The Devil in America Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  Epilogue

  for my father

  1955

  Emmett Till, sure, I remember. Your great grandfather, sitting at the table with the paper spread out, looked up and said something to Grandma. She looked over my way and made me leave the room: Emmett Till. In high school I had a friend everybody called Underdog. One afternoon—1967?—Underdog was standing on some corner and the police came round and beat him with nightsticks. No reason. Underdog thought he might get some respect if he joined up for Vietnam, but a sergeant in basic training was calling him everything but his name—nigger this, nigger that—and Underdog went and complained. Got thrown in the brig, so he ended up going to Vietnam with just a couple weeks’ training. Soon after he came home in a body bag. In Miami a bunch of white cops beat to death a man named Arthur McDuffie with heavy flashlights. You were six or seven: so, 1979. The cops banged up his motorcycle trying to make killing him look like a crash. Acquitted, of course. Then Amadou Diallo, 1999; Sean Bell, 2006. You must know more about all the New York murders than I do. Trayvon, this year. Every year it’s one we hear about and God knows how many just the family mourns.

  —Dad

  1877 August 23

  “’Tis all right if I take a candle, Ma’am?” Easter said. Her mother bent over at the black iron stove, and lifted another smoking hot pan of cornbread from the oven. Ma’am just hummed—meaning, Go ’head. Easter came wide around her mother, wide around the sizzling skillet, and with the ramrod of Brother’s old rifle hooked up the front left burner. She left the ramrod behind the stove, plucked the candle from the fumbling, strengthless grip of her ruint hand, and dipped it wick-first into flame. Through the good glass window in the wall behind the stove, the night was dark. It was soot and shadows. Even the many-colored chilis and bright little pumpkins in Ma’am’s back garden couldn’t be made out.

  A full supper plate in her good hand, lit candle in the other, Easter had a time getting the front door open, then out on the porch, and shutting back the door without dropping any food. Then, anyhow, the swinging of the door made the candle flame dance fearfully low, just as wind gusted up too, so her light flickered way down … and went out.

  “Shoot!” Easter didn’t say the curse word aloud. She mouthed it. “Light it back for me, angels,” Easter whispered. “Please?” The wick flared bright again.

  No moon, no stars—the night sky was clouded over. Easter hoped it wasn’t trying to storm, with the church picnic tomorrow.

  She crossed the yard to the edge of the woods where Brother waited. A big old dog, he crouched down, leapt up, down and up again, barking excitedly, just as though he were some little puppy dog.

  “Well, hold your horses,” Easter said. “I’m coming!” She met him at the yard’s end and dumped the full plate over, all her supper falling to the ground. Brother’s head went right down, tail just a-wagging. “Careful, Brother,” Easter said. “You watch them chicken bones.” Then, hearing the crack of bones, she knelt and snatched ragged shards right out of the huge dog’s mouth. Brother whined and licked her hand—and dropped his head right back to buttered mashed yams.

  Easter visited with him a while, telling her new secrets, her latest sins, and when he’d sniffed out the last morsels of supper Brother listened to her with what anybody would have agreed was deep love, full attention. “Well, let me get on,” she said at last, and sighed. “Got to check on the Devil now.” She’d left it til late, inside all evening with Ma’am, fixing their share of the big supper at church tomorrow. Brother whined when she stood up to leave.

  Up the yard to the henhouse. Easter unlatched the heavy door and looked them over—chickens, on floor and shelf, huddling quietly in thick straw, and all asleep except for Sadie. Eldest and biggest, that one turned just her head and looked over Easter’s way. Only reflected candlelight, of course, but Sadie’s beady eyes looked so ancient and so crafty, blazing like embers. Easter backed on out, latched the coop up securely again, and made the trip around the henhouse, stooping and stooping and stooping, to check for gaps in the boards. Weasel holes, fox doors.

  There weren’t any. And the world would go on exactly as long as Easter kept up this nightly vigil.

