The Devil in America Read online

  “Don’t worry none about us,” Pa said. “Just see to your Ma.” He spoke in his voice for hurt animals and children.

  “Charleston?” Old Mrs. Crombie said timidly, the fire and brimstone all gone. “That you?”

  “Oh, Mama. Charlie been dead. White folk hung him back in Richmond, remember? This Nathaniel.”

  Old Mrs. Crombie grunted as if taking a punch—denied the best child in favor of this least and unwanted. “Oh,” she said, “Nathaniel.”

  “Now y’all know she old,” Mr. Crombie raised his voice for the benefit of all those thereabouts. “Don’t go setting too much store by every little thing some old lady just half in her right mind wanna say.”

  Old Mrs. Crombie, muttering, let herself be led away.

  Ma’am stood up, and smiled around at Pa, Mrs. Toussaint, Señor, Soubrette. “Everybody excuse us, please? Me and Easter need to go have us a chat up at the church. No, Wilbur, that’s all right.” She waved Pa back down. “It ain’t nothing but a little lady-business me and the baby need to see to, alone.” When one Mack spoke with head tilted just so, kind of staring at the other one, carefully saying each word, whatever else was being said it really meant old Africa magic. Pa sat down. “And don’t y’all wait, you hear? We might be a little while talking. Girl.” Ma’am held out a hand.

  Hand-in-hand, Ma’am led Easter across the crowded green, across the rutted dirt of the Drive, and up the church steps.

  “Baby child,” Ma’am said. When Easter looked up from her feet, Ma’am’s eyes weren’t angry at all but sad. “If I don’t speak, my babies die,” she said. “And If I do, they catch a fever from what they learn, take up with it, and die anyhow.” As if Jesus hid in some corner, Ma’am looked all around the empty church. The pews and sanctuary upfront, the winter stove in the middle, wood storage closet in back. “Oh, Lord, is there any right way to do this?” She sat Easter at the pew across from the wood-burning stove, and sat herself. “Well, I’m just gon’ to tell you, Easter, and tell everything I know. It’s plain to see that keeping you in the dark won’t help nothing. This here’s what my mama told me. When…”

  * * *

  … they grabbed her pa, over across in Africa land, he got bad hurt. It was smooth on top of his head right here [Ma’am lay a hand on the crown of her head, the left side] and all down the middle of the bare spot was knotted up, nasty skin where they’d cut him terrible. And there, right in the worst of the scar was a—notch? Something like a deep dent in the bone. You could take the tip of your finger, rest it on the skin there, and feel it give, feel no bone, just softness underneath …

  So, you knew him, Ma’am?

  Oh, no. My mama had me old or older than I had you, child, so the grandfolk was dead and gone quite a ways before I showed up. Never did meet him. Well … not to meet in the flesh, I never did. Not alive, like you mean it. But that’s a whole ’nother story, and don’t matter none for what I’m telling you now. The thing I want you to see is how the old knowing, from grandfolk to youngfolk, got broke up into pieces, so in these late days I got nothing left to teach my baby girl. Nothing except, Let that old Africa magic alone. Now he, your great-grandpa, used to oftentimes get down at night like a dog and run around in the dark, and then come on back from the woods before morning, a man again. Might of brought my grandmama a rabbit, some little deer, or just anything he might catch in the night. Anybody sick or lame, or haunted by spirits, you know the ones I mean—folk sunk down and sad all the time, or just always angry, or the people plain out they right mind—he could reach out his hand and brush the trouble off them, easy as I pick some lint out your hair. And a very fine-looking man he was too, tall as anything and just … sweet-natured, I guess you could say. Pleasant. So all the womenfolk loved him. But here’s the thing of it. Because of that hurt on his head, Easter—because of that—he was simple. About the only English he ever spoke was Yeah, mars. And most of the time, things coming out his mouth in the old Africa talk didn’t make no sense, either. But even hurt and simple and without his good sense, he still knew exactly what he was doing. Could get down a dog, and get right back up again being people, being a man, come morning—whenever he felt like it. We can’t, Easter. Like I told you, like I told your brother. All us coming after, it’s just the one way if we get down on four feet. Not never getting up no more. That’s the way I lost three of mine! No. Hush. Set still there and leave me be a minute … So these little bits and pieces I’m telling you right now is every single thing I got from my mama. All she got out of your great grand and the old folk who knew him from back over there. Probably you want to know where the right roots at for this, for that, for everything. Which strong words to say? What’s the best time of day, and proper season? Why the moon pull so funny, and the rain feel so sweet and mean some particular thing but you can’t say what? Teach me, Ma’am, your heart must be saying. But I can’t, Easter, cause it’s gone. Gone for good. They drove us off the path into a wild night, and when morning came we were too turned around, too far from where we started, to ever find our way again. Do you think I was my mama’s onliest? I wasn’t, Easter. Far from it. Same as you ain’t my only child. I’m just the one that lived. The one that didn’t mess around. One older sister, and one younger, I saw them both die awful, Easter. And all your sisters, and your brothers …

