Holding Pattern (23 page)

Nawl. Pig Feet.

Fedora pushed back on his head. Stooped, his knees jutting out from under his body. Thick-winged eyebrows that seemed to be drawn down by his open mouth. Heavy eyelids, narrow light in the pupils. His dark (gray? blue?) blazer draped over one crooked arm, while the fingers of the free hand toyed with a gold watch chained—half-loop—to his vest. Sunlight and a diamond tie pin. Sunlight and patent-leather shoes.

Just left of Chitlin Sandwich, a small boy emerged from the shop and climbed atop the white Jaguar fender to get a better view of the procession. Chitlin gave the child a hard look. Grabbed him, lifted him off the fender, kicked him swiftly in the rear, and shoved him back into the shop. That done, he turned and shook his fist at Sheila.

She made no response. She would not give him the satisfaction. Hatch was no longer part of him now. A cool breeze blew from the trees and carried the smell of damp earth and leaves. Set branches moving and covered the road with long flickering shadows.

They crested a hill. Niece dropped behind to seek Man. Sheila found it fitting, elemental. The shrouded road wound off before her, almost lost among the dark trees. Footfalls peppered the silence. Now a new faint noise. She stopped and turned. The white Jaguar descended the hill like a fly down a distended belly. She continued.

She followed the white Jaguar’s progress by the roar of its approaching engine. She did not turn to look. She was tough, tougher than expectation.

Air punched her skin. She turned to see Niece rise, rocketlike, into the sky, only to have gravity snatch her rudely back to earth. Before she made impact, her male companion catapulted into the air, a clay pigeon. A scream awakened those standing still in disbelief. Frank tackled Angela into the roadside ditch. Others sought quick refuge in the ditch or farther, in the forest itself. Sheila dropped and rolled, her face buried in tufts of grass. The white Jaguar sped past with a hot gust of wind, spraying dirt and gravel like buckshot into the ditch and leaving behind the smell of hot metal and gasoline. White exhaust fanned and covered the road, phosphorous.

From her place in the ditch, she could no longer see or hear the white Jaguar. Dim screams. Coughs. Gagging. Feet trampling branches and brush. The smoke thinned. Someone gave a shrill warning cry. She watched it all, immediate and remote, tactile, a viewfinder picture. Face rimmed with light, Chitlin Sandwich was bent forward, both hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes almost touching the windshield, teeth tight in a pained smile.

He looked ridiculous. She smothered an impulse to laugh. He sped by, every eye watching, peeled, and crucified.

The Jaguar turned, tires crying. She pushed herself up from the ground. The car came gunning forward, half-slanted in the ditch. She dusted clean her bright summer dress and presented herself to him, memory and substance, mission and will. The car flipped over, rolled down the ditch, and slammed against a tree, then half rolled back up the ditch and fell on its hood, all four wheels topside, like a trained dog’s paws. Without pause, red hands edged out of the cab and searched the flattened grass. Hands and body, Chitlin Sandwich crawled from the cab and turned onto his back, still, breathing, opposite the Jaguar’s spinning wheels. Sun slanted into the ditch. Chitlin Sandwich. Breathing and bright. The gold watch had broken from gold vest chain. Nowhere in sight. The brim of his fedora directed at the treetops.

Damn, Angela said. Damn. Motherfuck!

The wind carried a blend of dust, exhaust, and blood.

Are they dead?

Crazy bastard.

The motor’s hum in her ears, Sheila approached Chitlin Sandwich with fists formed. Like a retractable cup, he rose in circles from the folds of his baggy slacks. Mouth open. Pieces of fractured windshield embedded in his cheek. In one motion, he removed his fedora, his eyes squinting, and swung it in a wide curve. She watched it beyond time, counting the revolutions, aware of the exact moment the sharp brim caught her forehead. More startled than hurt, she sighted what she could of his eyes and gave him her meanest look. He held his hand up for the fedora’s return. Caught it. At the ready. Like crude professional wrestlers, Frank and Angela tripped and pinned him to the ditch.

Damn! Motherfuck!

It’s okay, Frank said. It’s okay.

The Poors were kneeling over Chitlin Sandwich like priests attending the dying. He pedaled his legs like a trapped fly. Mouth gurgling.

Are you all right? Frank both speaking—to Angela? to her?—and holding Chitlin Sandwich in place.

