Gettin place 97814013060.., p.43
Gettin' Place (9781401306069), page 43
Mortrice was the one feverish tonight. He’d come sneaking in long after dark, trying to pass right through the kitchen and into the bedroom where Sofelia rested. Alma had gone in to see him lying on the bed, his skin puffed as a swollen belly under his bottom lip. “He must got a toothache,” Sofelia said. “And feel him—burnin up.”
The boy’s eyes were closed, his forehead swimming with sweat, and the swelling went all the way to his chin. He refused drink or food, and Sofelia lay, watching him.
Alma went from room to room. The baby girl slept now in Abuela’s room, and her first words were Spanish. “Arroz,” she said, pointing to her rice, “luna,” gazing up to the moon. Alma felt the damp, cool forehead, and glanced at her sleeping grandmother.
In the boys’ room, she laid palms on them, too. So many years she’d been touching skin, checking for dangerous heat, that she knew she couldn’t sleep or even sit down until she had made this journey through each room, each night. All the fevers and fears were webbed together with the tendons in her palms until she couldn’t stop herself from touching even Sofelia, a grown woman, a woman grown away from her. When she went back to that doorway, Sofelia lay sleeping. And Mortrice was gone.
He crouched on the other side of the coldhouse, his mouth glowing like a burning coal. He’d been going to the trailer, but he’d heard Marcus’s voice, and he’d slipped around the back of the stone walls to the dirt below the small window. He could smell beer and fire; his mouth tasted only coppery blood and green-sweet smoke. Dizzy, he slid onto the cool earth and closed his eyes, listening to their voices.
“Who the ponytail in the black Montero?” Hosea looked at his son, the gold wire of his glasses burning crimson now in the firelight.
“A reporter for the paper. Lives with the woman Enchantee’s working for.”
“Downtown. You think you a sherbert?”
“Why we gotta do this again?” His son tightened his mouth.
“He your friend.” Hosea waited. “He from Texas? He the one you heard?”
Marcus shook his head. “He’s from Boston. But I don’t know who the hell I heard—I can’t recall the voice much, okay? I was tryin to keep from drownin.” He finished the choc. “This dude knows about Oscar.”
Hosea put down his jar. “Know what about him?”
“Knows Oscar was a blues singer. Jackknife. Played me a song. He said Oscar disappeared…”
“How he know all that?”
“From a book, probably.” Marcus put down his jar, too. “From the newspaper. Like I know about Tulsa now.”
Hosea stared at the fire. “You know what you read. That’s all.” He saw the way the lemon oil burned fierce. “It was a war. National Guard, airplanes with machine guns. Bombs. They put us in a camp for days. At the fairground. We slept in pigpens and horse stalls and under the bleachers. Where Oscar was born.”
“Just like Jesus, huh?” Marcus tried to smile. “I only know what you tell me, Daddy.”
Daddy. His daddy. “I didn’t see him get shot,” Hosea said slowly. “My daddy. I lost him downtown, and his friend carry me home. Then the Home Guard, they had broke into all the hardware stores. They taken guns and ammunition, clothes, everything. They came into Greenwood callin theyselves protectin. They killed the men and looted the houses and burned em down to cover what they done. They taken us downtown.
“I went lookin for his body. My daddy. I seen bodies all over, burnt up and shot. I looked in all the creeks, in the river. I never found nothin from him. My mother had Oscar under them bleachers. It wasn’t like no Jesus. It was like hell.”
Hosea closed his eyes, remembering the smell of blood so different from any other, the smell of burning in his clothes. Marcus whispered, “Oscar was hard from the start.”
Hosea felt the blows to his head. “My mama’s husband beat the shit outta Oscar. I stepped in one time, down there on the farm, and the man bust my eardrum. He told me walk, or he kill me.
“I had my gun—the gun the cops taken—and I pointed it at him. My mama was cryin in the corner, tellin me don’t do it. I seen she was like a spirit, not a person no more. She was floatin away all the time. I went out in the yard, and I couldn’t find Oscar. So I started walkin.
“I walked to Texas, cause my grandfather said he was from Texas. I knew somebody down there might have work. Police caught me up on vagrant and taken me and the others off somebody’s porch and down into the woods somewhere. Say we had to work off our sentences.
