One More River (30 page)

I dream of your daddy a lot, she said through tears that shamed her. I dream of him in that foxhole leaning up against the roots of an old, dead tree and then his face starts to turn into yours and I run up to him in my housedress and I have an apron on and I try to rub your face out of his head. Then your skin starts to come off, and you bleed like you were just about bathed in a chemical, somethin’ really harsh.

She shivered as much with humiliation that she’d voiced her terrors as with the terror itself. He wrapped her in his arms, stroking her back until a great moan came out of her, one not so much of misery as relief.

Don’t worry, he said to her, pulling her in closer, making his voice as steady and reassuring as he could, I am nothing like my daddy. I do not share his fate.

And because she had to, she believed him.

O
NCE HE GOT FAR ENOUGH
out of Kansas City that he could be sure Mrs. Karp hadn’t caught wind of his return and followed him, Bernard went back to Saint Louis for the rest of his gold. After he dug that up, he stashed his treasure in a secret compartment he’d crafted in the boot of the Model T. Since he could not resist the call of the past, he went to visit the old house, currently inhabited by Cousin Mags.

Cousin Mags treated him like royalty. She kicked her two sons out of his old bedroom off the kitchen and installed him there with her best linens and fresh flowers in a vase. He wasn’t going to stay more than a night but lingered a week for the pleasure of listening to stories of Aurora Mae and Bald Horace in their childhoods, many of which he knew already from the lips of those two, but all of which he delighted in hearing again and again. His heart, he realized, had begun to heal. It gave him pure joy to hear Aurora Mae’s name spoken aloud where once he’d felt only sorrow. Cousin Mags told him she’d opened a botanical shop in Memphis just as she said she would and did fairly well by all reports. It was like waving a bone in front of a dog. A dangerous idea pestered him like hunger.

By the end of the week, he decided. He would visit Aurora Mae in Memphis, and they would be like old loving friends who meet to reminisce and share the warmth the past had knit between them. Nothing more. It would be an occasion of peace to him, a way to let old love behind, so’s he could search unencumbered for the new. He hoped she’d know where Bald Horace was and how he fared. Then he could look him up, too.

Before he quit the place, he put a handful of gold coin underneath a bell jar in the kitchen on a shelf that held Aurora Mae’s germinating herbs in the old days before the flood. He touched the shelf with two fingers and then kissed them, as if that simple plank of wood were a mezuzah. The gesture felt strange to him yet familiar also, and he questioned himself on the whys of that. He’d had acquaintance of mezuzahs at his grandparents’ home all those years ago though he couldn’t recall anyone ever caressing them. Maybe five times in preparation for his bar mitzvah, he’d visited the traveling rabbi’s horse-drawn caravan, which was graced with mezuzahs at every portal, exterior and interior both. It was likely he’d learned the devotion from him and had forgotten it until now, when moved by an object he found sacred in its own right for who had used it. He smiled and shrugged at himself for being a sentimental man. He set off for Memphis for a reunion with someone he pretended to himself was nothing more than an old, beloved friend.

In those days, Orange Mound was largely a shantytown, home to the Great Depression’s most down-and-out. Hobos arrived and quit the place after a sniff of air knowing the pickings there were worse than slim. There were shotgun houses, narrow boxes of undressed lumber, all in a jumble, as there were not so much roads connecting them as paths and sewage pits. Canvas tents were pitched all around the churches as shelter for those without, and everywhere there were men and women congregating outside, watching the children, flirting, arguing, trading whatever they could, praising Jesus. There was no work, and nothing else to do.

Three times, Bernard stopped to ask directions of men surprised by the sight of a vehicle driven by a white man in those parts, even one as beat up as the rattletrap he drove. Men approached him with hats in hand and bug-eyed smiles as they hoped for a handout. He’d describe Aurora Mae and mention she had a business, The Lenaka, somewhere thereabouts. They’d say, oh yessir, the shaman lady, why you just keep goin’ south, and you’ll find her, can’t miss her place, no, not even if you tried.

