Whisper Town (21 page)

“Poor white trash is not what Josie thinks of me! I think you’re jealous.”

“I ain’t jealous of anything that woman gives away.” Lucky kept rubbing the tip of a strand of her hair between her fingers,
smoothing the ends and feeling the slapdash knots she had pinned around the crown of her head.

Angel pulled on the old blouse she had worn to school—faded blue cotton, long-sleeved and warm—buttoned it up, and slipped
into her trousers. “So to make you happy, I should give you the dress and cut off my hair.”

“I said I don’t want nothing that belonged to Josie Hipps.”

Angel pulled out a pair of scissors. “Cut my hair then.” She dared her.

“I ain’t afraid to cut off your hair. You spiting yourself?”

“I don’t think you’ll do it.”

Lucky took the scissors from Angel’s hand and opened them over a large hank of her hair.

“What are you two doing?” Jeb entered the house through the kitchen.

Lucky sliced through Angel’s hair and handed the cutoff strand back to her. “Here’s your hair then.”

“Have you lost what good sense God gave you?” Jeb asked.

“You are jealous!” The strand dropped out of Angel’s hand.

“Angel wanted her hair cut, so I cut it.”

Angel stared into the mirror at the right side cut just below her ear. “I’m a freak.”

“I’ll cut the other side so both sides match,” said Lucky.

Jeb kept looking at the small pile of brown hair on the floor and then at Lucky.

Lucky stopped laughing.

“I can’t trust you, Lucky, not for a day,” said Jeb, mad as a hornet. “This is what people expect, shenanigans like this,
and here you go and give them the ammunition they’ve been wanting.”

Lucky ran out of the house, around the east side, past the window, and disappeared into the woods.

Angel and Jeb followed her as far as the porch. Angel pulled on her coat. “That wasn’t the thing to say, Jeb,” she said. She
gave the scissors to Jeb. “This is great, just great. I can’t see her going too far. Lucky don’t like those woods.” She grabbed
an extra coat and took off after her.

Angel regretted not having brought the lantern, but the moonshine along the streambed led her a good ways. Lucky made enough
noise to keep Angel moving not far behind; the
thump
of a stone kicked by her foot, the
swish
of brush. Angel had known that wood’s path for so long, she followed it as well as the path from the kitchen to the outhouse.
She heard tell of having the second sight and thought about how finding her way in the dark might be that gift. Her toe hit
a boulder. She stumbled sideways and then, flailing her hands in front of her, scraped her hands in thorny shrubbery. She
thought of calling out to Lucky to stop making her run after her in the dark. But if Lucky had thought about stopping to rest,
then hearing a plea from Angel might give her reason to keep running for spite. Lucky had had her way for too long in Angel’s
family and it had spoiled her.

Angel came into the clearing not far from where Willie kept his trot line. He kept a trap out in these woods too, but where
exactly she did not know. The moon shone down on a boulder as big as the cab of Jeb’s truck. A bird called out, maybe a raven,
but Willie knew his birdcalls better than she. The cold had not caused the stream to ice over and it had run hard all winter,
too hard to ice. The only sound she picked up on was the raven, the stream, and a bristling wind that stung her ears. She
brought her coat collar up over her ears and swore under her breath at Lucky. She peered out through the neck of the coat.
The splendid dark hair moved slightly from across the stream, a flash of lightning near the water. “I see you, Lucky,” she
said.

“I don’t give a care,” said Lucky. Her head went down into her arms.

“Sit over on that rock and freeze then. I’m going back,” said Angel. She came to her feet and turned away from the stream.

“I am freezing, if that makes you happy.”

“I brought an extra coat. But if you don’t want it, I’ll take it back.”

Lucky shifted and said, “You can bring me the coat.”

Angel had to roll another boulder into the water to reach the middle stone.

Lucky rose and reached out both arms, two extensions reaching in the dark, thin but strong like a boy’s arms.

Angel balanced her weight between the stepping-stones. “You got a long stride.”

Lucky rolled another boulder into the water and pressed her left foot against it. She reached her right arm toward Angel and
grabbed her. Angel leaped. Her right foot kicked sideways. The water bit her ankle, icy and stabbing cold. She felt her body
pulled forward out of the stream. Lucky backed away, making room for them both on the bank. Angel staggered but took two more
long strides until her feet felt sod again. She gave her the coat. “Your arms feel like ice. I can’t believe we made it across
in the dark.”

