Death By The Riverside Part 32

I never apologized. I didn't get anything to eat until the next day, when, after the visitation, we went to Uncle Charlie's and Aunt Lotty's for the usual Southern mixing of food and death. I loaded my plate while Aunt Greta glared at me. She even made an attempt to stop me, but Aunt Lotty told her to leave me alone, that no one went hungry at her house. Aunt Lotty believed in the consoling power of food. I piled her ham and potato salad and tuna ca.s.serole high and told her several times how good the food she had cooked was. I didn't touch anything that Aunt Greta brought. Spurred by my praise, Aunt Lotty urged me to seconds and even thirds. Toward the end of the evening, I was eating, not out of hunger, but to defy Aunt Greta.

Why was I thinking about them? I always did everything possible not to think about Aunt Greta or my despised cousin Bayard. Including, I had to admit, drinking myself into oblivion every now and then. That realization did not make me feel comfortable. It meant that I wasn't as in control as I thought I was. I had learned so well in that house to be calm and controlled. If I let them know when they hurt me, they would have known to always. .h.i.t that spot. And when I left, on my eighteenth birthday, I was sure I had beaten them.

They never saw me cry, not for my dad, not for Aunt Harriet, not for Smoky, the dog, who used to wait for me, with her tail wagging madly across a grease spot. Stupid dog, I would think, as I wiped off her tail, with her barking and licking my face. Then I would take her to the park to play and run about and I would talk to her. I told her about my dad and missing Aunt Harriet and she would listen. I was the only person in that family to give her any attention. In return, she gave me her steadfast loyalty (even to the point of growling at Bayard on several occasions), two s.h.a.ggy brown ears to listen, and the only love I could trust anymore.

I will always wonder if Bayard left the backyard gate open to get * 212 *

even with her (get even with a dog?), or if it was just Mary Theresa being stupid again. Smoky got run over by a pick-up truck.

I didn't cry when some neighbors gathered around to say what a shame and these drivers got no respect these days and thank G.o.d, it wasn't a child. I cried much later, in the dark of my stifling room.

But here I was, more than ten years later, trying not to think of them, and thinking of them. Or drinking them away. My victory suddenly seemed very hollow. What had I gained? My soul chained and barricaded in a deep part of myself? And I was no longer sure where the key was or if I even cared to find it. Like a hunted animal, there was no victory, only reprieve. I had been foolish to think there was. Instead, I now lived with the knowledge that even if I escaped them, there would be other hunters with other guns.

I came to an old pier. Some of the boards were crumbling and looked rotten, but there were others that were newer and had only been touched by a few seasons of weather. I walked out to the end. The river gave off a chill, compounding the cold of the gray day. I hadn't dressed warmly enough for a hike, hurrying as I had out of Ranson's. Still, I sat down, not willing to leave the river.

That was why I hadn't loved Danny. I had been too intent on listening for the rustling in the bushes, the chase. When I couldn't stand waiting any longer for the trigger to be pulled, I had left her.

Aunt Greta had won after all.

Shortly after Aunt Harriet's funeral, I got a job at the local burger place after school. I still had my paper route in the morning. I had to work to pay the taxes on the shipyard. Aunt Greta tried to get me to sell it, but I always refused. It was the only thing I could touch that had touched my father. I had to keep it to remember him. I was so afraid he would slip away. I asked for as little as possible from them. Every request gave Aunt Greta the power to refuse it.

I later found out that Aunt Greta charged me twenty dollars more than the actual taxes were. When I demanded to know why, she told me it was for her expenses. I had to give the money to her and then she wrote out the checks for me. The twenty was to cover the cost of two checks, two envelopes, two stamps, and the time it took her to write the checks. I addressed the envelopes myself. When I did point out that at maximum, fifty cents was spent on materials and that nineteen dollars and fifty cents seemed like a lot of profit to me, she lectured me * 213 *

on learning responsibility and not expecting other people to cater to your whims. It wasn't the money, but the lesson in responsibility that mattered, she finished.

