Balm (6 page)

He was the first colored to come to her house, and the danger of it prickled her. But she recognized the desperation in his eyes and knew his intent was no different than any other visitor.

She closed her eyes. A bright light. Then darkness. The spirit did not come at once so she waited. The table did not begin to shake so much as tremble. The natural light in the room took a turn. Something troubling. The spirit took hold of her like a chill. He didn't speak to her, but she felt his uneasiness.

“A mother and daughter?” Her lips moved with the spirit's. Their voices were one. “Something happened. Something you don't speak about.”

Her eyelids fluttered open. She stared at him. Sweat rolled freely down the side of his face. His nose flared wide. She mistook his expression for rage.

“Is . . . who . . .” He tried to speak but the words melted in his warm throat. The widow's eyes were clear like water. He had not seen eyes that blue since looking into Mr. Harrison's. She was Mr. Harrison.

He rose to his feet slowly, keeping his eyes on her. He felt if he turned, she might claw him. He backed up. She did not move, did not even appear to blink. The soft lip of curtain parted behind him.

W
HEN SHE SAW
H
EMP WALKING ON THE SIDE
of the house, Madge slipped out and followed. He did not walk as if he had somewhere to go, but it was not a casual stroll either, and it struck her as the pace of a man with awful things on his mind. She watched as he trawled the faces around him, worried he would look back and spy her, but he moved unwaveringly forward, heading south over the bridge into the city's heart. He kept to the edge of the street, lifted his pants around puddles, averted his face when a horse stopped to relieve itself. She thought of stories her mother had told her about her own father, his ability to appear carefree when he carried around the weight of his hatred, and for a moment the man walking in front of her was her father, the lover of the root woman on the outskirts of town who cracked his woman's toes and brought her handfuls of sweetspire.

Madge counted the tenth block. He had not avoided the filthier streets, and her shoes were soiled. They entered the ward where the
city's colored lived, and he turned into the yard of a frame house next to a snug alley. A woman was hanging laundry in the side yard. Hemp barely spoke a hello. Madge stood near the corner and watched as he closed the door behind him. On the line hung a man's nightshirt. A pair of child's trousers. The laundress worked nimbly. She stretched the clothes over the line so the little bit of sun that peeked into the side yard could move through. The line sagged in the middle with the weight of the garments. A wagon shuffled by, its wheel making a ticking noise as if about to roll off. A one-armed boy rolled a cart, yelling “Peeee-cans!” The woman draped a piece of cloth to shield the yard from the dust kicking up from the street.

Madge thought of how his voice had hushed the clickety-clack inside her. Few things reminded her of home. The comfort of familiarity was that it lacked surprise—teeth biting into something that, whether bitter or sweet or both, made sense. His voice had sidled up to her like an old friend she had not even known she missed.

When she arrived back at the widow's house, she saw that Richard had washed down the steps, Olga had put out a salted triangle of ham on the table, and the sun was brightening the darkly painted parlor where Sadie held her sittings.

M
ADGE SAT ON THE STEPS
, a fresh plug of tobacco in her jaw. The big man had visited Richard twice that week, and each time she had been inside working. She had determined that the only way to catch up with him was to wait outside. It meant she would have to endure Olga's sideways looks, but she did not care. She fingered a sack of dried soup herbs inside her dress pocket. She planned to give it to him even if she did feel foolish.

Thinking about him brought to mind the sisters, how they would disapprove of her waiting on a back step for some man. It was bad
enough she cleaned up after a white woman. They had taught her about plants so she would never have to sweep a white woman's steps. It was a rare thing to feel within a person's depths and know when to use a poultice and when to make a tea. Each week, Madge tried to remain faithful to the gifts granted her, squirreling away what she could in the pantry: sacks of powder, jars of gelatinous muck, crocks of dried leaves, flowers strung together in necklaces. She had planted a garden in the back, and it was finally beginning to produce. The kitchen was like her own personal workroom, but she still needed to get out of the city, be in the presence of the Lord King, prod the earth with a stick. To take off her shoes, feel the cold earth beneath her toes, pick burrs out of her dress, scratch bites at her ankles came as natural as breathing. The city was not a place for a woman who had learned to walk by holding on to branches.

