A Gracious Plenty (21 page)

Mrs. Livingston giggles; Mr. Livingston says, “Damn!”

Leonard lights a candle, then another, and he looks at me when he blows out the match.

The house is somehow more tolerable by candlelight, with just shadows and not whole faces. But the wind picks up and it becomes harder to hear each other. The wind screams in the distance.

If I was at home, I would stretch out on the ground and wait for the storm to end. I’d hold myself onto the ground and listen to the earth suck up the rain. And if limbs fell on my back or head, they’d just be like brothers and sisters wrestling and playing acrobat, playing rough. And I wish I could get out there, even in the storm. The ground, the earth, will always hold you, will always hug you back.

“Maybe you should read the Bible to us,” Mrs. Livingston says to her husband, her voice suddenly sharp, the giddiness gone. “You used to read the Bible during storms.”

“I haven’t read the Bible in thirty, forty years—however many years it’s been since Marcus died, that’s how long it’s been since I’ve read the Bible. Can you not remember that, Mildred—that I gave up on the Bible when Marcus died?”

“That’s true,” Leonard agrees.

But I know Leonard would agree with anything his father said.

“Well, that’s ridiculous, don’t you think?” Mrs. Livingston asks me.

I study Leonard for a clue, but he’s stiff, careful, and doesn’t look at me, so I just shrug.

“The Lord who took my son will not get my money or my prayers, either one,” the old man mutters.

“The Lord didn’t take Marcus,” Mrs. Livingston tells him matter-of-factly. “I did. I helped him get quiet with a pillow and he never made another sound.”

In the silence that follows, I wonder what’s more shocking, her murder confession or her tone. We are all stunned, for one reason or another.

“Mother!” Leonard says finally. “That’s not true.”

“That’s
insane
!” Mr. Livingston adds. “Darling, that’s not what happened. So
don’t say
that. We know what happened to Marcus. He died in his sleep. He simply failed to thrive.”

“He was thriving
fine
,” she insists. “His
lungs
were certainly thriving.” She hops up and pours herself another drink, a bigger one. “You’re the one who told me to hush him, Len. You had a speech to make in Richmond the next day. Don’t you remember? And you couldn’t sleep—”

And I am thankful for the candlelight, for the smallness of it, for the flicker that doesn’t make me look at any of them too carefully, for too long. If a crime has happened, I didn’t see it. I don’t know it. I do not want to know.

“And poor little Leonard,” Mrs. Livingston mocks. “He ate until he blew up like a little pig after Marcus died. We took him to a psychologist,” she whispers. “He was so nervous, he couldn’t help playing with himself.”

“Mildred!” Mr. Livingston yells.

“Did I say something
wrong
, Len? Did I say something you didn’t
like
?”

“Mother!” Leonard begs.

“It’s okay, son,” she replies. “Between your brother going away and the little burned child you kept dreaming about …”

Then she turns to me, puts her hand over her delicate mouth, says, “Oh, hello,” her voice quieter now, her sharpness filed flat.

“Miss Nobles, I am certainly sorry for all this,” Mr. Livingston says, rising. “You understand that Mrs. Livingston isn’t well. She’s suffering a decline and doesn’t mean the things she’s saying. And now, if you’ll excuse us, I think it’s time to take her back to bed.”

He scuffs across the room, seeming older and less spritely than he was in the morning. But his wife shrinks from him and begins to cry. The closer he gets to her, the more she wails, and when Mr. Livingston reaches out for her, she slaps his hand the way a cat might, if it didn’t recognize tenderness, or if tenderness wasn’t intended. She bristles, slaps his hand away, and sobs into cushions.

Mr. Livingston stands there, pathetic, calling, “Mildred? Mildred!” He is scared to touch her again.

Leonard says, “Mother? Aren’t you tired? Do you want me to help you to bed?” But he keeps his distance, too.

Finally, I go to her, and reach for her arms and pull her up before she has a chance to think about it. “Come on,” I tell her. “Come show me your room,” and I lead her there, in the dark, just feeling the walls.

For some reason, all I can think about is what Reba Baker told the newspaper reporter about treating William Blott the way she’d treat Jesus. And even though I’m not too hyped up about Jesus in general, it seems like a good policy, to try and treat everybody good, and it’s the only thing I can figure to do with Mrs. Livingston right now.

