Whistling Past the Graveyard (10 page)

11

w

e’ll just wait a spell,” Eula said. I held baby James while she climbed up into the back of the truck and got the brown grocery bag holding our food. We hadn’t had breakfast. But with Wallace’s bashed-in head still in my mind and us just being run off the road, I wasn’t hungry. She stepped off the back bumper. “Someone’ll be along.” I looked down the long stretch of empty road and doubted it. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to come along after what that man did to us.

“Too bad we’re hidin’ from the law or we could get that man into some trouble for what he did.”
Eula made a sound like she was choking.“Oh,child,the law wouldn’t do nothin’. A white man can do pretty much whatever he wants to a colored woman and a little girl—even if the little girl is white. It the way things are round here.”
“He wrecked us! That’s gotta be against the law. It don’t matter if you’re colored and I’m a kid.”
She sighed and shook her head. “You think what you want. We can’t go to the law anyway, so no sense in gettin’ all worked up over it.”
I was so wound up I wanted to break something . . . like that man’s nose. I gritted my teeth and felt like I was gonna come out of my skin. “Maybe we should just walk.”
Her head snapped up and she looked like she was disappointed in me. I was used to that look, but for some reason it felt particular bad coming from Eula. “Child, I done told you it’s two days’ drive to Nashville,” she said, not sounding prickly like I thought she might. “Walkin’ won’t get us there. We wait.”
Baby James started to fuss for his bottle, so I gave him a little jiggle until Eula had it ready. I think he liked me ’cause he sounded like he was trying not to cry.
“What if—?” I cut myself off and fixed my eyes on the road. “What?”
I was all shook up inside. And even though I still wanted to scratch that man’s eyes out, there was something hopeless inside me, too. “What if the next person comes along is like that man in the car?” She stood in front of me with a frown on her face.“It ain’t right that you had to see such hatefulness. Ain’t everybody like him.”Then she set her shoulders square. “We just trust the good Lord to send someone kind and respectable our way.”
It was plain Eula had more faith in the Lord than I did. Which was a wonder; from what I’d seen, she had plenty of reason not to. We sat down in the shade. We fed baby James one of the bottles Eula had wrapped in towels soaked in springhouse water and waited for the good Lord to do his work.
I spent some time splitting long blades of grass plucked from the ground, my mind asking a whole string of questions that was probably best left alone. I was most curious about Eula’s change since we drove away from her house. While we’d been there, she’d been skitterjittery about killin’ Wallace. She’d never stopped talking. Once we left in the truck, she went more inside herself. Now she was acting almost normal, like Wallace was just back home and not dead. I wondered why. Did she figure out Wallace needed killin’ and wasn’t feeling so bad about it now? Was she still set on going to the law once we got to Nashville?
I found a foxtail grass and pulled it from its skin. As I chewed on the soft, green stem, I watched Eula feed baby James. I couldn’t ask about Wallace, but I couldn’t keep all of my questions plugged inside my head any longer. “Who do you think baby James’s momma is?” Eula tilted her head to the side and looked at that baby with so much love it made my throat hurt. I wondered what it would feel like if someone looked at me like that.
“Someone young and scared, I imagine,” she said.
“Why scared?” It seemed to me that anybody old enough to have a baby ought to be grown-up enough to leave scaredness behind—unless they lived with a man like Wallace, that is.
“Maybe all alone,” Eula said. “Maybe too many mouths to feed already.”
There was a girl in my class who said she didn’t have a daddy, just a momma. I’d asked her if her daddy died, but she pinkie-swore she’d never had one, that her momma never even got married. When I’d asked Mamie about it, she’d said ladies didn’t ask those kinds of questions. She was in a mood, so I knew not to argue that I didn’t want to be a lady. Wish I had, maybe I’d know now and have one curiosity taken care of. I almost asked Eula about it now, about how a woman can have a baby and not a husband, but considering Eula done killed her own husband today, I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea.
Then I thought on her other idea about James’s mother. The LeCounts next door had five kids. They weren’t rich like Patti Lynn’s family and they all got plenty to eat.Truth be told, their dinners always smelled a whole lot better than what Mamie cooked up.Then I thought about the Pykes; ten kids, all black haired and gray eyed. They was all skinny and pale, kinda like I imagined that ghost would have looked at the haunted house. The Pykes I knew always had snotty noses, even in the summer. Mamie said the ladies auxiliary did a lot to help out the Pykes because they was dirt-poor.