Numb, Sheila touched her forehead. A dab of fresh warm blood on her finger.

Are you okay?

She raised her dress hem—blinded, exposed—and cleaned blood from her forehead.

Are you okay?

She let her dress fall. Yes.

Are you sure?

Yes. I’m fine.

You sure?

Yes.

You know him?

She know him! Angela said. Damn right she know him! She slapped her cloche, with a blast of dust, against her hip.

Conviction, Sheila moved forward in their direction. She did not rush. Her feet could not feel the ground. She seemed to be walking on her ankles. She came to where they kneeled. She bent at the waist and picked up Chitlin’s fedora. Slapped the dust off her bright summer dress. Reshaped the crown between her fingers. Stiffened the brim. Empty gestures. Indulgent. Vain. Taunting, perhaps. Challenging. In sum—she judged herself—too little too late, but telling all the same. The Poors seemed to understand. Synchronized, they took to their feet—twins, reflective forms—leaving Chitlin Sandwich unattended. Eyes wide, unbothered by sun, he did not try to rise.

The driver takes a quick and cautious glance at me in the rearview mirror, then returns his calm but vigilant gaze to the highway. Though there’s no traffic, he keeps the minivan at a crawl, both hands on the steering wheel, his foot pushing into the hum of the engine. His hair is short and neat, slightly longer than a boot-camp cut. And he is a long-limbed fellow, slim and strong in a long-sleeve cotton shirt and jeans, his skin smooth and bright, milky innocence. “A little town in East Texas. I doubt if you’ve heard of it.”

“No. I don’t think I have.” I lean forward a bit on the wide seat to hear him better, the joints of my shoulders sore from the plane ride.

“Well, I had never heard of the university back home.”

“No?” Dr. Hallard says. The crown of his head rises above the seat cushion in front of me, as bald and pointy as a chess bishop’s, a few remnants of hair here and there on his brown wrinkling scalp. He is a professor back East, specializing in Russian history, if I heard him correctly. He rocks about in his seat, trying to make himself comfortable. We’re both long in the leg, and the minivan is much smaller than it seems, plush cushions meant to foster the illusion of space. What we both must be thinking: A white boy chauffeuring two black men down a Mississippi highway.

“Not where I’m from. It’s kind of isolated. I think my mom was there once. She and my stepdad are driving up next weekend to help me build a shed for one of my professors.”

“You keep busy.”

“Yes. I’ve had to since I lost my scholarship.”

“Do you still train?”

“I try to find the time.”

“You really must. Sixteen feet.” Dr. Hallard sighs in astonishment.

“Yes. My best jump.”

“Wow.”

“There were a couple of other guys back home who could make that jump. One went out to California. One went to New York. He made the U.S. team. I came here and had a good first year, but then I seemed to fall off. I don’t know what happened. I was training hard, as hard as I ever had, as hard as I could.”

“Yeah, well—” Dr. Hallard shakes his head with the same cheerful resignation he had earlier, on accepting the mishap with his luggage at the airport.

“So, have you been on any digs?” I ask.

“Yes, several. We have quite a few sites right here in Mississippi.”

Bleak sunshine. The shuddering windows reveal heavy foliage under an overcast early spring afternoon. Vertical trunks and tightly positioned leaves chart our progress toward the town.

“That’s right,” Dr. Hallard says. “There are Civil War battle sites throughout this area.”

“Several big companies have been constructing strip malls on many of them.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes.”

“Such a shame.”

“Quite a few people have been trying to stop them.”

“That’s good. A railroad used to run right along here.” Dr. Hallard points to the grassy roadside beside the opposing lane. I take a long and thorough look. Think I see the ghostly outline of railroad tracks. “They would run their transports up and down here.”

“Yes.”

“So there were always plenty of raids and acts of sabotage, not to mention actual battles. Oh man. I can’t even name all of the battles that happened down here. Let me see.” Dr. Hallard taps his fingers on his scalp, sorting through a mental index. “There was Holly Springs, and Corinth. Shiloh, of course. And Tupelo—”

“That’s where my family is from,” I say.

“Oh yeah?” the driver says. “That’s about forty miles east of here.”

“Well, not exactly. They’re actually from Fulton. Houston.”

“So you’ve been down here before?”

