Sweet Song (5 page)

Leon ran until he saw Big Leon standing mid-field with his head held high as he scanned the property. Big Leon’s blackness belied his relation to Leon.

Leon watched his father for a moment and wondered whether Big Leon wanted to be alone. They both knew where Bess would be: soothing Sir’s sadness. What of Hillary now that she was through
with Leon? What of Martha, who must know the unsaid details of Leon’s trip to the creek flat?

A cool breeze shifted the tops of the trees and a hawk cried, then flew down to snatch a field rat or rabbit. It was too far off for Leon to notice which.

Big Leon raised his arm. He held a revolver. Leon had never seen one before and had no idea why or how Big Leon would get his hands on one. One shot rang out and Leon saw a ground hog drop. Big Leon lowered his head, then kneeled onto the ground as if praying.

Leon took some steps toward his father, then stopped.

Big Leon turned. “Where you been?”

Leon walked closer so he didn’t have to yell an answer. As if yelling the location would carry with it what he had done there. “The creek flat.”

“Readin’?” Big Leon seldom mentioned what he had been instrumental in allowing.

“Not this time.”

Big Leon stood and went over to Leon, grabbing his face by the jaw.

Leon tried to pull away.

Big Leon jerked the boy’s head and shoved him onto the ground.

Leon looked into the sky above his father’s head. He rose to one elbow. He said nothing.

Big Leon pointed the revolver barrel at Leon’s head. “I should kill you. Put you outta you misery.” He lowered the gun. “You stink in a bad way,” he said. “You in danger?”

“No.” Leon said. “She wouldn’t.”

“Don’t blame you. Them white folks can make a preacher sin. They supposed to be smarter’n us.”

“I tried not to do it.”

“Can you read?”

Leon hesitated. What did that have to do with it? “Yes, sir.”

“Listen.”

Leon sat up and focused on his father’s face.

“You listenin’?” He pointed the revolver at Leon again.

Leon crabbed backward, crawling away from the black iris of the barrel. Would his father really pull that trigger? Perhaps a blessing if so.

“You have to think white. You have to read white. You have to speak white.” Big Leon spit and it landed near Leon’s hand. “I don’t truss ‘em.” He grabbed Leon by the neck and lifted him onto his feet. “I know too much. You been used to kill me. Everybody use you to kill somebody else or somebody inside they self.” He shook his head and walked off. “It ain’t you fault, but you might get kilt for it.”

Leon stood and watched as Big Leon left the field and entered the woods.

Leon’s knees shook and his teeth chattered. He didn’t know how to think white. Even if he were evil, he couldn’t think as evil as how whites appeared to think. Leon peered into the woods after his father. He thought about the deer he’d seen. If he were to jump into the creek, he wouldn’t float to the river. He’d get hung up on a felled tree and drown. He breathed short, fearful drowning breaths.

He too hummed. Tried to forget what Hillary and he had done. All around him the field smelled of the new growth of spring. The woods let out the winter smell still, rotting leaves and a depth of cold not quite free of frost. Soon, Leon thought, the creek would peak then slow. He knew the sound. One night he’d hear the creek get quiet, the noise no longer strong enough to lift up through the woods to the six white-washed shacks.

Humming helped him to feel better, to think. The words he put with the humming reviewed his day, which started out in death, moved to orgasm, climbed into fear, and ended -- as Leon saw it -- with being evil in the eyes of those who loved him. Both Big Leon and Martha labeled him. Hillary did too in her own sinful and crazy way.

Leon thought about what his father had said. He wasn’t white, though. And he didn’t feel Negro. Besides a great uncertainty about himself and a greater uncertainty about where his life was headed, Leon sensed only guilt and fear.

No one spoke to him that night. He ate out back, alone, and cold from the night air.

When he went back inside, Bess lay in her corner, spider threads glistening in the deep dark near her head. Big Leon stood near a splintered window staring into the darkness. Martha hummed in her bed, in her corner of the room.

“My Leon,” Bess said.

Leon tensed. He was no longer anyone’s Leon, least of all Bess’s. Yet, he had been taught to respect his mother.

“Let me have your sweetness,” she said, shifting back close to the wall, leaving a space on the straw for him to lie down near her.

Leon looked at his father who let too many things go on. “No,” Leon whispered. “I’m going for a walk. I’m in a thinking way and I’m going.”

Leon noticed Big Leon smile to himself. A sign of approval?

Bess screeched, surprising them all. Then she covered her head and mumbled a long sentence that kept going even as Leon left the shack.

The cold bit hard, but he stepped lively into the darkness. The moon had remained low on the horizon and could not be seen from the woods. He knew his way to the creek. The closer he got the louder the sound and the colder the night air. At the creek flat, Leon kneeled down and hugged his knees to conserve a little body heat.

He tried to feel white, but nothing came except images of Hank and Earl and Mr. Carpenter. He couldn’t even conjure his own face. Then there were white women, but only a few. Mona, in his memory, always stared ahead, seldom looked around. It was as if she had been dead for years, like Bess was becoming dead. Mona moved slowly. Hillary had talked about how Mona mumbled, not ever saying any real words, agreeing and disagreeing with herself at the same time. The tones involved were what had made Hillary think so. And now Bess mumbled.

Thinking of Hillary also brought up other images. Her hanging breasts, thick arms, and wide, when she bent to pick up her dress, butt. Leon laughed out loud. She smelled like sweat and sweet water. Her big arms were made for work, but since she did little of that, they were flabby and soft.

He pictured lying atop that big softness and felt the itch to do it again.

Still, in his imagination, he didn’t look or feel white.

He spit onto the rocks. Moonlight edged onto the flat from behind him, scattering the pebbles and stones into shadow and light. The creek sparkled.

