A Southern Place (20 page)

After a month of such activity she went back to her usual solitary living. Convinced of his sister’s innocence yet relieved that she seemed to have at least some kind of social life, Calvin asked questions but didn’t worry. Delores knew what he was thinking; he often teased her about being obsessed with what other people thought. In his eyes, she was way too socially conscious to ever let herself be caught in a compromising position.

With any luck, Delores hoped to keep her news a secret from Cal until time to move into his new house. Though she knew it would break her brother’s heart, she assured herself that a clean break was the best course for all of them. She continued working at the factory, saving her money and planning for the new family she and her baby would become.

Delores cried often, but only at night, when she was alone. She cried for her mother, her lost dreams, the child who would never know a father. She cried for Cal, who pretended life was one big party, drinking to fill the void. Delores knew her brother was lost, afraid, and without direction. She had always believed she could help her brother through the horrible patch of bad luck he’d been dealt, but right now she just couldn’t. She had problems enough of her own.

If she moved in with her brother, he’d never find himself again. Cal’s present living conditions wouldn’t do for raising a baby, but if he straightened up just to take care of her, Delores knew he’d become an old man overnight. Cal needed to work and find a good woman and get on with his future.

By the time she was showing, Delores had made peace with herself, actually looking forward to the little one who would share her home.
The Lord never puts on you more than you can bear
, her Mama’d always said. Delores didn’t have a lot, but she had much more than some folks. She could feed and clothe and love this baby, and they’d get on just fine.

Hopefully, Cal would find a bright spot to hold onto as well.

Her plans were made, she found a place to live, made a budget she could get by on, and sketched out the next year or two of her new routine.
It ain’t perfect by any means,
she thought,
but at least I’m moving forward.

It was a typical Friday night; the usual Nolan regulars quietly celebrating a weekly paycheck with their presence at the Sundown. A few decent tippers early in the night gave Delores a faint glow of happiness as she calculated the nest egg she was trying to accumulate. Mr. Hall had left her to close again, and though the place was nearly deserted by midnight, it had been a decent night altogether.

A queer feeling nudged the pit of her stomach as she pulled her mama’s old Chevy into a parking space outside their apartment, right next to Cal’s truck. A single lamp shined through their window, and she couldn’t see much else through the half-closed Venetian blinds.

Cal’s home this early on a weekend,
she thought,
and alone? Maybe he’s feeling under the weather, or else—maybe he just left his truck here.
She was constantly after him about securing a designated driver for his weekend party nights; perhaps he was finally listening. Still, she couldn’t shake her queasiness as she climbed the front steps and opened the door.

Cal sat rigidly behind a half-empty gallon of Jim Beam. He looked at her with eyes that cut her to the core, then he drained the remaining liquid in his mason jar and set it beside the bottle.

“Good night at the Sundown?” he asked, his eyes reddened and his face glistening with perspiration. “Or did you even go there tonight? Seems I don’t know much about where you’re hanging out these days, or what you’re doing either.” He reached for the bottle, opened it, half-filled the glass, and drank it down in one gulp. He slammed the glass down so loudly Delores jumped.

“Slow down, Cal,” she said. “It’s not going anywhere, and besides, you’re still on meds that may not mix too well with straight liquor.”

“I don’t need advice from my baby sister, especially when she can’t seem to use good judgment in her own
life, let alone for anybody else’s.”

Delores remained standing in her wintry jacket, holding her purse. She knew the time of truth had come, but stayed caught in a moment where time stood still.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Sis?” he said, tears in his eyes. “Were you ever gonna tell me, or were you just waiting ’til everybody in town knew, or ’til I could see it for myself?” He wiped his hand at his face, averting the path of his tears under the loose pretense of pushing hair from his eyes or wiping away sweat.

“Cal, I never meant to—”

“We’re family, Sis,” he cried. “I’m the only family you got now. Did you think I wouldn’t help you, wouldn’t be there to—”

“It wasn’t like that, Cal.” Now she was crying, too, her voice racked with sobs as she subconsciously clutched at her abdomen. “I wanted
to tell you, I needed you so bad, but I was so ashamed, and—”

“Who is it? Where
is
the sonofabitch, and what is he planning on doing here?” Her brother sounded more wounded than hellfire-like mad.

