This Bitter Earth (2 page)

Part One

Bigelow Winter 1955

Chapter 1

SUGAR made her way down the road. The wind pushed at her back, hurrying her along and away from Bigelow and the people that gathered at the door of the church to watch her departure.

The women hugged themselves for warmth and smiled while nodding their heads and clucking their tongues in triumph while the men, including the Reverend Foster, lifted their collars against the gale as they watched Sugar’s long legs and hefty bottom fade away into the gloomy night. The men hung their heads; they would miss her and the pleasure she’d given them.

Good pussy gone
traveled through their minds as they patted their thighs in tribute.

Sugar walked with her head up and shoulders back as she slowly made her way down the road that had brought her to Bigelow. She moved past Fayline’s House of Beauty, which was closed and empty, but the laughter that had been had there at Sugar’s expense still echoed in her mind, fusing with the wind, adding to Sugar’s sadness.

Sugar rounded a tight bend and the darkness swallowed her. Bigelow’s residents cocked their heads and strained their eyes as they tried to penetrate the blackness, but she was gone. Not even the light
tap-tap-tap
of her heels could be heard.

Satisfied, they returned to their pews and their Bibles as if she had never been there at all.

Once out of their view, Sugar crumpled, her shoulders slumped and her head dipped. The secret she carried with her tore at her heart and filled her eyes with tears.

The secret hollered inside of Sugar’s mouth, rattling her teeth, pushing her tongue to curl the words out. Sugar would not speak it, but she did write it.

She’d scrawled it on the corners of napkins and at the bottom of the obit section of the county newspaper. She’d written it on a page in the Sears catalogue, the one displaying hunting knives.

She wrote it in block letters, sometimes in pencil or black ink and once, just once, in red.

She kept those tiny slips of truth, folded into neat squares or crumpled into tiny balls, hiding them away in her coat pocket, because she knew she would be leaving Bigelow and she had to take the secret with her.

Lappy did it.

When she got to the mouth of town and was sure that the eyes of the Bigelow men and women were far enough away, she reached into her pocket and pulled her secret from its depths. They were heavy, those three little words on those tiny bits of paper, heavier than the blows that Lappy Clayton had covered her body with, but not as heavy as the casket that held Jude’s body.

Sugar released the papers to the wind and watched as they danced and skipped their way across the cold hard ground. She covered her ears as the words screamed out to her:

Lappy did it. Lappy did it. Lappy did it.

Sugar wouldn’t tell, but someone else one day would find one of those pieces of paper and they would.

She moved on, hoping that she would never have to return to Bigelow but knowing that she would. Her life had been tailored that way.

Her departure only guaranteed her return, and every step forward just put her two steps closer to where she had been.

Short Junction
Winter 1955

Chapter 2

IT was early morning and the sun was blue behind the heather-colored clouds. Fat snowflakes dropped weightless from the sky, blanketing the earth in white frost. Dead leaves and tree branches, guided by the wind, moved restless across the ground, startling the small brown birds that poked holes through the ice in search of food.

Record-low cold held Arkansas in its frigid grip.

The wind howled and bullied people up the road and past the Lacey property. They slowed up in front of the house, however, despite the wind, and their eyes went wide and mouths just as broad as they stared at the snow-covered figure that sat still and lifeless on the porch.

Sugar’s body had stopped trembling hours ago. Her eyelids were heavy with frost, and the mucus that had run so freely from her nose when she first settled herself down to die was now a yellow track of ice.

She’d fought the wind all the way to Short Junction, bat tling with it, meeting its deafening howl with her own.

Ten miles she’d walked, all the while hoping that her heart would stop and she would fall down dead in the road.

She’d arrived at the Laceys’ just as the snow started to fall and the cold became black and unbearable. Sugar had looked down at the worn leopard print suitcase she carried, dropped it at the post that marked the entrance to the Lacey property and walked to the house.

