Whisper Town Page 8

  “God used the slave trade to bring the Nigra to Christ,” said Greta.

  “Or maybe he used the sins of our fathers to show us the blackness of our souls,” said Jeb.

  “Sounds like you’re taking sides, Reverend,” said Sam.

  “Who created sides anyway? Not God,” said Will.

  “Two sides, Will, if you don’t mind my interjecting,” said Jeb. “Love and hate.”

  “I say this meeting has come to a close, Will. We can see where the minister stands.” Arnell picked up his hat.

  “Don’t let it end this way,” Freda pleaded. “We’re not enemies. Reverend can’t help that someone dropped this baby on his doorstep.”

  “Fellers, I’d like to say something,” said Jeb. “I’m the minister of Church in the Dell, last I checked. I’ve got a little authority on these matters. Next time you want to call a meeting, mind asking me first, just so’s we don’t get the cart before the horse?”

  “You start getting high and mighty, Reverend, and next thing you know, you’ll be running people off. Folks has stood by you when other preachers would have been run oft.” Sam’s face turned red as cherries.

  “Sam, you and all of these fine men along with Reverend Philemon Gracie installed me to lead this congregation. If I’m the lead horse, sometimes we won’t agree on matters, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I haven’t committed a sin or a crime. Maybe God did give us Myrtle to show us what is in our hearts. Take this matter to God. See what he shows you.”

  “What you’re committing is division,” said Sam.

  “Sam, let’s go,” Greta whispered.

  Jeb watched them leave, all but Will, who stayed behind and asked Freda to wait in the car.

  Will waited quietly in the center aisle, his head down, holding his hat in his hands.

  Jeb turned on another lantern.

  “Jeb, this wasn’t handled right. I owe you an apology. What started as a simple talk outside my store grew into this monster. If you think you ought to keep that baby for a while, then I’ll stand by you. But what Greta said was right. People are watching. We got to keep our heads about us, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Jeb stuck out his hand. “I love you, Will. Your friendship means everything.”

  “Go with God, Jeb. Maybe this will all go away soon.”

  Will left. Jeb swept out the church and wiped down the pews. It seemed he had done a lot of cleaning by supper time. Still, the church had a dirty feel to it.

  Angel waved down the oncoming automobile. It was a newer model Ford, red with chrome that shone silvery in the afternoon light. The car slowed and Angel moved to the side of the road.

  A woman, small and kind of plain to look at, rolled down her window and said, “Any of you ladies have a map?”

  “I got a map,” said Angel.

  “We’re having engine trouble.” Fern had drawn back the hood and was looking into it as though she might know how to fix it.

  The woman turned and spoke to the driver, a man whose face was darkened by a tan fedora. She turned back and said, “Clyde here’s good with engines. If I could take a look at your map, he’ll take a look at your engine.”

  Fern sighed a big amount of relief. “We’re obliged. Thank you.”

  Clyde stepped from the Ford, paused to wipe dust from the chrome of the grill of his car, and then proceeded to look into Fern’s engine. He asked her a few things that Angel could not decipher. She opened the map and handed it to the woman. “Where you headed, ma’am?”

  The woman took the map. She studied it and made some markings on a piece of notepaper. “We took a wrong turn at Idabel, Clyde.”

  “I see your trouble, lady.” Clyde reached into the engine, made an adjustment, then told Fern, “Turn the crank.”

  Fern climbed into her car. She turned on the ignition and the engine gunned, shot out a sound like a shotgun, and then hummed nicely again.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Mr.—”

  “Bonnie, you found where we’re going now or not?” Clyde asked.

  “We’re set now. Here’s your map, girl.” Bonnie handed the map back to Angel.

  As they drove away, the women sat in the car for a while without moving. Finally Angel said, “You think it’s them? I mean, the real them.”

  “They’ll never believe this back home,” said Florence. “Bonnie and Clyde, in the flesh.”

  “They’ve gotten a ways ahead of us now,” said Angel. “They’re headed down Texas-way, not Ardmore like us.”

  “I feel a little dizzy,” said Fern.

