Part 14 (2/2)

Mam always p.r.o.nounced it Sickle like in Popsicle.

He said he owed for the paper. Said he wanted to pay 'fore he left town.

Mam handed me the envelope from her ap.r.o.n pocket. I could tell it had more than coins in it. I folded it in half and stuck it in my back pocket instead of running upstairs to my room to open it. Mam always said I liked things to simmer a bit.

Mam poured a tall gla.s.s of cold milk to go with my sausage and eggs and biscuits. Mam usually didn't make biscuits on Sat.u.r.day morning but there was a plate heaping high on the table next to a bowl of sausage gravy. I hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before and Mam knew that her biscuits and sausage gravy would fill me up if anything would. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the breakfast table in the chair across from me. She hooked her thumb around the spoon that always stayed in her coffee cup.

You eat and let me talks a spell.

I could tell that Mam had been thinking a good while about what she needed to talk to me about.

What happened last night shouldn't have, Little Man. We're going to talk about it this one time and then never again for all our born days.

She looked at me for a nod. I gave her one. And then I promised again with my eyes.

She went back to the beginning and told how she had known Ara T when she was growing up in Mississippi. He lived with a family who worked on the farm next to the one Mam's family worked on. She figured Ara T was about five years older than she was and told how he was all the time getting into trouble by taking stuff that didn't belong to him and picking on kids smaller than he was. Especially her brother. The two had gotten into fights and her brother always watched Ara T plenty close when he came around. She said most everyone was afraid of Ara T because he would fall into the fits without any warning. The only one who wasn't afraid of him was Big Sack who lived on another farm near Coldwater.

On the night her brother died Mam heard a scream on Coldwater Creek that ran between her house and Ara T's. Her brother had been to town to sell eggs so he could buy flour and sugar for her family. When they found him in the creek the sack of flour was scattered up and down the banks but the bag of sugar was gone and Mam's brother was dead.

Mam's father always suspected that Ara T had killed his son for the bag of sugar but never could prove it. Later on Ara T left Mississippi to come to the city. Mam had been in Memphis almost a year before Ara T started coming around our neighborhood. She told him to keep away from our house but he said the alleys were his and he could go where he pleased because Memphis was a Free State. Mam said she had asked Big Sack to keep his eye on Ara T. Big Sack told her the day he came to our door that he had seen me hanging around Ara T.

Mam got up to get me some more sausage gravy from the stove.

Will the s-s-s-s-police come?

The Memphis law don't pay much mind when harm comes to somebody like Ara T.

Why did s-s-s-s-Big Sack say that Ara T would never s-s-s-s-bother us again?

Big Sack is a man who makes things right. He'll see that Ara T moves on. Ara T knows not to buck Big Sack.

Will s-s-s-s-people in the red s-s-s-s-building who saw what s-s-s-s-happened tell?

Some will talk in the devil's places. But nothing will come of it. People know Ara T got what was due him.

s-s-s-s-Will you tell the s-s-s-s-police what Ara T did to your brother?

Mam explained how her people cleaned up their own messes and didn't depend on white people and their police. She said her people had always done it that way in Mississippi and then in Memphis and it always worked out best like that.

Mam told me to ask all my questions because when we got up from the table Ara T would never be talked about again.

s-s-s-s-Was Ara T the one who s-s-s-s-busted your face?

She nodded.

I caught him comin' out of his alley shed and told him to keep away from you ... and I told him I knows what he did to my brother.

s-s-s-s-When did he s-s-s-s-bust you?

I told him I's going into his shed to find your knife and he spun me around and hit me. I gots in a couple of good licks but he bested me ... that time.

I asked her if she thought she was going to die when Ara T had her slammed up against the wall with his hands around her neck.

I fear no man the likes of Ara T. No matter who has hold of me I know the Lord will protect my soul.

I had asked my mother one time after church to explain what a Soul is and she said we would talk about it when I got older.

s-s-s-s-What's your soul?

Your soul is the part of yourself that n.o.body can see. But it's the best part of a body's life because G.o.d has control of it.

I had more questions about the Soul but I knew it had to do with the Bible and I was going to have to think on that more before I could ask the right questions.

I asked her how she knew my yellow-handle knife was in Ara T's coat pocket. She said she had felt the Lord himself move her to the knife with a sure hand and she knew what had to be done.

Where's the s-s-s-s-knife now?

Buried so deep the Hounds of h.e.l.l can't dig it up.

I sat at the table while Mam sipped her coffee. My mind went back to the night before. I could see Ara T's hands around Mam's neck and then feel them squeezing my throat. I could see the yellow-handle knife slash and then go deep into his arm. I could see the blood ooze and then begin to spurt.

The tears started from deep behind my eyes without me knowing they were coming and then came gus.h.i.+ng out like water out of a busted pipe. I never cried much but I couldn't turn these tears off and stopped trying after a while.

Mam sat at the table with me until I emptied my eyes. She smiled when I wiped the last tears away.

You threw that bottle with a mighty heave, Little Man. Just like David.

I remembered Mam's needle story about the boy who busted a giant with a rock from a slingshot.

I was glad I had a bottle to throw. I'm not as good with a slingshot.

Chapter Nineteen.

Summer heat waves in Memphis usually end with thunder and lightning and rain that floods up over the curbs but the hot spell on the first Sat.u.r.day in August broke a little after noon with a puny drizzle.

The breeze coming in my window was just how I liked it. I sat at my desk with the envelope Mr. Spiro had given Mam. I opened it to find three quarters and two dimes for the week's Press-Scimitar. And the last piece of Mr. Spiro's special dollar.

I opened my desk drawer where the night before Mam had put my billfold and all the coins and paper money she had brought back in her handbag. I took the three pieces of the dollar and put them together in the desk drawer so the breeze from the attic fan wouldn't blow them away.

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