I revved my elbow, but kept my ear cocked to Kizzy’s story. She’d begun it soon as she’d noticed me peering through the honeysuckle-loaded gloom at Darius’s window.
“The secundines, the afterbirth, it had to git clear. Somebody had to fetch it, not fo the bairn so much as fo Miss Giselle. That baby was turned jes fine, but Miss Giselle had her a fever skin, a shiny jacket o birth sweat. She got fluster-brained. She magined she was heping her daddy tree a possum over by Cotton Creek n likewise trying to hush this pair of hollering dogs.
“ ‘Quiet!’ she’d caw. ‘Quiet, Cherie! Quiet, Smut!’ Then she’d go, ‘Shoot that night rat, Daddy! Please, you gots to shoot it!’ I didn’t midwife in them days, but Dr Sellers had me there wi Mister JayMac to hold Miss Giselle down. We pinned her, held her to, like hired mens at pig-sticking time. She thrished n thrashed, but we held er. Pritty soon, her cries got real groany, and her eyes rolled back, white as hard-biled eggs n jes as blind.
“ ‘I’ve got to fetch that afterbirth,’ Dr Sellers told Mister JayMac. ‘Cain’t leave it in er like a rag in a pendix hole.’ He scrubbed his hands with lye soap n rinched em real good in grain alcohol, then set down twix the missus’s legs to pick at the blood organ what wouldn’t come of itsef. He fished for that broke-up thing n got it out in pieces over a battle o three, mebbe fo hours.
“ ‘Doc,’ Mister JayMac say, ‘you’re damn like to kill er.’
“ ‘Not if you hush up n set that lamp where it jes might do some good,’ Dr Sellers say.
“Way it look at fust, baby gon live, but Miss Giselle bout set for morticianizing n hymns. Dr Sellers had dug in her deep and she was weak. It happened reversed around, though. That fat n wriggly gal baby took sick n went down like a orphan calf. She jes skinnied off n died. Mister JayMac cussed the doctor, flung some ol crockery bout, carried on like Job hissef. Miss Giselle, though, she improved, bloomed n flourished right up to the pint Mister JayMac had to say they gal baby gone.
“Don’t think she flew off like Mister JayMac. Uh-uh. Aw by hissef, he’s upsot nough fo a whole family. Miss Giselle withered into her own quiet woman grief, but she didn’t go down, didn’t pitch over broke. Not at fust, anyhow. Then her bosoms flooded, like she’d had these kicking twins stead of a gal baby awready dead. Had so much milk she leaked into her bedclothes, her nightdresses, day clothes too. Mister JayMac tol Dr Sellers to do something. If he don’t, he gon pay.
“So Dr Sellers hopped. He sweet-talked, soothed, and nigh on to comfort-coddled Miss Giselle, who lapsed anyways, turning back to fever sweats. With her mind on Canaan, her bosoms made even mo milk. Dr Sellers tol Mister JayMac her problem wi the placenter gon to steal any chanst fo other young uns, no matter what he try, no matter how hot Mister JayMac’s temper biles. Mister JayMac didn’t rant or nothing, jes ast the doctor to ease Miss Giselle’s bosom flow n bring her on back from her addlement.
“Anyhow, Dr Sellers reckoned he could try whatever, now things gone so bad n Mister JayMac so deep in his melancholy. And what he did was, he brought these two hongry bluetick puppies in and put em at Miss Giselle ’s bosoms. These pups had freckle bellies n snouts so squashed they looked like ugly ol men. When the doctor stuck em to Miss Giselle ’s teats to draw off her milk, they scrumbled n rooted n tormented that po fevered woman something furious.
“Mister JayMac come home. He heard pups whining and his missus yipping pitiful under the nick o they milk teeth. He bulged right in n slung the doctor to the flo. Gashed him from chin to ear, used his belt to do it. Thew that man out the house, down the steps. Dr Sellers moved off to Alabama -Fairhope, I think. Miss Giselle, she stayed wounded. Couldn’t have no other baby, gal or manchile. Never understood fo the longest how she’d come to git sech scratches n pricks round her bosoms.”