Maybe I can calm him down,
she thought,
get him focused on having more family and not so much on where the baby came from.
“I let them down, Cal,” she said, sniffling loudly to pull back the head full of wet mucus that threatened to escape her nose and flood the room. “Mama and Daddy; they taught me right from wrong, and I’ve been a good girl, always, and then suddenly, I wasn’t. It just happened. It didn’t
feel
like it was wrong, and it happened so fast, I–I—”

“Accidents happen, Sis, and nobody’d believe you were anything but a good girl with unlucky timing. A helluva lot of good marriages start out the same way. But why are you waiting so long? When are you planning on—”

Okay
, Delores thought.
This is definitely going the wrong way, and going there fast. I’ve gotta stop him before—
“No, Calvin, it’s not like that.” Delores raised her hand like a traffic cop, stopping her brother in mid-sentence. A moment of dead silence filled the room with the severity of an oncoming train.

“Well, little sister,” Cal finally said. “If it’s not like that, then pray tell, what exactly is it like?”

Delores chose her words carefully. She set down her purse and unbuttoned her jacket.

“I’m waiting,” Cal said through clenched teeth. Never taking his eyes from his sister, he reached for the bottle, refilled the mason jar, then replaced the lid onto the bottle. He picked up his glass and took a long draw. When he set it back down, Delores spoke.

“I won’t be getting married, at least not now. It wasn’t that kind of relationship.” She removed her coat and hung it on the hook beside the door. Her gaunt face was now void of color, but her words were delivered evenly, if with a slight quiver.

“Well, well,” said Cal. “Then what kind of relationship was it?”

Delores could hear his teeth grinding from across the room. She continued to look downward, saying nothing.

“Speak up, Sis,” he said. “Cat gotcha tongue? Surely a young woman of such mature relationships can shed a little light on the subject. Tell me all about this
relationship.
” With sarcasm, he used his one good hand in an exaggerated gesture of quotation marks.

Delores remained silent, still looking at the apartment floor.

“I guess it’d be too old-fashioned to call him your boyfriend, right? Besides, I haven’t seen any I.D. bracelet or class ring or anything.”

Delores said nothing.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m almost glad Mama’s gone. I’d rather remember her in that silver casket than imagine her finding out her own damn daughter’s nothing more than what she’d call a Jezebel. And what Daddy’d call a streetwalking whore.”

Delores ran to the bedroom, slamming and locking the door. She fell to the bed, using her pillow to stifle her own sobs, but her brother was just getting wound up, screaming outside her door.

“Did he leave you money, or were you too cheap for even that? He was at least white, wasn’t he?”

Though his voice had risen to a fevered pitch, it cracked in obvious pain on the last word. That’s when Delores heard the sound of his knees hitting the floor and then his body crumpling against the hollow door. He snuffled, attempted to clear his throat of bubbling mucous, and let out a slow, nasal whine.

It was a sound unlike any she’d heard before—more pleading than the baby goats just separated from their mothers, more painful than the young bulls who’d been reduced to steers by way of a sharp knife. It was the sound of the one person she loved more than anyone else on earth reduced to a helpless, whimpering child, because of what she had done.

Delores sobbed along with him, quietly, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking silently on her childhood bed. Finally, she stood and walked to the door, opening it slowly lest her brother might fall, then lowering herself to the floor.

She wrapped her arms about his shoulders as he did the same to hers. They held on, rocked, and cried some more, never noticing the mixture of tears, sweat, slobber, and snot they shared against their necks, their faces, their hair. With closed eyes she wondered if they silently watched a snapshot montage, one of the same and different moments that had made them a family. For minutes or hours or perhaps half the night Delores embraced that family—those already gone, leaving, and yet to come.

She knew the harsh words were not finished and that unanswered questions would continue to bring pain, but she could at least relish the gift of this temporary cease-fire. And she could continue to remind herself; that any moment to love and feel love in return was indeed a treasure.

Chapter 13: March 1959

Calvin

By moving day, things had changed considerably. Cal took the last of his boxed items away from the apartment, leaving Delores, who had finally gotten it across to Calvin that she would not be moving to the house on stilts. She claimed to be happy, and she was determined to make her own way. Calvin agreed to table the argument, for the time being.

“Like Mama always said,” Delores had explained, “I’ve made my bed, now I got to lie in it.” She turned the corners of her mouth in a smirk, but Cal saw her quick shiver. The Mullinax family was poor but proud, and as far as they knew, there’d been no babies born out of wedlock before now.

