Sweet Song, Page 2

  “Still not right,” Leon whispered.

  “Shush,” Bess said. “Don’t sass him.”

  Betrayed, Leon lowered his head in silence.

  Mr. Carpenter nodded to Bess, then to Martha. “Let’s go, boy.”

  Big Leon opened the door. He gave Bess a stern look, and she backed away from Fred. “What you doin’ with the boy?”

  Leon had made a step toward Mr. Carpenter and stopped when his father entered.

  “Don’t you look at me,” Fred hollered.

  Big Leon stared into the man’s face. “The boy?” he said. Big Leon’s arms shined with sweat. His thoroughly soiled shirt held tight to his toughened skin.

  “I told the women folk. Now, don’t push me or I’ll be forced to do more.” Fred walked to Leon and grabbed his arm as if it were a fly bothering him.

  Big Leon moved out of the doorway.

  “You watch how you’re walking.” Fred said in the angriest voice Leon had heard since the landowner’s arrival.

  Big Leon looked down and let Fred pass.

  Leon led with Fred’s thin fingers laid across his shoulder, shoving him forward. Leon heard his father say, “Dammit woman, you always takin’ my strength from me. What I done for it?” The voices stopped after that one statement, but now Leon let it ring over and over inside his head as Fred, using one firm hand, guided Leon down the path and around the barn.

  Behind the barn, Mr. Carpenter pulled his belt off and with the metal steer-shaped buckle slapped Leon across the face.

  Leon fell to his knees and touched his bleeding cheek.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  Leon obeyed.

  Mr. Carpenter hit him hard across each shoulder. Then he picked Leon up and made a quick scrape down his chest with a steer horn, opening the skin to the hot air.

  “You a pale black, boy.”

  Leon didn’t know whether to respond or not and stood quietly waiting for another blow.

  “Your daddy love you?”

  “He don’t say,” Leon answered.

  “You work with him?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “He teach you the work?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And he don’t say you his boy? Back there, he called you the boy, like you not his. You know why?”

  “No, Sir.”

  Fred scraped the buckle across Leon’s chest again. “Sounds like you got the nigger brains, but not the nigger skin.” He shoved Leon. Shoved him hard. “Don’t know why I’m bein’ easy on you, except that your life must be hard enough. You can go home now. Be ready to work at sunup, boy. And wash up first. You stink and I don’t want that smell stickin’ to my boy who’s left.”

  Leon walked into the shack, and Bess was already gone.

  “Boy, you look a mess,” Martha said right off. “I clean you up.”

  The sun was all but a sparkle from setting.

  Martha lit two candle lanterns and wet and soaped a rag. “This goin to hurt, but not like yo’ beatin’.”

  “Weren’t no beatin’.” Leon said. “More like a scrapin’ and a smackin’.”

  “You lucky as much as you unlucky.”

  “Why don’t Mr. Carpenter be upset at Freddy diein’?”

  “He upset. He fightin’ with his own self. I seen it. Like the devil fightin’ with the Lord. Men folk always like that. They always fightin’ with demons. He have plenty a demons, that man do. He down right guilty. But thinkin’ about this evenin’ he sharin’ his guilt with this family.”

  Martha prepared a dampened rag and ran it across Leon’s scrapes, first his cheek, then his chest.

  Leon tightened at the sting. “He say I stink and to clean up.”

  “You don’t stink. He just don’t like the smell of work. Or maybe the smell of truth.”

  “I don’t mind smellin’ different.”

  “You fine.” Martha said.

  After a moment, while putting his shirt on, Leon asked, “Does Pa love me?”

  Martha stopped fussing. She looked out the window for a moment. The light from a half moon flattened her face and put a shine in her eyes. Her teeth, too, shined when she spoke. Her lips quivered. “Yo’ Pa love you, boy. Yo’ Pa love everythin’. He love everybody. All except his-self. And that hard to get out of.”

  Leon breathed. He had been holding his breath. His cheeks tightened near tears even though he didn’t know why. “I love Pa. I be proud he boss of some of the work. I be proud he look Sir in the eye. I love him ‘cause he my Pa. Just ‘cause.” The tears streamed down his face.

