The Marrowbone Marble Company (20 page)

“Amen,” Lizzie said. Beside her, Harold and Mack nodded their heads.

Staples gathered up his Bible and his papers. Then he said, “And now, I believe our young preacher has some words for you this morning on the same subject.” He smiled at Harold. “He'll be leaving us for law school in Morgantown soon, and I for one will miss these too-rare sermons of his, one of which some of us witnessed at our very first service here, nearly fifteen years ago.” Staples smiled. “You could hardly see his head over the pulpit back then, but he's a real pawpaw knocker these days.” He waved Harold up.

Paul Maynard slid from his pew and left just as Staples was about to take Harold's empty seat. Instead, Staples followed. As he went, Harold was saying, “I believe Preacher Staples was right, and I believe that history will show us who has truly exhibited great power and righteousness in these times of trial.” Harold could feel the burns on his chest with each breath he drew. “As Dr. King wrote in his letter, ‘One day the South will recognize its real heroes. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream.'”

Outside the doors, Staples called after Paul Maynard. “Hold on now Paul,” he shouted. He descended the stairs and gave chase.

Down at the lot, Paul swung open the door of his truck but did not get in. Instead, he fetched his cigarette pack from the seat and lit one. When Staples was in talking distance, Paul blew smoke in his direction. It pounded from his nose and mouth as he said, “I swear Don…by God, if I'd known you were back to this type a thing…”

Staples regarded the bigger man. “It isn't a type of thing, Paul,” he said. “It's everything. Weren't you listening?”

“You can git off your high horse with me, buddy. I live right here.” He pointed to the ground below his feet. “Right on this here, and it's a place I was elected to protect.” Elections were coming up again, and Paul was worried. With the family mine shut down, he counted on the paychecks. “Now what do you think people's going to do if they find out I'm attendin services where a colored boy takes the stage to spout off about King?” He pulled so hard on his cigarette you could hear the paper sizzle.

“I think it doesn't matter what people do. I think from the sounds of it, you ought to have listened to the sermon a little closer Paul.”

“Oh hell,” Paul said. He threw his cigarette on the ground and got in his truck. He'd wait there for the rest of his family. “Look here,” he said, elbow on the open window well. “I'm glad to support the gym, and I'm happy to train white fighters alongside colored ones, but I'm done with your church Don.”

“Paul…”

But Paul had already started cranking his window up. He'd seal himself off and fry inside the cab before he'd hear another word on it.

Staples turned and walked toward his church. His bones ached and a cough came over him.

The sign had gone crooked above the door. Staples looked at it for a moment, then decided to sit under a shade tree on the lawn. He pressed his back into its bark and scratched at an itch on his shoulder blade. He wished he had his pipe with him.

Above him, tied with twine and dangling from the skinny branches, were chunks of scrap glass from the factory. One hundred or more. They twisted in the wind and sparkled like costume jewelry. They were hung in the tree years before by Harold and Mary and Willy after Staples had told them that glass trees warded off evil spirits.

Now he slouched and watched the sun glint white on the weathered edges of blue, red, and clear glass.

From inside the church, he heard only silence. Harold had finished preaching. Then came the sound of the piano, Effie's fingers so knowingly finding their mark. It was “Wade in the Water.”

Staples closed his eyes and listened, and when Orb began to sing in his high and haunting way that God was going to trouble the water, Don Staples nearly wept.

 

P
RESIDENT
K
ENNEDY HAD
come to Charleston like he promised. The state's one-hundredth birthday was not an occasion to be overlooked. Bob Staples had gone to witness the sight that morning, and at five p.m., when he pulled up to the gate at Marrowbone, he was still smiling.

“Evenin Bob,” Dimple said, nodding from on horseback.

“Evenin Dimple.” The top on Bob's Impala was down. He nodded to Wimpy, who was taking a leak beside his horse. For the first time, the brothers looked old to Bob. “Rained much here today?” he asked.

“Off and on,” Dimple said.

“Cats and dogs in Charleston. Ole Kennedy just stood right there in it.”

“Did he now?”

“See this hand?” Bob said. He took his right hand from the steering wheel and raised it before him. “This hand shook the hand of the president.”

