Mama Day

  “You know what an old collector I am.” Miranda smiles. “Always like to be prepared if I come up on a little useful bit of something in the bush. But my daddy told me that one time he and his brothers hunted wolves out here—imagine. Even said his daddy saw a panther once. Now all we got is a few coon, some possum—and one buzzard in our woods.”

  Miranda kinda blooms when the evening air hits her skin. She stands for a moment watching what the last of the sunlight does to the sky down by The Sound. They say every blessing hides a curse, and every curse a blessing. And with all of the aggravation belonging to a slow fall, it’ll give you a sunset to stop your breath, no matter how long you been on the island. It seems like God reached way down into his box of paints, found the purest reds, the deepest purples, and a dab of midnight blue, then just kinda trailed His fingers along the curve of the horizon and let ’em all bleed down. And when them streaks of color hit the hush-a-by green of the marsh grass with the blue of The Sound behind ’em, you ain’t never had to set foot in a church to know you looking at a living prayer.

  Miranda makes her way to the back yard toward the woods, trying to beat the failing light. It’s a little tricky finding the tree she wants even in midday. And she weren’t as familiar with these woods near the Duvalls’ as she was with her own. Passing the bedroom window, she can hear Ambush’s low murmuring and Bernice crying out every now and then. Pity she can’t keep nothing on her stomach, ’cause there was plenty of stuff she had right at the trailer to let her sip for the pain. In the woods, Miranda follows the ground that’s sloping down, stopping once in a while to place her palm against the earth to see if she is nearing the stream. If there was a choke-cherry tree anyplace in here, it’d have to be there. A bramble scratches her on the face, and a few feet on she trips over a creeper from a sweet bay. No point in cussing, she hears her daddy’s voice. Little Mama, these woods been here before you and me, so why should they get out your way—learn to move around ’em. And in her own part of the woods she could, even now in her eighties when it was pitch black. But younger, the whole island was her playground: she’d walk through in a dry winter without snapping a single twig, disappear into the shadow of a summer cottonwood, flatten herself so close to the ground under a moss-covered rock shelf, folks started believing John-Paul’s little girl became a spirit in the woods.

  She hears Dr. Buzzard singing before she hears the flow of water. Miranda stays upstream from him; she’s too put out to be bothered with Buzzard this evening. Peering through the oaks and cypress, she can see the glow from the fire in his still. He’s making a second run-through, and from the looks of him he done drunk up half his profits from the first run. He’d made camp there for the night, which shows how addle-brained he is, Miranda thinks—the weather’s gonna turn chill. Same old overalls and sneakers, no shirt. And laying up against a tree with his hat pulled over his eyes while his liquor’s collecting in an oak barrel, he’s going through the second chorus of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I oughta sneak over there and pour some potash in that devil’s brew, but he’d probably sell it anyway.

  An outsider might figure this strange behavior for a moonshiner. And Dr. Buzzard done built his reputation as a hoodoo man on the fact that he can make liquor with no secret of his whereabouts, never worrying about the law. I got my mojo to thank, he tells them silly young pups who hang around him. He got Willow Springs to thank. The folks tolerate him ’cause he don’t do no real harm—anybody who’s inclined to buy from him would just buy it someplace else. And there ain’t no sheriff to watch out for, and no jail to put him in if there was. The nearest courthouse is fifty miles beyond the bridge on the South Carolina side, and over a hundred on Georgia’s. The folks here take care of their own, if there is a rare crime, there’s a speedy judgment. And it ain’t like the law beyond the bridge that’s dished out according to likes and dislikes, and can change with the times.

  There ain’t been no trouble with the sheriff beyond the bridge since the ’60s, and even that wasn’t old Russell Hart. Was some hotshot new deputy he had, bringing himself over uninvited to look for “northern agitators.” If he had asked old Russ he woulda told him what everybody told them college kids when they came around here knocking on doors, getting people to register to vote. Them that was inclined had been registered to vote in Willow Springs since 1870, after they passed that Fifteenth Amendment. None never went over for local elections, ’cause there was no place to go, us being neither in Georgia or South Carolina. And them local politicians couldn’t do nothing for Willow Springs that it wasn’t doing for itself. But we’ve had a say in every national election since President Grant.

