Solemn (15 page)

“Do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Don't tell nobody you saw me here, okay?”

Soon as Akila said, “I won't,” Pearletta snuggled under the covers and closed her eyes, hummed to herself. Akila felt like she was getting away with something, goofing off with a guest. She wondered if Pearletta would have liked to sit up with her and Bev, talking and cooking and watching Oprah Winfrey and pinning clothes and playing with the baby. Akila saw the television was on
All My Children
. That poor woman must have forgotten she turned it on this Good Friday. Akila watched the television for a few moments. She rested. She had wanted to remind Pearletta, there was always home, somewhere she could go. But the guest had already drifted off into a sleep. Akila grabbed a generous handful of soap and shampoo to place on top of the even more generous pile of towels she left. Then, she turned off the television and lights and locked the motel room door. She had just met Pearletta Hassle, and the Redvines, for the first time, it seemed to her.

 

TWELVE

It was a rare occasion Bev practiced her actually pretty nice voice. This was it.

The friendly families reclined off excess of barbecued corn on the cob and fried chicken, two sweet potato pies Solemn and Desi consumed most of, and just enough watermelon so to wet their tongues without having to run to the few outhouses too often. Solemn and Desi wolfed down several ears of corn. Then, they ran off to find some of their more interesting classmates from school. To practice their routine. The rest thought Akila took the moment to run off to find the other girls she hadn't seen in all the time she was in the house taking care of a baby alone. Truth was, something was strange now in looking at Mr. Redvine, fogged up in riddles and crooked talk. Soon, Landon passed the newborn on to give speeches his work, for Uncle Sam had yet to interrupt.

“… I wouldn't lie. They want us to shut up … make everybody think it's all right. They just put that death penalty back on to kill the black man legally…”

“They're playing my jams, too, Bev,” Stephanie said. Then, “Landon, I find what you're saying to be very interesting, and certainly true.”

Landon confounded Redvine. Here he had a healthy son about to travel and get into shit he himself had never been able to, but still unsatisfied and hotheaded.

“The whole barracks filled up with white boys get a good job while we slop shit. We ask to know how the communications and mechanics and surveillance work and get told not to worry about it. But when it's time to figure out how to whip up some biscuits, we gotta be all ears. And the honkies sitting down eating and reading books…”

“Landon, you working now,” Redvine reminded his son. “Got yourself a good, fine military position, boy. You gonna mess around and—”

“Yeah, but only 'cause a white boy started having seizures and had to go home. It was a handout spot, not a first-choice pick. Now I come back here and see they got a whole scrapyard and refinery tore down to give white folks new mansions. What about a college or a school in walking distance for the folks round who need it?”

“What about you change this child's diaper?” Bev asked.

“Mama, you ain't never listened to nothing I'm telling you about all this.”

Landon grabbed the baby. Redvine leaned back in a webbed lawn chair, satisfied. The infant was not used to his daddy's arms, and the daddy was only used to letters about the baby or rare photos of him. The diaper change did not go well.

Bev shooed him. “So you wanna shoot guns but can't change a diaper? I tell you, men are something else…”

“Man ain't supposed to change no diapers anyway,” Redvine said.

“Aw, now here you go … out here in front of people trying to front. You know you did this with your own and you do it with this one here.”

“Not s'posed to.”

“Would you like a cookie, or how 'bout a night with me at the Ritz-Carlton?”

“Cookie taste better.”

A gang of unsavory characters strolled along past their posts, dense with the budget whores and well-fed pimps everyone recognized. Behind them were strung-out salesmen who, in the high-eighties temperature, wore shark suits with wing-collared jackets fanned out into racks of gold chains and bell-bottoms, weighted down with other stolen tokens. One of Landon's coconspirators showed up where Landon had said to meet him, with an armload of picketing signs and a handful of flyers.

“You ready man? 'Bout as many people here as ever,” the spectacled boy said, too tense and stern to be so young. Landon nodded. The young man gave the greeting he was trained to give: “Howdy, good peoples. Sir. Ma'ams…”

They all responded, but Bev had a thought. Solemn and Desi were nowhere in sight.

