Walking Through Shadows (14 page)

I had big plans for me and Sheila. I wasn’t gonna spend my whole life working on a dairy, shoveling grain, and sweeping cow piss. I told Sheila that someday we was gonna be riding in a fine car, a Cadillac with chrome wheels and a wood dashboard. We would leave Mississippians choking on our dust when we drove out to California to the ocean. Sheila hadn’t never seen an ocean, and she said she thought it must be like the sky only upside down. I hadn’t never seen the ocean neither, but I had a fair idea of what it would be like. Salty, I told her. Like swimming in the water that runs off from the ice around the ice cream churn.

What would we do for work was what Sheila wanted to know, and I said, as to that, I hadn’t decided yet, but it would be something that could be done in a big office building where the air was clean and fans blowed on you all day. Sheila said that would be something all right, but she might miss the scent of clover and mowed grass, and wouldn’t we be sad to leave our families and friends like the Cottons.

I got mad at her then. We was lying on the porch boards in the sun between milkings. Sheila’s face was red and more freckles was already popping up on her arms and legs. I’m dark and the sun don’t bother me, but Sheila, she’ll blister up if she don’t watch out. I shoved her over to where there was a little shade made by a branch of the oak. “Okay, you like it here so much. You stay; I’ll go by myself.”

Sheila just laughed at that. “You ain’t going without me. You wouldn’t.”

I raised up on my elbows and put my face close up over hers. “I would too leave you. I got a need to see what’s all in the world, like in California. That’s where the movie stars you so crazy about live, you know.”

Sheila flicked her tongue in her mouth and stuck it out to nearly touch my face. “I know that much. Maybe we could go on a trip. A vacation. I ain’t never been on a vacation.”

I sat up, wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve. “Mr. Cotton’s going on a trip. He’s going to Louisiana to take the Ayrshires, but guess who he’s taking.”

Sheila struggled up to her knees and put her hands on my thighs. “Who? You?”

“No. One of the niggers. Digger most likely. He ought to take me.”

“Oh, Stoney. I hope he changes his mind. Louisiana! Ain’t that far away? Is it close to California?”

I pushed her hands off me and stood up. “I ain’t got time to give no geography lessons. I’m going over to Mama’s, see if she’s got any sweets to give away.” I went in and got my truck keys and when I come back out, Sheila was pulling on her boots. “Don’t go messing with them mean Jerseys while I’m gone. You remember what happened that day I went to town with Mr. Cotton.”

“I ain’t, Stoney. I learnt my lesson on that,” she said, rubbing her leg like she was feeling them terrible bruises that cow give her again. I couldn’t believe a cow had messed her up so bad, but Sheila can figure out a way to get herself in trouble quicker than any gal I ever knowed.

Mama didn’t have no cakes made nor pies neither, but she give me five dollars and said not to tell Daddy, like I was crazy enough to. Hugh come over while I was there, and we went out to the barn to see Daddy’s new baler. I couldn’t get too worked up over a piece of farm equipment, but Hugh acted like it was a Rolls Royce automobile he was inspecting. I sat down on a hay bale and chewed on a straw while he rattled on about how this baler was gonna make hay bales tighter and better than the old one. After a while, he sat down on a bale too. “How’s that pretty little wife of yours?” he asked.

I didn’t know if he was being mean calling her pretty or if he was trying to be nice for once. “She’s fine and dandy,” I said. “She pesters me all night and all day, can’t get enough of me.” I had told him this before when he’d bragged about Earlene’s big tits.

“She’s a little wildcat, huh?” I looked over at Hugh and I didn’t like the curl of his mouth when he said that. Maybe he didn’t believe his little brother was more of a man than he’d ever be.

I leaned over and stared hard at his sneering puss. “You can’t imagine what that hump can do when the lights is out.”

Hugh’s eyes got big. He didn’t say nothing. Couldn’t think up anything ole Earlene had to top that. I stood up. “I best be getting back to her right now. Tell Daddy I think that baler is a piece of shit.”

“I’ll tell him you said that,” Hugh yelled after me. “I sure will.”

“Do it,” I hollered back at him.

