Five Smooth Stones (123 page)

Past ninety, that was what Brad had said was the general estimate of her years. It couldn't be far wrong, and was probably accurate. The grizzled hair was controlled in tight, short braids pinned down on top of her head. The skin was almost blue-black. The eyes were far back in sockets rimmed with wrinkled skin, the upper lids drooping over their brightness, half veiling their alertness. Only the structure of the bones beneath the webbed seaminess of the skin gave indication of what she once had been; that and the full lower lip and the carriage of the head, straight and unbending over a body age had made shrunken, yet a body that refused to be slowed by time or by the thought or intimation of eventual dissolution..

As she drew closer David felt the familiar sense of humility that had come over him so often with so many of his people whose paths he had crossed through the years. "There's greatness in them," he had said to Luke once. "And don't you forget it, youngster. There's greatness in them."

"Morning, son. Morning! No call to be skeered of Tinker here—" She unhooked the gate for him, talking so rapidly and in such rich idiom and accent David had trouble catching all she said. As soon as he was inside the yard the dog greeted him, not graceful now, but clumsy in his joy at making a new friend, rearing his great body upright, resting enormous paws on David's chest, ears flat in ecstasy at David's mauling caresses.

"Tinker down! Git down, boy! Quit worrying the man, y'hear! Reckon you was skeered at that, you being strange and all. Ain't no one around here don't know Tinker ain't going to hurt no brown-skin man. Less'n I tells him to—" Her cracked laughter showed her age more than did the high quick speech. "You the young man my son spoke about? Called a bit ago... Y'all seen that boy, Abraham? He ain't been home in three days... ain't been in the bed or et a meal far's I know.... You see him when you gets back you tell him to git along home...."

By the time they reached the house and went inside, David's mind was at full gallop, trying to keep up with her. She was evidently under the impression that he had already met her "boy" Abraham, and David said nothing to change that impression. She had not seemed to look directly at him since her first hooded, piercing appraisal at the gate, but David knew she had not missed a detail of his appearance or personality, that she was feeling him over with the fingers of her mind as she would a vegetable, seeking soft spots or rot, not trusting him for a moment until she felt she had reason to trust. When they entered the living room, she urged him to sit down, but he did not want to put himself in the position of a guest sitting on one of the best chairs in that seldom-used room, and ignoring her urging, he followed her into the kitchen.

He sat in a straight chair at a table by the west window, glancing out past the side yard to the smooth flowing waters of Angel Creek and the rough, wild greenness of Flaming Meadows beyond.

Miz Towers had poured coffee, given him a cup without asking. Now she was still talking, and David grinned down at Tinker, seated beside him, massive body pressed against his leg. It was beginning to seem as though he'd never hear the sound of his own voice again. "Abra'm sure thinks a heap o' that dog," she was saying. "Tinker's pappy, Abra'm say, he one of them dogs the po-lice got over in the town. Man what raises 'em, he stay over by Otisville, he give Abra'm the dog. Runt of the Utter, he say. Ain't no runty li'l pup now, Tinker ain't."

"Sure ain't," said David. Man's got to make his voice heard once in a while, he thought, even in church. But how in hell was he going to check that spate of talk, the talk of the old and often lonely, long enough to discuss her land? He knew her kind too well to force the issue, thereby destroying any faint burgeonings of trust and confidence, seeds and all.

She did stop long enough for him to read off the list of items Brad had given him. She had anticipated most of them and was packing them into a carton on the table in front of 'him, gnarled and knobby hands extraordinarily deft and quick. She had put carrots in, although they hadn't been included on the list, and David reached into the carton and took one. "May I?"

"Go ahead, son. Seems like when my babies wuz growing up never wuz a time one of 'em wuzn't chomping on a carrot. We ain't had no boughten vegetable on the table since we had the flood, and that's way back."

"You've got a lot of land to grow them on, Miz Towers."

"You-all fixin' to talk about my land. I been waitin' for it—"

David checked a laugh and tied the grin he hadn't been able to check into his play with Tinker. "Yes'm."

