The Marrowbone Marble Company (23 page)

S
OME MEN DIDN'T BREATHE
their pipe smoke in. Don Staples was not one of those men.

It was cold, and the coughing had gotten worse. He spat phlegm, red-striped by blood, into his tiny pedestal sink. He moved the stuff around with his finger, measuring the red evidence. He wondered what inside him was rupturing.

Outside, it was a clear night. He turned away from the window and sat down on the bed. His one-room chapel abode was frigid. Staples put his back against a bed pillow. Behind it, cold came through the wall. The pillow's down feathers might as well have been ice cubes.

A book, pen, and paper lay on the bedspread beside him. He read his own writing:
Dearest Annie and James
, the letter began.
How can I say all that must be said here?
He picked it up and wadded a ball. Threw it across the room.

If Staples had a nickel for every time he started a letter to his estranged wife and son in California, he'd have been a rich man.

He pulled the television knob and waited for the picture to blossom. The local news anchor spoke through static about the Economic Opportunity Act. He said, “Many believe that the War on Poverty will work best right here in West Virginia.” He wore his hair in a comb-over that wasn't fooling anybody.

Staples had high hopes for President Johnson's newly declared war. It seemed to him that even with Kennedy gone, a promise made to the poor might finally be carried out. Federally funded Community Action Agencies had sprung up in every county, Wayne included, and folks were showing up for meetings. Staples had been to a few himself. He'd sat and listened to out-of-work miners and stooped grannies and angry mothers as they stood up and told commission members about impassable roads and run-down schoolrooms with no windowscreens. Folks were fed up, and somebody was finally listening to them. In Huntington, black people were mobilizing, and somebody would hear them too.

Outside, the dogs were running loose. Staples could hear their anxious snouts against the ground. Hogs on the trail of a truffle.

Orb had taken to turning them loose before he went to bed, which was ten or eleven o'clock in those days. The boy seemed to require less sleep all the time. He'd grown five inches inside a year. Thin as a broomstick, his head had grown most of all. There was no way around it, Orb had a big noggin. Prevailing thought among his family was that his brain was finally expanding. This was evidenced in his newfound ability to read. School had helped him along, and so had Chester. Orb had cracked the code, and in moments of solitude, Rachel would find him sitting in the corner of a room, whispering the words on the page before him. First it was
Doctor Dan
, and later, his big Mother Goose book. His favorite rhyme was “Taffy Was a Welshman” because it contained the name of his home. Book propped in his lap, he'd whisper, “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief. Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.” Inevitably, Orb would smile as he got to the end, relishing in the words he could now see before him. “I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed. I took the marrowbone and beat him on the head.”

There was a knock at Staples' back door. He got off the bed, coughed, spat one last time into the sink, and opened up. Orb stood there, shivering, his head uncovered, his hands stuffed in his armpits. Behind him, the dogs snorted and circled.

“You're liable to ice up and crack,” Staples told him. He waved the boy in. The dogs followed, and Staples slammed the door before they made it. “You want coffee?”

“No sir,” Orb said. “Can I watch television?”

“Well it's on isn't it?”

Orb sat down on the floor. He rubbed his hands against his corduroys for heat. The news anchor was talking about a fire in White Sulphur Springs that had caused one hundred thousand dollars in damage. Orb turned to Staples. “You ever seen that much money?” he asked.

Staples shook his head no. He'd picked up a toothpick and was dislodging a stubborn piece of corn.

“In other news,” the anchorman said, “State Senator Charlie Ball was hospitalized today with a liver ailment. He is expected to be released tomorrow with a clean bill of health.”

“We'll see how clean his bill is,” Staples said. He chewed up the toothpick and swallowed.

“Is that the man Daddy and Mr. Wells used to work for?”

“You could say that. But a man won't really
work for
another man if he doesn't respect him.”

Orb tried to figure that one and couldn't.
Respect
was a word that had always confused him.
Respect the fire
his daddy had always told him, whether they were looking at the marble furnace or the barbeque pit. Orb wondered if the hundred-thousand-dollar fire had felt disrespected.

