Grace (37 page)

At once, I know him. Know his voice. He's been here before.

“You saved my life,” Colonel say to General Bobby Lee Smith. “Sixty men or more still thank you for what you did. These men were there, too. All of us owe you our lives.”

“All of us were ready to die for this great nation,” Bobby Lee say. “Lives marked with courage and bravery. We're all owed respect.”

“I'll never forget a hero,” Colonel say. “Or his story . . . how we were all in retreat. But not you. You charged over enemy rifle pits and through the lines of a whole regiment under heavy fire.”

“A long time ago,” Bobby Lee say.

“Killed as many bluebellies as you wounded. God was with you.”

Bobby Lee nods a little. Weary, he say, “There's a small army a day's journey behind me. My cousin, Ray, and his men are even closer. There's a good sum offered for you and your men on account of the marauding y'all did in Virginia. The peaceful end is to turn yourselves in now. Give folks who still believe in you a chance to call you heroes, too.”

“And this man?” Skinny say, flicking his pistol at Jackson.

“Way I see it,” Bobby Lee say. “Y'all need to make yourselves square in Virginia. Let the rest be damned.”

“He was laying up with a white woman!” Skinny yell but Colonel hold up his hand and Skinny stops talking.

“We're done here,” Colonel say. He nods to Fatty to step away from Annie. She rushes out to the field where the men and Jackson are, kneels beside him, tending to him.

“Whatever y'all decide,” Bobby Lee say. “You can go or be the heroes you're meant to be.”

“We'll consider the offer,” Colonel say, and he and his men take to their horses. Bobby Lee stays where he is, watching 'em go. Then he turns to Annie.

“Don't I know you, soldier?” she ask him.

48
/ THE RIGOR

J
OSEY IS DEATH
as she walks. Rigamortis has set into her expression—eyes sunken, mouth seized open, skin frozen to cooled wax, sooted gray. “Rachel!” she screams from the top of the hill. She's heard the gunshots coming from Annie's house and the fear of it has quickened all around her.

She's carrying Squiggy on her hip and managed her way back to the path. But she ain't all right. She's breathing now like she's winded, staggering back and forth across the width of the path. She stops at the tree lines on both sides as if it were a wall of stone and bats at their branches but won't go in. Tears slide down her face. “Rachel!” Her voice is ragged and empty.

She takes another step up the path where a hollowed log is side-lying making a barrier between her and trees—protection—but to the side of it, hidden, the ground seems changed from never walked on to recently worn. The drag marks there capture Josey's attention because above them, in the bushes, there's a near-perfect straight line of color—the yellow-green insides of freshly torn leaves.

When Josey gets closer, she sees a whole splotch of bright color where the bushes have splayed open and re-closed. The broken limbs are man-sized. Josey reaches a shaky hand out to the space and pushes. A path from here to as far as we can see is lined with deep drag marks.
A torn blue corner of Rachel's dress is caught on a branch like a grasshopper's flag. Josey falls to her knees and Squiggy tumbles out her arms. Her shallow breaths spread the color from her face. A whistle sound shocks her exhales. Her breath is so weak, almost missing. But still, she calls, “Rachel . . .” I ain't never seen her like this before. Not this bad, this afraid.

From her knees, she slouches to the ground, laid on her side now, her breaths screeching.

She's giving up.

I know she is.

I call her name,
Josey!
Who knows better than me the fear that comes with losing a child? She thinks that Jackson is gone, or worse. Rachel, too.

Her face stops me cold. Her doll eyes are back. Flat and unblinking.

I can help her.

I choose to ignite myself. If I only go inside her part way, maybe I can touch her quickly, help her, then move on out. Won't be as bad as Bessie said. I can be quick.

I throw my hand inside her. I'm swallowed up to my arm, a burning coal—heated black, hotter . . . red-orange. A searing pain chars my left side like graying ash and that layer of me crumbles away. Gone forever. Josey's eyes start to blink again. Her breathing becomes more clear as air finds her lungs. And in that moment, Squiggy ambles over and holds her hand gentle.

My God!
My tears come directly. His hand on hers is mine. His skin on mine. My own tears, one's I ain't had since dead, sizzle against my burning coal face. I touch his cheek and his skin is smooth and cool like laying a flat palm on the surface of still water.

I breathe.

Take him in.

His hair is the softness of rabbit's fur. The deep arc of his curls, halos. I follow their curve with my fingertips like tracing smiles. He stays
handholding me this way like we're waiting in line for something. But I have been. Been waiting for a moment like this all my life and after.