“We slept in cages. In the trees. They was like horse carts, up on wheels, and they had a hole in the floor for the bathroom. In the morning, the guards throw you out the cage and you couldn’t hardly walk. If you run, they shoot you in the back and lay you out under the cage for two days so we gotta shit on your body. Then we gotta dig a hole for you.
“They had white horses, and they taken us to the place we was clearin. Them horses breathin on your back. Poke you with the shotgun. We had to cut the trees, burn the stumps. They was gon build somethin there, the county sheriff was gon build it, cause he come out sometime and tell us we had to work faster or he line us up and shoot us all. Sometime he take one face he didn’t like and shoot him for a show. Sometime the guard set the dogs out on somebody just to see will they run or climb a tree.
“I climbed a tree. I stayed up there for three hours, and then they laughed and told me to come down.
“Next day, I was workin all the way at the edge of the trees, and I waited for the one to get off his horse and pee. Sometime they pee on you. I seen he was gon do that, and I hit him in the head with the ax. Two, three times—like hittin a pig. I taken off into the creek and work my way down. Sleepin in the day, walk in the water at night. I didn’t know what county, nothin. Just walk down the water and eat berries. It was late spring. Two years I been in the cage.
“I eaten squirrels and birds. Half-cooked em. I got sick as a dog in the water. I come to a town, I had to skirt around and find where I was. All I could think about was my gun. I wanted my gun back. I found some people in a mill camp, and one man taken me in his truck to the town where I been arrested. I couldn’t give him nothin. He say he want to help any colored brother he can. I found the house, and I tore up them porch boards for my gun.
“I walked back on the Red River and the Arkansas. I seen bodies even though I wasn’t lookin no more. Niggers get killed by whites, by niggers. Sometime just bones. I come up that creek by the cemetery to the farm.
“My mama was gone with her husband. Oscar had been gone. He left me a note. I didn’t see him until we was grown, in L.A., where he was singin at a club. And then he come out here after…” Hosea looked at Marcus. “I let him tell you.”
“He killed someone,” Marcus said. “You both did. You think somebody’s wantin payback now.”
“I might killed the guard. Might not. But he was a white man. After that, I didn’t never need my name nowhere. No papers on me.”
Marcus was quiet for a long time. Hosea thought he heard an animal scratching in the dirt outside the coldhouse. The choc warmed his back, the fire his front, and the banked embers leapt back into yellow. His grandfather had taught him to build a good night fire. And never use paper. Never let paper capture you.
Marcus heard the palm fronds shift slightly outside, and a possum or raccoon padding away on the gravel. “You hear somethin?” he asked.
His father’s eyes were shimmering red, fixed on the fireplace, and he didn’t answer until after the hesitant crunch of small stones had faded away. “You wouldn’t shoot nothin,” he said hoarsely. “Finis used to tell me—you didn’t even want to kill no possum to eat or sell.” Marcus felt his heart beat, childish and quick; his forehead was still swirling with images of burning stumps and guards and bones. “I was aimin for the tires on the Jeep. Next time, I’m aimin for the head. What you gon do?”
Marcus hesitated, and his father’s voice was as harsh as a claw. “You gon talk. Ax questions. I didn’t want you to know none a this. Make you bitter.”
“Better than ignorant.”
“There you go. Every nigger in Treetown come from somewhere else back in the days, and they got somethin they ain’t said. If they said it, maybe they ain’t said the whole thing.”
“You’re losin me,” Marcus said. “You said the whole thing?”
“Yeah.” Marcus saw his father stand up, and he felt fatigue wash through his eyes like watery ink. “Be out there in a hour to light up them smudge pots. You comin?”
“I’ma go talk to someone.” Marcus didn’t smile. “I’ll be back.”
Mortrice lay in the closed-tight trailer, his mouth as hot and square as a charcoal briquet flaking into ash in someone’s trash-can barbecue at the Gardens. His grandfather was right. No traces. AK was only inside. Only AK knew their territory. Their land. Treetown and the Gardens was theirs. Fools would find out.
