Misner couldn’t agree more. Since the murder of Martin Luther King, new commitments had been sworn, laws introduced but most of it was decorative: statues, street names, speeches. It was as though something valuable had been pawned and the claim ticket lost. That was what Destry, Roy, Little Mirth and the rest were looking for. Maybe the fist painter was looking for it too. In any case, if they couldn’t find the ticket, they might break into the pawnshop. Question was, who pawned it in the first place and why.
“You told me that’s why you left—nothing to do—but you never said why you came back.”
Anna wasn’t about to explain all of that, so she elaborated on what he already knew. “Yeah. Well. Thought I could do something up north. Something real that wouldn’t break my heart. But it was all, I don’t know, talk, running around. I got confused. Still, I don’t regret going one bit—even though it didn’t work out.”
“Well, I’m glad it didn’t, whatever the reason.” He stroked her hand.
Anna returned his touch. “I’m worried,” she said. “About Billie Delia. We have to come up with something, Richard. Something more than choir competitions and Bible class and ribbons for fat vegetables and baby showers…”
“What about her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She came in here a while back, and I knew right away she had something on her mind, but the truck was late with my goods, so I was short with her.”
“Which is to say what?”
“She’s gone off. At least I think so. Nobody’s seen her.”
“What does her mother say?”
Anna shrugged. “Pat’s hard to talk to. Kate asked her about Billie Delia—hadn’t seen her at choir practice. Know what she did? Answered Kate’s question with another.” Anna mimicked Pat Best’s soft, cold voice. “‘Why do you need to know that?’ She and Kate are close, too.”
“You think she’s courting harm? She couldn’t just disappear without anybody knowing where to.”
“I don’t know what I think.”
“Talk to Roger. He should know. He’s her grandfather.”
“You ask him. Not me.”
“Say, what is all this feeling about Roger? I’ve been here three years, almost, and I can’t make out why folks freeze around him. Is it his mortuary business?”
“Probably. That and, well, he ‘prepared,’ if you get my meaning, his own wife.”
“Oh.”
“That’s something to think about, ain’t it?”
“Still.”
They were quiet for a moment, thinking about it. Then Anna walked around the counter and stood at the window. “You know, you right smart about weather. This is the third time I disbelieved you and was proved wrong.”
Misner joined her. Just touching the pane they could tell the temperature had dropped suddenly into the teens.
“Go ahead. Light it,” she said, laughing and happy to be wrong if it made this man she adored right. There were church women who disapproved of his obvious interest in her—her and nobody else. And Pat Best was skilled at hiding her own interest in him. But Anna thought there was more to it than perhaps their own plans for this handsome, intelligent man and their various daughters and nieces. She was certain the disapproval was mostly because of her unstraightened hair. My God, the conversations she had been forced to have when she came back from Detroit. Strange, silly, invasive probings. She felt as though they were discussing her pubic hair, her underarm hair. That if she had walked completely naked down the street they would have commented only on the hair on her head. The subject summoned more passion, invited more opinions, solicited more anger than that prostitute Menus brought home from Virginia. She probably would have straightened it again, eventually—it wasn’t a permanent change or a statement—except it clarified so much for her in the days when she was confused about so much else. Instantly she could identify friends and those who were not; recognize the well-brought-up, the ill-raised, the threatened, the insecure. Dovey Morgan liked it; Pat Best hated it; Deek and Steward shook their heads; Kate Golightly loved it and helped her keep it shaped; Reverend Pulliam preached a whole sermon about it; K.D. laughed at it; most of the young people admired it, except Arnette. Like a Geiger counter, her hair registered, she believed, tranquillity or the intensity of a rumbling, deep-down disorder.
The fire, smelling wonderfully, attracted the mother cat. She curled up behind the stove, though her eyes remained alert to predators—human or otherwise.
“Let me make some coffee,” Anna said, eyeing the clouds above Holy Redeemer. “This might get serious.”
