HE ASKED HER if she would mind staying at Soldier’s house with his wife, Ellen, while he went to see his father. Jadine demurred; she had run out of conversation with Ellen ten minutes after it started, but Son urged her, saying he had not seen Old Man in eight years and that he didn’t want to bring someone his father didn’t know into his house the first time they met in all that time. Could she understand that? She said yes, out in Soldier’s yard near the mimosa, but she didn’t understand at all, no more than she understood the language he was using when he talked to Soldier and Drake and Ellen and the others who stopped by; no more than she could understand (or accept) her being shunted off with Ellen and the children while the men grouped on the porch and, after a greeting, ignored her; or why he seemed so shocked and grateful at the same time by news that some woman named Brown, Sarah or Sally or Sadie—from the way they pronounced it she couldn’t tell—was dead. But she agreed. God. Eloe.
He left her there and walked alone to the house he was born in. The yellow brick front looked tiny. It had seemed so large and sturdy compared to the Sutterfield shack he and Cheyenne had—the one he drove a car through. It wasn’t as big as Ondine’s kitchen. The door was unlocked, but no one was home. In the kitchen a pepper pot was simmering, so he knew Old Man wasn’t far and wouldn’t be long. His father, Franklin G. Green, had been called Old Man since he was seven years old and when he grew up, got married, had a baby boy, the baby was called Old Man’s son until the second child was born and the first became simply Son. They all used to be here—all of them. Horace who lived in Gainesville, Frank G. who died in Korea, his sister Francine who was in a mental home in Jacksonville, and the baby girl Porky Green who still lived in Eloe, so Soldier said, but went to Florida A and M on a track scholarship. They had all been in this house together at one time—with his mother.
Only a few minutes had passed when Old Man climbed the porch steps. Son waited, standing in the middle of the room. The door opened, Old Man looked at Son and dropped his onions on the floor.
“Hey, Old Man, how you been doing?”
“Save me, you got back.”
They didn’t touch. They didn’t know how. They fooled around with the onions and each asked the other about his condition until Old Man said, “Come on in here and let me fix you something to eat. Not much in here but it ain’t like I had notice.”
“I ate something over to Soldier’s.”
“You was over there?”
“I wanted to hear about you before I came by,” said Son.
“Oh, I ain’t dead, Son. I ain’t dead,” he chuckled.
“I see you ain’t.”
“Them money orders sure helped.”
“You got them?”
“Oh, yeah. Every one. I had to use some of em though.”
“Some of em? They were all for you. Why didn’t you use them all?”
“I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to raise no suspicions. I just cashed a few when I couldn’t help it.”
“Shit, Old Man, don’t tell me you still got some?”
“They in there.” He nodded toward one of the two bedrooms. “Porky in school, you know. I had to help her out, too.”
They went in the bedroom and Old Man took a White Owl cigar box from under his bed and opened it. There was a thin pile of envelopes bound by a rubber band; some postal money orders held together with a paper clip, and a few ten and twenty dollar bills. Eight years of envelopes.
“These were for you, Old Man. To take care of you.”
“They did. They did. But you know I didn’t want to be going over there to the Post Office every month, cashin em. Might set folks to talkin and turn the law out on account of that other business. So I just took a few in every now and then. Quiet, you know.”
“Old Man, you one crazy old man.”
“You been to Sutterfield yet?”
“No. Straight here.”
“Well, you know Sally Brown died here a while back.”
“They told me.”
“Be at peace.”
“Hope so.”
“She slept with a shotgun every night.”
“Huh.”
“Every night. Well, she burnin up down there now, her and her nasty daughter…”
“Don’t say it, Old Man.”
“Yeah. You right. Shouldn’t rile the dead. But you know I was more scared of Sally than the law.”
“So was I.”
“Law don’t care about no dead colored gal, but Sally Brown, she slept with that shotgun every night waitin for you. Made my skin crinkle to walk past her. And she just about lived in church moanin. Stopped me from vespers altogether. I couldn’t sit there listenin to her berate you. Can you feature that? Pray every Sunday and hold on to a shotgun every night?”
“Where’s the boy?”
“Gone away from here, his folks too.”
“He get his eyebrows back?”
“Never did. Guess his folks figured he couldn’t hide nowhere around here lookin like that. Sally was lookin for him too.”
“I didn’t see his face. All I saw was his asshole.”
“That didn’t have no eyebrows either I bet,”
“I should have made him some with a razor.” They laughed together then and an hour or so passed while Son told what all he’d been doing for the last eight years. It was almost four when Son said, “I didn’t come by myself.”
“You with a woman?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is she?”
“Over to Soldier’s. Can she stay here?”
“You all married?”
“No, Old Man.”
“Better take her to your Aunt Rosa’s then.”
“She won’t like that.”
“I can’t help it. You be gone. I have to live here.”
“Come on, Old Man.”
“Uh-uh. Go see your Aunt Rosa. She be mad anyway you don’t stop by.”
“Scripture don’t say anything about two single people sleeping under the same roof.” Son was laughing.
“What you know bout Scripture?”
“I could have lied and said we were married.”
“But you didn’t lie. You told the truth and so you got to live by the truth.”
