Ruby uses the white twine. White goes with any color dress, she tells Cocoa. She moves her hands along the temples to get the shape of the head before making the first part. A straight part down the middle, north to south. The teeth of the comb dig in just short of hurting as she scratches the scalp showing through the parted hair before she dips her fingers into the round jar and massages the warm solution down its length. The second big part crosses the first, going east to west, and this time she dips her fingers into the square jar, massaging hard. North to south, east to west, round to square. The braids start forming, tiny and crisscrossed under her flying fingers. They drop like a fan on top of Cocoa’s shoulders as Ruby knots the white thread on each end.
Done, Ruby tells her, and Cocoa asks for a mirror. There ain’t none inside worth using, but go on home and see how pretty it is. She cleans out the comb one final time and gives Cocoa a match to burn up her loose hair. Before she goes Cocoa leans down and kisses Ruby on the cheek. Ruby is still smiling as she watches Cocoa head back down the road. She caps her jars and presses the lids on tight. She then brushes a few strands from her lap into her hand and puts them in her pocket.
Your hair was gorgeous. The braids were like the ones I’d seen on prints of African women with those colored beads draped over their necks and crossed under high, tilted breasts. You should really wear it like that all the time. I wanted to follow you in the house and tell you, but that’s sort of hard to do when you’re not talking to someone. This whole state of affairs was less than twenty-four hours old and it was becoming extremely inconvenient, but where was the out? I was getting a throbbing headache; I finished what I had to do and took a walk to sort things out in my mind. The day was perfect for my mood, bleak and awful. I needed the east woods—rough going so I could feel the muscles pulling in the back of my thighs and work up a sweat, my heart beating close to its limit. If I got mauled by an alligator, she’d be sorry enough to apologize. Or if I had a heart attack, that would fix her. That sort of thinking was getting me nowhere, it was as childish as the behavior that had gotten us into all of this to begin with.
But I was right, damn it. That’s what was so infuriating. And why should I be the one to back down? I felt better when I finally made the climb up to Chevy’s Pass. That large oak tree was rustling loudly in the wind. Its Spanish moss reminded me of old-fashioned feather boas the way it was swaying in those branches. There I go, thinking about women again, and there was a time when I didn’t have my whole world complicated with them. A wonderful time. Just dozens of boys. Clean fights. Straight talk. Order. You did what you were supposed to and left it at that. No tantrums. No nonsense. And your hard work was appreciated. Just look at that poor slob buried there—he gave her a whole island, and she still cut out on him.
The ocean was going crazy. The waves would come crashing in, spraying foam halfway up the bluff, before rolling under like a clawed hand, gouging out pebbles and sand to drag away from the shoreline. Another and another. Tireless fury that somehow I found soothing to watch. Standing there for a while, I realized how varied gray could be: the horizon, the sky, the clouds, the water, the foam. It was ghostly off in the distance, smoky overhead, with cinders in the waves spraying up liquid ash, droplets that left salt stains on my shoes. Behind the clouds even the sun had become a smashed pearly gray. I knew it had to be the sun, although it could have been any shape up there. Oval. Square. The whole landscape was blended in gray but each feature was distinct.
My breath felt that color too, a heaviness that wanted to push itself out of my chest. There had to have been some days like this, I thought, when he stood here and waited for her. I turned to head toward home with the sky becoming increasingly darker and the surf churning at my back. Bascombe Wade’s tombstone was barely visible in the clearing as the oak branches swished even louder in the building wind. Waste. Waste. Yes, I looked at his monument; those leaves could easily be crying that. But legend or no, for you that wasn’t her name.
Somewhere behind the clouds the sun sets and the quarter moon rises. And folks are doing the things that normally come with the evening: the suppers are cooked and eaten, the babies put to bed, but this night it’s with the static from radios and the blue glow of the televisions. Hurricane watch. They evacuating beyond the bridge, the Red Cross is putting up shelters, the National Guard is called into Savannah to stop the looting that might come after. Picture after picture of boarded-up stores, deserted marinas, and interviews with mayors, out-talking each other about who’s bound to have the worst disaster area and how much emergency aid they been promised from Washington.
