Little Altars Everywhere

  You think somebody gonna throw us a party or somethin for gettin through all this? No sir. You don’t get no trophies for livin the life you born into. It just be your job, and you lucky if you can do the work set out in front of you and not fret if it seem puny. Maybe the Good Lord ain’t give us nothin but puny things. Little bitta things sparkin through our days and nights. In the fields and in the mornin air, little bitta things that if you blink your eye, they be gone and ain’t never comin back.

  So I set outside in the yard and paste things up in my scrapbook. Pictures and news clippins, old ticket stubs—oh, just all kind of things. I gotta get them all in my book fore I lose thought of them. Time fly so fast, you gotta get it down in the book. I put all kind of stuff up in there. Siddy, one time she throw out a bunch of old school pictures, I just lift them out the trash and paste them little Catholic white chilren in my book. Some of them I don’t even member they names, but they friends of Miz Siddy’s and call my mind back to that time.

  And pictures of Letta and Pearl and Ruby. All my jewels. From the day we was married, to the babies on Letta’s hips, to when Pearl got her the job over at the Wal-Mart. Pictures of Letta laughin. Oooh that woman, how she laugh and look at me like she do. How she walk in the house to take off her church clothes, lookin so good in her hat, and me followin behind. And her sayin, Chaney, who love you? And us crawlin up into bed in the afternoon with the sound of the girls playin on the porch, and the fan whirrin, and Letta lovin me till ever’thing that ever hurt me fall away.

  Siddy she call me The Philosopher. Such a sweet child. I wish her Daddy knew that fore he draw his last hard breath. One of these days I’m gonna tell him. Gonna tell him, Mister Shep listen to me: It be good to know you chilren done turn out sweet. It make ever’thing less bitter. It be one of the savin things.

  Me and Mister Big Shep was playboys that ran together when we was little, and now we old. That the way it is, old white man with your wheezin chest. I be settin down the lane watchin you. And whatever you took from me, I don’t want it back. I didn’t need it nohow. I’m gettin lighter every day and don’t wish you nothin but easy breathin.

  In my book I got it all. All what me and Letta done accomplished here. My book hold all my success, it hold my sorrow, it hold my harvests, it hold my heart.

  Looking for My Mules

  Viviane, 1991

  It was getting near sunset. Shep had already come in from the fields and was back in his bathroom taking a shower. I was in the kitchen and could hear the evening farm report on the radio when I was sitting at the counter doing my nails. Over the years, all that droning on about drainage and moisture content—it bothers me less and less. Now it’s like a kind of background chant, like Latin used to be at Mass before the Church went all Kumbayah and guitar Masses on me.

  Charlie Vanderlick had just come by bringing us some of his snap beans. That Charlie’s thumb gets greener every year. Little Shep had just left out for home after having a drink with me. That wife of his, Kane, won’t let him drink in his own house. She runs that place like a lady general. The girl is so damn tall and tailored—it’s no wonder she’s no fun. Watched too much Donna Reed growing up, if you ask me.

  I’ve already brushed my teeth and gargled with Listerine so Shep won’t know I’ve had any whiskey. He can smell bourbon a mile off. The man hasn’t touched a drop for six months now, because according to that know-it-all doctor he’s seeing, it aggravates his asthma.

  I pretend to go along with the drinking ban, just to try and keep things peaceful. Shep’s had his beans in since mid-April and now he’s putting in the rice. And he’s planting trees. All I hear about is his tree-planting program. He’s turning into an ecology nut, if you ask me. If I didn’t still have a drink or two, I’d be bored into an early grave.

  Nobody wants to have fun anymore. If they’re not tee-totaling, they’re cutting out sugar or fat or cholesterol. Drives me batty. I’ve been smoking and drinking and dyeing my hair since I was twelve years old. And I could do an Oil of Olay commercial if I wanted to—that’s how good I still look.

  I can tell we’re going to have a marvelous sunset this evening the way the pinks are already starting to strut across the sky. God, I love my sunsets more than I do hamburgers! I try not to miss a single one if I can help it. I’m looking straight out the picture window when I see this old black man right out there on our gravel road. One I’ve never laid eyes on before.

