Acts of God (17 page)

“I could take them both,” Cincinnatus offered. “Unless you're going in anyway.”

He walked over to the mailboxes and took out two letters from two separate boxes and handed them to Miss Nellie.

“Tell him about the quarters,” Naylor said.

“He wants a roll of quarters for the slot machine,” Margaret said. “Give them to him now.”

Cincinnatus opened the cash register and took out a roll of quarters and handed them to Naylor and then they opened the government envelopes and took out the checks. Margaret signed hers and handed it back to Cincinnatus and then Naylor signed his and handed it to him. Margaret's check was for three hundred and ten dollars and Naylor's check was for three hundred and seventeen dollars. No one knew why the difference was there and no one had ever questioned it.

“We need some Wesson oil,” Naylor said. “There isn't an inch left in the can.”

“I only have it in the half-quart jar,” Cincinnatus said. “Take that until we get in some more.” He reached up on a shelf and got the oil, and then Margaret found the cinnamon and Nellie took down a bag of ground coffee and they set all the things on the counter and Cincinnatus rang it up and made a bill and Miss Nellie signed it and then Cincinnatus walked them to the car and filled it with gasoline and put them all in their seats and waved as they drove back toward the house.

“It's ridiculous to make Momma go to the store every time your check comes,” Miss Nellie was saying to Naylor. “Just because Man and Baby Doll filled your head with that mess.”

“Leave him alone, Nellie. It doesn't hurt me to go to the store. It's all right, Naylor. I wanted to get cinnamon anyway.”

“We got to have it before all them come down here at Thanksgiving,” Naylor said. “Is Miss Zell going to be here?”

“Don't you all change the subject,” Miss Nellie said. “I don't mind driving you down there but you can't go on believing a pack of lies. The government sends you the checks because they passed a law in Washington to take care of old people who have worked all their lives. They are not mad at anyone because they have to do it. No one is going to hurt you because you sign the checks.”

“Miss Zell went to a lot of trouble to sign us up for this,” Margaret added. “It is called Social Security and Zell had to fill out a lot of forms and write letters so the checks come. All the old people are getting them, not just in the delta but all over the United States. If the government wanted to harm the people who get them they would have to harm thousands and thousands of people.”

“We're going to have to get them turkeys early this year,” Naylor said. He was tired of listening to them tell him about the checks. He knew all he needed to know about the checks. “Last year I never did get them thawed out after they'd been in the freezer up at Mr. Coon's. How many of them are coming to Hopedale this year?”

“I'm not going to talk about it anymore,” Miss Nellie said “I've had my say. You can either believe me or believe a pack of lies Man told you to make a fool of you. He knows what he told you isn't true.”

THEY ARRIVED AT
the house and got out of the car and went up the steps, and Naylor and Margaret went into the kitchen to start supper and Miss Nellie went to her bedroom and lay down on her bed to finish reading her magazine. She had hardly gotten settled into a story when the telephone rang and she had to get up and go to the table to answer it. It was her daughter in New Orleans calling to tell her that her husband had been asked to go on a trip to Russia with the president of the United States and she was going, too. “What's going on at Hopedale?” the daughter asked, when she was finished telling her news. “What have you all been doing?”

“The same thing we always do,” her mother answered. “Naylor believes the government is coming to Issaquena County to drown all the old Negroes in the bayou so they won't have to pay them Social Security, and Momma won't make him stop believing it, so we have to drive him down to the store to sign the check. She babies him so much.”

“What does he do with the money?”

“We made him a bank account in Rolling Fork in case he gets sick and has to go to the hospital. It's about two thousand dollars now. Zell started all this. She filled out the forms.”

“Well, I have to go now,” the daughter said. “We're going to dinner with the Charbonnets. I'll talk to you on Sunday. Bunky and Sharon will be here. We'll call you then.”

