Alabama Blues

Alabama Blues

  By Margaret Sisu

  ~~~

  Copyright 2011 Margaret Sisu

  All rights reserved. No part of this story or cover image may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Alabama Blues cover design by Gennia Holder

  ~~~

  ~~~

  Also by Margaret Sisu:

  Short Stories

  Rolanda

  Books

  The Nude

  This ebook contains an excerpt from The Nude.

  Available at:

  www.margaretsisu.com

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Alabama Blues

  Chapter 6 from The Nude

  About The Author

  ALABAMA BLUES

  By Margaret Sisu

  1999…

  “Yeoww! What the…?”

  Ripped from her daze by the searing pain in her arm, Ginny jerked out of what felt like a dream. She shook her head clear then shoved up the sleeve of her red silk blouse, twisting her arm for a look. An angry scratch was etched above her elbow, just starting to bleed, but did something that small really have to hurt so much?

  She dabbed it with her fingertips and noticed that—she didn’t even know how—she’d also ruined two nails.

  “Just great.” This was getting ridiculous.

  She dropped her arm and looked around, eyes widening when she saw that she was now deep in the woods. The woods! Pines, oaks, and birches knitted canopies over her head, all but blocking out the noon sun. The smell of sodden moss and decomposing vegetation soaked the air. And clover and thick tufts of grass tangled her feet, reminding her that she wore sandals—with three inch heels, for heaven’s sake!

  She turned to get her bearings and for a moment panicked. Then she caught a glimpse of the old house peek-a-booing through the trees in the much-too-far distance. She felt at once relieved and more disorientated than ever.

  “What in holy hell made me come this far?”

  First she was bullied into this countrified getaway when she preferred her condo in Birmingham, and her research lab, always with modern Alabama city amenities at hand. Then, in the days since she’d been in the plain, little Homestead house, incredibly named Paradise, she found herself repeatedly staring out back at the woods, as if something there called to her. A soil scientist she might be, but she was no naturist. She had no urge to explore the forest on her own. She’d just been taken with the unaccustomed view, she’d told herself. Yet here she was after—she glanced at her watch—more than half an hour of knowing that she wandering off, yet being unable to stop herself.

  This is definitely getting ridiculous.

  She brushed a twig from her natural, close-cropped hair and checked her shirt and slacks for damage. They looked okay and to keep them that way she was heading back to the house.

  No, don’t turn back. Walk on some more.

  Ginny stopped cold—literally. A chill ran through her.

  Where on earth had that idea come from? –an urging so strong it almost was like a voice.

  She shook her head and chided herself. “That’s what catatonic little towns do to normal folk. Messes with their heads.” Her words seemed to play through the lonely woods and bounce back to her.

  Still, and not knowing why, she turned around once more and continued even deeper into the woods. Thick roots scratched her feet; shrubs crawled over her arms; she barely dodged the back-lash of a low branch. And she didn’t want to think what could crawl inside her clothes.

  “I must have pawned my living mind.”

  As she moved, she grew more annoyed, too, at her brother and her boss. Their nagging had pushed her into this vacation. They didn’t think it healthy that she hadn’t taken any time off since Mike died. They didn’t understand that by the time her husband had passed a year ago, she and he had had two years to prepare. While the leukemia shrank Mike’s big frame, turned his coffee skin sallow, and stole his full head of kinky black hair, she and he had laughed at his last jokes and said all there was to say to each other. Once the funeral was over, Ginny had been ready to get back her rhythm; she’d needed it. Then three weeks ago, she’d doubled over with the pain of an ulcer. Frank and Dr. Eckert had nagged until said pain grew even worse. She’d caved just to get rid of them. Now she faced six weeks of nothing but clean open air, noisy night critters, and watching grass bend under the Gulf Coast breeze. God help her, she would die of brain paralysis, not from a ruptured stomach.

  Pushing on, Ginny suddenly found herself fifty yards from a giant cypress. High and broad, it seemed to groan under the weight of the Spanish moss that suffocated it. The veined limbs looked almost painful, its ridged and rutted trunk not so much rooted in the earth as pinned to it. Ginny wasn’t normally given to whimsy, but the despairing tree drew her until she stood mere feet away.

  “That’s peculiar.”

  There, at the foot of the ancient cypress, in the centre of thick knee-high grass and shrub, was an unexpected lot of parch-dry earth, so dry, in fact, that not even the tiniest weed grew.

  “Now what on earth caused that?”

  It was sharply outlined, too, about nine feet long and five feet wide, and Ginny stooped and palmed a handful of its cracked dirt. The texture told her that it should hold moisture well—like the rest of the soil around, normal for the local geography. Then she noticed a cut grey, stone at one end—a foot and a half high, and two feet across. To her left, six feet away and hidden by the grass, was another stone, this one moss-covered. Straightening up, Ginny realized that she’d likely stumbled onto two graves, though neither marker bore names nor dates, and while vegetation flourished on one, the other one was barren.

  “Now that’s really peculiar.” She tried to think what could cause such a stark contrast, but was interrupted by a sudden disturbance on her skin, an odd feeling that she wasn’t alone. The air stilled, the trees silenced, and a woodpecker stopped its staccato on a trunk nearby and flew off.

  Then Ginny thought she heard it again...or swore she did.

  “I will not rest.”

  She shrieked; then looked around, trying to figure out where the words—not merely an idea this time—had come from.

  “Hello, is someone there?” Her words didn’t bob and re-echo this time. They fell flat in the toneless air. “Hello?”

  She waited, but no one answered and she looked at the cypress. Then she shook her head because, “Don’t be stupid, girl. Trees don’t talk.” Still, it had seemed like the voice—or the feeling—had come from it.

  For long seconds, nothing moved, not even the wind. Then the sounds of wood life switched back on as suddenly as they had stopped. A ‘possum appeared; calmly skirted the base of the tree, and Ginny decided that isolation wasn’t doing her all the good it was supposed to. After all, her normal life was attuned to car horns, cable, and electronic contraptions. All this nature just wasn’t...well...natural.

