Authors: Ellen Gilchrist
T
he river was smooth and fast-moving because it had rained the night before. The storm had come in from the north and knocked down power lines all the way from Greenville to the Grace Post Office. It was 1944, and people knew what to do when that happened.
Even before the lights went out, Jimmy's great-grandmother got out six lanterns and set them in a line on the dining room table. She filled them with oil and lit them with long matches carved out of fat pine.
Jimmy took cushions from the porch furniture and carried them into the front hall and then stood with his grandfather in the door to watch the rain watering the fields. They needed a new roof for the house. If the cotton made, they could buy asphalt shingles. If not, they would patch the roofs with long, flat tiles made of cypress. Jimmy had helped fell the big cypress tree they cut last summer. He had heard it fall and felt the soft delta earth shake beneath his feet as it did.
The night's rain had been enough to fill the river above which he was standing now, on the long silver bridge built by the WPA. Before the bridge was built you had to drive all the way around three plantations to get to Mayersville. Before it was built Jimmy's grandfather had to stand on his side and their neighbor, Mr. Anderson, stood on his and they yelled news to one another. Now they just went across the bridge to get to the Andersons' place or to Esperanza or Grace or on to Greenville.
JIMMY WAS ON
the bridge with his cousins and the Anderson boys and their cousins. The river was deep and clear and fast-moving. Safe to jump. After you jumped from the bridge you could swim downstream to the pier at the store and climb up the ladder and shake the water from your hands and watch it fall in diamond shatters in the sun. You could wave to the bridge and watch the next boy jump. You could watch him hesitate and gather his courage and then leap into the air.
It was summer and the rains had come, and there were enough boys on the two plantations to have baseball games in the pasture in the late afternoons and cut open watermelons and run races on the flat brown road and watch to see if the girls from Esperanza would come walking down the road in their blue and pink and yellow dresses. Sometimes, in daydreams, Jimmy would reach out and touch the dresses. When he was fifteen, he would go to cotillion dances and put his arms around a girl, but not yet. Although he had danced with Cecelia Alford at a wedding when he carried the ring and she was the flower girl. Her dress had felt stiff and fluffy, but underneath, her body was as soft as a flower and as alive and wild as his.
He didn't have to worry about Cecelia Alford now. All he had to do was stand on the bridge and wait for his turn to jump.
“What if you hit an alligator?” Jodie Myers whispered to him. Jodie was only ten years old. He said anything he thought up.
“What if I did?” Jimmy answered.
“You'd crack open your head.”
“I would not. I'd knock that old gator to hell and back. Besides, there are no alligators in this river. Danny said so.”
“There're snakes and gars.”
“Then don't jump if you're afraid,” Jimmy said. “But don't talk to me anymore. I'm thinking.”
“About what?”
“About Cecelia Alford is what. I'm learning how to dance so I can dance with her. Miss Bodie is teaching me. I'm going to ask her if she wants to be in love.”
“With which one? Miss Bodie or Miss Cecelia?”
“With both of them if I want to be. Go on, move up, it's almost your turn. And don't do any silly stuff. Just jump off and get out of my way.”
Jodie stepped onto the pole in the center of the bridge and climbed halfway up and jumped into the river. It was an unremarkable jump but everyone cheered and clapped.
Jimmy climbed the pole. He climbed almost to the top, then hesitated. He looked down the road and saw the very edge of a blue and white dress with a white sash. It was Cecelia and her sister. Jimmy tore his eyes away and climbed to the top rung and spread his arms and dove into the river without looking. He sprang into the air and bent his body and dove. He was afraid of nothing and would have no need to be for many years.
When he surfaced he looked up at the bridge. The girls had come almost to the center and were looking down. Their tutor was with them, a young man from Ole Miss who played on the Ole Miss baseball team. He smiled and waved at Jimmy. Jimmy raised a hand and waved back, looking only at the tutor while he did. Then he stretched out his long, thin body and swam a perfect Australian crawl all the way to the pier at the store.
