The Bible Salesman Page 5

  She put the baby on the truck seat beside her and her things. He’d stopped crying. She wouldn’t look at him.

  She drove to Pa D’s and stopped the car and got out. She felt hot around her ears and down her neck. Ma D and Pa D and the rest were in the fields or barns. She was glad somebody hadn’t come to sit on the porch. She took the box from the front seat and, not looking down into it, took it inside and left it on the kitchen table with a note saying that Caroline would be coming home on the school bus. She did not look around.

  She would not think the child’s name.

  The air around her on the porch seemed cool and a thousand miles away, even though it was right there against her arms. She stood with her head dropped low and watched tears hit the floor planks as her shoulders shook, watched drip from her nose lengthen down in a string. She held her hands, clutched, at her sides. Henry. Caroline. Danny. She went back in and wrote a note to Caroline, saying good-bye, saying that Caroline would be happier now — that everybody would be happier now, and that she was sorry.

  Rather than turn left and drive back home, she turned right and headed toward Raleigh. She had more than forty dollars.

  At Sunday dinner at the homeplace, Pa D, after reaching for a biscuit, told everybody that somebody ought to go ahead and decide for sure who got the two children and make it official. Pa D wore suspenders and had a watermelon belly that kind of ran out onto his legs as he sat.

  Jack and Dorie, sitting for a few minutes on their front porch after driving home, talked.

  Dorie said, “It’s hard to think about them separated up. She’s a sweet girl and could help take care of him.”

  “I know she’s a sweet girl. But we got to make a decision. Ruth is begging for her, and that’ll work out good. Her war pension will go up, and she can move next door easy enough.”

  As usual, some came to Pa and Ma D’s for the family reunion early on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and spent the night. Others came for Sunday dinner only; some stayed after Sunday dinner for horseshoes and swimming. Most adults who stayed overnight played Rook on Saturday night.

  Uncle Delbert’s wife, Sis, after both families gathered in the house for Sunday dinner at one-thirty, clanked a glass with a fork. “Okay, everybody, listen up. Before Pa D says the blessing, Caroline is going to say Grandma Caroline’s name. Caroline, come here, honey.”

  Caroline came to the sink and Aunt Sis picked her up and stood her in a chair.

  “Speak it out, now, honey,” said Aunt Sis.

  Caroline looked at all the faces, then at Aunt Sis, and holding her eyes there, spoke: “Cora Rosa Hunter Novella Caroline Hildred Martha Bird Taylor Copeland.”

  Scattered applause.

  “Now, what did Grandpa Walker call her?”

  “Puss.”

  Laughs.

  “Pa D will return thanks,” said Aunt Sis. “Pa D?”

  “Who let that dog in?” somebody asked.

  “He just come in.”

  “Well, run him out.”

  Pa D made his way forward, thumbed open his Bible, and read the Twenty-third Psalm, what he always read, ending:

  . . . and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

  Then, “Let us pray. Dear Lord, make us thankful for these and the many blessings thou hast given us, and be with the soul of departed Danny. In thy blessed name, amen.”

  People gathered in the kitchen to serve plates for children and for themselves — fried chicken, beans, peas, beef, ham, creamed potatoes, deviled eggs, pickles, biscuits, corn bread, relish, corn, potato salad — hot and cold and warm foods together, smelling sweet along with the already-there smells of Pa D and Ma D’s house, and the sounds of voices and dogs outside, and the Twenty-third Psalm, all melding into an almost singular sensation that these people would be reminded of once or twice a year in some place they didn’t expect it.

  Two women met in a bedroom and nursed their babies. One, feeling uneasy in a way she couldn’t quite understand, told her cousin that Uncle Brother had just said that the only difference between a woman having a baby and a pig having a baby was that the woman squealed louder. That was just like Uncle Brother, always joshing, but the comparison brought an uneasiness that she understood only enough to laugh away.

  At a card table on the porch, Jack sat with his brother-in-law Delbert and brother-in-law Samuel, and a new in-law, Manley, freshly married to Dorcus, Delbert and Sis’s daughter. Not being able to remember all the names was a problem for most of the adults, except for Sis. People who needed a name went to Aunt Sis.