  Ma’am stood on the porch when Easter came back up to the house. “I don’t appreciate my good suppers thrown in the dirt. You hear me, girl?” Ma’am put a hand on Easter’s back, guiding her indoors. “That ole cotton-picking dog could just as well take hisself out to the deep woods and hunt.” Ma’am took another tone altogether when she meant every word, and then she didn’t stroke Easter’s head, or gently brush her cheek with a knuckle. This was only complaining out of habit. Easter took only one tone with her mother. Meek.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” she said, and ducked her head in respect. Easter didn’t think herself too womanish or grown to be slapped silly.

  “Help me get this up on the table,” Ma’am said—the deepest bucket, and brimful of water and greens. Ma’am was big and strong enough to have lifted ten such buckets. It was friendly, though, sharing the little jobs. At one side of the bucket, Easter bent over and worked her good hand under the bottom, the other just mostly ached now, the cut thickly scabbed over. She just sort of pressed it to the bucket’s side, in support.

  Easter and her mother set the bucket on the table.

  Past time to see about the morning milk. Easter went back to the cellar and found the cream risen, though the tin felt a tad cool to her. The butter would come slow. “Pretty please, angels?” she whispered. “Could you help me out a little bit?” They could. They did. The milk tin warmed ever so slightly. Just right. Easter dipped the cream out and carried the churn back to the kitchen.

  Ma’am had no wrinkles except at the corners of the eyes. Her back was unbowed, her arms and legs still mighty. But she was old now, wasn’t she? Well nigh sixty, and maybe past it. But still with that upright back, such quick hands. Pretty was best said of the young—Soubrette Toussaint was very pretty, for instance—so what was the right word for Ma’am’s severe cheekbones, sharp almond-shaped eyes, and pinched fullness of mouth? Working the churn, Easter felt the cream foam and then thicken, pudding-like. Any other such marriage, and you’d surely hear folks gossiping over the dead wrongness of it—the wife twenty-some years older than a mighty good-looking husband. What in the world, I ask you, is that old lady doing with a handsome young man like that? But any two eyes could see the answer here. Not pretty as she must once have been, with that first husband, whoever he’d been, dead and buried back east. And not pretty as when she’d had those first babies, all gone now too. But age hadn’t only taken from Ma’am, it had given too. Some rare gift, and so much of it that Pa had to be pick of the litter—kindest, most handsome man in the world—just to stack up. Easter poured off the buttermilk into a jar for Pa, who liked that especially. Ma’am might be a challenge to love sometimes, but respect came easy.

  “I told him, Easter.” Ma’am wiped forefinger and thumb down each dandelion leaf, cleaning off grit and bugs, and then lay it asid
e in a basket. “Same as I told you. Don’t mess with it. Didn’t I say, girl?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Easter scooped the clumps of butter into the bowl.

  Ma’am spun shouting from her work. “That’s right I did! And I pray to God you listen, too. That fool out there didn’t, but Good Lord knows I get on my knees and pray every night you got some little bit of sense in your head. Because, Easter, I ain’t got no more children—you my last one!” Ma’am turned back and gripped the edge of the table.

  Ma’am wanted no comfort, no acknowledgement of her pain at such moments—just let her be. Easter huddled in her chair, paddling the salt evenly through the butter, working all the water out. She worked with far more focus than the job truly needed.

  Then, above the night’s frogcroak and bugchatter, they heard Brother bark in front of the house, and heard Pa speak, his very voice. Wife and daughter both gave a happy little jump, looking together at the door in anticipation. Pa’d been three days over in Greenville selling the cigars. Ma’am snapped her fingers.

  “Get the jug out the cellar,” she said. “You know just getting in your Pa wants him a little tot of cider. Them white folks.” As if Ma’am wouldn’t have a whole big mug her ownself.

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Easter fetched out the jug.

  Pa opened the door, crossed the kitchen—touching Easter’s head in passing, he smelt of woodsmoke—and came to stand behind Ma’am. His hands cupped her breasts through her apron, her dress, and he kissed the back of her neck. She gasped aloud. “Wilbur! the baby…!” That’s what they still called Easter, “the baby.” Nobody had noticed she’d gotten tall, twelve years old now.

