“Yes’m. They got to have air’n. My drawers might even need a little extra air’n.”
“Least your drawers ain’t wide enough to stretch and jump on.”
Miss Maggie cackled. “You somethin’, Miss June.”
There was a basket full of wash and clothespins setting on the ground. Grandma plucked out some clothes, grabbed up a handful of clothespins. She put one of the pins in her mouth, and somehow holding three more in one hand, she pinned the piece up, grabbed another and pinned that.
When she had used the pin in her mouth, Grandma said, “I been up the barbershop my son owns, talkin’ to the men there, and I can tell you straight out, ain’t a one of ’em knows a damn thing.”
Maggie grinned. “Ain’t that the truth, Miss June.”
Grandma grabbed more wash and started hanging. “They think they know everything there is to know, but they don’t know which end of themselves the crap comes out of.”
Miss Maggie laughed. “You is one cutup, Miss June. Yes, you is.”
A short time later we were sitting in Miss Maggie’s house, at the table, eating buttermilk pie, and Grandma and Miss Maggie were arguing over a chocolate and buttermilk pie recipe. I had never heard of such a combination, but then again, I’d never had fig preserve pie until the night before either, and it had been like a slice of heaven.
It was hot in there because of the wood stove. The front door was open, and I could see out the screen. There were no flies this day, but in the distance I could see a black and yellow butterfly playing above the hog pen. I was seeing it and not seeing it. I was thinking about Ivanhoe.
Pretty soon Grandma and Miss Maggie were up cooking together, arguing all the while, banging pans, pouring this and that, Miss Maggie showing Grandma where the cooking stuff she needed was, and telling her what’s what on how to use it.
Grandma told her how she had been cooking for over sixty years, and Miss Maggie said how she started cooking regular when she was four, and hadn’t never stopped, and how she was a hundred years old or more.
Grandma sideswiped that by telling how she’d cooked for twenty men at a time, and Miss Maggie upped that one by telling how she used to cook for a logging company, cooking for well over three hundred men, three times a day, breakfast, dinner, and supper.
Before too long, both of them, covered in flour and sugar, were poking pies in the oven, building up the wood, stoking the fire, and letting the pies bake.
They went outside and brushed flour off, came back in, sat at the table, and went right back to it.
“You done put your buttermilk in too heavy,” Miss Maggie said.
“You poured in too little,” Grandma said. “Pie’ll be dry.”
“You got too much buttermilk, you can’t taste the chocolate right.”
“Use too little, you might as well have done gone on and baked a chocolate pie.”
“Hard as chocolate is to come by, you got to play with it some, add a little ginger to give it a right taste.”
“Ginger don’t help chocolate none at all,” Grandma said.
“We’ll just sit here and wait on them done pies,” Miss Maggie said.
While we waited, Miss Maggie said, “That boy there done told you about seein’ that Goat Man?”
Grandma looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Goat Man?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “Me and Tom seen it.”
“Now, I know you probably didn’t want nothing said, but I wanted your Grandma to know there’s been things goin’ on in them bottoms. She’d want to watch for you.”
“I heard there was some murders,” Grandma said.
“Uh huh,” Miss Maggie said. “But they wasn’t just no common murders. And I ain’t talkin’ out of school here, child,” she said, looking at me, “it’s all over colored town here, and over in Pearl Creek, which ain’t nothin’ but coloreds. This here is one of them funny murderers. A Travelin’ Man, maybe.”
“Travelin’ Man?” Grandma asked.
Miss Maggie told her the story she had told me, but a truncated version.
“Ah, tush, ain’t no such business,” Grandma said.
“Well, that boy there, he done see the Goat Man hisself. And that Goat Man is probably a Travelin’ Man.”
Grandma looked at me.
“Just like I said, Grandma. Me and Tom seen it. It had horns.”
“You must have seen somethin’ else and thought it was a Goat Man.”
I shook my head. “No ma’am.”
Grandma pursed her lips. “Well, you say you seen a Goat Man, then that’s what you think you seen. I haven’t got any doubt on that. But that don’t mean that’s what it was.”
“Whatever you believe, you best keep them young’ns out of them woods,” Miss Maggie said. “Well, I do believe them pies is ready.”
Tom and me was set up as judge, and they were both delicious, neither better than the other, just different. We declared it a tie. Both Grandma and Miss Maggie were happy with that. We ate half of each pie. Then Grandma said we had to go. Miss Maggie put all the pie in one metal pan and wrapped it with brown paper.
“This way, you got to bring my pan back,” Miss Maggie said, “and I could sure tolerate the company. I like my mule, but ole mule doesn’t say much.”
“Kind of like some men I’ve known,” Grandma said.
Miss Maggie chuckled over that. We got our pie, said our goodbyes, and went out of there.
On the way home Grandma drove a little more slowly than usual, which was good news for a couple of slow stray dogs and a startled squirrel.
Grandma quizzed me about the murders. I told her what I knew. Like Miss Maggie said, wasn’t any of it a secret, and she’d done told Grandma pretty much what I knew. I even told her about the body I found, and before I could help myself, I was telling her about being on the roof of that icehouse, looking down, seeing that poor dead woman.
“Well, now,” Grandma said. “This ain’t nobody gettin’ off a train at random, ’less they’re somebody lives close, catches that train to get into the area where they can do what they want to do. How many random hoboes you think gonna come through and do the same thing?”
“I don’t know Daddy thinks that,” I said. “Whites are pretty sure a colored is doin’ it.”
“Wait a minute. That’s what’s goin’ on with Mose, ain’t it? Somebody thinks he did them murders. That’s why your Daddy’s so hush-hush about him… Ain’t that it, boy?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You just said yes,” Grandma said. “You don’t tell a lie worth a damn.”
I thought about what she had said about Red’s tattoo and Mama. Neither did she.
Late that afternoon, when Daddy got home, Grandma was laying for him. She kind of directed him onto the back screen porch with Mama, and I sidled over to the door to listen. After a moment, Tom saw me and asked what I was doin’. I hushed her and waved her over. We both put our ear to the door.
We couldn’t catch all that was being said, but I could hear my name coming up, and Grandma explaining I wouldn’t tell her nothing, but she said she “deduced it from circumstances.”
I heard them moving toward the door. Me and Tom slid over to the table and sat down. When Mama, Daddy, and Grandma came in we were sitting there, our hands folded in front of us. Daddy looked at us and said, “Y’all just sittin’?”
“Yes sir,” Tom said. “We was talkin’.”
“Say you were,” Daddy said. He reached over and got me by the shoulder. “Come with me.”
We went out the front door and started walking down the road. Daddy said, “Grandma told me she figured out about Mose.”
“Yes sir.”
“She said you didn’t tell her nothin’.”
“No sir.”
“I want you to know I believe that. You can’t hide a darn thing from that woman. Too nosy, and too smart.”