MISS NELLIE'S OLDEST
daughter hung up the phone and went to her dresser and started fixing her makeup. It was getting harder and harder to call Hopedale and talk to them. It was her home and she missed it and she loved her mother and her grandmother, but there was nothing to do for them. Their lives were winding down and they didn't like to come to New Orleans anymore and stay with her. They wanted everyone to come to them and she was too busy to go down there all the time. She called her younger sister to talk to her about it. “We're going for Thanksgiving,” she said. “We need to get them down here so we can take them shopping and get Grandmother some shoes, but they never want to come. Maybe they'll come back with us after Thanksgiving. There's no reason they have to be there that time of year. Coon Wade's farming the place.”

“We'll take some shoes down there when we go,” her sister suggested. “I'll call Grandmother and find out the sizes.”

“We need to take her to a good foot doctor. They should come to New Orleans, but they don't want to do it.”

“They went to Jackson last month to stay with Aurora. Dudley sent a car for them. We should send a car.”

“I'll ask them when I talk to them on Sunday.”

“I wish we could do more for them.”

“We do all we can. They don't want us to do things for them. They are used to doing things for us. They're already getting ready for Thanksgiving. Is Nelson going hunting with the men this year?”

“I guess he is. I don't particularly want him to.”

They were silent. They had both lost a son, one to a drunken driver, and one to an accident with anesthesia during surgery. They knew the world was full of danger and uncertainty and they could not forget it. Their sister in Jackson had never lost a child. She was still light-hearted, but they would never be light-hearted again, no matter how much they pretended that they were.

MISS NELLIE GOT
back up on her bed and went back to reading the story in
Good Housekeeping
magazine. It was about a girl in Nebraska whose young husband died in the Second World War. She remarried and had three children. Then she got a letter from Germany. Her first husband wasn't dead.
To be continued.
Miss Nellie closed her eyes and tried to imagine what she would do under those circumstances. Well, she would find out next month.
Good Housekeeping
came the first week of each month. This one had just come a few days before. They shouldn't have these continued stories, Miss Nellie decided. This was too much waiting.

IN THE KITCHEN
Margaret and Naylor were arguing about when they were going to start making the cheese straws for Thanksgiving. Then they started arguing about the turkeys. “If you leave them out too long they can spoil,” Margaret was saying. “Dr. Finley said if you freeze them and then thaw them out you have to cook them until there is no red anywhere and that's too dry. They get listeria if they sit too long. People can die from it.”

“We need to get some turkeys that never are frozen and put in that freezer at Mr. Coon's place to begin with,” Naylor said. “I'd rather have chickens than have to have these frozen ones. You can't get the dressing in them right.”

“Well, that's what we have now. You have to be in the modern world, Eli. It's the modern world now and that's where we live.”

“If we had some chickens we could make a nice dinner when they come.”

“Well, we don't have chickens and turkeys come frozen from the store and that is what we are going to cook and that is that.”

Margaret was sitting at the wooden table with a cup of coffee in a gold-banded cup that had been Nellie's wedding china. Naylor was sitting on his chair by the door. On the first night he had ever slept in Hopedale, Margaret's mother had made him a pallet on the floor beside the door so he could feel the heat coming in from the back fireplace and he had kept his chair there ever since. It was his place. He had a cup of pot liquor and cornbread in his hand and he was tasting it while he talked to Margaret.

“When those potatoes are finished cooking I'll make some potato salad,” he said. On the stove a pot of potatoes was boiling and he was watching them.

“You better not let those potatoes cook too long,” Margaret said. “They'll fall apart if you don't get them out on time.”

“I know when to get them out,” he said. “Look out there, Miss Maggie, it's getting so dark.”

“It gets dark early this time of year,” she answered. “It's November. That's what happens. We are moving farther away from the sun. Then on December twenty-first we start moving back toward summer.”

“I hope we do,” Naylor said. “I don't like it to get cold and dark.”

“Well, it does. That's how it happens.”

They were thinking about the darkness of November but then Sugar came in and started talking to them. “I got the hose and washed the dust off the Buick,” he said. “Now I'm going home. You all want me to make a fire in the dining room before I leave? We got a pile of good firewood out back. I could bring some in. When Mr. Floyd was alive he always wanted a fire in November.”

