But his eyes never left mine as he called that bet. Their clear brown caught the reflection from the hanging lanterns and they were actually pitying me. I had to blink and look at our cards again just to be sure: No, any way he cut it, I was winning. But my throat was dry until he dealt out the last cards with those long delicate fingers. A ten of hearts for him, an eight of spades for me. He was showing a pair of tens against my aces. But we were up to three calls and a raise—three. And each time I kept doubting what was in front of my face, even doubting the eight of clubs in the hole that gave me two pair. No, there was absolutely nothing he could have in the hole, legitimate or otherwise, to win this hand. My mind knew it, but somehow the message hadn’t reached my gut because the fourth time he met my bet the strain was enough to make me fold. My voice cracked as I called and raised the fifth time—all of three dollars and fifty cents on the table and my hands were shaking. If he called and raised me again—well, damn it, maybe he’s palmed two cards (as unrealistic as that could be) and I’ll just fold with my aces and eights. Then he smiled—a brilliant, brilliant smile. Slow, even, and gleaming it spread over his face. He made a motion toward his money as if he were going to see my bet, and with that same shade of pity in his eyes, he flipped over his hole card—the king of hearts. I sat there staring at it stupidly, wondering why he didn’t pick up the pot. Then with a wave of disappointment I realized he had not won.
But that’s not why I came home drunk. It was the clapping. Dr. Buzzard started it off, his callused palms meeting each other with the rhythm of dirge as he looked straight into the eyes of the other men. His lone clapping echoed loudly into the night, persistent and slow. One by one, they joined in. At first it was for me. The small sip of beer did nothing to dissolve the lump in my throat. Neither did the next or the next. So I drained the can. And then the rhythm of their clapping shifted slightly and this time it was for him. Dr. Buzzard took off his feathered hat and the necklace of bones. He emptied his overall pockets of crumpled tissues, bits of stone, a rabbit’s foot. The clapping continued between the deep baritone of Parris’s voice:
Take my hand, Precious Lord.
He slipped out of his sneakers and with a huge grunt he was swaying upside-down on his hands.
Lead me on. Let me stand.
I am tired. I am weak. I am worn.
Each syllable was beat off in time with their hands while his raised small clouds of dust on the ground—
Through the dark. Through the night.
Lead me on to the light.
I didn’t understand the rhythm and I refused to spoil it by attempting to join in. Perhaps if I had known that I only had to listen to the pulse of my blood—
Take my hand, Precious Lord
And lead me home.
How long could he stay that way? His palms and muscled forearms balancing his body so that through the shadows his feet seemed to stretch up to the stars. I wanted it to go on forever—
When my way grows drear
Precious Lord, linger near.
When my life is almost gone
By the river I will stand.
Guide my feet, hold my hand.
Take my hand, Precious Lord
And lead me home.
I wanted his feet anchored up there in the sky. The clear liquor in the paper cup that was pushed toward me burned every part of my body it touched. But it didn’t touch as deeply as the rhythm being pounded into my ears.
Sometimes stumbling
Sometimes falling
Sometimes alone …
After the first cupful it stopped burning entirely. And through my watery eyes his body was stretching up into the stars—they outlined and illuminated the soles of his feet.
Take my hand, Precious Lord
And lead me home.
I said I fell asleep, you said I passed out. But when I woke up, I was holding on to the post of your grandmother’s fence for dear life. It seemed the logical thing to do: her front yard had been replaced by a huge cavern and I needed to get to the three of you sitting up there on the porch without falling in. My pockets were loaded down with change and I was afraid that the weight of the coins would throw me off balance and straight down into that gaping hole. I was aware that I was a little tipsy, but if I held on long enough to get my direction around that cavern, I could make it up to the porch with a modicum of dignity. I didn’t want your grandmother and Miss Miranda thinking that you’d married a drunk. I just hadn’t tasted beer in over seventeen years and I’d never tasted moonshine before. So I was just going to hang on there, both arms wrapped around the fence post, and think my way through this.
“Honey, ain’t you coming up on the porch?” Miss Abigail asked me.
“No, there’s money in my pockets.”
My answer was reasonable and I had concentrated carefully to avoid slurring my words, but after a moment of stillness, soft laughter encircled me before three pairs of even softer arms were guiding me up the steps.
Twice in less than twenty-four hours you ended up sprawled out on the bed with me having to undress you, and it was getting to be a bit much. That mess Dr. Buzzard brewed up was known to take paint off a wall—it had to be almost two hundred proof after he cut it down. What could have possessed you? Trying to be macho, no doubt. But you woke up after your wild drinking spree feeling a lot better than you deserved to. You had Mama Day to thank for that: she said just force two aspirin and a pint of water down your throat and you wouldn’t have a hangover in the morning. Personally, I wanted you to suffer, especially when you got up arrogant and lying through your teeth about the condition you’d been in. Yes, I was always exaggerating and downright spiteful because you had gone out and had a little fun alone without clinging to my side. And, oh, now, you weren’t going to humor me by having tea and dry toast for breakfast. You felt fine this morning because there had been absolutely nothing wrong with you last night. You insisted on pancakes and I soaked them with butter. You didn’t stay arrogant long, did you. I didn’t even bother repeating myself about your stomach muscles being paralyzed—you couldn’t have heard me anyway with your head buried in the toilet.
