K.O. pointed at his brother. “Hey Mabel. He’s next.”
“Not ’til I have my Lucky. Girl need a break. Gimme one K.O.”
He handed it over while Gubber muttered, “You sure ain’t a girl no more.”
“Wish I could say the same ’bout you Gubber Samuels.” And the men roared. Gubber sipped his bottle in silence.
Ole Pete, a white haired man with burnt almond skin, spoke from the shadow, “Too bad y’all ain’t ole enough to remember them Bell girls. Lord, they was some pretty women.”
Charlie jibed, “Aw Pete, you too ole to ’member what your own mama look like.”
Pete cut back, walking towards the pit fire and settling before it, “But not too old to ’member what your mama like.”
Charlie mocked anger, “Man, you so old if I told you to act your age you’d be in the grave.”
“You know boy, I coulda been your daddy, but the fella in line behind me had correct change.”
Charlie feigned rising in protest. K.O. sat him back down. “Hush.” Then to Pete, “Naw, I remember them Bell girls. There was three of ’em. I wasn’t but a young boy, but I was old enough to know they was some fine women. What was they names?”
Pete looked into the fire. “Girdie was the youngest with them long Indian braids, the redhead was Charlotte, then the eldest Neva.”
K.O.’s brother Jeb, a spindly boy all teeth and legs, came to life against the stairs. He wiped his mouth and slurred, “K.O., ain’t that crazy gal livin’ out at the Bell place they kin?”
Pete replied, “That’s Charlotte Bell’s daughter Ruby out there.”
“She ain’t nothing to look at.” Jeb shrugged.
K.O. said quiet, “Usta be.”
“Well,” Jeb tried to focus, “she look like the scarecrow now.”
Mabel asked between a slow drag, “Wasn’t that them three sisters had that trouble with the law?”
Pete shifted before the fire and shook his head. “Yes, but Neva make out the worst.”
Jeb leaned forward. “Who?”
“Neva Bell, Ruby’s Auntie.”
K.O. started, “Yes, yes I remember. I remember hearing what they done to that child.”
Charlie nodded. “It were a sin before God.”
Jeb’s face squeezed tight with interest. “Well — what happened to her?”
Pete shifted in the firelight. And the whole of the front yard seemed to lean into him. As he spoke, the ash on Mabel’s cigarette grew.
“TROUBLE COME the year of Mister Bell’s bumper cotton harvest. Nineteen and thirty-two. When the crop grew so tall and white, folks said it dusted the heaven. That year Mister Bell bought brass bells up in Jasper and tied them to his chinaberry tree. So that on a windy day at picking time the air was full of ringing and bits of cotton all the way to P & K.
“Now most of them Bells passed for White. Left the South on buses, boats and trains … flew up north just like them bits of cotton, but not Mister Bell, who was whiter than milk from a white cow in winter. Folks always speculating if Neva would take that train up north, but they knew just as well that she wouldn’t, she loved her daddy so.
“Now, Neva was the kind of pretty make the sun jealous. Not just because she was strawberry blond with her daddy’s blue eyes. And it wasn’t just her figure, though it looked like God must have been tickled with hisself with that handiwork. It were her smile. Lord help the men in Liberty when that child took a notion to smile. It were a miracle of nature, the apple that come into her cheeks. So we didn’t get mad one at the other for loving her cuz there wasn’t no escaping it. Still, we keep a distance from her, all Colored folk did, cuz she was different. We watch Neva Bell like we do a star just a-twinkling. Which made it all the harder when Mr. Peter Leech yank her down to earth.
“She’d kept house for them Leeches in Newton two years before when the rains had drowned most of her papa’s crop. Mr. Leech were Viceroy of the First National Bank. Folks say he look like Lincoln ’thout the whiskers. His wife, Missus Julie Leech, were a mean scrawny thing with a Adam’s apple. One day after Neva had put they three horse-faced children to bed, Mr. Leech tried to jump her. Neva up and quit the next day.
“Know how some men won’t work hard at nothin’ ’cept doing wrong? Well that man, who could barely lift his head to say hello to folks, who wouldn’t raise a hand to catch it if his soul was driftin’ off — somehow got the wherewith to chase Neva Bell up and down that red road in that black Fairlane of his. She say no ever’ way she could think of, but yet he chase and chase for months on end. Chase all the Black fellas away. Chase ’way what few friends she had. Chase so she didn’t feel safe walkin’ with her own sisters. She make them follow a mile behind. He chase her ’til she didn’t know where to turn. Chase her ’til that apple left her cheeks. Chase away her hope, and any dreams she might have been kindling ’bout that yella English teacher from Louisville. Mr. Leech chase her ’til she was tired enough to let him catch her, one Sunday after church in a ditch out by Marion Lake.
“Some folk say after time she come to love him. Others say she jes’ give in to shame. Me, I don’t know much, ’cept that he chased her all the way to lonely. And once you make it there, ain’t too many choices left.
“Things was easier for her after that, ’cept folks wouldn’t look her straight in the eye. They’d look at her new hat, or her paten’ leather shoes. She and her sisters was still invited to the same church socials, husking bees and melon splittings — only when the fiddle come out, didn’t nobody ask her to dance ’cept her daddy. He don’t never reproach her. Treated her like a princess, like he always done.
“All went long smooth ’til that man up and build her a house in them piney woods. Mr. Leech spent three months raising that place, hired my daddy, who was a sawyer and carpenter, to build it. I helped haul lumber from the mill and seen Mr. Leech there. Hands on his hips, his left foot jest a tappin’ ’til the last plank was painted. He fixed that house up with real glass windows, running water, and a icebox to keep his root beers cold, but not one single door lock. Not even a screen hook. Now he ain’t got to share her with nobody. Call her Bluebell cuz of her eyes.
“Now, she don’t go nowhere. Weddings, barn raisings come and go without Neva Bell. He only let her out once a week for church and her daddy’s Sunday supper after, but the rest of the time Mr. Leech have her stay in that little white house.
“Now they up there together most weekends. Smoke just a-churning out that chimney. Him leavin’ his wife and chirren ever Friday and not coming back ’til Sunday mornin’ in time for service. Sneakin’ off middle-week too. His black Fairlane kickin’ up clouds a red dust at noon while folk workin’ they fields and then kickin’ it back up in the opposing direction less than an hour later.
“ ’Til the day come when he pack up two steamer trunks and land them on Neva’s front porch. She’d been out working her little vegetable garden, her sister say, and pushed her spade down in the soil by her radish tops. She look at him and just knew trouble on its way. Say she could taste it in the back of her throat. Seem like a White man can do anythang on earth to a Black woman — rape her, beat her, shame her. But he show her a ounce of respect and all hell break a loose. And that day, he give her just a drop and tell her he leavin’ his old life on the side of the road to Liberty. So Neva, in spite of something holdin’ its breath in them woods, accepted that little drop. She left that spade planted in the earth and opened her unlocked door.
“Now Missus Julie Leech, who didn’t much mind having her husband out her hair and her bed on weekends, thought another thing altogether when her neighbors seen him putting his trunks in his Fairlane. Then that little Adam’s apple took to jumpin’ and she call on her family. First she call her mama, Lucy Levy, who tole her husband, Mr. Jeffrey Levy, president of First National Bank, who tole his son, Sheriff George Levy, who called on his sister where she cried into his collar ’bout shame, niggah whores and Black witches, and not bein’ able to show her face nowheres.