Things is always been done different in Willow Springs. First off, it ain’t never crossed nobody’s mind to leave. Them sitting close to the water just get back a little more, though nobody’s been fool enough to build right up to the edge. Ain’t been a bad hurricane in most living memories but that’s the last memory to count. It’s a place always been hit by storms, leaving a lick and a promise, so houses just don’t get built near the water like fields don’t get planted. A promise is as good as your word here, and you learn to live like every rain is gonna be the big one. Second off, there ain’t no mayor, governor, or the like. If anything gets blown down, it’s understood everybody will get together and put it back up. In 1920, Miranda says, they had to redo parts of the bridge. Sure couldn’t depend upon South Carolina or Georgia, since they don’t collect our taxes. It’s like we don’t exist for them, and near about midnight when that Hurricane Watch becomes a Wait, they stop existing for us. Them televisions and radios get turned off so folks can sit in the quiet, a respectful silence, for the coming of the force.
Abigail is reading her Bible in the light from the burning fire that Miranda feeds with pieces of kindling. It gives her hands something to do with the waiting; she’s tired of sitting, tired of pacing near the shuttered windows. Miranda can’t get rid of the heaviness way down in her center, holding there for a reason she can’t put her finger on. It ain’t Cocoa in one room, and George in another, after that miserable supper with him picking at his food and her real listless, refusing to eat at all. Both suffering from heart trouble and both of ’em stubborn to beat the band. But that’s to be left alone; the same passion that flared up to start all this mess can be depended upon to burn it away. And it ain’t them winds building up outside; she done felt that pressure for days now and it’s got a texture all its own. Naw, this was other trouble. And she’d just have to wait it out. Too much else going on around her to call up what it might be.
The old walnut clock ticks on behind the soft murmuring of Abigail’s voice, while far off and low the real winds come in. It starts on the shores of Africa, a simple breeze among the palms and cassavas, before it’s carried off, tied up with thousands like it, on a strong wave heading due west. A world of water, heaving and rolling, weeks of water, and all them breezes die but one. I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my voice. Restless and disturbed, no land in front of it, no land in back, it draws up the ocean vapor and rains fall like tears. Constant rains. But it lives on to meet the curve of the equator, where it swallows up the heat waiting in the blackness of them nights. A roar goes up and it starts to spin: moving counterclockwise against the march of time, it rips through the sugar canes in Jamaica, stripping juices from their heart, shedding red buds from royal poincianas as it spins up in the heat. Over the broken sugar cane fields—hot rains fall. But it’s spinning wider, spinning higher, groaning as it bounces off the curve of the earth to head due north. Thou boldest mine eyes waking; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times. A center grows within the fury of the spinning winds. A still eye. Warm. Calm. It dries a line of clothes in Alabama. It rocks a cradle in Georgia. I call to remembrance my song in the night. I commune with mine own heart—A buried calm with the awesome power of its face turned to Willow Springs. It hits the southeast corner of the bluff, raising a fist of water to smash into them high r
ocks. It screams through Chevy’s Pass. And my spirit made diligent search—the oak tree holds. I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings—the tombstone of Bascombe Wade trembles but holds. The rest is destruction.
Miranda hears it in her soul. The tall pines in the south woods go. The cypress in the east woods go. The magnolias and jasmines in the west woods go. A low moan as it spares the other place. But then a deep heaving, a pounding of wind and rains against wood. A giving. A slow and tortured giving before a summons to The Sound to rise up and swallow the shattered fragments of the bridge. The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid. The depths also were troubled. The clouds poured out water. The skies sent out a sound. Thine arrows also went abroad. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven. The lightnings lightened the world. The earth trembled and shook. Miranda goes over to her sister, and gently she closes Abigail’s Bible. Their gnarled hands rest for a moment on the worn leather binding. Abigail puts the Bible away and sits beside Miranda to listen to the heaving, screaming winds.
