The Sleeping Night (3 page)

Much later, she stirred, and found herself in her own bed. Foggily, she turned over. She listened for a minute, and sure enough, the sound of her daddy and Jordan talking came in through her window. She drifted away again.

The next Saturday
was the last of the month. Things had gone pretty much like always all day. Angel ran errands for her daddy, fetching lengths of cloth and keeping tea brewed to cool the lips of the customers. As she worked, she kept looking for Isaiah, who was always first through the door.

The night grew later; the customers drifted away. Angel’s daddy told her to get the broom and start sweeping up.

She was angling the old broom under the lip of a set of shelves when Isaiah burst through the screen door, letting it slam hard behind him. His face was dirty, his clothes askew, and his chest heaved like he’d been running a long way.

An immediate hush fell over the voices of the remaining customers, voices that had, until that minute, been rolling easily about the long front room of the store. All eyes fell on the boy, including Angel’s. They knew, looking at that face, that whatever they heard wasn’t going to be good. Angel felt her stomach fall to her feet and she clenched the handle of the broom with fingers that would be full of splinters the next day. Isaiah’s eyes swiveled around the room, lit on Angel, and passed to her father, who broke the silence.

“What is it, Isaiah? Speak up, child, speak up.”

“Mama said come get you.” His voice was thin with horror. “They killed my daddy.” His lip trembled, his eyes wide and shimmering with terror. “They killed him—”

At the remembered ugliness, Isaiah fell straight to the floor in a dead faint. Later, Angel didn’t remember doing it, but she ran to Isaiah, washed his face with a cloth she had wet with cool water, then helped him out to the porch to get some air when he came around with a jerk. By then there was hardly anybody else around; only a few women with a keening sound to their voices and a worry in their whispers.

It didn’t make sense to Angel right away, about Jordan High being dead because it was the first time in her life (unless you counted her mama—and she didn’t remember
her
) anybody she knew died. As she sat holding Isaiah’s hand in the darkness of the porch, she heard the rich sound of Jordan High laughing in her mind. She looked at the stars and Isaiah wept. Angel held his hand in the darkness, feeling something big and sad move inside of her. But instead of tears, she held on to the thought of Jordan High in heaven, laughing with God.

After a time, there came the flicker of torches and flashlights through the trees, winking in the darkness of thick pines. Isaiah dried his eyes and let go of Angel’s hand. He stared at the silent crowd. A hardness drew up his face as he watched the pinpoints of light weave toward them, and Angel had enough sense to know not to say a word.

How arrives it joy lies slain

And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

—Thomas Hardy “Hap”

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.

—I Corinthians 13:11

Mrs. Rachel Pierson
#2 Old Farm Road
Gideon, Texas

June 29, 1945

Dear Isaiah High,

I went yesterday to Corey’s store, for Parker is not well. There I saw your mother and, when I asked after your health, she shared the news that you have decided to stay in Europe for a time. She gave me your address when I said I might have a job for you to do, if you are interested.

It has been a long, difficult war and you must be very tired (I remember well the exhaustion of the soldiers in our last war) so, if you cannot do this thing for me, I will understand.

My wish is this: that you would see for me if there are any of my sister’s family remaining alive. They were Jews from Holland, and I had hopes I might hear from them when the war ended, but I have not. There was my sister, her husband, and their daughter, who will now be in her middle twenties. I will be happy to pay you what ever you wish. I want only to know if any of them are still alive so that I do not have to spend the rest of my life worrying if one of them is starving. If you find any of them alive, I will take them in here.

Please let me know at your earliest convenience if this is a task you wish to undertake.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Rachel Pierson

Gideon, Texas

May, 1946

By the time the train reached Texas, Isaiah felt like he’d been traveling a thousand years. He was weary of sitting and wanted a meal that filled him even more than he wanted a night’s sleep. His temper had been boiling for thirty-six hours and, if he’d had any doubts that he could return home for any length of time, riding Jim Crow through the South, where his uniform with its bars meant nothing at all, had disabused him of that notion.

He had been in Europe for more than four years, first in England, then across France and into Germany. He’d understood that his service had changed him. Until he’d been forced to board the colored car at the Mason Dixon line, he had not realized that it might be impossible to return to the Jim Crow South, to fit himself back into the rigors of a system that now seemed antiquated and peculiar.

However much he and his fellow soldiers had changed, it was clear the South had not. Companions warned him with stories of the beatings that soldiers received when, after long years away, they forgot themselves and tipped counter girls or filled paper cups with water from white water fountains.

Some of them, naturally, were young men who wanted to test the walls upon their return, soldiers full of themselves and the guns they’d held and the freedom they’d discovered on foreign shores.

Most had just forgotten. A grandmother in a blue calico dress warned Isaiah that there were always those willing to remind a colored man of his place.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Thank you kindly.”

