Mungus: Book 1 (12 page)

Lauren turned around in surprise and only allowed me to see her face for half a second before turning back around.  In that half a second I could see that her eyes were red and she was crying.  “Yes?” she asked and she continued to scrub with her back to me.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay.”

“That’s my job.  I can clean that if you want.”

She laughed.  “No.  I enjoy cleaning.  It relieves stress.  Go sweep some more in the library.  You’re doing a good job in there.  Lunch is in the kitchen whenever you are hungry.”

I wanted to help her.  I wanted to make her feel better, but I didn’t know how.  I left feeling sorry for her.  When I entered the kitchen I hoped to find the same sandwiches that I had eaten the day before, but found something better.  On a tray were a number of cooked steaks and baked potatoes.  I ate again until my stomach was full and then went upstairs, read for an hour or two and then fell asleep again.  I was surprised by how much I was sleeping.  It felt like more than usual, but after considering my recent working conditions
and that I ran during the nights I decided that that was probably nothing to concern myself with.

I awoke on my own.  My eyes blinked open and I saw that Lauren was standing in the doorway watching me and smiling vacantly.  When I looked back at her she grew embarrassed and then strode down the hallway.  I didn’t understand it.  It didn’t make sense. 
Pitri had said that she wanted me to work there since I arrived on the farm.  But why?  Why me?  Why does she stare at me when she thinks that I’m asleep?

I served Glen and Lauren dinner. 
Pitri made them grilled fish and sticks of cooked potato that I had never seen before.  He called them “French fries.”  Serving them was fairly easy.  All that I had to do was occasionally get Glen another glass of wine and some more potatoes.  After dinner, Glen’s face was red and his words were slurred.  He went off to bed and after I helped Pitri clean the dishes I took some of the fish and “French fries” home to eat with Saul.

I waited for Saul in our cabin and when he entered I gasped.  “What happened?” I asked.  His shirt was torn and the back was stained with blood.  His right eye was bruised and swollen shut.

He smiled and tried to talk, but his lips trembled.  He began to cry and I wrapped my arms around his big body, careful not to touch tender back.  “He hit me, Walt.  With a whip.  Hard.”

“Who hit you?”

“Di,” Saul’s body was shaking as he blubbered.

“Why did he whip you?”

“He was picking on me.  Calling me tubby and slapping me in the stomach.  He did it so many times that it made me mad.  All I did was block his hand and then he hit me in the face.  I started crying and everyone saw it, even Sarah.”  Sarah was the girl that Saul ate with sometimes.  “Then he told me to turn around.  It hurt.  It hurt so bad!  Then Glen came over and asked what happened.  Di told him and Glen said that it was strike two.  He shot his gun in the air, Walt.  I can’t get another strike!”

“I’m sorry.  I brought you some food.”

Saul and I began to eat the fish and French fries on our cots.  As he ate, he began to cheer up and he started to talk about baseball.  He told me about Derek Jeter’s last game.  Even though I had watched the game with him, I let him tell the story.  Talking about baseball made him happy.

Before Saul went to sleep that night I made him promise me not to block any of Di’s punches the next day, no matter how bad they hurt.  He promised to try his best.  That was all that I could ask for.  As I lay there and waited for the rest of the farm to go to sleep I became infuriated with Glen.  Saul hadn’t done anything wrong!  All he did was bring a baseball and try to defend
himself.  I had to get Saul off of the farm.  We could go and live in the woods.  Or, we could go and report what had happened to President Dickerson.  Yes.  I remembered how angry he had gotten when he saw us chained up.  If he got so upset about that, then surely he doesn’t know about what goes on at the plantations.  I worked that thought through my head.  ‘Surely,’ I thought, ‘this farm has to be unique.  Glen’s crazy.  We’ve got to get to town and we have to tell the president.’

I ran further and faster that night than I ever had.  It was an angry run.

