Solemn Page 12

  “We’d all like to do more than we could. You seen her around, lately?”

  “No sir, I haven’t,” Redvine said. Then, he excused himself back to his family.

  In Redvine, Bolden’s bother by the Singer folks’ indifference to Pearletta and her predicament crept up to him again. He seemed such the opposite of his wife, Bev: caring and concerned and proactive. Bolden couldn’t judge. What he wouldn’t give to have his daughter and her mother under one roof with him. It was the right way, he had finally determined. Chances are he wouldn’t care too much about nobody else, either, if he was a family man like Redvine, lives and interests to shelter, mouths to feed, fantasies to tame.

  * * *

  The wives walked along a makeshift path intended for sales but mostly replete with women who chased kids and boys who chased girls. Scant customers counted out change and wrinkled bills in back of the tables. It was a shame to approach tables without intent to buy. The blacksmiths and librarians and homemade ware makers depended on the shame, beckoning anybody over who lay a foot in front of their tables. Up ahead, a bright constellation of helium-filled balloons flew stark against the horizon. Pink, yellow, turquoise, red, blue, and white. A crowd of kids gathered in front of the table, for ice cream filled to the tops of pointy paper cups. A jolly voice drew them close: “Ice cream and balloons, one dollar … Ice cream and balloons, just a dollar. Enough for us all.”

  “The girls might like a balloon,” Bev said.

  “And I’d like the ice cream,” Stephanie answered. “My treat?”

  “Oh no…”

  “You can pay me back if I lose my mind at bingo,” Stephanie told her.

  She fished in a leather coin purse for change. Bev untangled a few balloons from the knot of yarned strings. Stephanie got their ice cream. Bev held a red and a white balloon, with mind that the girls could carry them once they were found so they would not be too far out of sight again. Already above them, legions of balloons drifted and strutted around in the sky—a consequence of lost marbles the string tied around. Ahead, they saw the part of the clearing where Theo showcased two dark-maroon ponies and one ivory one. The plaid-shirted cowboys who brought them collected ten dollars a ride from kids and grown folks alike. Stephanie saw her husband and quickened her pace.

  On the way up to him, she explained her replenished mood to Bev: “False alarm.” She laughed. So did Bev. “I told you, girl,” she said—glad it was all all right indeed.

  Theo showed a group of parents just how to hoist the kids up on firm, slippery saddles. The proud parents laughed while their kids waited in line. Some had the newer digital cameras ready, waiting for just the right time. The kids shook at the knees. Two stout cowboys counted cash, happy to be in one of the more popular parts of the Festival. Another demonstrated how tight he could draw his spurs. He teased a few teenagers with his Winchester rifle. After a while all three business partners would dismount the kids and ride themselves in the parade, pied pipers: one man at the front alongside the American flag, another man in the middle, and the last man at the back to wave at the crowd lined up in a dusty field like they owned every single road they would travel back home on.

  “I was hoping y’all might come along,” Theo told his wife. “I’m smelling nothing but food ’round here, but I ain’t got none in my belly. ’Bout another hour why don’t y’all bring me some back?”

  “Not sure, Theo,” Stephanie told him. “We gonna be busy winning bingo games.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Now, there you go … gambling all my money away.”

  “It’s about time I got a turn.”

  “No gamble this year,” Bev told him. “Festival raised money beforehand. They got tired of folks complaining about pay to play.”

  “Shouldn’t have to pay to play,” Theo said. “Only to win.”

  A younger woman handed out sparklers to her young brood. She couldn’t light them fast enough. “Hurry on up y’all,” she cautioned. “We getting out of here and going on home right after y’all get ya rides. I ain’t goin’ home soaking wet.”

  The downcast danced around. There had never been a thought, reason, or idea to plan for rain. With it, nobody knew what to do.

  “S’posed to rain?” Stephanie asked the woman, but the flustering kids tugged at her to rush matches to the tips of their sparklers. She didn’t answer Stephanie.

  Theo hurried the children off after just ten minutes and not twenty for more profit, with thanks to fond friends of his deceased father-in-law. He owed nothing for the stock rentals. The young ponies were to be sold and institutionalized into family pets, as it were, not for sport riding or prize showing. Just status. The early conditioning to children’s tinier hands and gentler commands was good for the cowboys as well. The new customers wriggled atop the ponies with legs spread and bladders running full. The adults were the worst. They pulled at the reins for balance as the cowboys had instructed them to. The youngest pony parted and the children sat cross-legged at side of him to watch the outcome. It was almost four. Parade started at five.

