“Blueberries?” He looked around at the cabins as if the blueberry patch was just a few steps away. “Where your mama?”
“Up at the house helpin out.”
“Where your daddy?” Stamford asked.
“Over to the barn helpin with that sick horse.”
“Lord, Lord,” he said. “Hand me that damn thing. Give that bucket here.”
“I need it for my blueberries. Me and my brother want blueberries.” She looked at her cabin and saw her brother. “Ain’t I told you to stay inside?” she hollered at Patrick, who hunched his shoulders, then stuck his tongue out at her, something his father had told him never to do. Patrick slammed the door shut.
“I’ll get the damn blueberries and you just go in the house,” Stamford said. The thunder and lightning were closer, and Stamford was now aware that there was more than rain about. He looked at the girl and the bucket. “I’ll get the damn things.” He knew he was going to die but he thought this little thing might provide him with a nothing stool way off in the corner of heaven that nobody cared about. That corner of heaven reserved for fools, people too stupid to come out of the rain. People got to that corner by heaven’s back door.
“You promise?” Delores said.
“If I said it, I damn sure meant it. Now get on in the house fore you catch your death.” The girl went inside.
Stamford emptied out what rain had collected in the bucket since the girl left her home. He walked toward where he knew the blueberries were, again the only person in the lane. He had heard of a poison plant one man had taken to get to the other side, but because Stamford had never thought he would want to die with all the young stuff on the earth, he had not taken note of what the plant was or where it could be found. A woman on one plantation in Amelia County had sharpened a stone and cut both her wrists. Bled out into the ground. He had heard that she was a real pretty woman so that must have been a waste of good stuff. Maybe she was a cripple like Celeste. Pretty was good. Cripple, not so good. The man, the adviser, was still silent in his head, and Stamford went beyond the lane out into a wide place not far from the useless woods where Moses went to be with himself. The thunder and lightning were now even closer, about two miles or so beyond where he believed the sweetest berries could be picked. Best hurry, he thought. Best get outa this weather. He wanted to die but he really didn’t want to catch a cold to do it.
The patch he found was priceless, a hunk of ground that was partly on the plantation of the white people next door. Stamford didn’t care. He climbed over the fence when he saw some he wanted. He worked steadily and was done in less than a half hour. He hefted the bucket. Yes, that would satisfy two babies’ bellies until supper. He walked away from the patch, came back on the Townsend plantation. Soon the useless woods was on his right, and the lane and the cabins more than half a mile away. He was on a nice piece of open ground that some women said had the prettiest baby’s breaths and morning glories. He had picked some when he was courting Gloria. Beautiful flowers in a man’s sweaty hands. But they got the job done. Yessiree bob. Maybe he could kill her before he died. That would learn her. Send her ass to hell so she could sit on one of the devil’s wobbly two-legged stools for the rest of eternity just so she could ponder what she done to him. Kill her and then sit on a rise himself and watch her suffer for the rest of eternity. Then he began to think that bad talk and children’s blueberries didn’t go together. The rain continued and the thunder and lightning came nearer.
He didn’t pay much attention to the first crack of thunder, but the second one pulled his head around. He was in time to see the nearest tree in the woods shudder, stop, then shudder again. An oak tree. Moments later, he could see the first crow flying as if upside down, heading toward the ground, two or three feathers fluttering after the body. The second crow flying upside down told him it wasn’t flying but death that had hold of them both. It took less time for him to blink the rain out of his eyes before the second crow joined the first on the ground, followed by more feathers. If they made a sound as they fell, the rain was too loud for him to hear it.
The top third of the oak tree was now a glorious blaze of yellow light, as though a million candles had been placed in it. The lightning had struck the birds and Stamford could see that it was now blazing up there at the top of the tree, hungry for some more. It occurred to him that the tree was very tall, and that if a man managed to climb up to the top, he could jump and die real good. Very slowly, as he watched, the lightning of the million candles came together to form one six-foot pulsating line of blue fire that he could see through the leaves and the branches. The lightning began to ease itself down the tree, staying close to the trunk as it burned everything in its way, leaves and limbs and branches and anything that might have made a home in the tree. Finally, the lightning stood at the base of the tree, still blue, still pulsating, still six feet.
Stamford set the bucket down and went toward the lightning, toward his death.
Before he had gone very far, he turned and looked at the bucket of blueberries, which was tilting because he had unknowingly put it on a small clump of dirt. If someone was to find it and know who should have it, then the bucket should sit up straight and be closer to the quarters, to the children. He went back and moved the bucket some ten feet closer to the quarters. The rain never let up.
The lightning had not moved, and as Stamford ran toward it, the lightning flowed down to the ground so that it was now a line of fire laid out across the grass, which did not burn. Stamford ran faster. When he was some five feet from the lightning and the woods, the lightning shot off away from him and stabbed itself into another tree, splitting that tree in half. Stamford arrived just in time to see the tree come apart and the two equal parts decide to go their separate ways. A punishing sadness took hold of him. Every day it was one damn thing after another.
The rain continued and the storm moved away from him, toward the cabins. The crows were at his feet. Stamford knelt. While the birds had fallen in deathly disarray, something had come along and laid them out nicely on the ground-feathers collected from all about and put back on their wings, their eyes closed, black bodies and wings glistening as though with life. Nothing burnt. They lay side by side, just as they must have perched side by side before death snuck up on them. They had never had such a pretty look in life, Stamford thought. And even if they came back to life, this, at that moment, was the best they would ever look. Now all they needed was for someone to come along and provide them each with a tiny coffin.
Stamford licked his fingers and rubbed them on each bird. “I just need a little to get me over to the other side,” he said to the first crow. He closed his eyes and waited for death. He began talking to the second bird, “Now don’t be stingy with what you got.” He continued to rub his fingers on them and lick his hand. He talked to each bird separately, as if the history he had with one was distinct and different from the one he had with the other. To speak to them as a couple, as one unit, would be disrespectful to the history he shared with either. He continued licking his fingers and touching the birds, but neither bird seemed very interested in sharing its little piece of death. “Thas all right, old bird. I won’t fault you,” he said to the first crow. “I can understand that you just had anough for yourself,” he said to the second bird. “I won’t grudge you that.” He felt something heavy and not rainlike fall on him and he touched the top of his head. He pulled down what he began to realize were the yolks of eggs. Then, bits of eggshells fell into his open hand, dull green pieces that were spotted dark brown. He looked up and more of the eggs and shells fell, along with twigs and sticks that had been the nest of the crows. He considered the shells and the yolks for quite some time, and all the while the rain continued. He looked about as if someone had called his name. Then he took some of the eggshells and tucked them under each of the birds’ left wings. He rubbed the yolks over their bodies. And when he was done, the ground opened up and took the birds in. He cried.