Isaiah worried over Gudren, up front in the white cars—worried about her being alone in her frail state, with her accented English. He’d found her in a refugee camp, half-dead, and it had taken several months before she’d been well enough to travel. Those months had given her some dignity, giving her time to flesh her emaciated frame, grow some hair, lose a little of her refugee look. She would still be plainly a stranger. He didn’t like to think of anyone being rude to her.

Though, considering all, a little rudeness wouldn’t be anything much to a woman who’d survived the camps.

At last they made it to Gideon. Isaiah and Gudren were the only passengers to get off the train.

“This is Texas?” she asked in wonder. “I thought it would be a desert. This is beautiful.”

“I reckon it can be.” He picked up her bag. “Let’s look for Miz Pierson.”

The car, a long fat Chrysler, waited near the door of the station. An old white man had evidently driven the car, for he still sat behind the wheel. Standing outside it was blind Mrs. Pierson, her chin jutting out. Only her hands, restlessly wringing themselves, gave her away. Her face had aged thirty years since he had left just before the war. It made him sad.

“Miz Pierson,” Isaiah said, “I brought you your niece, just like I promised. This here’s Gudren Stroo.”

The two women met with outstretched hands. Each waited a little shyly, until Gudren said quietly, “My mother talked about you so much.”

Tears, unmistakable in the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the pines around the station, glittered in Mrs. Pierson’s sightless eyes. “I only wish it could have been sooner,” she whispered.

Gudren bent to hug her aunt and Isaiah stepped back, his throat closed. It was worth coming back to Texas, worth Jim Crow a hundred times, to deliver this single life into the keeping of one who knew and cared.

As he slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, Mrs. Pierson’s voice halted him. “Isaiah High,” she said.

He turned. “Come see me in the morning. We have things to settle between us.”

“No, Miz Pierson. We’re square.”

“Perhaps,” she replied. “Nonetheless, I wish you would take the time. You must allow me to thank you for this precious work you’ve done.”

Isaiah hesitated, knowing she would press more money on him. He didn’t aim to accept it, but there was no harm in stopping by anyway. He nodded. “All right, then. I’ll be there.”

Gudren stepped up to him and held out her hand. “Thank you.”

Isaiah, conscious of the curious faces of the onlookers, ignored her hand and kept his head angled low. “You’re welcome. You get well, now.”

He left them, setting out toward home. As he passed through Gideon proper, he kept his gaze fixed firmly on his path so that he wouldn’t be required to speak to anyone, wouldn’t accidently meet the eyes of anyone who’d take offense. It shamed him to do it, after so long walking like a man in the world.

Even with his lowered eyes, it was apparent nothing in Gideon had changed in his absence. Women still shopped in flowered cotton dresses, men still gathered in little knots by their cars to talk cotton. He felt their eyes following him.

What had he expected? He shook his head. Something. The entire world had turned itself inside out, spilling intestines from one corner of the globe to the other. Fifty million people were dead, Europe was almost destroyed, and horrors he could barely comprehend had been unleashed.

But here, white folks lived in Gideon proper, black folks across the river and down the road in lower Gideon. The library wouldn’t give him a book and he better not try stopping for a beer until he crossed that bridge.

His walk carried him through a path in the woods by the Coreys’ store, but he didn’t stop. He glimpsed the worn roof through the trees, and the sight brought a surprising clutch of sorrow and .
 . . what?
Nostalgia, maybe. A time lost to him.

Parker and Angel. Before he left, he would have to stop to see them. On his way out.

He crossed the bridge into Lower Gideon, black Gideon. Here the houses sat a little bit farther apart, leaving room for chickens and hogs and the occasional cow. Almost every yard boasted the flat of a newly planted garden.

Nothing had changed here, either. Houses still had need of a good coat of paint. Rickety rockers sat on rickety porches. He took a breath against the pang it gave him, seeing the truth. They were so damned poor. He’d forgotten—poor and proud, or poor and tired, or poor and defeated, but poor. Here and there, fresh whitewash had been applied to a fence or a new screen door hung. Here and there, holes in windows had been patched with cardboard, or pigs had ruined a yard.

In the middle of the afternoon, there was no one much about. Field workers were planting cotton for the farmers who spread for twenty miles in either direction. Domestics were busy cooking and cleaning in genteel Upper Gideon. Those unlucky or unmotivated enough to have no work at all slept or gathered in the back rooms of the juke joint further down river. Isaiah saw only Mrs. Cane, hoeing in her garden, an apron tied around her dress. She didn’t see him and Isaiah didn’t holler.

His mama’s house sat as close to the river as the Corey store on the other side, and Isaiah knew if he jumped in and swam across, he’d be able to jog through the woods in a nearly straight line to the tree house he and Solomon and Angel had built. Not that he would, not with copperheads and water moccasins lurking in those sleepy depths, but once he had. He shook his head at the memory. A wonder he hadn’t been bit to death.

