The Waking (43 page)

No.

How about Rose then?

I don’t have her number either.

Auntie June?

I could …

She won’t take no collect call. She’s cheap.

Yeah, you’re right. I could call Mary—

—
and talk to her mama.

But I might get Mary this time. She always accepted my collect calls from County.

But what if it’s her mama? You might lose your magic coins.

Shut up.

Oh, but you know it’ll work cuz you’re still on 29. Magic coins always work on Highway 29.

Maybe I’m supposed to call Maxi to thank him again for the lighter.

Him? What for? He’ll just give you another history lesson and tell you to “listen to the wind.”

It’s a lesson I’ll never forget.

Give me a break. So who can you call?

I have Hughes’s number. I could call him.

To tell him what? That you’ve walked all of maybe twenty miles? The man’s probably out fishing anyway.

I could tell him that I wish he was my father.

Not that sob story again.

I take Hughes’s card from my pocket, drop in the coins, and dial the number. I let it ring fifteen times with no answer.

Told you he was fishing.

I dig the quarters from the coin return and return them to my boot.

How do you know those are
your
magic coins?

Shut up.

They could be any two coins, you know.

Give it a rest!

But I have no time to rest. The Twinkies disappear before I get through Whitfield, where a Seaboard Coast Line train seems to follow me, and I finish the canteen by the time I get to Hogansville. It’s also getting close to dinnertime. I decide against stopping to eat at Spradlin Restaurant even though the air around it smells so good, and I continue on through Trimble.

I pass an old brown woman wearing an apron, her gray hair parted down the middle. She feeds kittens dry Purina on the steps to her house. Her wooden screen door is open, flies buzzing in and out, and the kittens slurp water from a Mason jar. A wooden basket of squash sits at her feet. She waves, and I wave back. As I’m almost past her, she begins shucking peas from a paper bag into a glass bowl.

In the next field over, I see black kids playing dodge ball, several children playing hide-and-seek in some woods. Beyond them, I see wooden frame houses far back from the road, dirt driveways leading up to them. Some are boarded up, but they’re still standing. Some even have outhouses. I must be in the country. The electric wires overhead don’t have a single pair of shoes dangling from them. This is nice. This is watermelon, ham hocks, and collard greens country for sure.

I rest beside a tree, a mailbox nailed to it, wiping my face with my hand towel. An old dusty brown man with a walker shuffles toward me from a house that has hundreds of tree stumps around it, the roof silver tin. He wears a plain striped shirt, overalls, and a dusting of white hair.

“
Evenin’,” he says.

“
Hey.”

“
You mind gettin’ my mail for me?”

I reach into the mailbox and pull out a woodworking catalog. I hand it to him.

“
Thirsty?” he asks.

“
Yes sir.”

“
C’mon back.”

I’m only getting a drink.

The old man might be the devil!

Shut up.

“
Name’s Moses Green,” he tells me as we take a leisurely walk back to his porch over the damp, red earth.

“
Emmanuel Mann.”

As old as Moses must be, his face has no wrinkles at all. He must have had a hard life with few smiles.

“
My well is around back,” he says as he carefully mounts his steps.

I walk around to the back and see more stumps, a few large logs, and lots of kindling. I also see an old metal pump with a spigot. I crank the handle until water gushes out into my free hand. Cold, and crystal clear. I fill my canteen and even douse my face, neck, and back. I return to the porch and find him whittling, several tools within his reach.

“
Thanks,” I say, and I turn to leave.

“
You could stay,” he says. “You look tired. Been walkin’ long?”

“
I, uh, left Valley, Alabama, this morning.”

He stops whittling. “You walked forty miles in one day?”

I’ve come that far? I’m almost halfway to Atlanta. “Yes sir, I guess I have.”

“
You better come sit down ‘fore you fall down.” He points at a stool.

I sit on the hand-carved stool next to him and take sips from the canteen, watching his hands turn a little piece of dark wood into the figure of a man about five inches tall. My feet thank me for getting off them, and I unlace my boots to let my feet breathe a little. Fireflies dot the night outside the porch, and I don’t know how Moses can see to whittle without a porch light.

“
You hear voices, Emmanuel?” he asks suddenly.

“
Excuse me?”

“
I asked if you heard voices. I do.”

“
You … do?”

“
Um-hmm. They tell me what to carve.” He turns and takes a sip of something from an old jelly jar. “You see, the voices of my ancestors are in this wood, and they talk to me. All the wood you see around here, they planted it.” He blows dust from the figure. “And I turn what they planted into art.” He holds it up to me. “What do you see?”

The dusk is creeping in, so I have to lean close to the figure. “A man.”

“
Look closer.”

He’s holding something. A shield? “He’s African.”

“
Yes.”

“
A warrior?”

He pulls the figure to him and continues carving. “The voices told me to carve a warrior today. I don’t know if I’m to give him a spear or not. They’ll let me know.” His hands grow still. “They said not to give him a mask, that he wouldn’t need one.” He looks at me. “I think I’m supposed to give it to you.” He opens his palm, the figure standing at attention.

“
I can’t take it.” It’s like art I’ve seen at the Crawford Grill, and that stuff has to be expensive.

“
Why not?”

“
I didn’t earn it.”

“
You got my mail for me.”

“
That’s hardly worth it.”

He taps the woodworking magazine with a gnarled finger. “It is to me. I use this to get my tools. Can’t work without ‘em.”