I wondered if James could maybe be a Pyke. He was too little and wrinkly to tell if he looked like one. Then I wondered if the Pykes had throwed away other babies before him.
Eula had told me it was better if I didn’t know where James come from, but things had changed considerable since then. I decided it was worth a try to narrow down if maybe he was a Pyke. “You find James in Cayuga Springs . . . where you was deliverin’ pies?”
Maybe if she still didn’t want to answer about James, the pie question would get it out of her by accident. Mamie had got plenty of things out of me by asking two questions at once like that. Eula looked at me with her eyes all squinty. After I’d almost given up on an answer, she said, “I did.”
I looked at baby James again, trying to see if his hair looked like it was gonna sprout in black like a Pyke. “But you don’t know who his momma is?”
She shook her head. “Suppose we’ll know soon enough after we get to Nashville.” There was a little shimmy of her shoulders right then, like she’d shivered even though it was hot enough to boil a bullfrog in a pond.
I stopped asking about James. But my mind didn’t want to stop thinking about him. It seemed impossible, someone throwin’ away a baby, no matter how dirt-poor they was. Baby James was noisy and a pain in the be-hind, but I wouldn’t just leave him on a church step and not know what was gonna happen to him or who was gonna take care of him.
Something Eula had said come back into my head. She’d said she’d been nothin’ but a throwaway before she met Wallace. I knew she wasn’t throwed away as a baby ’cause she knew her momma and daddy. But was being a throwed-away person why she was so fixed on keeping James even after she’d seen he was white?
“You got any brothers or sisters?” I asked.
She gave me a look like I’d asked something I shouldn’t have. She swallowed and looked away before she turned it around on me. “Do you?”
I shook my head. “Wish I had a brother like one of Patti Lynn’s— she’s my best friend back home. Those boys can pull a real good gag and they got some of the goriest stories. Patti Lynn thinks they’re awful, but I think they’re funny. I wouldn’t want her sister, though.” I frowned. “Even with her record collection. She thinks she’s hotsytotsy.” I made like I was patting my fancy hairdo. “Not to mention she gets hair-pullin’ mad when Patti Lynn and I snoop in her stuff. The boys don’t care.”
Eula made a little grunt in her throat. “Sister might be better. Even a hair-pullin’ one. Not all brothers are like Patti Lynn’s.” Eula’s eyes got far away.
“You got one? A brother?”
Her eyes came back from whatever past they’d been busy seeing. She curled her nose and snorted. “Charles. He just like Pap. No-account. Ain’t seen him in years. Might not even be alive no more.” Something in her voice said she hoped he wasn’t.
Right then, she stood straight up, looking down the road. “Here come!”
I jumped up and looked. A truck was coming from the direction we’d been headed. It was lots better’n the one in the ditch; it looked to have all of its red paint and it didn’t shout out rumbles and rattles.
Before I could stop her, Eula walked out into the bright sun that was blisterin’ the road, shading her eyes with the hand not hanging on to James. My stomach balled up tight as the truck slowed down and stopped.
Careful.
She stopped just like she could hear my mind, keeping the ditch between her and the truck. Her shoulders got acting all turtley again. She stood quiet and still.
The man’s arm resting on the door was so brown I couldn’t tell right off if he was light-skinned colored or suntan-skinned white. Maybe Eula couldn’t either. When he stuck his head out the window, the shade of the straw hat hid most of his face. He was wearing overalls and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His brown chin and cheeks were covered with white stubble. Then he tipped his hat back on his head and showed he was white—which before this morning would have been a comfort.
I held my breath and got my feet ready to run and help Eula if he got ornery.
“That your truck?” he asked.
Eula nodded real slow, keeping her eyes down.
“Y’all okay?” he asked in a voice that didn’t sound like it yelled hateful things. “Nobody hurt?”
She nodded again.
Well, that wasn’t any help, her not talking like that. What was that man to think, we were okay? Or we were hurt? We didn’t need extra questions.
I hurried out of the shade and stopped beside her. “We’re fine, sir.”
He looked surprised to see me; right before he got all squinty, that is. “I seen you before little girl?”
Eula got stiff beside me.
I shook my head, real definite. “No, sir. We ain’t from around here.”