  Pa whispered secrets in Ma’am’s ear. He was a father who loved his daughter, but he was a husband first and foremost. I’m a terrible thirsty man, Pa had said once, and your mama is my only cool glass of water in this world. Ma’am turned and embraced him. “I know it, sweetheart,” she said. “I know.” Easter covered up the butter. She took over washing the greens while her parents whispered, intent only on each other. Matched for height, and Ma’am a little on the stout side, Pa on the slim, so they were about the same thickness too. The perfect fit of them made Easter feel a sharp pang, mostly happiness. Just where you could hear, Pa said, “And you know it ain’t no coloreds round here but us living in Rosetree…”

  Wrapped in blankets up in the loft, right over their bed, of course she heard things at night, on Sundays usually, when nobody was so tired.

  An effortful noise from Pa, as if he were laboring some big rock heave-by-heave over to the edge of the tobacco field, and then before the quiet, sounding sort of worried, as if Pa were afraid Ma’am might accidently touch the blazing hot iron of the fired-up stove, Pa would say, “Hazel!”

  “… so then Miss Anne claimed she seen some nigger run off from there, and next thing she knew—fire! Just everywhere. About the whole west side of Greenville, looked to me, burnt down. Oh yeah, and in the morning here come Miss Anne’s husband talkmbout, ‘Know what else, y’all? That nigger my wife seen last night—matterfact, he violated her.’ Well, darling, here’s what I wanna know…”

  Ma’am would kind of sigh throughout, and from one point on keep saying—not loud—“Like that…” However much their bed creaked, Ma’am and Pa were pretty quiet when Easter was home. Probably they weren’t, though, these nights when Pa came back from Greenville. That was why they sent her over the Toussaints’.

  “…where this ‘violated’ come from all of a sudden? So last night Miss Anne said she maybe might of seen some nigger run off, and this morning that nigger jumped her show ’nough? And then it wasn’t just the one nigger no more. No. It was two or three of ’em, maybe about five. Ten niggers—at least. Now Lord knows I ain’t no lawyer, baby, I ain’t, but it seem to me a fishy story done changed up even fishier…”

  Ma’am and Pa took so much comfort in each other, and just plain liked each other. Easter was glad to see it. But she was old enough to wonder, a little worried and a little sad, who was ever going to love her in the way Ma’am and Pa loved each other.

  “What you still doing here!” Ma’am looked up suddenly from her embrace. “Girl, you should of been gone to Soubrette’s. Go. And take your best dress and good Sunday shoes too. Tell Mrs. Toussaint I’ll see her early out front of the church tomorrow. You hear me, Easter?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” she said. And with shoes and neatly folded clothes, Easter hurried out into the dark wide-open night, the racket of crickets.

  On the shadowed track through the woods, she called to Brother but he wouldn’t come out of the trees, though Easter could hear him pacing her through the underbrush. Always out there in the dark. Brother wanted to keep watch whenever Easter went out at night, but he got shy sometimes too. Lonesome and blue.

