Winter Birds (43 page)

“And then it’s back here for watermelon!” Patrick announces. “One last fling!”

“Aw, why can’t we just eat it instead?” Hardy asks.

Some go and some stay. Another explosion lights the sky, this one green and silver. I can see all I want to see from where I sit.

I hear the sound of Steve’s pickup in the driveway. I hear laughter. I hear somebody calling, “Hey, wait for us!” And I hear Hardy singing: “Get on board, little children! / Get on board, little children! / Get on board, little children! / There’s room for many a-more!”

Chapter 33

My Gracious Silence, Hail
!

The melancholy coo of the mourning dove is in truth a sign that all is right with the bird, for it is the season of mating and nesting. For nourishment, the babies insert their heads deep inside the parent’s open mouth and feast on a unique substance rich in fat and protein, called pigeon’s milk
.

“I think one more little shim on this end will do it,” Patrick says, then, “Okay now, hand me the level, will you? Let’s make sure she’s plumb.”

“Plumb what?” Steve asks.

“Plumb level.” Patrick laughs robustly at his little joke.

Steve and Patrick are working nights and weekends on Rachel’s new bathroom. Today they have cut through the wall studs in order to install a new medicine chest. We can hear them quite clearly through the kitchen wall. Perhaps it is because of the hole they have cut in the bathroom wall, combined with the echo effect now that the old tile and fixtures have been removed. Perhaps it is because they are both using their instructive voices as if talking across stock rooms and warehouses. Perhaps Steve, recently promoted to a supervisory position at the catfish plant, is closely observing Patrick these days to pick up tips on How to Exude Authority.

Patrick, having wrestled with his soul, has decided that the Martyrs for Jesus will not go under because of a single remodeling project. Up until now, he and Steve have done all the work themselves, in preparation for “the tile man,” as Patrick calls him, who will be coming next week.

“He sure is going to a lot of trouble for this bathroom,” Rachel says to me. She says this while preparing a meal for Joanna Lebo, who is coming home from the hospital today with her new baby. This is a meal that could feed a family of ten.

“That is Patrick’s way,” I say. I am peeling carrots for Rachel and slicing them into long strips. It is not enough to do them the easy way. For Joanna’s meal, Rachel has it in her mind to make something called julienne vegetable medley.

“Bingo, she’s right on,” we hear Patrick say. “Okay, let’s get her in.” This is typical of Patrick to use feminine pronouns for inanimate objects. “She’s a feisty one,” I have heard him say of a thunderstorm and, of a car, “She needs a new radiator hose.”

“I tried to tell him I didn’t need that big fancy medicine chest,” Rachel says. “I was making out okay with just a mirror. But he wouldn’t listen.” She says this while standing over a skillet with a fork. I look at her standing there. In the August heat she has resorted to wearing shorts and sleeveless T-shirts. Over these she wears an apron. She will not adjust the temperature of the air-conditioning for her own comfort. Besides, she says, her body cannot make up its mind. She is hot one minute and cold the next. She goes barefoot in the house but keeps a sweater handy. Today her hair is pulled back into something called a French braid. It is a style Mindy showed her how to do.

Some would say Rachel does not have a figure for shorts, for she is broad-beamed. Her thighs are dimpled columns. Behind her knees is a purple roadmap of veins. She is browning pieces of sirloin for something called Swiss steak, which will simmer for four hours in a covered dish. I think of the potatoes that are in the oven. It is not enough to bake them once. Rachel means to do them twice.

“Both of you go overboard,” I say.

She turns from the skillet and looks at me. “Why, that’s not true, Aunt Sophie. What would make you say such a thing?”

I hold her gaze for a moment and then say, “Mitchell, Ahab, Potts, Steve, Teri, Mindy, Wes, Joanna, Lurlene, Prince. Those are some of the reasons I would say such a thing.” I could add another name to the list: Sophie.

She shakes her head. “Sometimes you say the funniest things.”

“Sometimes you do the funniest things,” I say.

Consider, for instance, the case of Lurlene Cook. Imagine telephoning the mother of someone who held you at gunpoint, who threatened to blow you open. Imagine inviting her out to lunch and sitting across the table from her. Imagine ordering from a menu and sharing food with her. Imagine picking up the bill and paying for both meals. This is what Rachel did.

“His mother must be so brokenhearted.” This was what I heard Rachel say before this event was set in motion.

