Jim the Boy (13 page)

“What?” said Uncle Zeno. “We’re not drunk, are we boys?”

“We’re not drunk,” said Uncle Al.

“Not by a long shot,” said Uncle Coran.

“They why are y’all acting so funny?”

“We’re not acting funny,” Uncle Coran said. “You’re just looking at us funny.”

“We just want you to see something,” said Uncle Zeno.

“In the middle of the road?” Jim asked.

“It’s as good a place as any,” Uncle Al said.

Jim looked up and down the highway again, then up the hill at the school. He looked at the uncles’ dark houses, at the store, the cotton gin, the depot, and the hotel. There was nothing to see. Everything was dark and peaceful and starlit and cold.

“What is it?” Jim asked. “What do you want me to look at?”

“You’ll see in just a minute,” Uncle Zeno said. “Just wait.”

Uncle Al held both arms out to the dark world. “Let there be light,” he said.

“Allie,” chided Uncle Zeno.

Again Uncle Al threw his arms out wide. “Let there be light,” he said, louder.

“Don’t be blasphemous,” Uncle Zeno said.

“Why is that blasphemous?”

“Because God is the one who said, ‘Let there be light,’ and this is Christmas Eve.”

“I know what day it is,” Uncle Al said. “And there ought to be one day a year when I can say whatever it is I want to say without somebody telling me I ought not to say it.”

“Was Jesus born tonight or tomorrow night?” Uncle Coran asked.

“Tonight,” said Uncle Zeno.

Uncle Coran scratched his head. “Then that would make today Christmas Day, not tomorrow.”

“What?” said Uncle Zeno.

“Think about it,” said Uncle Coran. “If Jesus was born before midnight tonight, then that would make all day today Christmas Day and yesterday Christmas Eve. But if he was born after midnight, then that would make Christmas Day tomorrow like it’s supposed to be, and this Christmas Eve.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Uncle Zeno said. “How can yesterday be Christmas Eve when today is Christmas Eve? Everybody knows when Christmas Eve is.”

“Doggone it, Zee,” Uncle Coran said. “You ain’t listening to me. I bet Jim understands. You understand what I’m talking about, don’t you, Jim?”

“No, sir,” said Jim.

“Then you weren’t listening, either.”

Now Jim felt offended.

“I’m cold,” he said.

“Let there be light,” said Uncle Al.

At that moment, miles away in New Carpenter, a man looked at his watch and threw a switch. Electricity blinked through the wires to Aliceville.

And the lights in the uncles’ houses came on.

Jim thought for a heartbeat that the uncles’ houses had exploded into flames, and involuntarily took a step backward. His mouth dropped open.

Uncle Coran let out a long, low whistle. “Do something else, Allie,” he said.

Uncle Al stared at his hands.

“I better not,” he said.

“Look,” Jim said, as soon as he was able to speak.

“We thank thee for thy miracles,” mumbled Uncle Zeno.

All three of the uncles briefly looked at the ground.

“Those are the biggest houses I ever saw,” said Uncle Coran. “I never knew we lived in such big houses.”

The uncles’ houses indeed suddenly seemed magnificent. Jim shivered as he stared at them. Every window blared with fierce yellow light, except for Mama’s, which was dark.

“Why don’t we wake up Mama?” Jim asked.

“Your Mama needs her rest, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said.

“And she wouldn’t like it out here in the cold no way,” said Uncle Al. “She’d make us all go inside.”

“Oh,” said Jim.

“Look,” Uncle Coran said. “Look up there.”

On top of the hill the new school had transformed into a castle filled with light. The ground was lit up all around it.

Jim and the uncles walked up the hill. The bright light streaming out of the empty school made it seem even larger and more imposing than it did during the day. Jim reached out instinctively and hooked his fingers through the hammer loop on the leg of Uncle Zeno’s overalls.

When they reached the school yard, they walked up close to the building, but stopped short of touching it. Uncle Zeno pulled his watch from his pocket and studied it.

“Look at this,” he said. “It’s ten after twelve, and I can see what time it is.”