  “Drive, honey,” said Florence. “It’s best to keep moving on this road before it gets dark.”

  After supper Jeb decided to take his anger out on a pile of wood beside the church. The air was cold, like a candle had gone out in hell. The sun disappeared behind gray clouds at five and never came back again.

  He came down wrong on the wood and knocked the fool out of his elbow. The ax dropped and he slumped onto the ground. A pair of shoes appeared, old leather that had never known a sheen. Jeb looked up. A man smiled at him with a face as dark as good dirt, but smooth and dewy. “You ought not to be so mean to the wood. You only hurt yourself.”

  “Evening to you,” said Jeb.

  The man extended a hand and helped him to his feet. “Are you Reverend Nubey?” he asked.

  “I’m he.”

  “Name’s Reverend Louie Williamson. I heard you was looking for help with a Negro baby.”

  “You know the momma?”

  “I know of help for you, and that’s all.” Reverend Williamson turned and motioned for a girl hiding back behind his wagon to come forward.

  “What church you pastor, Reverend?” asked Jeb.

  “Mount Zion, up around Hope.”

  “You drove your wagon all the way from Hope?”

  “I drove longer distances than that to help a sojourning Christian. Lucky, come over here and meet this preacher. I ain’t got all day, girl.”

  The girl was thin but rather tall, with a round face. Her cheeks sat like peaches above a cleft chin and she was brown as olives. She held out her hand to Jeb. “I’m Lucky.”

  “I’ll bet you are.” Jeb laughed.

  She looked at the Negro minister, who had delivered her to him. “I got to take this white man’s jokes about my name?”

  “He ain’t made fun of you, have you, Reverend?”

  “I like your name, that’s all. Never met a Lucky before.” Jeb held on to her hand. “How’d you come to hear about our baby?”

  The girl looked at Reverend Williamson.

  “Let’s say for now that word spreads like a field fire from here to Hope. I told Lucky that if she’d come and work for you, that you’d give her room and board. You got a place for her to sleep?”

  “How old are you?” asked Jeb.

  “Fourteen.”

  “What about your schooling?”

  “I know my books already.”

  “She’s smart, Reverend. I seen grown people that couldn’t keep up with this girl.”

  “Myrtle’s the baby’s name. She’ll keep you up all night if she feels like it.” Jeb studied her features as though he expected her to turn and bolt.

  “I can keep up with a baby. I took care of my auntie’s babies for a long time.”

  “Your folks don’t mind?” he asked.

  “Her folks put her out with her sister. Only her sister don’t have no way to take care of her. When I put two and two together, I figured she needed you. You need her. Hand of God.”

  “I already got three big children in the room with the baby. For now, you can take Angel’s bed. She’s away. When she comes back, we’ll have to find you a bed.”

  “You goin’ to let me stay?” She looked surprised.

  “I am.” Jeb turned to Reverend Williamson and said, “How can I get in touch with you if this don’t turn out?”

  “I ’spect it will, Reverend. But I’ll be in touch. I’ll come and che
ck on Lucky from time to time.” He nudged Lucky forward. “I’ll send your sister with the rest of your things.”

  Lucky held on to Louie Williamson until he pried her loose. “You wanted this, so now you have what you wanted. Go and be a servant, girl. Be Jesus-like and it will all turn out.”

  “Ardmore City Limits. I’m home,” said Fern.

  “Took all day,” said Angel, “but we’re here. You sure your momma’s got room for all of us?”

  “My brothers have all gotten married and moved out. She has more room than she knows what to do with.”

  Ardmore’s streetlights led them through downtown. The shops were all dark except for one bar that was lit up. As they drove away from downtown, the night was blacker than the bottom of a lake. After several turns that seemed to lead them around in a circle, Fern saw the lights of her mother’s house. “We’re home.”

  As they pulled up, several men spilled out onto the porch. She identified them as her brothers. Her sister appeared and Fern leaped from the car to run and meet her. Angel and Florence followed Fern up the drive. Fern’s mother treated them like family and invited them inside to make coffee and talk about tomorrow’s funeral.