  But guess that new deputy wanted to show off his badge while it was still shiny. Come on up to the general store and stumbled across a jar of Dr. Buzzard’s moonshine and figured he was on to bigger game. Asked Parris right out who was making it. Parris hesitated, not ’cause he was forming a lie, he was just stunned that some white boy would think that there was any possible way he could get an answer to something like that. It was clear that the boy was an out-and-out fool, and Parris, taking pity on him, was about to say something tactful, when he stuck his face all ugly up into Parris’s talking about, Nigger, didn’t you hear me? And nigger this and nigger that. The folks on the porch of the general store got real quiet. So he had no problem hearing Miranda. “You’ll address him proper before the night is over.” Guess he only saw an old colored lady with a bag of groceries and a red straw hat cocked on her head. Snapped right at her. Granny, ain’t nobody talking to you. Yeah, he was a fool, all right—and a fool who had to be taught a lesson. I’ll do better than telling you where that still is, Parris said, I’ll show you.

  The rest is history. How that boy got left alone wandering down in the cypress swamp. Took him half a night to find the road again, and his patrol car sitting on three flat tires. Still could have radioed for help, except Willow Springs saw one of its worst lightning storms in a decade. Not a drop of rain or a bit of wind—just a sky lit up so with them lightning bolts that you could smell the air burning. A bad night to be stirring about, but it seemed nobody was home when he staggered up and down the road begging to be let in somewhere. Being young and strong, he made it to the bridge, but even he wasn’t stupid enough to try to walk over water on metal-studded planks with lightning singeing all around him. It was either sweat in his eyes or tears that kept him from making out the driver of an old Studebaker that was turning down the road to cross over the bridge. Started running along, waving his hands over his head—Hold up there, sir! Please, sir, hold up there! Musta said it half a dozen times before Parris stopped and rolled down his window. Don’t know what surprised him more: when Parris leaned out and grinned, a flash of lightning turning his teeth into glowing pearls before he sped off; or the tongue-lashing he got from old Sheriff Hart for abandoning county property in a place where he had no business anyway. Russ Hart didn’t have to go on to tell him that moonshine or no, Willow Springs was one place that’s best left alone. With a little planning, some things you can even show a fool.

  Course now, Dr. Buzzard takes that story and turns it to his own ends. How he uses a mojo hand to make him and his still invisible to the sheriff. It is sorta easy to be invisible to someone who ain’t nearer than fifty miles to you. He’s into the third chorus of “The Battle Hymn” when Miranda finds the choke-cherry tree she’s been hunting for. She runs her fingers up along the smooth trunk and pulls off a small piece of branch so she can peer a little closer at the shape of the leaves and measure out the cluster of fruit. Even in broad daylight, if she ain’t careful, she can mix it up with a rum-cherry tree, and the bark from that won’t do a bit of good tonight. Satisfied that it’s the right one, she takes Ambush’s pocketknife and removes a small patch of outer bark. Then she strips the green layer underneath, making sure to scrape up. She gets herself a piece about long as half a hand. Much more than she needs, but she could take the rest back home—you never know when it migh
t be useful.

  Miranda starts to head on back, but looking downstream at Dr. Buzzard, it’s just too good a chance to pass up. She breaks off a heavy, long branch from a palmetto. Then she creeps over, stands behind the oak tree, and reaching around swats him on the side of the face.

  “Oooo, oooo,” Miranda calls, throwing her voice off into the bush. She can still stand so quiet, she becomes part of a tree.

  Dr. Buzzard jumps up groggy, wiping at his face.

  “Oooo, oooo.” Miranda throws her voice off again.

  “Who’s out there? What you want?”

  “Oooo, oooo, youuu, youuu …”

  “Lord have mercy—it’s haints. But I got something here for ya—yes, I do.” Dr. Buzzard grabs up his shotgun and points it toward the bushes. “Now, you just come on now—you come on.”

  Miranda slips on off out of the woods. Better leave before that addle-brain shoots her. But bet he won’t be drinking no more tonight. Gotta keep his wits about him to ward off them haints.

  She’s limping a little when she finally clears the woods. Lord, don’t tell me I’m gonna need a walking stick for that little bit of exercise. There’s still no sign of Dr. Smithfield’s car.

  “He called and said he’s on his way,” Ambush tells her.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “About an hour.”