The inside of my pot shone like a cannon bore. My hands ached from the scouring I’d given it.
“That’s a Highbridge story. A Mister JayMac n Miss Giselle story. I didn’t work fo them then, but I heard that story quick nough afterwards. Miss Giselle was among the last to hear, and she’s mebbe never gon stop suffering from what that fool doctor done after her gal baby born, then again after the po thing passed.”
Crickets chatted and whistled on the screened-in porch. Outside, fireflies bobbed, turning their flashlights on and off. One lit up at the sill of Darius’s window, rose a foot or so, and got blotted out by the brighter light coming from the room behind it. Darius crossed in front of the window. For a second or less, the firefly scorched a point into his dark form. Kizzy stood at my side, both of us gawping at the buggy house, straining our vision through the screen. Honeysuckle leaked its easy smell into the yard, and the night hung down around us black as overripe muscadines.
“That Darius,” Kizzy said. “He’s jes ashes n wormwood to Miss Giselle.”
I looked at Kizzy.
“Why?” she said. “Cause he’s Mister JayMac’s oldest living chile.”
28
The next day, after a light workout at the ballpark, Jumbo borrowed Mister JayMac’s Caddy-he did get perks no one else did-and drove off into Alabama again. Why? He had no living kin there, although he’d lied about that before (if he wasn’t lying now), and even a quick trip over and back could leave you panting. On a steamy Georgia day, I’d’ve rather played some more ball than go for a ride in a blazing-hot auto.
Upstairs, I had lots to mull. Mama’d nearly found out I’d slid back into dummyhood again. To muddy the waters more, the Elshtains would arrive this weekend to visit the McKissics, and they’d easily discover what I’d tried to hide from my mama over the phone. Mama would find out from the Elshtains later, and although she might see, and even forgive, my lie as an attempt to spare her pain, she might also decide I should come home to Tenkiller for treatment and TLC.
I didn’t want to leave Highbridge. Despite the South’s summer swelter, the torments Buck Hoey and friends had aimed at me, and a roommate big enough to scare a Marine, I’d begun to adjust. To the weird rituals of McKissic House. To my role on the team. I liked playing ball for the Hellbenders. I didn’t want to return to the mile-long apron strings and the boredom of my life in dust-bowl Oklahoma. I loved Mama Laurel, sure, but I’d truly begun scrapping for my manhood-a sense of my stand-alone self-in the CVL.
While Jumbo prowled the oiled and gravel byways of Alabama, I had nothing to do. A few guys had gone to their part-time jobs at Foremost Forge or Highbridge Box & Crate. A few others had caught a trolley uptown to a matinee, and everybody else’d settled in to nap, play cards, or letter-write. I’d mailed Mama a letter just that morning. Cards, with no cricket chirps or dance-band music to play by, appealed to me about as much as a swig of bicarbonate.
Upstairs, I had idle hands. So I fired up a cigarette, crossed my arms, and rocked on my heels like a tough in a gangster show. Humphrey Bogart? George Brent? Lloyd Nolan? I had to’ve looked like one of em, right?
By degrees, though, I ambled across the room to Jumbo’s space: his humongous bed, his pine-plank-and-tin-can bookcase, his bedside wash stand and lamp table. I stood there puffing my Old Gold and eyeballing all this stuff. The book shelves I’d examined before. Along with new library books, they held poetry, novels, philosophy, history, and religious texts, many old and some in French or German.
I walked around the bed, sat down on it by the bookcase, and opened something in French by a woman named Christine de Pisan. The book’s paper smelled like dried beetle wings-dusty sharp, I mean-and sour ink. I couldn’t decode a word, once past stuff like le and la and amour. It all just stymied me. So I shut old Christine and stuck her back in the bookcase. Something-boredom, curiosity-made me look back between my legs. Up under Jumbo’s bed I saw crammed what looked like a small boat, a kind of Eskimo canoe.