Josey breathes. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. I pull away from her feeling like I'm in pieces. Not whole. Never be whole again. She sits up on her knees. She reaches her arms out for Squiggy without me and stands but she cain't lift him. Her breathing is clear except for a rattle of phlegm. But she's still winded. She say to Squiggy, “Remember the hide game with Daddy?”

Squiggy squats down and crawls into the log there.

“That's it,” she say. He pulls his knees into his chest, smiles up at his momma.

“You don't come out for nothin, all right? For nobody, except me and Daddy. We the only ones who can find you, you understand?”

He shimmies back into the log, waiting to be found. Josey stands and turns into the mouth of the opening. With new tears pouring down her face, she stares down the trees, into the bushes, the dirt, and into the dimming light of dusk—it closes around her in the orange-pink promises for tomorrow. She screams into its shade.

The woods wisp by her as she lumbers forward up the path, my body on fire as I follow. The path ends sudden, dumping her into a small damp clearing, one I ain't never seen here before.

A manmade gate of twisted leafy limbs and young trees form fence posts meant to guard this entrance but Josey keeps going through it.

I drift around the muddied space, slow and careful and hurting all over, and over plugs of sprouted grass. Empty liquor bottles lay alongside a graveyard of half-buried toys—painted and ceramic. A doll's head is cracked in the middle and buried, a broken rolling hoop, and a soldier figure. Their erected parts are sticking out of the ground, sun-dulled and dusted over. May have been a playground. One with no laughter. Maybe never.

An old tree house is grounded at the back of the clearing, broken and torn down by a storm or a person. The outside of it is covered in
leaves and weeds and got a new tree snaking through it, partly covering a “Keep Out” sign. Its words are mostly rain-sanded away.

I circle the space and pass a clothesline where a young girl's bloomers hang hand-washed and turned inside out, yellowed in the crotch. Abandoned and dusty cobwebs have made a home on the bloomers, too—a scroll of gray where caught leafs are stuck.

Nobody's here.

A rustling turns me around to the gate again.

There's crying.

Rachel's crying.

The bushes across from Josey give way to George. He got Rachel under his armpit shoving her in the doorway of that house. She pins both feet on each side of the doorway, squats when he tries to push her through. She screams and bites his side. He throws her to the ground and Rachel's head chips a rock, puts her to sleep. She looks like one of his broken dolls.

“Get away from her!” Josey say, coughing and wheezing. She grabs a big jagged rock from the ground beside her. I fall to the ground next to that rock-emptied space, weakened.

George's eyes widen and his whole manner change. “Annie?” he say, not seeing Josey. His voice is childlike now. He say, “I was just taking the girl for a walk. She followed me. We were just playing, is all.”

Josey limps further into the clearing, between me and George, wheezing now. Her lips are pale gray.

“Get away from her or I swear I'll kill you.” She's hardly holding herself up to stand.

“Did Annie come with you? You gon' tell on me?” George say.

Josey gasps for air. Again. And again.

“I was just going to talk to her. No harm in just talking . . .”

Josey collapses. Her eyes are focused on nothin and shallow sips of air stammer from her lips. The vapors have taken all of her strength.

George seems confused. He steps closer to Josey, cautious at first, then sure. “No Annie. No husband. No daddy. No nobody. Been a long
time since we've been in these woods together like this, eh?” He kicks Josey in the side as if he's scattering a pile of leaves. A little louder, “Those were the good ol' days, weren't they?”

He rests back on one hip, wipes the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, takes out his flask. Pulls a long drink.

George finds his pistol, fiddles with it, drops bullets in one at a time as he takes his time moseying back to Rachel. He stops just above her, studying her, twisting himself around to get a better look. “Shame,” he say. “We didn't even get to play.” He cocks the pistol.

With a rage inside me, my body is set to flight. Too weak to reach George. I thrust myself inside Josey—the closest—and I'm coal again. I don't have much time. I fill her lungs, make her breathe, make her grab the stone. Red to silver gray, my forms slough away in fistfuls. My body turning to ash and yet. Stand. We stand. Together we stand. I can feel her strength then. Feel all the years I've had to watch her. Only watch.

Not this time.

I can feel my hand turning into nothing as she takes the heavy stone into hers. Raises her arm as I feel my own taken by the wind. All my strength leaves me as she finds her own and slams its jagged edge into the back of George's head. The thud of rock caving in bone sends his body to the ground. We fall. Together we fall. The rest of me ebbs away to cinder. I feel heavy. Lifted now. Light as the air.

I watch her straddle him, take the rock to his red-wet hair, 'til his whole face is gone.

I cain't see no more.

I cain't hear.

I cai

49

I
AM DEAD
.

