A Long Time Gone (14 page)

I wanted to ask him what those people had to do with his earning extra money, but he was pulling me toward the front of the house. “Come on; let's go get Sarah Beth home.”

I ran with him, feeling the presence of the swamp behind me, the black curtain almost pressing against my back. I held tightly to John's hand, somehow knowing that he wouldn't let go.

John drove as fast as he could, with all the windows down, hoping to create enough of a breeze to cool us off and to air out the stench
coming from the backseat. I kept turning around to make sure Sarah Beth was all right, but she seemed completely unaware of the rest of the world. I placed my hand under her nose twice to make sure she was breathing, because she looked like a dead person thrown in a heap in the corner of the backseat.

Down the block from Sarah Beth's house, we passed a pickup truck with
SC
OTS
FEED
AND
SEED
on the side, looking out of place in the neighborhood. John caught my glance and said, “It's how you and I are going to get back home tonight.”

I nodded, recalling Mr. Peacock telling that John lived with the Scots because of a family connection. I'd assumed that story had been made up, too, along with the one about John's weak lungs.

He parked at the end of the driveway and turned off the engine. “It's only about midnight, so her parents shouldn't be home yet. Sarah Beth said the front door usually stays unlocked until Mr. and Mrs. Heathman are home for the night.” He leaned forward over the dash, inspecting the darkened windows and the porch with one single but huge lantern hanging over the front door. “You wait here and I'll go check.”

More clouds had gathered overhead, blocking the moon and making it harder to see. I watched as John ran across the front lawn, ducking into the shadows formed by the trees. Crouching, he ran up the front steps and turned the knob. I held my breath, waiting for the door to open.

Instead, John jumped over the porch railing and into the boxwoods, ducking his head so it couldn't be seen from the front door. It was opening slowly, and I let out my breath with relief as I recognized Mathilda. She and Bertha lived in a room off the kitchen, and I was grateful that it was Mathilda and not her mother opening the door. I was about to lean over and call to her from the window, when I saw a figure standing behind her. The foyer light was on and I got a good look at the tall black boy who I recognized as the same boy I'd seen back at the Ellis plantation.

Not really knowing why, I shrank down into my seat so I couldn't be seen, but still high enough that I could see through the front windshield. Somebody flicked off the inside light, but I peered out to where the light from the porch lantern reached.

Almost as if he felt my eyes on him, he looked up and spotted the car. Without pause, he jumped down the stairs, right past where John
was hidden, and ran toward it. I was so scared I almost passed out, until I figured it was because I'd been holding my breath so long, as if he could have heard my breathing from where I sat.

“Hey!”

I looked past the boy to see John coming out of his hiding spot, running awkwardly to where the boy had stopped. He spotted John and nodded, as if they knew each other, then spoke quietly for a moment before they approached the car together.

Leaning into my window, John said, “This here's Robert. I hurt my foot jumping over the railing, so he's going to help us get Sarah Beth inside.”

I looked from his face to Robert's, trying not to think too hard about what Aunt Louise would say. Or Mr. and Mrs. Heathman. I figured that whatever we needed to do had better happen pretty fast or we'd have to answer to all three of them.

John opened my car door and I stepped out, glad to take a deep breath of fresh air. Robert nodded at me, then opened the door to the backseat. John made to reach inside, but I held him back.

“Wait a minute.” I straightened Sarah Beth's clothes as best I could, making sure the hem of her dress was pulled as far down over her legs as I could get it. As I moved back, my hand caught on one of her long strands of pearls and I felt the string snap as the
tap-tap
sound of tiny pearls hitting the leather seat filled the quiet.

John laid his hand softly on my shoulder for a brief moment. “Don't worry. I can fix it. Just leave everything there.”

I stood back and watched as John gently took Sarah Beth under the arms and slid her to the edge of the seat by the door, then stood her up where Robert was waiting. John held her upright as Robert put an arm under her knees and another around her shoulders, then lifted her as if she weighed nothing.

As much as I tried not to, I thought about what would happen if Mr. and Mrs. Heathman came home now and saw their unconscious daughter in the arms of a colored man. Men had been hanged for less. I wasn't supposed to know these things, according to Uncle Joe, who never left his newspapers lying about when he was finished reading them. Women were supposed to keep their minds focused on their homes and families and let the men worry about the rest.

But when I went to the market with Aunt Louise, or stood near the adults congregating on the steps after church, or even stopped at the sharecroppers' fruit stands on the side of the road, I'd hear whispers about lynchings and burnings for reasons that didn't make a lot of sense to me.

“Hurry,” I whispered sharply, causing both men to glance behind them, as if expecting two headlights piercing the dark.

Robert walked quickly while John limped behind him. I ran to put my arm around John's waist, not minding the feel of his weight pressing down on me.