"Abra'm says you'd give me an understanding of it. Why them white folks wants it. Cain't see what good it would do 'em. They uses it now, hunting and fishing. Ain't no one going to stop 'em. And Flaming Meadows yonder, it cain't be no good to 'em. Ain't nothing going to grow there. Ain't nothing going to be let grow there."

"I sure feel lonesome, drinking coffee all by myself. Can't you get yourself a cup and sit with me, res' yourself a while? You been on your feet ever since I got here."

"Lawd, soil, I don't mind. These bones wuzn't made for settin'. Too hard gettin' up again." Still she did as he asked, brought a full cup to the table and sat at the chair David pulled up for her, facing the window. She was looking at him directly now, something she had not done since after he had entered the gate. Deep in their sockets the eyes were black and bright, and he was acutely conscious that behind them lay the mother-wit and wisdom of nearly a century. Tinker went briefly to her side, glowed almost visibly at her touch, wagged an apology, and returned to David's side, laying a huge paw on his knee until ear-scratching began again.

"We owns this land legal," she said. "Been ownin' it since my daddy-in-law bought it after the war."

There had been only one "war" for the Miz Towerses of the land, David knew: the Civil War, the only war in which her people had a stake. The wars that had followed had been "their" wars. "They fixin' to get theirselves into another war," Gramp had said when Korea came along.

He was afraid that she would bog down in detail, but there was not too much of it. He learned that her name was Belle, that her husband's name had been Simon, and her father-in-law was called Zeb. She hadn't been "nothin' but a chile," she said, when she and Simon had gone to live together in the little cabin on Zeb Towers's new property. She guessed she'd been about fifteen, Simon maybe five years older. A year later Zeb's wife had died, and Zeb had come to live with -"" them. "He wuz a good man," she said. "He wuz a mighty good man. Good to me as my own daddy. I never knew my daddy. Never even knew who he wuz." She and Simon had produced six children, three in the first three years of their marriage, with the firstborn dying in infancy, then, after a long time, three more. Abraham was her youngest, the man she still called her "boy" and who must be in his mid-fifties.

David began to worry about time, but he did not dare make the gesture of looking at his wristwatch or at the clock that ticked tantalizingly behind him on a shelf above the stove. He Should have left after the supplies were ready and come back later to talk. God knew what was going on at the other end of Calhoun Road. Still, if they needed him, Brad could call. A question from Miz Towers brought him sharply back to attention.

"What they want with my daddy-in-law's land? You know?"

Now she was questioning him, and that was good; it showed the establishment of a certain amount of trust. He outlined the situation carefully, not talking down to her, yet using phrases she would understand. Now that he had met her and could see for himself how adamant she was about not parting with the land, he questioned the necessity for their plan. Still, she had areas of vulnerability in Abraham, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"Please understand, Miz Towers, no one is going to make any money on this, even if you sell the land. The only purpose is to protect you, make sure that you and Abra'm get a fair price. Not an outlandish one, with strings attached, but a decent, fair one.
If
you decide to sell. If you don't, we'll just keep the land optioned and there'll be no sense in anyone bothering you. We'll be the ones they'll turn the heat on."

"They ain't going to get it. What Abra'm do after I'm gone, tha's his business. But they keeps trying. Worries a person. First it wuz sweet talk and doing things for us, me 'n' Abra'm. Then a few days back they wuz in-spectors. They say they wuz from the fire department. Said as how Abra'm's shop there it didn't come up to the law." Her laughter crackled suddenly. "They thinks we fools. Shucks, them wan't no in-spectors." She laughed again. "Tinker run 'em off. All I has to do is wiggle me a hand jes so, and Tinker, he know what to do. They didn't even see me wiggle it. They wuz too busy lookin' at him walkin' stiff-legged down the path, hair riz' up straight on his back, all them teeth-showin'. All I'da had to do wuz say 'Go' an' that dog would have been right in amongst 'em."

"My own hair's riz' up thinking about it. You sit on your hands, ma'm, please, while I'm around."

"Lemme get you some lemonade, boy. Got it cold in the icebox."

"No, thanks, ma'm. You got buttermilk in there?"

"Lawd, it's the mos' thing I got."