I didn't argue further. It would have been pointless. Aunt Greta was going to charge me extra no matter what I said. If I argued too much, she would just raise her rates. A lecture fee, I noted sardonically.

I worked through high school, taking an early morning shift at the burger joint after Bayard "borrowed" my paper route bike one day and forgot to return it. Stolen, he said. I had to bite my tongue not to tell him to be more responsible, particularly with other people's things.

First he told me he had locked it up and it had been gone when he came back; then he told Mary Theresa that he had seen the thief, but had been too far away. By the time it got to Aunt Greta, he had been attacked by a gang and was lucky to get away with his life, let alone my bike. It was too small for me anyway. I had gotten it when I was nine years old. I was going to give it to David when he got old enough. He would have been eight that year.

I shivered, a chill wind picking up and slicing through my jean jacket.

"Ain't you cold, chil'?" said a voice from behind me.

I turned and looked. There was an old man standing on the pier behind me. He was wearing old clothes, clean but faded after years of washing, and carrying a paper sack that had creases from being used over and over again.

"Cold and sad, looks to me," he finished as he sat down a few feet from me.

I tried to ignore him and hoped he would go away.

"Yeah, what happen that you be so sad and so far 'way from home?

You never sat on this pier before 'cause I know all pier sitters 'round here," he continued.

"A friend died," I decided to answer him.

"That be sad," he commented, nodding his head. "How he die?"

"Suicide," I answered tersely.

"Why?" he asked. "You know?"

I sat and thought, wondering why I should talk to this old man.

Why not, I finally decided. A man this old had surely seen trouble.

"Twenty years ago today, his wife, eight months pregnant, and three-year-old son died. Murdered. Ben started drinking and got in * 214 *

trouble and went to jail. In and out for a while, I think. Then in, until a few weeks ago," I told the story. "I guess what he lived for, from then to now, was revenge."

"He got it?"

"No. He couldn't. The murderer was also killed twenty years ago today. But Ben didn't know that."

"You tell him, I s'pose, and now you be thinking you kill him."

I looked at him. He was very old, at least in his eighties, with the creased and weathered skin of a man who had worked his life outdoors.

"I had to tell him. He might have hurt someone who..." I trailed off. Someone whom I was beginning to care for.

"I get you, chil'. The problem with revenge, it sometime hard to aim. Like any ugliness, it splatter all around."

Barbara. Frankie. Ben.

"How do you live with it?" I suddenly turned to him, wanting an answer, hoping for one.

"Here, chil'. Warm yo'self up." He handed me a worn silver hip flask. I stared at it for a minute, before finally taking it from him. I uncapped it and took a swallow.

"Long time ago; this be a long story, so I figured you needed a drink first," he started. "But long time ago, my brother Abraham tell me, 'You got to endure. You just got to endure for as long as you got.

No choice there. Choice is, endure happy or endure sad.' Abraham endured happy. Couple years older 'n me. Laughing, happy, smiling, always a joke with us younger kids. He got lynched."

I jerked. Other hunters with other guns aiming at other people.

"Yeah, they strung him up," he continued. "Somewhere during the War, First that be. Bunch of white boys, maybe men, not fighting over there, so they fight over here. Somehow Abraham turn into the enemy.

"I's born in 1899, so I be maybe fifteen or sixteen when he taken from us. And I start enduring sad after that. Sad and angry, like you now. I stay that way for a while. One day, I visit Abraham, the grave he be in and I hear a voice. Abraham's. And he say, 'Isaac, why you endure sad? Why you visit me and be so sad? Didn't I teach you nothin'? Look at them pretty flowers growin' on my grave. Them birds singin' like the sun never stop shinin'. The one thing you can't let go of is joy. 'Cause once they take that from you, they taken everything. When you come * 215 *

by this grave, don't you be rememberin' me swinging from that tree limb. You'd better remember me laughin' and happy. 'Cause they might of killed me, but they never got to my joy. As long as you still got yours, then I be alive.'"