  * * *

  Easter stood looking through the open doors of the church on a view of cloudy sky and the town green. The creamy brightness of early afternoon had given way to ashen gray, and the supper crowd was thinning out though many still lingered. Arm dangling, Ma’am leaned over the back of the pew and watched the sky, allowing some peace and quiet for Easter to think.

  And for her part Easter knew she’d learned plenty today from Ma’am about why and where and who, but that she herself certainly understood more about how. In fact Easter was sure of that. She didn’t like having more knowledge than her mother. The thought frightened her. And yet, Ma’am had never faced down and tricked the Devil, had she?

  “Oh, Easter…” Ma’am turned abruptly on the pew “… I clean forgot to tell you, and your Pa asked me to! A bear or mountain lion—something—was in the yard last night. The dog got scratched up pretty bad chasing it off. Durn dog wouldn’t come close, and let me have a proper look-see…”

  Sometimes Ma’am spoke so coldly of Brother that Easter couldn’t stand it. Anxiously she said, “Is he hurt bad?”

  “Well, not so bad he couldn’t run and hide as good as always. But something took a mean swipe across the side of him, and them cuts weren’t pretty to see. Must of been a bear. I can’t see what else could of gave that dog, big as he is, such a hard time. The barking and racket, last night! You would of thought the Devil himself was out there in the yard! But, Easter, set down here. Your mama wants you to set down right here with me now for a minute.”

  Folks took this tone, so gently taking your hand, only when about to deliver the worst news. Easter tried to brace herself. Just now, she’d seen everybody out on the green. So who could have died?

  “I know you loved that mean old bird,” Ma’am said. “Heaven knows why. But the thing in the yard last night broke open the coop, and got in with the chickens. The funniest thing…” Ma’am shook her head in wonder. “It didn’t touch nah bird except Sadie.” Ma’am hugged Easter to her side, eyes full of concern. “But, Easter—I’m sorry—it tore old Sadie to pieces.”

  Easter broke free of Ma’am’s grasp, stood up, blind for one instant of panic. Then she sat down again, feeling nothing. She felt only tired. “You done told me this, that, and the other thing”—Easter hung her head sleepily, speaking in a dull voice—“but why didn’t you never say the one thing I really wanted to know?”

  “And what’s that, baby child?”

  Easter looked up, smiled, and said in a brand new voice, “Who slept on the pull-out cot?”

  Her mother hunched over as if socked in the belly. “What?” Ma’am whispered. “What did you just ask me?”
r />   Easter moved over on the pew close enough to lay a kiss in her mother’s cheek or lips. This smile tasted richer than cake, and this confidence, just as rich. “Was it Brother Freddie slept on the pull-out cot, Hazel Mae? Was it him?” Easter said, and brushed Ma’am’s cheek with gentle fingertips. “Or was it you? Or was it sometimes him, and sometimes you?”

  At that touch, Ma’am had reared back so violently she’d lost her seat—fallen to the floor into the narrow gap between pews.

  Feeling almighty, Easter leaned over her mother struggling dazed on the ground, wedged in narrow space. “…ooOOoo…” Easter whistled in nasty speculation. “Now here’s what I really want to know. Was it ever nobody on that pull-out cot, Hazel Mae? Just nobody atall?”

  Ma’am ignored her. She was reaching a hand down into the bosom of her dress, rooting around as if for a hidden dollarbill.

  Easter extended middle and forefingers. She made a circle with thumb and index of the other hand, and then vigorously thrust the hoop up and down the upright fingers. “Two peckers and one cunt, Hazel Mae—did that ever happen?”

  As soon as she saw the strands of old beads, though, yellow-brownish as ancient teeth, which Ma’am pulled up out of her dress, lifted off her neck, the wonderful sureness, this wonderful strength, left Easter. She’d have turned and fled in fact, but could hardly manage to scoot away on the pew, so feeble and stiff and cold her body felt. She spat out hot malice while she could, shouting.

