Perfect Peace (13 page)

“Aw, come on, W. C.,” the deacons bantered. “Don’t nobody run Mamie Cunningham! Includin’ you! If she tell you to jump, you go ta hoppin’ ’round like a black-ass jackrabbit!”

W. C. hollered, “Sheeeeit! I know y’all crazy! I runs my house de way a man s’pose to!”

The jeering evolved from one topic to the next, and once the laughter subsided, Gus gathered the courage to say, “Well, I guess I’d betta be gettin’ on to de house. My folks waitin’ on me to eat.”

“All right, all right,” the others said.

“Take care o’ yo’self, Gus,” W. C. said. “The way you and Emma Jean goin’, this time next year you liable to have yo’self number eight.”

“Oh no,” Gus said, and waved. “I’ll see y’all later.”

“Tell them two oldest boy o’ yours to come by de house dis week and cut my grass if they wanna make fifty cents,” W. C. called to Gus’s back.

“Sho will,” Gus returned over his shoulder. “I thank ya fu helpin’ my boys out.”

A hundred yards down the road he collapsed against a huge white oak. Sweat meandered across his forehead, and his heart beat as though trying to escape his chest. He hated that his mind always proved inadequate when around other men. Instead of joking with them freely, he found himself reticent and
afraid, as though they were men and he a boy. Sometimes, while plowing, he would rehearse things to say at the next gathering, but, inevitably, the men would talk about some topic he hadn’t thought about. Others’ spontaneous wit left him envious and desirous of a mind that moved so quickly. He was simply slow, his father had told him. He would never be smart and that was okay. Everybody couldn’t be smart anyway, Chester Peace Sr. had said. That was the same day Gus left school for good—not because, like other black sharecropping children, he was needed in the fields, but because his presence in the classroom was, in his father’s words, “a humongous waste of time and space.” Education was too precious, the sympathetic father argued, to waste it on a mind which, on a good day, comprehended an hour’s worth of basic information. “Let somebody wit’ a sharp mind have that seat,” he told Gus. “Some folks is cut out for school and some is cut out for work.” It took Gus a week to realize he was in the latter group, and instead of feeling dejected, he was amazed at his father’s incredible discernment. By fourteen, Gus could read most four-letter words—five-letter words gave him a headache—so Chester Sr. concluded that, as long as the boy worked, he’d make it in the world.

Occasionally Gus had dreamed of being smart, but usually he never thought about it. Anyway, he didn’t understand how smart people make money and feed their families. “Who get paid to sit around thinkin’?” he asked himself on his last day of school. “Everybody I know git money after they done done some work.” He knew he’d always eat because he’d always work. He had neither seen nor heard of a male schoolteacher—the only occupation he knew of for smart people—so the mystery took its place among others in Gus’s mind and accompanied him to his grave.

When Emma Jean first paid Gus any mind, he was picking cotton for Thomas Washington. Nothing about Gus was the least bit attractive to her until dusk when his cotton sack weighed in at three hundred pounds. She had never heard of anyone picking that much cotton in a day, so she knew Gus had to be a work mule, and more than anything, she liked working men. However, his sharp African features disgusted her. With lips three times the size of her own, and big open nostrils that flared with each breath he took, Gus was rejected by most women, and Emma Jean most of all. Who would ever marry such an ugly, purple-black brute, she wondered. His smile and frown were barely distinguishable, and the first time Emma Jean saw his crusty, flat, fourteen-inch feet, she actually vomited.

“You betta try to git dat man, girl!” Mae Helen admonished after witnessing Emma Jean’s repulsion. “What other choices you got?”

Emma Jean was eighteen then and swore she’d never lay with Gustavus Peace. A year later, after having been ignored by every other man in Swamp Creek, she cried her way to the altar and married the man she loathed. They never talked about love. Their union didn’t require it. What Emma Jean needed, she told Gus, was the promise that he’d never quit working. Gus raised his right hand like a courtroom witness and said, “I promise.” The only thing he wanted was a son and Emma Jean said she’d try. They married on a Saturday afternoon, in Mae Helen’s front yard.