Willow Springs is a barrier island, and unlike beyond the bridge, it ain’t a matter of calling them winds by a first name, like you’d do a pet dog or cat, so what they’re capable of won’t be so frightening—a prank or something that nature, having nothing better to do, just decided to play: one time a female, one time a male. But Abigail and Miranda is sitting side by side, listening to the very first cries from the heaving and moaning outside that darkened and shuttered house. Feeling the very earth split open as the waters come gushing down—all to the end of birthing a void. Naw, them winds will come, rest, and leave screaming—Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known—while prayers go up in Willow Springs to be spared from what could only be the workings of Woman. And She has no name.
I Sat Alone in our room and was moved beyond fear as the very walls of the house wanted to give way. When I was just out of school I worked with a team of engineers in redesigning a nozzle for a nuclear steam turbine generator. I was more of a blueprint filer than anything else, but your first real job is exciting. It was an awesome machine: the size of a railroad train, a tandem-compound, six-flow generator with blade rotations of eighteen hundred revolutions per minute. Its capacity was over a million kilowatts. And when it ran—in theory—lighting up every home in New York, a feeling radiated through the pit of my stomach as if its nerve endings were connected to each of those ten million light bulbs. That was power. But the winds coming around the corners of that house was God.
I hadn’t thought about God much before then. Declaring myself an atheist would have taken more conviction than I had one way or the other. I was more of a comfortable amnesiac. When things were under control—and I lived my life so that was usually the case—there was no need to think about having to deal with some presence that might be governing what was beyond my own abilities. I had no delusions of grandeur, wanting to stir up the world. I asked only to be left alone to seek happiness where I could find it, and since I sought it only within the limitations of my daily existence, I was normally a satisfied man. Every now and then when a day went haywire and I felt overwhelmed by unforeseen barriers to some goal I’d set for myself, I might take a deep breath and say, God help me, really meaning, Let the best in me help me. There wasn’t a moment when I actually believed those appeals were going beyond me to a force that would first hear, secondly care, and thirdly bend down to insert influence on the matter. No, I saw the Bible as a literary masterpiece, but literature all the same; and Christianity owed its rules and regulations to politics more than anything else, while filling its pews with uncertainty and fear. Substitute the Torah, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, for all of the above and the formula still worked perfectly. All of the bloodletting and chaos, the devotion and beauty, martyrdom, and even charity could be reduced to a simple formula of politics and fear. But the winds coming around the corner of that tiny house on that tiny island was God.
And I was even smaller than them. Trivial. Every thought, ambition, or worry diminished as it became my being against the being on the other side of two inches of wood. Fear never entered the picture: at first an exhilaration of the possibility of having the barrier broken and, for one brief moment, to be taken over by raw power. Pure power. What a magnificent ending to an insignificant existence. But remaining untouched with the relentless winds keeping on and on, the growing and pervasive realization of my insignificance caused a lump in my throat. You yearn for company then, any company, to have some minor evidence of your worth reflected back at you. I got up to go and sit in the living room with your family and found myself walking through the connecting bathroom doors to watch you sleeping.
I stood in the doorway and envied your oblivion. No thoughts of loneliness, the cosmos, and human frailty. When you woke up the sun would probably be shining. You’d reach up with that funny little stretch of yours, a small frown across your forehead, before getting your bearings. One last turn to grab the pillow, a sigh, and then you’d swing your legs over the side of the bed. I wanted to see you wake up that way for the rest of my life; you wanted it too. And we both knew it. So what had all the fuss been about? With the winds howling and beating against the house, I remembered but I found it hard to care. I had to face another irreducible formula: as little as it was, it was going to be you and me. And when you woke up tomorrow, it should be where you belonged. You were heavy because it was dead weight and I had to turn sideways to clear the space between the sink and tub. I finally got you into our room, a bit out of breath, and you had never stirred. My niece could sleep through a hurricane, Miss Miranda had said. I smiled to think how prophetic she’d been.