  “One, two, three, four!” Easter staggered up from the end of the pew as Ma’am gained her feet. “And we even tricked that clever Freddie of yours, too. Thinking he was so smart. Won’t never do you any good swearing off the old Africa magic, Hazel Mae! Cause just you watch, we gon’ get this last one too! All of yours—”

  Ma’am slung the looped beads around Easter’s neck, and falling to her knees she vomited up a vast supper with wrenching violence. When Easter opened her tightly clenched eyes, through blurry tears she saw, shiny and black in the middle of puddling pink mess, a snake thick as her own arm, much longer. She shrieked in terror, kicking backwards on the ground. Faster than anybody could run, the monstrous snake shot off down the aisle between the pews, and out into the gray brightness past the open church doors. Easter looked up and saw Ma’am standing just a few steps away. Her mother seemed more shaken than Easter had ever seen her. “Ma’am?” she said. “I’m scared. What’s wrong? I don’t feel good. What’s this?” Easter began to lift off the strange beads looped so heavily round her neck.

  At once Ma’am knelt on the ground beside her. “You just leave those right where they at,” she said. “Your great grand brought these over with him. Don’t you never take ’em off. Not even to wash up.” Ma’am scooped hands under Easter’s arms, helping her up to sit at the end of a pew. “Just wait here a minute. Let me go fill the wash bucket with water for this mess. You think on what all you got to tell me.” Ma’am went out and came back. With a wet rag, she got down on her knees by the reeking puddle. “Well, go on, girl. Tell me. All this about Sadie. It’s something do with the old Africa magic, ain’t it?”

  * * *

  The last angel supped at Easter’s hand, half-cut-off, and then lit away. Finally the blood began to gush forth and she swooned.*

  *Weird, son. Definitely some disturbing writing in this section. But overarching theme = a people bereft, no? Dispossessed even of cultural patrimony? Might consider then how to represent this in the narrative structure. Maybe just omit how Easter learns to trick the Devil into the chicken? Deny the reader that knowledge as Easter’s been denied so much. If you do, leave a paragraph, or even just a sentence, literalizing the “Fragments of History.” Terrible title, by the way; reconsider.

  —Dad

  People presently dwelling in the path of hurricanes, those who lack the recourse of flight, hunker behind fortified windows and hope that this one too shall pass them lightly over. So, for centuries, were the options of the blacks vis-à-vis white rage. Either flee, or pray that the worst might strike elsewhere: once roused, such terror and rapine as whites could wreak would not otherwise be checked. But of course those living in the storm zones know that the big one always does hit sooner or later. And much worse for the blacks of that era, one bad element or many bad influences—‘the Devil,’ as it were—might attract to an individual, a family, or even an entire town, the landfall of a veritable hurricane.

  White Devils/Black Devils, Luisa Valéria da Silva y Rodríguez

  1877 August 24

  There came to the ears of mother and daughter a great noise from out on the green, the people calling one to another in surprise, and then with many horses’ hooves and crack upon crack of rifles, the thunder spoke, surely as the thunder had spoken before at Gettysburg or Shiloh. Calls of shock and wonder became now cries of terror and dying. They could hear those alive and afoot run away, and hear the horsemen who pursued them, with many smaller cracks of pistols. There! shouted white men to each other, That one there running! Some only made grunts of effort, as when a woodsman embeds his axe head and heaves it out of the wood again—such grunts. Phrases or wordless sound, the whiteness could be heard in the voices, essential and unmistakable.

  Easter couldn’t understand this noise at first, except that she should be afraid. It seemed that from the thunder’s first rumble Ma’am grasped the whole of it, as if she had lived through precisely this before and perhaps many times. Clapping a hand over Easter’s mouth, Ma’am said, “Hush,” and got them both up and climbing over the pews from this one to the one behind, keeping always out-of-view of the doors. At the back of the church, to the right of the doors, was a closet where men stored the cut wood burned by the stove in winter. In dimness—that closet, very tight—they pressed themselves opposite the wall stacked with quartered logs, and squeezed back into the furthest corner. There, with speed and strength, Ma’am unstacked wood, palmed the top of Easter’s head, and pressed her down to crouching in the dusty dark. Ma’am put the wood back again until Easter herself didn’t know where she was. “You don’t move from here,” Ma’am said. “Don’t come at nobody’s call but mine.” Easter was beyond thought by then, weeping silently since Ma’am had hissed, “Shut your mouth!” and shaken her once hard.