Bernard gave them a nickel each and meandered on until at last, just as they’d said, there arose from out of the dung heap that was Orange Mound an oasis of prosperity, a shining white shingled house with an iron fence all ’round. Within the fence was a garden green with tall, feathery herbs and flowering bushes. A small glass dependency for growing things stood out the back as well. The house had lace curtains on the windows and a big bright door of haint blue with a brass knocker in the shape of a ram’s horned head. A sign on a post just outside the front gate read
THE LENAKA
. As an aid to those who could not read, a variegated leaf dangling above a mortar and pestle was painted underneath the words. He parked his car around the corner where it would not be seen.

Bernard huddled in a doorway across the street for a few moments, trying to still his wildly pumping chest. He laughed at himself. The mere sight of the house filled him with excitement and the heat of an infinite tenderness. She is near, he thought, she is within those walls that sparkle like a palace in the desert. Whatever made him think he’d traveled there for the sake of nostalgia, love’s lukewarm cousin? Love is eternal, he thought, why, everlastin’! It didn’t matter how many Mrs. Karps his life acquired—although he prayed to the Lord there’d only ever be just the one—or how many wives—same prayer—the woman in that house over there had a leash around his heart. He continued to marvel at true affection’s mysteries when the door to The Lenaka opened.

A tall, broad black man in a charcoal pinstripe suit, spectator shoes, and a bold red cravat to match the hatband of his gray fedora exited. He held the bright blue door ajar with one gloved hand and twirled an ivory-topped cane with the other. Bernard watched him, fascinated. What kind of a man is this? he wondered. He looked like a riverboat swell, but those types didn’t come in Negro that he knew of. Maybe he was some kind of actor or a landlocked gambler. Then Aurora Mae Stanton came out join him for a promenade down Carnes Street.

At the first glimpse of her, Bernard gasped. Fresh tears sprang to his eyes. She looked the same and yet completely different. She was still big. That hadn’t changed, but everything else had. When he’d last seen her, she was wounded, haunted. The woman who strolled down the street escorted by an Orange Mound dandy was restored to glory. She wore a turban of red and black and gold, a turban that tied in the back then again in the front so that a vibrant floppy bow sat on her crown like a diadem. At her nape beneath its hem, a cascade of waist-length braids snaked down her back like a thing alive. Her eyes and lips were painted, not in a garish way but in a soft, appealing manner. Her bearing, the way she carried all that weight, reminded him of the Aurora Mae he first knew young, unscarred, imbued by nature with grace and power. She was in a dress of the same vibrant cloth as the turban and wore a pair of high-heeled boots laced with red ribbon on her feet. Bernard followed the couple down the street taking care to remain where he could see them but not be seen himself. He wanted to hear her voice. Her companion spoke to her constantly while they walked. He spoke in a low tone Bernard could not distinguish. Aurora Mae did not speak. She shook her head or inclined it toward or away from him in response to whatever it was he told her, and Bernard was frustrated in his desire.

From as great a distance as he could manage, he followed them to a low brick structure not far off. When they entered, he came out of hiding and looked the place over, discovering it was an office building. There were four nameplates on it signifying that a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, and a bail bondsman worked out of the place. It was Orange Mound’s one and only professional building if you didn’t count the bank up the way that had few depositors and functioned more as a telegraph office for wired funds than commercial institution. Bernard waited outside ’til Aurora Mae came out alone. He chose that moment to approach her, popping out of a bush more or less and scaring her. A hand flew to her chest. It was full of rings set with gemstones of every color. Bernard, she said. Is that really you?

He shook his head and opened his arms, expecting or hoping for a welcoming embrace, but his hands trembled with emotion, so she grasped them instead and held them close together between her own to still them, to comfort him while they stood there in the street, a public spectacle. Come with me, she said, and they walked arm-in-arm back to The Lenaka, entering through the back where the living quarters were. Once they were inside, she guided him to a brocade settee and sat him down as if he were enfeebled or a child. She stood in front of him, wide-eyed with her ringed hands over her mouth and spoke.

I never thought I’d see you again, Bernard.

He looked around the room, took in the lamps with cut-glass shades, the heavy wood furniture, the gilt mirrors. He said the first thing that came to his mind.