It was plain no one was home in the High house. If his sister had been there, she would have had the radio on, and his mother never worked without singing something. A gentle quiet surrounded the simple house with its polished windows and swept walk. Someone had recently built a new set of steps up to the porch. The new wood gleamed in contrast to the old pine boards above it.

Inside, Isaiah took off his hat and hung it automatically on the coat tree, pausing at the scent of home hanging so richly in the room, a combination of cooking fat and lemon oil and a hint of his mother’s talcum, an unexpectedly powerful mix, like the sight of the roof of the Coreys’ store.

Then the nostalgic mood broke with a vicious growl from his belly and he headed for the kitchen, finding two leftover chops, gravy and three biscuits from breakfast. There was even, to Isaiah’s deep delight, half a pecan pie. He wolfed all of it down. Finding himself still longing for more, he scrounged around in a closet for a fishing pole. Time of day wasn’t the best, but he figured he might catch a catfish for supper. Surprise his mama when she got home.

Geraldine High walked
slowly up the road toward home. Her right knee ached with a vengeance, which told her there would be rain in a day or two. It was swollen twice its normal size, and she’d be lucky to sleep tonight with the pain of it. In her shoulders was a weariness born of lifting and folding and scrubbing. With one palm, she rubbed the tight spot.

The earthy scent of frying catfish drifted out into the early evening air as she walked up the porch steps. Geraldine thought gratefully that her daughter Tillie must have gotten home from the cotton fields early. Maybe a neighbor had dropped by the fish after a good catch. Whatever it was, she was thankful that for once she didn’t have to cook it.

She headed straight for her bedroom when she came in, unbuttoning her blouse as she went, thinking about the day. Mrs. Hayden’s grandchildren had been underfoot since they’d tumbled out of bed at breakfast.

“Never met such a pack of undisciplined children in my life,” she muttered, shedding her skirt. They’d run through the kitchen, trompled up and down the stairs and slammed out the back door, scattering their things all over the place. Mrs. Hayden had told Geraldine not to worry herself about the children, to let them pick up their own things. Easier said than done when their toys were on the counters where Geraldine cooked, when their squabbling spilled into the kitchen. Once, she thought, pulling a loose cotton housedress from her closet, once she would have scolded any child in her kitchen, given them an ear boxing they wouldn’t forget and sent them firmly outside with their games. Now .
 . .

She sighed. Both she and Mrs. Hayden were too old for all those children.

In her loose, comfortable dress, she went toward the kitchen, giving her scalp a good scratching. “I tell you, Tillie, I’m going to get after those children tomorrow. Can’t be letting them run all over like that. I’m so tired tonight I can’t even see straight.” She breathed deep. “That cat sure smells good, honey.”

It was only then that she looked up. And it wasn’t Tillie home from the fields at all. It was her son Isaiah, grown as broad and sturdy as his daddy, looking so such like him (
except for his eyes
, she thought proudly,
those eyes are mine
) that it nearly gave her turn. With a little cry of joy, she moved forward, lifting her hands to cup his face. “Isaiah! What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was a surprise.” A full, rich chuckle rumbled up in his throat and he scooped her into his arms. “I sure missed you, Mama.”

His arms were like blocks of wood, his shoulders broad as oak trees. “Put me down!” she protested, laughing. But she gripped him back, relief flooding her. It was good, so good to have her child in her kitchen, lifting her clear off the floor and laughing in her ear. Tears stung her eyes for a minute. They were blinked away by the time he let her gently down.

He kissed her head. “I figured you might be hungry.”

Looking at all the food piled up on the counter, she said, “You didn’t have to go all through this, son. I’d have fed you.”

Isaiah bent to check the cornbread browning in the oven. “Naw, Mama. I ate everything you had in this kitchen when I got home. Had to make up for that.” He pushed her toward the table. “You set down and put up your feet. We’ll eat in a minute. What time Tillie get home?”

Geraldine waved a hand. “No telling. She may not
be
home. Girl’s gone wild, Isaiah. Spends most her time over to Harry’s, raisin’ Cain.” She sighed. Her youngest had always been in trouble. She needed a daddy, that’s what ailed her. Now she spent all her time looking for somebody to fill up that empty spot and, when nobody could, drank it away. In one way, Geraldine understood it. In another, Tillie had been better taught than that. She’d come to a bad end one day.

But that was her second child. This one standing before her, her eldest and her son, was something else again. Not that he wasn’t no trouble, because he sure had been in his turn. Too proud and too smart for his own good and, as she eyed him now, she didn’t see that had changed much.

Maybe war had taught him prudence.

Guiltily she thought about Parker Corey. She oughta tell him. But later. Right now, she was going to keep him all to herself and eat the meal he’d cooked for her and drink in the wonder of his presence right here in her kitchen. After supper. There would be time enough then to tell him.