  Martha took him to her breast. “Now, boy. You stay proud. You keep lovin’ yo’ Pa. No matter what you learn, Big Leon yo’ Pappy. You remember.”

  “I don’t want extra chores. I don’t want to work with those white boys all the time. They try not to do nothin’.”

  “I know. I know.” Martha rocked Leon while they stood there.

  That night Big Leon didn’t come in until very late. Later than usual.

  Bess had returned to the shack and Leon lay on the floor with her, his muscles so tense they hurt. He lay naked after being washed. Bess ran her fingers absentmindedly up and down Leon’s body from knees to neck and touching everything between.

  The cool night air blew into the shack, shocking Leon at first. Then he rose from beside Bess and walked to his own corner. His body relaxed instantly. He slipped on his shirt. In slow silence, Leon reached and touched his father’s hand briefly before going over to lie on his own straw bed.

  Big Leon pulled a tattered blanket up and around Leon’s shoulders. Then with his big hand, he patted Leon on the back and brushed his face where it had been cut. He slid a vegetable crate to the back door and stared into the black woods.

  CHAPTER 3

  In the fall of his twelfth year, the air deep with winter urgings and blowing at him through the barn door, Leon busily mucked stalls and transferred feed barrels. By his side were Hank and Earl, who were alternately cruel and kind to Leon, one moment ordering him around, the next asking how Leon thought they should fix the barn door. Leon settled into his position as half slave and half older-brother. His weak stomach had him throwing up once a week, mostly late in the evenings and well after dinner, after being tickled or played with by Poor Bess.

  After spending the morning to early afternoon with the Carpenter boys, Leon worked in the fields with Big Leon. One day Leon reached for Big Leon’s hand, but the hand was pulled away and Leon didn’t try again for years.

  By this time Leon had learned why the other Negro children called him Mix-up. He learned that he could be an instrument of cruelty in his own family. And he learned that Hank and Earl’s sister, Hillary, grew older, just as he did, but that she blossomed differently.

  Mona had kept Hillary away from the help for years. By the time Hillary turned twelve, though, Leon had not only been introduced to her, but also saw her often while cleaning the garbage from behind the house or whenever she strolled out to the barn to call for Hank and Earl.

  Although stout like her mother, Hillary’s face didn’t carry the same weight of anger and cruelty that Mona’s face displayed. Not that Leon saw Mona’s face often. He tried to stay away when she was around. She’d holler and threaten to beat him.

  Hillary was talkative and curious at the same time. Sometimes she’d ask Leon a question, then suggest three answers even before he could think what to say. He learned to think faster and it became a game for him to come up with an answer before she could.

  Hillary slipped through the barn door. All the boys stopped working at the same time.

  “What you doin’ here?” Hank hollered.

  Hillary pointed at Leon. “His mama sent me to fetch him for garbage cleanin’.”

  “Why don’t she fetch him herself?”

  “Why doesn’t she? Don’t you hear any of your learning?”

  “No need for it. Anyhow, you didn’t answer.” Hank put down a feed bag.

  “She’s busy.”


  “Well, you go tell her he’s busy too,” Hank said.

  “Pa said it was okay. He’s talking with Bess about something.”

  Hank smiled and looked at Earl. They both started to laugh. “Nigger soup,” Hank said.

  Leon turned away.

  “So, where’s Ma,” Hank asked Hillary.

  “Sittin’, like always.”

  “She’s burstin’ with crazy,” Earl murmured.

  “Stop it,” Hank said.

  “You’re jokin’, why can’t I?”

  “Don’t matter what I do. Just stop it about Ma.” Hank glanced at Hillary. “Take ‘im. But bring ‘im back straight away.”

  Leon didn’t need to be ordered. He followed behind Hillary as if she were leading him with a rope. “Why it need cleanin’ now?” Leon said once they were outside.

  “’Coons got in the garbage last night and made a mess. Pa wants it cleaned up before the house stinks. You know what to do with it?”

