Whiter Than Snow (26 page)

That had been a week earlier, and Minder knew all about how the body had been discovered. People were glad for it, because it meant the avalanche had come to an end and they could put it in the past. There were some who thought it odd that Joe had not wanted a service, but others were relieved, because they did not know what would be expected of them at a Negro funeral. Still, there was compassion for Joe. The women left cakes and bread on the table in Joe’s cabin. Essie herself asked Minder if it was all right to make an extra portion of stew so that she could take it to the grieving man.

It was a good thing, Minder thought, that he had employed the young woman. He was glad that she cooked and cleaned the house for him, glad that she kept company with him, and gladdest that others were beginning to accept her. The Patch sisters, as they were called again, Lucy and Dolly, had invited her to stitch with their little group of quilters, and Essie said she would, although she had not yet felt comfortable enough to attend.

Joe was welcomed back to his job at the mill, which was unusual for any worker who had been away so long. The mill rarely held a job open for more than a week. Men, who were not much at expressing sympathy, slapped him on the back and said they were glad he was there. Joe only nodded. He’d always been an accommodating fellow, but now he was aloof. He brooded. But then, grief brought strange changes. Just look at how Ted Turpin had stopped drinking and who knows what else, and had started going to church. So no one wondered about the change in Joe.

Nobody knew better than Minder what grief could do. The old man studied Joe’s bowed body as he stood in the graveyard. Joe might have been praying, or he could have been crying, or perhaps he was just leaning over to brush the leaves off the grave. Minder couldn’t tell at that distance. It wouldn’t do to bother the man. Minder’d never been much good with words anyway and wouldn’t have known what to say to Joe even if Joe’d been a white man.

The old man started to turn away then. The day was cold, and he had finished his rounds and was anxious to go home, because Essie made tea in the afternoons and the warmth of it seeped into his bones. But for some reason, he stayed. Maybe he was just curious, but it seemed as if something wasn’t right, and it got on his mind. After all, it was strange that Joe wasn’t at work at the mill. With all the time he’d taken off to search for his daughter, he ought not to miss work to go to the cemetery. It was an odd thing, a man going off like that in the middle of the day to visit a grave, even if he was filled with grief.

So Minder stood in the cold, with the wind whipping up the leaves and blowing them across the graves, and watched. And he saw Joe pick up a bag he’d laid beside the grave and take out a rope, a long one and thick. Minder knew then what Joe had in mind to do. He knew because he had thought a hundred times to do it himself. But he’d never had the courage.

Minder thumbed Kate Forsythe’s worn Bible in his pocket and wished that he’d gone on home, that he hadn’t discovered Joe’s intent. It wasn’t just because Joe was a Negro and Minder didn’t like Negroes. He wouldn’t have wanted to come between any man and what the man had to do. But Minder knew in his heart that he had to stop the black man, knew at that moment that this was the reason he’d lived so long, knew that this was his chance to redeem himself for what had happened to Billy Boy.

Minder stepped out from behind the old graves just as Joe threw the rope over the limb of a pine. The old man walked slowly toward the new grave, because he had dropped his cane, and quietly, because there was still snow on the ground and the wind in the trees made a soft moan that covered up the sound of footfalls.

He came up close to Joe and said, “Trouble’s come on you all at once.”

Joe had not heard the old man approach, and he whirled around. He didn’t attempt to hide the rope or the purpose for which he intended to use it. “No,” he said after a pause. “I’ve never been out of trouble. It’s been with me my whole life.”

“It comes pretty high, the cost of life,” Minder replied. “Sometimes you wonder if it’s worth it.”

“Sometimes you know it isn’t.” Joe looked down at the fresh pile of dirt covered with a wash of white snow that had fallen the night before.

Both men were silent for a moment, then Minder asked suddenly, “Are you acquainted with the Lord?”

“I was. But He taken everything I had. I thought He’d leave my girl, but He didn’t.”

“He’s a hard one to understand. I haven’t made His acquaintance again myself, but I might this day.”

Joe felt the rope in his hand, the rough surface gripped in the hard, calloused fingers of his right hand. “How come you’re to be here?”

“Because I’m somebody who’s wore your shoe.”

“You’re the one with the grandson that got taken,” Joe said. He had not recognized Minder at first. “But that doesn’t mean you know me.”

“I’ve been to hell myself.”

“Well, I’m sorry for it, but you don’t know what it’s like to have nothing left to you. My life’s been so fetched mean. I’ve stepped in every trap the devil’s set for me. All my life I’ve been a white folks’ darky. They worked me up like a mule. My wife died ’cause it was suppertime for a white doctor. I had to leave my farm behind, run off with Jane. Now she’s gone, I got no reason to live anymore.” Joe coiled and uncoiled the rope, then made a circle, the beginning of a noose.

Minder raised himself up and looked the colored man in the eye. “You’ve had it mighty bad, but you don’t have the corner on hard times. I won’t historize on you, but there’s others been mighty ill off. It’s root, hog, or die for a good plenty of them.”

“They’re not my business, and I’m not yours, old man.”