Eula made a little sound in her throat and I bumped my shoulder into her as a warning to keep quiet. I went on, “We’re on our way to live with our aunt in Nashville.” Then I hung my head and looked real sad. “Me and James’s momma died last week.”
That sound came from Eula again, a little louder this time, like words was about to pop from her mouth. I bumped her again.
“Oh, a shame to hear that. My sympathy,” the man said, touching the brim of his hat. “How’d y’all end up in the ditch?”
I didn’t need to lie about that part. “Some man run us off the road ’cause he hates coloreds.”
The man just nodded.
“Can you get us out?” I asked.
“Reckon I can give it a try.”
He moved his truck around so its back was at the edge of the road, facing the back of Eula’s truck. As he was doing this, I said real quiet to Eula, “Since you got no stomach for truth-stretchin’, you’d better go back to the trees and wait until we’re ready to go again.”
“Can’t leave you alone with a stranger.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t ask you to go back to Cayuga Springs, just get too far away for bein’ asked questions. I’ll tell him James can’t stay in the sun. Go. ’Fore he gets out.”
Eula walked back toward the woods, but stopped as soon as she was standing in the shade. Her eyes stayed on me like a momma hen’s.
“We thank you kindly for your help,” I said to the man as he pulled a chain from his truck bed.
He just stood there staring at me for a spell. “How’d you get those marks on your throat?”
Uh-oh. I hadn’t thought about Wallace leaving marks along with the soreness. “A bear,” I said quickly. “I was runnin’ from a bear. Got hit in the neck with a limb.”
“A bear?”
Dumb! Dumb! I shoulda waited till I thought of something better. Course the man didn’t look like he believed me. Who would believe a little girl could outrun a bear?
I laughed a little and put my hand over the marks so he couldn’t study them too close. “Well, we was playin’ bear. My friend was the bear.”
“Oh, I see.”
I held my breath for a minute. Then he knelt down behind Eula’s truck and I was pretty sure he was done asking about my neck.
“This your momma’s truck?”
My heart jumped. Why couldn’t he just pull us out without all the questions? After a second, I decided there was no law against a colored owning a truck. “No, sir. Belongs to our maid. She been with us my whole life. Momma don’t . . .” I looked down at my feet like I was trying not to cry. “I mean, Momma didn’t drive.” A good lie needs particulars.
The man sent a look over at Eula. I was afraid she’d do something to ruin my story, so I started making crying sounds and snifflin’ real hard. For a second, the man looked like he didn’t know what to do. Then he patted me on the shoulder (I could tell he wasn’t used to kids ’cause he did it like he was slappin’ a watermelon) and then crawled under the back bumper with the chain. When he come back out, it had been hooked on something under there.
Two minutes later, Eula’s truck was back on the road and pointed toward Nashville.
“Tell your colored woman it doesn’t look like any real damage,” he said. “But I’d have it checked at a garage first chance you get, just to be sure.”
“Yes, sir. We will.”
He looked toward Eula again. “Y’all be careful.” He looked down at me, right deep into my eyes. “Things are mighty touchy right now. Mind that you don’t go lookin’ for trouble by takin’ your maid where she’s got no business bein’, you understand?”
Trouble seemed to find me well enough on its own, but I just nodded.
“And get to your aunt as quick as you can.”
That one gave me goose bumps. I stood up taller. “Thank you, sir.”
I watched him drive away, his words shootin’ around in my head.
I remembered the news stories on the TV. Somewhere in Alabama a colored crowd had been blasted with a fire hose by the police because they wouldn’t leave the streets. President Kennedy sent soldiers with guns to Ole Miss last fall when a Negro was trying to go to school there.There’d been lots of talk and whisperin’ by the grown-ups beforehand. Then riots started and some people got killed. Grown-ups wasn’t whisperin’ anymore after that. They was yellin’.
Mamie had explained that some coloreds were stepping out of their place, stirrin’ up trouble; that everybody—colored and white—was happy with keeping things separate, and it wasn’t the president’s business to tell Mississippi what to do. It had all made sense then. But after hearin’ about Shorty and that man puttin’ us in the ditch, I wondered. Eula hadn’t been doing anything but driving down the road.
“Things are mighty touchy right now
.
”
Once the man who helped us was gone, I waved Eula back toward the road. I decided not to tell her what he had said. His warning was for me. It was my job to keep Eula safe.

12

e

ula kept letting the truck drift from one side of the road and to the other, like someone who didn’t know how to drive. The further we went, the worse she got. Tick, tock, right, left. We was like the tail on the cat clock in the Sunday-school room.