The Marrowbone Marble Company (8 page)

“What do you mean?” Ledford asked.

Bob cleared his throat. “Five people died in that fire,” he said. “It was in the paper.”

Staples just shook his head. “Who died?” Ledford asked. “The elders,” Bob said. “I knew them a little. Mother and Daddy B is all they'd be called. They lived in the old ways.” He shook his head just as Don had. “And their oldest girl, Tennis they called her. She was going on sixty herself. Burned in the house with them, along with her two grown children, who I didn't really know. Men, both of em. In their thirties, I believe.”

In the other room, Erm stood up and walked to the record player. He put the needle down unsteady. “Big Butter and Egg Man” started up again.

Ledford cringed at the volume. He spoke louder. “Who's left then?”

“The twins,” Bob said. “Dimple and Wimpy. A little younger than Tennis was, maybe fifties.” He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Put it back in his pocket. “They are tough to figure. Hard men. Real hard. Part Indian is what they'll tell you, among other things. But they will look you in the eye, and they will die before they give that land over to Maynard Coal.”

Erm stepped into the open kitchen doorway. He leaned against the jamb and smiled. His glass was full again. “What time saloons close in
West
Virginia?”

The other three didn't answer. Erm had walked in at the wrong time.

Staples hung the dish rag on a hook next to the sink. “Like you said, Erminio, church is bright and early.”

Erm nodded in that loose motion again. “Yes,” he said. “Church is early. Big Bill's big day. Big-balled Big Bill's baptism.”

Ledford laughed despite himself.

Erm continued. “Big Bill will no doubt be a big butter and egg man like his Uncle Erm.”

Staples looked at Ledford. He wished the young man hadn't enlisted his Chicago friend as godfather. He wished he'd taught him a little more on life. There hadn't been time yet.

Erm kept up. “Or like Big Bob over here.” He motioned with his drink hand and spilled. He tapped his foot in time with the piano keys from the other room. “You got the kind of money that folds, don't you Bob?” Erm laughed, said he was only fooling. Then he looked directly at Don and said, “Where you get this music anyway?”

“Louisiana,” Don said.

“Louisiana?” Erm said the word as if he'd never heard it before.

“Louisiana,” Don repeated. “This is Louis Armstrong, the finest musician we have today.”

Erm turned to Ledford. “Leww-weeeez-eee-anna,” he said. “Ain't that where Sinus came from?”

“Can it Erm,” Ledford said.

“Ooooo, yes sir.” Erm had straightened at the command, pried his eyes alert. He smiled at the Staples brothers. Then he paused and said, “Armstrong's dark meat, isn't he?”

Nobody answered him. Bob pulled out his pocket watch again. Both he and Don straightened from their lean-tos. They'd not been talked to in this way by a younger man before.

Erm wore a look of contentment. He said, “Ledford rents his house to dark meat,” and looked from one to the next, fishing for a response.

Ledford started to speak, but Don cut him off. “Erm—can I call you Erm?”

Erm's grin spread one-sided and he nodded yes. “Your friend Ledford rents the home he grew up in to Mr. Wells because the federal government doesn't see fit to help out a Negro GI the way they might have helped me out, or the way they've helped you out, Erm. You follow?”

Erm didn't move a muscle. “Well, see if you can follow this,” Staples said. “You noted earlier that I'm both a man of scholarship and a man of God. An astute observation on your part. And do you know what I've come to learn from both? What is more clear to me now than ever?” He did not wait for an answer. “That the poor, most especially the Negro poor, have suffered long enough, and that we are at a crossroads, right now, at this moment. And if we do not right our wrongs against them, a mighty eruption will come.” He started to continue, but didn't. Instead, he stared down the young Chicagoan, whom he suspected of carrying a pistol in his sock. He asked him again, “You follow?”

Erm stared back and let his grin spread both ways. “I follow,” he said.

“Good,” Staples said.

His brother let out a held breath. Ledford did the same.

Staples pulled the dish towel from its hook and threw it across the kitchen. Erm caught it with his free hand. “Now,” Staples said, “clean up the shit you spilled on my linoleum.”

On the drive home, Erm passed out in the Packard. Before going inside, Ledford took off his overcoat and spread it across his friend. He left him there.

On his knees in front of the box labeled
Attic Junk
, Ledford picked up his father's batch book again. He'd not done so since reading of the dream, but now he scanned the pages for one word,
Bonecutter.
He soon found it.

Ledford read it three more times. He tried to remember his father as a man who might write such things, but nothing came.