Later that night, in the house Gus and Chester Jr. had built, Emma Jean asked, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

Gus stared at her sleepily and said, “I ain’t never really thought about it.”

Emma Jean almost slapped him, but decided that, as long as he worked, she wouldn’t trouble him about such frivolous matters.

Gus pushed away from the tree and shuffled home. Trying to avoid another embarrassing encounter, he hid, like an escaped convict, behind nearby trees and high grass whenever he thought he heard someone coming. Had a psychiatrist observed him, he would’ve been bound and transported to the Arkansas State Mental Facility. As it was, he simply took two hours to walk what should’ve taken him thirty minutes.

He thought to pick Emma Jean a bouquet of wildflowers along the way, but reconsidered when he remembered that vased flowers always die. Why did they always die? Why didn’t at least some of them survive?
Can’t something stay pretty forever? Something?
Then he figured out the answer and exhumed a handful of black-eyed Susans—dirty roots and all—and presented them to a stunned Emma Jean.

“I got you some flowers,” he announced proudly, walking through the back door. The clock chimed four. “Now they’ll live forever.”

Emma Jean snarled, “Sit down, man, and eat yo’ supper.” She tossed the plants out the back door.

“They gon’ grow like that? You sho you ain’t gotta plant ’em first?”

Emma Jean shook her head and watched the boys play with Perfect on the bare hardwood floor.

“Is she ever gon’ talk?” Mister complained.

“She ain’t old enough yet, fool! I told you that already,” Authorly said. “She jes’ six weeks. Most babies don’t talk ’til they at least two years old.”

“Two years old!” Mister screamed.

Sol chuckled. “It won’t be long, little brother. Just be patient. One day you’ll look up and Perfect’ll be walkin’ and talkin’ like everybody else.”

“But I want her to talk now!”

“You cain’t rush God, boy,” Authorly said. “Thangs happen whenever God say they happen, and not before.”

“I’ma ask God to make Perfect talk tomorrow. I bet He’ll do it!”

“Bet He won’t,” Sol teased.

Authorly buried his face in Perfect’s stomach and blew forcefully. After she giggled, he scowled. “Whea! She done boo-booed, Momma.”

“Why don’t chu change her then since you know everything,” Mister said.

“No!” Emma Jean yelled.

The boys flinched.

“Y’all remember what I told you: boys ain’t got no business lookin’ at they sister naked. Never!” She retrieved Perfect from their midst. “It ain’t right. A girl gotta be tended to by her mother. Men ain’t got no business doin’ nothin’ like that.”

The boys nodded agreeably as Gus continued eating. Emma Jean retreated to the bedroom, then returned Perfect to her brothers.

“Is you gon’ have another baby, Momma?” Mister asked.

“Hell, naw,” Gus mumbled before Emma Jean could speak. “She betta not.”

“I doubt it, sweetie. I got boys and a girl now, so I don’t need no mo’ chillen.”

“You got dat right! I love de chillen I got, but I shonuff got enough.”

Knock, knock, knock,
someone banged on the front door.

“Come on in,” Gus yelled as though he were miles away.

“How y’all doin’ today?” a boisterous voice returned.

“Uncle Chester!” the boys screamed, and leapt upon him as he entered the house.

“Goddamn!” Chester hollered in jest, hugging each nephew. “You niggas bigger’n me now! Last time I seed y’all, you wunnit nothin’ but li’l ole stumps. Shit, now I gotta look up to ya!” His wife and four children followed.

“Hi, Aunt Margaret,” Mister slurred, begrudging the sloppy, wet kiss she always left on his cheek.

“There’s my baby!” she moaned, and slobbered as he had predicted. “You almost too big to kiss now, boy.”

His brothers muffled their laughter. They’d tease him about it later until Mister would feel compelled to fight one of them.

“You chillen go play!” Chester instructed. “I ain’t neva seen chillen love to sit up in de house and look grown folks in de mouth. Y’all go ’head on now.”

After their stampede, Margaret cackled, “Girl, you and Gus gon’ have a army afta while, ain’t cha? Let me see dis precious li’l girl.” She reached and Perfect yielded.

