Sweet Song (3 page)

“What you doin’ here?” Hank hollered.

Hillary pointed at Leon. “His mama sent me to fetch him for garbage cleanin’.”

“Why don’t she fetch him herself?”

“Why
doesn’t
she? Don’t you hear any of your learning?”

“No need for it. Anyhow, you didn’t answer.” Hank put down a feed bag.

“She’s busy.”

“Well, you go tell her he’s busy too,” Hank said.

“Pa said it was okay. He’s talking with Bess about something.”

Hank smiled and looked at Earl. They both started to laugh. “Nigger soup,” Hank said.

Leon turned away.

“So, where’s Ma,” Hank asked Hillary.

“Sittin’, like always.”

“She’s burstin’ with crazy,” Earl murmured.

“Stop it,” Hank said.

“You’re jokin’, why can’t I?”

“Don’t matter what I do. Just stop it about Ma.” Hank glanced at Hillary. “Take ‘im. But bring ‘im back straight away.”

Leon didn’t need to be ordered. He followed behind Hillary as if she were leading him with a rope. “Why it need cleanin’ now?” Leon said once they were outside.

“’Coons got in the garbage last night and made a mess. Pa wants it cleaned up before the house stinks. You know what to do with it?”

“Throw it down the holler.”

“What do you do when you’re done work?”

“Go back to the barn.”

“I mean after that.”

“Help Pa.”

“I mean after that, too.”

“Wash up for dinner. Go to bed.”

“You don’t do any reading? That’s what I do. I’m reading parts of the Bible on my own. I have been for a long time now. Mrs. Milner said I’m smart. Smarter than those two back there in the barn. I’m going to go away when I’m old enough and keep learning until I’m smarter than anyone.” She looked into Leon’s face.

Leon turned his eyes away.

“You look smart.”

“I not.”

“What do you read and I’ll tell you how smart you are. Earl is only about first grade smart and trying to sit in the fourth grade.” She laughed at herself.

“I don’t read. Negroes don’t read.”

Hillary stopped in the path and touched Leon’s arm to stop him as well. “I already told you I’m smart. I know you’re not all Negro. I know you’re part of my pa. That’s why my ma is crazy. She hates him and loves him. That’s like a hook in a fish’s mouth. You love the taste but can’t get away.”

“You wrong, Miss Hillary. I all Negro and Big Leon the only pa I ever knowed.”

A breeze blew up and the scent of forest bottom consumed Leon. His skin pricked up in the chill.

“You be that then,” Hillary said. “You be what you want. But you’re still smart, and I bet I can teach you to read real quick.”

They walked close to the back of the house before anything more was said. “You didn’t answer,” Hillary said.

“Didn’t hear no question.”

“I’m going to teach you to read. After dark. I want you to come ‘round to the back here.”

“Can’t.”

“You won’t get caught. And if you do, I’ll be there too and tell them it was all my doing.”

“I don’t think so,” Leon told her before she left him in the back.

Hillary smiled back at him. “Oh, yes you will.”

Leon began cleaning the mess of garbage, putting everything into burlap bags kept near the kitchen door. When he was through, he took the bags three at a time into the side woods where the land
dipped toward Lower Run. On the first trip, Leon dumped the bags and shook them empty. Then he sat down.

The damp air of the woods wasn’t so cold. The wind slowed too. Afternoon clouds slipped over the treetops as they ruffled and shook leaves, in small bunches, down onto the ground. The place already looked more brown, yellow, and red, than it looked green. The place already felt ready for winter.

Leon relaxed his back against a tree, the same tree he’d relaxed against many times before. His only rest came when he took it. He learned in a few years how much time he could take without looking lazy, without looking as though he wasn’t doing his job. Leon learned how to work hard then rest, rather than work slow like some of the other Negro boys. Rather than being noticeably lazy like Hank and Earl. Even the white farmhands spent more time discussing how to do things rather than just doing them, stretching their days longer, and leaving no time for themselves, or so Leon imagined.