“I should go look for the girls,” Bev said. “Plus, it's gonna be time for him to eat soon and I ain't got nothing for him. Gotta find Akila, too.”

“Girls all right, Mama,” Landon said, poring over the flyers his friend had prepared. “Sit down and enjoy yourself for a change.”

“And just what you fellas planning on doing with those?” Redvine asked. He motioned his son's friend to put a flyer in his hand.

“Elevate and enlighten the people, sir,” the friend answered.

“Hmmm … I see:
‘death penalty and the black man, incarceration and the black man, front lines and the black man
 …
Rodney King and the black man
…'”

“Ain't nobody gonna be interested in all that today, hate to tell you boys.” Bev sighed.

Stephanie tried to change the subject: “You know what Beverly, we should create us some flyers to pass out for our new book club…”

“What book club?” Redvine asked.

Bev creased a shawl to create a nest for the child, smiled at him. She turned his head to the side to put a bottle of water in it. She told them all she would be back.

“I'll go with you,” Stephanie concurred. “Not used to all this sitting. They're probably at the pony rides. Theo's been talking about those ponies all damned year.”

“How far is it?” Bev capped her eyes from the horizon with the straight line of her free hand. Her modest engagement stone glistened with a sunbeam's strike.

“Not far. 'Cross the field,” Stephanie remembered. “Near the bingo tent.”

*   *   *

Bolden's uncles invited him out here. Some missed him. Most just had to check to see if he didn't think he was too good to come. But, with the address on Pearletta Hassle's DMV report turned up to a well-off Jackson, Mississippi, avenue and her mother's call passed on to him, she was in his hands whether he liked it or not. He drove past the gate of Singer's and cursed its recent dystopia. Everything black folks have gotta get messed up? He was one of the ones who dreamed of that baby. At the park, supposedly involved in talk and cards with family, he couldn't help himself: when young women walked past he looked; when couples strode by he inspected; when he saw familiars he asked. And the young mother whose nipples he saw just the night before looked carefree today. So rather than remind her he let her be. Same went for those Redvines, good people, he thought. And it wasn't nothing too much. Folks should understand a woman been through all that needing to self-medicate, hide from whispers, start all over, find herself again. But while he entertained the distant cousins who always wanted to know where his gun was, Earl Redvine came up behind him.

“Where's your uniform, sir?” Redvine said.

“Should be a church suit. Sun won't allow it.”

“We all need to relieve stress.”

“Gotta thank y'all for what you did for the Hassle gal,” Bolden said.

Redvine's face stretched. “I … I beg your pardon?” he asked Bolden.

“Helping Pearletta Hassle move,” Bolden said. “That was nice of y'all.”

“Oh.” Redvine came to. Then, “My wife and son did that. I had to work. I mean, I would have if I could have.”

“We'd all like to do more than we could. You seen her around, lately?”

“No sir, I haven't,” Redvine said. Then, he excused himself back to his family.

In Redvine, Bolden's bother by the Singer folks' indifference to Pearletta and her predicament crept up to him again. He seemed such the opposite of his wife, Bev: caring and concerned and proactive. Bolden couldn't judge. What he wouldn't give to have his daughter and her mother under one roof with him. It was the right way, he had finally determined. Chances are he wouldn't care too much about nobody else, either, if he was a family man like Redvine, lives and interests to shelter, mouths to feed, fantasies to tame.

*   *   *

The wives walked along a makeshift path intended for sales but mostly replete with women who chased kids and boys who chased girls. Scant customers counted out change and wrinkled bills in back of the tables. It was a shame to approach tables without intent to buy. The blacksmiths and librarians and homemade ware makers depended on the shame, beckoning anybody over who lay a foot in front of their tables. Up ahead, a bright constellation of helium-filled balloons flew stark against the horizon. Pink, yellow, turquoise, red, blue, and white. A crowd of kids gathered in front of the table, for ice cream filled to the tops of pointy paper cups. A jolly voice drew them close: “Ice cream and balloons, one dollar … Ice cream and balloons, just a dollar. Enough for us all.”

