Sweet Song (6 page)

Leon gathered and stacked. The wide band of black men and boys walking up through the field were too far away to talk to.

This activity continued from field to field until the last field was stripped of rock, then a flurry of work hovered around the stacks until the fence stacking job was complete. Even then, Leon worked around many people, but remained alone.

That evening, Leon walked down to the creek flat before nightfall and found Hillary waiting. Excitement and fear stood side by side when he recognized her form in the half-light.

“I brought a new book.”

Leon couldn’t wait to read whatever it was she had. “What is it?”

She held it toward him. “One of my mama’s. Pa said I could have whatever I liked.”

Leon took the book. “Henry W. Longfellow,” he read. “I’ve never read poetry except the Bible.”

Hillary beamed. “It’s pretty new.”

“But she didn’t read lately, did she?” Leon asked.

“I think when alone she might have been different.” She went to touch Leon on the chest. He stiffened. “What is it?” she said.

“I don’t like to be touched.”

“You mean by me.”

“No. I just have to be ready. It’s all right. I just get tickled at first.”

“It seemed like you were all right before.”

“Miss Hillary, please, you have your Jacob.” Leon held the book to his chest, partly for protection and partly to possess it.

“I been thinking about what we did. Sometimes it’s right and sometimes it’s wrong,” Hillary told him.

“It’s not right.”

“You don’t like me ‘cause I’m not skinny and pretty.”

“No. No. I didn’t say that.” He stumbled back a step.

“I’ll tell you, though, skinny girls don’t have a bosom like mine.”

Leon closed his eyes as Hillary opened her dress. In his mind he could see her, though. Her breasts reminded him of Martha’s when he was younger and used to watch her wash. They reminded him of a human warmth that was almost gone from his life now.

Hillary took his hand and leaned into it.

Leon shook his head back and forth protesting what he knew he would do. “My body ain’t listenin’ no more,” he said.

“It’s listening to the call of nature, that’s all.” Hillary led Leon to a soft bed of pine needles hid by low branches.

Leon’s actions and emotions shot in opposing directions. Fear rose inside him even as he let his trousers fall to the ground. He understood sex as a weapon and a pleasure. After the pleasure of release, fear dominated.

Hillary cried afterwards, claiming, once again, that her body had sinned like her father’s had before her.

Leon could not feel any worse. Nothing good could come from their act but the act itself. What’s more, she could break down, or worse yet have a two-headed child, as his imagination told him. He remembered her soft body and strong breath, the pungent and sweet scent of their bodies after lovemaking. He often thought of them together when they were not together.

Hillary let Leon take books home to read. No one would find them missing, she told him.

Leon read by the dying embers and by morning’s first light. He read to remember and he read to forget.

Y
ou stinkin’ like sin,” Martha said.

“It’s the fish fryin’.” Leon uncovered a book from his sleeping corner.

“Don’t hide in that there thing.”

“I’m not.”

“But you will. I knows you better’n you knows you.”

“I’ll wash then.”

“Can’t wash sin away, not even with lye.”

“Leave me alone. There’s more sinnin’ going on around here than in hell itself,” Leon said.

“Not in my place.”

“Your place is a corner. In your corner there’s hummin’ that’s supposed to keep everything out. But outside your hummin’ door, there’s evil beyond thought.”

Martha slapped a hand to her thigh as though she were reprimanding a dog. “You stop. It’s the white man put this in our house. We juss play-actors in a white man’s animal-sick play. Now you stuck twice in it.”

“I know what you mean. But I only got stuck in it once. When I was too young to fight. When I was too young to know better. Because of it, my pa hardly comes home and my ma is going crazy.”

“You stop right there. You respect—“

“You don’t respect her.”

Martha’s brow tightened.

“The truth,” Leon said. “She sinned me out of her body to kill Pa. Pa freed me to kill her. And, maybe to save me, though I ain’t his to save.”

Martha stood silent and firm, as though the truth had never been spoken so clearly or so openly.

“Nothing is said here. Everything is covered over like putting straw over horse shit. In books people talk,” Leon said.

“We ain’t books. And you ain’t talkin’ to that girl.”

“You’ve always been more mama to me than my mama been,” he said through tears. I want you to see.”

“I see, but I don’t know that you see.”

Leon slumped down and sat on the floor, letting the book drop to his side. “I’m scared.”

Martha grabbed his arms and lifted him to his feet. She held him in front of her.

“I can’t stop and she won’t let me stop,” Leon admitted.

“It’s a tangle in a web. It all sticky and sweet, frightful and glorious.”

“What do I do?”

“It can only lead to no good, boy. You tell that girl, you done. It not right. She knowed it ain’t right too. She can see. She juss as tangled as you. She juss as sorry and juss as glad. Somebody got to be strong.”

“I’m not strong enough.”

“You as strong as you pa, but you don’t know it.”

“My pa’s a white man who can’t whip a nigger boy.”

Martha pushed him away. “Your pa the man who here. He the man who teach you farmin’. He the man who set you free.”

Leon ran out of the shack, the smell of trout burning in the pan behind him.

Big Leon came down the path.

Leon pushed by him.

“You stayin’ for dinner,” Big Leon said.

Leon ignored him.

“Boy!”

Leon ran to the creek, not the flat, but where it straightened, where maple and pine stood in small groves near the edge. Leon flowed with the creek, swift and deep. He yelled at the woods. He cried with the insects, sirens of the quick life, the sudden death.

Stepping too close to the bank, he slipped and soaked his foot. The water felt cool on that hot night. The woods breathed humidity and the scent of loam. A crow cawed and flew off. Leon wondered why black birds could rule much of the area, when black men could not.

