered sign that announced WELCOME TO BIGELOW—POPULATION 981.

Chapter 16

IT was nearly seven when they pulled to a stop in front of the two-room shack that served as a bus station and post office. The morning glories that sat in window boxes looked blanched beneath the blue gray of the approaching night.

Two old men who’d been engaged in a heated game of dominoes stopped to consider the defiled bus.

They squinted their eyes against the dry dirt the halting wheels of the bus stirred up and turned their bodies so they would not have to twist and strain their necks to see who would be stepping off the bus.

This was the mouth of Bigelow, the wide opening that led to the narrow throat road called Pleasant Way, where ten years earlier Sugar had strolled down and past the general store, schoolhouse, Fayline’s House of Beauty and the Baptist church, leaving Bigelow’s residents open-mouthed and wondering who this shameless woman was.

When the bus came to a stop Sugar did not raise herself up from her seat, but leaned her head back and closed her eyes because she knew that road by heart. She’d walked it a hundred times when she lived there and a million more in her dreams. And now she walked it again in her mind.

Gloria could hardly wait and was up and out of her seat, adjusting her baby securely to her hip just as the bus rolled to a stop.

She moved up the aisle and toward the door, stopping to dip her body at every window she passed. Her eyes were wide and her bottom lip turned in as she bit it in quiet excitement.

Mercy nudged Sugar.

“This is it,” Sugar said without opening her eyes.

But she did not move. Her mind was still wandering, taking a left at the bend near the church and following the long stretch of road boarded by modest homes and separated by great green fields of wildflowers.

The road ended in a fork and Sugar could clearly see the divide, the option that had been crudely forged by man, plow and ox so many years earlier.

When her mind turned right and onto Grove Street, her body jerked as she was reminded once and again that every step she took forward placed her two steps closer to where she’d already been.

Joe had to go back in the house twice. The first time he forgot his keys on the dining-room table and the second time he’d forgotten to kiss his wife good-bye.

His son Seth had shook his head in exasperation each time his father slapped his knee and exclaimed, “Shoot!” before jumping out of the car and running back into the house. It was already two minutes past seven and the bus was due in at seven-fifteen. It would only take them five minutes to get across town, but Seth had wanted to be there ahead of schedule and now it looked as if they would pull up at the exact same time the bus did. Well, he thought, just as long as he wasn’t late. Gloria hated to be kept waiting.

“Got everything this time?” Seth said as he put the car in drive.

“Yep,” Joe said, letting out a small sigh.

“Sure now?” Seth was chiding him and couldn’t help but grin.

“I said yes, boy, now let’s go and get this grandbaby of mine.”

“And daughter-in-law,” Seth added as he turned onto the road.

“Uh-huh,” Joe said.

Pearl stayed behind, sitting in the parlor staring at the black-and-white floor-model console Seth had brought his parents for Christmas two years earlier.

She hadn’t even flinched when first Joe then Seth planted kisses on her cheeks and told her they were leaving to go collect Gloria and little Jewel.

“I don’t want Esther over here in my house,” Pearl had said dryly.

“You wanna stay here by yourself?” Joe asked, scratching his head, not believing it would be a good idea.

“I’m grown,” Pearl said without raising an eyebrow or shifting her eyes from Jethro and the rest of the Beverly Hillbillies, who were going through their weekly routine.

The doctor said Pearl wasn’t sick at all, well, not physically. He said her ailment was all in her mind. “I seen it before in plenty of people.” The doctor shared that with Joe. “She still mourning Jude, I s‘pose,” he said, dropping his voice, and then, as Joe followed him down the stairs and to the front door, “Uhm, say Joe, whatever happen to that woman, you know the one ...” The doctor’s words trailed off. He knew her name well, had called it out when he touched himself during his evening baths.

“Sugar,” Joe whispered and looked over his shoulder before hurriedly opening the front door and practically pushing the doctor out and onto the porch.

Joe didn’t speak about Sugar; it was too upsetting to Pearl.

The spells had started just after Sugar left.

Some days she was full of energy, cooking up a storm and singing off-key with the radio. But most days, and lately, all days, Joe would find her sitting in the living room, shades drawn, her face solemn and still wet from crying.

