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Just The Wind |
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It creaked open. Cold air hit our faces. But it was the stare of the old man’s withered eyes—void of any color, it seemed—that hit the coldest. Then he spoke, “Hurry up, now an’ get in,” and checked both ways. Strange, because there were hills on both sides of the house, trees zigzagging down, forming the jagged property line. No way anyone could have seen us go in. But it was the wide, open field in back—wheat just beginning to joust out of plowed earth that gave off this utter sense of ambience. The Sark House was as isolated a place as I had ever seen. Or would ever wanted to. I dreaded hearing the door close. The sun was shut out now and the smell of cake and burning wax swirled around me as I saw the old man’s wife for the first time. Her face was leatherlike, and her hands were dusted in flour; but even that couldn’t hide the plumb veins that rose off her liver spotted skin, like blue earthworms. They were hands, which showed what life had dealt her. But those eyes—those penetrating sapphire eyes, never showed it. They burned with a fire that the passing of time hadn’t snuffed. She finally put the cake down on the table. “Eleven? Right, Zack?” My name had been neatly written out in thin, red icing. Rest of the cake was done up in chocolate. My favorite. “Twelve,” I said. “But thanks for remembering.” Mom and Dad were pleased I’d keep my attitude in check. Not so for the old man. “Ain’t got all day for his,” he said, “birthdays an’ what-not. Silly, ya ask me.” “Well,” his wife said. “No one asked ya,” then she turned to me. “Go on, Zack. Wish for sumpin’ an’ blow out ‘em candles.” Wax dripped profusely, like a fat man on a treadmill. Thin trails of smoke snaked through the air as I blew out the candles and wished that Mom had never been kicked out, that her pregnancy had been embraced, that Dad had been accepted as the father of the grandson who now stood before the Sarks’. I knew it was the old man who felt I was the Great Divider between blood. He wasn’t about to celebrate my birth, that I could tell. “Field needs tendin’.” The old man walked right out, and the kitchen was left with the lingering stench of Brute. Its bitter fragrance was a stinging reminder that reinforced the notion that I wasn’t welcomed here. Mom and Dad, either, for that matter. “It’s just hard on Harold, seein’ ya like this, Melissa. It’s been so long.” “Time hasn’t anything to do with it. And you know it.” “Let’s not dredge all that up. It’s Zack’s birthday.” “How dare you play that card now.” Dad softened Mom’s assault. “We’re here for a fresh start, hon. Don’t ruin it,” and Mom teared up. “Oh,” she said, “let’s just leave, Terry.” Sapphire eyes beamed bright. “And go where?” “To my folks,” Dad said. “Plans have been made to pay them a visit, too, Mrs. Sark.” Her weather-beaten lips parted. “Well, while y’re off doin’ that, why not let Zack stay here?” “You don’t really mean that?” Mom said. “Why wouldn’t I?” Mom scoffed, “Same reason why you never bothered to call or write, that’s why,” then Dad whispered something that switched Mom’s way of thinking and she slowly nodded in agreement. It suddenly became clear that the trip up hadn’t been Mom’s doing. It had more then likely been Dad’s, all along. For years, he’d been badgering Mom to get right with her parents and try and mend the broken pieces that had once held their relationship together. “We shouldn’t be long,” she finally said. Dad added, “Not more then a few hours, Mrs. Sark.” “Take your time,” she said. “Me and Zack here’ll be gettin’ to know each other better. Right, Zack?” “Yes, m’am.” “Call me, gandma…If ya like.” Only the word wouldn’t come. It was lodged somewhere deep in my throat, like a thin sliver of piercing glass. “Well,” she went on, “when ya feel right ‘bout it, ya can. No need to rush it, Zack. No need, at all.” “Let us know if he acts up, Mrs. Sark.” “Why, Zack, here’ll be jus’ fine. Don’t take to frettin’ ‘bout that none,” then walked Mom and Dad out the kitchen. The front door shut and the old man’s wife ambled back down the hall, toward me. All I could think of, as her footsteps creaked along the hardwood floor, was being stuck in the very same house Mom had grown up in—then kicked out of. The hardwood floor ceased to creak. “Never did get any cake, Zack.” “That’s