9

Moving On

             
Days passed.  A Salyer guard went to town to sell a trailer full of cotton and while he was there he bought baby Julia some medicine that made her fever go down.  Saul kept his promise to not block any more punches or strikes against him, and because of this, I was keeping my promise to him to keep him alive; at least for the time.  He got the occasional bruises on his face or arms, but besides that, he was healthy.  I read for hours every day with long naps in between while my brother and the other servants toiled in the hot fields all day.  It made me feel guilty, knowing how hard the others were working, but taking food from the house and giving it to Saul made me feel better.

             
Lauren’s behavior was still a mystery.  I could not figure out why she had chosen me, why she didn’t make me work, or why she stared at me while I slept.  Often I would wake up from naps to find her leaning against the doorframe watching me sleep.  When I awoke, she would scurry off and pretend that the incident had never happened.

Until one afternoon.

              After a big breakfast of French toast and sausage, I took the broom and dust pan, as I did every day even though I never used them, and went upstairs.  I was tired from the run the night before and after half an hour of reading my eyes grew heavy under the soft breeze of the fan and I drifted off.

             
When I awoke, Lauren was sitting on the sofa beside me and crying into her hands.  I sat up and looked at her with confused eyes.  She covered her face and pretended that I wasn’t there while she continued to cry.  She was sobbing and making her slender body bob up and down.  I wanted to disappear.  I didn’t understand why she was crying on the back porch that night and I didn’t understand as she wept beside me.  I wanted to say something to comfort her, but my mouth felt like it was glued shut.  I expected her to stand up and leave at some point, but she didn’t.  She took her crying eyes out of her hands and looked at me with tears streaming down her face.

             
“You look just like him,” she whispered.  The words hung on the air.  The fan spun above our heads.

             
“Who?” I asked.

             
She didn’t answer, but moved closer to me and ran her hands over my face.  Her touch was gentle and I didn’t shy away.  She pulled my hair back off of my forehead and looked over every angle of my head.  My ears.  My nose.  My mouth.  Then she pulled me towards her and wrapped me in a tight embrace.  “My son,” she said.  She held me for a long time and I felt her warm tears run over my neck.  I wrapped my arms around her and she held me until she stopped crying.  I hadn’t been held like that since my mother had died.  Then she let go and scooted away from me on the couch.  She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and said, “I’m sorry,” she sniffed then laughed.  “That must have been weird.”

             
“A little,” I said, and we both laughed.

             
Lauren crossed her legs on the couch.  She stared at the coffee table and began to talk.  “I saw you from afar the first day that you worked out in the fields.  I was out getting water and I saw you walking by on a dirt road talking to a Beardsley.  You laughed and for a moment I actually thought it was him.  You look just like him, except for the hair, of course.”  Lauren smiled and her eyes ran over the bookshelves.  I didn’t ask anything, but she kept on going.  “And then when you brought Hank up here on that trailer, and I saw you up close it was all that I could do not to break down then.  His name was Gabe, my son.  He cared about the Beardsleys and would get angry at Glen when they were mistreated.  It was so moving to see you help out a Salyer guard like that.”  Her lips began to pull down on the side and water began to run from her pretty green eyes again.  “That’s what killed him, I think.  He made a mistake when he disagreed with Glen.  He took Gabe out on a hunting trip and there was an
accident.
  Accident?”  She laughed.  “He never cried.  I had to bury him.  Glen didn’t lift a finger to do it.  His son was dead and he didn’t even care.  Accident.”  The fan whirled above us and for a long time she sat crying.  I folded my hands over my book and waited.  Then, after a long time, she looked at me with green sober eyes.  “I hate him, Walt.  I do.  I hate my husband.”  She began to sob hard again and I came over and wrapped my arms around her.  She rested her head on mine and for a long while we sat like that.

She left and I sat on the couch for a time thinking about Glen.  It hurt me that someone like Lauren had to be with him.  Usually, people can divorce their husband, but on such a lawless farm it isn’t wise to leave a man who is capable of killing someone for a disagreement.  He was always
irritated, it was as though the workings of the world, the fact that he wasn’t God, made him mad.  As I began to think about every encounter that I had had with him I became upset.  Putting the gun in Saul’s mouth.  Not getting his child medication until she was about to die.  He was crazy, that was for sure, and he didn’t deserve the authority that he had.