Dimple nodded. He was not impressed. “He came right down the Capitol steps and onto the sidewalk. Shook hands with anybody in reach, including yours truly.” Bob marveled at his own hand. “Those Secret Service men must have a real time trying to do their job.”

Wimpy zipped up and walked over to the car. “You say you touched the president?”

“That's right.”

Dimple spotted a tick burrowed in Silver's mane. He leaned back and fetched from the saddlebag his needlenose pliers. He secured the tick with the pliers, struck a kitchen match on his thumbnail, and burned it alive.

Bob watched, his brow furrowed. “Did you speak to him?” Wimpy asked. He stared at Bob's hand as if the presidential seal might appear.

“I can't recall. It happened fast.”

“I reckon you ain't warshed your hand yet,” Wimpy said. Bob said he hadn't.

Dimple dropped the burned tick into his open palm and blew it into the air. He stuck the pliers back in the bag and said, “Did you pull his britches down and kiss his rump while you was at it?”

Bob drove on in and parked.

It was hot. A breeze came steady through the Cut, making it bearable for those raising the circus tent. Herchel swung the butt end of a maul into the last stake. He stood and beheld it. Double-peaked and striped red and white, it would seat two hundred. His new girlfriend had gotten the tent cheap. Bendy was her name. Russian. She'd once been a flying trapeze artist. After she broke her hip and found God, she moved out to Marrowbone and began teaching Herchel the fine arts of acrobatic lovemaking and marijuana cultivation.

Bob Staples nodded to Herchel and looked over the tent. He felt a little foolish leaving the state capital festivities for this particular centennial affair.

He walked to the Ringer circle, where Orb had just won his fourth straight game. He patted the boy on the head and asked him where his father was. Orb didn't answer.

Mary watched her little brother through the viewfinder of her movie camera. She wore a pair of her father's old slacks, cut off just above the knee. She found that men's trousers, when cinched at the waist with rope, made the best Bermudas. Two Band-Aids stretched across her ankle where she'd cut herself shaving. As always, Orb had been glad to supply the Band-Aids.

She quit rolling film and lowered the camera to her side. Harold walked over from the porch of his house and shook hands with Bob Staples. Mary waved to him, but he didn't see her. She turned the hand crank on her camera, winding the motor's spring. Fixing Harold through the lens, she rolled film again.

Ledford was up at the dog pen. He stuck his fingers through the chain-link and watched the tongues lap. “Simmer,” he told them.

His neck hairs stood on end. He could feel someone watching him. When he turned to find out who, it was Orb. The boy stood twenty yards off, still and blank. Ledford thought for a moment he was having an episode, but when he whistled, Orb came over. “I think they're hungry,” Ledford said. “You feed em yet this evenin?”

Orb shook his head no and dropped two full bags of marbles at his sides. They'd been playing for keepsies again. He pulled the tarp off the food bin, swung open the lid, and started filling bowls.

“I don't believe we'll be able to let em run tonight Son,” Ledford told him. “Too many folks that might be scared of dogs.”

“Okay.” Orb was inside the pen, setting the bowls before anxious snouts.

“Did you rake em for ticks this mornin?” Ledford asked.

“Yessir. There was two on Tug. I burnt em.” But he hadn't burnt them. Orb would not kill any bug, ever.

“Good boy.” Ledford put his hand to his brow and looked down the Cut. There was movement around the chapel and the circus tent. Jerry and Herchel were snapping kindling across their knees and tossing it in an old oil drum. Bob Staples was laughing at something Harold had told him. “I'm going to head on down,” Ledford told Orb. “Your mother's in the house.” The boy just stood there, as he often did. Ledford bent to him. “Happy birthday Son,” he said. He pulled a newly handmade taw from his pocket, three-quarter-inch and shiny. It was a sulfide, clear, a clay man inside.

Orb took it and turned it over in his hand. He studied the marble. It was still warm.

Ledford hugged Orb hard. Then he took him by the shoulders and looked him in the face. “I love you Son,” he said.

He headed toward the circus tent.