okay.” “Then there’s a few dishes that need scrubbin’,” and I was led back to the kitchen. From the window, I spied the old man inspecting his crop. It was like watching a gambler deciding on whether to hold or fold. My attention went away from him and to his wife, steady burst of water, rinsing each dish clean. I dried them and she put then away; then I noticed, just below the cabinets, on the sink’s faucet—specks of rust and mildew. The specks of mildew had hardened, stiff as cement, it seemed. “How long you lived here?” “Near fifty years, I reckon,” said the old woman and turned off the faucet. Slow drip. Steady ekes of water, like tears. I couldn’t help but think, that somehow, the house knew Mom’s pain and was silently crying for her. “Faucet’s drippin’ again, Harold,” his wife yelled out the window. “Get in here an’ fix it!” As he came in and knelt under the sink, wrench in hand, I was pulled to the living room, far enough away that the old man couldn’t hear a thing being said. His wife then, finally, after making sure he couldn’t hear—drew back the curtains. The musty smell of old furniture swept out the living room. Spotless. And leather-bound books lined two shelves; and just below the shelves, were pictures, each framed in silver, badly tarnished as if having never been cleaned at all. Closer look. The pictures were of my mother. Her innocence shone bright as bleached bone. I reached out but was nudged away. “Grab a seat,” said the old woman. The chair’s cushion let out an eerie hush. “Private talk is why you brought me here,” I said. “Isn’t it?” Slow nod. “And that private talk involves The Way.” “The Way?” “Way things are here in Walibe. Way they always been. An’ the way they’ll probably always stay. Most likely, I reckon.” I stood to leave. “None of this makes any sense,” then a cold, leathery hand reached out and grabbed my wrist. I couldn’t move. “Klan’s the reason…reason why Melissa was put out the house, like she was. Had the Klan ever found out what happened with her an’ Terry…Well, it wouldn’t been good, tell ya that. White girls have known to go missin’ an’ never heard of again if the Klan ever sniffed out they was makin’ talk with color’d boys. An’ what Melissa did with Terry went way beyond jus’ talk. ‘Course ya probably already knew that.” Fear swarmed. I was here, and Mom and Dad were out there— Where the Klan might be! I thought, then begged— “Get me over to the Whitneys’.” Then the curtains parted and the old man was there, hate brimming from his eyes. “Don’t take to orderin’ my wife around, nigga.” That word had never been used on me before. Closest I ever came to it was reading Twain. But there was no escape to the river and no Huck Finn no Tom Sawyer and no way from the house. The old man was closing in. Not but a few feet away now. “Harold, don’t! Zack’s our grandson.” “An off-color’d—“ and a hard kick between the legs sent him to the floor with a dead- ening thud. His wife vowed, “Next time, it’ll be y’r teeth I kick in.” I no longer saw her as I once had. She was now my grandma. She lovingly squeezed my shoulder, and we stepped over the old man—still on the floor, and nowhere near gett- ing his breath back. “C’mon,” Grandma finally said, “let’s go an’ wait for y’r folks,” and day gave way to night which gave way to worry as time neared midnight. The old man was snoring soundly (and quite bruised) upstairs. It was just me and Grandma in the kitchen. “Y’r folks’ll be here, real soon, Zack,” she said; only you could tell she was worried as I was about what might have happened from the time they had left the house. “There’s no more Klan here…Is there, Grandma? Tell me there’s not,” but her lips did not part, and the faucet began to drip again. That’s really all I remember. Grandma must’ve got me to bed because that’s where I woke from, covers strewn about, late morning sun heating my face and the smell of fry- ing bacon, seeping under the door. Hunger was at a fevered pitch. And I found Grandma downstairs, bent over the stove, turning bacon. “Cookin’ always gets my mind off things,” then her head hung low, fork trembling. “Stop worryin’ about ‘em!” The old man rounded the corner. “They’ll show. Soon enough.” He was in the kitchen now, heavy footsteps along the hardwood floor. Thick clumps of mud broke away from steel-toed boots. The old man had obviously been out working the field again. Sapphire eyes held him in