When he pulled himself up the ladder he turned his back to the bridge and walked into the store to borrow a shirt from his uncle. He didn't want Cecelia looking at his bony arms and chest. His uncle gave him an old white cotton shirt without asking why he wanted it. His uncle never asked questions.
“THIS RIVER RUNS
into the Mississippi both underground and above ground,” the tutor was saying to the crowd gathered around him at the edge of the bridge. “It's a meandering bayou, but down here it becomes a river. We're lucky to have it near so we can study the waterways of our county. I grew up in Yazoo City, and we used to go out on field trips to see how the Yazoo turns and curves and falls toward the Mississippi. Here we can see it right in our front yards.”
Cecelia looked up at Jimmy and smiled without taking her eyes from him. She was a bold girl and always let him know she was glad he was there. It was all there, for anyone to see.
He took a deep breath, then walked to her side and looked down to where her hand lay on the cotton gingham of her white and blue dress. He started to reach out and take her hand. She would have let him. She might even be the one to do it. “We're going to have a watermelon party this afternoon,” she said. “We came over to invite you all to come.”
“What time?” he asked.
“At five o'clock,” she said. “My uncles are going to demonstrate their new crop duster. We can watch them from the backyard.”
“I'll be there,” Jimmy said. “The river is so deep now,” he added.
“I saw you jump,” she said. “I wouldn't jump off that bridge for all the tea in China. I don't know why you all want to jump into the water.”
“It's fun,” he said. “When you're in the air it's really fun. And swimming to the pier with the river pushing you. It's like sailing in the water.”
“Mr. Jenkins is drawing maps of the waterways near us,” she said. “Come and look at what he's doing.”
They walked over to the flattened rock where the tutor was drawing a sketch of the waterways of Issaquena County. He was a good draftsman and the map was clear and easy to read.
“We could take skiffs and go down these waters,” he was saying. “But we'd have to get off before we get to the Mississippi. The Mississippi is a great drain. It would suck a small boat in. There are tides and eddies that change all the time.”
Jimmy wanted to say something to Cecelia but he didn't know how. He just kept on standing next to her wondering what it would be like to touch her hair. Her sun-filled hair that shone and moved in the slightest breeze and gave the world purpose and excitement and danger.
1975
It was an afternoon party in a house near Millsaps College, in Jackson. Jodie Myers was running for the Senate and had to be in Jackson for Democratic fund-raisers. He was forty-five years old and had decided to spend the rest of his life in public service. He had hired a manager to run his plantation and had thrown himself into running the race as he had always thrown himself into everything. “Thrust upon me by being the youngest boy on two plantations,” he was saying to a woman who was standing so near to him he was about to have a coughing fit from her perfume.
“You always lived in Issaquena County?” she asked. “Since you were born?”
“My whole life, except for when they made me go to Culver Military Academy so I'd have the education I needed to go to Ole Miss. Everyone had to go off to school sooner or later. We didn't mind. Well, I minded being cold in the winter.” He smiled at the woman and managed to move back a few steps.
“I know someone from there,” the woman said. “My third cousin married a boy named Jimmy Peoples. Do you know him?”
“Jimmy was my idol growing up. When he was ten years old he picked up a cottonmouth moccasin by the tail and slammed it against a tree. He did it to save his uncle who was with him. It was ready to strike his uncle and he picked it up and killed it. Three people saw him do it, but he says he didn't do it on purpose. He always said that. He's a fine man.”
“But then he got polio.”
“After he married Cecelia. It wasn't a bad case. He can still walk, with crutches or a walker. He's lived a full life. He never stopped. He used to have his overseer drive him to Greenville four times a week to swim in the country club pool. His overseer would push his wheelchair right up to the pool and Jimmy would jump in and swim a mile. People would go see him, he got so good, so fast. When it was fall he would swim two or three miles to store up strength for winter. He's had a happy life.”