  Samuel and Linda and their three children — Carson was the youngest — had driven up from Garden Springs, Florida, where they worked for a rich man, running one of his orange groves. But Linda was asleep in the back bedroom. She was Dorie’s sister. She often looked weak and pale, especially after the long auto journey up from Florida. Samuel had said the illness was God’s will. He spoke of Job.

  Jack normally did not sit with Samuel for the meal, because of grudges, some forgotten, but today Jack had missed the biscuits somehow, and while he was gone back to the kitchen for a couple of minutes, Samuel sat down at the card table across from Jack’s seat.

  When Jack came back, Samuel kept his seat anyway.

  “Do you go to church?” Jack, chewing a bite of biscuit, asked Manley, the newlywed.

  “I go with Dorcus, yeah. I’ll be going with her.”

  “Well, did I ever tell you about my dog’s Bible?”

  “No sir.”

  Samuel stood. “I’ve heard all this before.” He placed his silverware on his plate, looked around for a seat, picked up his glass of tea.

  “Aw, sit down, Sam,” said Jack.

  “Samuel,” said Samuel.

  “Sit down,” said Delbert.

  “Samuel,” said Jack. “Excuse me. Sit down. Get the corncob out your ass.” Then he said to a boy at the next table, “Could you pass me that chicken one more time? I meant to get a wing. And you-all eat some of that rabbit stew in there on the stove. I made it.”

  “I just don’t care to hear about Trixie’s Bible again,” said Samuel. “No thank you.” He moved away.

  Jack looked at Samuel’s back, then turned to Manley. “Trixie, my dog, has got this Bible. It’s got two verses. One: ‘There ain’t no magic and never was.’ Number two: ‘Nobody can see into the future.’ A dog wrote it over five thousand years ago, and it cuts through a lot of” — he whispered — “shit.” He took a swig of ice tea. “How do you like it so far?” he asked Manley.

  “What — married life?”

  “No. The family.”

  “It’s all right. It’s good. I think it’s good you-all took in the boy. And Aunt Ruth, the girl.”

  That afternoon Uncle Jack, Aunt Dorie, Caroline, the baby Henry, and Trixie got to the pond first — for swimming. A pasture lay between the house and the pond. At one end of the pond was the dam with a diving board, and at the other, a grassy bank where people rested on towels and in lawn chairs near the main wading place. Pine trees bordered the back side of the pond.

  Caroline sat on the grass on a white towel and watched Uncle Jack stand at the edge of the pond in his swimsuit and unbuttoned shirt and shoes without socks. He chewed a plug of tobacco. He pulled a cigarillo from his shirt pocket — the shirttail out. He looked at it, put it in his mouth, lit it, and then went back to chewing — not like an average man would chew tobacco, but nervously, rapidly. Caroline had seen him stand like this at the pond every year after the reunion dinner, while everybody waited for an hour after eating so they wouldn’t have a stomach cramp and drown. Her daddy would do the same thing back before he got hit by the piece of timber — he would stand there with Uncle Jack. But he didn’t chew. And he wouldn’t go into the water. He’d just talk to Uncle Jack while they stood there, and then Uncle Jack, after the hour was up, would walk slowly into the water. Sometimes Caroline’s mother had been sick and hadn’t been able to come to the family reunion. But he
r daddy always did.

  Aunt Dorie sat on a towel with the baby, Henry.

  The cigarillo hung in Uncle Jack’s mouth, with him taking puffs and chewing at the same time, and then he kicked his shoes off, took off his shirt, dropped it, and walked into the water.

  On the ground beside Caroline was an inner tube inside sewn-together tow sacks — a raft for floating on.

  Trixie ambled over, her tail wagging.

  Aunt Dorie put the baby in her lap and rubbed his back, while Uncle Jack waded into deeper and deeper water, until he was in almost up to his shoulders. The cigarillo still dangled, untouched, and he puffed on it while tossing the chew tobacco around in his mouth. He crossed his arms and stood there like that. Way out there. And then Aunt Dorie picked up Henry and pulled the float into the water a little ways and plopped Henry down on it and floated him in a circle. Way down at the end of the pond a boy dove off the diving board. Another boy followed. They were yelling and laughing.

