Part 13 (1/2)
”You gettin' awful old, Mama,” Toomer teased.
Arrabelle answered by balling up her fist and punching him in the shoulder.
”This is the hittin'est woman in this country,” her son said, shaking the reins. The mule moved out slowly, the joints of the wagon whining and rattling as it moved across the Meecham lawn and went over a curb to reach the small lane that led to Eliot Street.
”You see that, son?” Lillian said, watching the slow departure of the wagon. ”We've been living on bases and in cities for so long that I forgot what the South really is.”
”What is it?”
”You're looking right at it,” she said, ”but as for you, mister, these chairs better be in the house before your father gets home.”
On Sat.u.r.day afternoon Ben rounded the corner of River Street and heard Toomer's voice calling out in a wailing summer canticle to the last shoppers of the day. In a way, Ben thought, Toomer sounded like a priest chanting during a Ma.s.s for the dead. ”O be the wildflower, O come the wildflower, come the rose, come the sweet daffodil, come the good honey, come the ripe berry, come the wildflower. Come the flower, come the herb and the light of mola.s.ses.” Ben noticed that while Toomer sang he never once stuttered.
He crossed the street and began to help Toomer load the back of the wagon with the potted herbs, plants, and jars of honey he had not sold. Only two bunches of flowers were left that day. In a cardboard box, a half dozen deviled crabs s.h.i.+fted as Ben placed the box in the wagon. ”I didn't know you sold crab, Toomer.”
”I sell anything these folk want to buy, dribblin' man.”
Soon the mule was pulling the wagon down River Street toward the bridge, keeping close to the parked cars on the right so the regular traffic had room to pa.s.s. At Granville Street, the mule paused, then turned to the right and started toward the bridge. A boy with bright red hair sat on a Coca-Cola box near the gas pump outside of Fogle's General Store and shouted at Toomer. ”Hey, T-t-t-t-toomer. H-h-how you doing? Wh-wh-where you g-g-going?”
Toomer just waved, shook the reins, and urged the mule on faster. Soon they had mounted the causeway and were staring at the flowing bronze river below them.
”Who was that, Toomer?”
”That boy. He ain't n.o.body. He name Red Pettus and he and his family l-l-live not far from me over on the island. Pettus family like chickens. They h-h-h-hatch out all over this country. Red tease me about my s-s-stutter. That burn me up but R-r-red usually don't bother too much with me. When he was just a little boy, he used to come round and mess with me some. I taught him how to throw a cast net right. Red and his family hate a black m-m-man just for being black and just laugh when I tell 'em that J-j-jesus don't cotton much to hatin' white or black and that the world's a hatin' place and that there are t-t-too many hatin' white man and hatin' colored man runnin' around loose anyhow. B-b-but Red leave me be most of the time. He m-m-mean 'cause that's all he ever know. He used to come up and feed my dogs when I be up the river fis.h.i.+n' f-f-for a couple of days.”
”He still do that sometime?”
”No, man. Y-you don't leave the chicken to watch the feed. He stole some stuff from m-m-me. A shotgun my daddy gave me. I w-w-went down to talk to his daddy but his daddy just run me off.”
”Why?”
”He say a n-n-n.i.g.g.e.r ain't got nothin' his boy would want and he would 'preciate it to the highest if I would h-h-hustle my black a.s.s down the same road I come up which I did as fast as this no-count mule would take me.”
Toomer reached back and grabbed both bunches of leftover flowers. He asked Ben to hold the reins for a moment as he stood up and hollered up to the bridgetender's house. ”Yooo, Mr. Harper,” Toomer yelled. A thin man in khaki work clothes came out of a diminutive octagonal aerie and leaned over a steel gangplank. Before the wagon pa.s.sed beneath him, Toomer tossed the flowers up to the man, who caught them in a burst of falling petals.
”How did it go today, Toomer?” Mr. Harper called down.
”Made me a million dollars today. How 'bout you?”
”I bought me the Southern Railroad. See you Monday.”
The wagon crossed the bridge and took the first paved road to the right, a road that cut through a thick forest until it emerged into the clearings of vast stretches of tomato fields that appeared even in the wildest, most inaccessible reaches of the island. A mile down this road the mule veered off toward the river, shuffling down a heavily tracked dirt road that ran parallel to a large, plowed-under tomato field. Soon they entered an archway of low-hanging oaks, the bottommost branches consumed by soft stalact.i.tes of moss. Both Ben and Toomer had to duck to avoid the moss. When Ben looked up, the wagon was pa.s.sing between a dozen beehives, six on either side of the road. Then the wagon was surrounded by dogs of every possible size and description. More were baying at them from the woods. Two of the more agile dogs leaped into the back of the wagon and joined Toomer and Ben on the seat, licking their faces until Toomer pushed both of them off.
