Whistling Past the Graveyard (12 page)

she was going. Now I was worried. “Do you even know where we are?” “We in Mississippi.”
“Ugh!” I rolled my eyes. “I know that. How do you know we’re

headed toward Nashville?” She’d taken lots of different roads, most of them dirt, all pretty much the same far as I could tell.

“Knowed the roads close to home. Once those run out we been goin’ mostly north, sometimes east. We just keep doin’ it and we gonna hit Tennessee.”

“You sure? We been goin’ north and east, I mean? How can you tell?”
“Sun rise in the east and set in the west. Easy from there.”
“What about when it’s dark?”
“Moon does like the sun.”
“What about when the sun’s straight up? Or you can’t see the moon?”
“I just know, can’t explain why.”
“Mamie says I should know like that. But I don’t.”
“Who’s Mamie?”
Dang. Eula done guessed already some about my momma—her not knowing I was coming. If she found out that my grandma was sitting back there in Cayuga Springs—way closer than Nashville even though we’d been creepin’ along in that direction for a good part of a day—she might just turn around and take me back there. That’d be bad trouble for both of us.
I fished around and pulled out one of the stories I’d been gonna use when I run away with baby James. It only needed a little changing up.
“Mamie’s my grandma I lived with.” Building in some truth always made the best and easiest-to-remember story. “She died last week. That’s why I’m going to Nashville.” Uh-oh, I was sounding a shade too happy—truth be told, I was happy to be away from Mamie. But she wasn’t really dead. If she was dead, I reckon I’d be sad. “I cried all my tears already; it was real sad when it happened.”
Please, baby Jesus, don’t let her ask how Mamie died.
“Why didn’t your momma take you back with her after your Mamie’s funeral?”
Oh, boy. I needed to be a whole lot better in thinking ahead when I asked baby Jesus for something.
My mind spun like a top, then it come to me—and it wasn’t even a lie. “Well, you see, Mamie wasn’t her momma. That’d be Granny Ida, and she died a long time ago, back when my momma was little. I only know her from pictures. Mamie was my daddy’s momma; so Momma didn’t come down for the funeral ’cause she had to work.”Then I added a good particular. “She sent flowers though. They was pink, Mamie’s favorite color.”
“Mmm. How ’bout your daddy, then? He just let you walk to your momma in Nashville all by your lonesome?”
“Daddy works on an oil rig way out in the Gulf, so he couldn’t come home for the funeral neither.That’s why he can’t take care of me hisself. They don’t allow kids on the rig.”
“Sound like a mighty small funeral.” Eula’s voice sounded suspicious—even after I’d added the part about crying and the flowers.
“It was.” Then I perked up a little, like I was rememberin’ the good parts. “But it was real nice. All the church ladies made supper and the whole choir sang.” I’d never been to a funeral, so I was walkin’ a narrow rope here. I did know that Mamie always made food and took it to the church for funerals, and the choir sang at every church thing I’d ever been to, so I had to be at least part right. If Eula called me out, I’d just tell her white funerals must be different from colored. What could she say to that?
Eula let the truck get even slower than turtle speed. “Starla.” She looked over at me.
“It’s okay, Mamie was old, so you don’t need to feel bad.”
Her eyes stayed on me instead of the road. I could feel them like they was shootin’ tiny arrows at me. I looked out the windshield and squirmed a little.
“I’m pretty sure I know a made-up story when I hear one.”
I kept my eyes on where the headlights lit up the road in front of us. They zigged and zagged, shining on the weeds on one side and then the other. Eula seemed to be used to the crazy steering now, ’cause she didn’t head to the ditch when she fixed her eyes on me.