“You are,” Minder said, “because maybe you’re my retribution. Maybe if I keep you from doing this fool thing, the devil will call it quits on me. I got to save you to save myself.” Minder was never a big talker, and the words surprised him. It seemed as if they were someone else’s words, and he wondered where they’d come from, but he knew they were true, knew if he saved Joe’s life, the grief he’d carried for more than fifty years might let up on him, Billy Boy might forgive him.

“There is nothing wrong about it, what I’m doing. Jane’s waiting for me, waiting the way a dog waits for a bone. I got to go to her.”

“I guess it slipped you by that this is no decision for you to make. It’s up to the Lord.”

“I thought you weren’t acquainted with Him.”

“Maybe I met up with Him just now.” Minder thought hard. “Besides, how do you know you’ll go to heaven with Jane? Maybe you haven’t done enough good to deserve it. Have you thought of that?” Minder hadn’t thought of that, either, until he said it. He wondered again where his words were coming from.

“What do you know about it?”

“I know a good plenty. I used to think hell was too good for me, but now maybe I’ve been kept alive this long for a chance to go to heaven myself.” He paused and watched Joe twist the rope around the loop. “You want to risk it, do you?”

“You’re a plainspoken old man, aren’t you? You think you know every little thing, do you?”

The shift whistle blew then, and the two men were still until the sound died away. Then Minder said sadly, “No, I don’t know so much. I’m an evil man. I’ve done wickedness you’ll never know. I let my friend die because I was a coward. And maybe I couldn’t kill myself like you’re trying to do because I’m a coward.”

Joe thought that over and said slowly, “Living’s not a thing for cowards.”

“Maybe not. It does have its joys, and you don’t want them to slip you by. If I’d killed myself way back then, well, I wouldn’t have had Emmett. And it was better to have him for a little while than not at all.” Minder looked off toward the Fourth of July, but he could see neither the mine nor the slope below it. “I believe you think the same about your girl.”

“You think if you stop me from stringing myself up, it’ll make up for that boy you killed?”

“Not make up for it. No, not a tidbit, I don’t suppose. But you’d be doing me a favor. I’d feel better about it if you wasn’t to kill yourself.”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t stop me, would you? You couldn’t, a puny old man like you.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’d just slap me down.” Minder thought a moment. “I’ll tell you what, though. I’ll ask you to wait a day. Would you do that for me? After all, there’s no hurry, is there? If tomorrow you still want to do it, I won’t say a word to stop you. I’ll even hand you the rope. Just give me one day.” And the next day, Minder thought, and the next, but he didn’t say that.

Joe looked at the rope in his hands and then at the limb of the jack pine. He took pity on Minder then, or maybe it was that he really didn’t want to die. Whatever his reason, Joe slowly began to pull at the rope. When it was off the tree, he coiled it and put it back into the bag. “You’re a troublesome old man.”

“I am that.” Minder stood a little apart then as Joe knelt beside the grave. Minder waited until the man stood up, and then he said, “Mrs. Schnable makes tea every afternoon. Her daughter was another one got killed in the slide. There wasn’t anyplace for Mrs. Schnable to go, and so she tends to me now, and she’s a kindly lady. She’d be pleased if she had somebody to talk to besides me. She needs it. So I’d consider it a kindness if you’d come along home with me for a hot drink. You could doctor it if you like.”

The sun was starting down behind the mountains, and Joe shivered, because he hadn’t taken a coat with him. A man planning to kill himself did not need the encumbrance of a coat. He’d been at the grave for a long time, and he wondered what harm it would do to warm himself, what harm to wait a day. So he nodded, and the two men walked through the Meadowbrook burial ground, walked slowly, because Minder didn’t have his cane and had to hold on to Joe’s arm.

They were silent for a time, until Joe said, “It troubles me, Mr. Evans, that one day I’ll forget about her, that she won’t live anymore in my heart.”

“You don’t have to worry about all those things like that. You won’t forget. Never did I ever disremember my friend Billy Boy. There’s not a day I don’t think about him, don’t remember how much I cared about him.”

Joe thought that over as they walked down the road in the late afternoon, Joe holding on to Minder now, keeping the old man steady. He nodded.

“Mrs. Schnable’ll have enough supper for three of us,” Minder said. “But it won’t be pork. She won’t eat pork. You couldn’t hire her to pass it.”

“Won’t eat pork. I never heard of such a thing.”

“Women are funny, but I guess you already know that, ’cause you’ve been married. What was your wife’s name?”

“Orange. Her name was Orange.”

“Why, that’s as pretty a name as I ever heard, a sign better than Minder.” He chuckled.

The two continued on through town, nodding to the men they passed, lifting their caps to the women. A woman wearing an old-fashioned cloak stopped and took Joe’s hands, which were hard and calloused and stained with dirt from the grave, and said she was sorry, real sorry. She was a teacher, and Jane had been a good student. Smart. And sweet. He’d raised a real sweet girl. Joe nodded his thanks, because his throat tightened and he couldn’t speak.

The two men trudged on in the dying winter light toward Minder’s home. It was the ending up of one day. Minder knew there would be another.

Join Sandra’s
Piecework
subscriber’s list for her quarterly
newsletter and information on her appearances.

Go to
www.sandradallas.com
and click on “Newsletter.”

And welcome!