  Caroline stood and stepped into the pond, walked out, looking down into the murky water lit by streaks of sun rays, water up to her knees and then up to her waist. It was cool water with cold spots here and there at her ankles and feet. Her daddy had taught her to swim the summer before. He said everybody had to learn when they were six. Now he wasn’t in the world to teach Henry. She wondered if he might come walking up out of the woods and say he’d just had to go away for a while. She wondered where her mother was. But she didn’t mind living with Aunt Ruth. Her mama had scared her a lot sometimes by staring out the window while Caroline talked to her.

  She fell onto her back and floated, kicking her feet — the part about swimming she’d learned first. The back of her head was almost cold, after getting hot in the sun.

  When she came back onto shore, Aunt Dorie told her to sit with Henry while she swam out to Uncle Jack. Once Aunt Dorie got way out there, and Uncle Jack started horsing around with her, Caroline decided she’d take Henry for a little ride on the inner tube. That new man who’d married Dorcus was rowing Dorcus in a boat.

  Caroline managed to get Henry on the inner tube and then float it in very shallow water at the edge of the pond, and then on a little deeper. She watched Henry look at the water, waited for him to start crying, but he didn’t. He seemed pleased, and so she walked him into waist-deep water. Dorcus and her new husband rowed their boat right up to Uncle Jack and Aunt Dorie.

  Caroline looked back to the inner tube. It was empty. She looked first on shore, then at the long, wide surface of the pond — as smooth and calm as it could be — and she started to scream but swallowed it and dove beneath the tube with both eyes wide open, a deep orange muddy color in front of her. She grasped forward with her hands. Her right hand was suddenly touching — and then her fingers were around — Henry’s thigh. She found one ankle and then the other and lifted as she stood straight.

  She heard Aunt Dorie shout, “Caroline, what are you doing?” She looked out where Aunt Dorie and Uncle Jack stood. “Nothing,” she shouted. “Teaching him to swim.”

  “Put him back up on the beach, sweetie.”

  “Okay.”

  She held him a foot or so above the water like he was lying on his stomach, his nose down, and shook him. He coughed, struggled, and then threw up water, milk, and other stuff, something yellow, as she waded with him toward the shore.

  Uncle Jack hollered, “Don’t let that float float off!”

  A sob pushed out from her. She sat down on the white towel, holding Henry, looking out to Aunt Dorie and Uncle Jack and then down at her brother. He was more precious than the world. And now she had a big secret, unless Dorcus or her new husband had seen . . . But here came Aunt Linda holding her baby, Carson, in her arms. She was talking to him. She hadn’t noticed. Henry looked okay, except he was a little blue maybe. He held up his hand and looked at it as if he’d never seen it before. Aunt Linda walked up and set baby Carson beside Henry. “Well, what’s been going on?” she said.

  “I been teaching him to swim. Pretend. He got some water in his mouth.”

  “It’ll be fun when him and Carson get old enough to play together.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Later Caroline begged Aunt Ruth to let her spend that night with Henry. She sort of wanted to keep an eye on him. Drowning might could go ahead and happen anyway — a few hours after somebody got saved. Aunt Ruth said fine, as long as it was all right with Aunt Dorie. And it was.

  After her bedtime, Caroline, almost asleep, lay on the cot against the bedroom wall, still afraid for Henry, listening for talk and movement.

  “Let’s get you a fresh diaper,” said Aunt Dorie to Henry.

  “Look,” said Uncle Jack. “He’s got a woody.”

  “Jack. You shouldn’t be talking that way. Caroline might be awake.”

  “She’s asleep. He’d rather play with that thing than win money.”

  “Jack! Be quiet.”

  Caroline wondered if a woody was something caused by Henry almost drowning. What was he playing with? She saw a small piece of wood stuck to his side somehow. She thought about the big plank that killed her daddy, and the man who drove the truck.

  1933

  Henry, in Aunt Dorie’s lap, wore the blue pajamas that Santa Claus had brought him. Aunt Dorie sat up in bed. He listened as she finished the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors from The Children’s Book of Bible Stories, and then as she read aloud to him from a thin, blue book: “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

  Jack, propped up on the other side of the bed, read the newspaper, folded so he could hold it in one hand. A cigarillo and a kitchen match hung between his lips.