I could have told you then, the vacation was over. Grandma and Mama Day had decided that there’d be no more free time for you, kid. But you wouldn’t have believed me because they never said a word as they sat at that kitchen table chatting away with you retching in the background. But I knew them: idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and you had come home reeking with his brew. There was a soul in that bathroom to be saved with hard work. They were going to demand practically every minute of your day while you would think you were volunteering your butt off. When she puts her mind to it, no one can beat a southern woman at manipulating a man. And these women had been around long enough to take it to the level of art.
They were much too skilled to honey, sweetheart, or sugar you into anything. On the contrary, you would be told to run off, to rest, to leave them alone with their work. But context would be their master stroke and versatility their finishing touch. So Grandma starts out talking about her age. This will probably be the last year she’d fool with that garden. Her appetite is hardly what it used to be—why worry about growing beans? More there than she’ll ever use and even too many to give away. A long, long sigh. She’ll just go on up to the store and buy a few old frozen packages of something. She’s a lot better off than them other old people she reads about in the newspapers having to eat cat food. You see, then she totally drops that subject. Goes on to something else, and finally with another long, long sigh, she says that since these beans are already growing, she’ll go through the last hurrah and get out there and tie them up. To grab at her back when she stands up would be a bit too much, so she just shuffles slowly toward the rear porch. And, of course, you volunteer. That’s gentle pity.
Mama Day jumps in by the afternoon and uses fierce pride. She waits until she spies you on the porch before dragging that heavy rag rug out to the clothesline. She lets it trail
along the ground, stopping several times to hoist it up in her arms. That gives you the time to get across the road with an offer of help that’s flatly and emphatically refused as she struggles unsuccessfully—much too unsuccessfully—to swing it over the line. You get begrudging thanks for insisting that you do it and finally several pointers on the most effective way to beat out the dust. But she’ll keep you supplied with lemonade for your dry throat—at least she ain’t too old and decrepit to squeeze a few lemons. They exchange tactics on the second day and by the third, none are needed. You’ve been allowed to overhear the quiet whispers about how marvelous you are, to witness glimpses of melting awe at the strength of your back, your arms. Yeah, they could lie back now, your ego would take over.
I guess if I’d really taken those lessons to heart, we could have gotten along better. They had you under their heels and you were purring. But I found treating a grown man like a five-year-old a little nauseating. If they had just come out and said, We want you to help around the house, you would have. As a matter of fact, you would have done it for the remainder of your vacation and not have resented it. That was more my style: Hey, look, keep your tail here and help me. But like I said, they were artists. And they wove the illusion that you were doing more than helping, you were in charge. You wanted to do all those chores. You even thought of things to be done that hadn’t crossed their minds. The fact that you weren’t in charge had absolutely nothing to do with the results: Grandma’s roof got painted, the garden got weeded, Mama Day’s rugs were spotless. And you were too tired to go anywhere. If you only knew, I thought, watching you laughing and talking with them on the porch at night. Grandma shelling boiled peanuts for you, Mama Day rubbing liniment into your sore shoulders. And maybe you did know, but it was what you believed that counted.
The west woods were a real pleasure to walk through. The ground was flat and dry with a well-worn path shaded by pine trees for a good distance in before you came upon sporadic patches of live oaks. You told me the names of the other trees that seemed to spring up just for the opportunity to provide a burst of color among all the dark greens and browns: magnolia, yellow jasmine, wisteria. None of these flowering trees had been in the other woods in such abundance. This place was more like a wild garden—and a garden with a water view. As I looked to the right through spots where the trees had thinned, I could glimpse bluish strips of The Sound. A little farther on and we can see it fully, you said. There was a short cut through the family plot. I didn’t understand why we had to put moss in our shoes before entering the graveyard.
“It’s a tradition,” you said.
“But what does it mean?”
“I don’t know—it’s just something we’ve always done.”
“Well, what would happen if I didn’t?”
“Why be a pain in the butt, George? Nothing would happen if you didn’t. But it shows respect.”
“I was just asking—every tradition has some kind of background to it.”
“Then ask Mama Day, she’d probably know.”
An odd custom. But then I was entering the oddest graveyard I had ever seen. The tombstones—some granite, some limestone—were of varying heights with no dates and only one name. You explained that they were all Days so there was no need for a surname. But what, as in your case, if a woman married? You live a Day and you die a Day. Early women’s lib, I said with a smile. A bit more than that, you answered. You showed me how they were grouped by generations: the seven brothers and then the seven before them. The sizes of the headstones represented the missing dates—but only in relationship to each other. There was a Peace who died younger than another Peace and so her stone was smaller. There was your mother’s stone—Grace—and she had obviously died younger than her sister Hope. Mama Day, you said, would have the tallest stone. She’d already lived longer than any Day before her. The closeness of all this awed me—people who could be this self-contained. Who had redefined time. No, totally disregarded it. But it couldn’t be the custom in the whole place. I remembered the tombstone at Chevy’s Pass and mentioned it to you. Bascombe Wade’s stone had been marked 1788–1823. Who exactly was he? And I got the same legend. The unnamed slave woman. The deeds to Willow Springs. The vigil by the ocean bluff. Except that you told me that woman had been your grandmother’s great-grandmother. But it was odd again the way you said it—she was the great, great, grand, Mother—as if you were listing the attributes of a goddess. The whole thing was so intriguing, I wondered if that woman had lived at all. Places like this island were ripe for myths, but if she had really existed, there must be some record. Maybe in Bascombe Wade’s papers: deeds of sale for his slaves. Where had his home been on this island? Did he have a family? Who erected his tombstone?