He tried to forestall her and get it himself, but she was on her feet and walking toward the refrigerator she still called an icebox before he had a chance. When she came back with it, he said: "You study 'bout this land thing, Miz Towers. And you talk it over with Abra'm."

"I been studyin' about it. Me 'n' Abra'm's been talking 'bout it. Cain't see no harm in it, offhand. Like you say, they kin be powerful worrisome. Ain't nothin' they won't do does they see a chance to cheat colored and make theirselves some money."

He couldn't leave right away, and let her think all he was interested in was the land deal. He knew that fine hairline between trust and suspicion, and he settled back, hiding his restlessness as best he could.

He took a long swallow of the cold, fresh buttermilk and said, "Umm, good!" then, idly, "Why'd you say nothing would be 'let to grow' on that field over yonder—Flaming Meadows, I think it's called?"

She was seated again now, a glass of lemonade in front of her. He blinked at the directness of her answer.

"Ha'nt," she said. "Plenty people say they seen it."

There was a small bite of carrot left, and he chewed it now while he tried to think of what to say. All foolishness, Li'l Joe Champlin had said of ghosts and ha'ntings, all foolishness, but David smiled to himself, remembering that even as a kid he'd doubted if Gramp's words would have stood up to a test.

"Ain't you heered about Flaming Meadows?" Miz Towers called it "medders."

"I just got here yesterday. Guess there hasn't been time."

"You stays round here long enough, son, come the dark of the moon, mebbe you'll see it. You got the look of one who kin see ha'nts."

"Dark of the moon? I always thought ghosts walked in the full of the moon—"

"Mebbe so. Mebbe so. Reckon it depends when they come to be ha'nts." Then she was gone, from this day into countless yesterdays, gone so suddenly he almost felt she should have said goodbye. He could see the past in her sunken eyes and hear it in her voice, and he listened without speaking, interested in spite of his impatience to leave.

There had been no ha'nt when she and Simon Towers had gone there to live. The land known now as Flaming Meadows had been uncultivated, as it was today. Too small for cotton, too big to let he fallow, Simon and his father, Zeb, had talked of planting it to corn and potatoes.

"I remembers it," said Belle Towers. "I remembers it good. They wuz talking 'bout building fences the day them two young mens come by, hongry. Fine young mens." She had told the story a hundred times, he knew, a thousand times perhaps, yet he felt that it had always been the same, not embellished with each telling. There was an eerie simplicity in her recountal; she told the tale as an unimaginative artist might paint a picture, the highlights harsh, the details clear as mirrored images.

"They wuz fine young mens," she said again. One of them had been big, black, soft-spoken, quick to laugh; the other had been smaller, brown-skin, laughing not so often, quiet and polite.

"Raised good, they wuz; anyone could see that." They had come from the Gulf region, riding the rods and flatcars because they had been told there was more and better work in the North. They had learned differently and now they were going home with what little money they had made in the fields and packinghouses.

"Must've been way long before your daddy's time. Must've been your granddaddy's time. I already had me two babies running round and one in the grave. Abra'm, he didn't come along till near fifteen years later. Had me two more girls before him."

Her father-in-law and her husband had asked the young men in, given them corn bread and chittlins and whatever else had been on their table. The house was only a three-room cabin then, the kitchen the focal point for the family.

"The big boy, he was bigger'n you, he set where you're set-tin' now; he'ped my husband mend the chair you're settin' on. He set there laughing, playing with them babies. I kin see him good as my hand," said Belle Towers. "He wuz crazy for them babies of mine. Set 'em on his shoulders an' pranced around playing he wuz a horse."

The big man had said: "Gonna have me one of these mighty soon. We been trying a long time and now we got one coming. Fixin' to get back so's I kin be the first to say howdy."

Belle Towers added, "He wuz a happy man, a real happy man, and laughing mos' of the time. And gentle. Real kind and gentle."

That afternoon the two men went hunting with her husband, and that night the Towerses bedded them down in a lean-to in the back, bringing them quilts and blankets because spring had not yet come and there was chill in the night air.

They planned to leave the next day, but Zeb Towers told them he was taking the mule and going to Heliopolis the day after that; if they waited, he said, and went with him they'd probably be able to hop a freight as soon as they got there. Walking would take two days.