  * * *

  And this whole thing started over there, in old Africa land, where in olden days a certain kind of big yellow dog (you know the kind I’m talking about) used to run around. Now those dogs ain’t nowhere in the world, except for … Anyway, the prince of the dogs was a sorcerer—about the biggest and best there was in the world. One day he says to hisself, Let me get up off four feet for a while, and walk around on just two, so I can see what all these folk called ‘people’ are doing over in that town. So the prince quit being his doggy self and got right up walking like anybody. While the prince was coming over to the peoples’ town, he saw a pretty young girl washing clothes at the river. Now if he’d still been his doggy self, the prince probably would of just ate that girl up, but since he was a man now, the prince seen right off what a pretty young thing she was. So he walks over and says, Hey, gal. You want to lay down right here by the river in the soft grass with me? Well—and anybody would—the girl felt some kind of way, a strange man come talking to her so fresh all of a sudden. The girl says, Man, don’t you see my hair braided up all nice like a married lady? (Because that’s how they did over in Africa land. The married ladies, the girls still at home, plaited their hair up different.) So the dog prince said, Oh, I’m sorry. I come from a long way off, so I didn’t know what your hair meant. And he didn’t, either, cause dogs don’t braid their hair like people do. Hmph, says the gal, all the while sort of taking a real good look over him. As a matter of fact, the dog prince made a mighty fine-looking young man, and the girl’s mama and papa had married her off to just about the oldest, most dried-up, and granddaddy-looking fellow you ever saw. That old man was rich, sure, but he really couldn’t do nothing in the married way for a young gal like that, who wasn’t twenty years old yet. So, the gal says, Hmph, where you come from anyways? What you got to say for yourself? And it must of been pretty good too, whatever the prince had to say for hisself, because, come nine months later, that gal was mama to your great great—twenty greats—grandmama, first one of us with the old Africa magic.

  * * *

  It wasn’t but a hop, skip, and jump through the woods into Rosetree proper. Surrounding the town green were the church, Mrs. Toussaint’s general store, and the dozen best houses, all two stories, with overgrown rosebushes in front. At the other side of the town green, Easter could see Soubrette sitting out on her front porch with a lamp, looking fretfully out into night.

  It felt nice knowing somebody in this world would sit up for her, wondering where she was, was everything all right.

  In her wretched accent, Easter called, “J’arrive!” from the middle of the green.

  Soubrette leapt up. “Easter?” She peered into the blind dark. “I can’t see a thing! Where are you, Easter?”

  Curious that she could see so well, cutting across the grass toward the general store. Easter had told the angels not to without her asking, told them many times, but still she often found herself seeing with cat’s eyes, hearing with dog’s ears, when the angels took a notion. The problem being, folks noticed if you were all the time seeing and hearing what you shouldn’t. But maybe there was no need to go blaming the angels. With no lamp or candle, your eyes naturally opened u
p something amazing, while lights could leave you stone-blind out past your bright spot.

  They screamed, embraced, laughed. Anybody would have said three years, not days, since they’d last seen each other. “Ah, viens ici, toi!” said Soubrette, gently taking Easter’s ruint hand to lead her indoors.

  Knees drawn up on the bed, Easter hugged her legs tightly. She set her face and bit her lip, but tears came anyway. They always did. Soubrette sighed and closed the book in her lap. Very softly Easter murmured, “I like Rebecca most.”

  “Yes!” Soubrette abruptly leaned forward and tapped Easter’s shin. “Rowena is nice too—she is!—but I don’t even care about old Ivanhoe. It just isn’t fair about poor Rebecca…”

  “He really don’t deserve either one of ’em,” Easter said, forgetting her tears in the pleasure of agreement. “That part when Ivanhoe up and changed his mind all of a sudden about Rebecca—do you remember that part? ‘… an inferior race…’ No, I didn’t care for him after that.”

  “Oh yes, Easter, I remember!” Soubrette flipped the book open and paged back through it. “At first he sees Rebecca’s so beautiful, and he likes her, but then all his niceness is ‘… exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race…’ Ivanhoe’s just hateful!” Soubrette lay a hand on Easter’s foot. “Rowena and Rebecca would have been better off without him!”

  Soubrette touched you when she made her points, and she made them in the most hot-blooded way. Easter enjoyed such certainty and fire, but it made her feel bashful too. “You ain’t taking it too far, Soubrette?” she asked softly. “Who would they love without Ivanhoe? It wouldn’t be nobody to, well, kiss.”

  It made something happen in the room, that word kiss. Did the warm night heat up hotter, and the air buzz almost like yellowjackets in a log? One and one made two, so right there you’d seem to have a sufficiency for a kiss, with no lack of anything, anyone. From head to toe Easter knew right where she was, lightly sweating in a thin summer shift on this August night, and she knew right where Soubrette was too, so close that—