Joe had worried about her behavior, even more so after Jude’s body had ended up right in front of their house. It had shook Joe in a place where he thought he was unshakable, but it didn’t seem to worry Pearl at all.

He’d expected tears, wails larger and filled with more sorrow than twenty-five years earlier. But Pearl had smiled as if she’d been expecting Jude all along, and Joe supposed she had.

They’d had to bury her again. Who in the world buries the same dead child twice? Joe looked up to the heavens. Surely God was punishing him, but for what?

They were all reburied on the same day, all the bones and bodies that people had brought back to the cemetery in the back of pick-up trucks, wheelbarrows and pull carts. It was a horrifying scene that not even Joe could stomach, but Pearl had watched the activity as if the bodies were nothing more than ground provisions.

This increased Joe’s concern.

Pearl had insisted on wearing her church shoes and last year’s Easter dress with the hat that she’d worn to each of her children’s baptisms. Wide-brimmed and white with delicate silk daisies, the hat made Pearl look like she was going to a wedding, rather than a burial.

The families of the other bodies were all dressed in black; some women were even veiled and they looked on Pearl in pity.

“She crazy.”

“Mad.”

The whispers, the easy look of calm on Pearl’s face, all of those things unnerved Joe and he shifted in his heavy galoshes.

Pearl was quiet most days, more so after they buried Jude for the second time. Joe worried that he couldn’t read her. Worried that she had little or nothing to say to him and was fearful of what she might do if he left her alone.

That’s when he started asking Esther Franklin to come over and sit with Pearl whenever he needed to run into town.

But today, Pearl was defiant. “I don’t need no babysitter.”

Joe huffed and he shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, Pearl,” he said before placing another gentle kiss on her cheek and leaving.

“Maybe you should have had JJ come and sit with her while we gone,” Seth said as he rolled through the stop sign.

“You better pay attention, boy,” Joe cautioned as he pointed over his shoulder to the stop sign that was quickly becoming a small dot in Seth’s rearview mirror. “JJ got better things to do.”

Joe wished Seth hadn’t brought up his older brother. There seemed to be some bad blood between Joe and his namesake, but Joe didn’t know how that had happened.

One moment JJ was living at home; next thing Joe and Pearl knew he had enlisted himself in the service and was sent off to Camp Van Dorm in southwestern Mississippi.

Joe and Pearl received a letter a week from him for months and then nothing. When Joe finally inquired with the U.S. Army as to where his son was, he was told that Joe Taylor was serving six months in the brig for disorderly conduct and that no, they would not be able to come and see him and no, there was no further information that could be provided on the matter.

Two months after Joe’s conversation with Colonel Flint, he received a letter from Joe Jr. with no return address. The post-mark was stamped Chicago and the letter read very simply.

I am safe.
Will call as soon as I am settled.
Your loving son,
Joe.

It was disturbing and so were the ones that followed, which always said the same thing. The only differences were the dates and the postmarks.

Eventually JJ did come home, but those were short, disturbing sojourns that left both Pearl and Joe drained when he was gone.

During his visits, JJ hardly even spoke and avoided the questions Joe bombarded him with. He always seemed to be angry and preferred to stay in his room brooding over something that he refused to share with his parents.

JJ was just a younger version of his father: tall, dark and broad-shouldered. They spoke slowly and with low tones, but the differences ended with their eyes. Joe Senior had eyes that were warm and gentle, and while Joe Junior had inherited the same eyes, they’d changed in the years between Jude’s death and whatever had happened after he left home and joined the service.

Unlike his father, JJ had never been involved in active combat. Joe thought he could have understood his son’s distant disposition if JJ had actually witnessed the horrors of war. Joe knew plenty of men who’d returned home short an arm or a leg, some with half a soul.

Something else had stolen a piece of JJ’s soul, something, Joe thought, more terrible than war.

Pearl couldn’t look at him. Something about his eyes reminded her of death and when he hugged her hello or good-bye it was like being enfolded in ice.

She asked God to forgive her each and every time he came to visit because although she hated to see her son leave, she was more than happy to see him go.