I died a long time ago. Before you born, before your mother was born, 'fore your grandmother.

I was a mother, too. And I've lost her.

No more flashes.

No more watching.

No distance. No waiting on miracles. This ending is mine.

There's only darkness here now.

An arc of light just crossed the sky. A star.

A star.

Around it comes many strands of other light. A shower of 'em like a million shooting stars racing down at once. I want to touch 'em.

White spreads around me, gathering together to form a single tunnel of bright.

I know this tunnel.

I know it's for me.

My vision blurs with tears and I see Momma waiting at the end of it for me, her hand held out to me.

“Naomi,” she say, her voice like a song.

“Momma!” I say.

I want to run to her but I'm frozen here. A small window is behind me, framed in black. And through it I see Josey. This time, walking away from me with Rachel and Squiggy. Her clothes are bloodstained but she's safe. My grandchildren are clean. They're so distant now and almost unreal, like looking at a perfect painted picture you cain't step in.

But I can, if I go back now.

I hesitate. And I'm not sorry for it. Not sorry for my unsure. I'm too old to apologize for the ways I feel. So I'm not sorry for my sadnesses right now, or this love I cain't contain.

It's beginning to burst from me. Toward Josey and my grandchildren and Jackson. Toward Momma. Everything around me. I'm consumed.

For the first time, there's a new feeling resting on me.

Through me.

It's leading me forward. To Momma.

The flashes are peeling away from me like an undressing. The final piece a blouse over my head.

I'm naked.

Fearing nothing.

Loved.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

W
HERE DO YOU
start when thanking people for a dream realized? With the person who was there to help you take your last step, or the person who first believed in you? Or gave birth to you? Or gave birth to one of the people who helped along the way, or the person herself or himself, or the person who organized the event or taught the class that led you to the person or the people? Or the person who made you feel at home? Or the cab driver who got you there on time, or didn't and because of it, there was a chance meeting? Or…

Maybe there are no real beginnings anymore. Maybe the world is too old for that. Maybe there are just continuations of works laid out before we were even born. And what's been said is true: we are all products of ancient loves, and of long relay races orchestrated by the universe. God. And for me, I'm walking with Jesus.

I thank God for choosing me to carry this story and for the privilege to be the one to take it across the finish line. This is a new continuation for someone else. And for me.

To my courageous and loving mother who has had as many names as she's had lifetimes, Mildred Millie “Shirley,” my Dad, John, Jr. To the most beautiful person I've ever known, my husband, Lee; and to God's princess and prince, Ava and Ash. To my adorable and wonderful
sister, Katrina; my charming and wonderful brother John III; and to these stars, my brothers and sister: Tony, Michael, Fuschia and Parker.

To my family in Alabama and to those who are still living in East Tallassee, Alabama: Uncle “Dolf” Warren and Aunt Della; to the pillars of my childhood: Grandma Lurlean, Granny Harris, Katrina Brasher, and Hazel Ford. To the hope and beacon that has been Oprah Winfrey, to poet Romus Simpson, to Tod Goldberg, to my incredible agent Rachel Sussman and exceptional editor Dan Smetanka, and my publisher Counterpoint Press.

To Michelle Franke, Adam Somers, Jamie Wolfe, David Thomas, Jeff Eyres, Casey Curry, Heather Simons, Danny Corey, to David, Dee and Jason Saunders, to Manjit Sohal: my first friend while living in England. To Neena Bixby, Marytza Rubio, Cynthia, and Robert Eversz. To my pastors and to Nancy Hardin, A.M. Dellamonica, and Marcela Landres.

To the PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship Program, Breadloaf Writers' Conference, Megan Fishmann, Willie Davis, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Katherine Deblassie, Heidi Durrow, Libby Flores, Jamie Schaffner, Tiffany Hawk, Joshua Mensch, Zoe Ruiz, and all of those artists especially women and writers of color who came before me and those I have the pleasure of working with now; to the publishers who've published my work, and those unnamed friends who have offered words of encouragement, a sofa to sleep on, a cup of coffee, a meal, a dollar, a ride, a discount, a recommendation, a prayer, a good opinion, volunteer time, or have just listened.

To the powerhouse that is the Los Angeles Literary Community.

And finally, to the Beverly Hills Film Festival which honored me with my first award for this novel when it was first born as a screenplay, to the Charleston Film Festival,
HistoryPlace.com
, the books
The Jews of South Carolina
and
The History of Tallassee.
To Wikipedia, Dickinson House in Belgium, and to my church family including HV Hot Topic who have encouraged me to follow my calling.

I'm so thankful for all of you.