His grandfather’s face was all hard slashes. Eyes, cheeks, mouth. He kept it to himself. Maybe they were the same blood. He and the old man.
His mother’s land. This would be his mother’s territory. Her trees. Whoever was trying to fuck it up, Mortrice wouldn’t hesitate. Not like Marcus. His uncle was soft. Mortrice touched the barrel of the buffalo gun beside him on the bed. He needed lead, casings, and the form to make bullets. Fifty-six caliber. I got the cinco-six. His grandfather was waiting for something. Someone. Mortrice could wait, too.
Marcus hunched his shoulders inside the jacket. The ice was sifting down through the night. White things suddenly glowed as if they wanted to attract crystals in the moonlight. Marcus faced the chalky disc of bone, risen now. Paper squares plastered by the wind to the chain-link fence were as white as gull feathers. The headlights on Pepper Avenue were blinding. Across the vacant fields toward SaRonn’s house, even the tiny rocks reflected near his feet.
He heard voices when he reached the tiny front porch, and he remembered the shouting when they’d spoken on the phone. She’d had trouble. Larry Cotton? He listened for a moment, and made himself knock and call out, “SaRonn!”
“Who is it?” Her voice was muffled, cautious, near the doorjamb.
“Marcus.”
She opened the door only halfway, leaning out to see him. “Hey,” she said in a low voice.
“You still havin trouble?” He tried to peer past her, but she wedged her body in tight to the space, nodding. “SaRonn, I—” He didn’t know if he should tell her about Larry Cotton. Then she’d know what he knew… would she?
“I saw Larry Cotton that night,” he began, and she nodded again.
“I heard his voice out there,” she whispered. “You think I wouldn’t hear him? I saw you guys in the ditch.”
Marcus looked at her forehead, shining when she glanced down the dark street, and he could smell her skin. “Hey,” he said, pushing forward slightly, partly to get closer to the scent and partly because he wanted to see what the trouble was, the sobbing that didn’t sound like Willa’s baby cries. What he’d do was another thing, but he pushed until SaRonn’s breath was warm on his neck and he could see over her head.
A young girl with an arm cast was in the hallway, peering at him, her face contorted with crying, her mouth bright with blood and her shirt torn. Marcus felt ten fingertips push him back, digging in hard like they had when he lay on top of her and she held him there by his collarbone. He stumbled backward off the two steps.
“It’s not him, Malinda,” SaRonn said into the room behind her. Then she turned a stone-hard face on Marcus and said, “Last thing I need is a man shovin on me right now, okay? I gotta go. No—” She bit her lip. “It ain’t you. I gotta go.” She closed the door, and Marcus walked quickly back through the fields toward Pepper Avenue, his chest hot with anger.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the complete silence of the frozen dawn, Marcus started up his father’s old truck. The steering wheel was like carved ice. The eucalyptus and pepper branches hung, unmoving, as if they were in shock.
After midnight, he’d sat up with his father watching the two smudge pots glow angry red and breathe heavy black that drifted through the lemon trees. They’d built their own small fire in the trees and stayed close to the warmth, silent all the rest of the darkness.
His father left the house now and got into the passenger side. Marcus drove along the riverbottom and got onto the freeway to cross the bridge. “I drove this when you were in the hospital and people thought I was you pullin up. They were disappointed when they saw me,” Marcus said finally.
Hosea looked at him. “They was just surprised.”
Like SaRonn last night, Marcus thought. What the hell was going on over there? Was somebody messing with her place, too? He thought of Finis. Maybe Finis had somehow gotten SaRonn in trouble; maybe Larry Cotton was trying to come back. Marcus looked at the rinds of frost clinging to the riverbottom trees below them. His brain felt slow, opaque with confusion, and when his father handed him the cup of coffee he’d brought from the kitchen, Marcus touched the hard-scarred nub that ended his father’s thumb.
His shoulder, in this cold, wouldn’t move well. Hosea imagined the scars inside his muscle contracting, chilling hard like citrus rind. He was glad his son was quiet.