“I remember you,” I tell her. “I remember being little and seeing you at the dedication of the courthouse. That’s been a lot of years back. Do you remember that day?”

“Oh yes,” she says, sniffling. “I had a new hat. Len brought it to me from Chicago.”

“A pink one,” I tell her. “And you looked so special that day. I was sitting on my papa’s shoulders, watching you, looking at your fancy clothes.”

“Will you play with my pretty hair?” she says in a child’s voice.

“If you’ll come back to bed,” I tell her. And I lead her there with my hand on her head, her hair matted in the back. I push her forward.

And I feel my way around “the invalid’s room,” straightening her sheets and helping her climb in. In the distance, I can hear the wind, howling out, and it sounds like a screaming baby, a screaming trumpet, a screaming woman.

“I didn’t
mean
to kill him,” she says. “I loved him. He’d just been crying for so long, and I was so tired.…”

The glass jiggles in the windowpanes, and I wonder if it would matter to baby Marcus if he knew his mother hadn’t meant to kill him.

“I think I need to open these windows,” I tell her, because I’m scared that the panes might blow out. I pound and pound to get the window up, and once I do, the storm dips inside.

There’s a tree just a few feet back, a black cherry tree, and it rains its fruit inside her windowsills. The tree arms beat on the windowpanes like fists, knocking, but like an intruder, not a friend, and I’m not so sure we’re in a safe place. I’m thinking we might be better off in a place without so many windows.

I tell Mrs. Livingston that I’ll be right back, and I step into the hallway, where I hear Leonard and Mr. Livingston cursing and shouting.

“She did
not
smother that baby,” Mr. Livingston bellows. “She’s out of her mind.”

“We don’t know,” Leonard insists. “She keeps saying it.”

“You are an
insult
to this
name
to even
speak
that way about your mother. You are
no son of mine
!”

And then I hear glass breaking and wood splintering, and I run back to Mrs. Livingston.

But the glass and wood were from somewhere else. Not here. Here, Mrs. Livingston kneels at the window, her head stuck out. She holds the window up with her shoulders and catches cherries on her tongue. And she is laughing, deep from her chest.

The lightning pops around us and lights the room in glints, from behind, from the side, from every window, all around. I call to her to come back, but she can’t hear me. She’s saying something, but I don’t know what, in the high, buzzing twirl of screams and hums. There is noise all around, the rushing of a train, and I can only watch from the doorway as the sky lights up and shows a tornado spinning toward us, glowing in lightning like a devil.

And after the lightning, when it is pitch-black again, the sound getting closer and deafening, I do not go to Mrs. Livingston or try to save her. There’s no time. I crouch down in the doorway and wait for the screaming to take me.

Lightning flashes again and there’s the sound of shattering, cracking, exploding. There’s nothing to see but whirling quickness and a hint of something else, a baby spinning in the mass, leaning out from it to wave, and spinning around again, like a globe, his dark hair flying off like wheat in wind. He darts in and out of the whirling, like a tongue, someone else’s tongue, mocking us here in the living world. I think I hear him laugh above the high, whistling roar, but then I close my eyes.

“Marcus,” Mrs. Livingston screams. “Mar-cus!”

Then in an instant, so fast that there’s no time for surprise, the floorboards explode in one gigantic splintering, and I am hurled into the air, along with the bed and the table and Mrs. Livingston. When I land, I find roots beneath me, the roots of the black cherry tree. I settle with wood against my lower back and no wind in my lungs at all.

And it takes me time to find my air, to make sense of what has happened. I hear bricks tearing apart, scraping against one another, and I think the house is surely crumbling, being lifted away. It isn’t until later that I realize that the house has been spared. It’s the original kitchen that has disappeared into the night with the baby and the storm, with the sounds of the horn.

“Marcus,” Mrs. Livingston screams again. And she pulls herself to her feet and climbs out the window, chasing the storm.

But I’m tangled in a tree, still wondering if I’m going to die in the invalid’s room.

“Hey, Finch,” Leonard yells. “Finch!”

And when I limp out to the other room, I find his father on the ground, bleeding from the head, where he was hit by a window. And not just the glass. The whole frame.

