Magnolia
Vivian walked in his steps, carrying the large wicker basket stocked with soda, sandwiches and smiles packed away last night. She liked following Joe, liked how his broad back knifed so easily through dense forest. He was at home here she knew, in the woods, in the October cool, anywhere his thoughts could venture out unencumbered by the traffic of people, anywhere charcoal spoke in his stead.
The orange, red, and rust of sugar maple and oak mingled with loblolly evergreen, making her forget the long trek from the sorority house. She told herself that it was okay to offer a mid-morning to him, pulling up stray weeds of doubt. Her best friend Clara, if made privy to their exact whereabouts, would definitely-playfully-assuredly, call her a strumpet, but she didn’t care.
And they were different of course. He: beautifully blackened and hardened from country sun, she: cream-skinned and cared for by the promise of city stars.
Vivian nodded when they arrived at a small clearing, marked by the scent of a single, diminutive magnolia tree resting silently, an outcast of the forest. One white flower, oblivious to its browned and crumpled sisters on the ground, dangled from a low-lying branch.
While Joe kneeled to make a pallet over a patch of soft, green moss, she panned over the area like a newlywed inspecting her first house. The clearing reminded her of home, of Massachusetts, of tea parties and scones with friends from the preparatory.
Yes, it felt right to be with Joe, with his drawing tablet and his charcoal, beneath a sun determined to catch a few winks. A clear, rushing brook braided through the park, behind the magnolia, splashing over smooth stones. Beyond the brook stood another thicket of trees, some of which she had already determined to be inferior to the ones on their side of the water.
Vivian sat on the blanket, watched Joe tether the drinks to a sapling, and gently submerge the bottles into the cool water. He smiled at her, over shoulder, before cupping hands into the water to drink. She wondered if it was wrong to want a sip from the same cup.
“I think this here be a good spot,” he said, returning to sit Indian style in front of her. A long stalk of grass dangled from a corner of his mouth. “Nobody ‘round, kinda peaceful like.”
“Why yes it is Joe ,” Vivian replied, removing the thick, pink, sorority cardigan and white gloves the morning cool implored her to wear. She folded them into a neat square in a corner of the blanket. “I’ve never been to this part of the park before. However did you find it?”
“Followed the sound of the water.”
“Oh, applesauce!” Vivian chuckled, scrunching her nose at him. “You did not!”
Laughing with her, Joe shook his head. “My grandfather told me how he learned to listen to the water from my great-grandfather. He…my great-grandfather… was a slave in Alabama .”
“I see.”
“And there was this river, running kinda like this see, by the plantation,” Joe continued, mapping the words with the stalk of grass from his mouth, the chewed-on end free at last.
“Like this?” She said, recreating the path on the blanket.
“Yea. Well...wait a minute,” Joe frowned, shaking his makeshift pen as a boy erasing a bad guess on a long division problem would. Vivian’s eyes swam in his determination. Satisfied with the new effort he said, “Well, the mastuh decide to sell my granddaddy and..”
“He escaped?”
“Took my great-grand momma and followed the water right on to freedom.”
“My goodness.”
“So,” Joe shrugged. “I reckon it just be in my blood.”
Across the clearing, near the magnolia, a small, light brown rabbit surfaced, foraging through the last of a season’s sweet grass. Wanting to share the scene with her, Joe pointed to it.
“Vivian! Look at that jack rabbit!”
She smiled warmly, preferring to look at him instead. He was so simple, so very simple, yet she knew that his simplicity was more majestic than all of Sebastian’s degrees and money and proper way of saying things. Joe was a constant man, never flinching and perfectly secure in the customs one could not buy.
She sighed. It is so nice here.
Autumn sunlight filtered through the clouds, slowly warming the area. A gentle breeze moseyed past the couple, carrying with it the magnolia’s scent. Joe opened his tablet and pulled from his dungarees a stick of charcoal. Vivian wanted to stretch her toes, feel the dew on the grass, which she loved, but thought against it.
“So Joe , now that you have me here in the middle of the wilderness, all to yourself I might add,” she began, touching his knee with her penny-loafer. “May I inquire about your intentions?”