  He must be about eighty, but who knows? If I could bottle how well blacks hide their age, I’d be as rich as the Rothschilds. He’s got him this old cypress limb for a walking stick and he’s walking along pretty quick, like he’s got to be somewhere. Real neat and respectable old fellow, you know—no bum or what-have-you. Got on a clean white shirt and a pair of overalls like all the coloreds used to wear. And there’s all this gray hair on his black head that makes him look almost—well, you hate to say it: downright distinguished. He’s not looking from side to side, he’s looking straight ahead—like he’s got an appointment to keep, like he’s got a purpose.

  Now I know that I haven’t ever seen him before. He looks like an old field hand, but I’m absolutely positive I have never laid eyes on him. Not even when Shep first brought me out to Pecan Grove before we were married. Not even when I ruined umpty-ump pairs of high heels tromping through the mud, oohing and ahhing over the man’s land. I can remember the faces of all the Negroes who have come and gone over the years, and I have not ever seen this one before.

  I get the binoculars out of the recipe drawer and focus them on him. I always keep those binoculars handy. You never know when something will come up that you need to take a closer look at. The thing that gets me is how damn determined he looks. Determination is one of the virtues I’ve always envied, believe it or not. I think, Well I’m just gonna leave him alone. Even though he is trespassing. Even though we have got the Private Property/No Trespassing sign out there clear as day.

  He walks past the house without so much as a look my way. When he gets to the cattle gap, he just walks right over it like nothing is going to get in his way. I walk out to the driveway and keep looking at him through the binoculars.

  Nothing much happens. He just goes on walking. I go on back inside and steal a little sip of vodka, take a steak out of the refrigerator. Shep likes to eat his supper on time these days.

  I sit back down with the Monitor. No good news. I can hardly stand to read the paper anymore. I read my “horrible-scope,” like Shep calls it, and the funnies, and that’s about it. We got enough to handle right here at Pecan Grove without worrying about the Iraqis and Kuwaitis and what-have-you. They bought up half of the Carolina coast as it is. Some of my favorite spots are now owned by sheiks, which doesn’t really bother me one way or the other, as long as they still serve good soft-shell crab.

  I had halfway gotten the old man out of my head when Shep walks into the kitchen, all clean from his shower, heading out to the utility room to clean his fingernails. I will always love the way that man cleans his fingernails after every single day in the fields. And does it in the utility room, not in the bathroom. Those are the kinds of things that keep you married to a man, even when everything else is not what you dreamed on your wedding day when your waist was still small and your feet were tiny.

  I follow him out to the utility room and tell him: Babe, an old black fellow walked by a little while ago. Nobody we know.

  Shep keeps on scrubbing his fingernails. I am sick and tired of people roaming onto this farm like they own the place, he says. Can’t they read the sign? Goddamn it, I don’t know what it’s coming to, a man can’t even own private property anymore.

  Well, Babe, I don’t know, I tell him. He doesn’t look like he’d bother anyone.

  Oh yeah, probably just an escaped convict, Shep says.

  Shep does not like strangers on his property. In fact, I’ve wondered sometimes if he really likes anybody on his property. Seems like every single time I go and knock myself out
to throw a dinner party, he’ll get up soon as we finish dessert and walk back to his room. A few minutes’ll pass, then he’ll come back out with nothing on but his boxer shorts and say, Goodnight everybody. Don’t let me keep you. Yall remember where your car keys are?

  And that’s the last we’ll see of him. The Ya-Yas are used to this kind of behavior, but it mortifies me when he does it to somebody new. None of it has been easy on me. I’m a born socializer, I adore entertaining. I was born to throw dinner parties. They are one of the truly fine things in life. Even the Catholic Church hasn’t been able to find a single bad thing to say against dinner parties.

  Shep dries his hands and heads out to his truck. Well, I’m gonna see what the hell is going on back there, he says.

  Well, I’m coming with you, I tell him. And we get into the truck and head out to the back fields.