“You do what you gotta do, Sis, nothing wrong with that. But can’t you lie in your bed in our new house just as good as you can anywhere else? It’s your house, too, Delores, and the little critter’s, if you’ll just let it be.”

“You know I appreciate it all, but I did this to myself, and I’ve got to stand on my own two feet. There’s a project house going vacant next month, where I can walk to the factory in ten minutes and to The Sundown in less. Imogene Etheridge’s mama keeps kids in a house two doors away. I can make this work, and I have to. I have to make it right.”

She seemed to have thought things through and it was Cal’s last intention to upset her, but something just didn’t set right. Her ideas were all out of whack, it was like she was sentencing herself to purgatory for a crime she didn’t commit. And he couldn’t simply stand by and watch.

“Yeah, but you sure as hell didn’t do it to yourself, either, like you claim. Where’s his part in all this? Is he gonna be there for you? Is this a ploy to give ya’ll the time to work things out, get things together for a more permanent situation? Is this—”

“Cal, I don’t—”

“Is he at least helpin’ you out, tiding you over,” Cal’s speech became louder and faster, “while he gets his sorry ass in gear? Does he even have a damned plan? Where the hell
is
he?”

Delores stared at her shoes.

“Well?” Calvin asked.

Finally, Delores took a deep breath and said, “He’s not around, he’s not helping out, he doesn’t know about it. I wouldn’t tell him if I could, it was a one night mistake, and I won’t make things worse by adding him into an already messed up equation.”

“What do you mean, ‘you wouldn’t tell him if you could’?”

Delores swallowed hard, pushed a loose strand of hair away from her face, and cocked a hand on her hip. “I never even knew his damned name.”

Cal sniffled, feeling his nose run and wiping it on his sleeve. “Damned cold,” he muttered. “I don’t believe you, but I know when you get this pig-headed about anything, you won’t let go ’til lightning strikes, so I’ll let up on you for now. But it just ain’t right—”

“Calvin—” she said, sounding like their Mama coming back from the grave.

“Okay, Sis, I’ll let it be for now. But don’t think I won’t stay on you ’bout moving in with me. This is my family, too. We’re all we got left, and your little critter is gonna know his Uncle Cal, hell or high water.”

“What makes you so sure it’s a boy?”

“Boy or girl, I don’t care. Your kid is my family, no matter who the no-account, sorry-ass, good-for-nothing—”

“You
said
you were letting up on me. Could you leave it at that?”

Cal sighed. “I guess so, but I’ll be back. I’ll keep comin’ back til I talk some sense into your pony-tailed head.” He hugged his sister with his good arm, sliding the metal hook through the elastic band that held back her hair.

“Gottcha!” he said, sporting a blue and gold circle around the tip of his mechanical claw.

❦

Cal kept trying, but Delores never gave in, and Calvin’s home remained a bachelor’s quarters. Delores stayed at Mrs. Short’s another month, then Cal helped take her few belongings to the project house.

“Are you sure you’re sposed to be moving in today? There’s still some stuff left here,” Cal called from the back bedroom. “Looks brand new.”

Following the sound of his voice, Delores stood in the doorway with her mouth hanging open. A crib sat in front of the window, a light shade of oak and outfitted in yellow ruffles and blankets. A brown teddy bear sporting a green bow tie sat in the middle. In the corner was a rocker—their mother’s rocker that Cal had previously taken to his own place.

“The folks at the store said yellow worked for girls and boys. And that little chest,” Cal pointed beside the crib, “was in the back room at the home place. I think Mama used it to keep her sewing things.”

“She did,” Delores said, walking over and rubbing her hand over its top. “The first drawer had the button tin and cigar boxes of bobbins and thread.”

“Mosta the thread looked rotten, and I’m afraid there was evidence of a mouse or two camping out there. The dress patterns were pretty nasty. I burned most of it, you can’t be too careful about germs around a baby, you know.”

Delores smiled at her brother.

“I scoured it out good, fixed the bad bottom in the third drawer, then stained it near’s I could to the color of the crib. Hardware’s new, too. I wanted to fill it up with little clothes, but I figured I’d need your help in that department. Found a used high chair, too, gonna fix it up for you, any color you want, maybe paint his—or her—name on it, but I guess you won’t need the chair at first.”