“The girls might like a balloon,” Bev said.

“And I'd like the ice cream,” Stephanie answered. “My treat?”

“Oh no…”

“You can pay me back if I lose my mind at bingo,” Stephanie told her.

She fished in a leather coin purse for change. Bev untangled a few balloons from the knot of yarned strings. Stephanie got their ice cream. Bev held a red and a white balloon, with mind that the girls could carry them once they were found so they would not be too far out of sight again. Already above them, legions of balloons drifted and strutted around in the sky—a consequence of lost marbles the string tied around. Ahead, they saw the part of the clearing where Theo showcased two dark-maroon ponies and one ivory one. The plaid-shirted cowboys who brought them collected ten dollars a ride from kids and grown folks alike. Stephanie saw her husband and quickened her pace.

On the way up to him, she explained her replenished mood to Bev: “False alarm.” She laughed. So did Bev. “I told you, girl,” she said—glad it was all all right indeed.

Theo showed a group of parents just how to hoist the kids up on firm, slippery saddles. The proud parents laughed while their kids waited in line. Some had the newer digital cameras ready, waiting for just the right time. The kids shook at the knees. Two stout cowboys counted cash, happy to be in one of the more popular parts of the Festival. Another demonstrated how tight he could draw his spurs. He teased a few teenagers with his Winchester rifle. After a while all three business partners would dismount the kids and ride themselves in the parade, pied pipers: one man at the front alongside the American flag, another man in the middle, and the last man at the back to wave at the crowd lined up in a dusty field like they owned every single road they would travel back home on.

“I was hoping y'all might come along,” Theo told his wife. “I'm smelling nothing but food 'round here, but I ain't got none in my belly. 'Bout another hour why don't y'all bring me some back?”

“Not sure, Theo,” Stephanie told him. “We gonna be busy winning bingo games.”

He rolled his eyes. “Now, there you go … gambling all my money away.”

“It's about time I got a turn.”

“No gamble this year,” Bev told him. “Festival raised money beforehand. They got tired of folks complaining about pay to play.”

“Shouldn't have to pay to play,” Theo said. “Only to win.”

A younger woman handed out sparklers to her young brood. She couldn't light them fast enough. “Hurry on up y'all,” she cautioned. “We getting out of here and going on home right after y'all get ya rides. I ain't goin' home soaking wet.”

The downcast danced around. There had never been a thought, reason, or idea to plan for rain. With it, nobody knew what to do.

“S'posed to rain?” Stephanie asked the woman, but the flustering kids tugged at her to rush matches to the tips of their sparklers. She didn't answer Stephanie.

Theo hurried the children off after just ten minutes and not twenty for more profit, with thanks to fond friends of his deceased father-in-law. He owed nothing for the stock rentals. The young ponies were to be sold and institutionalized into family pets, as it were, not for sport riding or prize showing. Just status. The early conditioning to children's tinier hands and gentler commands was good for the cowboys as well. The new customers wriggled atop the ponies with legs spread and bladders running full. The adults were the worst. They pulled at the reins for balance as the cowboys had instructed them to. The youngest pony parted and the children sat cross-legged at side of him to watch the outcome. It was almost four. Parade started at five.

Bev surveyed the crowd for their wayward daughters. She spotted their matching jeans near the bingo tent, in a cluster of girls waiting for a chance to turn or jump double Dutch. She tapped Stephanie on the shoulder and pointed in their daughters' direction.

Solemn and Desiree held hands and skipped to the back of the crowd as one of their mamas drew near. The balloons behind Mrs. Redvine jerked back. The double Dutchers paid her no mind, especially since a tiff broke out when one of the turners leaned a little bit too far to the left. So, a grass patch interfered, to trip one of the jumpers. Wasn't fair. Solemn and Desiree chose their balloons. Bev quickly snatched the balloons from their fingers. She had something else in mind.

“I didn't buy these for y'all to play with,” she revealed. “I'm tying 'em 'round your wrists to keep up with you.”