  Bev surveyed the crowd for their wayward daughters. She spotted their matching jeans near the bingo tent, in a cluster of girls waiting for a chance to turn or jump double Dutch. She tapped Stephanie on the shoulder and pointed in their daughters’ direction.

  Solemn and Desiree held hands and skipped to the back of the crowd as one of their mamas drew near. The balloons behind Mrs. Redvine jerked back. The double Dutchers paid her no mind, especially since a tiff broke out when one of the turners leaned a little bit too far to the left. So, a grass patch interfered, to trip one of the jumpers. Wasn’t fair. Solemn and Desiree chose their balloons. Bev quickly snatched the balloons from their fingers. She had something else in mind.

  “I didn’t buy these for y’all to play with,” she revealed. “I’m tying ’em ’round your wrists to keep up with you.”

  Bev removed the marble at the end of the yarn and made their security bracelet.

  “Don’t get lost,” Bev told them. “Matter of fact, go back to where we were.”

  Solemn groaned. “Don’t sass me, gal,” Bev said.

  Eventually, new pep in her step, Stephanie jogged in their direction. She patted down Desi’s hair, frizzy at the ends now. She turned her nose up: she might have a tomboy on her hands. Wondered what a little brother or sister might look like. Kissed her daughter.

  “Go on back now,” Stephanie told Desi.

  Solemn had better things in mind: “We can get in the parade if we try.”

  She saw the stage: lights and sound system. She flicked her red balloon up while Desiree looked up at her white one. Neither of the girls had ever been in the parade. They were too young to follow the crowd and directions in prior years. But, just like on Soul Train or Showtime at the Apollo, she would be seen. Two hundred and fifty dollars was at stake; so she heard.

  “You have to sign up for that at school. The teachers told us, Solemn,” Desiree insisted. It hadn’t really been her dream to begin with.

  “No, anybody can do it … all we gotta do is walk over there to see.”

  It had gotten tiresome, these opinionated battles with Solemn, the ever know-it-all, the show-off, conjuring much but showing little. Still, the Man at the Well had not appeared. Neither had their “sexy” boyfriends or magic carpets. Even the kisses were the same. Their rides home from school had become characterized by Mrs. Longwood’s unanswered questions to the girl of: “What happened today?” Many incidents sent Solemn into the car cross-armed after yet another teacher’s stern look or coarse words. The bad attitude Solemn often displayed was just as funky as the newborn odor under her arms. Infatuation with her friend had waned, replaced by a given codependency and familiarity no more exciting than breakfast.

  And Desiree never perceived the things Solemn tried to get her to. The chicken wire rolled and ready to keep snakes from the rootvegetable plots was only that—chicken wire. Not the remains of the monstrously giant spider after God tore it
out of the sky and balled up his web, as Solemn told her. The thick garden hose coiled in and around itself on a hook at the side of somebody’s trailer home was just an innocent tube, not a bodiless visitor with its shredded, sagging face. The only outcome that ever came out of all Solemn’s nonsense was a nightmare. Now, as they debated the reflex of obedience, there was another: time wasted.

  “I don’t think they’re gonna let us in the parade,” Desiree told Solemn. “And I think we should go back to where my daddy is or your daddy is or either go to the bingo tent. I’m tired.” She started in that direction, just four footsteps to cement her point.

  Solemn glared at her, unaccustomed to this odd disagreement Desiree displayed.

  “I’m just trying to have some fun.”

  The only answer was the flap of Desiree’s thin leather sandals.

  * * *

  I stopped. I heard the plop of geese-web feet hittin water. And my feet felt heavy, like a crop duster want to take me but I can’t go. I wanted to tell my friend to wait, keep up, stay with me, forget it, move on. For once I could agree. Well, lately I ain’t have no choice. Our nights touchin went strange and interrupted and old news, too. And she left me, paid no mind to if I was behind. So I fumed behind, in a hurry, and silent, and slow. And Desiree blurred in the crowd, threaten to be lost from me. And this knockin at inside of my chest and my temples got tight, but it was too late to act like I never met her. I had already told her everythin and showed her a lot. So all I could do was think to make sure Desiree met the Man at the Well, soon as we was allowed together again.