I
T IS TOO
late to find her. I know. I want to tell Leonard, “She
saw
him.” I want to tell Leonard, “She recognized Marcus. She was gone from that minute on.”

But he can’t understand the way death happens slow sometimes. How sometimes people are dead before their hearts stop beating. How sometimes they walk around that way for a long time before their bodies let them go. Sometimes they even have to chase death down.

He can’t understand all that. He leaves me there to tend his father, and he says he’ll send an ambulance. By the time I get Mr. Livingston bandaged and iced at the place where his head eggs forth, the Vegetable Man has arrived to give us news.

He stomps his boots in the foyer for a solid minute, like mud’s worth worrying about when windows and floors explode.

“Who’s this hillbilly, and what’s he doing here?” Mr. Livingston yells.

And the Vegetable Man pulls off his cap and bows his head.

The Vegetable Man, who got stuck at Glory Road and couldn’t get home, says he saw a police car chasing the tornado. “With your wife driving it, Mr. Livingston. Looked to me like she was trying to give that storm a ticket. And it was going over the speed limit for sure,” he says. “I thought you ought to know—in case she borrowed Leonard’s car without asking.”

Mr. Livingston sits addled, on the floor, saying, “We gotta call the authorities, Miss Nobles. Leonard might need backup.”

“We’ll do it as soon as we can,” I tell him. “The phone lines are down.”

The Vegetable Man notices the blood leaking through the bandages I’ve made by candlelight. He disappears just long enough to find spiderwebs from somewhere; then he spreads them across Mr. Livingston’s gashes, to squelch the bleeding, he says.

And then there’s Reba Baker banging on the door and whispering to the Vegetable Man, who answers it. She calls me out into the foyer, where she stands with a kerosene lamp and teared-up eyes.

She tells me that Mrs. Livingston didn’t make it over the bridge. “She saved our store from destruction, though,” Reba says. “And I’ll praise God for her forever. That tornado was heading right for us, and I closed my eyes, praying to be spared, and then I heard the siren. She chased that tornado right down the highway, and right over the bridge. But she rammed the car into the steel sides and crumpled it like a tin can. That’s what I hear.”

“Where’s Leonard?”

“He’s there, bless his heart. He’s waiting for the fire trucks and the wreckers. But there’s no need for an ambulance, I’m afraid.”

“Go tell the old man,” I instruct her. “Don’t leave him here by himself, either,” and she scowls at me, like I could ever think she’d do something so heartless.

And I run out into the night, and the moon’s come out, mysteriously, along with the stars. I hear a siren in the distance, then see flashing lights headed our way. And then I feel a pain in my backside that I haven’t felt before. I put my hand high on my hip and see that I’ve been scraped raw by tree roots.

“Say there, girlie,” the Vegetable Man asks me, “you need a ride to the bridge?”

And I do. Someone has taken my truck—either the tornado or Leonard. I’m guessing the latter, but I don’t know how he’d manage to operate it, with the gears the way they are.

The Vegetable Man drives easy, with his high beams on. He drives slow and maneuvers around downed trees, dead cows, pieces of fence and concrete scattered along the road.

“You want a beet?” he asks me, and I say no.

He bites into one laying on his seat.

“Sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes these things happen. You can’t think about it too hard.”

I nod.

“Sometimes something comes along and tears your roots right out the ground, and that’s when you know you been planted too long,” he says.

I agree.

“Sometimes you been growing one thing in your garden for too many years, and then everything dies. You gotta give the soil time to replenish itself.”

“You talking to me in code?” I ask him.

“Shit no,” he says. “I’m just talking to pass the time.” And he laughs.

A little later, he asks me, “Did that baby you were watching ever cut his teeth?”

“Yeah,” I say.

When we get to the bridge, there’s just a siren wailing—and I think, at first, that it’s coming from the fire truck, but it’s not. It’s just about all that’s left of Leonard’s car or his mother, either one, and it doesn’t stop sounding for a while. I keep imagining baby Marcus with the siren in his throat.

I tell Leonard I’m sorry. I ask him if he needs me. But he says no, that he’ll be okay, that he’s headed to the hospital to find his father, that he’ll talk with me tomorrow.