“To put you on my paper,” he smiled, pinching the top of her shoe. He inspected it for a while, rubbing a finger over the shiny copper.
“You plan to capture me, is that it?”
Joe breathed deeply and made a few marks on the pad before saying, “Don’t think I could ever do that, not entirely.”
“I think you might try,” she teased, removing her cream flat hat, taking note of a speck of lint on the light, blue ribbon.
“You like my hat?”
“Mmm hmm. It’s a mighty pretty hat,” he said, chewing on the stalk. “Like you is-I-I-mean, like you are.”
Vivian blushed, moving a section of crimped, black hair from the middle of her forehead. She readjusted the hat on her head, tilting it slightly.
“Can you leave yo hair like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like…” Joe reached over, gently guiding the defiant strands back in place. “Like…that.”
The Pullman porter’s dark brown hand, a hand strong enough to crush stone and bend metal, brushed against her face like a down feather. Vivian shuddered.
“I think,” she said slowly, her hazel eyes peeking out from under the brim. “I think I would like that magnolia for my hair Mr. Mays, before…”
“Before I draws you?”
“Yes. Yes, before you capture me.”
“Be back directly!”
“Yes, you do that, Mr. Mays,” she whispered, watching Joe stride away, gobbling chunks of earth with each step.
Pursed lips blowing a stream of air, Vivian fanned her face. He would return with the whole tree if she asked it of him.
Why did you come into my life Mr. Joe Mays?
A sparrow, perhaps intent on answering the question, plopped on her sweater. Smiling, Vivian watched it dance about, plucking at a stray thread. After finding the strand not to its liking, the tiny bird deposited a thin stream of dinner on the sleeve, in protest.
“Shoo!” Vivian swatted at the bird. Picking up the garment, she started for the brook, suddenly wondering if the water would sing to her as it did for Joe. She watched him at the tree, frame around flower, cradling it with the affection of a father.
By the time she made it to the stream, Joe had returned to the pallet, looking for her. Kneeling, he peeked under the blanket.
Vivian giggled and waved to him. “You ninny!”
Exuberant, he returned the wave, calling back, “Vivian! Hey Vivian, I gots the flower! You gettin’ the soda pop?”
“Maybe I’m going for a swim,” she called, smiling coyly. “Maybe I am not.”
“You ain’t got no clothes, girl!” Joe rumbled to her, carrying the pad under one arm.
Walking backwards as she reached the water, Vivian removed her gloves and tossed them on a tall patch of lemon-grass.
When Joe arrived, Vivian sat cross-legged on the brook’s edge, bobbing her toes in the cool current. Beneath the quiet of the trees, the sound of moving water mingled its composition to that of brown field crickets and red-bellied woodpeckers. Joe untied the drinks and stood next to her, popping off the bottle tops with an opener made shiny from service on the train. He offered her one as she patted the ground, offering a seat next to her in recompense.
“Don’t you like it here Joe? The color of the trees, the stream,” she said, accepting the drink. “I could never imagine living anywhere else, could you?”
Nodding, Joe looked up and around the wooded area, then directly in Vivian’s eyes. He answered, “I could imagine livin’ here just fine.”
Blushing, she dipped part of the sweater in the water.
After a few moments of silence, Vivian finally uttered, in a voice barely more audible than a whisper, “I wish you didn’t have to go Joe , I really…”
“It be alright Vivian,” he said, skimming a stone across the brook, watching circles of water ripple behind it. A tiny, blue-green frog, unimpressed with Joe ’s aim, remained on his lily pad, still king of the river. “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.”
“Did you ever think that it would come to this? War? I’m, I’m scared for you Joe.”
“No call to be.”
“Aren’t you scared? All the shooting and...and…”
“Ain’t too much call to be scared I reckon. Colored man get shot by the white bullet every day, don’t make no never mind if it’s here or someplace else. My daddy always told me not to worry about thangs you can’t change anyway.”
“You talk about him a great deal. He must be a great man. I’m quite sure he must be so proud of you. How does he feel about you going into the army?”
“He dead Vivian.”
“Oh mercy Joe ” she said, turning to him. “I’m so sorry.”