Mathilda was holding the door open as we walked inside and our eyes met for a moment. She closed the door behind us, then looked expectantly at John, as if acknowledging he was in charge.

“I'll wait here,” he said, hopping over to a hall bench. “You and Adelaide go show Robert where to take Sarah Beth.”

Mathilda and I led the way to Sarah Beth's bedroom, with its new modern furniture. It was sleek and smooth and shiny—all things that my old bedroom furniture was not.

Robert gently laid Sarah Beth on the bed and, after a brief glance at Mathilda, left the room. She and I didn't speak as we set about undressing the unconscious girl and putting on her nightgown. I had the foresight to grab a ceramic bowl from her dresser and place it on the floor near her head. When I straightened I saw Mathilda watching me.

“Don't tell my mama about Robert, and I won't tell yours about tonight,” she said quietly. Her voice was lower than I'd thought it would be.

“I knew you could talk.” The words were out of my mouth before I could call them back.

She gave me a little smile. “I only talk if'n I have somethin' to say.”

I regarded her in the darkness as we listened to Sarah Beth's soft snores. “My mama's dead.”

She looked at me with the same glance Sarah Beth gave me when I was stating the obvious. “Who you call mama don' have to be blood. My mama call a bunch of other chil'ren her own. It don't make her love no less special.”

“Adelaide!” John's loud whisper carried up the stairs. “You need to hurry.”

I turned back to Mathilda. “You're good at keeping secrets, aren't you?”

She nodded solemnly. “Are you?”

“Of course.”

“Adelaide!” John's voice sounded even more urgent.

I ran toward the doorway, Mathilda's voice making me pause for a moment: “I be real good at keepin' secrets. You remember that, okay?”

I smiled back at her, then ran down the stairs to where John was waiting at the open door. Robert was nowhere in sight.

“Can you drive?” he asked.

“No. I mean, I've never tried.”

He grinned that heart-stopping grin that I pictured when reading one of my novels about a handsome hero. “Well, looks like tonight is your time to learn. I can't drive with my foot banged up like this.”

He took my hand and pulled me out onto the porch, shutting the front door quietly behind him. “You're not afraid to learn, are you?”

I shook my head, thinking that as long as he was with me, I could do anything.

“That's my girl,” he said. He took a step forward, forgetting about his bad foot, and wobbled until I wrapped my arm around his waist. He smiled down at me and I almost tripped us both. “We're a great team, Adelaide.”

I'm not sure how I managed to get us home, having only a vague memory of stalling the engine about a dozen times, but the dreamlike quality of the night stayed with me until morning, when I finally fell asleep with the rising sun, my last thought about Mathilda as we'd faced each other in the darkened room while she told me that she was really good at keeping secrets.

Vivien Walker Moise

INDIAN
MOUND,
MISSISSIPPI
APRIL
2013

A
fter a desultory supper in the dining room, the table set with the family silver—slightly tarnished—monogrammed china, and crystal, and with my mother, who divided her time staring at her food as if wondering what to do with it, Chloe's less-than-stellar table manners, and a silently brooding Tommy, I was happy to escape into the kitchen to help Cora with the cleanup.

I told her she could go home early, leaving me alone with my thoughts to dry and put away the dishes. I still hadn't heard from Mark, and neither had Chloe. I'd called Imelda—who was staying at the house in case Chloe came back—to tell her that if Mark called to give him my number and tell him it was urgent. I even considered calling the police to let them know where she was, but figured I had at least until after spring break before I had to deal with anybody reporting her as truant. I found myself crossing my fingers a lot, hoping Mark would call and we could sort something out before things got drastic.

Exactly what I wanted to have happen wasn't clear in my head. I was far from being an expert in child development, but it was obvious even to me that Chloe was in desperate need of parenting, and
returning her to LA seemed so wrong. But so did her staying with me. All I knew for sure was that each pill I took helped me not worry so much. Just like my namesake, I figured I'd think about it tomorrow.

From the kitchen window I could see the light folding in on the day, and I recalled the dazzling sunsets of my girlhood that the flatland of the delta made so spectacular. Tommy, Bootsie, and I would sit outside in the garden and watch them together, the spill of light pressed against the horizon gradually consumed by the encroaching night. Bootsie had always finished the show with a pat on our knees and a reassuring “Don't worry. It'll be back tomorrow.” Her hopefulness was what helped me sleep at night, helped me believe that some things really did last forever.

After checking on Chloe and Carol Lynne in the den, where they sat together on the sofa in front of an old episode of
Gilmore Girls
, I hung up the damp dish towel on the handle of the ancient oven, then let myself out the back door. I walked past the empty garden toward the cypress. The yellow tape was still there, but Tripp said it would be gone in the next day or two. Tommy was eager to begin chopping up the tree to use the wood for various building projects, including reconstructing his workspace in the old cotton shed. I felt oddly comforted by the knowledge that I could revisit my old friend after it became part of something else.

