Mudbound (30 page)

The hulking figure of Orris Stokes loomed over me.

“You ain’t in a position to make demands, nigger lover. If I was you, I’d worry less about what happens to him and more about your own skin.”

“Jamie won’t go to the law,” said Pappy. “Not when we tell him what the nigger did.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“He fucked a white woman and got a child on her,” Pappy said.

“Bullshit. Ronsel wouldn’t do any such thing.”

“Is that a fact,” said Turpin. “You think you know him, huh? Well, what do you say to this?”

He thrust a photo in front of my eyes, of a thin, pretty blonde holding a mulatto baby. It definitely hadn’t been taken in Mississippi. The ground was covered with snow, and there was an alpine-style house in the background.

“Who is she?” I said.

“Some German gal,” said Turpin.

“And what makes you think Ronsel’s the father?”

He waved a piece of paper in the air. “Says so right here in this letter. She even named it after him.”

My feelings must have shown in my face. “See?” Pappy said. “I told you boys he’d be with us on this.”

I looked over at Ronsel. He blinked once, slowly, in affirmation. There was no shame in his eyes. If anything, they seemed to challenge me, to say,
What kind of man are you? Guess we’re about to find out.
I looked at the photo again, remembering how shocked I’d been when I first saw Negro GIs with white girls in the pubs and dance halls of Europe. Eventually I’d
gotten used to it. Soldiers will be soldiers, I’d told myself, and the girls were obviously willing. But I’d never been easy with it, and I still wasn’t. And if
I
wasn’t, I could only imagine what that photograph stirred up in these white-sheeted men. That, and Ronsel’s quiet pride in himself, which must have infuriated them. I knew their kind: locked in the imagined glory of the past, scared of losing what they thought was theirs. They would make an answer. I understood that, and them, all too well. But I couldn’t let them kill Ronsel. And if I didn’t come up with something quick, they would.

“What do you fellows care about some Kraut whore?” I said.

That earned me a hard kick in the thigh from Orris’s boot.

“Just tell em you won’t talk,” urged Pappy. I could hear the desperation in his voice, and if I could hear it, so could they. That was dangerous. Nothing goads a pack like the scent of fear.

“You’re not taking my meaning,” I said. “These fräuleins, they’re not like our women. They’re cold-hearted cunts who’ll smile to your face then stab you in the back the first chance they get. They got an awful lot of our boys killed over there. So if Ronsel exacted a little vengeance on one of them and left her with a reminder of it, I call it justice.”

There was silence. I began to have a little hope.

“You’re good, boy,” said Turpin. “Too bad you’re full of shit.”

“Listen, I’m not saying we should give him a medal for it. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem right, killing a decorated soldier over an enemy whore.”

Another silence.

“The nigger’s still got to be punished,” Pappy said.

“And kept from doing it again,” said Stokes. “You know how these bucks are once they get a taste for white women. What’s to stop him from going after one here?”

“
We’re
gonna stop him,” said Turpin. “Right here and right now.”

He opened a leather case on the floor and pulled out a scalpel. Somebody whistled. Excitement crackled through the room. Ronsel and I started talking at the same time:

“Please, suh. I’m begging you, please don’t—”

“You don’t need that, he’s learned his les—”

Doc Turpin’s voice cut across ours like a whip. “If either of them says one more word, shoot the nigger.”

I shut up, and so did Ronsel.

“This nigger profaned a white woman,” Turpin said. “He fouled her body with his eyes and his hands and his tongue and his seed, and for that he’s got to pay. What’ll it be, boys?”

They all spoke at once: “Geld him.” “Blind him.” “Cut it all off!”

I caught a whiff of urine and saw a stain spreading across the front of Ronsel’s pants. The smell of piss and sweat and musk was overwhelming. I swallowed hard to keep myself from throwing up.

Then my father said, “I say we let my son decide.”

“Why should we do that?” Turpin demanded.

“Yeah,” said Stokes, “why should he get to do it?”

“If he decides, he’s part of it,” said Pappy.

“No,” I said. “I won’t do it.”