“S’okay. He died while back.” Joe said, finishing his cola. He stared into the empty bottle as he spoke. “Never had nothing, but he never asked for nothing either. Well, not except for one time.”
“What do you mean?”
“My daddy worked for wages at a meat packing warehouse. Did all the work no one else wanted to do: sweeping, washing down the waste, cleaning the latrines. Hard work, but a good job for a colored man I reckon. And…”
Sensing apprehension, Vivian placed her hand on his shoulder. “Please go on…”
“Well, one day, around Christmas time, my daddy went to the foreman to complain about his wages, cause theys was short.”
“And they told him they were correct of course.”
“They fires him on the spot and accuses him of stealing a side of beef. A whole side of beef! My daddy was a God-fearing man, never stole nothing in all his days, let alone half a cow.”
Vivian nodded, “That sort of thing still happens here too, all the time. You would think… that in 1942, people would be different…”
“Sometimes,” Joe began, selecting another stalk of grass, hopefully sweeter than the last. “Sometimes when I’m by myself, I be thankin’ bout this here war. Be thankin bout, if we win, if the colored man win, maybe thangs be different for us.”
“Well!” Vivian slapped her knees and folded her legs back on land. “How about that drawing sir? You did promise me a very special rendering, if memory serves me right.”
“Yes ma’am I did,” Joe said, standing. He brushed off his clothes before offering to help her up.
Smiling, she accepted the offer.
“Close yo eyes,” he answered, pressing him palms together.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It'll be alright.”
She sighed. “Okay.”
Joe pressed lightly, guiding his coarse hands over the subtle contours of her face. To draw her, he needed to touch her, to feel the delicate caress of her smile against his dark, weathered skin. Vivian closed her eyes and allowed his thumbs, one on each side of her face, to skim the surface.
She trembled, breathing in his husky musk, basking in the energy of this newest of suns.
“I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing hard. Her voice, like mist, floated between them. “Joe...I…”
“What’s wrong Vivian?”
“Tell me this is right.”
“What you mean?”
“Being here with you, like this.
“It feels good to me too.”
“How do I know this is real,” she asked, searching his eyes for an answer. “How do I know darling?”
He answered her with a kiss.
Vivian stood on her tiptoes, still wet from the brook, and gave her lips to Joe. Pressed into his wide chest, tiny wrists crossed behind thick neck, she lingered in the moment, their moment.
Breathing deeply, Joe nudged his face in her hair, loving the lavender found within. Vivian’s finger traipsed lightly up his face, twirling little circles at points of interest. Tonight, in bed, she would remember his eyes, fiery and piercing, branding her heart and his solid arms, around waist, claiming her spirit.
“ Joe ?” she asked, her heart dancing.
“Yeah?”
“I think,” she said, between short kisses on his chin and nose. “I think..you.. have..captured me.”
“On my paper?” Joe laughed, gently twirling Vivian around until he stood moments behind her.
“Why Joe !” Vivian blushed, twisting to tap his nose. “I do believe you are being fresh with me.”
“I..”
“And may I tell you,” she whispered, moving her finger to his lips. “I like it.”
“I likes it too Vivian,” he said. “Oh!”
“Yes?”
Joe reached behind his back and pulled out the blossom. He twirled it in his fingers in front of her.
“I almost forgot.”
“Thank you,” Vivian whispered. Gently, she weaved it into her hair, kissing him again.
“I loves you girl.”
“Say it again.”
“I loves.. I mean..” Joe lowered his eyes. “I can’t speaks all proper Vivian.”
With a finger she lifted his face back up. “I don’t care about that baby. I understand you just fine.”
“How you feel?”
“Don’t you know? Oh baby, I love you, I love you, I love you!”
Joe wrapped his arms around her again and said, “Will you wait?”
“Of course I’ll wait silly. You are forever my fella, I am forever your girl, okay?”
“That sounds mighty good.”
“Shh.” Vivian rested the side of her face in his chest and smiled.
“Why you smiling?”
“Because Mr. Mays,” she said, reaching up to turn his face towards the water. “Of that.”
Joe looked with her into the brook and caught an image of a beautiful, happy young woman, whose smile was like the smile of a child eating butter pecan ice cream for the very first time.