During short rest periods, Leon noticed the beauty of the world around him. Martha had taught him what to look for by pointing out the shapes of clouds, the colors of trees, and the sunset, what she always called “The Lord’s sweet song into night.” Leon hummed as he relaxed, learning that, too, from Martha. When he hummed, though, he heard words playing in his head. He suspected, but didn’t know for sure, that Martha heard only her own humming, even though she sang once in a while.

His words told him things about himself, like “I’m a loner in the wood/ bein’ forgotten by my own./ I’m a loner in the wood/ feelin’ like I got no home.” The words also informed him about what he enjoyed or hated. “The trees come a laughin’ with me/ like I be their friend.” or “Tunny too ugly to like anyone pretty as me.” He also whispered what he observed. “The girl done crazy ‘bout the nigger in the barn/ think she can teach him and that it won’t do no harm.”

That day, after each of three trips to the hollow to dump garbage, Leon sat and sang, satisfied with his life as it was.

After finishing his barn work, then working with Big Leon in the fields, Leon returned home and got ready for sleep as usual. Bess arrived home early and insisted on washing him even though he protested.

Martha retired early, humming loudly, and in an agitated manner. Something out of sorts must be going on. He would remember that humming. He would remember later that evening too. But years would go by before he remembered what happened between the two.

Late, and after Big Leon returned, Hillary tapped at the back door, then boldly stepped into the shack.

“What in the Lord’s name girl?” Martha said.

“Come to talk to Leon.”

“What you want wit him?” Bess asked. “He sick tonight.”

“I teach him to read.”

“Not my boy,” said Bess. “I tole you, he throwed up.”

Leon wanted to escape that night. Looking from Hillary to Bess, he stood between them unable to say his peace. He felt embarrassed to have Hillary standing on the dirt and bark floor, embarrassed that she might see his flattened form in his straw bed or the stains on the walls.

“He goin’ nowhere,” Bess said.

That’s when something sudden, strong, and unusual occurred. Big Leon stood, shirtless, skin-shining, and firm. It was as if he had risen from the ground, large and black. “Let him go,” he said.

“You got no say,” Bess shouted.

Big Leon turned to face Bess. “I got say now woman.”

Leon heard Martha say, “Um, um,” before she turned away from the action.

“You go on son. You learn to get outta here.”

Leon had never heard Big Leon call him son, and suddenly felt proud to be a consideration in the man’s life at all.

“In the South they hang you if you teach a nigger to read,” Bess said to Hillary.

“We ain’t in the South. Anyway,” Hillary said, “I’m doing this here for me, too.”

“Enough. He goin’.” Big Leon nodded and Hillary and Leon left before another word could be said.

W
hen Mona Carpenter died, Fred made everyone on the farm, blacks and whites alike, go to the funeral.

Hillary told Leon it was her father’s way of doing the least he could. Honor her one last time for putting up with him.

Leon didn’t want to go. Mr. Carpenter had stayed out of his life and he wanted it to remain that way. Yet he had a precognitive sense, like leaves turning up before rain, that changes would occur after Mona’s funeral. And those changes all seemed to stem from the family tensions of that day, starting with Big Leon’s refusal to let Martha be excused from the funeral. “We all gotta go,” he told her.

“I don’t owe that woman or that man for nothin’ ‘cept messin’ with a good family.”

“We goin’,” Big Leon said, finalizing the conversation.

Bess mumbled something under her breath as she was known to do more and more often.

“Quit mumblin’ woman.”

Bess mumbled again and Big Leon ignored her.

Leon stayed out of the conversation. He dressed in a clean shirt and trousers. Big Leon gave him a hat to wear, “For the day,” which made Leon feel like a man. At fifteen, he was a man as far as workload was concerned. With the hat on, his step turned more deliberate and controlled.

Once dressed, Leon stood outside the shack.

