Thursday, December 18, 2003

It was a handbill inviting all sharecroppers, day laborers and tenant farmers to a meeting with Mr. H.L. Mitchell, at Labor Hall in Jonesboro about a month back. Mitchell, it said was Secretary of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and would speak on the topic of fare living conditions and wages for all.  6:21:41 PM    comment []

The sun had shifted over to the east side of the house so that the front room was nice and cool.  Dishes were washed, Purity was out back shelling peas for supper.  There was plenty of ham left, and potatoes.  The greens wouldn't take long to boil up and they could have corn on the cob and hot rolls and that pecan pie in there.  They had been lucky to get this piece of land with the tree on it.  Time enough to sit a while before supper with the men out and taking Clem with them.  Oscar'd said after lunch that he didn't know but what Clem wouldn't be helped by some hard work that afternoon.  The truth was, this was the only morning of the week the boy hadn't been out in the fields with the men, and that was just because she'd needed him to mend the cow's stall in the barn.  It was a wonder young ones managed to learn anything during the school year as hard as the men worked them when they needed them. Clio went to check on Nellie out on the sleeping porch. Saw she was sleeping with Cassie and Jem curled up beside her on the bed. Clem and Jem. Clio shook her head.  Well that had been Oscar's doing having to go and name the child Jeremiah after his father like he did.  Wasn't like the old man had done anything but eat them out of house and home for four years before he died.  And she'd had to look after him like a slave in those days with three little ones to take care of.  She wrinkled her nose, remembering the old man scent of smoke and urine and bad teeth.  Her father had always been clean and neat and he'd smoked sweet strong tobacco in a pipe. Nellie's two girls were down on the floor playing with their rag dolls on the old quilt Momma had made when she and Oscar got married. It was the quilt for everyday, stitched with scraps of old soft cotton from Clio's dresses and things. She could still recognize almost every dress in the pieces of that quilt.  The green one she'd worn to Jersey Dale's fifteenth birthday party, the brown had been a fall dress for church with lace at the collar Momma had tatted, and the white. Clio let herself smile when she remembered the thick soft white cotton nightgown, heavy in the bodice where her mother had smocked it with dark blue silk embroidery thread.  Mamma had cut the pattern so that the bodice was heart shaped and threaded a blue satin ribbon through the neckline.  Clio spent a year of magical nights the year before she married, sunk deep in her feather bed reading the Arthurian Legends and imagining herself as Gwenevere.  Oscar when he started coming around was her Arthur, with his red gold hair and strong hard build.  He had been teaching school in Tuckerman then, but was saving for his own place.  A man couldn't marry and raise a family on a school teacher's salary.  Clio hardened her mind against the memories and forced herself to focus on Nellie's girls. They favored Mamma's side, like Nellie, though not as pretty, too much O.T. mixed in.  But still, they'd be pretty enough girls if they weren't so plump and useless. Well no doubt some farmer would marry them. She'd probably end up having to train them up herself with Nellie always so tired she could hardly turn her hand to her own work.  Clio made a note in her mind to start working them this fall. No need for Nellie to try to do everything with those two big girls around the house.  Always treated them like they were play dolls, dressing them up so they weren't fit for anything.  Well she could see to that well enough. They'd have school during the day, but there was plenty of time to learn some chores after they got home. The dog followed her out onto the front porch and sat at her feet; his tail curved around the heels of her shoes. The sun had started to go down in back of the house, and Clio could see the orange streaks of it across the fields.  Clouds had come up like she'd expected, and there'd be more rain tonight.  Oscar had said the crop was almost in, so it shouldn't hurt too much.  Way far out were the men.  Tiny blue shapes bending and standing, bending and standing.  Oscar could pull over a hundred pounds on a good day, and O.T. not much less.  Clio found herself thinking about Oscar's feet.  Too small for a man his size, not good for a farmer.  They always hurt him but he didn't say much about it.  Maybe she'd put some of those Epsom salts in a bucket for him tonight so he could give them a good soak.  