  “Throw it down the holler.”

  “What do you do when you’re done work?”

  “Go back to the barn.”

  “I mean after that.”

  “Help Pa.”

  “I mean after that, too.”

  “Wash up for dinner. Go to bed.”

  “You don’t do any reading? That’s what I do. I’m reading parts of the Bible on my own. I have been for a long time now. Mrs. Milner said I’m smart. Smarter than those two back there in the barn. I’m going to go away when I’m old enough and keep learning until I’m smarter than anyone.” She looked into Leon’s face.

  Leon turned his eyes away.

  “You look smart.”

  “I not.”

  “What do you read and I’ll tell you how smart you are. Earl is only about first grade smart and trying to sit in the fourth grade.” She laughed at herself.

  “I don’t read. Negroes don’t read.”

  Hillary stopped in the path and touched Leon’s arm to stop him as well. “I already told you I’m smart. I know you’re not all Negro. I know you’re part of my pa. That’s why my ma is crazy. She hates him and loves him. That’s like a hook in a fish’s mouth. You love the taste but can’t get away.”

  “You wrong, Miss Hillary. I all Negro and Big Leon the only pa I ever knowed.”

  A breeze blew up and the scent of forest bottom consumed Leon. His skin pricked up in the chill.

  “You be that then,” Hillary said. “You be what you want. But you’re still smart, and I bet I can teach you to read real quick.”

  They walked close to the back of the house before anything more was said. “You didn’t answer,” Hillary said.

  “Didn’t hear no question.”

  “I’m going to teach you to read. After dark. I want you to come ‘round to the back here.”

  “Can’t.”

  “You won’t get caught. And if you do, I’ll be there too and tell them it was all my doing.”

  “I don’t think so,” Leon told her before she left him in the back.

  Hillary smiled back at him. “Oh, yes you will.”

  Leon began cleaning the mess of garbage, putting everything into burlap bags kept near the kitchen door. When he was through, he took the bags three at a time into the side woods where the land dipped toward Lower Run. On the first trip, Leon dumped the bags and shook them empty. Then he sat down.

  The damp air of the woods wasn’t so cold. The wind slowed too. Afternoon clouds slipped over the treetops as they ruffled and shook leaves, in small bunches, down onto the ground. The place already looked more brown, yellow, and red, than it looked green. The place already felt ready for winter.

  Leon relaxed his back against a tree, the same tree he’d relaxed against many times before. His only rest came when he took it. He learned in a few years how much time he could take without looking lazy, without looking as though he wasn’t doing his job. Leon learned how to work hard then rest, rather than work slow like some of the other Negro boys. Rather than being noticeably lazy like Hank and Earl. Even the white farmhands spent more time discussing how to do things rather than just doing them, stretching their days longer, and leaving no time for themselves, or so Leon imagined.

  During short rest periods, Leon noticed the beauty of the world around him. Martha had taught him what to look for by pointing out the shapes of clouds, the colors of trees, and the sunset, what she always called “The Lord’s sweet song into night.” Leon hummed as he relaxed, learning that, too, from Martha. When he hummed, though, he heard words playing in his head. He suspected, but didn’t know for sure, that Martha heard only her own humming, even though she sang once in a while.

  His words told him things about himself, like “I’m a loner in the wood/ bein’ forgotten by my own./ I’m a loner in the wood/ feelin’ like I got no home.” The words also informed him about what he enjoyed or hated. “The trees come a laughin’ with me/ like I be their friend.” or “Tunny too ugly to like anyone pretty as me.” He also whispered what he observed. “The girl done crazy ‘bout the nigger in the barn/ think she can teach him and that it won’t do no harm.”

  That day, after each of three trips to the hollow to dump garbage, Leon sat and sang, satisfied with his life as it was.

  After finishing his barn work, then working with Big Leon in the fields, Leon returned home and got ready for sleep as usual. Bess arrived home early and insisted on washing him even though he protested.

  Martha retired early, humming loudly, and in an agitated manner. Something out of sorts must be going on. He would remember that humming. He would remember later that evening too. But years would go by before he remembered what happened between the two.