He shut the book and put it under the quilt in the old trunk. It was a perfect fit inside the square where his Ten High used to be. As he closed the trunk's lid, he wondered if Erm kept his Purple Heart under a stack somewhere. He wondered why the two of them didn't keep in touch with anybody else from B Company. Why they'd never go to the VFW, or see about a First Marines reunion.

He supposed it had something to do with memory.

Ledford went to bed. Morning would get here quick, and Willy was to be baptized in front of the eyes of the church. He would have two Godparents. His Great-aunt Edna, a retired schoolteacher, and his Uncle Erm, a drunken criminal.

I
T HAD TAKEN TWO
months for someone to burn a cross in the front yard of Mack Wells and his family. At five in the morning, he was pouring a bucket of water on the last cinders when Lizzie asked him, “Why did they wait so long to do it?” She pulled the lapels of her robe tight across her chest. She wore Mack's work boots on her feet, unlaced. In the yard, he was barefoot. He hadn't answered her question. “You'll catch your death out there Mack,” Lizzie told him. “No shoes on your feet.”

“The ground is warm,” he said. He stared down at it, watched an ember die. Tucked into the cinched waistline of his bluejeans was an Army-issue .45.

It occurred to Lizzie that whoever had done it might still be watching them, under the cover of early-morning dark. But the street was quiet. Only the bakery was awake, its assembly line humming, its slicers cutting loaves.

Mack looked around too. He had a mind to draw his pistol and fire at the first sign of movement. There wasn't any. He looked back at his house. In the upstairs window, Harold pressed his forehead on the pane. The hall bulb behind him flickered. He knew what had happened. He'd awakened just as his parents had, confused by the dancing light from outside. “Stay inside,” was all Mack had said to the boy.

Lizzie shivered on the porch. Her breath turned to condensation on the air. “Mack?” she said.

Again he did not answer her. He stared up at his son's silhouette until his vision blurred. “We'd better telephone Ledford,” he said.

 

A
T MIDNIGHT ON
the eve of Thanksgiving, Rachel sat down on the love seat for the first time that day. She'd been on her feet for sixteen hours. Willy was finally down and Mary could be counted on to sleep through the night. The stuffing was made and the half-runners strung. Rachel looked at her watch. She stretched for the radio dial. The tuner spun loose and she couldn't pick up a signal. There was a hole in the grille cloth where Mary had punched the leg of a baby doll through. Rachel stuck her finger inside and for a moment wondered if she might be electrocuted.

She looked at the telephone, thought about how it had rung so early the morning prior. How it had awakened the baby. How Ledford had grabbed it and put his feet on the floor hard and said, “When?” What they'd all known might visit the Wells family had visited them in the form of a fiery cross. The West End was white, and Ledford had changed that.

Now the Wells family was joining them for Thanksgiving dinner, at Ledford's request. Don Staples too. Rachel rubbed her temples and counted silently to herself, wagering that the telephone would ring again in twenty seconds. She got to sixty. Then one hundred. Ledford had gone for chewing tobacco at eight. “Right back,” he'd said, like always. And, like always, he'd stayed gone.

She reached down beside the love seat and grabbed her knitting bag. It had been her mother's before her. From it she pulled her latest work, a half-finished sweater that would fit Willy next winter season. It was blood red and hooded with brown toggle buttons. She picked up the straight needles that had been in the family for two generations. Her pointer fingers found the taper. These were not metal needles, like so many. Nor were they wood. They were walrus tusk, brought back from Alaska by her great-grandfather, a fisherman.

Rachel's hands bony and worn. Her nails were chipped and her fingertips dotted with tiny cuts. She pulled the yarn's tail and looped, and soon found herself in a void of mechanical movement, orchestrating in her mind the tiny, scraping sound of the bone needles. She hummed, in time with the scraping, “Amazing Grace.” Always, it was “Amazing Grace.”

Downtown, on Fourth Avenue, Ledford was stride for stride with Staples. Their fedoras were pulled low and their coat lapels high. It was dark, save the headlights of a passing car or the office lights above the storefronts. The Keith-Albee and the Orpheum were both running late pictures. A woman in a purple pillbox hat locked the ticket booth and walked west. Ledford thought he recognized her. He'd taken Rachel to see
Crossfire
the week before. Afterwards, they'd run into Mack and Lizzie, as they filed down from the balcony with the rest of the black patrons.