I stopped asking you questions you couldn’t answer, because it was irritating you. I didn’t know why, but I could guess. You were always very sensitive about your complexion, going out of your way to stress that you were a black woman if someone was about to mistake you for a Spaniard or Creole. It was certainly one I could never make. We only had to get into an argument for me to be reminded—your fists balled up on your hips, you drawing blood with your never-ending mouth—you were, in spirit at least, as black as they come. No, you could have easily descended from that slave woman who talked a man out of a whole island. But you hated to think about the fact that you might also be carrying a bit of him. What difference did it make? All of us carried strains of God-knows-what from God-knows-where except the American Indian. And if they were traced back far enough, there were strains of Asian blood in them. I thought it was unique that you had a heritage intact and solid enough to be able to walk over the same ground that your grandfather did, to be leading me toward the very house where your great-grandfather was born. Even your shame was a privilege few of us had. We could only look at our skin tones and guess. At least you knew.
The open slope just outside the circle of oaks surrounding your family plot provided a view of just a thin curve of the powder blue water in The Sound. Lying on that grassy slope with its tangled patches of wildflowers, I wondered how you ever brought yourself to leave a place like this. And you actually owned this land.
“No, I don’t own it. Our children own it.”
“But we don’t have any children.”
“Well, once you stop falling out unconscious at night, we will. And then it’s theirs. Some kind of crazy clause in our deed. It’s always owned two generations down. That’s to keep any Day from selling it.”
“But you’re two generations down.”
“Yeah, but once I was born it automatically flipped over to them.”
“And what if you don’t ever have any children?”
“A likely possibility, the way you’ve been acting lately.”
“Come on, I’m serious.”
“Well, I guess it reverts back to the original owner.”
“How? The original owner is dead. Isn’t that his tombstone at Chevy’s Pass?”
“I don’t know, George. Maybe to his original family over in Europe. Who cares?”
“Well, you should. And if you don’t, I do. This is all too beautiful to let go.”
“If Mama Day had to come back from her grave, this land isn’t going anywhere—believe me.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere either. I could see myself staying here forever.”
“Well, help yourself. Sure, it’s nice in the summer. But the other nine months of the year, there is absolutely nothing going on here.”
“Ambush Duvall manages—he farms.”
“Oh, I can just see you farming. Ambush isn’t playing, he works hard.”
“I’ve worked hard all my life.”
“You’ve thought hard all your life. A successful farm takes back-breaking work. Look at the condition you’re in just from weeding a few rows of beans.”
“So you wouldn’t stay here with me?”
“No. You would not chain me down here while you played at growing tomatoes and cor
n. And this whole conversation is stupid anyway, because you have no intention of staying here and becoming a farmer.”
“It’s not a stupid conversation. The point is that you said you wouldn’t stay with me.”
“Not in Willow Springs.”
“Well, that’s good to know, Ophelia.”
“George, I said ‘till death do us part,’ not starvation.”
“I wouldn’t let you starve.”
“No, I’d have all those half-assed ears of corn you’re dreaming of growing. Boiled corn. Fried corn. Cornbread. Succotash—if we could afford a can of lima beans. No thanks.”
“So if I’d been a painter or a musician—or a farmer—you never would have looked at me. Not enough security.”
“Why are we talking about this? You were not a painter or a trumpet player. You were you. And I married you.”
“I’d still be me if I stayed here. And so what if I had a dream? You wouldn’t be there for me.”
“Okay, George. This is what you want to hear: anywhere in the world you go and anything you want to do, I’m game. I’ll freeze myself, starve myself, wear Salvation Army clothes to be by your side. I’ll steal for you, lie for you, crawl on my hands and knees beside you. Because a good woman always follows her man.”
“Let’s just drop it, Ophelia.”
“Yes, let’s.”
“But I’m going to remember what you said.”
“Please do.”
It was so hard to tell with you. On one level I believed that if offered an ultimatum, you would be there if I chose to go scrambling after some sort of impossible dream. And I was hardly the man to do that: the steadiness and certainty of my work, of my marriage, was really all I wanted. And if we are defined by the limits of our desires, then the man you met was one for whom an impossible dream was unthinkable. I was putting you into an unfair position: I might as well have asked, I know you married me as a human, but what if I turned into a frog tomorrow? Would it be over? Basically, you were saying it would be. Realistically, you were right. But in the midst of a setting that was so unreal—the water, the flowers, the trees—I had an intense urge for you to offer reassurance that there were no limits to how far we would go for each other.