  THIRTEEN

  A church ran the bingo games under a tent it normally reserved for the revival. It asked for five-dollar donations at the door, to be handed to the laundry hamper reserved for the baptism towels. A typed note affixed to the hamper announced anything in it was for the Building Fund, going on for about as long as the church was built. Stephanie walked past it. Bev dropped in ten dollars for both of them. Women dressed in white, down to gloves and orthopedic shoes, handed out the cards and called the numbers. Only two cards allowed for any one person. No limit to the games. Some had been there all day and won nothing. Some stayed half an hour to leave with a forty-dollar prize and the way home, lest they lose it. Mostly women, mostly senior, and mostly grinning over friendly competition rarely encountered between them. The humble stones their husbands had given them shone under the church spotlights as they tinkered with the red tokens to pat down onto their cards. A few impatients who really needed money pushed glasses up and down their noses. A bullhorn shouted above the winding-down performers and all the radios outside.

  Bev and Stephanie settled next to women who greeted, “Howdy.” They placed red dots into free center spaces and waited for the calls. One renegade at the table played with beer bottle caps. She was drunk; judging from the sweaty forty ounce of Coors in front of her, she didn’t know it yet. A few of Landon’s flyers, crumpled into impromptu napkins after cursory glances, sat in middle of the table amidst tossed bottle caps. They warned them all of forced unemployment, poverty, and welfare monitoring—too much to make sense of on what was meant to be an easier day.

  Letters and numbers droned on and on, while the women stared at pots of gold on paper. It was all in fun, but they wanted to win. They exchanged shoulder hunches and frowns as the game went on. A woman shouted, “Bingo!” The few ladies around her had to settle the table and jiggle her card so the dots would fall back into place. An officiant made her way to the back of the room to check the card. The proclaimed winner’s card was quickly certified as valid. She jigged up and headed to collect her prize.

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” one officiant said from her microphone, while she adjusted her wig. “Remember your tithes, good people.”

  “Tithe to your own church, nobody else’s,” Stephanie mumbled.

  “Better yet, your own house,” Bev told her.

  Stephanie pointed as a few of their playmates heard her: “Even better.”

  “Folks always tryin’ to get in ya pockets these days,” said a player across from them. “Lord, I done spent so much money out here today…”

  “You, too?” said another. “’Bout time to get some of it back.”

  A sudden drone of thunder came down, unwelcome. The bingo tent seemed the best place for them to be. Not many thought too much of it. The bleaker packed their blankets and reasoned they could settle into their cars and trucks nearby until any rain passed. The main stage had an awning to protect the sound system, wires, cords, and lights. The vendors prayed the weather would cooperate just a little longer for them to get more comfortably past profit. The children planning for their part in a parade started to look worried of their chances, if not teary eyed in prediction. And the sought-after cowboys reasoned it might be time to set the ponies back into the hauls.

  Bev and Stephanie had just gotten to the tent, hadn’t played one full game, wouldn’t get out again possibly for far too long.

  “Walked all this way here,” Stephanie said. “Gotta play one more game.”

  “At least one,” Bev said.

  The bullhorn called out, “I twenty-two,” to distract the players from the weather, maybe draw a few more folks concerned about hairdos and outfits into the tent with their dollars dropped down for the shelter. By the time the call was finished, it was fifteen minutes later. One brazen grandmama came up to the front with her card in hand and her victory walk. They all heard another crackle of thunder, followed by footsteps of more thunder pounding down. The winner was paid as the caller began a new game. By then there was a sprinkle. It started an exodus both out of and into the tent. Stephanie and Bev had only to look for red and white balloons.

  “Red and white ones,” Bev reminded Stephanie.

  A prickle of lighting in the distance ended the tumbling team’s show onstage and the vendors’ hope. Bev and Stephanie passed Mr. Longwood. He had already turned down the last few customers and started to shake hands with his business partners for the day. The ponies stomped and spit inside the hauls behind the cowboys’ pickup trucks. They swung tails and snorted out a prediction they had tried to offer in impatience with the last hour of riders. Solemn and Desi were nowhere in sight when the first raindrops glided down, softly as cats’ tongues, tender and dry.

  Stephanie shouted to her husband: “I’m gonna go find Desi!…”

  Bev caught the full fabric of red dress up at her hips or else it would have tripped her down to the soon mud. She then caught her flip-flops at the edge of a pile of manure for trying to keep up with Stephanie. The blankets once served as resting spots now played as covers. Cars began to rush out into makeshift lanes. The tables once filled with things to sell now weighted down with boxes of items hastily thrown in.