Ace Flood’s faith had been the mountain-moving kind, so he built his store to last. Sandstone. Sturdier than some churches. Four rooms for his family above; below, a spacious storeroom, a tiny bedroom, and a fifteen-foot-high selling area crammed with shelves, bins, cases and drawers. The windows were regular house type—he didn’t want or need display; no big, wasteful “looking-in” plate glass for him. Let folks come inside to see what he had. He didn’t have many things but he had a lot of what he stocked. Before he died, he saw his store change from a necessary service in Ruby to a business patronized by the loyal for certain items, though they balked at his prices and more and more drove their trucks to Demby for cheaper (and better) supplies. Anna changed all that. What Ace’s Grocery now lacked in size of inventory it gained in variety and style. She offered free coffee on cold days, iced tea when it was hot. She put out two chairs and a small table for the elderly and those who drove in from farms and wanted to rest awhile. And since adults, nowadays, never frequented the Oven next to her store—except for special events—she catered to the appetites of the young who liked to gather there. She sold her own pies, made her own candy along with the lots she picked up in Demby. She kept three kinds of soda pop instead of one. Sometimes she sold the black-as-eight-rock peppers the Convent grew. She kept hog’s head cheese in the cooler, as her father had, along with local butter and salted pork. But canned goods, dried beans, coffee, sugar, syrup, baking soda, flour, salt, catsup, paper products—all the items nobody could or wanted to make at home—took up the space Ace Flood once used for cloth, work shoes, light tools, kerosene. Now Sargeant’s Feed and Seed sold the shoes, the tools, the kerosene, and Harper’s drugstore sold the needles, thread, counter medicine, prescriptions, sanitary napkins, stationery and tobacco. Except for Blue Boy. Steward had relied on Ace for that and wasn’t about to change his habits.
In Anna’s hands, Ace’s Grocery blossomed through variety, comfort and flexibility. Because she let Menus cut hair in the back on Saturdays, incidental purchases rose. Because she had a nice toilet downstairs, casual users felt obliged to become customers before they left. Farming women came in for peppermint after church; the men for sacks of raisins. Invariably they picked up a little something more from the shelves.
The contentment she drew from Richard’s fire made her smile. But she couldn’t be a minister’s wife. Never. Could she? Well, he had not asked her to be one—so enjoy the stove heat, the nape of his neck and the invisible presence of kittens.
After a while, a station wagon drove up and parked so close to the store, both Misner and Anna could see the fever in the baby’s blue eyes. The mother held the child over her shoulder and stroked its yellow hair. The driver, a city-dressed man in his forties, got out and pushed open Anna’s door.
“How you all doing?” He smiled.
“Fine, and you?”
“Look like I’m lost. Been trying to find eighteen west for more’n an hour.” He looked at Misner and grinned an apology for having violated the male rule of never asking for directions. “Wife made me stop. Said she’s had it.”
“It’s a ways back the way you come from,” said Misner, looking at the Arkansas plates, “but I can tell you how to find it.”
“’Preciate it. ’Preciate it,” said the man. “Don’t expect there’s a doctor around here, is there?”
“Not around these parts. You have to get to Demby for that.”
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“What’s wrong with the baby?” Anna asked.
“Sort of pukey. Hot too. We’re fairly well supplied, but who’d pack aspirin or cough medicine on a little old trip like this? Can’t think of every damn thing, can you? Jesus.”
“Your baby coughing? I don’t believe you need cough medicine.” Anna squinted through the window. “Ask your wife to come in out the cold.”
“Drugstore’ll have aspirin,” said Misner.
“I didn’t see no drugstore. Where ’bouts is it?”
“You passed it, but it doesn’t look like a drugstore—looks like a regular house.”
“How am I going to find it then? Houses round here don’t seem to have numbers.”
“Tell me what all you want and I’ll get it for you. Then tell your wife to bring that baby inside.” Misner reached for his coat.
“Just some aspirin and some cough medicine. ’Preciate it. I’ll get my wife.”
The blast from the open door rattled the coffee cups. The man got back in the station wagon; Misner took off in his ratty Ford. Anna thought about making some cinnamon toast. The pumpkin bread would be stale now. Be nice if she had an overripe banana—the baby looked constipated. Mush it up with a little apple butter.
