One More River (17 page)

Throughout the telling of Mags’s tale, Horace moaned and trembled and bent over double with grief. Bernard shook from his toes to the top of his head. Buckets of tears poured from his round, close-set eyes. For the next month, the two tried to find out where the night riders had taken her. They combed the woods, the farms, the city of Saint Louis. They put about to everyone in their ken to check with everyone in their ken, especially those Negroes who worked in the town in private homes and businesses, for sightings of her or gossip about the night she was taken. They tried mightily but could not find her nor any information about where she might be. So they gave up, heading east away from the river, not so much toward a new life, as life felt pretty much over for them both, but because neither could stay in the big house anymore, not without her, not with the sight of little Maxie’s brains splattered on the wall burned into their memories, not with the images that sprang up in every corner of the house and in the yard, images of Aurora Mae’s torments accompanied by the everlasting echo of her screams.

E
VERYONE AT
N
EEDLEMAN’S
F
URNITURE TREATED
Laura Anne differently after her daddy yanked her back to Greenville. The men looked at her longer than they should. Whispers warmed her back each time she passed two or more of them together. The women smiled too broadly when they said hello and took too much interest in what she wore, remarking on the length of her skirts, the fit of her blouse. If she dared to wear a fabric that wasn’t coarse or a color that wasn’t dull, she’d overhear them criticize. Look at the way that silk lays against the skin, they’d say. I bet it feels like it’s not even there. Can you imagine? Walkin’ around in public feelin’ naked? And that yellow is bright enough to wake the bees on a winter’s day. . . .

All this was from her coworkers, many of whom she’d known since she was a baby girl when Lot would take her into the store as his “chair tester,” when he’d set her down on something hard and then something cushiony and ask her to pass judgment on how they felt. The customers were worse. As she approached, her face tarted up in her would-you-like-some-help-smile, they turned on their heels, tossing her the insult of a sidelong glance before they walked away with chins up in the air. It got so bad, she quit working the floor and spent her time in the office banging about trying to find enough to do. Lot did not like having her at close quarters. He couldn’t curse his suppliers or tell racy jokes with his daughter right there at the next desk. He couldn’t have his best salesmen or the shipping crew in to share a shot at the end of the day. There were times he considered firing her.

Out on the street, things were better, but only if Laura Anne chose neighborhoods where people didn’t know her. Otherwise, she was stared at, pursued by wolf whistles so rude and sharp they made her jump. If she walked to the drugstore to take her lunch at the counter, men sitting next to her exchanged winks and got their arms and elbows in her way or brushed their thighs against hers. In short, her public life had become that of a fallen woman, a consequence of her behavior she’d never considered when she was occupied with being heroic and in love. There were other consequences, too.

What she’d done to her mother, for example. Rose was a wreck. Her twitch was as fierce as it ever got, including the time she suffered the shingles and spent three weeks in constant agony. Her hair was a mess, she wore the same housedress every day. She kept herself in to avoid others. She would not answer the door. She couldn’t look anyone in the eye, not even the help. The only gaze she met was Laura Anne’s. Her daughter suffered each wet-eyed, red-rimmed stare like a knife to the heart.

Supper times were the worst. Before she’d run off, supper was an occasion of intimate pleasures, of boisterous fun. Daddy cracked jokes and put on the airs of fine ladies outfitting their boudoirs as he told stories about his business coups of the day. Mama might relate some whacky domestic incident, interrupting herself with giggle fits. Often Laura Anne leavened proceedings with a report of something she’d read that informed them all, and conversation would take a serious turn while the family leaned forward on their elbows after coffee to solve the world’s problems. Laura Anne grew up looking forward to supper as the best time of day, but since she’d come home, she hated it.

Mama picked at her food and ate little. Daddy overate and drank, too. The whole meal was silent but for the blessings Daddy made over the wine and bread and fruits of the earth before they ate and the thankful blessings Mama led after they finished. They’d never had the habit of all those blessings before unless it was Friday night or a high holiday. These days, Mama made sure they did so every night as an act of repentance. They’d raised a wanton and must to apologize to God, each other, and the community at large. If she thought to ask the cook for some, she’d have worn sackcloth to table and piled ashes on her head.

