Walking Across Egypt Page 8

  “Well, good for you.” Wesley eyed the paper bag. “I don’t smoke now. I ain’t got no cigarettes. Ain’t had none for two days.”

  “You stop smoking and your color will improve.”

  “Who gives a shit whether my color improves.”

  Mattie stared at him. “I do. And listen, son, you shouldn’t ever talk that way around a lady.”

  Wesley’s head fell forward slightly while he stared into Mattie’s eyes; he suddenly laughed, looking away, staring far away out over the green trees, covering his mouth with his hand while he laughed, then looked back at Mattie as it hit him. He stopped laughing. “Are you my grandma?”

  Bad teeth, thought Mattie. “No, I’m not.”

  She might be lying, thought Wesley. “My grandma’s alive somewhere. One of them, I know.” He looked around to see who was looking. This was the craziest thing in the world. Here was this old woman who could very well be his grandma come to see him. Telling him what to do. Well shit, this was the funniest thing in the world. “You brought me some cake and pie?”

  “I’m going to take it back if you don’t apologize.”

  “Who sent you out here? You sure you ain’t my grandma?”

  “I know about you because of Lamar, your uncle. Do you want this piece of cake and pie?” Mattie was still standing.

  “Yeah. I’ll take a piece of cake and pie. I apologize.” He looked around.

  “I put it on a paper plate in case you didn’t want to eat it right now and—”

  “I’ll eat it right now.”

  Mattie opened the tin container. She lifted her foot over the bench to sit down, and noticed that she was still a little sore from falling through the chair. She’d tell him about falling through the chair. People liked that story and she’d gotten it down pretty well. Everybody else knew about it; why not him? “I’m a little sore from falling through a chair,” she said as she sat down slowly.

  “What’s in the paper sack?”

  “Iced tea and a plastic fork. I brought the tea in a mason jar. I got so many mason jars I don’t know what to do.”

  “The iced tea they got here is rotten. Tastes like it’s got rotten oranges in it.”

  “I’ve tasted tea like that.” She pulled the tea out of the paper sack and set it between them, twisted off the top. “Well, this ain’t rotten. There you go. You can start on that.” From the tin container she lifted out the paper plate with a piece of cold apple pie and a piece of pound cake on it. Well, he was the one person since Monday who hadn’t wanted to know every single detail about her falling through the chair. She pulled out the plastic fork wrapped in a paper towel and laid it on the table. “Help yourself.”

  Wesley looked at the plate with the big piece of pie, big hunk of cake. The apple pie was not runny. It was solid, the apples held together with a cold solid filling. It was thick, with a faint hint of sparkling sugar on the crust. Resting beside it was the thick hunk of pound cake, visibly moist. And the jar of tea with ice cubes, the jar looking wet and cold. He looked at Mattie’s face. She was looking at him. He reached for the jar of tea, sipped, then drank. He put the tea down, picked up the fork and cut a big corner off the cake, stuck it from the top with the fork—it hung together with moisture—and put it in his mouth. It was the best thing he’d ever eaten in his life. “That’s the best cake I ever had in my life.”

  “Well, I’m glad you like it. But, listen, you should be more careful about your language.”

  Wesley wanted to finish the cake so he could get to the pie. He looked around. It was a wonder somebody wasn’t coming over to get some. “Where’s Lamar?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t tell anybody I was coming, I just took off on the spur of the moment after I washed my dinner dishes.”

  Wesley was eating the pie. It was the best pie he’d ever had. The cinnamon. That was it, and the apples and crust had a little crispy crunch. “You seen Lamar today?”

  “No, I saw him yesterday. He fixed a chair of mine.”

  “In his shop?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “He’s got one hell of a shop.”

  Mattie decided to let the “hells” and “damns” go. They let them go on television. “Well, he did a nice job on the chair.”

  “He’s supposed to come out here today. He called and told them he would.”

  “How long are you supposed to be in here?”

  “I don’t know. My lawyer moved to Virginia and I ain’t been able to get a new one.” He put the last piece of pie in his mouth.