His feet would give him a lot less trouble if he'd use that rub she made for him with he willow bark in it.  And then her lip curled a little.  Oscar never would listen to her about anything he was afraid she might know more about than he did.  The man shot himself in the foot that way.  Clio reached around and rubbed that spot in her lower back.  Like an old woman she thought, what with all these new aches and pains. I don't remember my momma ever talking about hurting like this, but then she'd never had to work hard either. Never a day in her life. The Bible sat where it always did on the round table beside the rocking chair up at the front window.  Clio let herself sit down heavily and felt the cushion on the seat of the chair slide under her.  One of those ties was probably loose.  She considered standing up and retying that tie, but didn't move, and after a moment the chair creaked rhythmically as she rocked forward and back.  For just a second she shut her eyes and felt the world change around her.  There was thunder off in the distance, just starting in the big white clouds, making the room close, even though the temperature had dropped a degree or two and a breeze blew in the scent of the mimosa tree out front.  Somewhere a mockingbird started to sing it's strange song.  The Arkansas lark, Daddy'd always said. This one seemed to have a song of its own, musical and sweet, interspersed between bob white calls and the ugly blue jay sounds it made.  Two years ago there'd been one that clucked like the chickens and crowed like the rooster. Given that old tom cat a run for his money too, diving at him when he got too close to the mimosa where she'd had her nest.  No one was in the room to see that Clio smiled with the memory.  If they had been they might have been surprised at how young she still looked when she smiled.  But Clio didn't smile often, and so like most of the women on Floodline Farm, she always seemed older than she was. For that second, she let sounds drift over her.  The dog's snuffling snores at her feet.  Girls playing quietly in the room beyond.  Dragon flies' big black papery wings buzzing near the ground where she dug up her flower bed every spring and kept the earth wet. A pot clanged from the direction of the kitchen where Purity was shelling the peas.  Probably she'd finished and was fixing to start washing those greens soon.  Soon enough, Clio thought.  Let the child rest for a piece, and Clio hoped she would, though she would never have gotten up from her chair to go tell her to.  The girl wouldn't know what to do with herself if she wasn't working at something. Opening her eyes, she reached for the heavy black Bible.  Flipped without thinking past the smooth family pages where her father had recorded names going back to the Revolution in sculpted handwriting.  There were bright colorful images too of Jesus' ascension into the clouds with the deciples standing by, and the three Marys at the cross.  Her thumb stopped when she got to the page where the dark frayed ribbon lay. Revelation 3:20. Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and I will sup with him, and he with me. There was an illustration across from that page as well.  Jesus, his long blondish hair waving down his shoulders to the bright blue and white robes he wore, stood in front of a round door of deep knotted wood.  His hand was raised as if he was just about to knock on the door, and there was a golden light around his head, though it looked like it was dark outside except for that.  Jesus, always knocking and knocking, and no one ever seeming to let him in.  Clio turned a couple of pages to the spot where she had left off reading to the family the night before.  She lifted the heavy book with both hands and read aloud. And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power and his seat. Well that would probably give Jem nightmares again. Maybe she should try to get him to bed before the reading tonight.  Problem was the boy seemed to love the Bible reading and prayer time.  While the others were yawning, he'd be just praying and praying, including every chicken and pig on the place.  Couldn't understand half of what he said either, but maybe that didn't matter to God. She turned a few more pages and found what she was looking for.  A piece of paper folded in quarters and shoved in the back of the book when Oscar had come home a few days ago.  At first, Clio thought she should put it somewhere else, but then figured that the way Oscar was, the Bible would be the last place he'd find it. She unfolded the paper at its creases and read it again.     2:09:53 PM    comment []

