I Am Not Sidney Poitier (23 page)

“I must be,” I said. “Can you fix my car?”

“Can but won’t”

“May I use your garage to try to fix it myself?”

“You may not.”

“Are you Rabbit Toe?” I asked.

“That’s what they call me.”

“It’s not your name?”

“That’s what they call me,” he repeated.

“Why do they call you that?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

The belts of my engine were squeaking and squawking. I spotted some WD-40 on the rack with the oil by the pumps. “I’ll take some of this,” I said.

“It’s for sale,” he said.

I handed him some money. “Keep the change.”

He nodded.

“Well, thanks for nothing,” I said.

“You bet.” He gave me a hard stare.

I started the engine and the sound was not there. I made it another few miles and the noise again started up. It was just about sunrise and I found myself off the dirt road on a dirt drive in front of a small house. Three women were trying to build a fence around a chicken coop. Another older woman spied my approach, crossed herself, and looked up at the sky. I thought I could read her lips and I thought she said, “Thank you, God, for sending me a black buck.”

I got out of my car and opened the hood to look stupidly at the troubled engine. The oldest of the women walked over and stood behind me.

“Your car is not running?” she asked.

“I’m afraid that’s true,” I said. “Would you mind if I worked on it here? I think the belts are loose, but I can tighten them. Do you mind?”

“No, we don’t mind.” The other women had come to stand with her. “Our roof needs to be fixed.”

“Really?”

“It leaks when it rains. And you will fix it?”

“I don’t know how,” I said.

“It’s simple,” she said. “We have a book that explains it.”

“Well, I suppose I could try.”

“You will do more than try. You will do it.” With that she marched off and left the other women to stare at me. I offered a smile and glanced back at my engine.

The battered service manual for my Skylark suggested that the job of tightening the belts would be simple and fairly quick. In fact it said, “This adjustment is simple and quick,” the rather clear subtext being that any idiot could do it. I read this recognizing that I was not just any idiot. I put the car manual aside and picked up the book that had been given to me by the old woman,
How to Roof
a House.

She stood over me while I read. “It is clear?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll do this, but then I’ll have to go.”

“We will see,” she said.

I climbed the ladder to look at the roof. It was a simple flat roof that required only that I remove the bad surface, replace the bad wood, roll out the new roofing paper, and paint the seams with tar. It would take awhile, but I was happy that I at least understood the project.

I called down, “It’s a big job.”

“But you can do it.” It was not a question.

“I can do it.”

It was thankfully November, so, though the air was insanely humid, it was not insanely hot. Nine hours later, just as the sun was setting, I finished the roof. I was dirtier than I had ever been, smellier, more tired, and yet I felt a kind of vague peace. I washed up at the outdoor spigot at the side of the house. The water was cold, but I didn’t mind. I dried my face and underarms with a stiff white towel that one of the women had set down near me.

The oldest came and said, “Come, you eat with us.”

“Don’t you want to see the roof?”

“You have fixed it. That is all that matters.”

Clean and wearing a fresh shirt I stepped into the building to find the women dressed alike in what might have been habits and sitting around a rectangular table; the oldest was at the head. She finally introduced herself as Sister Irenaeus. She introduced the others as Sisters Origen, Eusebius, Firmilian, and Chrysostom.

“Really,” I said, somewhat astonished. “My name is Poitier.”

“Poitier,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Poitier,” the others whispered.

“Where are you from?” I asked. I had been trying to place Sister Irenaeus’s accent.

“We are from North Dakota.”

It was hardly the answer I was expecting. “You’re a long way from home,” I said.

“We are indeed. Have a seat, Poitier.”

I sat in the woven-cane chair opposite Sister Irenaeus. The room was quiet and damp and dim, and lit by two brass standing lamps. There was a dark, heavy wooden buffet against the wall behind Sister Irenaeus, and to the left of that was a book stand supporting what I was certain was a very large and tattered Bible.

“I didn’t know you were nuns,” I said.

“We are not Catholic,” Sister Irenaeus said. “We are of the Church of the Ever-Holy Pentecost of Our Savior Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“We are all children of God,” said Sister Firmilian, who was by my estimation the prettiest of them. Then and now, thinking this made and makes me shudder.

“We say grace,” Irenaeus said.

They all put their hands together and for some reason I did as well.

Sister Irenaeus cleared her throat. “Dear Jesus, thank you for this day, this bread, our roof, and our new big man, and he is a black man just like William J. Seymour and his one eye, but his eye was open to only you, Jesus, only you, and so you have sent him to us to help us in our mission, our quest to bring your word of love to every breathing human creature that walks the face of your beautiful Earth and, Jesus, this road is difficult, arduous, but not hard as you have kissed the trail we travel with your divine lips, full, Godly lips, so that our feet might tingle with the joy of your love with every step, O Jesus, our Jesus.”

And with that Sister Origen, the stockiest and shortest of the five, began to tremble, and inside I felt myself take a step back. Sister Origen’s mouth opened and her tongue fished around in the air and sounds came out, though I found them incomprehensible, but strangely clear. She said, “Ailalossolg si eht eugnot nekops yb em nema nema nema nu sam msitpab yb yloh tirips ninzela lump zaba zabalee zabael yliem si devol ehs si enim bleedle peetle leetle little zaba za zalee.” She went on that way for what seemed like four or five minutes. Then she shook her face violently and was done and the sisters said, “Amen,” and sat. I sat too and watched as they passed around a loaf of sliced white bread. I took a slice and pushed the basket back to the middle of the table.