  ~~~

  1959…

  Herman hitched up his dungarees and peered closer at his face in the cracked mirror over the kitchen sink. There wasn’t much he could do about his coarse features, but he had put on a clean shirt and brushed his teeth, which stood proudly white against his black skin. He ran the wooden hairbrush once more over his grease-slicked hair; then, satisfied, reached to the window sill to turn off the radio announcer discussing the president and the threat of
the Russians. Didn’t matter what Eisenhower or Vice President Nixon said about the Russians, Herman still had to wake up every morning, work in the shed out back, make his deliveries, then return to a lonely house. Well, lonely most times, anyway.

  He looked around now to make sure nothing from his lunch was left lying around, the table and counter scrubbed with lime, the dust swept out. Not that there was need to worry about in here being seen; it just added to his sense that everything was fitting.

  He went out to the sitting room—also tidy. The sofa and chairs were old, made by his Pa, but in good condition and sturdy. The two side tables Herman had made himself years back and they showed that he was a better craftsman than his father had been. If Ezekiel Bagshaw could have prevented it, Herman would not have known a hammer from a wood plane. But the Depression had made Ezekiel old before his time, and his son a better joiner than he should have been.

  A cockroach flew through the window and landed on the overcrowded corner bookcase, reminding Herman that one of the window screens needed fixing. He flattened the insect dead with his thick fist and flung the critter back out through the front door in two smooth movements that were oddly graceful for such an ungainly man.

  Now everything was perfect and he went out onto the porch, sat in the swing, looked across his front yard, and waited.

  He wondered what ‘Zeke would say if he could see the garden now. Twenty-five years ago, nobody had time or water for flowerbeds. The Depression was handing everyone a whole new list of things to worry about, things like having even the portion a man eked out for himself from the land made worthless by circumstance. Then the paper mill sprang up and ‘Zeke got work there, only for that too to be snatched from him. Years of being beat down finally took its toll on Herman’s pa, but nothing whipped the old man’s spirit flat like his son having to give up schooling at just nine years old to work and help support them both. But they had held onto every plank of their house, and for the nine years since he buried old ‘Zeke out back at one corner of their eight acres, Herman continued to keep the place up. Being a joiner might not be the educated future Zeke had wanted so badly for his only boy, but turned out that Herman’s hands were his gift. And he still had his books.

  “Hi, Herman. How come you’re not reading this afternoon?”

  Ebony Johnson had come up on him woolgathering and Herman calmed the pleasure that would have made him blush.

  “Just thinking instead,” he said as easily as he could, not being a man of many spoken words.

  “Nice evening for it.” Ebony smiled that pretty smile that sometimes filled Herman with regrets. “Mind if I sit a while?”

  He shook his head, as they both knew he would, and she sat down on the top step of his wide porch, her back against the banister post, her legs stretched out so she was facing him.

  “They say it’s going to be colder than usual this comin’ winter,” she said, fingering pleats in her calf-length skirt. She scoffed. “As if this far down we get a real winter. The way they talk, you’d think it was New York.”

  Herman liked her voice. Maybe it was because it was reminded him of the cocoa Zeke used to fix for him as a boy – cocoa mixed with just the right touch of honey. Or maybe it was because it was the only female voice he heard around his house. And she sure liked to talk about New York. Whether she was talking about clothes, cars, houses or horseshit, it always came back to New York. Surprising, since she’d never been there.

  Not hearing any comment from him now, Ebony asked, “So what were you reading today, Herman?”

  “The Grapes of Wrath,” he told her.

  “Oh, the Pastor has that book, but I never read it. What’s it about?”

  He thought about telling her to read it herself, but said instead, “A family that had to leave their farmland and go to California to pick cotton.” There wasn’t much point telling her more than that. She wouldn’t really be interested.

  “Hmm. You wrote any more poetry?”