deep stare. “We’re goin’ over to the Whitneys’,” Grandma said. The old man scoffed, “Like hell we is.” Turning the knob, and the stove’s flame was out. “Like hell we ain’t,” and Grandma was out from behind the stove. “Get y’r ass up an’ outta that chair, Harold. Breakfast’s is done over.” Then came a low whisper… “This is all y’r fault, nigga,” rugged hand on my neck, and the old man had me out the house and in the front seat of the Chevy pick-up, next to Grandma. Then the old man turned away and vanished inside the house again. Grandma said, “Don’t need him anyhow,” and gunned the engine, fishtail of gravel. Bound for the Whitneys’, we were. Grandma and me. Mom and Dad have to be there, I thought as the Chevy picked up speed. Gritty cloud of dust followed, close behind. Until the ride was over. When it was, we were there. At the Whitneys’. Theirs was a two-story house too. But without the ugly ambience of the She gave a firm knock at the door. We wait. Patiently. There, on the concrete steps. Seemed forever before the door creaked open. We were greeted by a man, I knew only by telephone and letters, wearing faded over- alls and sporting a shaved head. Fine traces of salt and pepper stubble, which matched his five o’ clock shadow, glistened brightly in the noon-day sun. By now, it was getting hot. Very. “Well,” he finally said, sweaty scalp. “If it ain’t Mildred Sark.” She was shocked he knew her name; then he saw me, and knew that I had to be his only grandson. “Zack? That you?” I burst out, “Where are my parents?” Their car was nowhere to be had. “Mean they—“ “—No,” I said. “They never showed back up.” “Well, Terry an’ Melissa left here right about three, yesterday. Haven’t seen ‘em since, neither. So, c’mon in. Heat’s too hot to be out here talkin’,” and we were all in the house. There was a shotgun near the pantry but I didn’t think much of it. Being how things were in the country, a man had the right to protect what was him and his alone. The air conditioner dried our sweat clean as we walked into the den—small, crammed—and just barely enough room for the two plush recliners, aligned perfectly in view of the TV. Faded copies of The Saturday Evening Post cluttered its freshly oiled cabinet. In fact, the entire den was cluttered about with out-dated copies of The New Yorker and Esquire, faded as well. But it was the silence that cluttered around us most. There was no getting around it. I had to face it because I was finally meeting Dad’s dad. In the flesh. They had the same face, that’s for sure—except for the stubble and shaved head; yet I knew that would all come in time. If I ever saw him again. Mom, too. I was just about in tears. “Any idea where they might have gone, Grandpa?” He shook his head and said, “How about you, Mrs. Sark?” “Only place I can think of is that ol’ oak tree,” she said, “where they first struck up. But they wouldn’t take to stayin’ out there all night an’ day…Would they?” “Don’t reckon, they would. Never know, though.” My gaze met sapphire eyes. “Don’t think the Klan—“ “—Had to go an’ tell him about ‘em, didn’t, Mrs. Sark.” Tension had festered to a nasty head. “Figure Zack here had a right to know why Melissa was—“ “—Thrown out. Of y’re her own house, ain’t that right, Mrs. Sark. Well, let me tell ya sumpin’, I don’t much like my boy with Melissa neither. World’s hard enough on a man’a color without him mixin’ with whites. Just ain’t right. Sure ain’t. Now I think it’s time ya both left. Now.” It was clear that prejudice rode both sides of the fence. And I was stuck right smack in the middle. For the first time, I didn’t know where I fit. Black? White? Who knew? Not me, that’s for sure. I was lost within a whirlpool of mixed emotions that teetered along a thin line of regret of ever being born. Look at the harm it had caused. And I was the root cause. Hell, the whole root, period—and the blemish neither Run! Far away as I could, and it really didn’t matter where—so long as it wasn’t somewhere that lead back to the Sarks’ or Whitneys’. They’re better off without me, I thought, pushing passed the front door and knocking over a stout woman, groceries tumbling haphazardly to the ground. Turned out, this was my other grandma. On Dad’s side. But even so, she must’ve got it in her head that I was a thief because the air became a shower of buckshot—my leg feeling as if hundreds of wasps had took to stinging it; she had