  Late, and after Big Leon returned, Hillary tapped at the back door, then boldly stepped into the shack.

  “What in the Lord’s name girl?” Martha said.

  “Come to talk to Leon.”

  “What you want wit him?” Bess asked. “He sick tonight.”

  “I teach him to read.”

  “Not my boy,” said Bess. “I tole you, he throwed up.”

  Leon wanted to escape that night. Looking from Hillary to Bess, he stood between them unable to say his peace. He felt embarrassed to have Hillary standing on the dirt and bark floor, embarrassed that she might see his flattened form in his straw bed or the stains on the walls.

  “He goin’ nowhere,” Bess said.

  That’s when something sudden, strong, and unusual occurred. Big Leon stood, shirtless, skin-shining, and firm. It was as if he had risen from the ground, large and black. “Let him go,” he said.

  “You got no say,” Bess shouted.

  Big Leon turned to face Bess. “I got say now woman.”

  Leon heard Martha say, “Um, um,” before she turned away from the action.

  “You go on son. You learn to get outta here.”

  Leon had never heard Big Leon call him son, and suddenly felt proud to be a consideration in the man’s life at all.

  “In the South they hang you if you teach a nigger to read,” Bess said to Hillary.

  “We ain’t in the South. Anyway,” Hillary said, “I’m doing this here for me, too.”

  “Enough. He goin’.” Big Leon nodded and Hillary and Leon left before another word could be said.

  CHAPTER 4

  When Mona Carpenter died, Fred made everyone on the farm, blacks and whites alike, go to the funeral.

  Hillary told Leon it was her father’s way of doing the least he could. Honor her one last time for putting up with him.

  Leon didn’t want to go. Mr. Carpenter had stayed out of his life and he wanted it to remain that way. Yet he had a precognitive sense, like leaves turning up before rain, that changes would occur after Mona’s funeral. And those changes all seemed to stem from the family tensions of that day, starting with Big Leon’s refusal to let Martha be excused from the funeral. “We all gotta go,” he told her.

  “I don’t owe that woman or that man for nothin’ ‘cept messin
’ with a good family.”

  “We goin’,” Big Leon said, finalizing the conversation.

  Bess mumbled something under her breath as she was known to do more and more often.

  “Quit mumblin’ woman.”

  Bess mumbled again and Big Leon ignored her.

  Leon stayed out of the conversation. He dressed in a clean shirt and trousers. Big Leon gave him a hat to wear, “For the day,” which made Leon feel like a man. At fifteen, he was a man as far as workload was concerned. With the hat on, his step turned more deliberate and controlled.

  Once dressed, Leon stood outside the shack.

  Tunny and Bud walked by. “Mix-up,” one of them said.

  Leon hadn’t heard that for a long while. Tunny and Bud seldom spoke to him except when necessary. The whole family maintained an invisible existence soon after Freddy’s death.

  Leon didn’t mind being called Mix-up as much as he hated being called Nigger Soup by the Carpenter boys. He thought about all the names he had and which ones he liked best and which ones he liked least. He liked it when Big Leon called him Son, even though it seldom happened. He liked how Martha called him boy most of the time. Martha spoke in changing sounds unlike anyone else Leon knew. Most often boy was a loving and familiar word, but Martha could change the sound so it came out like a curse. Her humming had the same range. Leon liked the way Hillary called him Leon. His name so seldom uttered in his own house that Hillary came to mind whenever his name was used. There was the exception though. Bess called him Leon, but she always prefaced it with my. My Leon. He hated that sound.

  Martha came out and interrupted his name game.

  “We leavin’?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Big Leon claimin’ his rights to Poor Bess before he have to look into Sir’s face. I reckon he want to be the first man of the day.” Martha spit the words out.

  Leon turned his head away.

  “Don’t like the truth? Well it disgusts me. Right now ain’t the time. They almost started in front a me. Afore I even ready to go. You don’t like me sayin’ it, but theys the ones disrespectful.” She walked down the path. Her shoulders and back rounded, folding in.