“This is supper?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Sister Irenaeus. “You may have a second portion if you like. You are a big man.”

“So I understand. I’ll be leaving in the morning,” I said.

Sister Irenaeus shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“God has sent you to us.”

“He didn’t mention it to me.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He might.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Tomorrow, you build a fence,” she said. She closed the door and I found myself outside, alone in the dark. The sky was very clear and I could see Cassiopeia and Orion and maybe Canes Venatici, but I was never too sure about that one. I lay back on the hood of my car and stared upward for a while.

I would have tightened my engine’s belts then, but frankly I was too exhausted. I was still hungry after what had passed for supper, but luckily I had one doughnut left. Finally I crawled into the backseat of my car and drifted into a fitful, dream-racked sleep.

The wind blows steadily across the rolling Texas prairie. A rust-muddy river flows some hundred yards away, marked on either side by cottonwoods with white seeds floating all about. I am standing only a few yards from an old man who is tossing pieces of bone onto the wrinkled surface of a spread-out blanket. No, wait. There is no wind, just a stillness of arid air. Monument Valley. Spires of red rock rise into the cerulean sky, a blue bluer than blue. An old man, gray haired and weathered, tosses bones on a tattered blanket. Other men, younger men, watch.

“We go on,” the old man says.

One of the younger men turns to me. “You know that DeChenney and his army ain’t gonna let us go. They want us back to work their land.”

“Buck,” an older man says, “we’s a-goin’ on. If Old Deke says we go on, then we go on.”

“All right then,” I say. I take off my Stetson and wipe my brow, stare out across the plains at the mountains in the distance. “Be ready by the time I get back here tomorrow. Be about midday.”

“We be ready, Buck.”

“Good. And you’re going to have to pare down some. Those mules gonna have to pull you a long way.”

“All de way to de green valley,” he says.

I nod. I step away, nodding at the women who were cooking over the fire, tip my hat. I mount my bay quarter horse and rein him in a tight circle and then trot, no, canter off away from the camp and not on a bay but on a palomino, flaxen mane and tail full of the wind.

A shake of the head. A clearing. I am saying again:

“All right then.” I push up the brim of my Stetson and look at the unforgiving western sky. Then I look at the mountains in the distance. Lavender hills capped with snow. “You all be ready,” I say. “I’ll be back tomorrow around midday and you all just be ready. You hear me?”

“We be ready, Buck.”

“You see all this furniture and these heavy trunks. You gotta pare down something fierce. These same sad mules gonna have to pull you all the way over those mountains.”

“All de way to de green valley,” he says.

“Why are you talking like that?” I ask.

“Sorry, Buck.”

I step away and acknowledge the women who are cooking at the big fire. I tip my hat to them and smile. They giggle at the sight of my smile. I mount my palomino and ride off; his flaxen mane and tail are full of the wind.

I ride through a stream and through a canyon as my horse kicks up a steady red cloud. I approach a cabin, a homestead. I am looking for my woman, Bes. But something isn’t right. The farm is too quiet. The cabin is too quiet. There are the usual animal sounds—chickens, pigs. The cow is standing where she always stands. Bes’s brother and his wife and children have been living here too, and there’s no sign of them. One of them is always outside. The cabin is small, two rooms, and it gets crowded inside, but where are they? I dismount some distance away and lead my horse to a teamless buckboard next to a sycamore. Bes steps out into the shadow on the porch, stands there. A breeze moves her blue gingham dress. Her yellow dress. She slowly raises her hand to wave, a stiff wave. I wave back, knowing that something is bad wrong. I slip off the leather keep from the trigger of the pistol holstered on my hip. I study Bes’s eyes. I look closely at the windows of the cabin, at the barn, at the smokehouse. The chickens walk about in front of Bes. Then she runs, and a white man behind her starts shooting his pistol at me. No, he pushes Bes to the side, she loses her balance, falls into the dust. He shoots, and other men shoot from the windows of the cabin, the smokehouse, and the open barn doors. I dive to take cover in the pig corral, sliding through the mud to the far side where I kick out the bottom fence rail and roll out. Bullets whiz by my head, and I can’t see where to shoot back. I spot Bes running to the trees, her skirts full of the wind, and I wave for her to keep going, to get clear. The faces of the white men are fierce, evil, full of hate. I run and slip and slide and squirm to more cover and still more cover as the bullets ricochet by my ears. I get to my horse and dash away, hunched low over the saddle, a cloud of dust pluming behind me. Soon, the white men have found their horses and are chasing me and though I can’t see them, I can feel the posse’s hooves drumming the ground. I ride into the night. No, I’ve ridden hard for a couple of hours. My horse is slick and foamy with sweat. He is walking now. I’ve ridden him so long and hard.

At a watering hole I see a man bathing, wearing nothing but a hat. He splashes around in the pool on skinny brown legs while I admire his chestnut horse, no, black horse. The animal is hobbled next to the man’s camp, his clothes are laid out on some big rocks next to a dead fire. I remove my saddle and the sweat-drenched blanket from my palomino and quietly approach the black horse. He becomes nervous, whinnies, and I put a hand on his neck to settle him down.