They walked up Tenth Street, past the darkened doors of Chief Logan's Tavern. On the sidewalk, there was a splatter of vomit in the shape of a daisy. They stepped around it.

The two walked fast and spoke to one another about the books Staples loaned him. The American Indian was up for discussion. Ledford had not known such thought and conversation possible until meeting Don, and ever since, it seemed to him that his mind was expanding faster than it had in all the years prior, combined. They'd had conversations, like this one, that lasted five or six hours. Don had waxed knowingly on the laws of the Confederacy of the Iroquois. He spoke of the Indian League of Nations and their General Council's democratic ideals. He liked to say that nothing was new, that we spent our days committing the mistakes of those who came before us because we forgot to remember them. He liked to say, “America will grab hold of the scientist's lab coat, and they will hold on for dear life as he rockets us straight to Hades.”

On this cold night, he answered Ledford's question on work. On deeds. Staples said, “Look here. ‘Thou art the doer, I am the instrument.' And this is real important for you, Ledford, because you're the type that needs to keep himself busy.” The tip of his nose was red from the chill, and there was pipe ash caught in his beard. “Now, busy like a businessman isn't going to cut it. Nossir. You've got to be busy like a bee, in the service of something besides
I
. See what I mean?” He grabbed Ledford by the coat sleeve and kept walking. “You will only beat back what's chasing you if you forget about yourself. You work for your family, for your God, for those around you that need it most. Never for yourself.” He put his hands back in his pockets. “Should've worn my gloves,” he said.

Ledford flicked the cherry off his cigarette one-handed and stuck the butt in his pocket. “But what if the work a man does isn't real?”

“How's that?”

“Office work,” Ledford said. “I'm not workin for anybody but those whose pockets is already lined, as far as I can figure.”

“Then quit,” Staples answered. “You don't strike me as the type to fall in with the scotch-and-bridge crowd, Ledford. Get out while you can.” They were coming up on Fifth Avenue, Rachel's Episcopal church.

“Let's double back on Sixth,” Staples said.

The younger man had questions. “Were you ever—”

Staples had stopped walking.

Ledford turned back to him. Staples was squint-eyed and studying the church. Ledford looked there and saw, huddled against the double doors, the outline of a man.

“That doesn't seem right,” Staples said. He ascended the staircase. Ledford followed. The man's hand protruded from his shirtsleeve at a peculiar angle, pale and knuckled against the concrete. His neck bent hard against the door, and his winter coat lay beside him in a heap.

“That's a dead man,” Staples said as they got within five feet.

Hair grew wild and white from his earhole. His skin looked blue in the moonlight. “That's Lucius Ball,” Ledford said. He took a knee and pressed his hand to his father-in-law's neck. Cold. There was blood on his chin. More beside him on the ground, mixed with vomit. Ledford stood and hung his head.

“Drank himself to death,” Staples said.

Ledford nodded.

“I am sorry, Ledford.”

“What was he doing here?” Ledford looked back down Tenth Avenue. The vomit outside Chief Logan's. He'd stepped around it. He'd had a bad feeling. Now here was Lucius Ball, at the doors of God's house.

“Refuge,” Staples said.

“What?”

“Refuge. Sanctuary. The church doors should have been unlocked.” Staples stepped forward and tried them. They did not give. Lucius's head slid a little from the movement. Both men watched him as if he might move again. “You ought to get home,” Staples said. “Let's get to the police and then get you home to Rachel.” He put his hand on Ledford's shoulder.

Neither of them were uncomfortable in the company of a dead man.

“All right,” Ledford said.

On the way down the stairs, he stopped. He turned and looked up at the steeple. It was tall and skinny, and it tapered toward the sky like a shiv, waiting on something to fall.

 

T
HE
V
ERY
R
EVEREND
Thompson joined them for Thanksgiving dinner. He felt a sense of shame for having locked the doors of his parish. It was a practice begun during the Depression, after someone had beaten in the communion cabinets and stolen all the silver.

For her part, Rachel had not shown emotion upon learning of her father's death. The night prior, when Ledford sat down beside her on the bed and gave her the news, she'd said nothing. Instead, she kicked off the bedsheets and walked to the bathroom. She stared at herself in the egg-shaped mirror, took out her bobby pins, and brushed her hair for a half an hour. When she'd finished, she hollered, “Thanksgiving will still be Thanksgiving.”