“Oh, shit.”
“That’s right. Shit. She’s welcome in my house all day in the day. Bring her back so I can meet her.”
“She’s special, Old Man.”
“So am I, Son. So am I.”
“All right. All right. I’ll go get her and bring her by. Cook up something, then I’ll take her by Aunt Rosa. That suit you?”
“Suit me fine.”
Son stood up to go, and his father walked him to the door. When Son said, “Be right back,” Old Man said, “Wait a minute. Can I ask you somethin?”
“Sure. Ask it.”
“How come you never put no note or nothin in them envelopes? I kept on lookin for a note.”
Son stopped. How hurried all those money order purchases had been. Most of the time he sent a woman out to both buy and mail them. He’d done it as often as he could and sometimes five would be sent from one city and none from any place for six months. How hurried he had been.
“I guess I didn’t want nobody to read em and know where I was…” But it was too lame an excuse to continue with. “Is that why you kept the empty envelopes too?”
“Yeah. They had your handwritin on em, you know. You wrote it, that part anyway. ‘Franklin Green.’ You got a nice handwritin. Pretty. Like your mama.”
“See you, Old Man.”
“Go by Rosa. Tell her you comin.”
JADINE was squatting down in the middle of the road, the afternoon sun at her back. The children were happy to pose, and so were some of the younger women. Only the old folks refused to smile and glared into her camera as though looking at hell with the lid off. The men were enjoying the crease in her behind so clearly defined in the sunlight, click, click. Jadine had remembered her camera just before she t
hought she would go nuts, trying to keep a conversation going with Ellen and the neighbor women who came in to see Son’s Northern girl. They looked at her with outright admiration, each one saying, “I was in Baltimore once,” or, “My cousin she live in New York.” They did not ask her what they really wanted to know: where did she know Son from and how much did her boots cost. Jadine smiled, drank glasses of water and tried to talk “down home” like Ondine. But their worshipful stares and nonconversation made Son’s absence seem much too long. She was getting annoyed when she remembered her camera. Now she was having a ball photographing everybody. Soldier’s yard was full. “Beautiful,” she said. “Fantastic. Now over here,” click click. “Hey, what’d you say your name was? Okay, Beatrice, could you lean up against the tree?” click, click. “This way. Beautiful. Hold it. Hooooold it. Heaven,” click click click click.
Son didn’t mean to snatch it. Just to end it somehow. Stop the crease, the sunlight, the click click click. And when he did she looked at him with confusion at first, then with evolved anger. “What’s the matter with you?”
It wasn’t nice. To snatch the camera and then to have to tell her about the sleeping arrangements—it wasn’t nice. Not nice at all.
He took her to Old Man’s, and after supper there to Rosa’s. Drake and Soldier picked them up and drove them to a joint in Poncie called Night Moves, where there was live music, Bar B Que sandwiches and unrestrained dancing under four blue lights that neither flashed or strobed. They even managed some snatch in the car—Jadine under the impression that nobody knew; he aware that everybody did. The back seat turned her volume up, but the beer and the bad whiskey made her so sleepy there was no problem when he left her at Rosa’s. She slept like a boulder for three hours, then woke missing him and suffocating in that little bedroom without windows. She sat up naked, for she never wore nightgowns, and held her shoulders. The room had a door to the living room and one that opened to the back yard. She opened the latter and looked out into the blackest nothing she had ever seen. Blacker and bleaker than Isle des Chevaliers, and loud. Loud with the presence of plants and field life. If she was wanting air, there wasn’t any. It’s not possible, she thought, for anything to be this black. Maybe if she stood there long enough light would come from somewhere, and she could see shadows, the outline of something, a bush, a tree, a line between earth and sky, a heavier darkness to show where this very house stopped and space began. She remembered the blackness she saw when Son told her to close her eyes, and to put a star in it. That would be the only way it would get there, she thought, for the world in the direction of the sky, in that place where the sky ought to be, was starless. Haze, she guessed; there must be haze in the sky. Otherwise there would be a moon, at the least. The loudness of the plants was not audible, but it was strong nonetheless. She might as well have been in a cave, a grave, the dark womb of the earth, suffocating with the sound of plant life moving, but deprived of its sight. She could see nothing and could not remember what she had seen when it was daylight. A movement behind made her jump and turn around. Rosa was standing in the inner doorway, lit from behind by a lamp.
“Anything the matter? I heard you moving around.”
Jadine closed the back door. The lamplight from the other door was weak but it was healthy enough to spotlight her nakedness. Rosa gazed down Jadine’s body with a small bowing of her head, and then up again. Her eyes traveled slowly, moving like one of those growing plants Jadine could not see, but whose presence was cracking loud.
“Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have no nightclothes. I got somethin I can let you have,” Rosa said.
“I…I forgot,” said Jadine. “I forgot to bring anything.”
“I’ll get you something.”
When Rosa came back, Jadine was in the bed. Rosa handed her a kind of slip, wrinkled but clean-smelling.
“You all right, daughter?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I just got too warm and wanted some air,” Jadine answered.
“This used to be a porch. I made it into a extra room, but it does heat up. I didn’t feel like buyin no windows.”