I must back up. What set it in motion was something Potts did. He came over one night to talk with Patrick and Steve. His heart was “burdened,” he said. “The Lord keeps bringing that boy to my mind.” That boy was Prince, who was still in jail, who had in fact gotten into further trouble by being an uncooperative prisoner. After mouthing off repeatedly, he had finally assaulted one of the guards with a fork he had somehow gotten from the kitchen. Things had gone from very bad to a lot worse for that boy.

“He reminds me of myself when I was his age,” Potts said to Patrick and Steve that night. “I was headed straight for hell and would probably already be dead and in permanent residence there if I hadn’t landed in jail the second time.”

Somebody with a Bible came to the jail, talked straight to Potts, and, in his words, “I turned from my wicked ways and gave my heart to Jesus.” Hearing this, I wanted to head him off. I knew what was coming. I wanted to cry out, “Don’t do it! Don’t go down there and try to convert that boy. He’s a lost cause. He’s bad news. He’s a contagion. Stay away from him!”

“And what made Cyrus LeGrande come to the jail that night?” Potts said. “What made him pick out my cell for his little Bible talk? And what made me listen for probably the first time in my life?” He paused for a long time. Perhaps he saw that Steve and Patrick, like me, weren’t quite willing to go where he was leading. He finally said, “It was grace, brothers. It was only the grace of Almighty God that let me hear the gospel that night. He worked a miracle in my life.”

He gave a laugh. “Old Mr. LeGrande wasn’t even a very good preacher. That man could jumble up more words than you can imagine. But I heard past his words to his message that night, and something told me that what he was saying was the truth.”

It didn’t take anyone with a Ph.D. to understand what he was suggesting.

“So what are you suggesting?” Patrick said. “Are you going to get Mr. LeGrande to go pay Prince a visit in jail?”

“Cyrus LeGrande is dead,” Potts said. “I’m talking about me.”

Imagine agreeing to send help to the boy who had walked uninvited into your home with a gun, who had jammed that gun into your wife’s neck, who had tried to take your daughter from you. But that is exactly what happened. The three of them prayed over it, and Steve and Patrick gave their blessing to Potts.

So Potts went to the jail. That’s when we found out about the other trouble with the guard and the fork. That’s when Rachel said, “His mother must be so brokenhearted.” I must admit something. My first feeling was not compassion for Prince’s mother. It was gladness for us. If Prince had done this thing, surely he would be in jail even longer. Nor was my second feeling any closer to sympathy: Could the jails of our state not be trusted to take the simplest precautions—that is, to keep track of their forks? How could we, the innocent people of Mississippi, have confidence that they would keep track of their inmates?

No miracles happened at the jail when Potts talked to Prince. Prince did not turn from his wicked ways. He did not give his heart to Jesus. “He’s closed up tighter than a lockbox,” Potts told Patrick. The metaphor was weak, for a lockbox implies something of value inside. But Potts does not mean to give up. When he went the second time, Patrick was with him. And they will go again. Likewise, Rachel will go again to Lurlene. I would not be surprised to learn that she was cleaning the woman’s house, hoeing her garden, ironing her clothes.

“I’m glad Joanna and Wes had a boy,” Rachel says to me now. “When he’s a little older, he can play with Ahab.” I imagine the Lebo baby toddling along with his tongue hanging out, trying to keep up with Ahab. Wes and Joanna have named the baby George, after Joanna’s father. Imagine two babies named George and Ahab.

I finish the carrots and begin cutting the yellow squash into strips. Rachel covers the meat and starts pulling husks off the ears of corn. No canned corn for this meal. Rachel remembers Wes saying that his favorite vegetable is fresh corn cut off the cob.

“Timothy says those glass tiles run five bucks a piece,” Patrick says to Steve. “Did I tell you that already? And the stainless steel ones are even more.” Timothy is the tile man who is coming next week. I have heard Patrick call him an “artist,” a “perfectionist,” a “master craftsman.” For this project Patrick has not chosen the lowest bidder.

“So what did you decide?” Steve says. “Did you order a couple hundred of both kinds?” Steve is a person who says, “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” while he laughs.

“No, no. I scaled way back,” Patrick says. “We’re just going to use a few of the glass ones as accents.”

“He doesn’t need to do that,” Rachel says to me. “That’s just extra trouble and expense. I could live out the rest of my life happy as can be without those glass tiles.” She says this while spending her Saturday to make a meal for her neighbors, while laboring to remove every corn silk so that Wes Lebo can have his favorite vegetable.