Uncle Coran and Uncle Al and Jim leaned toward Uncle Zeno and looked at Uncle Zeno’s watch.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Uncle Coran. “It’s ten after twelve.”

Jim climbed up on the steps and looked down into Aliceville as if he were a prince and the town was his kingdom. Soon he felt weighted by a prince’s worries. The brightness of the few lights burning in Aliceville only magnified the darkness that still surrounded the town. The uncles’ electric lights drew fragile boundaries around their houses; around those boundaries a blackness crept that suddenly seemed as big and powerful as God. Jim had never noticed the darkness before. He felt on the verge of knowing something that he didn’t want to know. He jumped off of the steps to be closer to the uncles.

Uncle Zeno dropped a heavy hand onto Jim’s shoulder.

“Home looks different now, huh, Doc?” he said.

Jim forced himself to keep smiling; he willed his eyes to stay wide. He didn’t want to disappoint the uncles.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “It sure does.”

On the way home the uncles did not seem as merry. Nobody talked as they headed down the hill. Suddenly the night seemed even colder. Jim felt as if they were marching into a strange town — a kind of town different than the one he had always known. Such a town would require a different kind of boy to live in it — a boy smarter and stronger and braver than Jim knew he was. He didn’t know how to live in such a place. The world had changed in an instant, but he was still the same. He looked at Mama’s dark window and shivered. When he looked up at the stars, they did not seem as bright.

December 26

My dearest, dearest Husband,

If you are looking down on me — as I have believed for the last ten years, as I must believe if I am to continue to rise each morning and live without you — what must you think of me? If you are looking down on me from your high place and know my thoughts and my heart, you already know that I have agreed to see another man and consider his suit. Did this break your heart and make you turn your back on me? Or do you really wish — as I have heard over and over until I am sick of hearing it — that I should marry another? Would it really please you — as everyone says — if I “got on with my life?” Is it possible that you could really look down on me from heaven and watch me speak to another man in the ways of women and men and not feel pain?

My brothers tell me that I am hurting Jim, our son, by not taking a new husband to be his father. And I cannot countenance the idea of hurting Jim any more than I can entertain the idea of causing you even another moment’s pain, which leaves me torn and bewildered. If I do not marry again, I harm your son; if I do marry, I harm you. What my brothers do not understand is that even though you died, I swore in my heart that it did not matter, that we were still married, that your death was only a momentary separation. I told myself that you had gone away to prepare a home in a better place and that you would send for me when it was ready. I swore that this was how I would live my life, that I would be faithful to you and married to you until such time we could be reunited. This was my secret oath. And now I have betrayed that oath. Does this not make me the vilest kind of low woman? Did Jesus not tell us that the thought of sin is as bad as the sin itself? How can you possibly forgive me for what I have done?

I know that God left me on this earth to insure that our son grow up to be the kind of man you would have raised him to be, and therefore see that your death was not in vain, but what do I do when my brothers tell me that God’s will is different than I perceive it to be? Does God speak to them and not to me? Am I really as alone as I feel in my heart? By insisting that I speak to this man, my brothers force me to act in a manner I find despicable. I want to shout out at them, I AM A MARRIED WOMAN! Can they not honor my marriage? Can I not choose to be married to you even if you are dead? Is this not my sacred right?

I just don’t know what

At the Tenant House

A
FTER SUPPER
, Mama told Jim he could go sit with the uncles in the store. Jim leapt up from the table. The store was where the uncles retreated evenings when they wanted to be by themselves. Most of the time they didn’t let Jim go with them.

The moon shone brightly on the snow. Jim watched his shadow slide thinly in front of him as he crunched down Depot Street. The snow had been on the ground almost a week; it lay frozen and pitted and muddy where people had walked or driven, but the moonlight made it look fresh and new. The uncles said that when snow stayed around for more than a few days it was waiting for its mate. Jim hoped that it would snow again soon. The frigid air made his chest burn pleasantly; he tried to feel warmth on his face as he passed through the clouds made by his breath.

At the store, Jim crouched and sneaked toward the window. He crept through the white square the electric light drew on the snow. He rose up slowly and peeked inside. Uncle Zeno and Uncle Coran hunkered over a game of checkers. Uncle Al stood above them and studied the board with a frown. Nobody moved and nobody spoke. Jim decided that he would rather stay outside.