They all joined hands in the kitchen. A prayer circle to offer thanks for their blessings and understanding for their losses. Little Mary walked inside the circle, tapping knees as she went, saying, “Duck duck duck goose.” Baby Willy slept on the porcelain tabletop, wrapped in a flannel blanket and wedged between the wall and a five pound can of Karo. All heads bowed. Reverend Thompson held the hand of young Harold Wells, who held the hand of his mother, who held the hand of her husband, who held the hand of Don Staples, and so forth. Harold kept one eye open and used it to see what white folks did when they prayed. The words sounded both different and the same as those spoken in his church. Staples had both his eyes open. He winked at the boy, who quickly shut his in response. Reverend Thompson said, “Through Jesus Christ our Lord to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all glory and honor, world without end, Amen,” and they all repeated his final word, raising their chins off their chests.

The turkey was called a fine bird by all who partook of it. Lizzie Wells spoke quiet thank-yous to compliments on her cranberry dressing. She checked the time and worried on being late to her father's table.

Staples asked Harold about the first grade, about his take on the game of baseball. “I like it,” was all the boy would say.

“How about ole Chuck Yeager,” Reverend Thompson said at one point. There was gravy on his cheek and his eyeglasses needed cleaning.

“They thought he'd blown himself up when the barrier broke.”

Truman became the topic of the hour, and all speculated on whether or not Senator Kilgore might well make a run at the White House in a year.

“My brother Bob could fill Kilgore's empty seat, I'd imagine,” Staples said. “Specially since Bob's rear end is ample enough these days.” They all laughed, Mack the loudest. Harold smiled with food in his mouth. He appreciated an adult's use of such terminology. Don continued, “He'll probably smell this here turkey you've brined all the way across Eighth Street, Rachel. Be here by six to pick it to bone.”

Rachel smiled. She had her hands clasped under her chin. A calm had come on her since Lucius crossed over.

Ledford loved the way her crow's-feet came when she smiled. He put his hand on hers. He knew she was glad her father was gone. It meant one less worry on her mind. She'd loved her daddy, but he'd loved only things.

It was tradition in Rachel's family to dry out a Thanksgiving wishbone for a full year before pulling on it. After sweet potato pie, Rachel took the old wishbone from the kitchen window and replaced it with the new, grease-shined and chunked with meat. Harold and Mary would face off this year, the younger one with help from her mother.

Harold bent his knees and smiled at the toddler. Rachel gripped the bone with her. “You two close your eyes,” she said. Mary giggled. She scrunched her nose at the boy whose knuckles brushed her own. Eyes shut, they pulled, and everyone clapped when the little bone snapped.

It had split dead center at the apex. None in attendance had ever seen such a break. Rachel asked Harold for his half and held them aloft, side by side. All leaned in and eyeballed. “I'll be durned,” Ledford said. The halves were precisely equal in length.

Young Harold, who had squeezed his eyes as tight as he could, asked, “What does it mean?”

No one answered him. Willy began to cry from the nursery, and little Mary, having lost interest, ran and tripped over the loose kitchen threshold. She landed on her chin and began to wail. Ledford went to her, Rachel to Willy.

Harold looked to his parents for answers. His mother licked her thumb and wiped at the crumbs on his cheek. “It means both your wishes come true,” she said.

Harold looked around her to Reverend Thompson, who sipped from a coffee cup with his pinky extended. “Is that right?” Harold asked him.

“Yes.”

Staples watched the boy. It was clear he had put some thought into his wish. “What did you wish for?” he asked.

“Can't tell or it won't come true,” Mack said.

“That theory's been disproved,” Staples answered.

The boy didn't speak for a moment, and then he said, “I wished I could play for the Dodgers, like Jackie Robinson.” But this was a lie. Harold had wished nothing of the sort. As he'd pulled on that dry little bone, he'd asked God to help his daddy find the man who'd burnt a cross on their front lawn, and that when that man was found, to forgive his daddy for shooting him between the eyes.

 

I
T WAS THE
day after Lucius Ball's funeral that Ledford accompanied Bob Staples to the Bonecutter place in Wayne County. Bob drove a Ford Sportsman with an airtight convertible top. The car wore wood door panels like a boat. Inside, the two men shared Thermos coffee and Bob talked about his plans to run for office. “Next year's elections won't be like any we've seen before,” he said. “And I'm talkin about everywhere.” Bob's foot was heavy on the pedal, and he didn't watch the road when he spoke. “My brother has told me about your stand on the rights of Negroes, and I'll tell you what, Ledford, high time is here.” The tires kicked rock hard around the wheel wells and Bob swerved off the shoulder.