  “You stole a car?”

  “That’s the thing. I didn’t steal it. These guys I was with stole it.” Wesley swallowed. “We’d been sort of drinking and it was all their idea, all their execution. They executed the whole thing. They—”

  “Use your napkin.”

  Wesley wiped his mouth. “They got in first and everything and the only way I had to get home was to ride. Then the law found out about Holder. Ferren Holder. Ferren was driving. His old man made him go to the police and tell them that it was all mine and Morris’s fault, Morris Griffin, and they believed it, man. They believed it, and that’s the last chance I’ve had, and when I get out of here I’m going to . . .” That pie was good, thought Wesley. “. . . to cut his head off.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you have to live in here,” said Mattie, looking around. “But if you live in society you have to follow the rules.”

  “Rules? That’s a joke.”

  Wesley finished the tea, sucked on an ice cube, spit it back into the jar, turned the jar up, let the ice cube fall into his mouth and shuffled it as he talked. “If Lamar’d give me a place to live I might could get out of here. You got a extra room?”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t . . . I don’t have a room. I couldn’t do that.” Mattie envisioned talking with Elaine, Robert, Pearl, Alora: “This young prisoner is coming to live with me.” But there was that doing unto the least of these scripture. What if she said, “Jesus is coming to live with me”?

  “If I could get somewhere to live. Lamar said he would help me out, but I don’t know if he is or not.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Well, son, I hope something works out. I know it must be terrible to live here. But I’m too old to rent rooms. I’m slowing down.”

  “There he is! Lamar.”

  Lamar was talking to the guard. He waved.

  “I’ll speak to him on the way out,” said Mattie. “I got to get going on back. My sister usually comes by on a Sunday evening. Here he comes. I’ll speak to him before I get up.”

  “Hey, Mrs. Rigsbee,” said Lamar, walking up.

  “Hey there.”

  “I stopped by your house to get Wesley a little something to eat, like you said.” He handed a small paper sack to Wesley. “Here’s your cigarettes.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I visit around on Sundays,” said Mattie, “so I just figured I’d come on out here and visit and bring a little something myself. I just said to Wesley here that I got to get going. I told him about you fixing my chair.”

  “I’ll fix that well-house roof for you, too. I’ll come by one day next week to get it.”

  “Let me know when you’re coming. Give me a call.”

  Lamar looked at the pan and paper sack. “She brought you something?”

  “Best cake and pie I ever eat,” said Wesley, blowing smoke.

  “Well, thank you,” said Mattie, slowly standing. “I got to get going.”

  Wesley eyed Mattie through the smoke. She might really be my grandma, he thought, coming here to check me out, see if she wants to keep me. She might just found out I even exist and she’s got a million dollars stuffed away and I’m going to her house and live in a cabin out back and she’s going to buy me a 4 by 4 and any damn thing else I want. “Thank you for bringing all that.”

  “Well, it won’t nothing. You all behave yourselves. Maybe I’ll get back out here to see you again.�
�� She started off, stopped, turned, and said to Lamar, “I’m still a little sore from that chair.”

  “Well, I guess so.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Lamar picked up the mason jar. “Is this hers?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lamar started after her, handed her the jar. She grabbed his arm and stopped him from turning back around. She whispered, “Do you suppose he’d let me get his teeth fixed.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess so, if you want to.”

  “I just wondered. I’ll be seeing you.”

  Lamar sat back down at the picnic table with Wesley.

  Wesley took a deep drag on the cigarette, blew smoke through his mouth, then nose. “Is she my grandma?” he asked. “My mama’s mama?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “I just wondered if you’re pulling some kind of trick, and she’s going to get me out, let me live with her or something.”

  “She won’t even keep a dog.”

  Wesley frowned. “Go to hell, Lamar.” He ground out the cigarette on the table.

  V

  Pearl, in her light blue Ford, turned into Mattie’s driveway in front of Mattie. Mattie, driving the tan Plymouth that Paul bought just before he died, pulled in behind her and then up beside her so that Pearl could back out when she was ready to leave.