She'd managed to come by some pokeberry and arrowroot, but most of it wasn't any good. Picked too early or too late. Missing the roots or the caps. She had done what she could with it, but now the need to get out of the city was urgent. Madge touched her brow and kicked a rock toward the garden. Tomatoes a bright green. Cabbage leaves swollen and yellow. The patch of plantings would barely do for eating, and it would never do for working. She'd mixed in a few things the cook wouldn't notice, herbs that could pass for weeds.

When she saw him walking toward her, she quickly spit the tobacco into the grass behind her. She took out the bag of herbs from her pocket.

“I mixed up some soup for you.” She handed him a bag, the crunch of dried leaves between her fingers.

“Deacon.” Richard startled both of them, as he strode up clapping dust off his hands. Madge stood on the top step. Hemp stood on the ground, three steps below, his eyes even with hers.

“Deacon?” she repeated.

“Yes, Hemp is a deacon at my church.”

“That surprise you?” Hemp asked.

“Should it?”

“Which church you belong to?”

“I don't belong to nobody.”

Richard cleared his throat. “Deacon, Miss Madge been looking for somebody to take her out to the country to pick some plants. I figure, seeing as you got time on your hands and all, you could be the one.”

“Time?”

“I tell you how to get there.” Richard ran a hand over his gray streak.

Hemp turned to Madge. “What kind of plants?”

“I just need to get out there.”

“You can take the train,” said Richard.

“A train?” Hemp did not want to admit he had never been on one.

“I can use the widow's credit for the tickets,” she said suddenly.

Hemp put a foot up on the step, leaned an elbow onto his thigh. He looked down at his hand, turned it over. Veins rose up like rope when he flexed his fingers. A needle of wind pricked his left eye. He put up a hand to block it as he looked up at her and said, “Sure, I might could take you.”

S
HE WAS HOPING THE RIDE
would give them a chance to talk. But as the train took off, the poor man looked ready to vomit. She had felt the same queasiness when the widow first took her on a train ride, so she searched for a way to distract him.

Madge took her time looking him over again. Everything about the man was big. Even his head. And everything looked small on him. The shirt choked. The pants strangled the trunks of his thighs. The toes strained the tips of his shoes. He looked strong enough to protect the whole earth. Arms wide enough to shelter her. Being in Hemp's
presence was like standing beneath something cool and shady. The man calmed.

“My ma died giving birth to me, so I don't know nothing about her,” he said when she did not hide her rudeness. “The thing I most remember about my daddy was his hands, and they was sure enough big, too.”

“Hands ain't no trifle. You lucky to know that. I don't know nothing about how my pa looked.”

“That so?”

“My mama the only one of her sisters had a child. The sisters figure all they need is each other.”

“That why you left?”

“What you care?” She immediately regretted the bite in her tone. She leaned back and tried to relax. Maybe talking wasn't the best idea.

The benches in the railcar were empty except for two men in the back wearing farmers' hats. Madge squeezed her rooting stick, but as they pulled away from the city, the sight out the window did not meet her measure. She had hoped to find woods like the bottomland forest full of old cypresses in the valley around the Hatchie River, but all she found was more of that flat Illinois prairie that had dominated the land when she'd come up from Tennessee. The desolate sight momentarily caused her to forget Hemp.

The two stepped off the train, the rail depot little more than a raised wooden platform.

“This where you taking me?”

“This where Richard tell us to go for you to find plants. Eighteen miles outside the city.”

She walked to the edge of the platform, shaded her eyes, and looked. Even though it was already fall, the flowers stretched endlessly. Purple tips bent, angels rearing their lovely heads. A blackbird squawked, a long tail hanging from its beak. A sheet of sky covered
them, the occasional cloud like a wrinkle. The scene whispered that knowledge was not just to be found in the knobby brush of a tangled forest floor but also in this flat sameness, this rambling underbelly of the Lord King's paradise.