A commercial came on. Two children sat on the floor in front of a television, just as Orb did. He watched them watch a Gemini rocket launch. Inside the rocket, an astronaut drank Tang from a zero-gravity bag, and then the children stirred their own Tang into a glass and gulped away. “Have a blast…and some Tang,” the announcer said.

“I wish we had Tang,” Orb said.

“It isn't natural.” Staples checked his wristwatch. “Time for you to get home Orb,” he said.

On his way out the door, Orb turned and hugged the old man around the rib cage. Staples patted the back of his head. It still took some getting used to, Orb's newfound tendency to hug. If you watched him close, he
was expressionless as he did it. The hugs were mere mimicry, a habit picked up from his mother, but he offered them nonetheless. All were grateful.

Before he took off, Orb used his hands to sign “Goodbye.” Jerry had been teaching him sign language again, though Orb talked more than he ever had before.

Staples watched the boy run up the Cut, the dogs on either side of him. It was the kind of cloudless dark outside that moved the heavens closer, the kind of cold that brought no snow. He stepped out into the yard and walked a circle around the chapel.

The creek was frozen solid. The glass tree was quiet. Icicles the size of sewing needles hung from tree branches and glass scrap, like teeth on a jawbone.

Staples regarded the moon. It was full, its edges crisp against the blue-black night as if scissor-cut. Around it, the stars mapped their claim on the night sky like buckshot. He wished he knew their pattern, their meaning, but he didn't. He wished to be free of the thoughts such nights produced, but he wasn't. Staples was overwhelmed by the world and the mess people had made of it. There was much to be done. He hoped he had the energy.

He listened. There was only the still of winter. No frogs, no birds, no crickets, no wind. He breathed deep through his nose and a cough came upon him again. It hadn't quit when he stepped back inside and shut the door behind him.

 

S
TATE
S
ENATOR
C
HARLIE
Ball sat and swirled sugar in his coffee with a spoon. He admired the new ring on his pinky finger. It was thick and fat, gold with maroon inlay.
BPOE
it read below the Elk head. As an elected official, Charlie made a habit of visiting every community organization he could stand to, particularly when they handed over honorary hardware.

Jim's Spaghetti was crowded as usual. Lunch rush. And, as usual, Charlie was seated in the back corner booth. He tapped his feet and checked his watch. Thought about slipping his coffee under the tabletop and adding the contents of his flask. His cousin came through the door just in time to stop him.

“Good to see you, Noah,” Charlie said.

The thin man slid in across from him and struggled to remove his overcoat. “Sorry I'm late Charlie,” he said.

“I'm accustomed to it.” Charlie had always felt sorry for his younger cousin, Noah Ball, though there was no real reason to anymore. Noah was rich, the busiest mortician in Wayne County. He was also influential in politics and had once been county commissioner. Now he headed up the War on Poverty Commission in Wayne.

But Noah was skinny and frail, and he'd never dated a woman. Charlie watched him knock his funny bone on the table's edge. He grimaced. “Well, Noah,” Charlie said, “what was so awful important you couldn't tell me over the telephone?”

Noah looked around, nervous. “How long they been letting coloreds in here?” he asked.

“This isn't Wayne,” Charlie said.

The waitress said how do you do and poured two more coffees. Charlie winked at her and watched her hips sway as she walked away.

“You see how she tied that apron string in the back?” Charlie said.

“Like buttermilk biscuits rising under there.”

Noah made a late attempt to crane his neck and gander. “Yeah, like big ole biscuits.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, there's some things going on you ought to know about.”

“I ought to know everything. That's my job.” Charlie slurped his coffee and eyeballed a black patron at the lunch counter. The young man was laughing with a mouthful of applesauce. Charlie shook his head.

“It's that Marrowbone compound,” Noah said. “That crazy Don Staples is getting more involved with the community action groups, and he's no dummy.”

“Spit it out,” Charlie said.

“He's been making known his suspicions that federal funds are not being allocated properly.” Noah had lowered his voice to a whisper.