  “Why couldn’t they put him together?” Henry asked Dorie.

  “He was broke.”

  “Why was he bloke?”

  “He fell off a wall.”

  “Why?”

  “He just did.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t say, sweetie.”

  “Read it again.”

  Dorie read the nursery rhyme.

  “Who was the king?”

  “He was the head man in England.”

  “Did he know Moses?”

  “I don’t think he did.”

  “Did God know the king?”

  “I guess he did. Yes, he did. God knows everybody.”

  “Did Jesus know the king?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was at a different time.”

  Later, after Henry was asleep on his thick pallet, Jack looked over. “I just think you should read him nursery rhymes and comic books. That Bible-story book . . .”

  “What?”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “What?”

  “That book of Bible stories.”

  “Right here on the table.”

  “Hand it here. Which one were you on?”

  “Joseph. It’s from the Bible, Jack. Let’s don’t do this again now,” said Dorie.

  “I’ll just open it. Okay. So here we go. Adam and Eve. Poor them.”

  “Let’s don’t do this in front of Henry.”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “You read to him if you don’t like what I read.”

  “I’ll tell him some stories. And you show me a man that won’t eat a apple hanging in his own yard and I’ll show you a . . . wimpy man.”

  The next night, in bed, Dorie rested her head back with her eyes closed. Henry sat in Uncle Jack’s lap, facing him.

  “Now,” said Uncle Jack. “Once upon a time there was this old woman lived way out in the woods by herself, and every night she cooked biscuits and gravy for supper, and while she was cooking she’d go to the door and say, ‘Who’s a-coming to eat biscuits and gravy with me tonight?’ And nobody ever answered, except one night this voice from way off says, ‘I’m a-coming.’ So she went back inside and started fixing biscuits and gravy, then in a little bit went back to the door and sai
d, ‘Who’s a-coming to eat biscuits and gravy with me tonight?’ And not that far off a voice says, ‘I’m a-coming.’ So she went back in and finished up with the biscuits and gravy and then came back to the door and said, ‘Who’s a-coming to eat biscuits and gravy with me tonight?’ and right around the corner of the house this voice said, ‘I’m a-coming,’ and she went back in and this big, tall man followed her in the door. He had long hair, and long fingernails, and long teeth. So the old woman says, ‘Why you got those long fingernails?’ and he said, ‘To dig graves with.’ And she said, ‘Why you got that long hair?’ and he said, ‘To lay graves with.’ So then she said, ‘Why you got those long teeth?’ ”

  Henry’s head leaned forward.

  “To EAT YOU UP!”

  Henry jumped, grinned. “Tell it again.”

  Henry stood on the stool at the woodstove. Uncle Jack handed him the salt shaker to sprinkle the two rabbits, each split down the middle, lying on a big piece of wax paper. In the big black frying pan, bacon grease was beginning to fizzle.

  “Okay, I’m going to just drop them in there. Good. Now. We’ll just wait till they’re done, and then we can dress them up fancy. You can sit at the table now.”

  Uncle Jack cut open a lemon with the sharp kitchen knife.

  When the rabbits were done on one side he turned them over with a fork, and then when they were done on that side he forked them to a plate and placed them in front of Henry at the table. “Now. We got all our stuff ready here. Get you a handful of them crushed pecans and sprinkle them on. Good. Now I’ll pour this lemon juice in the frying pan, and let’s let it heat for about a minute. Okay. Now. We stir it good. There you go. This is going to be good. Okay, I’m going to pour this over the rabbit, and we got a little scraped lemon peel I’m going to sprinkle on, then these real thin lemon slices. Now, don’t that look good?

  “Dorie. Dorie, come and get it. Come look what me and Henry cooked.”

  1939

  Three colored women dressed in white uniforms sat in the back of the trolley. Most of the other people were dressed up. Aunt Ruth, who was small, had let Caroline dress up in one of her dresses. Henry wore his coat and tie, and Aunt Dorie wore a Sunday dress. The trolley was so full that Henry sat in Dorie’s lap.