When Glen came in from the fields that day, his fists were clenched and his eyes threatened whoever looked into them. 
Pitri and I had set the table all ready and Lauren and Julia were already seated.  Glen shoved the wooden door open and entered the dining room.  He kicked off his boots which scattered over the floor and rested his gun against the wall.  The weapon was old, but still something to be feared.

             
“Hi, honey,” Lauren said.

             
He didn’t answer, but just threw his body down and began to fork his casserole into his mouth.  The dining room was quiet.  The Biblical figures on the wall glanced over the table.  Glen’s fork hit against his plate and he gulped from his glass of water.  Besides the sounds of silverware hitting and water being swallowed, the room was silent.  I felt as though if I moved something would explode.  Glen began to fidget in his chair.  His foot was tapping in nervous rhythms on the floor.

             
Glen dropped his fork onto his plate with a loud clank and gazed at his wife.  She looked back at him with green eyes.  “Do you not even care?” Glen asked.

“Do I not even care about what?”

Glen looked at the floor and shook his head.  “Could you get me some wine, Little Salyer?”

“Yes, sir.”

I went to the kitchen, retrieved a glass, and he gulped it down and then stared at his wife.  Glen tapped his knuckles on the table and pulled his top lip up to show his teeth.  “I come in here, after working all day, and you don’t even ask how my day was.”

“I thought that you were upset.  I thought that you didn’t want to be bothered,” said Lauren.  Her elbows were on the table and her hands were over her mouth.

Glen pulled his arms out wide and his voice rose, “I come in here after a full day of work and you’ve just been lounging around all day with the baby.  I throw off my boots and you don’t even ask me!”

“Ask you what?”

“Ask you what,” Glen repeated and laughed.  His face turned angry and red and he began to yell, “What’s wrong!  What’s wrong?”  He pointed a finger at his and yelled, “Why don’t you ever ask me what’s wrong?  Do you not care about me?  Do you not care?  I would ask you if you came in like that.  Go ahead, ask me!”  Glen was breathing hard through his nose and his lips were pursed.  You would have thought someone just slapped him in the face.

Lauren just looked at him and didn’t say anything.

“I’m not joking,” he said.  “Ask me!”  His chest moved up and down with mad breaths.

Lauren’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper.  “What’s wrong?”

“Now she asks me,” said Glen, cackling to the ceiling.  “It takes her all that just to ask me one simple question.  What’s wrong, you ask.  No one’s worth anything, but me.  And the problem is that I’m only one person.  The workers aren’t working.  The guards aren’t making them work.”  Glen spat onto the floor and said, “I had to kill one of them today.  It was a worker, big guy, too.  We’re losing a lot of cotton because of it.”

             
Was it Saul?  Please, no!

My hands clenched and my blood began to pump hot with hatred.  I imagined my brother dead under the hot sun.  Lauren nodded her head and tried to feed her scared and crying daughter some mashed fruit.  Tears were just under the surface when Glen turned to me and said, “go get me some wine, Little Salyer.”

              I nodded and went to the kitchen.  When I was out of earshot I whispered, “I hate you,” as I poured him a glass of white wine.

             
I brought Glen the glass and he gulped it down without ever setting it down on the table.  “Another,” he said.  And again, he chugged it.  “Another.”  He gulped it down.  When I brought him his fifth glass he sat it down and sipped on it.  His face was red with rage and alcohol and it was quiet in the dining room except for the clinking of silverware.

             
Glen took a bite, chewed it, and then spat it back onto his plate.  “Are you kidding me!” Glen screamed.  He banged his fists down on the table making the plates jump.  He stood up and walked over to Pitre.  “It’s cold!” he said, pointing to his plate.  “How come?”