When I got home, Sheila was back in the kitchen peeling Irish potatoes for our supper. I reached over her shoulder and grabbed the potato she held next to the knife. I took a bite and dropped it into the pan of water beside her. She jumped as drops splashed up her arms. “Stoney! Wait’ll I cook ’em.” She turned around with the knife still in her hand. I held her wrist tight and closed my hand over hers. I forced her hand up until the blade was close to her throat. “Stoney! Stop!” she hollered out.

“Take your clothes off right now,” I said making my voice tough like a gangster’s. “After I rape you, I’m gonna kill you.”

Sheila’s knees went to jelly and she slid right down to the floor. At first I thought she were pretending with me, but then I seen she was upset like she believed me. I knelt beside her. “It were just a joke,” I said in my regular voice. “You know I was teasing.”

She dropped her chin on her chest and wouldn’t look at me. She were crying, not making no noise, but drops fell and spotted her blue apron. “I’m sorry. You just, you was sounding so real.”

When I lifted her face, it was like I could near ’bout see bad memories going on in her head behind her eyes. Maybe her papa had held a knife to her before. Maybe he’d told her he’d kill her if she didn’t let him fuck her. I wondered if I was going to have to kill him someday. I knowed I wouldn’t be one bit sorry if I did.

Sheila was like that lizard that changes color when it moves from grass to dirt. By the time we went to bed that night, she was singing “Beautiful Dreamer” and pretending her nightdress were a evening gown, and she held it out and danced around the bedroom like she was Cinderella at that ball. I told her I was the prince, and she said no, that I was a king.

I felt like a king two weeks later when Mr. Cotton and me set out on our big trip. I don’t know how he come to change his mind and take me, but I was some glad to be going. Sheila was as happy as me. She took an hour ironing my two shirts, and she cooked up a whole ring of sausage for us to eat along the way. Of course, I had duties. It were my job to load the Ayrshires, the grain, water for them. They wasn’t much trouble though, and the man who had the bull admired them, said I was taking good care of Mr. Cotton’s stock for him.

Mr. Cotton drove straight up there on through the night, and when we got to the farm, he unloaded his gear and spent the night in the big house. I slept out in the barn on a horse blanket, but I didn’t mind much. It was warm and the sky seemed bigger overhead so that I got to wondering if there was more stars in this state of Louisiana than there was in Mississippi. On the way home, Mr. Cotton said we was gonna stay at a roadside cabin if we found one handy to us, and I was sure looking forward to that. But it didn’t turn out that way at all.

We ran into some trouble on the way home at this roadhouse. I had too much liquor in me and the red haze come back on me when these two fellows insulted a nice woman I think Mr. Cotton liked more’n he should. I don’t remember a whole lot about the fight, just the taste of blood and some little pain that didn’t amount to nothing much. I slept all the way home, and I remember just before I waked up, I was dreaming about a squalling baby crawling around out in the pasture. I was running after it because Franklin, Mr. Cotton’s bull, was headed right for it. I had it in my arms when the sun hit my eyes and waked me up.

I didn’t say nothing to Mr. Cotton, but I figured it was his coming baby in the dream. Sheila told me they was gonna have one, and you’d of thought it was her that was expecting it. I said, “Ain’t they kind of old to have another one? Annette’s gonna be twelve this year.”

“Shoot,” Sheila said. “My mama’s just had one a few months back and she’s way older than Miss Rowena.” She had this goo goo look in her eyes that warned me what she was gonna say next. “Stoney, maybe we’ll have a baby soon too. I used my magic cord on the baby bed they got, and it worked. If you’d let me tie it on you, we could…”

I interrupted her and said, “I told you I ain’t wearing no string on my peter. Never. You can go down there and rock the Cottons’ young’n or go out to your mama’s and get one of hers. She’s got more’n she can take care of, probably be glad to get rid of one of ’em.”

Sheila shut up then, and I was glad of it.

After we got back from Louisiana, I couldn’t quit thinking on Sheila’s papa. Wondering if’n he was the first one to have her. If he was, then that could be the reason he hated me so much. Sheila, she tried to pretend her papa would come around to us being a couple, but I seen how her eyes slid away to the floor when she said such.

There was what happened on this one Sunday afternoon. Me and Sheila was sitting on the porch between milking times when she seen her papa’s truck going real slow in front of our house. “That’s Papa,” she said, throwing down her bit of sewing and leaping outta her chair. “Maybe he’s coming to visit us, Stoney. Get up and go put your shirt on.”