My father bent down to me, his eyes narrowed to slits. He put
his mouth up to my ear. “You know where I found that letter?” he said. “In the cab of our truck, on the floor of the passenger seat. Only one way it could’ve got there, and that’s if you let him ride with you again. This is
your
doing. You think about that.”

I shook my head hard, not wanting to believe it, knowing it had to be true. Pappy pulled away and raised his voice so the others could hear. “You had to stick your nose in. Busting in here like Gary Cooper, waving that gun around and making threats. Threatening me, your own father, over a nigger! Well, you’re in it now, son. You don’t want him killed, fine. You decide his punishment.”

“I said I won’t do it.”

“You will,” said Turpin. “Or I will. And I don’t think your boy here will like my choice.” He made a crude stabbing gesture toward his crotch. There were hoots and chuckles from the others. Ronsel was shuddering, his muscles straining against the ropes that bound him. His eyes implored me.

“What’s it gonna be?” said Turpin. “His eyes, his tongue, his hands or his balls? Choose, nigger lover.”

When I didn’t answer Deweese swung the shotgun around, pointing it at me. My father stepped away from me, leaving me alone in the shotgun’s field. Deweese cocked it. “Choose,” he said.

Here it was, the oblivion I’d been chasing for so long. All I had to do was stay silent, and I would have it—an end to pain and fear and emptiness. Here it was, if I just had the guts to reach out and grab hold of it.

“Choose, goddamnit,” said my father.

I chose.

LAURA

I
WENT TO SEE
Florence the day after we found Pappy dead. I wanted to find out how Ronsel was. I also needed to have a private talk with her. I couldn’t have her working for me anymore. I didn’t think she’d want to in any case, but I had to be sure of it, and of her silence.

I told Jamie where I was going and asked him to watch the children for me. As I was about to walk out the door, he pulled something from his pocket and handed it to me: the photograph of Ronsel’s German lover and their child. My arms broke out into gooseflesh; I didn’t want to touch it. I tried to hand it back to him.

“No,” he said. “You give that to Florence, for Ronsel. Ask her to tell him . . .” He shook his head, at a loss. His mouth was tight with self-loathing.

I gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m sure he knows,” I said.

I intended to drive, but both the car and the truck were mired too deeply in mud, so I took my umbrella and set out on foot. The rain had slackened a little since yesterday, but it was
still coming down steadily. As I walked past the barn, Henry saw me and came to the open door. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“To Florence’s. She didn’t show up for work yesterday or today.”

Henry still didn’t know about what had happened to Ronsel. Hap hadn’t come and told him, and we’d been cut off from town since last night. Jamie and I had said nothing, of course. We weren’t supposed to know about it yet.

Henry frowned. “You shouldn’t be out in this mess. I’ll go over there later and see about it. You go on back to the house.”

I thought quickly. “I need to ask her some questions. About how to prepare the body.”

“All right. But take care you don’t fall. The road’s slippery.”

His concern for me brought a lump to my throat. “I’ll be careful,” I said.

Lilly May answered my knock. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. I asked to speak to her mother.

“I’ll see,” she said.

She closed the door in my face. I felt a clutch of fear. What if Ronsel hadn’t survived his wounds? For his family’s sake, and for Jamie’s, I prayed that he had. I waited on the porch for perhaps five minutes, though it felt like much longer. Finally the door opened and Florence came out. Her face was drawn, her eyes sunken. I feared the worst, but then there came a long, guttural moan from inside the house. It was a horrible sound, but it meant he was alive. They must have brought him back
home yesterday afternoon, I thought, before the river flooded the bridge.

“How is he?” I asked.

Florence didn’t answer, just gave me a cold, knowing stare. I stared back at her, adulteress to murderess. Reminding her that I knew things too.

“We leaving here soon as the river goes down,” she said curtly. “Hap’ll be by later today to tell your husband.”

Relief flooded me, overwhelming the small bit of shame that accompanied it. I would not have to see her, even from a distance; would not be reminded daily of how my family had destroyed hers. “Where will you go?” I asked.

She shrugged and looked out over the drowned fields. “Away from here.”

