Momma looked old.
Not in the way old people looked old, with peppered hair and liver-spotted skin, but in the way you do after someone sneaks up behind you in the dark every night and whispers boo.
She didn't believe in the doctor or his therapy or in the hollow words of comfort given from the town anymore. She just wanted to believe that her husband wasn't yet ready to give up the ghost.
Father’s bed was like the rest. It was twin and metal, had a thin mattress, and rested along a rust and cream wall with eleven others. The Negro hospital, more of a clinic really and sixteen miles from our town, reminded me of the barracks he often talked about staying in during the Great War. The other side of the long, busy room looked the same. The floor was black and white, checkerboard, and despite best efforts to keep it shiny, was scuffed with thick, off-white streaks that had to be buffed out every night.
Each patient was sectioned from the other with tall green curtains that smelled of disinfectant and pine oil. Small radiator heaters, about every third patient, did little good except make small pockets of heat and cold behind the beds. Momma had to bring blankets from home to keep daddy warm. One of the nurses, a new one fresh from the nursing school in Houston, chided her for doing so-going on about the possibility of germs and such, but momma paid her no never mind.
She had been at the hospital three nights, praying for father and had tended house for the Jacobsen’s in the mornings, to pay for the whole matter. As my brothers Thomas and Jackson had departed for Tuskegee, I was left with the care of my sisters, Emily and Margaret.
At my father’s request, and against momma's wishes, we came to see him. I stood there, inside our curtain with momma, my two sisters and a stand of saline which had become his constant companion.
Although it wasn't that bright, the light stand over the bed had been turned off because it hurt his eyes, which were black and swollen shut. A stream of liquid oozed from one of them and slowly flowed over the side of the wound and onto the pillow, leaving a dull yellow stain.
Part of daddy's bottom lip hung at an angle, like it had been hooked on a fishing line. Momma softly patted that corner of his mouth with a wet towel to catch the saliva and blood which pooled in it every few minutes. I cringed, watching one of his eyelids flutter as he tried to open it. His voice raspy and weak, he asked, "Boy, is you crying?"
"No sir," I said, wiping my eyes and nose the length of my shirt sleeve.
Daddy's whole body shook as he raised a hand, called me to him.
"Alvin," momma began. She leaned over, talked low. "Try to get some sleep baby. I'm going to take the children home alright and be back as soon as I can."
Daddy groaned, moved his head a bit. "Let me talk to my boy first."
"Alvin.."
"Do what I say Mabel."
Momma nodded, escorted my sisters away and closed the drawstring curtain, while I moved closer to him.
"Son." He sounded like someone was sitting on his chest. "You there?"
"Yes sir."
"You know I ain't much on words boy," he said, reached for my hand. I came close to his face, turned my ear to his mouth. He held my wrist, held it hard and tight and spoke to me in coughs.
"You understand?"
I nodded. "Yes sir."
"Promise me boy."
"Yes daddy, I promise," I said. "But you'll be alright, you'll see. In a couple…Momma! Momma!"
Daddy's grip moved up my forearm, tightened. His back lurched up and he yelled like somebody had stuck him with a butcher knife.
“Momma!"
"Alvin!" Momma flew through the curtain and past me. A doctor and nurse followed closely behind. I rushed to my sisters, hugged them out of the enclosure, looking back on him for the final time.
Chapter 2
I dipped the last of my hard boiled eggs in a little salt and settled back against a big red cedar. I liked this part of the lake, as it was my daddy’s favorite place to fish. The woods surrounding it were thick and tall and had begun to change into the orange and red of fall.
Dog laid by daddy’s old cane pole, which I had stuck in the ground, and gnawed on a piece of hog gristle, happy. It was overcast and cool, perfect for perch and perfect for the sweet breeze that glided in over a tangled patch of lemon balm.
Even though I didn’t feel much like fishing, I reached into my bait can just the same and pulled out a worm. It squirmed, coiled it itself around my finger. For a moment, I inspected it, tried to read it, thought about how it must feel to have your life in someone else’s hand.
Shaking my head, I took a stick, plowed it through the soft, moist dirt and laid the worm in it. I made a path in it to the grass, watched the insect lie still. I fanned over it, blew behind it, tapped the side of it.
“You’re free,” I said. “Go!”
Dog rose up from his meal and walked to me. He made some kind of noise at the worm, one I never heard before and pawed at the grass around the path I made. The worm, as I would later learn most creatures did, understood canine and started to move.
“Well I’ll be.” I rubbed Dog on his head, played with his ears. He wasn’t much for chasing coons, which is why my daddy got him, but he was fine by me. German Shepherds weren’t supposed to be coon dogs anyway.
*
Barefoot, I walked home, cool, red clay underneath, tall pines on my shoulders. Dog strolled on my side, tongue out, tail in. He stopped from time to time and sniffed the air and would scurry to the edge of the woods, testing his nose. When he did, he would turn and look at me.