“That would be very kind of you,” Margaret said. She stood up and ignored the pain in her feet and started toward the dining room to help with the fire. Naylor put down his pot liquor and went to work on the potatoes.

In a while a beautiful fire was burning in the dining room and Margaret began getting out the china and place mats for their supper.

The phone started ringing. Margaret went back into the kitchen and took down the receiver and answered it. It was Aurora calling from Jackson. “You all getting along all right?” she asked.

“We're very well, my darling girl. Naylor's making hot potato salad and Sugar's building us a fire.”

“Margaret's worried about your feet. I want to come and get you and bring you up here to a doctor. Could I come do that next week one day?”

“There's nothing wrong with my feet. Is everything all right with you, Sugar Pie?”

“I think you're wearing the wrong size shoe, Babbie. I want to take you to a man who can fix some of the corns and get you some shoes that fit. Margaret's worried to death about it and I told her I'd come see about it.”

“Then come on down. We could take Naylor, too. He could use some new boots. He has two thousand dollars in the Farmer's and Merchant's bank now. From his Social Security checks.”

“I will come down on Wednesday then. Write it down so you don't forget.”

“Come on then, honey. I can't wait to see you and hold you by the hand. We'll be waiting for you.”

Margaret hung up the phone and said a little prayer of thanks. Then she turned to Naylor, who had been waiting to see who was calling. “Aurora's coming on Wednesday to take us to the shoe store,” she told him. “So get Sudie to give you a haircut and get all those hairs off your chin before she gets here. Tomorrow we'll have to find Baby Doll and get the parlors dusted. Don't cut those potatoes up so small, Eli. They soak up too much mayonnaise when the pieces are that small. And don't forget to put some celery into it. Nellie likes a lot of celery in hers.”

She walked over to the refrigerator, refusing to pay attention to the pain in her feet, and opened the door and got out the celery and took it to the sink and started cleaning it.

“I know how to cut up potatoes,” Naylor muttered, just loud enough for her to hear, but not loud enough to solicit an answer. “I guess I been cutting up potatoes without any help from anybody since I was by my momma's skirts on Panther Burn.” And he went on cutting, not giving in to the sadness of thinking about his momma and times of long ago that were all dead and gone.

THERE ARE PLACES
on Hopedale Plantation where the topsoil is thirteen feet deep. Cotton will grow there and soybeans and if you want to make a vegetable garden, you just turn the soil a little bit and throw down the seeds. You can turn your back and when you return there will be tomatoes and corn and green beans and bell peppers and okra and every kind of weed and grasshopper and caterpillar and earthworm and roly-poly and ant and wasp and dirt digger known to man and, in June, butterflies and moths and anything else you need to have plenty to look at if you get tired of talking to any people who are around.

IV

It was another November when Margaret fell on the floor in the back hall and the ambulance came and took her to the hospital in Greenville and all the girls started driving there from all over but only two of them got there in time to hold her by the hand and talk to her. Roberta had been away on a trip to New Mexico with her husband and only got there in the middle of the night, when it was already over.

The family came and there was a service in the Episcopal Church with the new young minister from up in Ohio reading the service in a nice, clipped manner.

Then they drove out to Greenfield's Cemetery and buried her in the shadow of the church her father and her uncles had built beside her mother's grave and the graves of all three of her mother's husbands, all of whom had been fathers to her and loved her and helped her in every way.

Naylor stood way back behind the family and wouldn't let anyone talk to him about it although he did agree to ride back to Hopedale with Aurora and her husband and Miss Nellie.

He didn't want to talk to anyone about it, even Mr. Dudley, who was always good to talk to about anything. He wanted to think about Margaret up in the clouds walking around on things so soft nothing would ever hurt her feet again and he was wondering what she had to eat up there and if they had anything to eat or if they just had to be hungry even if it was in heaven.