Sugar climbed the stairs that led to an aged porch that sloped so badly the women of the house had abandoned it for the back door. Carefully Sugar eased herself down onto the warped wood, waiting for the winter night to wrap her in its frigid embrace. A slow chill enfolded her and quietly traveled through her body. And Sugar decided that dying wasn’t bad, not bad at all, and she closed her eyes against the snow-filled night.

The light went out behind her eyes just as day broke and the dull rhythm of her heart went idle. Sugar’s soul echoed the absence of her heart’s music. And God watched sadly as Sugar’s spirit spun in wide helpless circles to the silence of the dead.

“She ain’t never had much sense.”

“She got plenty of sense.”

“Humph!”

“She ain’t even got the sense she was born with.”

“Hush, Sara.”

“You hush, I’m grown, lemme speak my mind.”

“You talking foolish, so hush.”

“Sister, you ain’t got no right—”

“I said hush and I ain’t gonna say it again.”

“She sho’ do look dead.”

“She ain’t dead, Ruby. Near it, though.”

“If she had sense she woulda slit her wrist, jumped off a bridge or just blown her head off.”

“Sara, I ain’t gonna tell you again to keep your mouth shut. You are really testing me, hear?”

“Well, it’s true, May. If’n someone wants to kill themselves,
for real,
they know how to do it.”

“Seems you know, so why don’t you go ahead and get it over with?”

“I don’t wanna die.”

“Well, then I advise you once again to hush.”

“Humph.”

“Look at them scars all across her stomach. My God, someone ripped into her like she was a pig gone to slaughter.”

“Yeah, looks that way. We got any of the rubbing alcohol left?”

“Used the last of it two days ago. Got some brandy, though.”

“Too much sugar in that. Go on and look under my bed, I got a jar of corn liquor there.”

“You got what? Doctor say you was to stop drinking that stuff.”

“You talking again, Sara.”

“Umph.”

“Sister, you okay? You swaying some. Maybe you should sit down.”

“Ruby, you don’t worry about me. It’s ‘bout my time to go. This one here the one we all need to be worried about, she got plenty of years left. Plenty.”

“You may think so, but ain’t it plain as day that that ain’t what she think? Lord have mercy, you know anyone that want to live sit out in the bitter cold all night? Look to me like she prefer the comfort of a pine box.”

“Lord, child, what you go and do to yourself?”

“You think she can hear you, May?”

“She can hear me. Somewhere in the blackness she can hear me.”

“Shoot, she crazy just like her grandmother. Come to think of it, her mama wasn’t wrapped too tight neither.”

“She ain’t crazy, just tired.”

“Tired?”

“Tired of living?”

“Just tired.”

“Them scars, you think she did that to herself?”

“They still fresh.”

“You think she did that to herself?”

“Lord, them cuts must go at least two inches deep.”

“Sisters, you think she did that—”

“We did it to her.”

“What you saying?”

“I’m saying we did it to her.”

“We did no such thing!”

“Now you talking crazy. I think you’d better sit down like Ruby suggested ‘cause I know I ain’t got that child’s blood on my hands.”

“Her blood on all of our hands.” “Look to me like blood on the hands of the one who carved her up and—”

“Look to me like you need to stop running your mouth and get to fetching some more hot water. Ruby, empty that corn liquor over these here scars.”

“Sister, but they open and so deep ... I don’t think we—”

“I can see that, I ain’t blind.”

“But, uhm—”

“Do as I say, Ruby.”

“Yeah, do it, Ruby.”

“She can take it, she’s strong enough to take it.”

Sarah Cummings’ boy, Albert, was the one who’d discovered Sugar and got her heart to beating again. He was the only one who stopped and really looked hard because he’d passed the same spot twice in little more than half an hour and realized that the person sitting on the Lacey porch hadn’t moved at all, not one inch.

The pounding of his fists on Sugar’s cold hard chest pulled the Laceys from their slumber; the screams for help ripped them from their beds and dragged them down the stairs and out the front door.

“Who that there?”

“Lord have mercy, who that? Albert?”

“Jesus, is that Sugar?”

Each sister took a step back before taking a step forward, clutching their chests and looking down into the half-dead face of the woman they had raised from infancy.