He reached into the middle drawer and pulled out a shiny fruitcake tin, rusted in places, but clean as a whistle. Calvin shook it for effect, making a full, clanking sound. “A blast from the past,” he said.

Delores wrapped her arms around him, squeezing tight as she cried into his shoulder. “I love you, Cal,” she said.

Cal jerked back and looked at her. “This is supposed to be a happy day, what’s this crying for?”

“I
am
happy, Cal,” she said, “happier than I ever thought I could be, under the circumstances. I’m happy I got this place, and that I don’t have to be a leech and live off you. I’m happy I’ve got a crazy brother that knows more than I ever dreamed about babies and stuff like that. I’m ever so happy you found Mama’s button tin. And I’m happy that you still love me, and that we’ve got each other, no matter what. Maybe things
can
get better, maybe we might do all right yet!”

It was the first time she’d let on to Cal how much she worried about where her life was taking her. “Things’ll get better, Baby Sister, you can bet your sweet little ass it will,” he said. “Mama’d be damned proud of you, girl, you’re a woman who can take care of herself.” Cal put his calloused hand on her cheek. “She’d be damned proud,” he repeated. “But if you ever change your mind and want me to find the sorry, low-life—”

“Not now, Cal. Today can it just be us?” She placed her own thin hand over the hand on her face.

“Sure, Sis, sure,” he said. “Today, in my baby sister’s first home of her own, there’s just the three of us.”

❦

The house on stilts was everything Cal had hoped it would be, and being out-of-work gave him plenty of time to add the finishing touches and do them right. The pale oak floors were nice, but a little too pristine; sanding and adding a dark stain gave the whole place a richer, more masculine feel. He used an even darker stain on the outside stairs, covering it with several coats of creosote and then polyurethane. Deciding he didn’t like the too-shiny metallic finish of the gold knobs and hinges on his cabinets, he carefully took them off and repainted them with flat paint, then rubbed them with black to simulate an antique patina.

He chose furniture with care, traveling to Albany, Tallahassee, and Dothan where he checked out the stores, then left to compare prices and mull over what he wanted. After weeks of deliberation, he ended up with a few well-chosen pieces that seemed made for the place. His house had become a home; in the kitchen he hung his mother’s iron skillets, in the living room, his father’s guns, and over the bed, his parent’s wedding picture. He bought a second dog and acquired a cat. After scouring miles of woodland along the riverbanks, he filled his little yard with native plants and river rock.

There was nothing else to do but find a job, and Calvin was ready.

Oakland was still the county’s largest employer of farm labor, but Cal had cut his ties there and had no desire to go back. Ichauway Plantation, in the far south of the county and owned by “the Coca-Cola Woodruffs,” was the largest farm in acreage, though nearly half of it was kept as a game preserve and not farmed at all. Pine Bloom and Tarver Plantations bordered Oakland; actually more industrial farms than plantations in the literal sense.

After talking with his friend Mr. Danner, the county extension agent, Cal prepared a simple resume of his farming experience and hand-delivered copies to the larger farms in the county. Mr. Danner also took a folder of copies and kept them in his truck, sharing them with any of the smaller farming operations who might be interested, and promised to keep an eye out for any job possibilities in the area.

Always outgoing and personable, Cal took his job hunt seriously, looking his “farming best” and taking the time to talk to every prospective employer he could find, even those not currently looking to hire. Remembering the things he admired about Mr. Danner, he spoke clearly, complimented each man’s current operations, and tried to use casual conversation to show his extensive farming knowledge without seeming a know-it-all. Because many of the older farmers still believed in practices he and Mr. Danner found comical, Cal nodded, smiled and let them assume he was also schooled in following the almanac and planting with the phases of the moon. Cal knew that those who owned their own land, no matter how small their acreage or allotments, had the upper hand. He could be obedient and comply with those in charge, and who knows, maybe he’d find a way to educate
them
, and they could all profit from working together. It had worked for Mr. Danner, maybe it would work for him, too.

But as time moved on, it seemed that nothing worked; it was as if Cal had somehow been cursed or blackballed before he set foot on any farm, big or small.

“A very nice resume, Mr. Mullinax,” the Ichuaway overseer had said, standing outside and extending his hand to Cal’s good one, awkwardly. He glanced quickly over the paper, almost as a formality, as if he knew everything on it before Cal showed up. “We’re not hiring anyone at this time, I’m afraid, but will certainly keep this on file. You never know when things’ll change. Good luck with your job hunting.”