Without my being aware of it, my feet seemed to be leading me there. The yellow tape where I'd knotted it had been torn again, and I wondered whether Chloe or my mother was responsible. Wherever one was, I found the other, and I wasn't sure if I should be reassured by this. Chloe would give me a wide-eyed “help me” look every time Carol Lynne took her hand, but I didn't intervene. Because I also saw the way Chloe had appointed herself a sort of bodyguard for my mother, always following her around even when Carol Lynne didn't ask.

“I don't want her to mess with my stuff,” Chloe had told me when I'd asked her about it. I knew better than to tell her that I thought it sweet—if not downright unexpected—to discover that Chloe had a nurturing side. I pushed aside the memory of her excitement about my pregnancy, and how she'd put a sonogram photo on her bulletin board in her bedroom. Some memories were too close to the hurt to be pressed on again.

I walked through the broken tape and stood at the edge of the hole, the scent of rich, moist earth permeating the air.
I love you forever.
I wondered who'd worn the other half of the ring, and if they'd missed this unknown woman when she was gone.

Streaks of pink and orange littered the sky, casting a rosy glow on the ground like a benediction. I looked up in time to see the last sliver of light leave the sky like a sigh, and I stared at the spot for a long time, wishing I could call the colors back.

A light flicked on in the cotton shed, and I saw Tommy pass by the open window. I'd been meaning to talk with him, so I headed for the door. A blue tarp had been stretched over the broken roof, but the encroaching planting season had stalled any permanent repairs.

I knocked gently on the door, and when I didn't hear a reply, I let myself inside. The same messy desk greeted me, along with several additional mugs of half-drunk coffee with curdled cream on top.

“Tommy?” I called loudly.

“Up here.”

“Are you decent?”

“Always.”

I smiled as I ascended the stairs, wondering how old a sibling had to get before he stopped saying all the old stock responses from childhood.

He was sitting at the worktable, an old-fashioned pocket watch in front of him, its back removed to display its inner workings like a patient on a surgeon's table. The bright overhead light shone on Tommy's head, turning the strands of hair white.

“You come to get those little bags to sort through the hatbox?” he asked without looking up.

“I actually came just to talk. But I can get the bags now, too.”

He jerked his head toward a tall tower of makeshift shelves made of plastic milk crates. “They're in a box over there somewhere.”

I found the box and grabbed a handful before sitting down on a turquoise chair that looked a lot like our old high school desk chairs. “Nice chair.”

He shrugged. “When they tore down the old high school they offered all the furnishings to whoever wanted them. This chair was the only thing left by the time I got there, and only because it was back behind the baseball field, buried in some weeds.”

“Nice choice. Makes me feel sixteen again.”

He just grunted and continued to work.

“So, how's the cotton business?” I asked.

“Horrible. Wonderful. All of the above. Answer'll be different depending on the year and the month.”

“Well, what about right now?”

I didn't know if it was the chair I was sitting in or the way he was looking at me, but I suddenly felt like a kid sent to the principal's office for passing notes in class. “Three years ago, I had the trifecta of good cotton growing—perfect weather, great market price for cotton, and a crop failure in China. I harvested three bales per acre and was able to put a lot of money in the bank. Which was good, because the last two years have been piss-poor. Too much rain, too much heat, and low market prices. The only reason I'm still hanging on is because some of my neighbors aren't.”

He pushed away from the worktable and faced me. “I've been doing some speculating in cotton futures and options—helped pad the coffers and pay the light bill. And it helped me buy out my neighbors, who couldn't wait to pack up and ship out after the last few years we've had. I got almost six thousand acres all together now—not really a lot when you think about how much I need to plant just to break even. I've diversified some, too—rice, corn, soybeans. I'm still a cotton farmer, though. Even if it kills me, I'll always be a cotton farmer.”

I stared at him for a long time, wondering why I couldn't see any defeat in his shoulders and heard only pride in his voice. “What about this year's crop?
Farmers' Almanac
telling you anything useful about the weather?”

He gave me a lopsided grin. “Planting mostly cotton—taking over two of my soybean fields, even—because it looks like it's going to be a good year for cotton. Now all we can do is pray for good weather.”

“And for China to have a crappy crop.”

He smiled the first genuine smile I'd seen since my return. “You're catching on, Booger.”

I picked up a piece of wadded-up paper from the top of a milk crate and tossed it at him, beaning him on the temple. “Please don't call me that. I'm not six anymore.”

“Nope. You sure aren't.” He gave me a sad smile, and I wondered if
he was thinking about our growing-up years with Bootsie and Emmett here on the farm, our unconventional but mostly happy existence where Tommy hardly noticed that we didn't have a mother or father like the other kids at school. But I had. I felt their absence the way the fields missed the rain.