“
Where I come from, they’d sell figures like this for fifteen, maybe even twenty dollars apiece or more.”

“
And where do you come from?” he asks.

I used to answer “Pittsburgh” automatically, but now I’m not so sure. “Well, originally my people came from Ghana.” And just saying that gives me goose bumps.

He leans back and nods. “Yes.”

“
They were captured and brought to Mobile Bay, and they later started Africatown.”

He nods and smiles. “Yes. Africatown. Down near Mobile.”

“
Then they migrated eventually all the way to Pittsburgh. That’s where I live now.”

“
Ah, Pittsburgh. You must know Thaddeus.”

“
Who?”

“
Thaddeus Mosley. Another man the wood speaks to. You must visit him when you get back.” He closes his fingers over the figure. “I want you to have it, to show to Thaddeus, to let him know I am still alive. Will you do that for me?”

“
Sure.” He hands me the figure, and it feels heavy in my hands. How can something only five inches tall weigh so much? “Where will I find him?”

He smiles. “Probably at his home, sittin’ as I’m sittin’, talkin’ to a piece of wood that’s talkin’ back.” He looks off into the distance. “Hmm.” He reaches for a stick of wood in a bin beside him and immediately starts carving. “You need a place to stay tonight?”

“
Yes.”

He closes his eyes, but his hand still carves. “I have a shed out back. It has a floor, so it’s dry.”

I am feeling weary, and trying to see through the dark to watch his hands is wearing out my eyes. “Is there something I can do for you?”

He smiles. “My dishes. I can’t seem to keep up with them.”

“
Okay.”

“
And if you’re hungry, there’s some stew on the stove. Won’t take but a couple minutes to warm it up. Bread’s in the fridge so it doesn’t get moldy.”

“
Great. You want me to bring you some?”

“
Already ate.”

I leave the stool and enter Moses’ house, and it is an art show everywhere I look. There isn’t a bit of space anywhere that doesn’t have an African figure on it. They fill an entire bookcase against a wall, they litter the floor, they even perch themselves on top of his refrigerator. He has carved an entire tribe, an entire African nation, and they live in his house with him.

Told you the man was crazy. He could be a rich man if he did something with these.

He
is
a rich man. And one day someone
will
do something with these.

Even at only ten bucks a pop, there must be ten thousand dollars’ worth in here. You got that backpack, right?

So?

He won’t miss a couple. He’s almost blind as it is.

No. I’m his guest.

The sink in the kitchen is full of plates and more jelly jars, but it doesn’t take long to clean and dry them, and I eat my stew and bread while I work. As I open the cabinets to put the dishes away, I see more figures, some so intricate they almost look like flesh and blood. The cabinet where the jelly jars go bursts with painted figures, and the shelf for the plates is lined with fierce warriors, all of them raising spears and fists.

After washing my own bowl and wiping off the counter, I return to the porch. “All done. The stew was delicious.”

He holds up a carving of a little boy and a little girl. “Give this one to your children. As a gift.”

I take the carving, this one done in lighter wood, and look into the boy’s face, and it almost looks like me. “I’m having a son this Christmas.”

“
Hmm.”

“
How’d you know?”

“
The wood told me.”

This is amazing.

Oh yeah, it’s a miracle. Let’s put a tent over this guy and let
him
preach.

Hush. It
is
a miracle.

“
Have you sold many of your, um, sculptures?”

He closes his eyes. “I give them away mostly. I used to have many more. Used to be you couldn’t even walk much in there.”

“
But you could make so much …”

He puts a finger to his lips. “I get paid in other ways, Emmanuel, better ways.” He opens his eyes and looks out over the horizon. “You’ll find a pillow on a shelf in the back room. And make sure the shed door’s closed nice and tight. Bugs are murder after a storm.”

I put the new carving in my backpack. “Well, um, thanks for letting me stay.”

“
Hmm.”

I get a dusty pillow from the back room and go out to the shed. After stumbling around and tripping over heavy wooden objects in the dark, I find an open space, lay out my blanket, and settle in. A mosquito or two buzz my ears at first, and then I drift peacefully to sleep …

Sunlight streaking through some cracks in the shed wakes me, and I bolt upright to see what I had tripped over. An entire African army of warriors surrounds me, some as tall as three feet high, many of them wearing grotesque masks and waving a sharp spears.

The shed swings open, a metal walker preceding Moses inside. “Sleep well?” he asks.

I fold the blanket and grab the pillow. “Yeah. I slept all right.”

“
My warriors didn’t keep you awake with their war dances, did they?”

C’mon, Manny, this man’s been sniffing sawdust or something. Let’s get out of here!

Shh. He gave us a meal and place to stay.

“
No sir. It was pretty quiet in here, except for the mosquitoes.”

He chuckles and nods at the warriors. “They’re pretty scary, huh?”

I slip the backpack over my shoulder. “Yeah. They’re, uh, they’re pretty fierce.”

“
Did these back in the sixties.” He raises a fist to the ceiling. “Black power and all that. The wood was pretty angry then.”

I crouch and look into one warrior’s eyes. “They’re magnificent.”

“
Hmm. How much you say folks would spend to buy one of these?”

I pick up the warrior, and I’m amazed at how heavy it is. “I couldn’t say for sure. Let’s say one like this goes for forty-five, maybe fifty, and the biggest ones …” I shake my head. “Man, there are folks who would pay almost anything to have those.”