Jim Allen cleared his throat.  He should have known better than to set foot in this house.  Oscar never had gotten over him knowing Clio for so long.  "Anyways, I don't know but we may have some trouble in Arkansas before this thing is over. Sometimes it seems to me Mr. Roosevelt is trying to kill cotton farming in the South." "Teacher said Arkansas has the largest cotton production in the world," Clem quoted coming out of his bib a little. "Surprised the boy can remember that so long after school's out."  said Clio.  She took a hot yeast roll from the pan but ate it plain, without any butter. "Well did he now, Clem, did he indeed," said Jim Allen, "Well it's third largest if I remember it right. Whatever it is, it's a hell of a lot of cotton, that's for sure." Across the table, Nellie's two girls giggled.  The man had said hell, and at dinner too. Jim Allen heard them and looked over at Clio, "Excuse me Ma'm," he said. "Roosevelt's got his hands far and away too much into other people's business as far as I'm concerned." Oscar said.  "It's not government's place to be telling people how to live their lives and then taxing em for the privilege.  I don't know but what he's done anything to fix this depression either.  New Deal, New Steal I say." "That Mrs. Roosevelt's sure not much of a looker, is she." O.T. helped himself to the first piece of pie.  Chess, one of his favorites.  Just cooled from sitting in the pie safe for the morning. Clio must have made it that day, or maybe Purity.  Too bad his girls were so little help to Nellie. "Mrs. Roosevelt is a good woman and wants to help the poor." Clio said in her voice with the edge. "It's a far sight more than most rich people do." Jim Allen shifted in his chair and Clio went on. "She's building new houses and towns so that folks with little or nothing can have a place to live and good work to do.  She's as good as the President himself as far as that's concerned." "Building towns for coal miners not farmers. I don't see any help coming from Washington for any around here." The chess pie sat in front of Oscar but he didn't take a slice. "Maybe that'll come in good time." Clio said, "Pie Jim Allen?" Jim Allen said he didn't mind if he did, and the pie passed Oscar by the first go round.  1:40:22 PM    comment []

Cassie sat on the floor of the sleeping porch on an old patchwork quilt.  Colors and shapes without names looked up at her.  That the quilt was one of three that her grandmother had worked for Clio for her wedding, she did not know.  Nor that it had been a place keeper for four other small damp packages of flesh like hers.  She knew soft, and somewhere in her mind a word was forming for the smell of the quilt.  Her own smell mixed with the smell of Clio's lye scrubbed pine floors, the beloved aroma of the dog and the general odor of food and sweat and work that was the family. Her mother's smell was not on the quilt.  Perhaps just a trace.  That smell of lilac water and soap from the store. Woman damp and pie crusts. "What you doing honey?" A voice from above.  Cassie focused her eyes on Nellie's round face and blonde hair and her own face opened up. "Oh look at her smile." said Nellie. "You sure are a pretty little thing. Look like your momma don't you with them eyes.  Daddy always said that's the Indian blood." Nellie's smooth forhead creased.  Their momma had never held with such talk. Said Clio's hair was dark like that queen of Egypt back in Bible times, or sometimes she'd say it was from the Irish on her side of the family. Daddy'd always laughed at that and said that if it was, it was black irish blood for sure. Nellie'd never known what they meant by all that.  And anyway, lots of families in the county had Indian blood.  She rubbed at her forhead with one hand for a second, then remembered Cassie. "Maybe her's going to get herself another little girl cousin to play with before too long, and then before you know it all you girls'l be making them quilts yourself." Nellie went on with her baby talk and Cassie's eyes dropped back down to the quilt.  It was an extension of the fields with greens and whites and blues and browns all stitched into the circular wedding ring pattern. Here and there where the fabric had worn thin, a little of the cotton batting showed and Cassie worked one of these spots tenaciously until she got a wisp of the white stuff out.  Then she screamed with delight.  This was something she knew. From the other room came voices.  Her mother, "Nellie keep that child quiet," and the men, low and speaking in their mysterious worried tongue. Always the worry sound. Always to Cassie like her sound of crying, but low pitched and without tears. All around the sleeping porch were Clio's books and old magazines arranged on low shelves along two sides of the rectangular space below the screening.  