The Orphan Mother (13 page)

“And what is your kind of work, Mr. Tole?”

What to call it? He had been a man called to fix unfixable situations.

“Handyman.” All of Franklin was falling down, people were desperate for skilled workers, and he, a “handyman,” couldn't find a job except one given to him from charity? But what could he tell her?
I'm a drunk? I'm living off my soldier's pension and drinking myself to death, here in this broken southern town in the middle of nowhere, where even God can't find me? And my trade is death?
“Handyman” sounded vastly more respectable.

Mariah nodded. She had softened toward him, he thought. Her eyes were so gray, they might blow away like smoke. She smiled kindly, which was more than he knew he deserved. He had tricked her, misled her, run a game on her. He wanted to deny it, to denounce this part of himself. But this woman! He would do anything to right the scales for her, to make things right. He knew this instantly, even though he also knew that righting the scales would make things very dangerous for George Tole.

“You know Hooper?” she asked.

“The liquor man?”

“He's a ragman and a liquor man. He also delivers firewood, and I think he got chopping to do. When he come to see you, you know that I sent him. That be two jobs, then.”

“Thank you. Appreciate it.”

She turned and began along the path back to the house. There wasn't another soul in sight, and Tole wondered how she could stand the quiet, so much quiet. He wondered if she was lonely.

“You can come up to visit the graves, or whatever you do up here, whenever you want. I ain't stopping you, Mr. Tole.”

As she got farther away, she seemed to disappear into the tall grass, and Tole was sorry to see her go.

July 17, 1867

It was raining when Mariah found Hooper's chimney by the smoke she saw tailing up out of the woods far off, down the stream. Hooper had built the chimney himself from river rock and old abandoned stone fences. It tipped here and there but never fell, and it always contained the warm fire the whiskey man used to make the heat that drove his chemistries.

Townsmen told many stories about the liquor man: that his was a recipe brought directly over from the old country by pirates; that his secret ingredient was the tears of abolitionists; that each jar contained six months of work; that he had been stolen and set free by the outlaws of Cave-in-Rock on the Ohio because none of them could defeat him in a wrestling match; that he never drank his own product; that his own liquor man was the Devil hisself; that he never slept; and that his only real pleasure was the tending of fire. Only Hooper knew what part of it was true. If they kept buying his jars, what trouble could he ever have? He aimed to avoid trouble first and foremost, always. He took very few risks.

Mariah entered the clearing that was Hooper's workshop and living room, mud packed and hard, ringed by scrub oak and hickory.

“What you want, Mariah?” He sounded uncomfortable, like he already knew what she wanted but had to go through the ritual of asking, the back-and-forth.

His voice came from behind one of the burlap sacks that hung low from tree branches, embroidered and drawn upon like tapestries. Hooper had many private rooms in his clearing set off by these hanging sacks, and a lean-to at the south end of the clearing in which to sleep. The sacks flapped in the storm wind, barely a breeze now but getting stronger, and it seemed to Mariah that the clearing itself was moving, flapping, shaking. She went to the hearth before answering.

“That you, mister?”

“Who else would it be, girl?”

“Abraham Lincoln for all I know.”

“Mr. Lincoln dead, everyone know that.”

The fire spat and smoked behind her, heating the copper kettle. She sat on an oak stump Hooper used for wood splitting. On the stone hearth sat a near-full jar of that thick, syrupy stuff the whiskey man made every day of his life. Mariah dipped her pinky, took a suck.

Hooper came around the edge of his burlap and stepped into the center of the clearing. In his full glory, it became instantly clear why he could remain alone out there in the woods, unmolested by man or law. Far from Carnton's porch, in the seat of his power, he seemed tall as a horse and practically as wide. He was dark brown, and his beard, which he had been trimming with a Bowie knife, was gray-flecked and thick, not so much grown on his chin as sculpted there. He was powerful- and hard-looking, but something about him seemed pieced together to Mariah, none of the parts seeming to quite fit into the whole. He had been beaten severely at least once in his life, probably many times; there were scars at each corner of his eye, and his nose had become flattened and canted to the left. His eyes were almost black and very wide. In him she recognized both the power and the wreckage she associated almost always with black men—especially in her memory of the three brothers she had not seen or heard from since she was twelve.