“Guess you don’t.” I lifted my chin. “You just get me to Momma, then you’ll see.” I had to get to Momma. And I sure couldn’t let Eula go back to Cayuga Springs until I had it figured out how to keep her from getting locked up in the pokey.
Eula sighed real long and heavy. “Reckon I will.”
We went along for a while. The light spot in the sky didn’t seem to be getting closer. I was real tired and wished we’d get to there so we could go to bed. Then a thought sprung on me like a hop-toad. Where did people with no home and no money go to sleep at night?
Clunk!
The front of the truck dropped lower on my side, at the same time it veered toward the side of the road, making a
thud-rub-thunk
over and over. It only went a few feet before it stopped moving altogether.
I looked over at Eula. The little bit of light from the dash showed her eyes was big again.
“Guess that pimple-faced boy was right,” I said. I picked up baby James, then unlatched my door. I slid out, extracareful to hang on to James until my feet hit the ground. Lucky we wasn’t in a ditch this time.
Eula shut off the engine, but left the headlights on so we could see some. It didn’t take two seconds for the bugs to start swarmin’, ticking and snapping as they beat themselves silly against the headlights.
Eula and me met up in front with the bugs. We stood together looking at the truck like it was a dead animal. I kinda felt like we should say a prayer over it or something.
“How far you figure the town is from here?” I finally asked, keeping my eyes on the truck.
“Prob’ly a mile or so.”
I noticed she kept staring at the dead truck, too, like maybe she could use her mind to make it come back to life. But the front wheel on the right side was sitting whopper-jawed enough I knowed that wasn’t gonna happen.
I sighed. “Guess we’d best get goin’. Should we take your suitcase and the food, or leave ’em here?”
She stopped looking at the truck and turned to me.“We ain’t walkin’ into town in the middle of the night. What we gonna do when we get there? Knock on somebody’s door?”
“Sure, why not?”
She made a little tisk noise that made me prickle.
“Once when my daddy was comin’ home from the Gulf,” I said, “his truck broke down and he stopped at a house where a real nice man and his wife let him stay over.Then they gave him breakfast and helped him fix his truck the next morning. Maybe someone would help us fix our truck, since we don’t have enough money.”
“Well, your daddy wasn’t tryin’ to travel invisible ’cause o’ the law. And he weren’t colored, neither. We don’t know that town. Nobody gonna open their doors to us tonight.”
“What we gonna do then?”
“We got enough milk for James. We got food.” She looked up at the sky, where the chip of a moon was trying to get through the clouds. “With the Lord’s blessing, we got good weather. We camp.”
“We don’t have a tent.”
She made another tisk, like I was dense or something. “Too hot for a tent. We got the perfect place in the truck bed. High enough to keep the snakes away; we see the stars if they get out.”
“What about bears? Truck bed ain’t a pedmint to them.”
“A what?”
“A pedmint. You know, somethin’ too hard for them to get around.”
I saw her head bob and her bright teeth showed. “Maybe you mean a
impediment
?”
Well, crap on a cracker. I thought I had it right. Patti Lynn and I had been hiding behind the couch listening to her sister talk on the phone when I heard it. Since Cathy had had to explain it to the boy she was talking to, I figured me using it would sound extra-smart. I’d been saving it up to use on Daddy when he came home, to show him even with my bad grade in arithmetic I wasn’t stupid. Mamie always said I was dense as swamp mud when it came to arithmetic.
“Bears can climb,” I said.
“If we put the food inside the truck and put the windows up, no bear’s gonna bother us.”
“You sure?”