They were arranged precisely, in alphabetical order, another code of the world Cassie didn't know.  Some were old with worn brown leather covers with faded gold lettering and fat with hundreds of thin pages. On others the cover had been lost and only the woven thread of the back binding showed.  So many variations of squares. Tall and short, fat and thin.  The magazines filled half of a whole shelf.  Covers slick and shiny with bent corners and frayed paper spines.  People on the covers were faded from the sun that filled the porch in the mornings.  They wore strange clothes that made no sense and looked hot.  Some had a tail like the dog's around their necks.  Magazines didn't smell like books which smelled fresh and old at the same time.  Magazines smelled like they looked.  Like some other world entirely. From the other room came a word Cassie understood.  Her father's voice, raised and rumbling.  Cassie heard him say thatdog, and Clio's reply which came clear to Cassie's ears.  "I don't know why you'd want him out of here today when he sits by me for every other meal this family has." In a moment the dog appeared on the porch with Nellie and Cassie.  He settled his muzzle on the bed and gave Nellie's belly a diagnostic sniff.  Satisfied, he ambled over to Cassie, licked her ear and flopped down beside her, between her and the door to the bedroom.  The black eyes between his paws kept watch, but his ears pricked to the conversation going on two doors beyond.  Understanding more of the language than Cassie. "Now I wouldn't say that, Oscar, " O.T.'s voice whined a little. "I don't think I'd say that at all.  What would you say to that, Jim Allen?" "Well now, I don't know for sure about that. You men would feel differently about it I guess being renters." "Thirds and fourths." The words seemed to come out of Oscar automatically. "Yeah now, the men who are straight sharecropping would have a different idea about it all I reckon." "Pass the potatoes to Mr. Alden, Clemenceau." Clio broke in.  I swear I don't know why I bother trying to teach you children manners at all. For all the good it's done, and get your elbows off the table." "If your name was Clemenso, you wouldn't have no manners either." "Any manners," Clio said. "No manners or any manners either," Clem's voice raised as far as he could get away with. "Nobody can even spell Clemenso.  Not even teacher spells it like you do Momma." "Don't sass your momma or you'll feel the back of my hand boy." Oscar said. "Sunday School teacher says not to swear, Momma," said Purity quietly.  It wasn't fair for Mamma to talk bad about her manners like that, like she was as bad as Clem.  Somewhere in her a small knife turned and she pushed her plate away. "What are you talking about child, no one was swearing at this table," said Clio, " And besides that, little Miss Sunday School doesn't know everything about everything I imagine.  I knew it was a mistake to let you go over to that Baptist church in Jeru this summer.  That dog out there's got more sense than the Baptists, dunking little children in the Cash river like they do.  It's a wonder we haven't had the typhoid on this farm because of you getting Baptised with the rest.  If I'd known about it, I wouldn't have let you do it." And seeing Purity's chin quiver: "Oh stop that now," she went on a little easier, she was a good girl after all, and a hard worker. "I don't know what on earth has gotten into you children. You all showing out because Mr. Alden is here?  I tell you this is not the way to endear yourself to an important man." "Well now, Clio, I guess those children have spirit and that's a good thing." Jim Allen smiled sidewise. "And Clem, that Mr. Clemenceau wasn't as bad as all that.  Especially early on.  Went off there at the end as far as I'm concerned." "You had the great misfortune to be born before my mother died, Clemenseau." Clio pronounced the name extraordinarly clearly and passed a platter with the second to last ham to the nearest set of hands. "And she had the privilege of naming you. She always said that Clemenseau was a refined sounding name and begged me on her death bed never to call you anything common--like Clem." Clem's chin sunk down onto the bib of his overhauls, but he kept quiet. Oscar looked up sharply at Clio and she met his eyes. He wasn't happy.  Oscar never liked it when she talked like that, called it her "book talk."  Well what of it.  She had a right to speak her mind now and then didn't she? If he didn't like it he shouldn't have married her.  Seemed to like it well enough ten years ago when he'd courted her.  Had his own place then too she recalled. "Talk about showing out." he said under his breath.  Loud enough for everyone at the table to hear, it seemed to Clio.         12:46:23 PM    comment []