The man came back shaking his head. “I’ll just keep the motor running. She says she’ll stay put.”
Anna nodded. “You got far to go?”
“Lubbock. Say, is that coffee hot?”
“Uh huh. How you like it?”
“Black and sweet.”
He’d taken two sips when the station wagon horn sounded. “Shit. Excuse me,” he said. When he came back he bought licorice, peanut butter, crackers and three Royal Crowns and carried them out to his wife. Then he returned to finish his coffee, sipping it in silence while Anna poked the fire.
“You better gas up when you get on eighteen. Blizzard’s coming.”
He laughed. “Blizzard? In Lubbock, Texas?”
“You ain’t in Texas yet,” said Anna. She looked toward the window and saw two figures approach, then Misner shouldered open the door, with Steward close on his heels.
“Here you go,” said Misner, handing over the bottles. The man took them and rushed out to the station wagon. Misner followed to give him directions.
“Who all is that?” asked Steward.
“Just some lost folks.” Anna handed him a thirty-two-ounce tin of Blue Boy.
“Lost folks or lost whites?”
“Oh, Steward, please.”
“Big difference, Anna girl. Big. Right, Reverend?” Misner was just stepping back in.
“They get lost like everybody else,” said Anna.
“Born lost. Take over the world and still lost. Right, Reverend?”
“You just contradicted yourself.” Anna laughed.
“God has one people, Steward. You know that.” Misner rubbed his hands, then blew on them.
“Reverend,” said Steward, “I’ve heard you say things out of ignorance, but this is the first time I heard you say something based on ignorance.”
Misner smiled and was about to answer when the lost man entered again to pay Misner for the medicine.
“Blizzard’s heading in.” Steward looked at the man’s light clothing and thin shoes. “You might want to ride it out somewhere. Gas station on eighteen. Wouldn’t go no further than that if I was you.”
“I’ll beat it.” The man closed his wallet. “I’ll gas up on eighteen, but we crossing that state line today. Thank you. You all been a big help. ’Preciate it.”
“They never listen,” said Steward as the station wagon drove away. He himself, having been around in 1958 when whole herds froze, had been pumping water, nailing down, forking alfalfa and storing up since Wednesday. He was in town for tobacco and syrup and to pick up Dovey.
“Say, Steward,” Misner said. “You seen Roger’s granddaughter, Billie Delia?”
“What should I see her for?”
“Anna says nobody has. Of course, we haven’t asked her mother.”
Steward, picking up on the “we,” put a crisp five-dollar bill on the counter. “You won’t get nothing there,” he said, thinking, No major loss if she did run off. Serve Pat right, he thought. She noses about in everybody’s business but clams up if you get near hers. “That reminds me, Deek told me he saw Sweetie this morning—just walking on down the road. No overcoat. Nothing.”
“Sweetie? Out of her house?” Anna stressed her disbelief.
“Down what road?” asked Misner.
“Not Sweetie.”
“Deek swears it was her.”
“Must have been,” said Misner. “I saw her too. Right outside my house. I thought she was going to knock, but she turned around and headed back toward Central. Look to me like she was going on home.”
“Didn’t. Deek said she was way past Sargeant’s—marching out of town like a soldier.”
“Didn’t he stop her?”
Steward stared at Anna as though he couldn’t believe her words. “He was opening up the bank, girl.”
Misner frowned. Anna cut off anything he might have been about to say with, “You all want some coffee? Maybe some pumpkin bread?”
Both men accepted.
“Somebody better speak to Jeff.” It was Anna’s voice but all three glanced at a wall of shelves beyond which was Fleetwood’s Furniture and Appliance.
Despite the predictions—from Richard Misner’s gaze, Steward Morgan’s watchfulness—a tiny piece of the sky flashed a watercolor palette: orange-peach, minty green, seashore blue. The rest of the sky, pewter, served to brighten this odd, picture-book sun break. It lasted a full hour and thrilled everybody who saw it. Then it faded, and a leaden sky solidified over the relentless wind. By noon the first snow came. Stinging pellets, popping, not melting, before the wind. The second snow, two hours later, didn’t pop. It lay down quietly and covered everything there was.