“Uh-huh. Bears got way more important things to do than sniff around a skinny woman and a couple of chil’ren. We ain’t got enough meat on us to fill him up.”
“What about a catamount?”
“Oh, well, now, a catamount just can’t help but holler once it gets dark, let ever’body know where he is. We’d hear him in plenty of time to lock ourselves in the truck.”
“You just sayin’ that so I’ll shut up and sleep in the truck bed?”
She looked at me like she could see right inside my head . . . she was getting real good at that. “You ain’t ever slept outside?”
I shook my head. I’d been outside after dark plenty . . . but sleeping and not knowing what was sneakin’ up on you was crazy.
She grinned at me. “It’s real nice. You gonna like it.”
Turned out, I did. We was settled in the truck bed with baby James tucked into the suitcase, me and Eula laying shoulder to shoulder. The clouds broke up and there was plenty of stars, more’n I’d ever seen. The night was jumpin’ with sounds, birds and bugs mostly. And tree frogs. Nothin’ that sounded like a bear or a catamount.
Pretty soon, I heard a train whistle. It made me think of the one that blew nearly every night as I was going to sleep in my bedroom back home. Our house wasn’t right near the tracks, but after the whistle if I listened close, I could hear the rumble as the train rolled through town. I wondered if it was the same train farther down the tracks. It made me feel far away from Cayuga Springs for some reason. My feelings was all mixed up about that. It was what I wanted. But there was things I was going to miss. Maybe that nighttime train whistle was one of them.
After a bit Eula started talking. “See how nice it is out here? Back when I was a little girl, sometimes Pap’d get in one of his moods— the hot weather seemed to bring ’em on—and me and Momma’d walk right out the door with nothin’ but an old quilt and her clean uniform for the next day. We’d walk two miles to the judge’s house—that was where she worked you remember.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded. I remembered right clear. I remembered about her momma working for a respectable family, and about the dresses used to make the quilt I’d slept with, and how sad Eula was that she couldn’t recall the stories that went with the pieces of cloth. She went on, “It was outside Jackson. Oh, they had a big spread. Lots of land.” Her voice sounded like she was smiling, enjoying the memory. I thought that was nice, kinda like how I felt when I remembered my momma and Daddy’s visits home. “We’d sleep right out under the stars and nobody ever even knew we was there. It was nice, sleepin’ out with Momma, even if Pap was in a snit. He never got to swingin’—at least while Momma was alive—but the man never would let a body sleep if he wasn’t done railin’ and carryin’ on. Once he tied me and Momma to straight chairs in the kitchen and throwed water in our faces if we fell asleep while he was preachin’. He got goin’ on a lot about the Lord in them days.”
“What about your brother?” I asked. “Did he go to the judge’s, too?” “He always stayed with Pap.”
“Why?”
She was quiet for a long while, like she was having to think real hard. “Momma said it was to keep Pap from comin’ after us. But I think . . .” She sighed. “I think that boy never did nothin’ that wasn’t selfish.”
We got quiet then.The sound of the tree frogs seemed to get louder. I was just about asleep when I heard Eula. She was crying, real quiet, like she didn’t want me to hear.
I knew what it was like, needin’ a cry but not wanting anybody to know. But what if Eula didn’t feel like that? What if she needed comfortin’ like baby James?
I wasn’t sure what to do. Our arms was pressed against each other still. I finally moved just enough to slip my hand around hers.
She squeezed tight and I squeezed back.
I fell asleep with my hand in hers and the stars floating over my head.