“Used to come all the time when I was a kid to visit my great-aunt. That’s been, what, thirty years? Then again, I was here ten, twelve, years ago for her funeral.”

“You might want to drive over while you’re here.”

“Perhaps I will. All this time, I never knew the university was so close to where she lived.”

“Less than an hour’s drive. Most students hang out and party in Tupelo.”

“Rather than Memphis?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Tupelo is not quite as far.”

“You’ve been to the battlefield at Tupelo?” Dr. Hallard asks.

“No. We do mostly Indian sites.”

“How do you know where to dig? I mean, how do you narrow down a spot?”

“Glad you asked. Let me tell you. We put an infrared camera on a huge helium blimp. Now, this blimp is the size of a basketball court. Bigger. The robotic camera travels along it and pinpoints places where you might find some artifacts. It’s quite amazing.”

“Wow.”

“A blimp, huh?” Me, Hatch, the skeptic.

“Yes.”

I think about it, uncertain if I’m impressed.
You have made me glad. At the works of your hands, I sing for joy.

We ride in silence for a while, tires measuring out time. The highway seems inconsequential in this landscape, like a jackknife that can be folded back into its handle. An occasional car or truck creeping down the road like a steel-and-glass insect. Breaks here and there in the tree-jammed roadside, elbow room for squat houses with compact driveways. (No garages.) Every now and then some ragged suggestion of a farm. Cow or horse or chicken or pond or crop—one fact among many in this terrain of the hidden and the seen.

“What kind of winters do you all get down here?” Dr. Hallard asks.

“Oh, mostly rain. Every once in a while we’ll get some snow. Two or three inches hit the ground and everything shuts down.”

Many trees at the margins of the highway are stooped over in fascination at whitening earth, twistings of vine and branch like so many whorls on a fingertip.

“Hey, what do you call that stuff?” Dr. Hallard asks.

“Oh, that’s kudzu.”

“So that’s what kudzu looks like.”

“Yes. They imported it many many years ago.”

“From Japan?”

“I think so. They brought it over to control the spread of rank weed and briar. But it grows like crazy. A month from now it’ll cover everything.”

I press out the image, all of Mississippi wrapped in a kudzu shawl. Justice.

The road gradually rises to a crest I can’t see beyond, then flattens out again. White letters on green metal inform us that the town is two miles ahead.

“You might not know, but tonight is the big night around here. Lots happening.”

“Thursday?”

“Right. I don’t know why, but Thursday is our Saturday.”

“Okay.”

“And you should also know that your hotel is a short walk from the town square. Five minutes. Plenty of restaurants there.”

“What do you recommend?”

“Benjy’s is pretty good. Try their catfish in red-wine sauce.”

“Okay. We’ll keep it in mind.”

Off in the distance I see what appears to be a courthouse with a small yard in front, where a colossal marble pedestal rises some fifty feet above the ground, a bronze soldier mounted there, facing the road to confront all who approach. Closer now, I see a human figure leaning against the pedestal, sharply outlined, in gray coat and black pants, against the stone, this figure shouldering a Confederate flag, black stars patterned into a cross against a dark blue (gray?) background. The rude eyes of witness reveal: a black Confederate soldier.

“What the—? Motherfucker,” I say, unmindful of the crude and cutting edges of my words.

“Yes. He’s caused some controversy.”

I say nothing, for anything I might say seems so much less than what I feel.

The black Confederate is outfitted in a full-length gray coat with a cloaklike attachment, a small, short-brimmed hat—the crown folded over toward his forehead like a scorpion’s stinger—and black jeans and black gym shoes. His flag is attached to a pole no thicker than a broom handle, certainly not military standard or military-issue. An old rusty Boy Scout canteen crosses his chest and waist. His skin is so dark that his fingernails glow like tracer bullets.

“Next month we will be voting on a referendum to remove the flag from the state capitol and all state buildings.” The driver jerks his head toward the Confederate. “He wants them to keep it up.”

“What?”

“Now I’ve seen it all,” Dr. Hallard says.

“Some kind of joke?” I ask.

“I don’t know. All I can say for sure is that he’s caused quite a bit of controversy.”

The driver circles the square, circles the courthouse, circles the bronze statue. I can’t chance a good view of the reb’s face, but he moves his head in our direction, peeps us, and raises the flag higher. Somehow, I feel that we are on display, the three of us in the minivan like some rare species behind glass.