The old man paused. He took his flask back and took a swig, then handed it to me. He continued. "He was right. Pretty yellow and blue flowers growin' on his grave and them birds just sing and sing. Trees growin' high to the sky and I got to smile. And I ain't stopped smilin'

since. Sometimes, of course, a little while. Sadness happen and you be a grinnin' fool to smile at it. But Abraham be right. We all, all of us, gonna die someday. Your choice with a smile or a frown."

He paused again, took his flask and took another drink. "This,"

he said, indicating the flask, "was given to my great granddaddy by the man that owned him. My granddad was born just before the Civil War. Born into slavery. After the war was over and we was freed, the owner come back and 'cause my great-granddad and granddad and others stayed and looked after his wife and kids (nowhere else to go, my granddad said. You want to be runnin' around with a war goin' on?), he gave them things to help. A horse, some money, a gun. Things he didn't need. This owner be kind. Kind to dogs and slaves, my granddad say, he can't tell the difference.

"This flask go to my granddad, my dad, now me. After me, it go to my granddaughter, 'cause she be my favorite and I be old enough to have favorites. She a teacher. She teach white and black kids. T'other day she send a white boy to the princ.i.p.al's office. She call and tell me this. His name be Henderson, she tell me. Same name as the name of that man that owned my grandfather. Maybe they not related. Probably, like she say. But maybe they be so."

He stopped and opened the bag and pulled out something wrapped in brown paper. He unwrapped it slowly, spreading the paper out like a table cloth.

"You hungry?" he asked. "I got me a pile o' crawdads. Don't know I can eat this many. Don't know 'bout you, but crawdads always help me when I be sad. Don't always make me happy, but at least get me pointed in the right direction." He picked up a big, dark red crawfish and offered it to me.

"Thanks," I said for both the crawfish and the story.

We cleaned them, watching the sh.e.l.l pieces disappear in the * 216 *

eddying river. He sucked the juices out of the head, so I did the same.

I hadn't done that since I left the bayou. Too rude for Aunt Greta. I watched the thick red head disappear into the dark water.

"Feed some skinny lil' catfish down in the Gulf," he said as he tossed some sh.e.l.ls into the current.

"Skinny? There's no such thing as a skinny catfish." I threw another head in. We were probably violating all sorts of pollution laws.

"See, there be a twitch of a smile on your face, girl. Them crawdads be workin'," he commented.

But it wasn't the crawfish. It was the kindness of a stranger. And a story reminding me that mine wasn't the only or even the worst tragedy in the world.

"Thank you," I said. "You've been kind to me."

"'Course, chil'. Oftentimes you give kindness and get nothin'

back. The world goes that way. But the only chance you got to get kindness back is to give some out. When it don't return to you, you just shrug your shoulders and go on your way. But you can't stop giving kindness out. For every person stop being kind, the world a sadder place. The world get too sad, there be no joy left for n.o.body." He tossed another head in. An unseen fish nibbled at it, bobbing it along out of rhythm with the river.

We sat for a little while, throwing sh.e.l.ls into the river, watching for fish or crabs to start nature's cycle. Birth and death. Birth and rebirth.

"You've seen a lot of people die?" I asked, not sure of my question.

"Course. Some of us easy, some hard. Old as I be, probably easy for me. Something hard when people die young. No matter how."

"Why?" I asked. That was the question. The question that I spent four years of college studying. And all the time after avoiding it, it seemed. "How do you go on after death? After someone has died?"

"How's easy. Sleepin' and eatin' take care of how. If I knowed the why part, I wouldn't be sittin' on this here dock, but be speakin' at one of them fancy colleges or talkin' to the president. Maybe G.o.d know, but he ain't tellin', near as I can figure."

I nodded, knowing I was asking too much.

"Maybe, why changes for every person. Some go to G.o.d, some to drink, some to eating crawfish on a pier. Maybe there be a whole bunch of whys. You got to find your own."

