The Sleeping Night (7 page)

May 6, 1943

Dear Miss Corey,

I cannot even express my delight over the package that Isaiah has just brought to my door. So much bounty! The nuts and candy will be a lovely addition, but I am most delighted by the tea. It is my great weakness, you see, and it pains me to parcel it out so.

While I have nothing of great value to send you in return, I hope you will enjoy the enclosed book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Poetry is my other great passion. Isaiah and I have been enjoying great discussions when he is able to come to town. He is a very great help to me.

Please write again, and when this war is over, I hope you will come to see me. I will show you the land as I know it, an insider’s view.

Again, my deepest thanks, Miss Corey.

Most sincerely,

Mrs. Angela Wentworth

Isaiah rocked on his mama’s porch in the mild evening. His mother and sister had learned to let him be in the late evenings, when things he couldn’t speak of crowded into his mind. Things no one should see. Things that could not be unseen.

And yet, through it all there had been a measure of freedom. Now it was seeped away, drop by drop, changing the tilt of his head, the angle of his shoulders.

A fat woman wanting a piggy back ride, that was Texas, and no matter how he fought to keep her off, she still climbed on and insisted he walk upright and bear her weight.

It wasn’t that she struggled to jump up on him again that surprised him. He had expected that. The thing that amazed him was that he had not ever really understood her obesity until she had been flung off.

Not all at once. The Army, at first, had been no different than home—colored soldiers were colored first. Crow was part of training and the Army. Just like home.

But Isaiah had been lucky. As the States had been drawn into the war, he had been among the first troops assigned to Britain. There the class structure had been intimidatingly different. Its subtle complexities had been so confounding that he was afraid to do much of anything at all for the first few weeks.

Slowly, though, he began to enjoy the first real freedom he’d ever tasted. The English, wary of colored troops to begin with, had finally decided the American color problem was none of their concern. They flung open the doors of their pubs and dance halls and homes to colored soldiers as well as white.

When the trouble came, later on, it wasn’t the Brits that caused it. The murders and stabbings and fights stemmed from the fury of the Americans. Eventually, out of self-defense, the Brits had been forced to hold dances on alternate nights, arrange lodgings in separate areas and give pubs over to one race or the other. White Southerners had forced it.

In spite of all that, Isaiah had liked the Army. He didn’t complain about the building they did, because building had always been his dream. Building roads and runways might not be glamorous work, but he gained valuable education doing it.

And in England, he had met Sergeant Owens, a black man with a big mind and a need to talk. It had been Owens who had given Isaiah the books he now held in his hands.

He looked down at the volumes of poetry and novels, all of them written by black men.

Black
men.

His initial reaction upon reading the words of black poets had been fury—how had he lived to the age of twenty without ever knowing there were poets of his own color?

Why had no one ever
told
him?

But the fury was replaced with excitement. If those men could write and publish their words, it was possible that he could fulfill his own dreams.

The covers were worn now, the pages soiled with repeated readings in battlefields and ditches and farmhouses. They’d kept him company through the worst of everything, when it seemed he’d spent a whole year in the same smelly uniform. There was never a chance to bathe or change and, like the other soldiers around him, he trudged along doing his job as bombs and mortar exploded and bullets flew.

Not his own bullets, naturally. White soldiers were the infantry, gaining glory. Colored mainly did the dirty work. They were mine sweeps and grave diggers, called by every name but soldier. Later, as the mortality counts rose, colored soldiers had got their guns, all right, been pressed into service in the desperate need for cannon fodder, Isaiah among them.

During those long, grim days the poetry had become to him like the Bible others toted with them, the only comfort he could find, outside Angel’s letters.

“
I’m so tired and weary, so tired of the endless fight,
” he read now. “
So weary of waiting the dawn and finding endless night.”

The words had been penned by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., but they echoed Isaiah’s thoughts this night, seemed to embody the fat woman on his shoulders, seemed to echo in the blues floating on the mild night air and the hush of endlessly waiting lower Gideon. The people waited here in this little town like they’d waited in the villages in Europe.

But no army was marching to free Gideon. There would be no liberation, no dawn to break the endless night. For the first time, he understood what had driven his father to protest so loudly, so long—until he’d protested right into his grave. Parker and Jordan had seen things in the first war that had triggered the same restlessness in them that Isaiah felt now.

Isaiah had seen the futility of Jordan’s fight, and Parker’s. If he were to make use of this life, it wouldn’t be in Gideon.

Tossing away his cigarette, he went inside to the comfort of his family. Perhaps the chatter of voices he knew and understood could drown his sorrow for one more night.

Monday, Angel rose at five
to prepare the morning offerings before the sun rose. In addition to dry goods and the sundry items any five and dime would carry, the store sold soda pop and doughnuts and pie, coffee or iced tea for a nickel. A sprinkling of colored women had made it a habit to stop by with dawn’s light to have a bit of the richly brewed coffee before heading off to other women’s homes to make breakfast and scour floors. There were five with positions in the homes of upper Gideon, and they were highly prized situations—long term and good pay.

But the moments at Corey’s store were often the only moments of silence they found in a day, the companionable silence of women united by the tasks ahead. Here, for a moment or two, they were free of husbands and children and employers, could speak their minds in some semblance of truth.

It had always been Angel’s project to open the store early. As long as she could remember, she’d awakened to the twitterings of blackbirds in the cottonwoods. Alone in the deep quiet of morning, she’d dress and slip outside to the front porch, waving to those first early travelers on the road to town. It had only seemed natural to go ahead and open up the store. And sometimes, someone would buy thread or a length of cotton or some such thing for the day ahead, but mostly they stopped for the comfort of friendly faces.