He pictured Big Leon, Tunny, Bud, and all the other shack people together. Picturing him with them made it plain as day that he wasn’t black either.

“I nothin’,” he said. “Evil have its own look.”

Hearing his voice, Leon heard again what Big Leon had told him that day. ‘You have to think white, read white, and speak white.’

Big Leon never said feel white. He never said be white.

Leon didn’t feel white, but he knew how to speak white. In fact, he spoke better than most whites. Leon didn’t feel black either, but he could speak black.

He spit onto the rocks again. He looked into the trees on the opposite bank. The moonlight brightened the branches and highlighted the new life, the spring buds searching for a place in the world. Was he evil? He sensed pain and sadness inside him, but also song and delight. Perhaps Mix-up was an appropriate name for his feelings as well as his heritage, as well as his appearance.

A great horned owl hooted and Leon saw it high in a tree waiting for the stirring of a mouse.

He spit once more, then stood. Cold air brushed all the newly exposed areas of his skin. He rubbed his arms. In a slow careful run Leon headed to the only family he knew.

He sneaked into the shack, undressed and lay on the cold straw floor, pulling a blanket over him. There had been a fire in the fireplace earlier, but only embers glowed now. He stared across the room into the red and black mystery of the dying fire. He listened to the shallow breathing from the other bodies who shared the shack with him. He attempted to sense a connection, a kinship, an instinct, between him and each of them. Only thoughts of Martha brought that family feeling. For Big Leon he felt respect. He felt pride. For Bess, even the thought of her made him tense up and pull back. He closed his eyes and thought of Martha again. She had been his mother and sister, his only playmate when the other children teased him.

They all lay quietly, spread around the shack to create as much privacy as possible. But there was no real privacy, only a false sense of it. Surely, everyone in the shack new what went on in there, but each in his or her own way ignored or forgot or hid behind those truths as lies, and hid behind the lies as truths.

That day Martha worked hard to break that notion down, Leon thought, then Big Leon took a step in that direction too. Even Leon had changed the course of events when he left that evening. What strange chain reaction did all that signify? What would break down next? He thought he knew the answer. He closed his eyes harder against the thought. His mind racing, Leon lay still until he fell off to sleep.

*          *          *

Leon woke groggy and slow. Bess had already gone off to the big house. Big Leon stood naked, raising his pants from the floor. Martha sat with her head turned from Big Leon.

Noticing Leon’s movements, she said, “Don’t think Leon should do no white chores today. Got a bad feelin’.”

“Not ours to say,” Big Leon said.

“If you need him more? You could say that. You boss of it.”

Big Leon looked over at Leon then pulled on his shirt. “Feed him. I’ll see.”

“What are you feeling?” Leon asked.

“Feelin’ those boys a his gonna be rammin’. They gonna feel righteous.”

Big Leon left without another word.

“I don’t care,” Leon said.

“This is a bad time, boy, a bad time. People be confused what’s right. They feelin’ guilt now it’s too late. They want to hide their guilt behind wrong doin’s. You don’t get in the way of that, you hear?”

“I hear you, but I don’t know what I can do about it. Like Pa said, ‘Ain’t our say.’”

“Don’t mock your pa’s speakin’ ways.”

Leon pulled on his clothes. “I didn’t mean to. I was just saying what he said.”

Martha got up to feed him. “He tole me what he tole you in the field.”

She put a chunk of bread in his hands.

“What was that?”

“You know. You doin’ it. You talkin’ white. You remember how to do that. It save your life out there.” She pointed out the window. “I’m thinkin’ you be workin’ with your pa today.”

“I’m not afraid.” Leon bit off some bread and walked outside. He skipped heading for the barn and went straight to the house, collecting the kitchen garbage from the back. The kitchen help heard him and someone he didn’t recognize peeked out at him, then jerked back inside.

After he had everything bagged, Leon carried two bags at a time into the woods. As was his habit, he emptied the bags and sat for a moment.

He watched three squirrels appear from nowhere and chase one another along a felled tree, up another, and across a branch to a third tree. Their tails fluffed and twitched. They chattered and ran, bumping into one another, rollicking and chattering some more. He laughed at their play and wished for the return of his own innocence. When he decided to retrieve two more bags from the main house, the squirrels scurried away. Leon looked into the ravine. The run flowed steadily, still high from thaw. He breathed deeply, letting out a long relaxing breath, then repeated the act allowing his shoulders to loosen and drop.

Two more bags, another, shorter stay in the woods, and Leon headed for the barn. Hank and Earl weren’t there. Leon knew the chores that needed to be done and set to work filling feed bins and water buckets, setting hay and cleaning stalls for when the horses came back that evening. He worked until early afternoon, deciding to ready a place for new hay even though that was months off. He didn’t mind organizing bales and cleaning the bays. He enjoyed the calmness of the broom swing. In all, the first part of the day went smoothly. Leon did what he knew to do.

He stopped in to see Martha, but she was working in one of the other shacks. He scooped some water and broke some bread to eat while heading out to Big Leon.

Spring plowing also meant rock collecting. It seemed no matter how many years the fields had been planted, about the only thing the ground grew consistently was rocks. Every spring a new crop had to be gathered and added to the stone fence barely inside the woods.

“They’s less of ‘em every year,” Big Leon said, but it always seemed there were the same number to Leon.

“The land just chucks ‘em up,” Leon said.

Five men and seven children stood abreast and walked each field up and down, pulling and passing they called it. The rocks accumulated in number as they were handed, thrown, or kicked from the center to the edges of the field.

Leon, coming on late, was told to gather and stack, which meant he’d work alone. He’d take the stones from the edge of the field into the woods and add them to the fence. Since the planting fields were rotated, a fence would grow in size slowly over the years. Once high enough, new fences would be started, or old ones curved to section off a new area.