The Queen of Palmyra (19 page)

“Stay back and shut up!” he hissed. Then he disappeared inside. I heard things banging around and water running. Smoke was curling out of the kitchen window like it was a chimney. I couldn’t believe it. First my mother runs herself into a train, then I burn down the house and kill my father. All in one day.

I was jumping from one foot to the other. I wasn’t sure what I should be doing. Should I run out into the street and holler Fire? Should I keep quiet so Big Dan and Miss Kay Linda wouldn’t
find out that the house they’d rented to us was about to go up in smoke?

One thing I knew I had to do was go to the bathroom before I wet my pajama bottoms. So I went over into the shrubs and squatted and pulled down my bottoms and let loose. Just as I did, I saw that the smoke had stopped coming out of the window. I heard some more
whapping
noises from the kitchen along with the running water from the sink. I pulled up my pajamas and went back onto the porch stoop. I didn’t sit down. I wanted to be able to take off fast if the fire came roaring out the front door. But it didn’t, and soon everything got quiet. I waited. Then I had a thought. Last year at Christmas a whole family of five had died in their beds just from smelling smoke! Maybe Daddy was inside lying on the floor breathing his last breath of smoke while I was standing there on the front porch like a fool. Maybe he needed artificial respiration.

So I went back into the house. I opened the front door and there was Daddy, not breathing his last, but sitting on the couch staring into space. Every second or two, he’d cough and rub his eyes. When I opened the door and he looked up at me out of the smoky darkness, I felt like that baby rabbit out in the open. His eyes shone hot and wild. I looked into the lighted kitchen and saw puddles and burnt things in the sink and on the floor. Soggy pieces of my cakes splattered all over everything.

Daddy leaned forward and picked up his cigarette lighter that had been lying on the coffee table. “Come here you,” he said, so I walked over and stood in front of him. Then he said, “I ought to snatch you bald-headed. You know what fire feels like?” I said, all whiney and quiet, “Yes sir,” and he said, “Hell no you don’t, because if you did, you wouldn’t have done such a damn fool thing as setting the kitchen on fire. You just a chip off the old block. You your mama all over again, taking us all down.”

I started up blubbering again. “I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to get Mama’s cakes ready for tomorrow so she wouldn’t lose her business. It was the cup towel. I didn’t mean to start a fire…”

He grabbed my arm and jerked me down on the couch next to him. The stink coming from him had gathered itself; his mouth smelled like garbage.

He pulled my arm straight out and turned it so the soft underside was up. His hand over my wrist was so tight it burned. All the time he was rasping hard, deep down in his throat. Was he still winded from fighting the fire? He used the thumb on his other hand to open the top of the lighter, then to flick the flame on. “Yes siree,” he said, “what I’m thinking is you need a good lesson. Teach you a thing or two about fire. You holler out loud and I’m going to beat the living hell out of you.” Then he jerked my arm around again so that the underside was down. Then he passed the flame under it real slow.

He must have done it to the other arm too—it was burnt like the first one when I woke up—but I don’t remember the second one.

Which was the beginning of something new. Up until then, I could remember anything. When Mama or Mimi or Zenie would forget something that happened, they’d ask me, and I’d remind them. I was Miss Smarty Pants about it too. “Don’t you remember,” I’d start off, “it was Miss Lucy who said she’d pick up her cake late.” Or: “No, it wasn’t milk Zenie said we needed. It was coffee, don’t you remember?” And so on. If I knew about it, I could remember it better than anyone else could.

So not remembering the other arm was the commencement of something new. To this very day I still can’t see it. And it’s the seeing, isn’t it, that lets us catch slippery things and hold them forever in the mind’s eye? Of course, even if you can’t see something,
you can remember it. I’d gotten good at squinching up my eyes so I couldn’t see Mama go for the poison bottle or take a sharp curve on a dime, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember her doing it. So maybe this was just a natural thing, to go a step further. I was squinching up something bigger than my eyes. Only this time it worked. You can’t see what you don’t remember.