“I ain’t wearing no shirt for him, and he ain’t coming here noways,” I said, watching him come to a dead stop in front of our drive.

“Lookit! He is too. He’s coming.” And she took off down the drive. I stood on the porch watching her running on the gravel on her bare feet like she were floating on a road of cotton bolls. When she stuck her head in the window where her papa sat, I could hear bits of their talking.

“Git in,” he yelled at her. “You needed at home.”

I saw Sheila shaking her head, pointing up to me, then I seen him wringing her arm till her knees buckled and she fell up against the truck door. I started running to her then, but Mr. Carruth had the door open and her thrown across him before I got halfway down the drive. He backed out onto Carterdale Road and was gone in less than a minute. I turned around and headed toward my truck, thinking I could overtake him easy, but the piece of shit I got to drive wouldn’t turn over. I figured it were the starter or maybe the battery, but it didn’t matter which it was since I wasn’t going nowhere right then.

I waited all afternoon for her to come back, but it got to be milking time and she still hadn’t showed up, and I went on down to the dairy barn in a real bad mood. Them cows got the worst of my feelings, but I took a swing at Shorty too when he said the reason Sheila was late was because she and me had had a fight and she couldn’t stand the sight of my ugly face. I told him to mind his own business, there weren’t no fight twixt us, and then he smirked like he does with his eyes kinda crossing, and I popped him with my fist in the gut. He doubled over and said, “Stoney, you’re crazy. I was pulling your leg, man.”

I knowed he were joking, but I needed to hit somebody. ’Course I couldn’t tell him that, so I said I were sorry, and we got on with the milking.

When I first started back to the house, I thought Sheila was still gone, but when I got as far as the garden patch, I seen her slumped over at the well. “You alright?” I hollered to her. She didn’t answer, and I run on towards her and seen the dark spots on the ground around her weren’t water. “Son-of-a-bitch! What’s he done to you?” I grabbed her arms and turned her around. Her lip was swelled up some, but I couldn’t see where all the blood around her was coming from. “Where you hurt?” I asked her.

Sheila pointed down toward her feet. I lifted her torn skirt and seen a deep cut shaped like a bolt of lightning on the back of her leg. “How’d he do it?”

She started to cry. “Claw hammer. I was running. He throwed it and it caught me.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” I said. “He ain’t getting away with this no more.”

Sheila dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around my legs. “Stoney, he took off again. He ain’t home.”

I leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Then I’ll wait till he gets back; I’ll wait, but I’m gonna kill him soon as I find him.”

I carried her into the house and got some rags and salve and helped her bandage herself up. She wanted me to lay down beside her in the bedroom, said she had to tell me what had happened. It was dark by then, and I couldn’t see nothing but the outline of her. “I’ll light the lamp,” I said, but she put her hand on my arm.

“No. Wait. What I got to tell you I want to say without no light on my face.”

This kind of rushing, whooshing sound started in my head, and I knowed I didn’t want to hear her words, but I was going to have to let her say what she needed to say.

Her voice was low, singsong like she were reading some psalm or poem. I hadn’t never heard her read of course, but I thought this would be how she would sound if’n she knew her letters. “Papa took me to the woods. He parked beside a big ole pine, eighty feet or more. He said he missed me.”

“I’ll just bet my ass he does,” I said.

Sheila put her hand over my mouth. “Shush. He said Mama ain’t been feeling good. I reckon she’s got another one a-coming. But I didn’t say nothin’ to him. He telled me he ain’t sleeping good since I been gone.” She got quiet then, and when she spoke again, the air in her went out between each word like a wind inside her was pushing them out into the room. “See Stoney, when I lived there, Papa would come to me. Come into us kids’ room and shake me awake. We’d go out. Out to the tool shed sometime. The turnip patch. Down to the creek. We’d go to those places. Once in the rain and it were cold.”

I knew what was going to come next. I tried to cover my ears, but Sheila pulled my hands down and held onto them. I could feel her little nails against my skin. “Stoney, you got to hear. It were always when Papa was drinking the corn. When he didn’t have none, he never came. He left me be all those nights.”

“I reckon he’d had a few today when he took you off.”

“Yeah. He got to crying, Stoney. He said he wanted me to come back home. ‘Leave that bastard you hitched up to like a mule pulling a plow’ is what he said. I telled him I love you, how it is with us. I said, ‘I’m happier than I ever been in my life.’”