“I guess she like you, Margie. She don’t go to most folks.”

Margaret smiled and whispered, “All chillen like me. It’s des titties, girl. They like to put they head on ’em and jes’ relax.”

“I like to do that, too!” Chester taunted.

Gus looked away and Emma Jean hollered. The men stood, as though on cue, and walked out the front door.

“Let’s see what all dese damn chillen doin’,” Chester grumbled lovingly.

He and Gus scuffled to the porch and fell heavily into old, high-back wooden chairs. Gus studied the children in the yard, glad his childhood days were long gone.

Chester was more nostalgic. “We gon’ look ’round and dem chillen be grown, Gus.”

“Yep. That’ll be good.”

“Funny how fast chillen grow up, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Me and Marg thought we’d betta come and see dat new li’l girl o’ yours.”

“She’s in de house.”

Chester bit his bottom lip. “I know she’s in de house, man! I was jes’ sayin’ . . . oh shit. Forget it.”

Chester’s frustration always left Gus nervous. He would’ve introduced a new subject had he been able to think of one. Instead, he closed his mouth and waited for his big brother to continue.

Reminding himself that Gus couldn’t help it, Chester smiled and said, “My niece is jes’ as cute as she can be. Looks jes’ like you, boy.”

Gus lifted his head. “Folks been sayin’ that.”

“Well, it’s de truf. She look kinda like a li’l boy, now that I think about it.”

Gus frowned.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. She’s a cutie. I’m jes’ sayin’ she look so much like you dat she coulda passed for a li’l boy. That’s all.”

“De boys is crazy ’bout her. I’m glad about that.”

“Oh yeah! Boys always love dey sister. Dat’s why it’s good to have the boys first, so they can look after her. They’ll take care o’ her de rest o’ they lives. You mark my word.”

“Hope so,” Gus moaned. “Hope so.”

“But, now that I think about it, I thought you said you didn’t want no mo’ kids after Mister? I told you Emma Jean was gon’ come up pregnant again, didn’t I? Dis ain’t de last one, neither!” His hearty laughter vibrated across the front porch.

“De hell it ain’t! I didn’t want this one, but I didn’t have nothin’ to do wit’ it.”

“What chu mean, you didn’t have nothin’ to do wit’ it? If you didn’t, you need to be out kickin’ some nigga’s black ass right now!”

Gus’s stoic expression never softened. “You know what I mean.”

“Well, long as y’all keep doin’ de do, Emma Jean gon’ keep on poppin’ out babies. She ain’t gettin’ ’em by huself.”

“I know.” Chester’s words reinforced Gus’s decision to sleep on the floor. “This one snuck up on me though. We ain’t havin’ no mo’—not if I can help it. Emma Jean don’t want no mo’ noway.”

“Is that right? Well, y’all betta stop fuckin’ if you want this li’l girl to be de last! What’s her name, by the way?”

“Perfect,” Gus sighed. “Dat’s what Emma Jean named her.”

“Perfect? What kinda crazy-ass name is dat?”

“You tell me.”

“You didn’t have no say-so in de matter?”

“Naw, I didn’t.”

“Well, I’ll say! Perfect Peace. That’s a name for ya!”

“Yes it is.”

Chester howled. “It’s plenty folks with crazy names though. You ’member dat girl we used to call Sticks? De one who lived in dat old shack behind de church?”

Gus couldn’t remember.

“De one with fourteen brothers and sisters?”

“Oh yeah. I remember her. What about her?”

“Well, did you eva know her real name?”

Gus searched his brain. “I guess I didn’t.”

Chester hollered before he ever spoke it. “Man, that girl’s name is Busterlina!” His entire body shivered.

Gus laughed wide enough to expose his rotten wisdom teeth. “What?”

“Her daddy’s name was probably Buster and I guess they named her after him.”

“Why didn’t they jes’ name one o’ de boys after him?”

“ ’Cause when Sticks come ’long, it wunnit no boys yet. It wuz eight girls and I guess it looked like wunnit no boys comin’. Then, after Sticks, six come straight in a row.”

“Busterlina,” Gus repeated in disbelief.

“Ain’t that some shit?”