When I woke up it was bright day. I was flat on my back on the couch, the kitchen was cleaned up, burnt-up curtains taken down, dishes washed, everything neat and tidy. By looking, you’d never know anything had happened, unless you looked at the kitchen ceiling, which had sooty circles on it right over the sink. I felt loggy, and when I looked down at my sides, I saw white pieces of gauze taped on the underside of both arms. When I lifted my arms to look, the smell of Ungentine and stale smoke rose with them.

The house was dead quiet. Had Daddy left for good? I wouldn’t have blamed him. Here he was sad and all worn out, trying to see about me after what Mama had wrought, me playing dead under the bed. Now look what I’d gone and done. I wanted to go into my room and crawl under my own bed, but I was scared to move myself from where he had planted me. I just lay there on the couch and opened my eyes and let the water roll out and soak the couch.

After a while, I heard him. He was coming up the stairs from
the basement.
Thunk, thunk
went his shoe on each step. I sat up on the couch. I had to rest my arms on my lap with the top sides turned down. I was sweating through my pajamas. The door to the basement opened and he came toward me and turned. It was a blessed relief to see his face. He was grinning and had the box under his arm. He walked right up to me and looked down at me. My neck hurt from looking up at him. My eyes were burning hot, but my arms felt like they’d been packed in ice from the coolness of the Ungentine.

“Honey. Look a here. I got
things
to show you.” He stuck out the box.

“I got to go to the bathroom.” I got up off the couch and backed up. I wanted to keep some distance. What things? My arms felt heavy in their bandages, stiff cold wings hanging at my sides.

Daddy waved his arm in the direction of the bathroom. He seemed in a hurry. “Well giddy up and go then, and get on back. Going to show you what’s in the box. You a big girl now.”

I ran for the bathroom. I couldn’t believe I was finally going to get to see what was in the box. I sat on the commode and looked down at the wing bandages on my arms. My arms didn’t hurt a bit, thanks to the Ungentine. When I was done I pulled up my bottoms and headed back into the living room. The box was on the coffee table. Daddy was on the couch, one leg folded over the other. The little key had sat itself down nice and comfortable right beside the box. I sat back down on my end of the couch and looked down at the box. It squatted there, waiting.

“Open it,” Daddy said, and winked like it was Christmas. “But first you got to promise you can keep a secret.”

I almost laughed out loud. Seemed like everything I knew in life was a deep dark secret. Bootleggers, hats, Daddy and Little Dan, Eva getting messed up, what the sheriff said, burns. Right
down to that nasty commode in Mimi’s garage. Seemed like I didn’t know a single thing that wasn’t a secret.

“Yes sir,” I said.

Then Daddy made a strange move with his hand. He stretched out his pointer finger and put it over his top lip, right under his nose, like Mama showed me to do when you’re trying not to sneeze in church except that he didn’t press, he just held it there while he talked. “Because everything in this here box is a secret, handed down from my granddad to my dad to me, generation to generation, so you can’t ever tell a soul what’s in here or you’ll break the chain.”

The way he said it made me feel proud and righteous, like I was a link in a golden chain that could stretch on and on through all eternity. “I won’t. I swear. Ever and ever, amen.” I put my finger up the way he had his, right over my top lip. We sat there and looked at each other, our fingers in exactly the same pose. Two statues trying not to sneeze. Mirror images.

When he picked up the key and handed it to me, my chest seized up. The key felt warm like it had just gotten solid after being hot and molten for a good long time. It went into the hole like it had found its one true home. The lock opened up smooth and easy. When I started to lift the lid up, Daddy said, “Keep the key in the lock so you don’t lose it.”

I froze. I wasn’t sure whether Daddy wanted to open the box himself. He was breathing as if he’d just run a race, which of course was impossible because of his foot. He got up and went over and pulled Mama’s living-room curtains together. Then he said, “Go on, open it. It won’t bite.” He slapped his knee and he-hawed. “What you thinking’s in there? A big old slimy snake?” And he reached over and tickled me in the ribs.

