“I can’t rightfully remember all the details,” Maidie said, her forehead wrinkling as she tried. “But it won’t nothing like that, though. It was more to do with fighting for our rights. Trying to get colored folks signed up to vote? But seems like I remember there was something about breaking some white boy’s nose that might’ve meant going to jail? And later we heard there was a white girl that he’d messed with and her menfolks was after him. Anyhow, whatever it was, I reckon he figured it was time for him to get out of Dodge.”
That was something my mother used to say all the time and it made me smile. I emptied a pod of beans into my mouth. They were crisp and tender and had an earthy sweetness of flavor. “So Mrs. Mitchiner raised Cyl here? I thought she came from down around New Bern.”
“She does, she does. Her daddy found another light-skinned woman down there and that’s the one raised her. But you know how it is with some women. I don’t think she was mean or nothing, but she had girls of her own. Let’s just say she didn’t mind that Miz Mitchiner brought Cylvia up here every summer when she was little.”
She threw another handful of hulls into the bucket that sat between us. “To do her daddy credit though, he promised Rachel before she died that he’d see she went on to school and he did and look how good she’s done— district attorney! She always was brighter’n a silver dime.”
“Cyl’s that, all right,” I agreed, trying to match her hull for hull. “But she sure is hard on young people that break the law. Especially young men.”
Maidie nodded thoughtfully. “Probably because of her uncle running away like that. He made a lot over her and they say she took it awful hard when he left. He was only ten years or so older’n her and just as dark-complected as her—onliest one of Miz Mitchiner’s family that was. All the others is real light.”
(As someone smack-dab in the middle of the color chart, Maidie speaks of skin tones as casually as I talk about the color of someone’s hair or eyes, but it does aggravate her if somebody preens herself on being light or puts another sister down for being too dark. “Like they was extra smart for deciding to get themselves born like that,” she sniffs scornfully.)
“Best I recall, Cylvia must’ve been around eight or maybe nine the summer Isaac run off. They say she ’bout cried herself sick and after that, she didn’t come as much or stay as long.”
Was it that uncomplicated, I wondered, nibbling on more raw beans. A girlchild so wounded by her young uncle’s abrupt flight that she unconsciously tried to punish every young black male who strayed from the straight and narrow?
“You keep on eating my beans,” Maidie said, “and they ain’t gonna be none to freeze. You so hungry, why don’t you go get you some of that ham I fixed for supper?”
“Ham?” I suddenly realized just how hungry I was. “Maybe I’ll fix a sandwich to take with me,” I said, abandoning the beans as abruptly as Isaac Mitchiner had abandoned his niece.
An hour later, I sat on the steps of my own house and watched the sun set redly over the tips of the tall pines half a mile away that mark the edge of Andrew and April’s backyard. Shorter oaks, and maples, now in the full leaf of summer, ranged closer, flanked by a thicket of scrub pines, wild cherries, dogwoods and sassafras that bordered the broad fields of corn. A warm breeze blew from that direction and carried the smell of tasseling corn, the promise of dryer air tomorrow, the plaintive call of a mateless and lonely chuck-will’s-widow.
You and me, bird, I thought, feeling vaguely sorry for myself as the red sky deepened to purple and a pair of bats flitted across the pond in jittery dives and abrupt zigzags to snatch invisible insects from the air.
On the concrete porch floor beside me, my cell phone lay silent. When he called this morning, Kidd had asked where I was going to be tonight and he sounded pleased when I said I’d probably work out here till dark and then I’d go take supper with one of the boys or visit Daddy for a while.
“How ’bout I call you there around seven-thirty?” He had helped me site the house and knew its surroundings quite well by now. “You be on your porch, I’ll stand on my deck and we’ll see the sun go down together, watch the same stars come out.”
“And who says men aren’t romantic?” I’d teased.
But the sun had already set, the moon was glowing brightly overhead and still he didn’t call.
Despite my ham sandwich, my resolve was weakening on that last pack of Nabs in the paper bag and I was just reaching for it when the phone finally trilled.
“Hello?”
“Sorry I’m late.” Kidd’s voice was warm and chocolaty smooth in my ear, making me hungrier for him than for all the cheese crackers in the world. “Amber needed a ride to her friend’s house out in the country and I couldn’t get back in time. Are you still out at the pond?”
“Yes,” I said. “Looking for Venus and wishing you were here to show me Mars.”
He chuckled and I knew he was hearing the double meaning.
“Oh damn!” I murmured as headlights flashed through the trees that lined Possum Creek and jounced down the lane toward me.
“What?”
“Someone’s coming. I don’t believe this. I’ve been out here by myself for over an hour and now that you’ve finally called—”
I tried to make out the shape of the vehicle—car or truck?—but the headlights were blinding.
“Let me get rid of them and I’ll call you right back,” I said as I rose to my feet and tried to squint past the brightness.
“No, wait,” he said. “You’re there alone. Find out who it is before you hang up.”
“Good idea,” I said.
A split second later, I was standing there stunned as Kidd turned off the headlights and stepped from his van with a big grin on his face and his phone in his hand.
“Surprised?”