  Without seeing the balloons, there was no way for the women to get a real handle on where their daughters were. So many children still had them. Bev came up upon sight of a red one waving in the sky, just inside the thickness of a group of girls showing off the latest gyrations. The mothers stopped running. They pushed many girls aside. But they only met a toddler with a balloon in one hand. A leash in the other. At the end of the leash, a greyhound with a red bandana tied around his throat and his right hind leg missing. The girl spun in a circle and forced the dog dizzy until they both toppled down.

  “I think they went back to where we were,” Bev reasoned.

  “I think you’re right,” Stephanie agreed.

  Then another string of lightning, more running from the people who didn’t want to be caught up in it, and more thickness in the crowd. The numbers who seemed dwindled when sitting or dancing now seemed unbearable when all standing. A man with his pants unzipped flung out of a rattled outhouse. Any reprieve kids gathered from the adults’ good moods was gone. They were pulled by one arm and slapped ’cross back of their heads and shoved into compliance to hold the loads of things families either had to walk away with or share rides to get home. Little babies cried an
d toddlers whined. Teenagers got in their last laughs. The last few acts who waited to perform stomped away. The backs of swerving pickups slumped down with riders shouting out their telephone numbers, addresses, or plans to meet up again. The wind blew blankets, paper plates and cups, paper signs, plastic bags, gentlemen’s hats down, ladies’ skirts up.

  No problems or fights erupted, only the undercurrent of sadness that the day had been cut short. The rushed exits mocked the deranged mayhem in the skies. In a cluster of swamp maples at the head of it all, many boughs dueled at once. Their leaves followed in waltz. Crows soared along for refuge should the clouds break. Or maybe they were bats. A network of pigeons outflew the falcons behind. Kids pointed to the sky and so did adults. They waited with bated breath for a storm to remember to happen, to become something they would grumble about. Most of them were already planning to reminisce on just how much their hairstyles and outfits and perfect dates got ruined.

  With heads twisted to and fro and their daughters’ names yelled by voices that would soon grow hoarse, Beverly Redvine and Stephanie Longwood skipped along.

  And there was no noteworthy thunderstorm, that day … but that night, much later it waited for, to appear and magnify into tiny cuplets of rain in the newly budding leaves and early quench for set garden plots. First time that happened, ever, the day of a Festival. Easter Sunday, too? But that day, that time, that moment, when two mothers ran and one girl followed the other one who led, there was an incident the newspaper reporter was long gone to report firsthand, and only a scattered few would recount being close enough to, so as to gain the glorified retelling of it for the rest of their lives. All the few told the story the same, wispier than a news story but more concrete than a rumor …

  That sad incident of one girl in her little jeans, running in the direction of the part of the clearing where she knew she had come from, another little girl behind … And both of them with their hands out straight but balloons hanging from ’em. On Easter. After church. When folks normally would have been eating supper and going to the nursing homes to show face to the ones who, even if they don’t show it, know who they are. And nothing was wrong. No, nothing. We all was running. Nobody was fallen, stomped, or crushed. No, just peace. Order. But they shouldn’t been out there by themselves. Somebody older shoulda had ’em. Now nobody ever out there on malice, everybody good. And it was Easter Sunday. No blues on the radio. But still, you gotta wonder … Anyway. That little girl in her little jeans marched, surely and okay, big pretty eyes up to the sky for a few seconds she did stop and look up like it was a message in the clouds just for her. Just her. And the girl in behind this one, same little short blue jeans, matching, trying to keep up, arms crossed, just a few steps behind, but thank God not right alongside or holding hands or nothing would have connected the two. Only difference between the two is one had wild hair flying all around and the other one had French braids damn near stitched to her scalp. Other than that, they could have been sisters. And we was all running. Coulda been any one of us, praise Jesus. The one in the back was taller and seemed a little older for some reason. So I think that’s the one everybody was looking at the whole time this thing happened. Or maybe it was the pigeons in the sky, all wild and fanned out, outrunning them falcons furious they couldn’t catch ’em. We was all looking at something, every one of us, even her. ’Cause then this little girl in front of another one was jerked up like a jack-in-the-box with the lid tapped. Then she flopped to the ground with her arms and legs long and stiff. And we kept on running. Nobody stopped for a while. And that balloon was low, just sitting there first, then batting at the wind. But it could only go so far, ’cause the girl who had it tied to her wrist wasn’t getting up. And some of us saw it. Some of us thought we did. I don’t know what she saw ’fore she fell. Never saw anything like it in my life.