So I jumped and hollered and in a scramble I opened it. I don’t know what I was expecting to see, maybe some gold and
silver for a rainy day, pirate’s treasure like Uncle Wiggily finds sometimes. Or jewels. Rubies and sapphires, like the Queen of Palmyra would wear around her bare neck when she was riding wild and naked and free. So I got to say I was disappointed. All I saw at first was an outfit. Folded nice and neat like it just got delivered from Sears and Roebuck. A cloth outfit like a bathrobe. Black and shiny. It was kind of pretty, I’ll give it that, the shininess made it look like an oily starling looks in the bright sun. Black with other colors underneath. Plus it had a nice crest on the left side over the chest, the kind you see on a man’s nice suit coat. A white cross with tips that fluted out at the ends. A box inside the cross and a red upside-down comma inside that. It was pretty. The shiny black with the white-and-red design.

Daddy reached in and pulled it out. “Look,” he said, and he stood up, put his arms through the sleeves, and wrapped it around himself and tied it with a little black rope with tassels. Then he reached back in and got something else. At first I thought it was a matching hat like Mimi had for a few of her good dresses, but no, it was a hood, or maybe a big shiny sock. When he popped it on his head, I could see that wasn’t right either. It wasn’t a hat and it wasn’t a sock. It was a mask. Soft and loose so that it flowed nicely into the neck of the robe. No skin showing between. It had a pointed top that stuck up and cut-out holes for eyes. Nothing like Daddy’s other club outfits with silly little hats topped in tassels and what-all that Mama always laughed at and said, “Win, you look ridiculous in those getups.”

For a minute Daddy stood in the living room not saying a word, just standing there in the black outfit, mask and all. His eyes peeking through the holes didn’t look like anything like his or any person’s. They looked like a pair of eyes floating in darkness all by themselves, seeing everything and everyone. He looked good and scary. Ready to go trick-or-treating. I was hoping
he’d let me wear the thing on Halloween. When people asked me what I was, I’d tell them I was the biggest cockroach they ever would see. No, I’d carry a can of bug spray so they’d get the idea and not even have to ask.

“Well, what do you think?” he said from inside the thing. I could barely hear him.

“What do you
do
in it?” I asked, not having a good answer to his question.

He pulled off the top part. Sweat was rolling down the front of his face, getting in his eyes so that he was having to blink hard. A lock of his hair fell over his returned eyes. He grinned at me the way a boy grins, joyful and eager. “I’m the Nighthawk. We all were. Granddad, Dad, and me.”

The Nighthawk. Daddy made it sound proud and brave, maybe even royal. A knight, or at least a sheriff, so I tried to erase the picture in my mind. I saw a fierce bird with a razor beak swooping down in the dead of night to tear a bit of soft fur that scuttled across the forest floor. A cry and then only silence.

When I looked at the box again, I saw some more stuff in the bottom. A Bible with a pretty marker in it. A big knife—no, a little sword in a metal holder. A Zippo lighter. Two flags rolled up. I unrolled them a little and knew right off what they were. One was the flag of Dixie and the other the flag of the United States of America. Old Glory, Grandpops called it. A little cross of Jesus made of two pieces of board. Some cards. A vase. Not a pretty one, just an old glass one the florist will send you if you have to go to the hospital. Mama had a whole long row of those under the sink from when she had me and almost died on Mrs. C’s floor. It was a good stash of stuff, but not jewels or precious metals. More like what you’d find in the back of the hall closet.

The cards interested me because they looked like the place cards that Mimi used when she had the Saturday Matinee Bridge
Club at her house. They bent in the middle and stood up. Mimi’s favorite chore was to figure out where to put the place cards around at the four bridge tables. “It’s no fun to get your pants beaten off,” she’d say. “You want an even contest.” She’d let me help her put the little cards around. She saved them and used them over and over. She always put a strong player across from a weak player. “Bridge should be a
stimulating
experience,” she’d say. “Let’s put Joyce across from Jane Stuart so she can teach her how to bid. Joyce is an atrocious bidder. You never know what she’s going to come out with.” Mimi’s cards had little fleur-de-lis on them. The ones in Daddy’s box had two red eyes on the top, the kind that follow you wherever you go. Under the eyes were the words, “The eyes of the Klan are upon you. You have been identified by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”

“Sister,” Daddy barked my name and jolted me out of my bridge-club thoughts. “Don’t you want to know what the Nighthawk does?”

“Yes sir,” I lied. It was more interesting looking through the box. Maybe there were some jewels hidden in secret compartments.