”How many dogs you got, Toomer?” Ben asked. He saw collies, boxers, terriers, Labradors and combinations thereof.
”Twenty-s-s-s-six last time I checked,” Toomer said.
”Where do you get them? Why do you have them?”
”Most of 'em I just pick up off the road. Marines leave 'em behind a lot when they move out from this country. Some of these dogs half dead when I find 'em.”
”It must cost a lot of money to feed them.”
”You tellin' Toomer somethin' he don't know? That's a fifty-pound bag of food under that blanket back there. These are some eatin' dogs.”
”They ever bother the bees in the hives?”
”If they do, it only be for one time,” Toomer laughed. ”B-b-bees teach 'em fast.”
”Where's your house, Toomer?”
”You lookin' right at it,” Toomer said.
The house was a discarded school bus stripped of its wheels. Its axles were set on piles of cinder blocks and the formerly yellow vehicle was painted a rather haphazard eggsh.e.l.l white. The logo of the State of South Carolina could be read through the whitewash. To the left were three fenced-in acres of flowers. The air was rich with the combined perfume of the garden and the river which was visible through a clearing fifty yards behind the school bus.
For the next hour, Ben helped Toomer feed the dogs, put the mule to pasture, and unload the wagon. Ben carried a basket into the school bus that was very heavy although he could not see the cargo since it was covered with a layer of Spanish moss. When he set it on the small wooden table near the wood-burning stove in the back of the bus, Toomer discarded the moss through an open window and revealed a bushel of single oysters.
”I traded some honey for Mr. Oyster t-t-today,” he said. ”You ever eat an oyster?”
”Raw?” Ben asked.
”That's the only way to eat an oyster. I-i-i-if you cook 'em up he becomes something d-d-different from what he really is.”
”I don't think I want to try it but you go on and eat as many as you want. I don't mind at all.”
”Let me open you up one. M-m-m-man, when you eat an oyster, you taste the ocean and the river and the marsh and shrimp b-b-boats. Man, you bite into a livin' piece of the lowcountry.” He inserted a pocket knife into the joint of the sh.e.l.l and twisted his wrist to the right. The sh.e.l.l popped open. The oyster glistened in a translucent liquor that spilled onto Toomer's hand. With a certain dramatic grandiloquence, he slurped the oyster into his mouth. ”Now that's fine. That's f-f-fine, white boy. When I pop me open Mr. Oyster, I think about growin' up and my papa and Captain Bimbo, the first shrimp boat I e-e-ever work on. Let me pop one of these sweet things for y-y-y-you.”
”Why did you quit working on a shrimp boat, Toomer?”
”This g-g-gimp foot. I caught it in the winch and it took a few t-t-toes.”
”That must have hurt bad.”
”You'da thought so. The way I screamed and such. Here, open wide and let it slide,” he said, tilting a half-sh.e.l.l into Ben's mouth. The oyster hit Ben's mouth. It felt warm, salty, and had the consistency of loose phlegm. For a moment, Ben thought he was going to vomit. Somehow, he got the animal down his throat.
”Wasn't that g-g-good?” Toomer said, opening another one. ”You got to keep eating them. One oyster w-w-wouldn't keep a sand flea alive.”
This time Ben swallowed faster as though he were ingesting his own saliva. Speed, he thought, was the secret behind the enigma of why men would torture themselves by placing these raw quivering bivalves on their tongues. He couldn't rid his mind of the image that he was eating sh.e.l.led snot. But after the second oyster, he noticed a pleasant aftertaste in his mouth similar to the one he experienced as a child when he was driving home with his family after a day at the beach. There was the tang of salt, of sun, of weakened brine, and grit dissolved in the breakers. Still, he was delighted to see Toomer fold his pocket knife and motion him to come outside the school bus.
”You gotta make friends with the Gray,” Toomer said.
”Who's the Gray?”
”Come on out here and you'll see 'im. I got to get you to make friends or the Gray's gonna eat you up when I ain't lookin'. There he is. Get on out here, dog. I see you.”
At the edge of the forest, a huge lean dog fixed a cold, green eye on Ben. His lips were curled back over his teeth and Ben thought the dog was probably a combination of Great Dane and German police. But one look at the animal cleared up any doubts Ben might have had about the acknowledged monarch of the pack.