  Easter nudged aside a log and clutched at the hem of her mother’s skirt, but Ma’am pulled free and left her. From the first shot, not a single moment followed free of wails of desperation, or the shriller screams of those shot and bayoneted.

  Footfalls, outside—some child running past the church, crying with terror. Easter heard a white man shout, There go one! and heard horse’s hooves in heavy pursuit down the dirt of the Drive. She learned the noises peculiar to a horseman running down a child. Foreshortened last scream, pop of bones, pulped flesh, laughter from on high. To hear something clearly enough, if it was bad enough, was the same as seeing. Easter bit at her own arm as if that could blunt vision and hearing.

  Hey there, baby child, whispered a familiar voice. Won’t you come out from there? I got something real nice for you just outside. No longer the voice of the kindly spoken Johnny Reb, this was a serpentine lisp—and yet she knew them for one and the same and the Devil. Yeah, come on out, Easter. Come see what all special I got for you. Jump up flailing, run away screaming—Easter could think of nothing else, and the last strands of her tolerance and good sense began to fray and snap. That voice went on whispering and Easter choked on sobs, biting at her forearm.

  Some girl screamed nearby. It could have been any girl in Rosetree, screaming, but the whisperer snickered, Soubrette. I got her!

  Easter lunged up, and striking aside logs, she fought her way senselessly with scraped knuckles and stubbed toes from the closet, on out of the church into gray daylight.

  If when the show has come and gone, not only paper refuse and cast-off food but the whole happy crowd, shot dead, remained behind and littered the grass, then Rosetree’s green looked like some fairground, the day after.

  Through the b
ushes next door to the church Easter saw Mr. Henry, woken tardily from a nap, thump with his cane out onto the porch, and from the far side of the house a white man walking shot him dead. Making not even a moan old Mr. Henry toppled over and his walking stick rolled to porch’s edge and off into roses. About eight o’clock on the Drive, flames had engulfed the general store so it seemed a giant face of fire, the upstairs windows two dark eyes, and downstairs someone ran out of the flaming mouth. That shadow in the brightness had been Mrs. Toussaint, so slim and short in just such skirts, withering now under a fiery scourge that leapt around her, then up from her when she fell down burning. The Toussaints kept no animals in the lot beside the general store and it was all grown up with tall grass and wildflowers over there. Up from those weeds, a noise of hellish suffering poured from the ground, where some young woman lay unseen and screamed while one white man with dropped pants and white ass out stood afoot in the weeds and laughed, and some other, unseen on the ground, grunted piggishly in between shouted curses. People lay everywhere bloodied and fallen, so many dead, but Easter saw her father somehow alive out on the town green, right in the midst of the bodies just kneeling there in the grass, his head cocked to one side, chin down, as if puzzling over some problem. She ran to him calling Pa Pa Pa but up close she saw a red dribble down his face from the forehead where there was a deep ugly hole. Though they were sad and open his eyes slept no they were dead. To cry hard enough knocks a body down, and harder still needs both hands flat to the earth to get the grief out.

  In the waist-high corn, horses took off galloping at the near end of the Parks’ field. At the far end Mrs. Park ran with the baby Gideon Park, Jr. in her arms and the little girl Agnes following behind, head hardly above corn, shouting Wait Mama wait, going as fast as her legs could, but just a little girl, about four maybe five. Wholeheartedly wishing they’d make it to the backwood trees all right, Easter could see as plain as day those white men on horses would catch them first. So strenuous were her prayers for Mrs. Park and Agnes, she had to hush up weeping. Then a couple white men caught sight of Easter out on the green, just kneeling there—some strange survivor amidst such thorough and careful murder. With red bayonets, they trotted out on the grass toward her. Easter stood up meaning to say, or even beginning to, polite words about how the white men should leave Rosetree now, about the awful mistake they’d made. But the skinnier man got out in front of the other, running, and hauled back with such obvious intent on his rifle with that lengthy knife attached to it, Easter’s legs wouldn’t hold her. Suddenly kneeling again, she saw her mother standing right next to the crabapple stump. Dress torn, face sooty, in stocking feet, Ma’am got smack in the white men’s way. That running man tried to change course but couldn’t fast enough. He came full-on into the two-handed stroke of Ma’am’s axe.