“Razor-backed bitch!” Granpaw shouted. He ditch-walked himself back to his stool, sat down and motioned me to sit down on mine. He gave me that flat-on look. “Now. Tell Granpaw. What all happened out there with Moses?”
I sat down and told him everything I could remember. How the beams appeared and disappeared. How the little boy who was Victor tried to get his Momma to stop what she was doing. How the men around the table laughed. About the sight I had of Moses, hanging upside down in a tree. How the blood dripped from his fingers. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the rattlesnake skull. “He gave me this, Granpaw.”
Granpaw took it between his first finger and thumb, raised it up to the level of his eyes.
“He used it on you, Granpaw. He made you better with it.”
Granpaw turned the little skull around, looking at it every which way. “Moses wouldn’t give this away unless they was good reason to. This is his Rain Skull. You know what a Rain Skull is?”
“No Granpaw.”
Granpaw shook the skull, making that swishy hissing sound. “Them’s herbs and things Moses put in there. Walked all over these hills gathering them. I know. I helped him do it. A Rain Skull is power, son. Contrary power. You’ll think it’s going one way but then it’ll end up going another. Then it’s too late.”
“Too late for what, Granpaw?”
He gave me another flat-on look. “To save what you was wanting to destroy, by grabs.”
I thought about that a minute. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“No,” Granpaw said. “And I don’t reckon it ever will. That’s how it works though.”
“Like magic,” I said.
“Not magic. Contrary power. Moses is a medicine man, son. Takes a good long while to get what a medicine man is saying. It’ll seem unnatural.” Granpaw nodded his head at me real slow like. “You’ll see though. In time.”
I was glad I would see. Still I wanted to know about the little boy, about Victor. I wanted to know what he was doing there with his momma in that kitchen with all those men.
“Victor’s the enemy, that’s what you think,” Granpaw said. “To feel sorry for the enemy runs agin the blood. An eye for an eye is what the blood says. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”
“But what if the enemy was going to kill your family, Granpaw?” I said. “Like in a war. Like, if somebody was going to drop a bomb on your house. What would you do then?”
Granpaw laughed. “Well, I reckon I’d have to kill the sumbitch!” He reached up around his neck, took hold of the leather draw-string his tobacco pouch was tied on and pulled it over his head. “You got to keep that in a good place. You got to keep it protected.” Granpaw emptied the pouch of chewing tobacco and pushed the rattlesnake skull inside. “I can’t chew no more no how. Here. Put this around your neck.”
I’ll skin it back for you, if you want me to. You can put its skull on a string for a necklace.
“How’s that feel?” Granpaw said.
“All right I guess.” I ran my finger along the draw-string. “Granpaw? If you wanted to destroy something, why would you want to save it too?” I looked up for the answer, but Granpaw had gone all zombie-eyed again.
It was the 7th of August. Granny was sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch. Granpaw was in his wheelchair, staring at something across the road. I was throwing little stones at the picture of Jesus in the Jesus Tree.
“Orbie, cut that out,” Granny said. “You’ll put a hole in Jesus.”
“Yes. Stop that,” Momma said. She was sitting on the edge of the porch with Missy in her lap. Her face had healed some, more yellow now than purple. Missy still wasn’t talking.
“Aw shit,” I said.
“I’ll wear you out boy,” Momma said.
“Them kids ought not be missing their school,” Granny said.
“I ain’t leaving Harlan’s Crossroads Mamaw. Not till you and Granpaw get more situated.”
“Lord hon, that might be a while,” Granny said. “Won’t see any crop money till the fall.”
I sat down next to Momma. “I could go with Willis, Momma. They got school in the Kingdom. Missy could go too.”
Missy laid her head against Momma’s chest, staring, the white sail of the sling falling across the front of her. All she did anymore was suck her thumb and stare — or else whine around like a little lost puppy dog.
“Missy won’t be going there,” Momma said.
Granny cracked her gum. “You afraid she might turn colored?”
“She can’t go to her own school let alone someone else’s,” Momma said. “Look at her.”
“I could go,” I said. “Willis is my friend.”
The other day I’d brought Willis in to meet Momma. I think it surprised her, him being colored and crippled and all. He told Momma he was sorry about her face, about Granpaw and Missy getting hurt. After he left, Momma went on about how sweet he was, how well behaved. She didn’t use the ‘nigger’ word even one time.
“He’s a nice boy, Willis is,” Momma said. “We’ll see about school when the time comes. Victor will have something to say about that.”
“You mean to take him back then?” Granny said.
“No. I don’t know, Mamaw,” Momma said. “I never was one to stay mad.”
Granny spit her gum in a tin can she held up to her mouth. “I’d learn to stay mad if I was you. He might get to feeling bad someday and decide to kill somebody.”
Missy tried to hug herself closer to Momma.
“They something not right,” Granny said. “All that business in Floridy. Him on a leave of absence.”
“It worries me too,” Momma said.
I wanted to tell them about my dream of Victor killing Daddy, of how Moses had come, of how I met with Moses in the cave and what all I seen when Victor was a little boy. I almost did, but then I remembered my promise to Willis.
“He’s like a bucket got a hole in its bottom,” Granny said. “More you put in, more goes out.”
“We all got holes,” Momma said.
“Don’t it bother you none him takin’ that feller Armstrong’s side against Jessie?”
“‘Course it does. He was just mad though. At all that business with the Union.” She looked away over the yard over the crossroads toward the cemetery. “Jessie’s gone, Mamaw. Won’t nothing bring him back.”
The other day me, Missy, Granny and Momma had all gone over to the cemetery. Momma had stood over Daddy’s grave, arms wrapped about her body, shivering in the hot sun.
“I need Victor,” Momma said. “Even with all he’s done, I still think of him.”
“That little patch between your legs is talking now,” Granny said. “That’s old pussy talk!”
I couldn’t keep from laughing out loud.
Momma sent mad eyes to me, then back to Granny. “You sorrier than Granpaw is, I swear.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, daughter.”
“What about forgiveness Mamaw? Ain’t they no room for forgiveness?”
“Well, cut my ears off and feed ’em to the hogs!” Granny almost hollered. “Victor ain’t been around to ask for no forgiveness, and here you are a giving it away already. I wouldn’t be so quick to forgive a sorry son of a bitch! Excuse my French, Orbie.”
“Revelations!” Granpaw hollered from his wheelchair.
Part Seven
22
A Wall Against Victor
Willis and me were lying out on an old blanket by the well. It rained a few little sprinkles after supper, and we had spread the blanket over some grass sacks to keep it dry. I was reading my comic books. Willis sat, drawing a picture of Granny in her rocking chair. She was up on the front porch, fixing holes in Granpaw’s socks.