“Can you leave the back door open?” asked Jadine.
“I wouldn’t advise it. Anything at all might come in here out of those trees. I got a little old electric fan I’ll get you.”
“No. No. Don’t bother.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“It’s beat up, but it stirs the air around.”
“It’s okay.”
“Well, I’ll leave this here door open.” Rosa propped a wooden slatback chair against the inner door. “Sorry,” she said. “That gown ain’t much, but it’ll cover you.”
“Thanks,” said Jadine, but it didn’t cover her. She lay down in the slip under the sheet and her nakedness before Rosa lay down with her. No man had made her feel that naked, that unclothed. Leerers, lovers, doctors, artists—none of them had made her feel exposed. More than exposed. Obscene.
God. Eloe.
They were leaving Sunday. Surely she could get through a Sunday and then she and Son would be back on the train holding hands, and then on the airplane playing with each other under the Delta Airlines blanket—their faces serene as passengers, their hands devious and directed. She fell asleep on that thought and woke at ten-thirty with Rosa’s fingertips tapping her on the shoulder.
“Son’s in there,” she said. “You all goin to eat with me, ain’t you?”
Jadine got up and dressed quickly. He was sitting at the table looking more beautiful than after the first haircut on Isle des Chevaliers, more beautiful than when he stood at the piano with his coat over his shoulder and she saw savannas in his face, more beautiful than on the beach when he touched her foot, than when he opened the door to his room at the Hilton. She wanted to sit in his lap, but Drake and Soldier were at the table too, so she just walked over and put her hand on his head. He smiled up at her and kissed the palm of her other hand. Drake and Soldier looked bathed and glittery. They beamed at Son with the same adoration she did, but they didn’t compete. They sat back and enjoyed his presence and his prize woman. They looked at him with love and looked at her like she was a Cadillac he had won, or stolen, or even bought for all they knew.
“YOU ALL gettin hitched?” Soldier asked. They were alone in the house while Son and Drake drove Rosa to church.
“I guess so,” Jadine answered. “We haven’t talked about it.”
“He’s good. You ought to snatch him.”
She laughed. “Should I?”
“Damn right. You don’t, somebody else sure will. He was married before, you know.”
“I know.”
“Never should have married that woman. That Cheyenne. Every one of us told him that, or tried to. But he did it anyway to his grief and sorrow.”
“Was she pretty?” asked Jadine. She didn’t want to ask it, but it seemed extremely important to know the answer.
“Naw. I wouldn’t say pretty. Not bad-lookin, mind, but nothin like pretty.”
“He must have loved her, though.”
“That could be what it was.” Soldier sounded as though there were some doubts. “Naw,” he said. “She wasn’t pretty, but you had to hand it to her though. She had the best pussy in Florida, the absolute best,” and he turned his eyes on Jadine as if to say Now top that!
It wasn’t nice. Not nice at all. Son embarrassed her in the road with the camera; Rosa made her feel like a slut; and now Soldier was trying to make her feel like a virgin competing with…She didn’t answer him so he went on.
“You ever been married?”
“No,” she said, and looked squarely in his face thinking, if he says “Good-lookin woman like you ought to be able…” she would smack him in the mouth. But all he said was “Too bad,” and that didn’t seem definite enough to break his face for.
“Any children?”
“You ask too many questions,” she said. “Anything you want to know about me ask Son.”
 
; Soldier smiled at that and shook his head. “Son don’t talk about his women and don’t let nobody else talk about em either.”
“I’m glad of that,” she said.
“I ain’t. Keeps him dumb. He wouldn’t know a good woman from a snake and he won’t let nobody point out the difference.”
“Can he tell the difference between a good man and a snake?”
“Oh, yeah. Son knows people. He just gets confused when it comes to women. With most everything else he thinks with his heart. But when it comes to women he thinks with his dick, you know what I mean?”
“Some people think with their mouths.”
“Yeah. I guess you right about that.” Soldier smiled. “But maybe it’s better’n not thinkin at all.”
“How would you know?” she asked him.
He laughed. “You a hot one, ain’t you?”
“Yes, I’m a hot one.”
“Yeah.” He ran his fingers over the place on his head where his hair was thinning. “A hot one all right and a live one too.”
“Believe it.” She got up to pour herself more coffee.
Soldier scanned her hips. “Can I ask you somethin?”
“What?”
“Who’s controllin it?”
“Controlling what?”
“The thing. The thing between you two. Who’s in control?”
“Nobody. We’re together. Nobody controls anybody,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “That’s real good. Son, he don’t like control. Makes him, you know wildlike.”
“We don’t have that kind of relationship. I don’t like to be controlled either.”
“But you like to have it, don’t you?”
“Not with him.”
“Good. Good.”
“Did Cheyenne have control?” She sat down and stirred air into her coffee.
“Cheyenne? Naw. She didn’t control nothin. At least not during the day. But good God she sure did run the nights.” He laughed and then, since she did not join in, he sobered quickly and asked, “How long you all plannin to stay around?”
Jadine repressed a smile. He’d lost, and wanted her out of town. “We’re leaving today.”
“Today? You can’t leave today.”