“After a while, my eyes grow used to it.”

“You’re shivering. I’m glad the moon’s out.” Angel kept holding on to Lucky’s arms, even after she slipped on the coat. She
rubbed up and down on her arms, sure that any minute Lucky would jerk away, but she didn’t.

“I’m not jealous of you, but I’m sorry I cut off your hair,” said Lucky.

“Why’d you do it then?”

“You’re always daring me, like you don’t think I’ve got any gumption. I got as much as you, and more.”

Angel hugged herself for warmth. “I was stupid to dare you.”

Lucky smoothed the short strands of Angel’s hair. “It surprised me when I cut off such a big hank. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Maybe I’ll cut it all short. It’s the rage now.”

“Sometimes I do things I wish I’d never done. It’s not the first time.”

“First time giving a haircut?”

“You know about that old hay shed back in those woods, the one you find if you go left down this path?”

“It’s abandoned.”

“It’s a good place for telling things you don’t want no one else to know.”

“You about to tell me something no one else can know, Lucky?”

Lucky headed down the path. “Follow me.”

Jeb fumbled his watch out of his trousers’ pocket a fifth time.

Ida May poked a milk bottle into Myrtle’s screaming mouth. “She won’t take it, Jeb. She never takes it from me.”

Jeb lifted the baby into his arms. He jostled her gently against his chest and stroked the top of her head like he had seen
Lucky do on nights she had soothed her into slumber. Myrtle made a sound like sucking wind and then let out another cry, a
long and drawn-out bawling scream that possessed a horrific pulse.

Willie put a pillow over his head and lay flat on the parlor floor.

“They should have been back by now,” said Ida May. “This is torture!”

Jeb paced in front of the window, gazing into the woods, not seeing a light or the shadow of girls conversing in the moonlight.
An hour had passed since Angel had run out after Lucky.

Willie got up and grabbed his coat and took the lantern off the kitchen peg. “Better to be lost in the woods than stuck in
here listening to Myrtle cry like a bobcat.”

“You’re not going without me,” said Jeb.

“I go all the time to check my traps, Jeb.”

Jeb bundled Myrtle into Ida May’s arms. “You’re the woman of the house till we get back, Ida May.”

“I am not,” she said. “I’m not cut out for it.”

“You are, you’ll see.” Jeb lay Myrtle’s head against Ida May’s shoulder, propped the bottle on a towel, and poked it into
the baby’s mouth.

“I know what you’re up to,” Ida May yelled after them. “You’re scared of a diaper changing. At least I’m man enough to admit
it!”

Jeb grabbed his rifle from the wall rack and slammed the door shut behind himself and Willie. “I think there’s a Scripture
about this,” said Jeb.

“If not, we’ll say there is,” said Willie.

Back inside the hayloft, the wind did not cut through as badly as it did down by the stream. Angel and Lucky sat against the
wall, listening to nothing at all. Angel had not asked her anymore about what she wanted to tell her, but held her tongue
so Lucky would tell her outright and not assess what she divulged on a dare.

“When that Belinda woman used to come and feed Myrtle, I’d sneak off, lay up here, and let the sun warm my legs. I never had
no place to myself except for those times,” said Lucky.

“I never had no place to myself. Wouldn’t know what that was like. Fern’s momma’s the only one I ever knew who did, but her
husband had to die for that to happen. You think she’s lonely knocking around in that house, or you think after we all left,
she threw off her clothes and danced naked all to herself?”

“If I had a big house like the one you said she has, I’d dance all over it.”

“We always had a lot of kids back home in Snow Hill. But we had two older brothers die, one of the influenza, the other got
drunk one night and got himself killed. Then my older sister Claudia met a man and took off with him. I’d never been looked
on as the oldest until then. I miss Claudia.”

“I don’t miss my sister much. She caused me too many headaches.”

“You must have fought then,” said Angel.

“We fought, but she don’t look out for no one but her own self. If she did, things wouldn’t have gotten so bad.”

Angel pushed on her stomach across the straw and then rolled over so that the moonlight fell across her face in a diagonal
stripe.