“Wes said they were releasing her right after lunch, so they’re probably already home,” Rachel says.

I glance at my watch. It is a silver one with a stretchy band, a birthday gift from Patrick. It has a large face the size of a quarter and sturdy black hands with arrows on the ends. Like a nurse’s watch, it is immensely practical. It tells me that it is a few minutes past two o’clock. Rachel has promised Wes that we will deliver the meal at six.

“Wes said he’d hang a new door for us in here,” Patrick says to Steve in the bathroom. “He’s so good at it, he can practically do it with his eyes closed. He said it would be payback for wallpapering the nursery.”

Steve chuckles. “I guess it’s a good thing we decided to do that job last Saturday instead of today.”

“Yep,” says Patrick. “I guess nobody told the little guy he was supposed to wait another two weeks.”

“Joanna sure did fix the nursery up cute, didn’t she?” Rachel says. She has taken a brush to the corn and is going after silks in hiding.

“Yes, she did,” I say. It is not a subject I wish to pursue. I wonder what it must have done to Rachel’s heart to walk into that nursery with its circus motif, its clown curtains and elephant lamp, the posters of the man on stilts and the little dog riding a unicycle. To look at the yellow wallpaper with its border of flipping acrobats, to see the crib, its sheets imprinted with colorful balloons—well, I cannot imagine being Rachel and seeing such a thing.

But it was something she asked for. “May I see the baby’s room?” Those were the words she spoke when we went over three days ago to take a gift. It was a blue, pink, and yellow blanket that Rachel made herself. Knitting and crocheting do not come easily for Rachel, but she goes slowly and carefully. She has taught herself from a book. I have seen her at it in the middle of the night, sitting on the sofa in the living room, her head bent close to her work.

Joanna took us back to the nursery that day and laid the blanket on the crib. I could not look at Rachel’s face, but I heard her voice: “Oh, what a pretty, cheerful room.” Rachel’s voice is one I know well by now. It is low and slow. Over the telephone it must sound mournful.

Perhaps it has always sounded so. Or perhaps it was suddenly and irreversibly infused with sorrow one day twenty years ago at the Memphis Zoo. All I know is this: When she said, “Oh, what a pretty, cheerful room” in her low, mournful voice, it was clear that she meant it. One must not judge from sound alone. He must look at all the evidence. I have read in my bird book that the mourning dove is a contented bird in spite of its name and the dark, pensive sound of its coo. I have read in the Bible that the dove is thought to be a symbol of mercy.

I look down at my feet. Imagine slippers made out of purple yarn. I opened them on my birthday after I opened the watch Patrick gave me. At first I thought they were twin drawstring purses until Patrick announced, “Try them on! Rachel made them! The pattern said one size fits any foot, so let’s see!” No one would look at them and call them the work of an artist, a perfectionist, a master craftsman, but a thing does not have to be beautiful or perfect to be loved.

“There she is!” Patrick says triumphantly. “Now just a little filling in around the edges, and we’re in business.” There is a soft thump. “Look at that. Just the least touch and it closes. I bet you could
blow
it closed.” There is a pause, during which he must be experimenting. Another soft thump. “See, what did I tell you?” Then, proudly, “You know, it really is true—you get what you pay for!” It is hard to think of a truism that Patrick has not uttered at some time.

“How about the window molding?” Steve says. “Can we get it back up today?” No doubt Steve is thinking this: The sooner we finish Patrick’s bathroom, the sooner we can start on my kitchen.

“Yes, but we’ve got to replace the sill,” Patrick says. “Remember, we got a little carried away with the sledge hammer and wrecked it!” He laughs his cheerful home-improvement laugh. He is fudging with the plural pronoun, for it was he himself who hit the edge of the windowsill and broke it off.

“Did you read Patrick’s new story yet?” Rachel asks. She is cutting the kernels off one of the ears of corn with a long sharp knife. She goes cautiously, as if shaving hair close to a scalp.

“Yes,” I say, “what there is of it.” I have finished with both the yellow squash and zucchini and am working on the small red potatoes. The recipe shows a diagram of how to cut them so that some of the red skin shows on each strip. The person who wrote the recipe down must have a lot of time on his hands. He must also fancy himself to be a wit. “To create the most colorful palette for the refined palate,” the recipe says.