  Herman didn’t answer immediately, embarrassed. She was the only one he’d ever told that he wrote poetry then regretted it because she kept expecting him to read it to her. At least she never told anyone in town. His poetry was their little secret, like the real reason she visited him two afternoons a week was their little secret. There were already folks in town who didn’t think their association fitting, and if her father, the Baptist pastor, ever found out fully what was going on, he would put a stop to her coming out for sure. So Herman and Ebony kept secrets.

  “Soon. I’m working on one,” Herman said now, though strictly speaking it wasn’t true. He had finished two that she hadn’t heard yet, but he wouldn’t read them today. That way, he’d have another of her visits to look forward to.

  “Want some lemonade?” he asked.

  “No, thank you, Herman. I guess I had better be going now.”

  He nodded, expecting it. “Take care.”

  He watched her stride off, continuing her trek past his house, as always. She was tall and skinny and would have looked tom-boyish if not for her dark-skinned prettiness and full skirts and her thick hair like wavy black wool. And her voice.

  As Ebony headed into the trees, her humming floated back to Herman and he strained to catch every note he could before the woods took her. She sang a cocoa-honey-laced blues song that the good pastor would not have liked one bit because, according to Pastor Johnson, anyway, secular music was the Devil’s tool in keeping the morally weak away from church. That, dance halls, and those new-fangled color TV pictures folks had started talking so much about. Herman didn’t know how much of such preaching the congregation actually believed, but none of it seemed to matter to the Pastor’s only child. Ebony knew better than to flaunt her ways in her father’s face, of course, but she had a willful streak and a mind of her own.

  She was smart, too—finished at the local school a few weeks ago and, after summer, was heading off to that Howard University in Washington D.C. She was going to be schooled fancy. Then she’d find a husband (not from here in town, unless Ray Green figured to leave his family business and follow her), settle down, and make some babies. Or become a teacher or a nurse; maybe even a lawyer. In any case, she likely wouldn’t set foot back in Homestead, no matter how young Ray Green talked around town as if she would.

  Herman tried not to think what life would be like when Ebony Johnson no longer came out to the edge of town to visit him.

  ~~~

  1999…

  Ginny looked up at the clock that hung on the living room wall above the corner bookshelves. The hour she planned on spending on the computer was up, so she set aside her laptop and the research data she was working on, and got up off the sofa to look for supper.

  She headed to the kitchen, putting work out of her head – with increasing ease lately. In the last ten days, she had indeed slowed down. Instead of bounding out of bed at six a.m. to make the most of the day, now she rolled out at nine, lagged an hour over breakfast then got on with the demands of watching TV or reading in the porch swing. She’d even gone into the woods again, back to the cypress—purposely this time—and it hadn’t spooked her like it had before. The clean Gulf air made her sleep so well that she’d even started dreaming about Mike again and she hadn’t done that since the first months after his funeral. In her dreams, however, he was more solemn than the laughing man she’d loved. He was rougher, too, and she could never quite see his face.

  Ginny paused in the act of pouring herself a glass of milk.

  Almost like a different man altogether, in fact.

  But the more she tried to recall, the more details of him slipped away, so she gave up and instead concentrated on reheating meatloaf and recalling the phone conversation she’d had with the Mobile City realtor the day before. He hadn’t known about the graves in the woods and said there had been nothing in recent history to account for soil tainting. He’d also said that the current property owner had held the title for less than a year. Ginny was piqued by t
he unexplained curiosity and decided to take yet another look at the mystery patch, perhaps in the morning. Right after supper, she went to bed.

  She snapped awake just after midnight to the feeling of someone else in her room. Heart thumping, she bolted up and flicked on the light.

  Nothing. Or rather, no one. The night air was as still and the night critters as noisy as they both should be. When a cockroach flew across the room, she realized that it was because she had left the bedroom window open.

  “Get a grip, Webster,” Ginny scolded herself, and got up to hunt for bug spray.

  En route to the kitchen, she realized that her sudden waking had brought a strong image of her dream man out of her sleep for once. Tonight he’d been sitting at the kitchen table of this very house, writing. He’d even held up the paper he’d been writing on as if for her to read, but …damn...again the image slipped away.

  The dream was really starting to bother her, not only because it was recurring, but because in it, the man was always...agitated. She had felt it. How could she feel agitated on behalf of a man who only existed in a dream?

  My name’s Herman.

  Ginny stumbled, banged her foot on the edge of the door frame, and cussed.

  “Who said that?” Frantically, she looked around—left, right, ceiling, floor. There was no one there; she was alone. Of course, she was alone.

  “Great, lost my stomach lining. Now I’m losing my living mind.”

  She saw the cockroach under the dresser. A quick blast of spray, deadly follow through with her shoe, and she ended the critter’s family line. She disposed of it, closed the window, and went back to bed, determined to sleep.

  When she finally drifted off once more, however, again her dreams featured a man with skin as dark as obsidian. He sat hunched over the tiny kitchen table, his thick head and neck retracted into his shoulders, his fist dwarfing a pencil that moved quickly across a white page. He reached for a knife, dashed off deft slivers from the pencil’s tip, licked the lead, and wrote some more.