gotten the shotgun before anyone told her it was me. Her grandson. Then— Came loud screams of regret from the front lawn. By now though it was too late, and I was over a barbwire fence, adrenaline pumping madly, pushing me on. Where? I didn’t know. But soon found out. Quarter mile north, just shy of Old Holopeter Bridge, I stopped, breathed, and inspected the damage done. My right calf was blackened, sootlike, and buckshot was embedded deep into muscle and tendons. Though no more then a flesh wound, most would say, regardless—I was bleeding. Profusely. Then shock crept up and the world became cold, distant—like the coming of a bad dream you cannot stop and have no choice but to follow down into the abyss. Soon, I lost my footing and was stumbling down a steep embankment. I landed, face down, near a stream, cool flow of water rippling over moss infested rocks, and just over this tranquil sound of cool water, came the approaching stealth of moccasin clad footsteps. They were upon me. And I passed out. Into the abyss. I woke to a gut-wrenching stench and a bad taste in my mouth, and saw that I was in an adobe hut, on a cot, fire in center of hut, table near the fire and mason jars on the table. My calf had been carefully bandaged with these brownish soaked clothes. And it was from these brownish soaked clothes that covered my calf, that the stench came. It got worse, each breath. I gagged and heard, “You’ve been asleep a long time.” The Indian girl wasn’t much older then me. She sat on the cot. Flames from the fire accentuated her lush mocha locks of thick black hair. She said, after touching the bandaged clothes, “Soon, they will need to be changed again,” then an old Indian woman entered the hut—hair white—and eyes that shone bright and alive like shattered splinters of chipped ice. It reminded me how the ground looks after heavy snow and how, once the snow settles—seems likened to that of flaked specs of diamonds that have suspiciously been scattered about by a thing unknown—until that first stinging bite of freezing wind hits and hits hard, across the face. But it was summer here, as I lay in the hut. Not winter. Yet, waiting for winter to cover the ground in snow and come calling with whispers of sullen lulls was an indulgent thought that seemed to be nothing short of lucid sanity. But waiting for those sullen lulls were soon gone and replaced with thoughts of my parents, and the old Indian woman took to wringing out a set of freshly cut clothes and grabbed the nearest mason jar and slathered this brownish paste evenly across the top and bottom of each cloth—heavy and wet feeling. When the old set of clothes were removed and the new set was wrapped snuggly around my wound—there was no more pain in my calf. Only soothing comfort. This horrid concoction was working me toward a full recovery, and I heard something whispered to the Indian girl and watched her leave the hut. I recognized her moccasins at once, and knew—without doubt—that she had to have been the one who had saved me there that day at the edge, the edge of the stream. Yet, this sudden, unspoken truth wasn’t what shocked. It was the old woman. Why? Don’t really know, other than maybe how her back arched up when bent over. Or maybe it was the bony hand she used to stoke the hot embers of the fire with? Soon, thin vaporous trails of smoke escaped up, by way of hole in the hut’s roof. I wanted to do the same as those thin vaporous trails of smoke and escape up, until I heard the faint howl of coyotes. Hungry. And on the prowl. Then the girl was back, my attention drawn away from the howls, to a leather bag, tossed onto the table. The old Indian woman’s fist came down hard and smashed whatever was hid in the leather bag. “What’s in there,” I finally asked. The old Indian woman replied, “Scorpions and fiddle backs,” then emptied out, the contents of the leather bag, Indian girl saying, “For your wound,” and began grinding up the venomous vermin into the very same brownish paste that had been used to slather the clothes, earlier. Only the paste wasn’t for my calf, this time. Soon, a broth was made and poured into a wooden bowl. “I’m not drinking that,” I said. “No way.” The old Indian woman said, “Then infection will swell and take your leg.” The wooden bowl was at my lips. “Best drink now and not ask questions,” said the Indian girl. Still, I couldn’t drink because the smell had twisted