  “You can drive halfway from Charleston in that amount of time.”

  “I believe that’s where he was, Mama Day. And he didn’t seem none too pleased.”

  “Well, if we broke up his good-timing, too bad. Nobody’s having a good time here.”

  Bernice’s skin done turned an ashy shade; her breathing is low and shallow. She seems too weak now to even take her head up from the pillow. Her body ain’t gonna let her take much more of this—she’ll pass out soon from that pain.

  Miranda washes off the choke-cherry bark and then cuts a piece about the size of the last joint on her little finger. She has to be careful with this stuff—awful careful. It could kill as easy as cure. And there weren’t no time to dry it out and make a syrup. She props Bernice up in her arms and first makes her suck on a piece of peppermint candy she had Ambush bring her. When Bernice has worked up a good spit, Miranda takes the candy from her.

  “Now, Bernice, I want you to put this here piece of bark in your mouth and chew good. I’m warning you that it’s bitter, but try not to gag. Keep moving it around in there, ’cause if it stay in one spot, it’s gonna burn the lining of your mouth.”

  When Bernice has chewed for a while, Miranda makes her spit the bark out in her hand and then gives her the peppermint candy. Miranda strokes her throat to help the sweet juices go down, and then makes her chew on the bark again. They keep doing this till it’s nothing but a pulp, and the muscles in Bernice’s body start to relax with her breath coming in a little deeper.

  “All right, now, lay on down, the pain’s gonna lessen even more. And you’ll probably go to sleep.”

  Bernice does close her eyes and doze off. Miranda puts her ear to Bernice’s chest and brings her hands up under her throat to feel for her pulse again. Good. It’s a little slow, but that’s to be expected. Ain’t near slow enough to worry about. She tells Ambush he can leave her, but he insists on sitting in the room.

  Miranda says she’s gonna go stretch the kink out of her legs. She’d love herself a cup of tea, but if she started rattling around in the kitchen, Ambush would feel obliged to come in and help her. They’re good kids, Miranda thinks. Some folks just don’t deserve the trouble they bring on themselves. Bernice’s kitchen is all tile, Formica, and stainless steel. Walled-in oven and other fancy gadgets these young people cotton to. She gets herself a few saltines from the box on the table. There’s a plate of cold chicken in the icebox and she nibbles on a wing—Bernice sure ain’t much of a cook. And look at the mess up in this freezer—frozen pizzas, Sara Lees. And a cabinet full of canned soup, pork and beans, Jiffy cornbread mix. That’s why she finds it hard to be patient with all this time on her hands. Don’t she know that baby she want so bad is gonna run her ragged? They give ’em throwaway diapers to buy now, packaged formulas, but ain’t no such thing as instant love. After quietly running herself a cold glass of water, Miranda decides to wait for Smithfield out on the front steps.

  As she passes down the hall to the living room there’s a door ajar to her left, and from the corner of her eye she catches a small flash of light. Miranda pushes open the door and hears the faint tinkling of music. Turning on the switch, she sees it’s one of them glass chimes hung up near the window. Little green and yellow rectangles strung together with silver twine. Them colors are repeated throughout the room: there’s a maple crib, matching chest, and a little tiny rocker with a stuffed yellow teddy bear in it. The crib’s been made up fresh—pale green toy prints on the sheet and a green hand-knitted blanket. Seeing that the carpet is beige, she takes off her muddy shoes and her toes almost disappear in the soft pile. One of them little mobiles is hanging over the head of the crib, and when she touches it lightly the tiny pigs, chickens, and cows start going round and round to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell.” Each drawer of the maple chest is stuffed to bursting with hand-stitched jumpers, crocheted blankets, sweaters, and booties—all yellow and green. Miranda’s gotta swallow a little hard when she remembers Bernice’s voice. “Ya know, Mama Day, folks always carrying on about wanting a boy or girl. But I done told God and I’m telling you, just give me anything.” How long ago was that? Miranda frowns. Too long for me not to have listened. And if I had really listened to that child, I woulda known this day was coming.