Sweetie had said, “Be back directly, Miss Mable.” “Won’t be gone but a minute, Miss Mable.”
Meant to say it. Maybe she did say it. Anyway it was in her head to say. But she had to hurry quick before one of them gurgled.
On the porch, the walkway, Sweetie’s stride was purposeful—as though there were somewhere important she had to be. Something important she had to do and it would take just a few minutes and she would be right back. In time to massage a little bottom to keep the sores away; or to siphon phlegm or grind food or clean teeth or trim nails or launder out urine or cradle in her arms or sing but mostly in time to watch. To never take her eyes off unless her mother-in-law was there, and to watch then as well, because Miss Mable’s eyes weren’t as sharp as they once had been. Others offered help, repeatedly at first, irregularly now, but she always declined. Sweetie was the best at watching. Her mother-in-law second best. Arnette used to be good, but not anymore. Jeff and her father-in-law couldn’t look, let alone watch.
The problem had never been watching while she was awake. It was watching while asleep. For six years she slept on the pallet near the cribs, or in bed with Jeff, her breath threaded, her ear tunnel ready, every muscle braced to spring. She knew she slept because she dreamed a little, although she couldn’t remember what about. But it was getting harder and harder to watch and sleep at the same time.
When dawn broke and Mable came into the dim room with a cup of coffee, Sweetie stood to take it. She knew Mable had already run her bathwater and folded a towel and fresh nightgown over the chair in the bedroom. And she knew she would offer to do her hair—braid it, wash it, roll it or just scratch her scalp. The coffee would be wonderful, dark and loaded with sugar. But she also knew that if she drank it this one time and went to bed in morning sun this one time she would never wake up, and who would watch her babies then?
So she took the coffee and said, or meant to, “Be back in a minute, Miss Mable.”
Downstairs, she put the cup and saucer on the dining table, then, unwashed, coatless and with uncombed hair, she opened the front doo
r and left. Quickly.
She was not hoping to walk until she dropped or fainted or froze and then slipped into nothingness for a while. The small thing she wanted was not to have that dawn coffee, the already drawn bath, the folded nightgown and then the watchful sleep in that order, forever, every day and in particular this here particular day. The only way to change the order, she thought, was not to do something differently but to do a different thing. Only one possibility arose—to leave her house and step into a street she had not entered in six years.
Sweetie traveled the length of Central Avenue—past the Gospel-named streets, past New Zion, Harper’s Drugstore, the bank, Mount Calvary. She detoured into Cross Peter, left it and walked past Sargeant’s Feed and Seed. North of Ruby, where the quality of the road changed twice, her legs were doing brilliantly. So was her skin, for she didn’t feel the cold. The fresh outside air, to which she was unaccustomed, hurt her nostrils, and she set her face to bear it. She did not know she was smiling, nor did the girl staring at her from the bed of a brand-new ’73 pickup. The girl thought Sweetie was crying, and a black woman weeping on a country road broke her heart all over again.
She peered at Sweetie from her hiding place among empty crates. The Ford truck, heading south, slowed as it passed Sweetie, then stopped. In the cab, the driver and his wife exchanged looks. Then the driver leaned out the window, twisting his head to holler at Sweetie’s back, “You need some help?”
Sweetie did not turn her head or acknowledge the offer. The couple looked at each other and sucked teeth as the husband shifted into drive. Fortunately, the road inclined at that point, otherwise the brokenhearted hitchhiker would have hurt herself when she jumped from the back of the truck. The couple could see in the rearview mirror a passenger they didn’t know they had, running to join the pitiful, ill-raised creature who had not even said No, thank you.
When the girl whose heart was breaking caught up with the woman, she knew enough not to touch or speak or insert herself into the determined bubble the crying woman had become. She walked ten or so paces behind, studying the shapely dark ankles above worn white loafers. The wrinkled shirtwaist dress, pale blue with sagging pockets. The sleeper’s hair—pressed flat on one side, disheveled on the other. And every now and then a sob that sounded like a giggle.