They moved closer, one baby step at a time, clutching at the embroidered breasts of their long cotton gowns. Timidly they moved closer, shoulders touching. They leaned over Albert’s shoulder, careful to avoid his curled fist as he swung it up and then down hard onto Sugar’s chest.

“She dead?” They turned suddenly on one another, eyes meeting and then dropping away, realizing that all three had asked the question at the same time in the same low tone.

Albert didn’t answer, because he wasn’t sure, so he just kept pounding, making sure to stop every fourth blow to press his head against Sugar’s chest and listen for the sound of her heart.

A crowd was gathering, but not more than one or two people ventured inside the gate and onto the Lacey property. The few who did kept their distance, preferring to brave the glare that came up from the snow rather than step too close to death.

May grabbed Albert’s fist in midair.

“She dead,” May said in a matter-of-fact tone. Their hands, suspended in midair, trembled, and Sara and Ruby did not know if it was the wind that shook them so or the forces that moved invisible around them.

“Leave her be, she’s gone.”

May tightened her grip on his fist. Sweat slipped in streams down the sides of Albert’s face, even though the temperature was well below zero. He struggled to get away from May’s strong grip.

“Leave her be,” May said again.

They stayed that way for a long time, May holding back his fist, her sisters alongside of her staring down at the woman they’d raised and loved the best way they knew how.

The wind let loose a long moan that terrified the spectators and sent some hurrying off to tell of what was happening.

The ones that remained, moved closer.

Sara didn’t notice the cold until the wind cried out, startling the trees and causing their limbs to chatter like teeth.

She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and that’s when she saw the small puffs of air, like chimney smoke, coming from between Sugar’s parted blue lips.

“She breathing,” Sara said in a small voice.

“What you say?” May said, turning to look at her.

“I said she‘s—”

“—breathing!” Albert finished her sentence, snatched his fist from May’s grasp and scooped Sugar up all at the same time. He pushed past the women and into the house, leaving the sisters standing in astonishment on the porch.

The scars, all five of them, ran horizontal, from hip bone to hip bone. The flesh had been stitched badly and the thread had torn in some places, pulling the flesh apart and allowing it to smile, open mouthed, up at them.

The sisters shuddered.

Sara snatched the bottle of grain alcohol from Ruby and poured it over the crooked smiles on Sugar’s stomach. She was happy to do it, because she had had enough of those tortuous grins, those reproachable smirks.

She emptied the whole bottle over Sugar’s wounds and smiled as the skin folded and then puckered until the smiles, all five of them, were replaced with frowns.

Sugar’s body jerked, but her eyes remained closed.

May donned her glasses and called to Ruby to bring the oil lamp and to stand close by as she began the process of re-stitching Sugar’s open wounds. When she was done, Sara went out into the parlor to where Albert was waiting to help Sugar into the bedroom she’d prepared for her.

“She won’t make it through the night,” Sara mumbled beneath her breath.

Sugar’s body was still cold to the touch and her dark skin looked as if she was covered in a pale blue film.

Albert laid her gently down on the bed.

The sisters looked down on Sugar. They all had the same thought floating through their heads, but Sara was the only one to say it aloud.

“I said, she won’t make it through the night.”

“Albert, bring in some more firewood before you head out,” May said, ignoring Sara’s remark for the second time.

“Yessum,” Albert said and rushed from the room.

“Ruby, fill this here up with some fresh water, please.” May handed Ruby a blue-and-white ceramic pitcher.

“All right, Sister.”

“What you got for me to do, Sister?” Sara said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“All I want you to do is shut up. That’s all. That’s the most I’ve asked of you all day. Do you think you can do that for me now?”

May spoke to Sara as she moved around the bed, checking to make sure the sheet corners were tucked tight beneath the mattress.

“I’m just saying, Sister, ‘cause she’s breathing don’t mean she’s all the way alive. She could be dead in here,” Sara said, tapping her index finger on her temple.

May shot her a long, sobering look. “No,” she said with a heavy sigh. “You the one that’s dead in there and in
there,”
May said and pointed her finger at Sara’s heart.