Freshwater Road (44 page)

She placed Mrs. Owens's mail on the kitchen table. In the quiet of her
room, the rain pelting the small house, Celeste opened the thick letter and
pulled out a small stack of color photos. Cloth on bolts and ribbons in exuberant colors, strings of garlic and red peppers hanging on nails above
bins of peaches, grapes, piles of bananas, okra, and tomatoes. Loaves of
bread wrapped in paper. And long windowed houses with green shutters
and balconies, wrought-iron railings in fleur-de-lis patterns, iron fencing
and gates with corn on the cob posts, each kernel in detail. A photo of the
St. Charles Avenue streetcar going up the middle of the shady street. For
the first time she blessed the fact that she didn't have a telephone in this
house. She flattened the letter on her lap like a document, smoothing the
fold creases, read "Sugar" at the top of the page. Good. If he was saying
something as bitter as goodbye, he wouldn't start with something so sweet.
She flopped back on her soft bed. Her eyes stayed on the "Sugar," refused
to float on down the page. She heard him saying the word in her ear.

I been thinking about you, the way your face made the stars and the
moon run for cover, afraid ofyourglow. You stole my heart and now
I'm walking around Mississippi completely heartless. You are too cruel.
A woman in the office in Jackson asked me why Ilooked so sad. I told
her I lost my heart and didn't know ifI'd ever find it again. Didn't
want you to forget the French Quarter, the St. Charles Avenue street
car, Audubon Park, and me.

Ed

She closed her eyes, feeling the after-rain stagnation gathering intensity,
the ponds festering, rivers slowing, her heart all muddy desolation. This was
the kind of viscous humidity that stopped you where you stood, had you
staring into space vacantly, not bothering to bathe or change clothes, not
able to pass through the weight of the air. She stretched out on the bed,
too weary to pull her mattress down to the floor. She held the letter flat on
her breasts, clutching the sides of the paper. The letter was her shield, her
lifesaver, her hope for a better tomorrow away from this place, a dream of
colors and dancing, of sunlight on rooftops. But she knew, too, that this
man had a beautiful but dangerous heart. Untouchable in a sense, because
she knew that this thing in Mississippi owned him, though they'd never
spoken of it. That commitment she trusted, but it was the thing that would
preclude all else. She felt drugged, sinking into the mattress, its fine hairy
fibers creeping into her nose and stopping the flow of air into her lungs.

With one index finger crooked in the steering wheel and his mind on
Celeste, Shuck eased the Cadillac to the curb, the sunlight reflecting off
the long hood of the glossy car like the stage lights at the Fox Theatre off
of Cab Calloway's big white suit. The top was down. Momma Bessie's
house sat there like an old memory. It hadn't changed in the slightest since
Momma Bessie and his father, Ben, first bought it. They'd gotten in early
on the opening of the West Side to Negro people ready to buy the small,
well-built, two-story houses. The area grew into a haven for the up and
coming, a coveted world, the strivers row of Detroit.

Shuck grew up surrounded by an odd mix of families like his own and
resentful whites who were slow to see what was coming and got stuck. Even
progressive-minded whites who intended to stay put regardless eventually
moved or died out. Now this was old. Other neighborhoods opened. The
houses on LaSalle, Boston, and Chicago Boulevards made this one look
like a miniature. Even Shuck's house on Outer Drive was no big deal in
Detroit anymore. One or two well-off Negroes had bought into Indian
Village, even Palmer Woods. Shuck sat in the car thinking that somebody
might've already made it into Grosse Pointe-whether the white folks out
there knew the buyers were Negroes was another story.

Momma Bessie's deep emerald green lawn, summer-cut high, was wellwatered and weed-free. He paid a gardener to do the yards on Outer Drive
and here once a week in the summer and to shovel the snow in the winter.
Shuck heard his own footsteps on the wood stairs, surveyed the seasoned porch furniture. Momma Bessie took care of things so that they lasted until
Shuck had to unhinge her grip from them. She'd used her manual wringer
washing machine until Shuck sent her off to Bermuda on a vacation then
had the old washer removed and a new electric one installed in the basement. She accepted it, but he knew she would've been just fine with the old
one until its L-shaped handle fell off and clanked to the basement floor. It
was the same all through the house. Old but shining like new.

Before he crossed the few feet of porch, Momma Bessie had arrived at
the front door and swung it open. She rarely gave him time to use his key.
She was tall, a subtle mixture of brown and yellow skin, gray hair bunned
in at the neck. Shuck had noticed she was beginning that slight tilt forward,
heavier now that she didn't work every day, that she was up in age. No one
had a clue as to why close people started calling her Momma Bessie, but
they did. Mrs. Annie Rose Tyree had been quite a looker in her day. Still
wore her housedresses starched and ironed, never went out without a hat
on Sundays.

Shuck kissed her on the cheek, saw the delight in her eyes every time he
came in the door. He walked through the vestibule to the neat living room
with the television angled in the corner, the curtains closed against the sun,
the carpet vacuumed with not a footprint in it, the sofa and two upholstered
chairs set for conversation or television watching. The coffee table glittered
with crystal pieces and mementos of Momma Bessie and Ben's travels in
years past. Ashtrays from Bermuda, California, and Las Vegas. In this living
room, children had been encouraged to sit on the floor. Celeste and Billy
didn't earn chair rights until they entered high school.

He went out the back door to check the yard, the fence and gate, the
garage with his father's old Mercury still sitting in there. Momma Bessie
never would learn to drive. He should get rid of that car. He walked along
the narrow yard pavement, the sun high and hot, marveling at her gardening, the small yard worthy of photographing with its roses and peonies,
morning glories and lilac bushes. The ancient apple tree still bore the fruit
that she used to make the best apple pies on the West Side of Detroit.