  Headlights are turning just off the road when Miranda gets out on the front steps. She cocks a hand on her hip—it took him long enough. For years Miranda and Brian Smithfield have had what you’d call a working relationship—some seasons it worked better than others. But each knew their limitations and where to draw the line. Since he married a gal from Willow Springs and Miranda was his age now when he was born, he had a measure of respect for the way things was done here. It just saved him a lot of aggravation. No point in prescribing treatment for gout, bone inflammation, diabetes, or even heart trouble when the person’s going straight to Miranda after seeing him for her yea or nay. And if it was nay, she’d send ’em right back to him with a list of reasons. Better to ask straight out how she been treating ’em and work around that. Although it hurt his pride at times, he’d admit inside it was usually no different than what he had to say himself—just plainer words and a slower cure than them concentrated drugs. And unless there was just no other choice, she’d never cut on nobody. Only twice in recollection, she’d picked up a knife: once when Parris got bit by a water moccasin, and the time when Reema’s oldest boy was about to kill ’em both by coming out hind parts first. Brian Smith-field looked at Miranda a little different after that birth. Them stitches on Reema’s stomach was neat as a pin and she never set up a fever. Being an outsider, he couldn’t be expected to believe the other things Miranda could do. But being a good doctor, he knew another one when he saw her.

  “You stealing my patients again, Miss Miranda?” He gives her that slow grin when he gets out the car. “A poor country doctor like me can’t keep body and soul together that way.”

  “Well, if they paying you a dime, it’s ten cents more than I get. And thank you for hurrying.”

  “I had a breech birth almost halfway to Charleston.”

  “Do tell? They both make out all right?”

  “Yeah, but it was touch-and-go for a while. You know, they waited till the last minute to call me. Had an old midwife over there who had put a butcher knife under the bed and told the mother it was gonna cut her pain.” He shakes his head sadly. “Some people. So what’s the story here?”

  “From what I see, Bernice got some kinda boil up on her female parts—feels like the ovaries to me. She’s been taking these pills, trying to have a baby.” She hands him the vitamin bottle.

  He shakes ’
em out and squints at the name printed on ’em.

  “Good God—Perganol. How in the high holy hell did she get her hands on these? Excuse my mouth, Miss Miranda. But of all the things she coulda done, this is about the worst. I wouldn’t even give Bernice Clomid—and that’s a lot less potent. How long has she been taking this?”

  “I’d guess about two months.”

  “But how did she get it?”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I got my hands on some and gave ’em to her?”

  “No.” He gets real snippy. “I wouldn’t believe that at all.”

  “Or maybe you’d believe that since they in a vitamin bottle, she thought she was taking vitamins and was taking that instead?”

  He gives her a long, hard stare. “What’s the point, Miss Miranda?”

  “The point, Dr. Smithfield, is that it don’t matter how she got ’em—she got ’em. And we needed you here to find out exactly what kind of damage they done to her system.”

  He gives her that slow grin again. “You give her anything for the pain?”

  “A smidge of choke-cherry bark.”

  “I’m not familiar with that one.”

  “The way I gave it to her, it knocked her out. Slows down the pulse. Sorta acts like dope.”

  “Okay, about how long ago?”

  “No more than half an hour.”

  “I appreciate it. Guess she did, too. I have a feeling I’m going to find myself a sweet little case of ovarian cysts in there. Just hope there’s no liver damage.”

  “There ain’t—I checked her eyes.”

  Miranda sits out on the front steps while Smithfield goes in to see Bernice. The night’s turned chill, but there was something out there in the air. Something the air was telling her. She gets up, stretches, and moves around to the back of the house. It’d be a good place for a vegetable garden—even enough space for corn between here and the woods. But with Ambush truck farming, there’d be no need for that. Still, there were no flowers. With them dogwoods and wild camellias just on the edge of the woods, guess she don’t need to bother. She turns and goes a bit to the edge of the bluff, and Pearl’s house is sitting down there, closer to The Sound. Her lights are off, but her car is parked out front. Pearl can see everything happening up here, Miranda thinks. She must be at that window peeping, since it ain’t prayer meeting night. And never came up or called to see what she could do for her son and his wife. Everybody knows she hated to see Ambush marry Bernice. Naw, she’ll wait till everybody’s gone, then come up tomorrow and get Bernice alone. It won’t take much to make that girl feel ashamed. Something the air was telling her. She sighs, and circles the house again. I’ll walk home from the bridge road. I’ll walk and think this through on my own ground.