  I don’t think Shep will ever know how lovely it still is for me to ride in that truck with him. There is just something so—oh, I don’t know—sexy about the inside of a pickup truck that a man has been working in all day. The smell of the sun and dust and Shep’s body. I guess I will just always be a sucker for a man in a pickup truck. I guess that’s why I have put up with so much shit over the years. I hear the sound of the man’s voice on the telephone after a day of being apart and it still gives me goosebumps. I still have it bad for him, even though I’ve lived down the hall for so many years. There is no accounting for chemistry.

  The day I decided to marry Shep, I was standing inside the River Street Cafe. It was after the War, after I lost my first love, my true love. I looked up and saw him pull up in a red pickup, watched him swing down out of the cab before hardly coming to a stop. He was wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. When I saw how the hair on his arms was bleached blond from the sun, it took my breath away. That very evening I told Caro and Necie and Teensy they could stop saying Novenas for me to get married. I had found my man and that was it.

  Maybe if I’d been born later, I wouldn’t have even gotten married. I’d have enjoyed what I wanted, then moved on. Enjoyed that convertible Buick Shep used to drive, and the way he’d lay his head on my lap when we’d park out at Little Spring Creek. And just let it go at that. Not sign up for life, for four kids and farm reports, day in and day out. But I was born before you could do what you wanted. That’s what my children will never understand.

  We head on back, not driving too fast. Shep points out the new drainage system he’s been putting in for the rice. I swear the man knows more about drainage than the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s a damn shame he didn’t finish college. He could’ve made something of himself.

  We slow down when we get back by the canal. Then we spot the old black man. You can just feel intention all over the man. He’s got the look of a person who knows he’s got a job to finish but can’t find where he left off. He stands there looking at the ground, then out at the fields. Then he shades his eyes and squints off into the distance, like he’s waiting for somebody to show up.

  Shep calls to him from the truck. What you want, podnah?

  Shep’s got that gruff voice he gets when he doesn’t know what’s going on. I hope he won’t be too rough on this old fellow.

  The old guy says, Yassir. I be lookin for my mules. Name of Sary and Mike.

  Shep says, Ain’t no mules here, old man. This is my farm. All we got is my machinery.

  The old man doesn’t even hear Shep. He’s in another world. He puts his hands back above his eyes and keeps staring out.

  Sary! he calls out. Where you at, girl? Get you bad self over here. Sary! Sary! We got work to do.

  Podnah, Shep says, We’re gonna have to give you a ride out of here. This is my land.

  And Shep gets out of the truck. He takes the man by the arm and helps him into the back of the pickup. Then we drive past the house and up toward Pecan Road leading into town. When we get to the paved road, Shep goes round to the back and helps the old man out, then he gets back in the cab. I can see the old fellow standing there on the blacktop, his head kind of cocked to the side like he’s trying to get his bearings. Shep doesn’t say anything and we drive back to the house.

  Soon as we get there, he goes on back to his bedroom like he’s hiding. Me, I stay in the kitchen. That sunset is taking its time, spreading out all over the flat fields, and I don’t want to miss it.

  If I miss a sunset, my next day is never a good one. It’s one of my superstitions. If I miss a sunset, I have to consult the Ouija board. I’ve done that religiously ever since the kids left. It’s part of my schedule. That’s the reason I had so much trouble when all four of them were still at home: I couldn’t stick to my schedule. They can laugh—but between Mass, sunsets, Ouija board, cocktails, and maybe a snippet of a prescription pill, I do fine. I’ve put together my own package. Anybody says something to me about it, I tell them: Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.

  I’ve hardly started sprinkling the T-bone with Lea & Perrins when Freddy comes flying up on his little bike. Freddy’s one of the kids I got to know after my four left. Lives up on Pecan Road, cutest little thing, big ears that stick out from his head. His daddy works for the phone company. I used to let his big sister crayfish in our bayou and she would bring him with her. I have known him since he was in diapers. I’m the one that helped him get over his fear of dogs. He just adores me, thinks I’m the greatest.