Her stomach rolled. To right herself, she eyed an island of trees. A swarm of bees ignited, spread out like a fan, drifted, then disappeared.

“I can't do nothing with this,” she whispered to Hemp who had moved to stand beside her.

“What kind of plants you say you need?”

Madge shook her head and took off her shoes. She stepped off the platform and walked into the grass. The ground was cold and wet beneath her feet. Her toes sank. She could barely see five feet in front of her. A bird that looked like a chicken hopped out of the high grass nearby. She jumped.

“Girl, that ain't nothing but a grouse,” he called out, laughing.

She pulled at a purple flower. It stuck to the ground, its thick stem held fast by the root. She pushed her mouth into its face and bit off its head, chewing thoughtfully. She sensed the life that dwelled in the place and poked at the ground with her stick. Beetles scrambled beneath its tip.

Afterward, she waited with him for the train. They sat on a bench. Her bag held flowers, some grass. That was really all there was. Flowers and grass.

He spoke tenderly, drawing her out again. “You find something?”

She took some petals from her bag, held out her palm for him to sniff. He leaned. The muscle in his neck twitched, and she could not help but touch it with her other hand. For a moment, he allowed her hand to linger there, as most folks did. Not much to heal with this one. Everything sounded brisk and sharp inside him. But there was something else. A grievance down deep in his gut. She had never felt a sadness so thick. He suddenly drew back, and she mumbled an apology.

“Back home they call me Horse,” he said, rubbing his neck where her hand had been. That hand had been so warm. She had soothed him with her touch, and now he felt split wide open.

The wind died; the grass ceased its rustling. Here it was again: the past reaching up to steal what little joy Madge could manage. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“Soon as I could, I pick a name for myself. Felt like being born again.”

Her heart returned to its rightful place, and her voice arrived with it. “Horse ain't no kind of name.”

“I was wanting to take a real name. I can't be called no Horse up here. But then I think, how she gone find me if I change it? What if she come looking?”

“What if who come looking.”

“My wife.”

She had hoped the laundress in his yard was not his wife, but it had not occurred to her there might have been a wife from before.

“You left a wife?”

“She left me. Sold off before we was freed. I'm aiming to find her.”

“And the laundress?” She could not help herself, the first taste of jealousy on her lips. She had been taught to distrust men. Surely he could be no better than the rest. “Richard say a woman be washing in your yard.”

He looked at her briefly, as if taking his first estimation of her, then looked away. “She just using the yard. Don't belong to us nohow.”

The train's far-off whistle screeched. Coolness crept over her, and she pulled her cape around her shoulders.

“Why Hemp?”

“Hemp was what we grew. Man owned us by the name of Harrison. Harrison's Hemp. Be mighty nice if my new name help my wife find me.”

The train appeared in the distance, and Madge looked at him, the drawn cheeks, the horn of a nose. The man's face was chiseled bone. She wanted to wrap her arms around his waist, but she had never done such a thing to a man in her life and did not even know where to start.

Hemp's eye flitted in and out of focus. One moment he was looking intently at her, the next he was elsewhere. He was like a half-person.

“I got to find her 'cause I got to confess.”

“Confess what?”

The sound of the approaching train threatened to drown his words.

“Annie's girl, Herod. She try to do something with me that wasn't natural.”

“Something like what?”

The train's wheels roared, the screech of metal on metal. They raised their voices.

“I hit her. I hit her to get her off of me.”

“You hit her?”

“I was sleep! And I hit her to make her stop!”

She took his hands in hers and rubbed the backs of them. She did not believe he was telling her more than she could handle, but his eyes were wide with fear, his lips marked from the pressure of teeth. The train was upon them, and nothing either of them could say would be heard. Had the train not arrived at that moment, he might have caught the hushing sound coming from her lips. “Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.”

When they got back to the house, he deposited her on the steps, his face back to its normal. “I hope you found what you went out there looking for.”

She pulled the bonnet close, hiding her feelings as she stepped into the widow's kitchen, and shut the door softly behind her.