HE ASKED HER if she would mind staying at Soldier’s house with his wife, Ellen, while he went to see his father. Jadine demurred; she had run out of conversation with Ellen ten minutes after it started, but Son urged her, saying he had not seen Old Man in eight years and that he didn’t want to bring someone his father didn’t know into his house the first time they met in all that time. Could she understand that? She said yes, out in Soldier’s yard near the mimosa, but she didn’t understand at all, no more than she understood the language he was using when he talked to Soldier and Drake and Ellen and the others who stopped by; no more than she could understand (or accept) her being shunted off with Ellen and the children while the men grouped on the porch and, after a greeting, ignored her; or why he seemed so shocked and grateful at the same time by news that some woman named Brown, Sarah or Sally or Sadie—from the way they pronounced it she couldn’t tell—was dead. But she agreed. God. Eloe.
He left her there and walked alone to the house he was born in. The yellow brick front looked tiny. It had seemed so large and sturdy compared to the Sutterfield shack he and Cheyenne had—the one he drove a car through. It wasn’t as big as Ondine’s kitchen. The door was unlocked, but no one was home. In the kitchen a pepper pot was simmering, so he knew Old Man wasn’t far and wouldn’t be long. His father, Franklin G. Green, had been called Old Man since he was seven years old and when he grew up, got married, had a baby boy, the baby was called Old Man’s son until the second child was born and the first became simply Son. They all used to be here—all of them. Horace who lived in Gainesville, Frank G. who died in Korea, his sister Francine who was in a mental home in Jacksonville, and the baby girl Porky Green who still lived in Eloe, so Soldier said, but went to Florida A and M on a track scholarship. They had all been in this house together at one time—with his mother.
Only a few minutes had passed when Old Man climbed the porch steps. Son waited, standing in the middle of the room. The door opened, Old Man looked at Son and dropped his onions on the floor.
“Hey, Old Man, how you been doing?”
“Save me, you got back.”
They didn’t touch. They didn’t know how. They fooled around with the onions and each asked the other about his condition until Old Man said, “Come on in here and let me fix you something to eat. Not much in here but it ain’t like I had notice.”
“I ate something over to Soldier’s.”
“You was over there?”
“I wanted to hear about you before I came by,” said Son.
“Oh, I ain’t dead, Son. I ain’t dead,” he chuckled.
“I see you ain’t.”
“Them money orders sure helped.”
“You got them?”
“Oh, yeah. Every one. I had to use some of em though.”
“Some of em? They were all for you. Why didn’t you use them all?”
“I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to raise no suspicions. I just cashed a few when I couldn’t help it.”
“Shit, Old Man, don’t tell me you still got some?”
“They in there.” He nodded toward one of the two bedrooms. “Porky in school, you know. I had to help her out, too.”
They went in the bedroom and Old Man took a White Owl cigar box from under his bed and opened it. There was a thin pile of envelopes bound by a rubber band; some postal money orders held together with a paper clip, and a few ten and twenty dollar bills. Eight years of envelopes.
“These were for you, Old Man. To take care of you.”
“They did. They did. But you know I didn’t want to be going over there to the Post Office every month, cashin em. Might set folks to talkin and turn the law out on account of that other business. So I just took a few in every now and then. Quiet, you know.”
“Old Man, you one crazy old man.”
“You been to Sutterfield yet?”
“No. Straight here.”
“Well, you know Sally Brown died here a while back.”
“They told me.”
“Be at peace.”
“Hope so.”
“She slept with a shotgun every night.”
“Huh.”
“Every night. Well, she burnin up down there now, her and her nasty daughter…”
“Don’t say it, Old Man.”
“Yeah. You right. Shouldn’t rile the dead. But you know I was more scared of Sally than the law.”
“So was I.”
“Law don’t care about no dead colored gal, but Sally Brown, she slept with that shotgun every night waitin for you. Made my skin crinkle to walk past her. And she just about lived in church moanin. Stopped me from vespers altogether. I couldn’t sit there listenin to her berate you. Can you feature that? Pray every Sunday and hold on to a shotgun every night?”
“Where’s the boy?”
“Gone away from here, his folks too.”
“He get his eyebrows back?”
“Never did. Guess his folks figured he couldn’t hide nowhere around here lookin like that. Sally was lookin for him too.”
“I didn’t see his face. All I saw was his asshole.”
“That didn’t have no eyebrows either I bet,”
“I should have made him some with a razor.” They laughed together then and an hour or so passed while Son told what all he’d been doing for the last eight years. It was almost four when Son said, “I didn’t come by myself.”
“You with a woman?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is she?”
“Over to Soldier’s. Can she stay here?”
“You all married?”
“No, Old Man.”
“Better take her to your Aunt Rosa’s then.”
“She won’t like that.”
“I can’t help it. You be gone. I have to live here.”
“Come on, Old Man.”
“Uh-uh. Go see your Aunt Rosa. She be mad anyway you don’t stop by.”
“Scripture don’t say anything about two single people sleeping under the same roof.” Son was laughing.
“What you know bout Scripture?”
“I could have lied and said we were married.”
“But you didn’t lie. You told the truth and so you got to live by the truth.”
“Oh, shit.”
“That’s right. Shit. She’s welcome in my house all day in the day. Bring her back so I can meet her.”
“She’s special, Old Man.”
“So am I, Son. So am I.”
“All right. All right. I’ll go get her and bring her by. Cook up something, then I’ll take her by Aunt Rosa. That suit you?”
“Suit me fine.”
Son stood up to go, and his father walked him to the door. When Son said, “Be right back,” Old Man said, “Wait a minute. Can I ask you somethin?”
“Sure. Ask it.”
“How come you never put no note or nothin in them envelopes? I kept on lookin for a note.”
Son stopped. How hurried all those money order purchases had been. Most of the time he sent a woman out to both buy and mail them. He’d done it as often as he could and sometimes five would be sent from one city and none from any place for six months. How hurried he had been.
“I guess I didn’t want nobody to read em and know where I was…” But it was too lame an excuse to continue with. “Is that why you kept the empty envelopes too?”
“Yeah. They had your handwritin on em, you know. You wrote it, that part anyway. ‘Franklin Green.’ You got a nice handwritin. Pretty. Like your mama.”
“See you, Old Man.”
“Go by Rosa. Tell her you comin.”
JADINE was squatting down in the middle of the road, the afternoon sun at her back. The children were happy to pose, and so were some of the younger women. Only the old folks refused to smile and glared into her camera as though looking at hell with the lid off. The men were enjoying the crease in her behind so clearly defined in the sunlight, click, click. Jadine had remembered her camera just before she thought she would go nuts, trying to keep a conversation going with Ellen and the neighbor women who came in to see Son’s Northern girl. They looked at her with outright admiration, each one saying, “I was in Baltimore once,” or, “My cousin she live in New York.” They did not ask her what they really wanted to know: where did she know Son from and how much did her boots cost. Jadine smiled, drank glasses of water and tried to talk “down home” like Ondine. But their worshipful stares and nonconversation made Son’s absence seem much too long. She was getting annoyed when she remembered her camera. Now she was having a ball photographing everybody. Soldier’s yard was full. “Beautiful,” she said. “Fantastic. Now over here,” click click. “Hey, what’d you say your name was? Okay, Beatrice, could you lean up against the tree?” click, click. “This way. Beautiful. Hold it. Hooooold it. Heaven,” click click click click.