“She went down to that High Cotton Club and left me on my own. I was thirteen. Didn’t know nothing about nothing, like boys
and the things they do, if you know what I mean.”

“I like boys.”

“They’re no good.” Lucky crawled out as far as Angel and slumped next to her. “Especially the kind come sniffing around after
Jewel. One night she didn’t come home. I heard a car pull up, a nice car like no one I knew drove. I figure it was all right
to open the door to someone who drives a car like that. White shining fenders. A boy come up on our porch. Not young like
me, but in his twenties. White and smiling. He wore these good clothes, like them boys who go to college out of state.” Lucky
turned her face from the moonlight. “He asked for Jewel, and when I told him she was still down at the club, he asked me if
I was her sister, and I told him I was. He kept smiling. I hated that smile, like it made me want to run. He told me that
if he couldn’t see Jewel that I was as pretty as she was. I liked him telling me things I’d never heard before. He wanted
to come inside and wait, he said, for Jewel to come home. I said he could if he’d let me see his car. He let me look inside
his car and touch the seats. I never felt nothing so smooth as that leather.”

“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want, Lucky.”

“He said he’d give me a ride down to the corner and back, so I climbed inside.” Lucky cried. She wiped her eyes with the back
of her hand. “He didn’t take me back like he said. He drove me down to some old house where no one lived. He dragged me inside,
and when I cried, he slapped me and told me to keep my nigger mouth shut.”

“When did Jewel come back?”

“Not until he had put himself all over me and took me and pushed me out of his car into Jewel’s yard.”

“Did you call the cops?”

“White cops don’t listen to colored girls, Angel. That boy told me if I told anyone, he’d kill me, and that no one would care,
so I’d best keep my mouth shut.”

“You never told anyone.”

“Not until my stomach started growing with that white boy’s baby inside.”

“Your daddy got mad at you, I guess?”

“Like it was all my fault. The only one that listened to me was Ruben. He wanted to go and kill him. Jewel begged him not
to, said he would get hanged and nothing would happen to that white boy for what he done.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“When I started having pains, I was scared. Daddy wouldn’t let Momma come and help. Ruben was mad. He put me in his car and
drove me to the church, only no one was around. He said the minister had told him about a preacher that took in children down
in Nazareth. Ruben was crazy that night. He drove me into Nazareth. Things started happening and I started screaming. He drove
us down into the apple orchard. That’s where I had that baby. He wrapped it in his shirt. Then he took off through that orchard
for the lights of some house. When he come back, he had stolen someone’s laundry off their porch. We wrapped that baby the
best we could in clean laundry and put her in that basket. Ruben told me that I was not to blame for what had happened, that
the whites ought to take care of their own kind.”

“You brought your baby to our porch?”

“Ruben knew better than to stop and ask how to find your church. We drove up and down roads all morning. Once he spotted your
church, the Church in the Dell, and the house behind it, he told me that’s where we would come that night and leave Myrtle.
He wrote that note. I couldn’t do it. I cried for her for days until Jewel was sick of me. The minute I laid eyes on her,
I loved her. I named her Myrtle after an auntie who was good to me.”

“You’re Myrtle’s momma, Lucky?”

“Did you hear that, like a clanking sound?” asked Lucky.

Angel brought her hand over Lucky’s stomach and then up to her lips.

“Girls, we’re waiting for you down here,” said Jeb.

Angel and Lucky peeped out from the loft. Jeb waited below. A lantern flashed across the field as Willie marched along the
dead grasses hunting for them.

“You been listening long, Reverend?” asked Lucky.

“Who did this to you, Lucky?” asked Jeb.

“No one listens to me, Reverend. It don’t do no good for you to try and help.”

“I want his name,” said Jeb.

“The buddy of that banker boy. Frank Pella. Myrtle’s his baby.”

O
Z MILLS WHACKED A BADMINTON BIRDIE
over a backyard net to a young girl, who, when she occasionally missed the flying shuttle, endured Oz’s correction and his
taunting comments, like “Bad for you, good for me, Cousin,” or “Another point for your elder relation.” Both Oz and the girl
had donned white sweaters and, even in the brisk Saturday-afternoon air of January, their foreheads perspired, wetting their
hair and causing the blonding strands to stick to their cheeks.