White liquid dripped from the lip of Hooper's still, which sat squat on a platform of stone next to the chimney.

“I heard they killed your boy.”

They
. He knew. What did he know? She nearly leapt up to claw his face off until he told her. They all knew, of course.
They, they, they
. He sat down across from her and stared unblinking. The wind picked up and blew tiny dirt swirls across the cleared patch, from her side to his.

“I liked your boy, Mariah, and I reckon all this don't sit well with you.” His vest, made from deerskin like the roof of his lean-to, opened wide in the wind and flapped around.

“Everybody liked my boy. Didn't matter much, did it?”

“He was a good customer. Don't know where he got the money, but he always paid.”

“He made shoes, that's where he got the money.” She looked down at Hooper's own shoes, which were sprung at the sole and had been wrapped with twine and rag. “Might have thought about buying some from him yourself.”

Now he stood up again, like something ancient unbending itself, all creaks and cracks. He walked over and stoked the fire to roaring, and turned back. “When I heard you moved back to Carnton to live with Missus McGavock, I knew right away why you done it. That town, every town, got a thirst for blood and don't care who you are or what you want from this life—you best be living their way and according to their rules so long as you live among 'em. And their rules what done Theo.”

He took a deep breath. “I did want to talk to you, Mariah Reddick.”

“I know. It's part of why I come.”

“I suppose you read my mind, houdou witch.”

“Don't take much to read you.”

Hooper slapped his knee. “Good! I'm glad! I ain't gone sneak through this life.” He looked down at the ground again. Mariah wondered if the words were going to kill him and if he was afraid of dying.

“I guess you know that I get around that town a lot, though I hate it.”

“Part of your business, I reckon.”

“That's true. And people drink in front of me, and when they drink in front of me they say things.”

“Who they?”

“
They
. And you know who I mean.”

Mariah nodded her head.

“I don't want them coming out here,” he hissed. He was scared.

“All right.”

He became a little more comfortable then, and looked her in the eye. “I know you got your little spies, and I'm sure they fulla horseshit, because I hear them talking in the back rooms and in the hallways when I make my deliveries. But you got the right idea, having them listening. If you really
do
want to know what happened to your boy.”

“I do want to know,” Mariah said. “Do you think you know?”

“No.”

“Then why am I here? What the hell is all this about, Hooper?”

“I don't know the what or the why. But I do know two things. First, remember the lady whose baby they say you delivered the day before? I weren't there, so I don't know.”

“Evangeline Dixon. Yes, I do.”

“You have to talk to her.”

“Why?”

“Ask
her
. I ain't speaking for her. But why the hell do you think? I ain't talking for my health.”

“Fine then. I talk to her.”

“And I know one more thing. Some of them men who were in that mob, some of them who was beating on your son, said they didn't see no guns on the stage.”

“They say Theopolis had a pistol and shot the grocer. Mr. Sykes.”

“You think that's true?”

“I know it's not.”

“Smart woman.” Hooper blew out one more sigh from puffed cheeks. He stood up as if to escort her out, so Mariah also stood and gathered her skirts in her left fist to avoid the mud. “Other people know it's not true, too,” Hooper said. “And I heard that there are some who was beating on Theopolis who want to know who was doing the shooting. You find out who some of them men were, and maybe you find out what they know.”

“Do you know who they are?”

But Hooper just stared at her. A little lightness had come into the sky behind him, and in silhouette he seemed to Mariah a massive thing casting its shadow over her. He loomed, he rocked and nodded his head, working up to something. “Your boy got caught in the middle of a group of men who don't like niggers, or don't like things changing. They 'specially don't like niggers like your boy, ones with brains, ones who could make a difference in this world. There lot of men who don't like anything about any of that.”