On Cottonwood Canyon Ranch road, Hosea saw that the old two lanes had been widened. A planter striped the middle of four lanes with sprinklers and rocks and landscaping. Takin up water, he thought, just so when you stop at the light, you can look at flowers. While you waitin. You gotta experience somethin. Shit—it’s a damn road, you there to drive. And up there, on the hills, they just bedrooms, and you there to sleep. Not have a goddamn hotel with a Jacuzzi and wet bar and couch like Demetrius tell me.
“Turn right here,” he said suddenly at the signal light marked Morita Road.
“Been a long time,” Marcus said, peering at the narrow asphalt lane.
The groves along the first few miles were dead, the leaves curled as pale as sand, the trees like thousands of dust clouds rising from the earth. Hosea stared at the baked-hard ground underneath, the milkweed purple and clogging the rows. “I guess the sons don’t want this O’Brien land,” he said.
Morita had been the Japanese farmer who grew lemons and strawberries. Alma and her grandmother had picked the berries, but the Moritas picked alongside them, packing the berries and running the fruit stand. During the war, the family had been sent to a camp in Arizona, where Morita and his wife had died. O’Brien owned the adjacent acreage, and when Hosea had been among the pickers on his grove, he heard O’Brien telling people, “I got the Morita place for a song. A song.”
The trees turned green immediately after a chain-link fence, and dead crows littered the roadside. “He’s still shootin,” Marcus said. “So he called you about the big fan, huh? All this time, you guys only see each other once a year, and you’re still buddies. Only white guy you ever talk to.”
“He ain’t white. He’s Hungarian,” Hosea said, looking at the fruit. “He done ate what he had to. Like me.”
At the wrought-iron gate, the Hungarian appeared in his khaki coveralls, his face smeared with oil, like war paint. Hosea shook the dark-coated hand. “My friend,” the Hungarian said. “You would like a drink to heat your inside?”
In his red wooden barn, cluttered with machinery, he handed them each a shot glass of the plum brandy he made every year. Hosea felt the purple fire trace down his chest and pool in his belly. The Hungarian laughed at Marcus. “You are old,” he said. “But the baby, eh? And you don’t work any land. Look at your hands.”
“He live downtown,” Hosea said, seeing Marcus roll his eyes.
“No land,” the Hungarian said. “Who will work your place? The oldest? Because you are ancient. Like me. Tough old meat.”
Hosea said, “The two oldest always work the cars. I don’t know who gon work the trees. I got grandsons don’t know shit but play TV games.”
“Like O’Brien’s boys. They are selling it all.” The Hungarian walked over to the two wind-machine engines. “They grow houses. And they buy citrus from fucking Florida.”
“Those engines runnin on your California oranges?” Marcus asked, and they all grinned. Marcus remembered the gasahol the Hungarian made from oranges; one day he’d poured the fuel into an old Buick to demonstrate, and the car wouldn’t cut off. He’d killed the ignition, pulled out the battery, and they’d finally stuffed rags in the tailpipe.
They’d come at Christmas every year before the bridge went out in the flood; they’d brought chitlins and pecans, and the Hungarian’s young wife, whom he’d had sent over from the old country, had silently handed them a tray of pastries. Heavy cream-filled tarts, grained and laced with brandy, poppy seeds crunching in prune filling. Hosea could smell the boiling sugar wafting from the house now.
After the bridge was gone, and they had to take the freeway, they’d come less often. “You and your brothers would come with your guns,” the Hungarian said to Marcus now. “The oldest, he had rabbits tied to his belt. You were thirsty. I said to give me rabbits, and I cooked them on the fire. You, you didn’t touch that.” The Hungarian’s dark, raisin-small eyes disappeared with his grin. “I told you that when I was a boy like you, in the war, we watched from the buildings to see when a horse fell dead in the street. We fought each other for the meat. Pull hot chunks and run upstairs. You threw up.”
“That’s me,” Marcus said, his voice resigned. “Always a sissy.”
“Downtown,” the Hungarian mused. “Now we are all taken in from the city, from the people downtown. How is it?”
“Annexed,” Marcus said.
“The water bills go up, the drought is seven years already, and they want farmers out, I see that easy,” the Hungarian said, turning to his machines.
The large fans could circulate the air in a small grove, enough to keep frost from settling onto leaves and fruit. Marcus strained to push them on the dolly and up the plywood ramp into the truck.