Daddy came over to the couch and stood over me. He still had on the robe. The mask hung from his hand like an Easter basket. “Well, he’s bound to guard everybody else, make sure nobody gets into meetings who ain’t supposed to. Who don’t love God and his country and his race and the great state of Mississippi. He gets to wear this special robe. It’s black, when everybody else’s is white, and shorter than everybody else’s in case he’s got to move fast. When some folks, I won’t say who, is being bad, we got our ways to make them behave. First we give them a fair warning. But sometimes they don’t listen. Sometimes we got to whip them good. Like the police do with the criminal element. Like Bomba with the cannibals.”

Daddy seemed unaccountably excited. His eyes glowed the way they did when he’d go out at night with the box under his arm. I could tell he had in mind he was telling me the best news I’d heard in a long time.

I didn’t know what to say. What are you going to do when your one and only father wants to run around in a Halloween getup and whip people? Say you’re proud? I just hoped he wasn’t going to wear it out in public.

“The Nighthawk takes care of the important things too. For when we get together. He sets everything up for the meetings.” Daddy pointed at the stuff in the box. “See, everything’s all here. Nice and neat.”

While he was going on and on about being the Nighthawk and his precious box, I was thinking three thoughts at the same time. Both my arms had started up burning and stinging under the gauze, and I was wondering whether the second arm was burnt bad. Mama was always worrying about scrapes getting infected and had a heavy hand with the iodine until she discovered Mercurochrome, which kept infection at bay just as well and didn’t sting. That thought led me back to Mama. I wanted to get into the hospital to see her. I wanted to say, Why did you do it, Mama, why did you run yourself into a train when you were supposed to be coming back to pick me up? Somebody had said children under twelve weren’t allowed in the Millwood Hospital, but I had in mind putting on some of her high heels and lipstick and surprising her. She’d get a lift out of it, I bet she would. Everybody said I was the spitting image of her when she was little. Maybe when I pranced in, she’d think she was getting visited by herself and take herself back.

Thought number three was that my stomach was clawing up my insides, trying to get out and go live in some other girl’s body, and Miss Kay Linda’s sweet rolls might make it stay. The third
thought was getting more pressing by the minute. I was eyeing the kitchen counter, trying to catch sight of those rolls, hoping they were still there. That Daddy hadn’t eaten them up this morning while he was cleaning up my try at burning down the house.

By now, he could tell I wasn’t paying attention. Here he was explaining things to me, grown-up things, he said, and I wasn’t even listening. I wasn’t even interested. “Well, missy, see if I tell you anything no more, it’s like talking to a brick wall,” he said. He clawed at his Nighthawk outfit and pulled it off and shoved it back in the box and slammed down the lid and clicked the little lock shut. The key he dropped into his shirt pocket.

“That’s it, Sister, show’s over.” He looked down at me like I was a piece of something he’d dropped on a nice clean floor. “Go get something to eat. I’m going to call your grandma to come get you so I can get over to the hospital.” I was a bitter pill for him to swallow. Lord knows he was trying.

He locked up the box with a hard little click of the hinge between his fingers and headed for the basement.

“I’ll take it back down, Daddy.” I was thinking we could get back into the swing of things, me carrying the box up and down, him doing the taking and giving of it. When I stood up this time, I felt dizzy.

“No.” That was all he said, but it hung in the air, not wanting to leave the way normal words do. It wanted to stay and eye me and not let me get away. Ungrateful child that I was.

So when the phone rang, I wanted to run over and hug it. But I answered nice and polite, expecting a lady wanting to put in a cake order. Mama had taught me to answer the phone saying, “Forrest Residence, Florence speaking,” so it would sound like a business, both for her cakes and Daddy’s policies, though his customers didn’t call on the phone like hers did. When I asked her why not, she said his customers didn’t have phones. Sometimes
the Mississippi Assurance district manager would call to speak to Daddy and Daddy would tell him he was busting his butt; he didn’t know how much more he could do.

So I answered just that way, but it was only Mimi.

“Florence, honey, are y’all doing all right over there? When did you get up? Did you get some breakfast? Are you feeling better?” Her voice sounded far away.