14
i

was being chased by Jimmy Sellers on his bicycle and a bear. It was dark and cold. I was running so fast that my feet hit the ground hard. With every step, a pain shot through my head. I could hear the bear growling and the card clapping in Jimmy’s spokes. They was getting closer, closer, closer . . . then all of the sudden, something snatched me right out of that dream and I opened my eyes.

Things hit me one at a time, but real fast:
I was still breathing hard.
My head still pounded with the echo of my running feet. It was still dark.
The moon was out from behind the clouds. It had moved a good

distance across the sky.

It wasn’t Jimmy’s bicycle clapping. It was my teeth chattering like the plastic windup kind from the dime store.
Lucky the bear stayed back in my dream.
I was curled up against Eula trying to get warm. My head felt like horses was running around inside it, and when I moved, it got worse.
I must have moaned a little, ’cause Eula was up right quick. “What is it, child?”
My teeth was chattering too much to talk.
She put her hand on my forehead, then on each of my cheeks. “You burnin’ up.”
I shook my head and lightning struck inside it. “C-c-c-cold.” I felt so bad I wished I was back asleep being chased by a bear.
“Lord A’mighty.” She sat there for a minute like she was thinking. “Got no aspirin. Can you get up and walk?”
I wasn’t sure, but I said I could. With the truck broke, it was the only way I was gonna get to something to make me feel better. I started to stand up, then got all tippy. Eula grabbed hold of me right before I fell over the side of the truck bed.
“Whoa!” She kept her hands on my shoulders. “Maybe you should lay back down while I walk in the direction of that town. Be better not to have to explain why I got a white child with me anyway. First house I see, I get you some aspirin. Can’t be far.”
“No! Don’t leave me!”
She looked at me for a minute, like she was deciding.
“I c-can w-w-walk.” I didn’t care how puny I felt, I wasn’t staying out here alone not knowing when Eula’d be back.
“Child, you can’t even talk.” She tried to make me sit back down, but I stiffened my legs.
“Th-that’s-s-s jus’ ’cause I’m sh-sh-shiverin’. I can w-walk. Y-you said it can’t be f-f-far.”
“All right. Don’t much want to leave you here alone, anyhow. Sit back down so I can put your shoes on you.” She did. The one that had been covered in mud was stiff and kinda crackled, but she got it on my foot and tied.Then she got me stood back up and kept one hand on my arm as she reached outside the truck gate and undid the hook—there was only the one on the passenger side, the driver’s side done rusted away. We’d been listening to that gate rattle all day.
It dropped down and she helped me out. She made me sit on the ground while she got back up in the truck bed and collected baby James.
She tied him onto her with a sling made out of the same slip I’d used to keep the skeeters off him. Nobody could tell if he colored or white in there.
Eula put her hands under my arms and helped me stand up. She didn’t let go until she was sure I wasn’t gonna topple over. Then she wrapped one arm around my shoulder and hooked her hand under my arm, holding me close to her side. We started down the road, stepping together like we was in a sack race—but real pokey. Every time my feet hit the ground my eyeballs feel like they was gonna shoot out. But I didn’t bellyache about it ’cause I was scared she’d leave me where I was and go on without me.
It felt like we went a long, long way, across a little creek and past a field, but Eula said we hadn’t done much more than a quarter mile when we seen a mailbox post with two beat-up mailboxes sitting on a cross T.Two tiny houses sat back a ways on either side of a rutted drive. They was still dark, but we heard a rooster crow somewhere near.
“Farm folk rise early,” Eula said. “We wait just a bit, let ’em get roused afore we go knockin’ on their doors.”
My head hurt so bad I wanted to cry. My throat felt like I’d swallowed hot charcoal from Patti Lynn’s daddy’s grill, and I wasn’t sure I was hearing anything in my left ear—Eula was on my right, so I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t think an aspirin was gonna make these giant miseries go away, but sure wished I had one to try.
I was just ready to drop down and lay on the ground when Eula said, “There now.” We started up the lane, toward the house on the left that had a light shining in the window—not bright, more like Eula’s oil-flame lamps.
When we got closer, I saw these wasn’t much in the way of houses, just one-room shanties really. The front step of this one was mostly rotted away, so we stayed on the hard-pack ground and Eula reached high to knock on the door.
I was thinking on the nice man and his wife that gave my daddy a place to sleep. I hoped this house had at least one empty bed. All I wanted to do was crawl into it, cover up, and get warm.
As we waited, I got real dizzy, so I sat down on the ground behind Eula.