“Jesus Christ, Noah, did you pick up that lingo in a Lyndon Johnson handbook? Tell me what the hell is going on.”

The waitress came back to take their order, but Charlie held up a hand and she retreated.

Noah leaned across the table. He whispered, “Well, I been puttin people on the payroll, supervisory positions, you know, making sure I go to community meetings and nod my head. And most of the welfare and AFDC types are happy to have anything come their way. Shorty Maynard keeps them in line.” He looked around again. “But the local Communists, like Staples and Ledford and all the crazy coloreds they got around 'em, well, they know a lot about the federal bylaws, I guess. About the poor having a say and all. They're makin' noise, Charlie, stirring up meetings with talk of committees made of these local nuts.”

Charlie reached across the table and patted his cousin's bony hand. “That's a fine ring,” Noah said. “Thank you kindly. Now look here.” The waitress was coming back. Charlie stopped her short again, but this time he hollered, “Two cheese-burgers, two coleslaws, two cherry pie. Okay, sugar?” He returned his gaze to Noah and said, “I've heard rumblins of this stuff myself. Preciate you tellin me. I need to do something, it's simple as that. Just like here in town.” He glanced back at the black couple, lowered his voice. “You'd think it was Columbus or Detroit the way these niggers are organizing, with the CIP and the Human Rights Commission and old man Mitchum with his righteous speeches.” He smiled. “Everybody wants a piece of this federal money, Noah, but we're the ones doling it out.” He winked. “So you sit tight and go on fixin' up your dead people, and I'll do my job.” He patted Noah's hand again, then raised his own in a fist between them. “This may be a District 5 meat hook, but it reaches all the way to Wayne,” he said.

 

O
N
C
HRISTMAS
E
VE
,
Ledford put the children's things under the tree and looked up at the star on top. He'd made it himself. Blue glass, hollow and handblown, an opening for the bulb inside. It was beautiful, the way it threw light across the ceiling.

There were still a few presents to bring down. He grabbed the newspaper from the coffee table and climbed the creaking stairs to the attic.

There were, among newspapers, certain bits that Ledford would not use to cool hot glass. He saved them instead, cut them out and pasted them into the old empty album he kept in the trunk. He still cracked open the trunk now and again, sat up in the attic with memories. Some were his own, and some were his daddy's.

He sat cross-legged on the bare wood floor and pasted in the latest article—
Marrowbone Marble Co. Feeds Hungry on Christmas Eve
. It was from that day's evening edition, and there was a photograph of Harold setting a plate of turkey and stuffing before a smiling old woman with a patch over her eye. Harold looked so serious in the picture, his face aged beyond his twenty-one years. Ledford was happy to have him home for Christmas. Such stays were rare in those days. If he wasn't up at Morgantown carrying eighteen hours a semester, he was on the road. He'd spent the previous summer registering black voters in Mississippi, and he'd been lucky to come back alive.

Ledford flipped the heavy pages in reverse, through two years' worth of articles. Like always, it occurred to him that the headlines recorded a pattern—for every step forward, there came another one back.

He sipped from his glass of milk. He longed to be tired, to find slumber's peace. But the dreams were visiting again, and it was best to wait for exhaustion's peak.

It was two in the morning.

More Than 100,000 Marchers Stage Giant Parade in Nation's Capital
. He ran his fingers over the words, the miniature dots of all those faces across the field's expanse. Ledford wished he'd been there for it. He turned the page.

Four Children Die in Birmingham as Explosion Levels Negro Church
. He remembered how Staples had called a special ceremony that night at the chapel, a Monday. How he'd cried openly in front of all of them.

PRESIDENT'S ASSASSIN STILL NOT APPREHENDED
, an Extra edition. Ledford remembered that day too. He'd been in town, making a deposit at the bank. Everywhere, folks crowded around radios and televisions. They wept unguarded when the final word came, and Ledford walked past them to his car, his face unreadable to passersby, his mind wondering how many of them had shed such tears for the little girls in Birmingham.