Bob hadn't seen Ledford in such a getup before. His white shirt was pressed and the polish on his loafers had yet to fully dry. “Well, I'll be damned,” Bob said, shaking Ledford's hand, “you own something other than overalls after all.” They laughed. Bob said, “And I see your beard is aspiring to grow as wild as my brother's.”

Ledford pulled at the whiskers on his chin. “It's coming in okay,” he said.

“I was just telling Harold about the Smalleys' case. The judge threw out their injunction. Ordered them to file another one if they want to proceed. He recognized that we have the right to picket.” Bob was pleased with himself, and he didn't care to hide it. “My phone's been ringing off the hook, I'll tell you what. There's a lot of civil rights attorneys with an eye on this one.”

Ledford nodded. “Glad to hear it. How was the party in Charleston?”

“Well attended.”

“How many?”

“I heard five thousand. In the rain.” Bob held up his hand. “Kennedy shook it,” he said.

“Is that right?”

“Firm grip.”

“I bet it was.” Ledford loosed a cigarette for himself and another for Bob. They cupped against the wind and lit up. “Did he have much to say?”

“It was a short speech.”

“I bet it was.” Ledford watched Mary, who watched everyone else.

“He said the sun might not always shine in West Virginia, but that the people sure do. Said any other place, they would have all gone home to get dry.”

“Well,” Ledford said, “I reckon there's enough out of work to fill the esplanade and Washington Street too. Maybe the coal dust has fortified their skin, made em waterproof.”

“What in the hell are you talking about Ledford?”

Ledford looked up at the sun. “I believe we're out of the woods here. Isn't a cloud for miles.”

Bob looked up and squinted.

The dogs bayed in the distance. A fox had scampered by. “Listen Ledford,” Bob said. “Charlie Ball was up in Charleston today.”

Ledford flicked the cherry off his cigarette and stuck the butt in his pants pocket. “What the hell for?”

“Well.” Bob cleared his throat. “He's going Democrat.”

“What do you mean he's going Democrat? That boy is a spoon-fed Arch Moore brownnoser.” Ledford had heard about Charlie's rise up the ranks. He'd gone from hot end manager to city councilman to mayor.

“Not anymore. He's planning a run for the legislature, and he's switching teams to get elected.”

“Son of a bitch.” Ledford rubbed at the back of his neck.

There was a roar from the oil drum. Jerry had dropped in a fiery rag.

“You might be surprised Ledford. Ole Charlie may have grown up on us.” Bob was smiling his politician smile, an ugly remainder from his run in '48.

“Ole Charlie can grow up as much as he wants to,” Ledford said.

“But he's dumber than dirt Bob, and you know it.”

“Well,” Bob said. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose.

“I thought I ought to mention it.” He hesitated. “And I'd better mention that he said he wants to make peace, and, seeing as he has family in the area, said he might show up here today.”

“What?” Ledford could hardly believe his ears. Bob was too predictable, always an eye out for a political up-and-comer, but never a discerning one.

“Well,” Bob said. He looked around nervously. “Where is my brother anyway?”

“He's in bed. Feelin poorly.” Ledford looked over Bob's shoulder at two approaching figures. It took him a moment to make them out. “I'll be durned,” he said.

Erm Bacigalupo stepped stride for stride next to his boy Fiore, who had grown tall for fifteen. The two of them had shown up once or twice a year ever since their first visit on the day Orb was born. Oftentimes it was unannounced, a side trip from Erm's dealings at the Charles Town Race Track. At first, Ledford hadn't wanted him around, but after Erm's wife Agnes shot herself in '55, he'd mostly felt sorry for the man.

From twenty yards off, Erm called out, “What time do Mr. Barnum and Mr. Bailey arrive?”

Ledford hollered back, “Soon as Admiral Dingleberry gives the go-ahead call.”

They shook hands. There had been no hugging or backslapping in years. “Fiore, you're a regular beanstalk,” Ledford said.

“It's Fury,” the boy answered.

“You look at a man when you speak to him,” Erm said. He put two fingers under the boy's chin and pushed up, hard.

Fury wore double-kneed blue jeans and a fine plaid shirt, buttoned to the top. His hair was parted and held in place with ample oil. It reflected the sun. “Hello Mr. Ledford.” The boy looked like he never smiled.