* 217 *

"Yes, that's what I always heard," I said.

"Just don' kid yo'self, girl. Lookin's a b.i.t.c.h." He flashed me a big grin. "Some folks take the short route and follow somebody else's why.

Religion got to be big that way. So did hatred, I think. Most them boys probably didn't even know why they lynched Abraham, 'cept someone else had a reason for it." He paused. "It be getting cold and late, sugar, my old bones need's be gettin' off this dock. Your bones get old if you keep sittin' here."

He stood up, sweeping a few dropped crawfish sh.e.l.ls into the Mississippi. He carefully put the silver flask into his pocket and folded up the paper bag.

"Thank you for the crawfish and talking to me," I said as I stood up.

"Talk's cheap, chil'. The day I stop talkin' be the day I die. Now you be on your way. The next couple of days when you finally able to smile, you think of me and my crawdad pointers. I know you got sadness today and tomorrow. But someday you start to remember it all together and the bad times won't seem so big and the good times grow to their right size."

I nodded slowly. He was right, I suspected, but I wondered if time was different to an ninety-year-old man than to a woman almost thirty.

We walked back to where the pier touched ground, he turned to me and said, "Now you be good, chil'. There's a world out there, full of sadness and joy. Take what you want, don't just let it hand things to you." He extended his hand. I took it and we shook hands.

"Thank you," I said. "I don't know when, and it may take some time, but I'll pa.s.s your kindness on."

"You a good kid," he said, echoing Ben's words.

I nodded and smiled at him. Maybe I wasn't too bad a kid. He turned and walked away, slowly, not with the infirmity of age, but with an understanding of the uselessness of haste. I stood watching him until he was almost out of sight. Then I turned abruptly and walked in the direction I had to go. I didn't want to see the horizon with him not in it.

It was late in the day and I had a long walk. I found two dimes in one pocket. Not enough to even make a phone call. I found the keys to my apartment in the jacket pocket where I had put them for safekeeping.

My apartment, at least, was closer than Ranson's. I supposed that I * 218 *

would call her and let her chew me out and get it over with, but the thought didn't make me happy.

The gray clouds kept their promise and a light drizzle started at around the halfway point in my walk. I turned up my jacket collar and hunched my shoulders against it. I hoped the old man was inside, safe and warm, sipping his bourbon and telling his favorite granddaughter joyous stories.

I wanted that. To know that life had done what it could to me, but that, no matter what, there were always possibilities. Even the gray of this day no longer seemed so bleakly relentless, but rather a fitting tribute to a man who had died. I would take it as that.

Would I trade the time I had had with my father to avoid the tragedy of his death? What if he had never been?

No, if that was the deal, the ten years with a kind, gentle man who loved me, to be ended with the horror of that night, I would take it again. By denying the night, I denied all the days before. Don't ever let them take the joy away from you, the old man said. I had. I had let them take both pain and joy. If I had been able to cry at my father's death, all the tears that needed to be cried, not just the few that Aunt Greta thought appropriate for public display, then maybe the next day, the next year, I could have laughed. I could have held on to the joy.

Maybe if I stopped running from the memory of his loving me, I could stop running from the possibility of others loving me.

* 219 *

CHAPTER 21.

It was dark and the drizzle was veering toward rain when I got to my apartment. After letting myself in the bottom door, I shook myself like a dog, trying to get some of the wet out of my hair and off my shoulders. I decided to make myself some coffee and change clothes before I called Ranson.

I walked up the stairs, slowly, tired from the walk and the day. I had pa.s.sed the second floor landing before I noticed a shadow above me on the stairs. s.h.i.t, I thought. They must have seen me, certainly heard me. Reality intrudes, as it usually does. But I must say, fate has an exquisite sense of timing.

I hung motionless on the landing, trying to decide whether I wanted to get shot in the back running down the stairs or in front charging up them. "There are ten cops behind me and I've got a shotgun," I said in a loud, and I hoped, threatening, voice.