my stomach to knots and had turned my insides to muss. And the old Indian woman simply just walked out the hut; but the Indian girl kept the bowl at my lips and said— “Don’t think what it is. Just drink.” I held my nose. That did nothing to stop the rank bitterness from covering my tongue, my throat, then my stomach. I thought it would all come back up. But it didn’t. The broth soon settled my insides, and my body was overcome with the same soothing comfort as my leg. “Color’s back in your face,” the Indian girl said. “You were ashy there for awhile,” then sat on the edge of the cot and asked what had happened and how I had fallen down the embankment, next to the stream. I explained all that and what I suspected about my parents sudden disappearance and who I assumed was to blame and asked if the Klan were still around. The girl stood and nodded and said a defiant yes and then went on to say what she said was true because she knew of the Klan’s secret meeting place. I begged the girl to take me, but she just shook her head no and said I’d never make it, not with how bad off my leg was. “My parents are all I have. Please. Where is—“ “—Five miles, south of here,” came a thick voice, and an Indian boy, no more then nineteen, scaled down from the hole in the roof. The boy’s biceps—toned and ripped—glistened softly against the fire’s warm glow; then its glow glistened off something else. Something leather. It was flipped open. “These your parents?” the Indian boy asked. A sudden chill came when I saw what had been flipped open, to be my father’s wallet! His picture was next to my mother’s picture, and my picture, next to hers—safely protected by plastic dividers that come standard in all wallets. “Where’d you get that?” I asked. The Indian boy said, “ “—A Pinto.” The Indian boy nodded. “That’s at “Don’t say that, Rising Sun,” the Indian girl said. “It’s true, Weeping Dove.” Rising Sun then turned to me. “But your parents are alive. Barely.” I cried, “What’s the Klan done to them?” “All but kill them.” Rising Sun’s stare went straight through me. “But it’s your mother that’s taken the worst of it, so far.” I didn’t need specifics. I knew. Knew exactly the things men who formed the Klan would do to a white woman who married outside her race. I also knew exactly what would happen to the man she married, outside her race. Visions of finding Dad, noose around neck, burlap sack over face, and Mom at his feet, wrapped tight in barbwire, kept pounding my brain. “How much time before you think they’re killed?” Rising Sun said, “Day or two, at most. But the Klan will kill them.” “Not if I can stop it,” I said. Weeping Dove whispered, “You can’t fight with your leg like that. And even if you could, you don’t stand a chance against the Klan.” “Then I’ll die trying,” I pledged. “My parents aren’t about to get murdered without me putting up a fight.” I stared at Rising Sun. “Take me to them,” and the old Indian woman was back, plate of food in one hand, deerskin bag in the other. She put the bag on the floor, plate on the table and said, “Eat first.” Wolfing down tortillas, beans, and corn—I watched her conjure up another bowl of stench-ridden brew—scorpions and fiddle backs. I didn’t resist this time and gulped it down. My strength grew stronger almost immediately, and the blackened flesh of my calf was all but gone when the clothes were peeled off again this time. “The brew has taken to you good.” The old Indian woman reached into the deerskin bag and took out two smaller bags, each filled with powder, red in the first bag, blue, in the other; then rubbed the powder, red in her left hand, blue in her right, on what was left of my wound and passed Rising Sun what looked like flower buds. He handed me one. “Chew,” then began to gnaw. So did I. The old Indian woman finally spoke, “The peyote will take you to your parents,” and at that very instant, my stomach muscles grew tight. Suddenly, the walls of the adobe hut began to breath and expand and my body had this grotesque feeling of floating up, passed the roof. Only it wasn’t my body. It was— My soul— Soaring out, over wheat fields, next to Rising Sun. Our souls glided in effortless ease through the night—a streamline jaunt that ended in a clearing, next to a barn. At the very top of the A-frame was a hayloft. Yet, no hay… only the faint smell of Mom’s perfume and the sweat that covered her. She was on her