  Over cake and berries, Angel nearly fell asleep with her head against a padded floral sofa back. She could hear the soft droning of Fern catching her family up on her life in Nazareth.

  “So do you think he’s really the one?” Fern’s sister asked.

  “I think I’ve been in love with Jeb from the minute I first laid eyes on him,” said Fern.

  Angel let out a sigh and fell asleep. At least Fern had not gushed about Jeb all the way to Ardmore.

  10

  IDA MAY DREW PUMPKINS AND AN OCTOBER moon the color of wheat. In a few days she and Willie would go out begging for pennies for All Soul’s Day.

  Willie yelled for the last time for her to walk with him to school.

  “My drawing is going to win the art show,” she said. “No one draws as good as me.”

  “Ida May, don’t make your brother late for school,” said Jeb. He held the door open and glanced out at the morning and its stillness. He worried over three women driving to Oklahoma.

  The clouds overhead made rows like cattle waiting in paddocks for slaughter. He followed Ida May and Willie to the end of the drive. The morning’s quiet languished without a birdcall, or even a friendly ripple of thunder. Only clouds, empty; limbs baring to all the giving up of summer, and it was a brown surrender, what with the lack of rain to rosy up the autumn. Jeb walked toward the empty porch cleared of rocking chairs. The house begged for Fern and Angel to return. Or else that was Myrtle crying for her mother.

  Jeb turned when he heard the snap and pop of rock under rubber tires. A faded black car slowed. Lucky ran out to meet her sister. The door opened and Lucky accepted the bundle handed to her. She stepped away and watched the car drive out of sight.

  Lucky Blessed smiled at Jeb for the first time. “You have kind eyes,” she said. She appeared thinner this morning as though the fabric of her soul had shrunk on the wash line.

  Jeb walked her back to the house. “I believe with Reverend Louie that God brought you to us. I don’t know what to do with babies. They don’t seem to like me much.”

  Lucky aimed an exasperated sigh at Jeb. Myrtle was cradled in blankets a few feet from the stove, where Willie and Ida May had made a bed for her. “I see a dish of milk out by the walk. You keep a cat?”

  “The girls run after this stray—”

  “It’s a bad thing to keep a cat around a baby. They try to steal a baby’s breath, so they lay on its face when the master ain’t looking and smother it.” She lifted Myrtle from the hive of blankets. She bounced her, slowly nodding, bending her knees and humming. “Baby’s hungry.”

  “Belinda’s late. She’s late a lot on account of she has her own to feed.”

  “White woman don’t mind feeding a colored baby?”

  “Have you had breakfast? We have some left over from the kids’ breakfast.”

  Lucky ate all of the leftovers, the biscuits, and even the cold eggs, eating with one hand but never losing her grip on Myrtle. She had a way with her.

  “I think she likes you,” said Jeb.

  Lucky looked at Jeb as though he had slept for a while and then awakened to find the world had changed. “You go on about your business, Reverend. Me and ’is baby will be fine.”

  Fern’s daddy was laid to rest on the hill where he had practiced his drives. Fern’s brothers and uncles acted as pallbearers. Angel had never seen quite so big a turnout for a man’s funeral. He had known a lot of people, obviously.

  Fern held her momma’s hand as they huddled around the grave, each family member taking turns tossing dirt onto the casket. Angel and Florence each held a flower given to them by one of Fern’s many nieces. They offered their flowers to Mrs. Coulter and she in turn dropped them as a farewell bouquet on top of her husband’s final resting place.

  The Coulters gathered around their mother to console her with words of remembrance about the family patron. It seemed a sin to covet a scene like theirs. Angel wondered who would come and see her off if she kicked the bucket. Not a lot, it seemed. Not like this.

  “I think we’re about to go back to the house,” said Florence. She kept wiping her eyes. Her husband had left her without a trace, years back. She had not mentioned him at all on this trip, yet it seemed the thought of him might be running through her mind.