One morning after the prodigal was home a scant few days, Cousin Patricia Ellen phoned just after Laura Anne left for work. She gave Rose a coded message that communication had arrived from Mickey Moe and she’d call back with the lowdown after supper. Never had a meal dragged out so long. Laura Anne’s nerves were in a fix. Every sound was magnified. Whenever someone swallowed, her spine tensed. The smack of tongue over teeth irritated more than a cloud of gnats. She broke.

Lord God in heaven! she said and threw her napkin down over her plate. If you two don’t stop acting like grandmama was buried alive under the floorboards, I won’t run away from here again, I’ll kill myself instead!

With heavy tread, she trooped upstairs to her room muttering like a petulant child of thirteen rather than a twenty-year-old woman of the world. Thankfully, they did not follow. She imagined them sitting drop-jawed before Mama started to weep and ask Lot what she’d done to be punished with the company of a cruel, unmannered brute, and where had her precious good girl gone. Since Laura Anne remained a good girl, through and through, despite her parents outdated morality, an avalanche of guilt crashed down upon her, not guilt for loving Mickey Moe nor even for running off to him, but for losing her temper. She started to cry herself and was bawling away when the phone rang. She jumped on it. It was Patricia Ellen.

Whatsamatta, honey? You sound terrible.

Laura Anne dissembled. I’m gettin’ the most awful cold.

While she waited for news of her lover, her heart leapt around in her chest like a rabbit with its tail on fire. Cousin Patricia Ellen, whose domestic life was by turns dull and harried, enjoyed the drama of her go-between role so much she doled out information in excruciating bits and pieces.

You know I must say that boyfriend of yours has the most lovely voice, she began. It’s got a little rasp to it, but it’s deep, the way a man’s should be. Not like my Ruben’s. His is just a tad thin, don’t you think? It has a tendency to screech when he gets excited, and I mean when he’s joyful excited or angry excited, either one. . . .

Patty-cakes! Laura Anne interrupted, employing the woman’s baby name, which she knew annoyed her, to get her attention. Please!

Alright, alright. You don’t have to shout in my ear.

Laura Anne apologized, groveled a bit even, because she needed her cousin’s cooperation or she would be lost, truly lost, in this wasteland of opprobrium, formerly her most happy home. Ruffled feathers smoothed, Patricia Ellen spilled.

He was not in Memphis yet. That surprised. How long could it take for a drive of a few hundred miles? After he’d finished his premium collections, it seemed he’d stayed on the back roads, following his daddy’s old route as well as he could piece it together, not for any reason that made sense, but because a voice in his head told him to. He’d met with a few mishaps, a flat tire, a washed-out road. In the latter case, a tumble into a ditch caused him to pause a few days in Littlefield, Tennessee, a town so small it was not on the map but near enough to Memphis that soon as repairs could be effected to the car, he could arrive there the same day. He was staying at the home of the garage mechanic. Cousin Patricia Ellen gave her the phone number, saying that Mickey Moe would love it if she could manage to call. His host was a good old boy, who enjoyed talking religion. They spent the night discussing the virtues of Moses versus Jesus. She wasn’t to worry. If she was unable to call or failed to find him, she was to understand that his love had not faded but grew stronger each moment they were apart.

Laura Anne hung up the phone in a fog of love and amazement. Littlefield, Tennessee. Of all the places Mickey Moe should wind up. It was a miracle, something to do with that voice in his head, she was certain. She wished she could tell Mama. How could Mama object to Mickey Moe when the very voice of God was guiding him? Littlefield, Tennessee, was the birthplace of J. Henry, the janitor at Daddy’s store. A sweeter colored man didn’t exist on the face of this earth, she was sure of it, and every weekend he drove his old rattletrap of a Chevrolet coupe up to Littlefield to visit his ailing mama. Why, she could pay him to take her along. Since the next day was a Friday, she could be with her man in two short days, and no one would know, no one could find them, no one could fetch her back this time. Never again would she be bedeviled for the crime of loving Mickey Moe Levy. The two of them could resuscitate their original plan. They could travel in company to Memphis, confront Aurora Mae, and return to Greenville with Mickey’s roots rehabilitated for all time. If that wasn’t enough for Mama and Daddy, she and the man she loved would give up on propriety and get married by a justice of the peace. The thought gave her a twinge of pain—the dreams of young girls die hard—but she bit her lip, bid good-bye to the wedding dress lodged in her mind’s eye, and renewed in her heart the vows of liberation that got her into all this trouble in the first place.