back, naked and bleeding, lips split open, and eyes bruised. Swollen shut. Had it not been for the swaths of strawberry blonde hair that clung to her chin in a matted mess, I never would’ve recognized her. My own mother. She’d been beat and most likely, raped to the point of near death. Then a muffled moan escaped her parched lips and she rolled over and her blood stained hands, nicked and cut, clenched her sto- mach; and four of her ribs had been broken. Bone was almost poking through her skin, transparentlike in the moon’s bathing glow. And the coyotes howled again. Closer now then before. The pack seemed headed this way, under the dense twilight—a midnight canvas of flickering stars that beamed through a charred vortex. Thoughts soon went to Dad, and the sound of a whip cracked hard against flesh and I heard him scream out high and loud as mine and Rising Sun’s soul sank far below the hayloft where the hooded Klan stood—twenty in all, circle around Dad. His hands were secured by rope on a pulley—welded to a sheet of metal. Dad was six feet off the ground and looked like a human speed bag, meant for punching. The whip tore into Dad again, and the circle of twenty laughed aloud as blood spurted down the nape of his neck, to the puddle below his calloused feet, and his back looked like an ebony tree of deep, lacerated scars, welted up and gleaming in the slick wetness of fresh blood that slathered the wood- en planks of the barn, and you could smell the horrid stank rise up through the night. So could the pack. The coyotes were onto the scent, and the scent had them here, at the barn, where my mother lay dying and Dad apt to join her. Pants of hunger raged from outside. The pack was ready to feast, paws scraping at the base of the barn, and the leader of the Klan closed in around Dad and told the nearest hood to go get the white woman and bring her down because once ‘em coyotes were done, not a damn trace would be left, ‘cept for dust an’ bones. Sick laughter filled the barn and Mom was brought down and tossed next to Dad and the leader of the Klan ordered for the door to be opened; yet the door didn’t budge and seemed held shut by an unseen force. And there was Rising Sun, legs crossed, fists clenched, eyes shut—good prayers over my parents’—bad prayers over the Klan, and the barn’s rafters suddenly began to drip. The Klan was covered in blood. But my parents’ were washed clean and a halo of bluish light surrounded them as the pack outside went into a ravenous fit, finally clawing through the barn, foaming at the mouth. Rabid. But the pack hadn’t been coyotes, after all. This pack was of a different breed. A breed not seen before. Least not here on earth. This breed, this massive pack of beasts, seemed a cross between wolf, bear, and jackal—spiky, coarse black fur—and walked almost upright, shoulders slightly bent and hind legs arched. Then the attack came. What was left of the Klan was being slurped up off the ground in loud gulps that sounded like over-grown heifers sucking fast on utters. As I watched all this, my soul was yanked swiftly up. And Rising Sun whispered, “Your mother and father will be by your side when you wake.” Then all went black. Next morning, Mom and Dad—just as Rising Sun had said—were next to me. The old Indian woman and Weeping Dove were applying soaked-ridden clothes to my parents’ wounds. We stayed in the hut for three more weeks, though, healing up even more and gained in-depth knowledge about ancient shape-shifters—shamans who had been slaughtered on The Trail of Tears—and who had returned, by way of Rising Sun’s prayers, to save my family and devour the Klan. Forever. Often, I take Tylor and But sometimes, when the moon is in full bloom and the night is vastly silent, there comes these faint howls over the hills that force the covers up to Tylor and chin. “What’s that?” they always say. And my reply always goes the same—“Just the wind,” then I kiss them goodnight and go downstairs and help Mildred get things ready for tomorrow’s breakfast. She hasn’t shook in fear behind the stove while turning bacon, in a long time. Some- times when she does though and feels the fear begin to rise, she just tells herself, it was nothing more then a bad dream and goes right on turning bacon with a smile. A big smile. Mildred smiles quite often these days. Quite often, indeed… |
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