JJ returned home for good in 1960. He stayed with his parents for three months, then moved into the two-room space above the old cotton house he purchased out on Highway 6.

“What you gonna do with this place?” Joe had asked as he placed his hands on his hips and looked up at the rafters. “There’s more sky than roof, JJ!”

JJ just nodded.

“You ain’t even got a floor, just dirt,” Joe said, stomping his foot on the bare, hard ground. “Look like you might have you some snakes holed up in here too,” he said, squinting at the dark corners that surrounded them.

A month later Joe found a flyer stapled to the post office bulletin board.

FOOD, DRINKS AND LIVE ENTERTAINMENT TWO MILES IN HIGHWAY 6 (TWO MILES OUT FROM WHERE YOU STANDING!) OWNER: JOE TAYLOR JR.

Five years later, Two Miles In was bringing in the best of the best of the chitterlings circuit and had put the Memphis Roll completely out of business.

JJ wiped the counter off again, even though no one had been in yet and no one would come in before eight or maybe nine. Angel was in the kitchen cussing to herself and banging the pots around like they’d done something wrong, while her fourteen-year-old son, Harry, who looked more like ten with his string bean arms and bat wing ears, struggled to pull the heavy mop across the new linoleum floor JJ had installed in the kitchen last week.

Harry was a mute and slow in the mind but a hard worker.

“Boy, get on out my way ‘fore I use this cleaver on you!” Angel screamed at him.

Harry worshipped his mother, and JJ suspected he would still be attached to her apron strings when he was long past forty. Angel pretended that the boy annoyed her and hardly ever had a kind word for him, but Harry knew that was just Angel’s way.

Harry never looked at JJ dead on, he never looked at any man dead on. Men seemed to make him nervous and he got real irritable when Angel got too close to one, which is what she did whenever she wasn’t cooking or punishing the pots for crimes no one would ever understand.

Angel had come on to JJ once when the club was just getting started. She’d rubbed her behind up against his leg during the last set, when the band was feeling their own and the crowd was going wild. Harry was clearing the tables on the other side of the room and Angel’s hands had found their way down between JJ’s legs.

JJ didn’t bother to push her hands away. He just waited for her eyes to find his and then she would know that he was dead inside.

Angel still dreamed about those barren eyes and drank a little more than she should to forget about them when she closed her own eyes at night.

The clattering sound of silverware hitting the floor startled Harry and he moved farther away from the swinging red door of the kitchen.

“Angel, tell that boy to check on the bathroom,” JJ said as he lifted each liquor bottle from its place on the shelf to check the contents.

“Harry, get with that bathroom!” Angel yelled out to her son and then let loose a barrage of curse words as she bent to pick up the scattered forks and knives.

JJ looked at his watch. It was after seven and the band hadn’t even arrived yet. He supposed they may have gotten turned around. You could blink and miss Bigelow.

He was down to the last bottle and noted mentally that he was running low on scotch when the phone rang. JJ hated the phone, wouldn’t even have one if it wasn’t needed to book bands and order supplies.

“Yeah?”

“JJ?” It sounded like his mother, but JJ wasn’t sure. This woman on the other end of the phone sounded too normal, too much alive.

“Mama?”

“Uh-huh. Listen, I need some food over here and soon. You know your brother’s wife and child coming in and ‘spect some other people coming along with them and I ain’t got hardly anything here so I need you to bring some of what you got on over.”

Pearl was talking so fast it made JJ’s ears ring.

“Mama?” was all JJ could say before the dial tone sounded in his ear.

He stood dumfounded for a moment, trying to replay what his mother had just told him. It took too much away from what he needed to be thinking about. He looked at his watch again. Seven-thirty.

“Angel!”

“Yeah?”

“Get your boy to take that food we got left over from last night on over to my mama’s house.”

“All of it?”

“All of it,” JJ said, picking the rag up off the bar and stuffing it into his back pocket.

He could hear Angel mumbling under her breath about having to cook more now that there were no leftovers. JJ heard the words “crazy” and “insane” mixed up in her spiteful litany, but it didn’t bother him one bit. He knew he was all of those things and more.