“So why do you do it?” I asked, because I really wanted to know. There was a lot of world outside the Mississippi Delta, and to my knowledge he hadn't seen any of it.

He studied the backs of his hands placed flat on the thighs of his jeans. “Because it's more than just what I do. It's who I am.” He leaned back to rest his elbows on the worktable. “I can charge ridiculous amounts of money to a gentleman in Australia to fix his two-hundred-year-old timepiece, but I will never be a clockmaker. Being a cotton farmer is who I am. And I'm okay with that. Heck, I'd even say I enjoy the challenge. It's a dying industry; that's for sure. But I don't want to let it go. I can't. It's the fabric of our lives.” He winked, but I could see the sadness in his eyes. I saw hope there, too. He'd always been that way, always believing that if the sun rose in the morning, it meant we'd been given another chance to try again. I'd just seen it as another day I was still stuck in Mississippi.

That had been our one fundamental difference growing up: I was always looking beyond the horizon for what was next, my heels merely skimming the surface, but Tommy was happiest in the fields with Emmett, his feet firmly planted in the fertile soil of our home.

I straightened in my chair, wondering if I'd thought the chairs were that uncomfortable when I was sixteen. “Before I forget, Tripp showed me a piece of jewelry he found with the skeleton. It's a ring—well, half of a ring. It has a heart on it that's cut in two, along with a little message. We think it's supposed to read ‘I love you forever.' It was hung around her neck with a watch chain.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“Yeah. I thought that was an interesting coincidence, too. We don't know where the other half is, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen the ring before. But . . .” I stopped, still not sure why it had seemed so familiar when Tripp had shown it to me.

“But what?”

“Well, it just seemed like I'd seen it before. I was hoping maybe the mention of the ring would jog your memory.”

He shook his head. “Nope. But I'll ask Tripp to show it to me just in case. Although even if I'd seen it, not sure I'd remember. I'm a guy. I'm not supposed to remember stuff like that.”

He turned back to the watch and picked up a tiny tweezers, and I knew he was dismissing me, wanting me to leave so he could go back to his solitude, but I had one more question for him.

“Why aren't you married? You and Carrie Holmes were practically picking out china together when I was back in high school.”

Tommy shrugged. “She married Bobby Limbocker instead. His family's less crazy than ours.” He stood and rubbed his hands through his hair. “She had two kids and then bam, Bobby starts running around on her and she dumps him. Guess it's been two years now.”

“That's sad. I always liked Carrie. I would have liked to have her for a sister-in-law.” I smiled up at him. “Still could, I guess.”

He shook his head. “That train done left the station. She's only got time for those kids and her new movie theater.”

Somewhere in my hazy brain, an idea sparked. “Speaking of which, Tripp is taking Chloe and me to see a
Twilight
movie marathon tomorrow. Why don't you come?”

“Naw. Not this close to planting. Got to make sure the fields are ready for some seed.”

“I know you've been making sure the fields are ready since February. One night isn't going to kill you.”

“It might,” he said. “And I've got to make sure the soil's dry enough and not so heavy, so I can plant the seed without killing my tractors. I can't afford to buy a new one right now.”

“Plant while you still need a coat,” I said, quoting Emmett. “Isn't it getting a little late to start your planting?”

“Yeah, but with all the rain we've been having, things have been pushed back. There's always something to keep me up at night, and busy as a long-tailed cat on a porch filled with rocking chairs during the day. Doesn't allow me much time or energy for anything else.”

“Is there anything I can do to help? It's been a while since I've been around a tractor, but I'm sure it's like riding a bicycle.”

“Nah—but thanks. I don't have time right now to teach you all the new equipment. Besides, I've already hired my extra workers and they need the money.”

I nodded, understanding the scarcity of workers and what the farmers needed to do to keep them happy and coming back every season. “Well, think about coming with us—you need a break. Not to mention we might need another pair of hands for Chloe.”

Tommy snorted. “That's for sure. She's . . . different. Unique, you could say. But I like her. She reminds me a bit of you when you were her age.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “How so?”

“Oh, I don't know. It's like she's trying so hard to push people away and show them that she doesn't care if they like her or not. She's working so hard at it that she's got to be feeling just the opposite. I think that's why you were such a little snot. You were a real fire ant as a kid.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You're just making that up. And people only called me a fire ant because of my red hair.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. He stretched. “I've got to be up at four, so I'd best turn in. Thanks for the invite—I'll think about it.”

“You do that,” I said, slipping out of my chair. I reached up and impulsively kissed him on the cheek. “Good night, Tommy.”

He gave me a lopsided grin as I turned and headed toward the stairs.