Each time I would answer with, “I know.”
Momma and my sister Wanda, twelve years old and six years younger than me, were outside hanging clothes when I made it home. My baby sister Angela-I could hear her laughter from a mile away- swung on the tire swing in front of the house. Smoke rose from a dull, black, stack on the roof. Momma was cooking.
“Jason! Jason!” Angela ran to me, grinning and laughing. Her dark brown hair, parted in two long plats, bounced happily. But then she fell.
I dropped my rod, my bait can, everything I had and rushed to my sister. Dog beat me to her, twirled in circles and barked.
Kneeling, I helped her sit up. She had some dirt in hair and on her arms, so I brushed that off before I asked, “Are you alright?”
Angela nodded and pouted a bit, like always. When she saw the scrape on her knee and the little trickle of blood oozing from it, she raised the pout to a cry and the cry to a yell.
“Angie, Angie,” I said. I picked her up and started for the house. Momma and Angela followed. “I’m here, I’m here, don’t cry, don’t cry.”
Angela hugged me tight, as if I was something that could fly away. I wanted to tell her that my wings had been clipped, but I knew she wouldn’t understand.
Chapter 3
I couldn’t sleep. Early morning dark brought me outside to the porch, led me across the yard to the fence bordering our property. I wiggled my toes in a patch of dew-covered moss, worked, wiggled off a section of wood from the fence and looked at the stars. Dog, not too happy I messed with his sheep, camped beside me nonetheless, probably wondered what was on my mind. Probably wanted to bite me.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, “You’re thinking that it’s okay, thinking you can take care of things while I’m gone. But you’re wrong you know, you’re not as young as you used to be.”
He looked up at me and groaned.
“Heck you can’t even run anymore, not like you used to, think about it.”
Dog burrowed his nose under front paws, so I assumed he was going to give it some thought. Me, I listened to the crickets.
A cool gust blew past me, refreshed my face. The northern was coming in, just like Aunt Rose said. It grew stronger, whistled through the trees. I closed my eyes with my head back, stretched my arms, bathed in it. A letter I carried in my chest pocket stretched with me. I carefully unfolded it, running a finger along the worn creases and indentions and read the words in my mind.
Mr. Jason Cottonwood,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering program at The University of Texas. The program..
The back screen door creaked open. I turned, saw my momma, in the fancy pink housecoat daddy gave her last Christmas, walk towards me and Dog. The bottom of it whipped about like a flag.
“Does he ever talk back to you?” she said, her voice a bit hoarse.
“Sometimes,” I answered, chuckling.
“And why did I know you would be out here.”
“Cause daddy..”
“Because.”
“Because daddy used to come out here too. And according to you, and everybody else, I’m just like him.”
“Yes,” she said, sighing. “You are. Just like him.”
She had two cups of coffee and handed me one. I blew over mine, watched the steam fly away for a moment and took a sip. Momma’s eyes were red and tired, bordered dark with thick circles. We stood there for awhile, silent.
“No.”
“Mam?” I asked. Her face was set to the moon.
“I said no. No to what you’re planning on doing son. No to staying here.”
Her words hung in the air, pressed into my shoulders and the back of my neck.
“Momma, you know I can’t leave now. I’m a man now and I have to..”
“You have to find your wind, that’s what you have to do.”
I turned to her. “My wind?”
Momma set down her cup and reached into one of her pockets. She pulled out a small thin book, smiled, and handed it to me.
I smiled in return, looked at her, looked back at the book and smiled again. I ran my fingertips over the cover. The surface was faded, book binding a bit frayed. I shook my head and whispered, “Little Red Sailboat.”
Momma wiped her eyes and pointed to the picture of a small grinning boat in the middle of an ocean. A happy white seagull, wearing an orange sailor hat, stood on its sail.
“Remember this?”
I nodded. “You used to read this to me.”
“Mm-hmm.” Momma pinched my ear. “Until you could read it to me back. You used to run around the house, with a sheet in your hands, pretending you were a sailboat.”
“Momma I know what you’re doing, and I appreciate it, but my mind is made up.”
“Oh?”
“Yes mam, I mean I’m seventeen now mamma, the same age daddy was when he started…”
She grabbed my arms, turned me towards her. Her eyes pierced into mine. “Your daddy worked twenty-one years in that plant son, twenty-years, until it killed him. But not once did I ever hear Nathaniel complain, not once. You know why? Because of you and because of Wanda and because of Angie.”
My chin sunk to my chest and I looked at my feet.
She continued, “Because he wanted you to have a better life that what he had as a boy. He worked Jason, so you could have this opportunity to go to school and be what you wanted to be, be that little red sailboat. And you’re going to honor him and you’re going to honor yourself by doing just that.”
“But..”
“No buts, now go get ready, your Aunt Rose is expecting you.”