The raggedy curtain on the window next to the door moved. Two little heads with tiny braids sticking out all over peeked out and looked down at us—little colored girls. I was glad; we weren’t gonna have nastiness toward Eula from some cranky white person. A bigger head showed up over them in the top pane. Then they all disappeared. We waited for the door to open.
It didn’t.
Eula knocked again. “Sorry to bother y’all so early,” she called through the door. “We be needin’ a little help.”
There was a space between the door and the floor where the yellow light from inside showed. I could see the shadow of somebody’s feet on the other side. “Please!” I said, the word tearing up my throat. Then quieter I said, “Please help us.”
The door swung open. A man stood looking down at us. “Sorry. We got nothin’ to spare.” He started to close the door.
Eula surprised me when she reached out and pushed against it and kept it open; especially since this man was every bit as big as Wallace. “We don’t need money . . . or food. Truck broke down and the child is sick. If we could just have a couple of aspirin to bring her fever down, we’d be mighty grateful.”
A woman came up behind the man and peered around his shoulder. She put an arm out to keep her children back. “What’s wrong with him?”
Eula said, “Nothin’ catchin’. And she’s a girl.”
“How you know it ain’t catchin’?”
“We don’t need to come in. If you could just spare the aspirin, we’ll be on our—”
“That child white?” The man was leaning out the door, squinting at me.
“Yes,” Eula said. “She in my care.”
The door closed . . . hard.
I saw Eula’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. Then she turned around and walked toward the other house. I stayed sitting where I was.
There still wasn’t any lights on over there. When she knocked on the door, it squeaked right open.
“Hello?” she called. “Hello? Anybody ’t home?”
A small voice called out from the door of the house with the lights on, “Nobody live there.”
Just as soon as I turned my head, the girl disappeared from the door with a little squeal, like she’d been pulled away.The door closed up with a bang.
I was so cold; I brought my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. It didn’t help. I was shaking so hard my muscles started to hurt. If the sun would just get up, I knew I’d be warmer.
Eula pushed that squeaky door all the way open. Before I figured out what she was doing, she and baby James disappeared inside.
“Wait!”What if that little girl wasn’t telling the truth? What if somebody got surprised and shot her? Everybody on a farm had a shotgun.
I jumped up. Pain shot though my head. I was so dizzy that I stumbled forward and landed on my knees.
“Eu-Eula!”
She didn’t come back. She didn’t call out. I didn’t hear no gunshot.
I tried to get up again, but slower. My head pounded, but I didn’t fall over from dizziness. I started for the open door and realized something wet was on my cheeks. I musta been crying from being so miserable. I sniffed and wiped my face dry on my T-shirt sleeve.
This house had a porch. Thinking of the rotted step on the other house, I stepped up on it real careful.
“Eula?” I started in the dark doorway.
Eula was headed back out at the same time and we ran smack into each other. I don’t know who screamed the loudest, me, Eula, or baby James (since he was tied on her front, I slammed right into him). My own scream felt like it came out of my throat with bear claws.
“Oh! Oh, my! Oh!” Eula sounded like she couldn’t catch her breath. “Goodness!” She put her arms around baby James and started to jiggle him. “Shhhhhh. Shhhh, now. It’s all right.”
It wasn’t all right. I bit my lip to keep from crying again.
“Place is empty, but I checked in case there was somethin’ left we could use. Been picked too bare even for mice to bother. We keep on down the road a piece. Next house can’t be far.”
“Why can’t you go back there?” I pointed to the house with the lights on and the little girls inside. “And make them give us some aspirin.”
“Because that ain’t the way Christian folks behave. C’mon, now, let’s go.”
I stomped my foot. “Is it Christian to let a kid be sick and not help? Why do we care if we treat them Christian-like if they won’t help us?”
She leaned down so she was looking right in my eyes. “You hear me, child. You can’t use other folks’ bad behavior to excuse your own. When we got a choice, we keep Jesus in our hearts and don’t do nothin’ that would make him ashamed.”
“Why won’t they help us?” I sounded like a crybaby, but I couldn’t help it. “Why did he slam the door when he saw I was white?”
“Same reason some white folks slam the door when they see I’m colored. Some folks don’t see nothin’ but your skin. It ain’t right, but it’s the way people are.” She bundled me close to her and started us back toward the road. “C’mon now. Sooner we start walkin’, the sooner we get you some aspirin.”
When I looked back toward the house with the lights, those two little colored girls were back at the window. One of them raised a hand and waved.