He became small just then, or perhaps it was the rain that still ran down the leaves and dripped upon his head, flattening and darkening him. He sagged, she thought. The giant man was scared, and this fear made her nearly vomit.
What am I doing? I can't do this.

“But you can get even if you clever about it, Mariah Reddick,” he said.

Clever.
Even
. Later she would say the words over and over in her head as she walked back to Carnton in the rain.
Clever
. She could try.
Clever
would be getting the ragman, Hooper, her friend of many years, to be her spymaster. He moved in and out of every house in town picking up junk and delivering firewood, and she guessed that most of the people whose houses he visited didn't notice him and couldn't even remember his name. He was a
ghost
. That seemed appropriate; that would be useful.

And then she wondered if she would need to be clever with the woman whose baby she had saved the day before she lost her own. She thought not. She thought, instead, that such a woman would owe her the truth.

Before she left Hooper, Mariah had one last request.

“Hooper,” she asked, “you been by my boy's house since he was killed?”

“No ma'am.”

“I been meaning to go in there and clean it out, but I can't seem to bring myself to get it done. I don't know if I'd be able to throw any of it away, or give it away, like needs to be done.”

“I didn't take you for sentimental, Mariah.”

Mariah laughed, mostly to herself. “You know, when I was a young girl, five, six years old, before my mama would head off to the fields, she'd send me up to the big house for Bible study. She'd make my lunch out of whatever food there was laying around, scraps from this and that, and she'd wrap it tight in this brown parchment paper. Foolish little thing I was, I'd fold the paper up and save it. I remember Miss Carrie asking me once why I saved it the way I did, and I tried to explain to her, my mama had touched the paper, and I couldn't just throw away my mama's handwork. I haven't thought about that in years.”

“Mariah, you need me to clean out your son's house, all you gotta do is ask.”

“All right,” she said. “I'm asking. And there's a man I'd like you to help with it. Name of George Tole. Lives right near Theopolis's house. He might want some of the things. If he does, let him have them. Pay him fair.”

July 19, 1867

The trip to Elijah Dixon's house should not have made Mariah so nervous. She had been summoned, after all, and not for her inquiries into the murder. It was Evangeline who wanted her.

As a midwife, she had made many such visits to newborns during the first few weeks of their lives. Most of the time there was some challenge that their mamas were at wit's end about, and Mariah would do what she could to fix things. There were colicky babies, babies that had become thin, babies that wouldn't sleep, babies that slept too much, babies that slept so soundly they seemed dead, babies that couldn't cry. There were also the fevered babies, the cold babies, and the babies that seemed perfectly healthy but had been brought into the world by women who couldn't stand their smell, their noise, their constant hunger, their breathing. These last were the babies that would have the hardest time of it, Mariah knew.

On the occasion that she found a child who just seemed to need to go on and cross death's river, she had no words to turn it back. Those children, motionless in their fevers by fireplaces, scaly-skinned, twisted up in bedclothes and unmoved by the sweet smoke and the smelly poultices she applied to their chests so lightly—those children taught her more than she ever could do for them. This is what she thought during those hours by the cradle listening to the wheels turning down the dirt ruts in front of the parents' house, when she was listening to the world move on by as if there were not a child dying in the house:
What does this child know?
She thought such children had some kind of foreknowledge, some sight that was more than human. Or, rather, such a child had an immortal's sense of time, which was no such sense. Such a baby was a pure thing, breathing shallowly, unmoved and isolated from the muddy, fleshy, and cruel state of being human that other humans would hold on to and kill to maintain. There was wisdom in such a child.

Evangeline Dixon came to the door bloodless and pale, gripping her skirt in one hand and balancing little Augusten precariously on her other hip, as if she hardly wanted to hold him. Behind her Mariah could hear the sounds of the other children playing—four others, she recalled.