“Well, he married a wonderful woman,” the woman said. “My cousin never stopped loving him. That's not something you see much anymore, that kind of love, that kind of devotion.”
“I see it,” Jodie said. “I see it every day. I see it in all kinds of folks from all kinds of backgrounds. Love is devotion. Love is the choice you make and how you keep on making it no matter what happens.”
“I wish I knew more of them,” the woman said. “Those kinds of people. I want to be with them.”
“Join my campaign,” he said. “Come put yourself in their path. Do you have a job?” he looked at her designer suit and shoes and handbag. Of course she didn't have a job. “Are you married? Do you have children?”
“I want to,” she said. “But I haven't yet.”
“Come work for me. We have big things going on. We need all the help we can get. This is a big election.”
“I might do that,” she said. “I really might.”
Later, his auditor told him he had been talking to the daughter of the biggest automobile dealer in the state. “She came over and signed up to help with fund-raising,” the auditor said. “What did you do to her, Jimmy? She's starstruck.”
“Her cousin married an old friend of mine. It's a happy marriage. I guess she thinks I know why.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I told her there were heroes. I told her there were people who know how to love.”
1992
“I'm not going to live forever, Cecelia,” Jimmy was saying. “You have to face that and pay attention when I show you things. The children will need you to take care of all this. It's only an insurance policy on the place in Issaquena County. It's not a death certificate. It's what has to be taken care of so I can die in peace when the time comes.”
“I can't talk about it, Jimmy. Let Butch take care of it. He's our lawyer. Why should I have to read everything?”
“Because you have to know exactly what to do so you won't be confused. These are the details of the fruits of the labors of three generations of men and women.”
“John Wilson said you were fine when we talked to him last month. He said you were doing well.”
“I'm doing well for someone with one lung that works forty percent of the time. You'll be young when I'm gone. I want you to travel. I want you to get married again.”
“Stop!” She turned furiously toward him. “Don't talk to me like that.” She went out the front door and down the long path to the garden and put on her gloves and began to savagely pick at her rosebushes. Then she got out the poison and began to spray the bushes. He was going to do it and soon. I know him, she decided. He won't be a complete invalid. There's no way he will stay for that. He thinks he can make up for it by having all the papers in order and no bills outstanding and all the taxes paid. I know what he's doing. He'll go off somewhere in the deadening and do it with a pistol. I know how he thinks. I know who he is.
He came walking up behind her. He was using the walker. He never used the wheelchair except on very bad days. It was amazing how tall he had remained.
“Let's go into Greenville and have dinner at Doe's and see a movie,” he said. “I put away the papers. Stop being mad and go into town with me.”
She turned and pulled off her gardening gloves and fell for it in spite of herself, as she always fell for it.
“All right,” she said. “But swear you will stop writing wills in the middle of the summer.”
“I'm finished anyway,” he said. “And you don't have to read it if you don't want to.”
She moved near to him and reached out and touched the powerful arm that still allowed him to hold himself upright. “Let's go change clothes,” she said. “I'm not going into town looking like this.”
Cecelia changed into a pale yellow sundress with a brilliant yellow scarf around the waist for a belt. She took off her sandals and put on two-inch-high white platform shoes she had polished that morning in a fit of old-fashioned perfectionism.
Oh, go on and dress up, she told herself. He loves for you to be pretty. She put on her mother's pearls and pearl earrings and two gold bracelets her grandmother had given her on birthdays.
Jimmy was waiting when she came onto the side porch. “A vision,” he said. It was something he'd read once in a book and it always worked. Cecelia grinned like a girl and let him put his arm around her and steer her out the door and down the two steps into the waiting car. He kept one hand around her waist and another on his cane and somehow managed all this without it seeming labored.
They drove out the long, packed gravel driveway to the two-lane asphalt road that curved around the fields of picked cotton and past the Indian mounds they had played on as children. They came to Highway 1 and turned northwest onto its shining four lanes of concrete and drove toward Greenville.