He headed toward the hotel, thinking that maybe he would throw a snowball at Whitey Whiteside’s window. Whitey was passing through town on his regular run. Jim had no idea what he would say if he got Whitey to come outside, and tried without much luck to think of something. As he approached the hotel, the front door swung open and Whitey stepped onto the porch. Jim froze where he stood. Whitey wore a suit — but no overcoat — and one of his snappy hats. He held on to a porch post and leaned out and looked up at the moon; he removed his watch from his vest pocket and tilted it toward the light. When he walked down into the yard and started toward the fields, Jim decided to follow him.

Whitey walked out of town and turned onto the faint track that led through the woods to the tenant house where Mama had lived with Jim’s daddy. Jim, who had been following about fifty yards back, stopped at the edge of the woods and wondered what Whitey was doing. The track led solely to the tenant house. Beyond the tenant house lay only open fields, and, across the fields, the river. Mama, of course, spoke of the tenant house as if it were a site in the Holy Land, but nobody else spoke of it at all. Why would Whitey go there?

As Jim stepped off of the road, he noticed another set of footprints leading into the woods. These prints were smaller than the ones made by Whitey’s big shoes. Jim began to feel a little scared. Who did the other set of footprints belong to? What if Whitey was up to no good? What if he was a bank robber meeting his gang at the empty house? Jim cautiously entered the woods, careful to avoid the open track. He didn’t want anyone to see his footprints later. Whitey was out of sight somewhere ahead. Every few steps Jim stopped and listened and peered through the trees. The limbs of small trees reached out and scratched at him as he passed, and the leaves frozen beneath the snow crackled underneath his feet.

He reached the edge of the clearing where the tenant house sat just as Whitey stepped onto the porch. Small cedar trees poked up through the snow. Beyond the old house, the smooth, white fields glowed peacefully. Whitey knocked on the door. When the door creaked open on its rusty hinges, Jim knew, without knowing how he knew, that Mama was inside. Mama had made the other set of footprints in the snow. Mama was waiting in the tenant house for Whitey.

Jim understood that he was witnessing a transaction so important and secret that he was not supposed to see it. Once he had peeked through Mama’s keyhole and watched her bathe — an act that made him so ashamed he could not look her in the eye for days. That’s how he felt now, only he could not make himself stop watching. He squatted and sat motionless in the woods and tried to breathe quietly, like a rabbit waiting for a hunter to pass.

Whitey stepped forward, but stopped without passing through the doorway. His voice reached Jim as a low mumble without discernible words. He held out his arms as if puzzled or imploring, and asked what Jim recognized as a question. Jim didn’t hear Mama reply, but what she said made Whitey turn away from the door and step to the edge of the porch, facing away from the house.

With his back to the door, Whitey talked to Mama a long time. He gestured with his hands and stopped occasionally to listen. Once he looked up at the sky and shook his head. Finally he raised both hands as if asking Mama to be quiet. He removed a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit, shook it open, and spread it onto the porch floor. He knelt, still facing away from the door, placing his right knee on the handkerchief. Jim’s breath turned jagged in his throat. A sweat bloomed all over his body, even though he had been cold the moment before.

Whitey was proposing to Mama.

Mama spoke sharply from inside the house —Jim heard her for the first time — and Whitey stood up quickly. He took his hat off and put it back on. He reached into his jacket pocket and removed something small. Still facing away from the door he extended his arm behind him and implored Mama to take it. Jim held his breath, waiting to see if Mama would step forward.

But Mama stayed inside the tenant house.

Whitey’s arm eventually sank to his side as if he had been holding up a great weight. Without speaking again, he stepped off of the porch and walked across the clearing and up the track into the woods.

After Whitey had gone away, Jim stood still and waited for Mama to come out of the house. When she finally appeared, Jim’s heart pounded as if she were a deer or a spirit. She carefully closed the door, turned, and looked down at the handkerchief Whitey had left on the porch. She picked it up, held it briefly to her nose, and put it into her coat pocket.