Mr. Turner giggles as he scoots back to the middle of his seat and drives off. I’m glad he don’t say bout that girl gone missing. There’s enough talk bout that.
He passes Gladys’s mailbox without stopping so today she won’t even get a circular. I might take mine to her this evening…or maybe not. She’ll likely think Mr. Turner missed her on purpose when he mighta forgot. Most days I can’t win with Gladys. She thinks she knows everything bout everybody. Specially me.
But she don’t.
Like the day Walter got killed by lightning.
? ? ?
I come up on Walter that time he was fried on top of the plow. His body was crispy like a skinny chicken, but I seen something else, too.
In the morning’s light, there was wide drag marks cross Gladys’s yard. They started at Walter’s dead body, rounded the corner, crossed the creek, and went up the hillside where the trail showed clear as the path to damnation. Looking at it, anybody would be curious what laid that track, and they might have a mind to follow it. Gladys don’t need curious right then.
Before the mud got hard in the day’s sun, I picked up tree branches blown down in the storm. I zigzagged them leafy branches over those muddy drag marks that crossed the creek and climbed up the hillside. I found that piece of tin that used to live under her porch. It’s got a burn hole in the heart of it. Lightning could make a burn hole like that. I pile the tree branches on top of that tin.
When I need to, I got the backbone of Mother Jones to do what’s right.
? ? ?
I’ve been sitting on this kitchen chair near three hours, and my bottom’s gone numb. I stand slow, hold my arms up, and bend one way and then the other, then pick up the chair.
And stop.
I hold real still. Listen careful.
It’s a car engine a ways off.
It’s coming this way.
I turn, holding my chair, and watch. A car rounds the curve. It’s one of them little fancy cars missing a top. A man drives and a woman wears a long scarf that trails in the breeze. The car horn toots three times.
It’s Skeeter!
He hits the brakes and the car stops beside me. My boy gets outta the car and hurries round back, and I think he’s gonna hug me, but he opens the car door, and the woman who must be his new wife leans out and upchucks right at my feet and some of it splatters on my shoes.
I put the chair down and step back. Skeeter helps the woman outta the car like she’s a invalid. Her lipstick’s smeared. Her hair’s a mess. The scarf on her head is cockeyed.
“Ma, this is Helen,” he says without looking at me.
Helen holds out a limp, cold hand for me to shake, then she turns quick to hurl again.
I step back. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Helen’s constitution must not care for this thin air. We didn’t know that till we got underway. That’s why we’re late. Sorry if we worried you.”
“What’ll make her better?”
“She may not feel like herself till we get back to the city.”
Not a word has come outta Helen’s mouth. I say, “I get a wet rag,” and I get a rag and a glass of water. When I get back, Helen sits on my kitchen chair with her head hung low. She’s pitiful is what she is.
I hand the rag to Skeeter and he looks like his daddy when he gets down on his knees, tender. He washes Helen’s face gentle, then her fingers one at a time. He dabs at some spit-up on her coat, but when he comes to her flat bosom, he hands the rag to her. She cuts a smile at him. Reaches out and tugs his earlobe.
He whispers, “You are beautiful.”
“Aw, Skeeter, you sweetie. I’m a wreck” is the first words I hear her say, with a little laugh.
I love her.
Just like that.
I love Skeeter’s new wife.
She sips a little water, and my boy helps her to her feet, then turns her narrow shoulders toward me like he’s showing off a prized blue ribbon. She’s got crow’s-feet round her hazel eyes and saggy skin on her skinny neck and not a speck of color in her freckled cheeks. She’s older than I thought she’d be, but Skeeter’s no youngster his self no more. Only that little car made em look young till they got close.
They look right side by side and I don’t have to ask Skeeter if he’s happy. He keeps one arm snug round her and tells me again, “This here’s my Helen,” and says her name extra special.
“Helen,” I say and get all mushy inside thinking of the sweetness Willis and me had that belongs to them now. “Glad to meet you.” I sound stiff like I’m sitting in somebody’s parlor on a horsehair sofa when my insides are about to pop and my throat closes up with too much happiness.
Just when I think this moment can’t get any better, my new daughter, Helen, loved by Skeeter, says, “I’m so glad to meet you at last. May I call you Mother Jones?”
Eli Perkins
Daddy took me to see the devil when I was nine years old. Mama didn’t want me to go, but Daddy said, “If the boy wants to come, he comes,” so I did.
The sun came up in a blue-sky morning and took some of the scare out of the day. Daddy carried his Bible clutched to his chest with one hand, and he held my hand with the other as we walked without talk through the woods to see the devil.
Granddaddy crossed the creek and came up beside us and walked. He took my other hand in his, so I was held tight by muscle and bone to my two heroes. I didn’t know who this serious Granddaddy was who came this time without a joke or penny candy like he usually did. He wore his black fedora low and carried his Bible like a small shield, like Daddy did.
Then the brother deacons came one by one from their places in the woods till they were four strong. They followed behind Daddy and Granddaddy and me, and their hard leather shoes walked on soft ground riddled with roots and rocks and fallen leaves. Above us, crows followed from tree to tree. They swooped low and cried soft.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Son?”
“Where we gonna see the devil?”
“He’s taken up residence in the body of Pharrell Moody, God bless his soul.”
I’d heard about Pharrell Moody from grown-ups, in scattered whispers, with wringing hands and worry, and none of it was good. Folks had given up on him and wanted him gone.
Not Daddy and Granddaddy. They don’t give up on Pharrell Moody.
“What you gonna do?” I whispered.
“Help’s on the way, and we gonna cast out the devil and send him back to hell so Pharrell Moody can get back to living.”
Daddy gave my hand a squeeze of confidence, and we turned quiet and walked on.
That was a day I’d never forget.
? ? ?
I wake soggy brained, back in my aging body, stiff from a nap in my worn easy chair. I wonder what in the world pulled that devil of a day from my youth to the front of my mind. Back then when I was young, the name Pharrell Moody was folklore around here, part demon and part redemption. Pharrell Moody’s long gone from this world, and his flesh has turned back to dust.