There was nothing wrong with the child that Mariah could see. Augusten was pink like a piglet and nearly as fat. But Evangeline had not been thriving. She seemed thin, colicky, and the little purple pouches beneath her eyes seemed to indicate a young woman who had been trying to cry herself to sleep at night without success.

They walked around to the back, where they both took seats, Evangeline on the sofa and Mariah, hands full of the boy, on the settee. Evangeline twirled the hair at the nape of her neck until her fingertip turned bright red. “I need…” But she wouldn't finish her sentence. She shook her head, she closed her eyes, she flipped them open and locked in on Mariah's own, like she was waiting for the Negro midwife to come up with the words to describe a wealthy white lady's horror.

Evangeline had always been kind to her, and Mariah would have called her sweet and quiet in the past, given their long history together. She guessed that Evangeline, in her childhood, had spent days pressing flowers and reading ladies' poetry and staring out windows at floating leaves and dandelion seeds. That's the kind of white woman she seemed to be, but this was not the woman who now sat on the sofa. She was preoccupied, fidgety, uncertain. Mariah noticed the sweat marks on Evangeline's blouse, between her breasts and down her sides.

“I feel guilty, Mariah.”

“What you feel guilty about, ma'am?”

“That I don't want to be a mother again, that I'm sorry I brought yet another child into this awful world. I have too many children who will suffer.”

“It ain't so awful.”

Evangeline stared at her. “How can you of all people say such a thing, Mariah Reddick?”

How indeed? But Mariah knew what she was supposed to say to women who wanted to go back in time before they'd birthed their children, to before they'd let their men touch them, to the time before they had any responsibility to take care of another human being.

“I still believe in it, but I admit it's been hard, Miss Evangeline.”

“I'm terribly sorry.” Evangeline burst into tears with a gasp. Mariah would have gone over to comfort her, but she had her hands full with Augusten, who was clawing at her breast.

“What are you sorry about? You ain't done nothing. You givin' birth to a beautiful little boy is all.”

“You saved his life.”

Mariah didn't say anything to that. She let the words hang out in the air between them, lending the room more gravity, more weight. A child's life had been saved, that was true.

“I do love him,” Evangeline said.

“'Course you do.”

“I don't love myself, though.”

Mariah was taken aback. “He just need you to love him. You can love yourself later.”

“But how can he love a mother who can't hardly stand to look at herself in the mirror?” Evangeline shook her head and slapped her thigh, hard, like she was trying to fling something out of her mind. She bent her head over for a moment, and then raised it. She looked directly into Mariah's eyes, unblinking.

“You came because God sent you, didn't he, Mariah?”

“Don't know nothing about that, but God is in everything. I do believe that.” Had Evangeline forgotten the note she'd sent? Maybe. Mariah would play along. If this was what it would take to get her to say what Mariah could sense she was about to say, then she'd profess to be the Archangel Gabriel himself.

“God wants me to talk to you.”

Mariah stayed silent, waiting.

“I can't keep this from you. I should keep it from you, because white business is not supposed to be Negro business, or so I've always been told. But you saved his life”—she pointed at her baby cradled on Mariah's lap—“and that changes things. You saved his life with your
teeth
. You were fierce that day, Mariah. I remember looking up into your face and knowing as fully as I've ever known anything that you would take care of me and my baby, and that you would yourself banish death from this house. And you did.”

This talk made Mariah uncomfortable. She knew how the white ladies of Franklin thought of her. The mothers, the others in town. She had houdou, they thought. That's what they called it when they thought she couldn't hear them. She could see it in their faces: the awe. They handed her their births and their babies in the deep conviction that they were handing them over to a witch with power greater than their own. What she would do for them, what incantations and strange rituals she'd conduct, they'd rather not know; they were just in thrall to the idea of houdou, and more accepting of it than Mariah herself would ever have been.