  Mattie knew Pearl would ask her where she’d been. She’d go ahead and tell the truth—about visiting Wesley.

  “Where you been?” asked Pearl, bending far left, then far right as they walked toward the back door.

  “The prison.”

  Pearl raised an eyebrow. “They catch you writing bad checks?” She laughed.

  “No.” Once Mattie heard Pearl say to her gentle husband Carl, walking with a walker, after Carl said he’d live another fifteen to thirty years: “Unless you get shot in a whorehouse.”

  They stepped up and into the den. “I was visiting a prisoner,” said Mattie. “Young fellow.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “He says he didn’t do nothing—that somebody put him up to it: stealing a car.”

  “You don’t know who’s going to do what these days,” said Pearl, sitting on the couch. “Did you go with the Sunday school class?”

  “No, I went by myself.”

  “You ought to be careful. There’s mean boys out there.” She reached into her pocketbook for her tin of snuff. “Mean enough to push biddies in the water.”

  “They got guards and all that. And as young as this boy is, I don’t see how he could have got too mean yet. Course I don’t know.”

  “They get mean young nowadays.” Pearl placed a pinch of snuff in her lower lip. “I see you ain’t got the bottom back to your rocker.”

  “Nope, nor to the kitchen chairs. I think Bill said tomorrow or Tuesday.”

  “How do you know this boy?”

  “Well, he’s some kin to the dogcatcher, and it hit me in Sunday school this morning for some reason. The scripture about the least of these. You know: ‘When you’ve done something for the least of these my brethren, you’ve done it for me.’ I thought that maybe if I took a piece of cake and pie out to that boy it would be like taking it to Jesus.”

  “Was it?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I never took no food to Jesus.”

  “Did it seem like the same?”

  “No. He didn’t look like Jesus, or talk like him.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t expect him to if he stole a car.”

  “No, I don’t guess you would. Listen, why don’t you stay for supper. I can warm up my peas and corn, and stringbeans. Or . . .” Mattie stood and started over to the refrigerator. “I could fix us some bacon and eggs.”

  “I don’t like mayonnaise.”

  Mattie stopped and turned. “Bacon and eggs.”

  “Oh. That’d be nice. I thought you said mayonnaise.”

  “No, bacon and eggs.”

  “I don’t like mayonnaise.”

  “I know that. Which do you want—vegetables or bacon and eggs?”

  “I don’t care. Whatever’s easiest.” Pearl stood, walked into the kitchen.

  “Here, sit on this one with the board,” said Mattie.

  Pearl walked around the table, bent over, carefully adjusted the board.

  “Remember how we used to take water to the prisoners working on the road.” She sat down.

  “I remember. Striped suits. You know, it’s a wonder Mama would let us go.” Mattie went to the refrigerator for eggs. “This fellow had nice eyes, looked okay, but his teeth were rotten and his hair right stringy.”

  “Had the hives?”

  “Nice eyes.”

  “Well, you just can’t tell.”

  “He sure did enjoy that cake and pie.”

  “I reckon he did.”

  “You want a piece of toast and jelly while the bacon finishes?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m all out of preserves,” said Mattie. “I wish I had a mess of strawberries. Alora bought a quart of the biggest, reddest, prettiest strawberries you ever seen at a yard sale last week. Cellophane stretched across the top. They were so pretty she brought them over to show me before she opened them. I told her the pretty ones were on top and the ugly ones were on the bottom, but she told me next day they were all pretty.”

  “You know, I been thinking it’s about time we had another yard sale,” said Pearl.

  “Maybe so. How about some Saturday. Say, Saturday week. That’ll give us time to plan.”

  “Okay, fine with me. We’ll have it at my house. More traffic.”