There was only one thing I could offer her. “The old man is dead,” I said. “He died night before last, in his sleep.” I emphasized the last part, but if she was reassured her face didn’t show it. If anything, she looked even more bitter. “God will know what to do with him,” I said.

She shook her head. “God don’t give a damn.”

As if to prove her words, Ronsel moaned again. Florence closed her eyes. I don’t know what was more terrible: listening to that sound, or watching Florence listen to it. It might as well have been her own tongue being torn from her body. I shuddered, imagining how I would feel if that sound were coming out of Amanda Leigh or Bella. I thought of Vera Atwood. Of my own mother, still grieving after all these years for Teddy’s lost twin.

“I have something for him, from Jamie,” I said. I took out the photograph and handed it to her. “It was taken in Germany. The child is—”

“I know who he is.” She brushed her fingers lightly across the surface of the picture, touching the face of the grandson she would never see. Then she shoved it in her pocket and looked at me. “I need to get back to him,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Two words, pitifully inadequate to carry the weight of all that had happened, but I said them anyway.

Ain’t your fault.
Three words, a gift of absolution I didn’t deserve. I would have given anything to hear Florence say them, but she didn’t. All she said was goodbye.

JAMIE

T
HE FIVE OF US
staggered through the mud to the grave. It was still raining lightly but the wind had picked up, coming in violent gusts that seemed to blow us in every direction but the one we needed to go. Henry and I carried the coffin and the ropes. Laura walked behind with the children, Bella in her arms and Amanda Leigh hanging onto her skirt.

When we got to the hole we set the coffin down and worked the ropes underneath it, one on each end. Henry moved to the other side of the hole and I threw him the two rope-ends. But when we tried to lift it, the ropes slipped to the center and the coffin teetered, then tumbled to the ground. The wood groaned, and there was a loud crack from inside the box—Pappy’s skull, hitting the wood. One of the boards on the side had pried loose. I bent and pushed the nails back in with my thumb.

“This isn’t gonna work,” I said. “Not with just the two of us.”

“It’ll have to work,” Henry said.

“Maybe if we stood at either end and ran the ropes lengthwise.”

“No,” he said. “The coffin’s too narrow. If it falls again it could break open.”

I shrugged —
so what?

“No,” he said again in a low voice, with a glance at the children.

Laura pointed at the road. “Look. Here come the Jacksons.”

We watched their wagon approach. Hap and Florence sat up front, and the two younger boys walked behind. The wagon was piled high with furniture. As it got closer I saw they’d strung up a makeshift tarp in back. I knew Ronsel was under there, suffering.

When they came abreast of us Henry waved them down.

“Don’t,” Laura said. “Just let them go.”

He shot her an indignant look. “It’s not my fault, what happened to that boy. I warned him. I warned both of them. And now Hap’s leaving me in the middle of planting season when he knows damn well it’s too late for me to find another tenant. The least he can do is give us a quick hand here.”

I opened my mouth to agree with Laura, but she gave a slight shake of her head and I swallowed the words.

“Hap!” Henry shouted over the wind. “Can you help us out here?”

Hap whoa’d the mule, and he, Florence and the two boys turned and looked at us. Even from thirty yards away, I could feel the force of their hate.

“We could use some extra hands!” Henry shouted.

I expected them to refuse—I sure as hell would have. But then Hap handed the reins to Florence and started to get down.
She grabbed hold of his arm and said something to him, and he shook his head and said something back.

“What are they dithering about?” Henry said impatiently.

Hap and Florence were really going at it now. Their voices weren’t quite loud enough for me to make out what they were saying, but I could guess well enough.

“No, Hap. Don’t you do it.”

“It’s the Lord’s doing we passed by here just now, and I ain’t gone argue with Him. Now come on and let’s see it done.”

“I ain’t helping that devil get nowhere.”

“You ain’t helping him, he’s already burning in hell. You helping God to do His work.”

I saw Florence spit over the side of the wagon.

“That’s for your God. He ain’t getting nothing more from me. He done taken enough already.”

“All right then. I won’t be long.”

Hap climbed down. He turned toward the two boys, and Florence spoke again. Her meaning was plain enough:
“And don’t you ask the twins to do it neither.”