  Anyway, he comes spinning up and calls out, Miz Vivi! Miz Vivi!

  I light myself a ciggie and walk on out to the carport. How you, Mister Freddy? I ask.

  Fine, Miz Vivi, he says.

  Don’t you ever start this filthy habit, you hear me? I tell him, pointing to my cigarette.

  He’s all worked up, though. He says, Miz Vivi, there’s a black man just wandering around up on the road! You want me to bring him back to Mister Shep?

  I think for a minute, then I tell him, Yeah dahlin, why don’t you do that?

  And he pedals off like his hair’s on fire. I walk back to Shep’s bedroom. He is laying back in his chair, watching Dan Rather on TV.

  Baby, I tell him, That old man is still hanging around.

  Damn, Shep says. A man works all day in the fields, he wants to be left alone. Can’t I get any peace and quiet anywhere?

  Don’t get cross with me, I tell him. I just thought you’d want to know.

  I fix myself a splash of vodka on the rocks and call up Caro. Her damn machine answers. All I get is that damn machine, ever since she started that travel-agent job. It makes me sick. I call Necie, but they’re sitting down to dinner. I try Chick and Teensy, then I remember they’re in Florida. I hate it when there’s nobody to talk to on the phone with, I just detest it! I’d call over to Little Shep’s, but that tight-ass wife of his told me that “any time after five is a very busy time in our home.” I sit out on the swing and smoke three cigarettes in a row, because I will be damned if I start picking on food and gain weight just because this town is so goddamn boring.

  Shep comes out and I stub out my cigarette. We both go out and stand on the carport next to the basketball hoop that we put up when the kids were little. It’s funny to look at that thing now. Nobody plays basketball around here anymore, but if someone was to rip that thing down, the whole front of this house would look naked. Strange how things stick with a house. Like the insides of all my lampshades where Little Shep wrote his name when he first discovered Magic Markers. God, that child adored Magic Markers! Loved the way they smelled, love the way they squeaked when he wrote his name with them. I just hated having to whip him, he loved them so much. But still, the inside of every lampshade in my house was ruined by him scrawling: Little Shep, Little Shep, Little Shep.

  I stand there next to my husband, not saying anything. When you’re married nearly forty years, you don’t always need to talk every second. I would go stark-raving nuts if I had to discuss everything, the way Sidda wants us all to do.

  I’m just abou
t to go in and powder my nose when Freddy and the old black man finally show up. Freddy’s walking his bike, looking like he thinks he’s a real important messenger.

  Shep walks down there, and I can tell by the set of his shoulders he wishes this fellow had never shown up in the first place. Shep says: I told you to move on from here, old man. What you doing still hanging around?

  I be lookin for my mules, the old fellow says, Sary and Mike.

  Podnah, I done told you, there are no mules anywhere around here. This is my place, Pecan Grove, and there aren’t any mules.

  I step down closer to the two of them. What do you want those mules for? I ask.

  That black man looks at me like I don’t have good sense. He says, I gotta start my plantin is why.

  And that’s when Shep’s gruffness just melts away, and I start to understand what’s going on. Shep stands there silent. For a minute I think he’s going to turn around and walk back inside and hide again. He’s done that eighty-four thousand times before, God knows. Walked away and left me to deal with everything. But this time he just keeps standing there.

  I say, Well why don’t we go and have a seat?

  I have always found that if you are ever in doubt about how to behave, just act like a hostess, and it’ll get you over the rough spots.

  The black man nods politely at me and I lead him and Shep over to the swing, where the two of them sit down. Shep has gone mute, but what else is new?

  Why don’t I go and get us something to drink? I say.

  Thank you, ma’am, the old man says. Shep just nods.

  I go into the kitchen and pour us each a 7-Up over ice in my plastic glasses. I put a splash of vodka in with mine, and reach up in the medicine cabinet and bite off half a Valium, which is almost nothing. Valium and vodka make a good cocktail, but you absolutely have to get your amounts exactly right. I have no desire to get carried off to The Betty Ford Center, I don’t care how many movie stars I could meet there.