As if dismissing Cal, he turned and walked away, heading into a small building labeled “office.”

You’d think a farm big enough to have an office would do its interviewing in one,
Cal thought as he plodded back to his truck.

Trying to hide his disappointment, he stopped himself from spinning off in the loose gravel of the parking area. Though he’d only been on the plantation a few times, Cal had always admired its massive entrance gates, acres of green fields surrounded by humongous oaks, and bright red barns worthy of calendar prints. A boy in grade school had told him there was a cemetery for bird dogs, with real marble headstones bearing pictures of the deceased canines. The boy had also said that cats were not allowed there, since Ichuaway was a “bird sanctuary,” whatever that meant. Cal wondered if these ideas were truth or legend.

“Guess I’ll never know,” Cal said aloud, turning on Highway 91 and heading back towards Nolan.

At Nilo, Pine Bloom, and Tarver, Cal was received the same way, only less formally. The overseers were usually working and had to be hunted up or waited for, had no use for the conversational banter he’d prepared, and took his typed white paper with dirt-crusted hands, barely glancing before laying it aside. No one was hiring, and they all said they’d get back to him later, none of them sounding as though they would.

In less than two weeks, Cal had been to every farm in the county and was following the few outside leads Mr. Danner had suggested. Everyone was cordial, and no one was hiring. They made it sound final, like there were no plans to hire in the future, either. Like the farming community would forever remain the same as it was, that day in 1959.

A few of the smaller farmers ventured to ask a few questions about his injury and the hook he now wore.

“You kin drive a tractor with that thang?” asked Enoch Tabb, the seventy-year-old corn and barley farmer who still kept a team of mules, “just in case.”

“Yes, sir,” Cal said. “Took me a while to get re-adjusted, but I spent some time out at Mr. Danner’s, and we got it figured out. Can drive a combine, change implements, do pretty much what I did before, just look a little funnier doing it. And it actually helps me with moving cows—some of ’em think it’s a cattle prod, and pick up the pace a little when they see me coming.”

Mr. Tabb did not seem amused. “Well, ain’t it dangerous? If that thang got hung on something, it’d have to pull your whole shoulder off now, wouldn’t it?”

“First of all, sir, I’m pretty careful about how I use the hook, and I don’t see much of a chance of that sort of thing happening. But the truth is, if the hook got caught on something, I would simply release it from its holster, and I’d still be here, unattached. In that way, I guess you could say it’s safer than a real arm.”

Mr. Tabb shook his head and spat into the dry ground below. “Still,” he said, “you got hurt, got hurt bad, when you was working at Oakland. I feel for you, I do. Shouldn’t a happened to no man, bless your heart.” He scratched at the dirt with his foot, looking downward, away from Cal. “But I hear tell they paid you a pretty penny for your troubles. You get hurt here, I couldn’t afford to help you out the way they did. This little ninety acres is all I got. I was looking to maybe take on another’n to help out here, but I’m sorry, son.” He looked up. “I just can’t afford the risk. I’ve gotten along this long without no help, I reckon I’ll keep going. But I wish you the best. Have you thought about trying in town? Maybe at the gin or the peanut mill? It’s only seasonal, but it’s probably as much as you need, not having a family or nothing. And a lot safer, I’d think. You don’t want hurt yourself, there.”

Mr. Tabb turned and walked under his pole shed, puttering with an old plow, leaving Cal standing alone in the bright sunlight.

Cal thought about following him, pleading further, but it was no use. Cal knew men like Enoch Tabb: once their mind was set, there was no sense in arguing with them. He headed back to his truck, forgoing the next two farmers on his list, and heading home. He knew the only open arms he’d find today were those of Old Crow.

Cal continued to look for work, but less often, with less vigor, and some days not at all. Evenings, he collected a menagerie of fair weather friends whose sole purpose in life was to get more wasted than the night before. Yet this was not Cal’s life, he could stop when he wanted, and often did. It was only after long spells of hopelessness that he engaged in such reckless behavior, and besides, who cared?

When there seemed to be no need for farm labor in Dumas, Mitchell, Early, Calhoun, or Miller counties, Cal decided to take matters into his own hands. In his treks through the countryside, he had seen several small acreages going fallow, and decided to investigate.