How can you live like this with so many poor folk around? I would think they’d murder you from envy.

She shrugged. I’m their medicine woman. I help their sick babies and ease their old ones into death. I don’t charge but what they can afford. It’s like it was back home. Most of ’em think I can put a hex on ’em. Then Bailey helps me, too. Most of ’ems afraid of Bailey.

Bailey? he asked, thinking correctly that she referred to the man in the pinstripe suit. But what was this man’s role in her life? he wondered. Business partner? Bodyguard? Her answer broke his heart.

Bailey’s my man, she said.

At her words, he deflated, sunk into himself. His head drooped, moving slowly side to side in amazement. He studied the swirling pattern of her carpet without seeing it.

She looked out a window so as not to have to watch Bernard try to gather himself, a sight that broke her heart in turn. Then since she knew he deserved an explanation, she gave him one. I found I needed a man after all, she said. It’s a hard world, and a hard time for a woman to be alone. All my life I had Horace, you know.

How is he?

Oh, Bailey don’t bother me much. He’s happy long as I keep him in grits and gabardine as they say.

Bernard’s head snapped up. His eyes were shiny with tears.

I meant Horace, he said.

They both laughed. Despite the terrible burdens they carried on each other’s account, Aurora Mae sat down next to Bernard, and they held hands and talked. Bald Horace lived in a small town in Mississippi, she told him, doing what he loved best, raising goats and chickens and tending his garden. She sent him money regular though she thought it likely he just turned around and gave it away. Bernard had her write down an address so he could go visit. They talked about her shop, and he told her about Mrs. Karp. Aurora Mae asked him if he wanted to stay on awhile, and he said he didn’t think that would be a good idea. He got up when it felt like time to be going, who knew when that Bailey might be back. She walked him to the door. They continued to hold hands the entire time. He was about to drop her hand when she said, softly, I don’t love him. I only ever loved one man in my life, and he ain’t the one.

Oh ’Rora Mae.

It’s true.

He squeezed her hand, thanking her for that, and left with shoulders square as a general’s to keep him from turning around for a last look, because if she was watching him he might never leave at all. He’d live in the outhouse and shine Bailey’s boots if he had to, and that would not be good for any of them. A crowd of children milled about his car, standing on the running board and staring in the windows. He gave each one a nickel.

The second time a woman breaks your heart, he found, the healing comes quicker, because you’re used to having that sodden place in you, heavy with sorrow. He toured around some, stopped in Biloxi and New Orleans. In the latter city, he set up shop for a while. He sold tobacco and moonshine out of a truck just to have something to do. His fortunes increased. He made a friend or two. He learned about finance and invested in real estate. He employed three lawyers, and to one of them, a man named Joshua Stone, he told all his story one night when they were holed up together during a hurricane with a bottle of bourbon. Joshua never told a soul, likely because his own sins were spilled that night, which gave the two a mutual bond of silence.

When he decided he was strong enough for it, Bernard made a trip to Guilford, Mississippi, and looked Bald Horace up.

I been expecting you for two and one-half years, Bald Horace told him. Ever since ’Rora Mae made mention that you’d been to see her. What took you so long?

Bernard sighed. I needed more healin’, he said.

He found he quite liked Guilford. It was good to live near a man he thought of as his oldest and dearest friend, one who could keep him up to date on Aurora Mae’s goings-on as well. A town is not the countryside, so they couldn’t live together as they had outside Saint Louis given the difference in their race and class, but they could visit from time to time without causing talk. Bernard cast his eyes over the women of the town and knew which was his bride the first time he saw her leaving Sassaport General Emporium in the company of her mother. Beatrice Diane Sassaport was dressed in a striped blue-and-white frock with flounced sleeves and wore Mary Janes with a short stacked heel. She was beautiful, of course, and her carriage, her dignity bespoke the propriety he’d longed for since his liberation from Mrs. Karp. What stole his heart in an instant was her hair. It was thick, black, abundant, tied back away from her face that day with a white ribbon so that it rolled down her back in waves reminding him powerfully of Aurora Mae.