He sat and rubbed his hands over his foot until it became dry. A clatch of gnats moved slowly on a breeze coming his way. He got up, swatted at a mosquito and walked farther down-creek toward the river.

He hummed as he walked, listening to the sound resonating through the back of his jaw and into his skull. He wondered what difference there might be between a black man’s skeleton and a white man’s skeleton. When he died, would anyone be able to guess what color he had been? Being both black and white, were there extra pieces inside him? Or missing? What was the difference if everybody were blind?

Leon heard a noise and stopped humming. He saw movement in the fading light. A potato sack shirt, lighted by a deep violet sunset, slipped behind a tree. He waited, but nothing more moved. Thinking clearly what to do, he walked backwards. In a few steps, Tunny peeked around a tree. At that moment, Leon understood how stupid he had been night after night. The humping. The nakedness. It had all been known.

Tunny stopped as though he thought Leon couldn’t actually see him.

“How many times you follow me?”

“We know what you ‘bout,” Tunny said.

“Git, then.” Leon ran toward Tunny, who shoved Bud out from behind a tree and ran after him.

Leon watched. Neither of them looked back to see whether he’d stopped or kept following. A darkness deeper than night set over him. He picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could toward Tunny and Bud. It crackled through leaves then thunked into a tree trunk or branch and fell to the ground. He picked up another and threw it harder. His breath came hard. His teeth clenched. He scanned the area for anyone else who might have followed him. Shaking his head, Leon walked back to the shack. He felt hungry. He
hurt for the comfort of food. Even cold fish would be better than nothing.

Big Leon was not home when Leon arrived. When he came inside, Bess mumbled in the corner, called, “Sweet Leon.” When he ignored her, she rolled into the space nearest the wall, the thin blanket falling and her bare shoulders and buttocks showing. Martha presented Leon with a plate of fish and a biscuit as quickly as she could. She blocked his view of his mother by standing between them, the plate held out.

The room smothered him with the odor of sweat and compression of night heat. His hunger was deep and covered many areas of his life, many emotions. He hated Tunny and Bud. Their knowledge disgusted him. What they do with what they know didn’t matter any longer though. How could they alienate him more than he already felt?

Leon left the heat of the shack and ate, sitting on a rock out back. Using a biscuit, he cleaned the last of the grease from his plate. He set the plate down at his feet and leaned back against the shack. Stars and fireflies blinked in and out of life overhead.

His head against the shack wall, Leon heard Bess and Martha arguing. None of their words came through clearly, but the tones of their voices belied their exchange. He let the sounds comfort him, like humming a ruckus song. Their discourse took place in a rapid-fire question and answer format. He imagined how they might hold back conversation that he and Big Leon were not invited to hear. When alone, those two could lash out with no need to pause unless one of the men came walking through the door. How amusing it was to hear so much talk coming out of them now. At times they both talked simultaneously. He giggled. All the talk of respect that Martha delivered suddenly felt—and sounded—like a complete lie.

Remembering Tunny and Bud once again, Leon wondered where Big Leon went on his walks. Did he follow Leon as well? Nothing seemed real or honest. Even the fireflies were false stars.

Leon stayed outside, swatting an occasional mosquito, until the anger inside the house slowed, until the humming began.

He usually met with Hillary three times a week, sometimes more. He questioned his own intentions and wondered what would
happen, truly, if he refused to meet her, like Martha suggested. Should he test this new idea?

The thought of Hillary caused his heart to beat faster. His body reacted against the memory of her touch, yet his mind leaned toward it. She had a peculiar smell about her body and a strong scent from her mouth. When tender her manner was superior. Was he her nigger, like Bess was her father’s nigger?

Enough pain slithered through their little shack even before he was born, was he to carry that pain through, add new ingredients, and make it venomous? His mind boiled and his body ached. The way Hillary rubbed against him made his skin crawl, yet the way she moaned made him hard.

Leon dashed the thoughts from his mind. He grabbed his plate and stood quickly, exerting his body to release its hold over his thoughts.

He never had to make a decision on his own, but it was getting to that time and he could feel a decision standing over him like a large man in a black cloak. He couldn’t let Tunny and Bud see him with Hillary again. He couldn’t imagine his father watching. And Martha knew. Bess? His stomach churned and his throat opened. He squeaked and groaned. He gagged at the combined thoughts of Hillary and Bess and their awful connection through him, through Sir, through Big Leon, who knew too much about his own family to stay inside the same shack for more than a few hours at a time. Hell could not be a hotter, more sinful place.

Leon wiped sweat from his brow. He used a shoulder to wipe his mouth dry. His hand and shirt were rough and scratchy, work heavy and sweat soaked. He remembered as a child being hugged by Martha and caressed by his mother. He had wished to be touched by his father, but that never or seldom happened except by accident. His mother’s touch soured. Martha retreated. Now his skin tightened at anyone’s touch except his own. He’d move out of the way to avoid being brushed against. As Hillary searched his body, he squirmed and shifted claiming that it tickled or scratched or hurt.

He kicked the dirt, sending dust into the air. He swatted at a mosquito using his empty plate. He breathed deeply, looked to the sky, said a silent prayer for himself, for Hillary, and for the rest of his
family. He had decided. No matter the outcome, he could go on no longer. Not as things were.

Big Leon returned home. He sat near the wash basin, then lifted his eyes to stare out the window, his head held high, his eyes fixed on a cloud, the sky, the treetops. Neither Leon nor Big Leon spoke. Leon set his plate with others on the ledge. In his own corner of the room, Leon sat on his bed of straw. He reached down and back with his hand, touched his book, the one he’d kept, Wordsworth.