I was having that terrible dream again with you nearly drowning in The Sound and me trying to keep from calling out so you could make it back safely to shore. Only this time I didn’t succeed. Through my clenched lips I could hear the screams echoing out over the water. They seemed to go on forever, churning up the waves you were struggling in until I couldn’t see anything at all with the water hitting me in the face and blurring my vision. But where was the screaming coming from? My mouth was closed—so afraid I was sick to my stomach—but my mouth was closed. I couldn’t see, but I knew you had gone under. And suddenly there was such a feeling of peace because that’s when I told myself, This has to be a dream. He would never leave me. I was waking up with that same peacefulness because my legs were tangled into someone else’s, and as I turned over to snuggle closer with my head buried into that shoulder, it hit me that something was wrong. I tried to force myself fully awake—Grandma didn’t have hair on her chest.
“George, how did I get in here?”
“You mean, you don’t remember?”
“No.”
The room looked strange behind the closed shutters, a grayish light filtering over everything. My clothes were folded in the chair the way I normally put them. But I couldn’t have gone to sleep in here, could I? Nothing was clear and there was a dull throbbing in my head; it felt as if I had a hangover. It seemed to take you forever to yawn and stretch. You put your arms around me and I didn’t know if I should let them stay there or not.
“Ophelia, it was so touching.”
“What?”
“Why, the way we made up. You came in here in the middle of the night. Started right over there by the door on your hands and knees—I was worried that you might get splinters …”
“George—”
“But you said no, let you do it your way. All along the floor, begging me over and over—”
“I’m getting out of here, George.” But I was gripped so tightly I couldn’t move.
“And I thought, why not let bygones be bygones. She was only asking me to forgive her for marrying a fool. So that’s how you got in here. Whether you stay or not is your own business.”
I was very very sleepy. That gray light seemed to be pressing down on my eyelids. I buried my head into your
shoulder again and moved my fingers through the hair on your chest. You brushed the braids gently away from my face, but our motions were all underwater and the sleep was quickly overtaking me. When I wake up, I remember saying, remind me to tell you about the fool that you married.
She’s walking under cloudy skies through her garden, ankle deep in leaves and broken branches. But crumbling a fistful of earth and then licking at her fingers, she knows there’s reason for hope. It’s all right, you took six peach trees and my big pecan, but at least there’s no salt. The roof was a small price to pay for the unspoiled topsoil. Getting that back would only take money, and at this stage of the game she had more money than time. But she’d have to get workers from beyond the bridge—once there was a bridge—’cause nobody in Willow Springs would come out to the other place. Folks do get the strangest notions. They oughta see it now, porch steps sunk in, a big gap over the balcony. That pecan tree musta taken out the roof, but the branches ain’t smashed no windows on its way down.
The rest of the garden is sure enough gone, but it was August anyway. She’d salvage what she could and just turn the rest under, fallen birds and all. Let it lay through the rest of the year and start again next spring. Her throat tightens up at the rush of gratitude that there would be a spring. And if it hadna been, she didn’t know what she’d do. Well, ain’t no cause to carry on about ifs and hadna beens, what is is enough work to see her through the end of the month and into September. She’s thinking she might move out here till it’s done—save that walking twice a day, let Abigail have a fit or no. Wouldn’t be no telephones no way till long after the bridge was up. These little telephones we got is the least of their worries over there. Folks done without telephones for longer than they’ve had ’em, without lights or gas to boot. Spoiled. That’s all it’s about—can’t live without this, can’t live without that. You can live without anything you weren’t born with, and you can make it through on even half of that. Naw, she’d just get her a tarpaulin to nail up under that hole so she wouldn’t be rained out of there—looks of the sky more was coming—and she’d sit here snug as a bug till her garden was laid by.