The first customer this Monday morning was Clara Jackson. She came in just as the coffee was finishing, a short, rotund woman with shiny black skin. “Mornin’, Angel,” she called in a high, sweet voice.

“Good morning, Mrs. Jackson.” She poured a thick ceramic mug full of coffee. “Let me run and get the milk out.”

“Take your time, honey. I’m in no hurry.”

Angel filled the pitcher and returned, putting spoons on the counter. Mrs. Jackson took one to stir sugar into her cup. “Hear the rain put some new holes in your roof.”

“I had buckets all over the place,” she commented, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “How’d you do?”

“Well, it ruined my garden, of course, but we sit up kinda high. Nothin’ else was hurt.”

“It drowned my garden, too. I’m thinking I might try planting again this afternoon.” She stirred milk into her cup. “I never liked growing vegetables, but it got to be such a habit during the war that I can’t imagine a summer without it now.”

Two other women came in, Geraldine High, Isaiah’s mother, and Maylene McCoy, Paul’s grandmother, with Paul in tow.

“Good morning, Clara,” said Mrs. High. “Mornin’, Angel.”

“Mornin’.” Angel poured two more mugs of coffee and looked at Paul. “What’ll you have, sir?”

The boy beamed, crawling up on a stool. “Coffee.”

Angel glanced at Mrs. McCoy, who nodded. “He drinks half coffee, half milk. Can you do that? I’ll pay for the extra.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. I can spare a little milk.”

Maylene looked tired, Angel thought, her beautiful walnut skin pulled taut around the eyes, her mouth drawn. “Are you feeling ill this morning, Mrs. McCoy?”

The older woman shook her head and sipped her coffee.

Geraldine High spoke. “She’s had to take Paul with her to work for a week now.” Isaiah’s mother met Angel’s eyes. She was nearing sixty but it didn’t show. Her bearing was straight, and behind her spectacles, her deep brown eyes were clear and sharp. Not a single wrinkle marred the skin, a fact that Angel marveled over again and again—especially since she had begun to notice a few on her own face.

“Last Friday,” Geraldine continued, “Paul accidentally broke a crystal vase and there was considerable fuss.”

“Why do you have to take him?” Angel asked.

“Anybody that might keep him is in the fields for the planting right now. They was about to get done, but now with that rain .
 . .” she trailed off.

While they talked, Paul had leaned over the counter to grab a handful of straws kept in a tall glass. Angel shook her head, holding out her hand for the straws. He placed them in her palm with a sheepish grin. She winked. “Why don’t you let me keep him here?”

“Oh, that’s kind, but I can’t impose like that.”

“In case you never noticed, I really like children, and I like this one here in particular. He won’t be any trouble.” When she saw Maylene still hesitated, she added, “You don’t have to pay me anything, if that’s your worry. It’s been lonely around here and I’d like the company.”

Maylene’s face softened. “We all miss your daddy, honey. No doubt about it.” She frowned at her grandson. “If I let you stay here, are you gonna mind Miss Angel and stay out of her way?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. I’m always good for Miss Angel.”

Clara nudged Maylene. “Go on. Ain’t no sense in you losing your place.”

“All right then. You know,” she said to Angel, “that I sometimes don’t get done till after dark.”

“That’s fine. I’ll feed him.”

Geraldine lifted her chin. “Isaiah told me he’d be stopping by here on his way home from Miz Pierson’s this afternoon.”

Angel waited.

There was an odd expression in Geraldine’s eyes—a combination of worry and pride, and something Angel didn’t quite understand. “Why don’t you send Paul home with Isaiah? He surely can’t work in the dark.”

“I’ll do that.”

Clara stood up. “I guess we better get moving. It’s almost six-thirty.”

Geraldine let the other women go ahead of her. “God keep you, Angel.”

“Always has.” She turned to Paul as the screen door swished shut. “Well, sweetie, are you gonna help me out around here today?”

“Yes, ma’am.

“I have to plant my garden. You can help me put the seeds in.”

“I know how to do that.”

“You have any breakfast yet? Let’s start there.”

“Can we have pancakes?”

“Why not?”

And he might only have been four, but he brought a lot of energy into the day. She really had been painfully lonely, first through Parker’s decline, and then his death. Unless she was at church or made the effort to walk up to Mrs. Pierson’s, she didn’t have a lot of contact outside the store, and that was casual. A friendly wave, an exchange of funds. Done.

Today, a handful of customers drifted through, but most everyone was busy in the fields or in town. Angel straightened the house and the store, then took a hoe and a rake and packets of seed to the garden.

“What are we gonna plant?” Paul asked.

“Carrots and radishes, first of all,” she replied. “The corn looks like it came through all right, some of the collards are okay, too.” She tucked her hair under her hat. “And what do you say to sunflowers and pumpkins and watermelons?”

“Okay!”

She paced off the plot, counting under her breath. “Tell you what. If you work hard, I’ll give you a watermelon vine and some sunflowers of your own to take care of, how ’bout that?”

“Can I have a pumpkin, too?”

She grinned. “You betcha.”

As Angel squatted in the cool earth, digging and planting, she sang. Paul bent with fierce intent, meticulous about even the tiniest seed placement. He was born tidy, his mother said, with a powerful sense of how things were meant to be.