  VI

  After Pearl left, Mattie found her glasses in the top bureau drawer and sat down on the couch. She turned on the lamp, got her Bible from the table and looked in the concordance under “least.” It wouldn’t be in the Old Testament. Luke 16:10. She looked. No. 1 Corinthians 6:4. No, that wasn’t it. Matthew, it seemed like—well, she would have to ask Martha or Carrie or Clarence Vernon.

  Mattie got up to find the paper so she could see what was coming on TV. She shouldn’t be watching television on Sunday night; she should be going to church. But she was afraid to drive after dark, and Alora and Finner didn’t go, and she didn’t want to have somebody pick her up. She looked in the TV section of the newspaper for any animal programs. None.

  Well, then, no TV. She’d play and sing some hymns. She went to the piano, sat, leafed through the Broadman. Something simple to warm up on; something she could sing along with. Ah: key of G.

  All hail the power of Jesus’ name!

  Let angels prostrate fall;

  Bring forth the royal diadem,

  And crown him Lord of all;

  Bring forth the royal diadem,

  And crown him Lord of all.

  She thumbed through several pages. Here, here was one. “Love Lifted Me.” B-flat. She played, remembering that it used to be Robert’s and then Elaine’s favorite.

  Now Robert never went to church except occasionally he’d come home and go with Mattie at Easter or Christmas. She almost wished he wouldn’t because it forced a question the next Sunday in Sunday school or church: “Where did you say Robert was going to church now?” And she’d say: “At the Lutheran church north of Listre.” He had been there a few times.

  Elaine hardly ever went to church. She was bitter. Maybe a little age would change her. She did go to that Unitarian place once in a while, but that was all.

  The last time Mattie had tried to talk to Elaine about religion, Elaine had explained that the existence of the soul was not a given. She said it could all be in the brain: chemicals, nerve endings. But there was a soul, Mattie had protested. We have absolutely no evidence of that, said Elaine. Mattie had stood, walked from the kitchen table to the end table by the couch, and returned with her Bible and handed it to Elaine. Elaine had stood and said, “Mother, it is wonderful literature. There are beautiful stories all through it, and that’s a wonderful achievement, a wonderful monument even, a monument to hum
anity, but Mother that’s all it is. There is, in spite of this book, no clear evidence that we are dealing with anything but our imaginations.”

  Mattie had been horrified. It was as if Elaine had died and someone had returned in her place.

  “To think otherwise,” said Elaine, “I would have to be untrue to myself and I refuse to do that. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  To have a child think she was being true to herself and untrue to God was a magnificent and terrible problem.

  After Elaine had gone home, Mattie thought over and over: why didn’t I say you cannot be untrue to God and true to yourself because God is in all of us? Elaine couldn’t have had a good answer for that. But Mattie had only stared at Elaine, unable to say anything, feeling tears swell in her eyes, hating that she could only cry rather than say the exact right thing that would clear the blinders from her own daughter’s heart—bring her to Jesus, bring Jesus to her. She had done everything she knew to do—sent Elaine to Bible school every summer of her life, to church every Sunday and Sunday night, to . . . everywhere she could, and read and told her Bible stories over and over and over.

  VII

  At midnight on Friday night, Wesley stood on a cinderblock step and knocked on the door of Lamar’s mobile home.

  He knocked again, louder.

  A light came on. The door opened. Lamar stood there in his underwear.

  “You got a girl with you?” asked Wesley.

  “Wesley! What the hell? No, I ain’t.”

  Wesley tried to open the screen door. It was hooked.

  “Wait a minute,” said Lamar. “Did you escape?”

  “You goddamn right. Open the door.”

  “Wesley, they’ll fry my ass if they find you here.”

  “I’m leaving for South Carolina tomorrow. Tomorrow night. Myrtle Beach. This guy Blake Bumgartner is getting a car and is going to pick me up at Creek Junction behind the 7-Eleven. It’s all set up. I just—”

  “Listen, Wesley. I don’t want to know about it.”

  “I just need something to eat and that belt and stuff I sent. Maybe a shirt and a pair of pants. They won’t know I’m gone until tomorrow morning. Let me in.” Wesley looked left and right. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Let me in, man.”