Tunny and Bud walked by. “Mix-up,” one of them said.

Leon hadn’t heard that for a long while. Tunny and Bud seldom spoke to him except when necessary. The whole family maintained an invisible existence soon after Freddy’s death.

Leon didn’t mind being called Mix-up as much as he hated being called Nigger Soup by the Carpenter boys. He thought about all the names he had and which ones he liked best and which ones he liked least. He liked it when Big Leon called him Son, even though it seldom happened. He liked how Martha called him boy most of the time. Martha spoke in changing sounds unlike anyone else Leon knew. Most often boy was a loving and familiar word, but Martha could change the sound so it came out like a curse. Her humming had the same range. Leon liked the way Hillary called him Leon. His name so seldom uttered in his own house that Hillary came to mind whenever his name was used. There was the exception though. Bess called him Leon, but she always prefaced it with my. My Leon. He hated that sound.

Martha came out and interrupted his name game.

“We leavin’?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Big Leon claimin’ his rights to Poor Bess before he have to look into Sir’s face. I reckon he want to be the first man of the day.” Martha spit the words out.

Leon turned his head away.

“Don’t like the truth? Well it disgusts me. Right now ain’t the time. They almost started in front a me. Afore I even ready to go. You don’t like me sayin’ it, but theys the ones disrespectful.” She walked down the path. Her shoulders and back rounded, folding in.

“Where you goin’? We gotta wait here.”

“I’m goin’ this far, no farther. Don’t want to hear no ruttin’.”

Leon followed her. He shook his head as he walked.

“Mona be lucky she done with it,” Martha said.

“Hillary told me she’s been crazy for years.”

“That what it’ll do to you if you let it. Poor Bess ain’t too straight already.”

“It must have been hard for Mona,” Leon said with careful thought to use the proper English he had learned from Hillary and his reading and writing lessons. He envisioned the words even as he spoke them.

Martha’s face softened. “Hard for you, but you here.”

“I’m not here. I’m separate. I don’t belong anywhere.”

“Those some big thoughts boy. Careful you head don’t break open. ‘Cause you here, all right. You here.”

In a moment he said, “They abuse each other. It’s all the hate in the world, isn’t it?”

“Not all the hate in the world, juss the hate on this little piece of property. One time I love my sister Bess. I love Big Leon even more. Now Poor Bess goin’ the way of Mona and it not from losin’ all them babies. Big Leon stay with her from spite and pride. He hate his-self for it, but can’t get loose. She hate him and Sir and now you too, I’m a-feared.” Martha stopped and peered directly into Leon’s eyes driving the words home.

He was filled with discomfort, as if he had eaten too much supper then found the meat was bad. His stomach turned. He searched the trees and the sky for a sense of belonging. He hummed. A warm breeze reminded him it was almost summer. This eased his stomach somewhat, until he heard Bess cry out and a moment later heard Big Leon.

In five minutes they both came out the door.

Leon ran his fingers along the rim of the hat. He stood tall. Bess turned from his gaze when he glanced into her face. Big Leon snatched the hat from Leon’s head. Martha jumped back.

“Change my mind. You not wearin’ no hat,” Big Leon said.

Leon’s shoulders raised. He was about to protest, but then Big Leon slapped him along his ear. “Take it inside.” He handed Leon the hat.

Leon cupped the top of it in one hand and took the rim between the fingers of the other. He gritted his teeth. “I’ll do it, all right.” As he turned to go back into the house, Big Leon slapped him again. This time Leon pulled his head down and his shoulders up in a protective motion.

“Don’t sass me, boy.”

“I puttin’ the hat inside.”

Stepping into the shack, Leon noticed the thick line of faded leather around the rim of the hat. A crust of dried sweat, white-stained and salty, also rode the rim. Leon threw the hat onto the unmade bed where Big Leon and Bess had been. The smell was
harsh and musty in the room. Leon picked up the hat again and spit into it. He threw it back down and joined the others outside.