Evangeline took a deep breath. “I know you've been asking around about what happened that day to your Theopolis. I heard it from the cook. When I heard this I knew I had to talk to you, but I didn't have the courage to go see you. And now you're here, as if you knew this. You are an amazing woman.”

“You sent me a note.”

“But you didn't have to come.”

“Do you have something to tell me, Miss Evangeline?”

“I'm not a bad woman, Mariah. I want to be a good person. I want to be a good mother, and I can't as long as I'm being eaten up inside.”

“Let it out then.”

Evangeline blew the air out, sucked it back in, arranged her skirts around her. “There are men in Nashville who arranged to have that rally attacked. They wanted one of the people on that stage to be killed. It was about politics, but I'm not certain the exact reason. But I do know this, that your boy wasn't the one they wanted killed. And they're angry about it.”

Mariah stood up with Augusten in her arms, strode over to the sofa, handed the child to his mother, and sat back down on the settee. She placed her hands in her lap in front of her and blinked the tears back. She had already heard part of this, from Della. “And how do you know this?”

“Because my husband knows, and I overheard him talking to some men out back in his shed. Elijah is a good man, Mariah, and he told them they had been damned fools and should have stayed out of Franklin. He told them they had managed to kill the one good cobbler in town.”

The one good cobbler
.

“He doesn't know that I heard. I wished I hadn't, but now that you're here I'm glad I did.”

Mariah realized that this path she had embarked upon, her quest for truth, would contain moments like this that she could hardly stand. She would suffer pain along the way, and relive her son's death in a dozen different ways. She would have to accept this, or stop asking questions. She considered going back to Carnton and never leaving again, but shook her head. She would go on.

“Do you know who the men were? The men who were talking to your husband?”

“I don't think so. Although many looked familiar. One has a few fingers missing from one hand, I think. But Elijah has never introduced me.”

So it was true: Theopolis hadn't been the target, his death had been a cruel accident or mistake. But then she remembered those other men standing around her as he died on the ground in her arms, she remembered their faces. Maybe they didn't come looking to kill her son, but they didn't seem to mind that he had died.

“I don't want Elijah finding out that I know anything, and he especially can't ever know that I told you anything. About him or those men.”

“Is he one of them? Your husband?”

“One of the group? I don't think so. I only came in at the end. It sounded to me like they came to him with a question or a problem or some such, and he was trying to advise them.”

“Why didn't he just turn them in?”

“I don't know. Really, I don't.”

“Probably some of those Conservative white boys,” Mariah said.

“It didn't sound like that. These men sounded—well, rougher somehow.”

Mariah paused, thinking. “What else you remember?”

“That's it, I'm afraid. But I wanted you to know. I felt like I owed it to you.”

All Mariah wanted was to walk away from this place and be alone and walk some more. She couldn't remember what she said when she left or if she said anything at all to Miss Evangeline. She just wanted away from the place. But Franklin was a small town, and there wasn't much room for being lost and unnoticed. She could feel eyes on her, as if people could see what she now knew. The walls and roofs knew it, too, and the squirrel running along ahead of her knew about it. Every white face she saw could see what she possessed, and condemned her for trying to find out the truth. She thought she ought to be scared, but she wasn't much scared at all. She looked at herself in the plate glass of the stores along Main Street and saw a taller woman than she remembered. She was Mariah Reddick; she had birthed their children and tended their war wounded. She was owed. And perhaps Theopolis had been right, it was time for Negroes to get their due, and it might as well start with her, sitting in the Dixons' house, listening to the white woman.

Mariah walked for a little while toward the Blood Bucket. In the window of the ladies' garment store she saw some of Theopolis's shoes, toes shining. She moved quickly past.
I am Mariah Reddick; I birthed the children of this town and tended their war wounded. I have nothing to fear.

But she imagined the shoes following her down the street.