And we tended the yard. Oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, and what have you. Any kind of tree you can name.
Porsha looked out the window at the tumble of vegetation in Inez’s garden.
The Indians always take the dirty clothes down by the spring where stones sparkle like big white diamonds under the running water. Scrub your clothes clean clean. By and by, they build them a springhouse.
Them Indians could cook up a storm. Jack salmon wit some black-eyed peas and wild raspberries. My favorite. And squirrel.
Squirrel?
Yo mamma ain’t never make you no squirrel?
No.
I’m gon have Inez cook you one.
No, thanks. Yuck.
The Indians sold ginger cakes and whiskey. And they made shoes and seams. Spinned and weaved. One would treadle while the other wind fast. (You got to wind fast and take the thread right off the spindle, else it get tangled up.) Then they switch.
When he could catch a day or two away from the farm, Whole Daddy labor on the county railroad. Ride down and work a day here, a day there fo something extra to fill his pockets. He was a trackwalker. Walked ten miles a day hammering down loose spikes.
DON’T KNOW WHEN I WAS BAWN. Whole Daddy write it in his Bible. (The one he took from Page.) Then somebody lose the Bible. So, don’t know when exact, cept Whole Daddy say sometime around hog-killin day. So it musta been in December or January. You know how to kill a hog?
No, Pappa Simmons.
Get yo rifle and blast him right here. Pappa Simmons pointed to his forehead.
Porsha shut her eyes. At the back of her mouth, behind her clenched teeth. She tasted metallic gunfire. She opened her eyes.
Then slit the throat.
She closed her eyes. Red seeped through.
Dunk that hog in a vat of boiling water to get his hair off. Make him pink and white. Pink white. Now he ready fo the smokehouse. You bind and skewer his hind feet, then hoist him high on a pole in the smokehouse. Rip him ass to throat so the insides clean out.
IT RAIN ONE DAY and it cold next day and it rain again and cold again. Storm slow down work but it ain’t stop it none. You got to eat. Take two spoonfuls of turpentine. And fish oil to make you thick inside.
Yuck! Double yuck!
Mamma get sick, bone-sick. Whole Daddy work while Aunt T watch, then Aunt T work while Whole Daddy watch.
You ain’t going to die, is you?
I’ll have to. You want me to live forever?
Whole Daddy take the pillow from her head to ease her dyin. Turn her bed east facin the crossroad. And he cover up the clock wit a hog sack to keep her spirit from stealin into the glass. But she didn’t die. She didn’t die the firs night or the second or the third.
Aunt T and Whole Daddy grew tired of workin and waitin. By and by, some of the church women come over and sit wit Mamma all night, singing them church songs. (Whole Daddy and the Indians tend church regular.) People tend her like she tend people. Come mornin, all of them sisters gone. Nowhere to be found.
What happened?
Water burst from Mamma’s body. Them church sisters run off. Scared.
AUNT T FOUND THE SHARPEST KNIFE and cleaned it in her skirt. She cut a line on her forehead so that her blood could mix with her tears. Then she cut her a gown from a flour sack and a veil from some mosquito netting. She and Whole Daddy put Mamma in the box and rest that box on two chairs, then they call in a preacher who know how to whoop and holler.
We make ash of the body.
Ash?
Aunt T spread Mamma’s filthy ashes over her face. Then we bury her out in the yard behind the house, plenty near the creepin gators and the diggin and shovelin coyotes. Whole Daddy hammer a cross three foot high to remember where we put white roses every day. (We grew our own.) He put Mamma’s favorite quilt over the grave.
WHOLE DADDY SAT DOWN on the front porch wit the double barrels of the shotgun across his lap. Aunt T sat beside him. Old. They couldn’t do much else but watch me and Manfred work.
THE COUNTY SENT A WOOGIE to take the farm, the barn, the smokehouse, the hogpen, the outhouse, the springhouse, and everything else in and outa sight. The county hit like a flood and carry it all away. What the Lord give, he sho can take. He can even take what he don’t give. The woogie say one word, Taxes. Death taxes.
Suh, I said, beg pardon but there must be some misunderstanding.
Manfred came right out wit it, You can’t steal what ain’t yours!
The woogie look at him. Nigga, go hire you a lawyer.
WE LEAVE RAINS COUNTY with one hundred twenty-six dollars Whole Daddy had kept tied in a knotted rag and buried in an old barrel out in the barn. Wasn’t nothing to keep us in Rains County, make us wanna stay. Shake the tree and see what falls from the branches. Sides, niggas talk. (Don’t we?) In the city, the fire hydrants full of wine and all the grass green onions and there taters neath the sidewalks. Mighta gone to Library if we knew how to get there.
Had to steal away durin day cause the white folks guard the railroad at night. Guess them white folks thought rightly no nigga stupid nough to leave in broad daylight. Broad or narrow, me and Manfred git.
Packed everything I owned into a grip. I wuz lookin good the day I left Rains County. Never will forget. A duster.
A duster?
High dicer.
High dicer?
A derby. Lil hot fo the summer. Frock coat. Vest. Paper collar. Watch chain all shined. And my brother was lookin good, too. (Folks took us fo twins, only he was taller.) Straw hat. Spats and high boots polished with Bixby’s Best Blacking.
If I live nother hundred years, I ain’t gon forget that railroad station. Station house no bigger than a toolshed and this lil ole red-faced woogie in striped overalls, like a convict or somebody on the gang, wheezin behin these three lil rusty iron bars wit his red face stuck in a piece of window. You can tell he think he high dukey there behind his window. One of those real nasty woogies, the salt that make the cracker.
How yall? he say.
Fine.
A good day fo travelin.
Yes indeed.
Two tickets fo two niggas, Manfred said.
I stomped on his foot.
That woogie’s eyes snapped out of his face, like red whips. Niggas?
That’s right, Manfred said.
We don’t low no white niggas in this here county.
Yes, sah.
And we don’t low none to leave.
We won’t tell if you don’t, Manfred said. He winked at the woogie.
Boy, you need to school you some manners. The red-faced woogie take the money and slid the tickets under the bars.
Manfred had to have the final word. Make sure his money rang loud on the counter. Thank you, white folks, he said.
We wait fo the train on a piece of knobby plank they called a bench under the station porch. Then it come.
Inside Porsha, the story grew and grew. She could see it, the locomotive puffing short blasts of black smoke that held, lingered in her memory, then grew, a long black plant.
I stand there and watched the moving walls of that train as it come rushin in and past, fast as a flood.
A few woogies get off and yawn and stretch.
We want the Jim Crow car, Manfred say. See, Whole Daddy had told us many stories about travelin woogies. Nasty. Spittin in the aisles.
Son, you know we don’t low that.
If I’m payin, I’m nigga.
Suit yoself.
So we board at the noon whistle. Ride in the Jim Crow car. Niggas give us a curious eye, tryin to pretend like they ain’t lookin. We right up front near the engine. Cinders jus fly right in through the window.
She faced him in light where red was missing. Shadows of dreams passed along his forehead, clouds over water. So you fled across a black land similar and same to the black land that birthed you. The train rushed on. And your heart raced to keep pace. You leaning to the window, watching the fleeing countryside, the tracks hill-rising and valley-plunging, and your heart leaning into your chest, trying to flee your tight skin.