Back inside, Shuck climbed the stairs, hand on the smooth oak railing,
checked windows, screens, faucets, drains, the toilet in the one bathroom.
Stood in the room that had been his own as a teenager, the room he slept
in when he met Wilamena in high school, the room they slept in just before
they got married, the room he came back to when she left him. Momma Bessie hadn't changed one thing. He kept clothes in the closet. Could stay
the night here and never bring a thing with him. The past lived in this house,
pressed into overcrowded closets, in shoeboxes and hat boxes in the attic.
He glanced at the framed photograph on the chest of drawers of Billy,
Celeste, and himself standing in front of the Royal Gardens the day it
opened. The ghost in the picture was Wilamena. Celeste looked just like
her when she was a child. Still did.

Downstairs, he sat at the dining room table where in years past he'd
written his policy numbers every day of the week. Shuck could see his
reflection in the tabletop. Used to come in with a head full of numbers and
bets, a doubled brown paper bag full of cash. Would sit at this table with
his small book and rectangles of inky copy paper that he slid in under the
top sheet as he wrote down the numbers and the code names for the people
who'd made the bets. At each stop on his route, he wrote the numbers and
bets for his customers on little papers so each customer had a copy. He never
drove through the streets with the numbers slips, knew the police watched
for men like him who lived well and never punched a time card. He called
in his numbers, put the books in a shoebox in the basement, and took the
money to the "bank." Late in the afternoon he'd come back as the numbers
fell, coming off the racetrack. In the evenings he'd go pay off his winners.

Shuck played fair and square and people trusted him, and some stood
right in front of him and cried when he said he was finished running numbers. He became the bank, let the runners come to him. He'd felt the heat
of the police, knew it was time to make some changes. After a good hit,
he bought the Royal Gardens and pulled back from the numbers game
altogether; luck, he knew, was like the weather, and it was hard to live the
good life in jail. Shuck, with his bar and his house on Outer Drive, became
a respectable Detroit businessman. His only contact with that other world
came through the vendors he needed for the bar. The Mafia controlled the
jukebox business and the liquor business, and had a hand in cigarettes. It
was all about distribution, and no Negro man had been able to crack that.
More than a few, he knew, had died trying.

Momma Bessie poured him iced tea with lemon and a sprig of mint
from the backyard and gave him a coaster for his glass. He heard her rummaging in the front hall closet, covering the dress shirts she ironed for him
with dry cleaner's plastic, thinking that was why he was there. How many
shirts he brought, that's how many she washed and ironed. When he didn't bring them, she acted as if he'd broken her heart. So once a week, he came
with a bag of dirty dress shirts and picked up the washed and ironed ones,
the starch in the collar and cuffs done exactly the way he liked. She said
she turned to her stories on the television, set up the ironing board, and by
the time the stories went off, she was finished. Said the ironing was good
for her arms, just like working in that yard.

Shuck drank the perfect blend of tea, sugar, mint, and lemon, not a bit
sure what he wanted to talk about or if he wanted to talk at all. This house
was his touchstone. If he just came in, walked through the rooms, sat for
a moment, it convinced him that things held, that everything wasn't just
flying off in directions. Sometimes, he knew, he wanted things to fly off,
to be forgotten.

Momma Bessie didn't know Celeste was in Mississippi and he wasn't
going to tell her. He'd told her, instead, that Celeste had stayed in Ann Arbor
for summer school.

"Where's your shirts?" She gently laid the ironed ones across the other
end of the dining room table, the clear thin plastic ballooning out then
relaxing.

"I'll bring 'em tomorrow." He had the bag ready in his bedroom on
Outer Drive, had just walked right by it.

"You hungry?" Momma Bessie headed for the kitchen before he answered. "I got some pound cake in here." She'd cut him a piece and bring
it with a fork and a napkin no matter what he said.

"No, no. I'll pick up something tomorrow when I bring the shirts."
Shuck knew she felt his distraction.

Momma Bessie put the small plate with a slice of pound cake on a place
mat in front of him, then stood in the doorway between the kitchen and
the dining room, worry knitting her brow, tautening her sagging jawline.
"I saw Alma Weaver down at Hudson's the other day. Said she was teaching
summer school. I wondered why I hadn't seen her all summer long."

"Summer's just getting started good." He wanted to push summer along
as fast as possible, get it over with, bring Celeste out of that hellhole down
south. It was August. He'd lost all track of time. Summer had been whizzing by, but to him it felt as if it was all in slow motion.

"It'll be gone by the time we look up." Momma Bessie's clock ticked on
another sphere. Day counting, life counting, needing to group around her
those she loved as often as possible. Shuck knew these things.

"Maybe we should start planning something for Labor Day?" He hoped
that would calm her down about this summer business. Celeste would be
home from Mississippi by then. Something to celebrate, he was thinking,
a cookout at the house on Outer Drive.

"Well, we can have a ending to the summer, though we never had a proper
beginning, I guess." She turned away into her kitchen.

He ate the cake, the butter and sugar spreading out on his tongue. He
washed it down with iced tea, taking in the room where he'd eaten Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for more years than he could count. Adults at
this table, children at the card table set up in the corner. When he bought
the house on Outer Drive, the alternations began. Christmas dinner here,
Thanksgiving there. But it was never the same. "You ever think about leaving
this house?"

"To go where, at my age?" She came back to the doorway.

"To my house." He pushed his placemat away gently.

"What would I do with all my furniture, my things?" Momma Bessie
considered his words right there in front of him. He wondered if she'd ever
had the same thought.

"We could work it out. Think about it." With Momma Bessie in the new
house and Alma, too, with her plants, maybe Celeste would come home, just
pack the Outer Drive house with people, make things the way they used to
be. Maybe then the new house would feel like this old house used to.