The next day at lunchtime, she went to the bank and drew out her entire savings, cashing out ten dollars of it in quarters, nickels, and dimes with which to call Mickey Moe from a phone booth. Then she cornered J. Henry and told him she had urgent business in Littlefield, that she would give him fifteen dollars to take her with him when he went up in the morning. J. Henry knew better than to ask a white woman what her plans were in a godforsaken place like his hometown. The way people talked about Miss Laura Anne, he knew she was wild. She was trouble. Her plans could have just about any definition at all. But fifteen dollars was fifteen dollars, so he told her alright, he’d do it, only next week. I got some springs busted in the backseat, he said, and I don’t want to think what a mess some of them old roads might make of your spine. The following week when he’d had time to fix things up was better. He’d do it then.

Laura Anne would not let comfort stand in her way. Filled with the heady spirit of emancipation and recalling that she’d some redemption to do after insulting Mama Jo Baylin, she said, Don’t be silly. I need to go tomorrow or not at all. I’ll ride up front with you if need be. It don’t matter to me.

J. Henry was a middle-aged man, slim and small, nut-brown with a face flat as a tin pan. He had no artifice in him that Laura Anne ever noticed. Just now, his discomfort was palpable. He looked at his feet.

No, Miss Laura Anne. I can’t have that. You ridin’ up by me might reap the whirlwind in them woods. You just don’t know.

Then twenty dollars.

No.

Twenty-five.

No.

They say every man has his price. J. Henry’s was thirty-five dollars. It wasn’t really fair, offering him that amount. It was a fortune in his eyes. He could hardly say no, no matter what his misgivings. They made a plan to meet in the morning at 9:00 a.m. on an access road near the town dump, an hour’s walk from Laura Anne’s home. She’d have to leave the house at eight, which would surely raise suspicion, but she agreed anyway, afraid that if she threw any obstacles in J. Henry’s path, his will would become priceless.

That night on her way home from work, she stopped at the drugstore and called Mickey Moe from the booth at the back. He wasn’t there. She told the man who answered the phone to tell him she would arrive in Littlefield the next afternoon. He promised to deliver the message. She stressed to him that Mickey Moe wasn’t to call her back. She didn’t want her cousin involved in this. Once she was determined gone again, Patricia Ellen’s house would be the first place her father’d look. There remained the problem of leaving the house early. She puzzled things out a while and came up with the perfect excuse.

Where you goin’ so early? Mama asked at quarter to eight on Saturday morning. Since she hardly slept anymore, she’d been up hours.

To temple. To services. I’m catching a ride with Rebecca.

Mama was incredulous. To temple? Really? To temple?

Yes. I feel as I need some prayer about now.

Rose Needleman’s head twitched to the side three times. Her daughter was dressed in a light blue cotton dress of modest cut and length. She’d flats on, not her customary high heels, along with a straw hat with bunches of plastic cherries sewn on the back over a light blue grosgrain ribbon tied in a bow.

You look . . . you look . . . like your old self. Don’t you think that pocketbook is a little ostentatious, though? For temple? Honey, it’s huge.

Laura Anne had anticipated everything. She patted the bag with a slight, deprecating smile.

I needed some room. My siddur’s in there.

Lord, Mama thought as she watched her daughter leave, she’s carryin’ a prayer book? Her weary, grieving spirit lifted. Could penitence be far behind? Thank you, Lord, Rose Needleman cried out with her hands clasped under her chin and her gaze raised to the heavens, thank you!

As soon as Laura Anne turned the corner of her street, she ran. She ran in her flat shoes all the way to the access road by the town dump. Somewhere along the way, her hat flew off. She left it behind. Her lungs felt like they might explode, but she made it to the meeting place in forty minutes. Her dress was soaked through under the arms. Her hair was plastered to her head. That’s ok, she thought, patting her purse, which held a pair of blue jeans and a fresh shirt along with her makeup, her nightgown, her hairbrush, toothbrush, and wallet. She’d change when they stopped for gasoline.