  Angel wiped her own eyes, once for Fern and Mrs. Coulter, and once for Florence. “I made a good chocolate meringue pie,” she said to Florence. “I’ll cut you a slice when we get back.”

  Florence took her hand and they followed the Coulters back to their automobiles. Fern invited Angel and Florence to join her in the family car while the boys joined their wives.

  They all made small talk about the beautiful service. The older women conversed about how well laid-out Mr. Coulter had been. Angel refrained from talk about the dead. It didn’t seem right.

  “I wonder how Jeb is making out with Myrtle,” she said. “I can’t imagine him washing out diapers.”

  “I’m fretting about the same thing,” said Fern. “Ladies, what say we join my family for a big lunch and then head back to Nazareth?”

  “Fern, you can’t leave,” said her mother. “Besides, I want you to think about talking to the school here in Ardmore. They’ve a teacher leaving to have a baby in the fall.” Fern’s mother did not miss a beat.

  “I wish I could be both places, Mother,” said Fern. She handed her mother a fresh handkerchief. “But Stanton School is stretched thin this year. They’ve got a student’s mother taking my place while I’m gone and I’ve got my students in the middle of a term paper.”

  “And then there’s Jeb,” Angel said.

  “Most of all, there’s Jeb.” Fern’s brows lifted in surprise.

  Belinda scarcely looked at Lucky before leaving. Lucky had taken it upon herself to give Belinda a piece of her mind for her late timekeeping. Then they went round two over Belinda smoking while she nursed Myrtle.

  “She’s all we got, Lucky. You can’t run her off.” Jeb had come in from seeing a sick family and found them arguing.

  “What kind of wet nurse hauls off feeding a baby with her smokes anyway? I seen girls having they kids younger than me that can take care of a child better than her.” Lucky washed Myrtle’s mouth with a damp cloth as though she had been contaminated by Belinda’s feeding.

  “She’ll be back for the evening feeding, so you better get used to seeing her. I’m glad you’re taking such an interest, though. You’re better company for her than me.”

  “What you feed her in between times?”

  “Angel put together some formula. You’ll find it in the icebox. We warm the bottles in a pan of hot water over the stove.” Jeb noticed a scar on her arm.

  “Folks around here mind you having coloreds living with you?”

  “I’m more concerned about where you
’ll sleep when Angel comes home.”

  “How you come by all these youngens?”

  “Fate.”

  “We heard you was the preacher that took in stray children.”

  “Apparently so did someone else. How did you come to hear about me?”

  “Church people talk about everything.”

  “You nailed that right. I’m worried about you not attending school, Lucky.”

  “I got pulled out of school long time ago to help my auntie. Ever since, I been working to help bring up her babies. All I know is bringing up babies.”

  “What’s your auntie’s name?”

  Lucky gazed to the right. “We call her Auntie.”

  “She must miss having you around.”

  “Too many mouths to feed.”

  “Willie and Ida May will be home soon. Get to know them. I’ve got a load of wood to deliver. You think you’ll be all right here by yourself?”

  “I do well by myself, Reverend. I can take care of myself fine.”

  “I believe it.” Her name suited her.

  The sky darkened and Fern’s oldest brother told her they should wait until morning to leave. Fern agreed but kept gathering up her belongings until they were nearly packed and waiting at the front door. “Ladies, we may as well leave. We can stay at that same inn if we get there before midnight.”

  “Take this food with you, honey. We have more than we can eat.” Fern’s mother had a tone of resignation.

  “We’ll not have to stop for food this go-around,” said Florence.

  “I want to pay for your gas,” said Mrs. Coulter. She held out several bills.

  “It’s not necessary,” said Fern.

  “Let me do something, for goodness’ sake! You always have to be so much like your father?”

  “I love you, Mother.” They kissed. Fern accepted the money.

  “Angel, you can come and stay with me anytime. You’re a perfect guest. You too, Mrs. Bernard.”

  Florence and Mrs. Coulter exchanged pleasantries. Angel and Fern loaded up the luggage. Fern’s brother insisted on checking out Jeb’s pistol, so Angel retrieved it for him. “I practice-shot it before,” she said.