Solemn Read online

  “How you know ’bout that? You wasn’t even here,” she said.

  “Daddy told me be nice to your mama today ’cause Solemn and a cop done set her off.” Landon grinned. “Worried about what the neighbors was gonna say and think, if they knew. What you do to get police coming round here?”

  “Nothing,” Solemn said. “I lost my way home. A policeman brung me. Just one.”

  At back of her brother’s shoulder, jagged and silent, came The Man at the Well, with unspoken malice and charm. It was a puzzle. But with Landon there, he didn’t move Solemn. She closed her eyes and blinked, and it all went back correct.

  Landon rose and took Solemn’s hand, to the window to see the three-planked fence horizoned against the dawn. Their neighborhood’s signpost and mark, like a brand, was prominent to double take and second glance: Singer’s Trailers … Park With Us.

  “See that fence?” he asked Solemn. Their faces pressed to each other in the four-by-four kitchen window. He pointed to the slate-gray weathered logs erected decades before, logs creased softly like smokers’ faces. Solemn nodded. “Ain’t no black man’s blood ever drop from inside this fence and ain’t no cotton come up from the ground inside it, either. Some Freemasons marked it off, before we got here on this earth. They shot up any white man who come past. Blew his head off. Popped it like a balloon.”

  “Ugh, Landon…”

  “Well, they did.”

  “How you know? You wasn’t here.”

  “I know. Trust me. I know. I told Daddy to move here. Well, not directly. I just hinted. We came out here together. First. I could feel it was something clean about it. No haunts here.”

  This was reassuring to her. The tricks would go away. Landon went on.

  “You know, I been meeting and planning. Every day. Shooting my guns…”

  “You gotta gun, Landon?” Solemn relaxed, fascinated and absorbed. It was better than TV and a singer singing. It made more sense than her little eight-room school.

  “What you talking about? Got a lot of ’em. Rifles, pistols, shotguns, revolvers. My man said he got a few Uzis he gon’ bring by the meetinghouse. But, yeah, me and my partners, my brothers … we got ’em. Can’t tell nobody though. So, you gotta stay away from them cops. They ain’t your friends. You see ’em coming, you run. Fast. But not too fast, ’less they think you stole something. And you stay inside this fence. It’s here for a reason. The Masons knew. Don’t go out it without one of us.”

  “What if the cat run to the road?”

  “Then let her run. She’ll come back.”

  “Okay.”

  The predictability of Bev’s shuffling and stirring interrupted them. Landon went along to put on a shirt with a proper neckline. Solemn slept all day. Meanwhile, Bev’s reaffirmation of their life and daily reconstruction of its peaceful iconography included a red paisley print scarf not normally a part of it. It was tucked into the corner of the creamy faux velvet couch behind one of the matching faux velvet pillows. She had told Landon (too many times) to stop perching his greasy new Afro on it. And Solemn, that girl, she never put the pillows back uncrooked or right side up. Ever. Bev chalked the unplaced and unfamiliar item up to her son, unapproached for the new morning curfew he apparently decided on for himself but punished for it nonetheless. She threw it away.

  FIVE

  It took a few days before a teenage girl complained the pump in the main well was too jammed for her to get the water her family did not want to drain their own gray water tanks to run again, to risk overflow. It took a couple of well-side consultations and politicking sessions for that girl’s father and the men who talked often to come up with a solution to unjam it—namely, force. It would take one of those men’s woman, an unmarried girl shacking up until she could do better, to let the drunk she lived off know to stop the guessing: “Just stick a flashlight down there.” It took one more day and one more lost bout with sobriety for that man to follow her advice. It took a half hour for the new white officer to figure to take the unmarried girl’s sickened call seriously. It took two hours for the brown officer to volunteer to walk up to Pearletta Hassle’s shell in the world—with Gilroy thinking the blue suits were the devil catchers and they should have caught up with the brute in him long ago. It took that brown officer a moment to tell Pearletta he saw what could be her baby floating in that well: bobbing, like a determined apple, begging a little blindfolded party guest to bite into it. It took less than an hour for a drunk and high Gilroy Hassle to remember he “dropped” the baby down there.

  “Stay here” meant a correct way to keep on seeing things. Solemn stayed.

  Bev and Redvine went to see what the fuss was about. So did as many who were home in Singer’s. From the steps of the trailer, Solemn saw a group of folks looking and talking and stretching and pointing, with morning glory crushed under an uncharacteristic pile of people. Solemn strained to see through the crowd and thought her Man at the Well was just a man, bossy and controlling with children at his hands but crumbled and obedient with handcuffs on his. He spit at the other men or whomever along the path to the patrol car sending firework lights across the field. He missed Redvine because, at Bev’s caution, Redvine stood back far from the circle. The couple walked back to Solemn with their faces incorrect. They left her on her own to find something for supper, put the puzzle together, and believe she saw what she saw for real, with all she saw proving Landon wrong about there being no hauntings at Singer’s.

  * * *

  Taken aback, Officer Justin Bolden thought of the discovery of two black children in the wild twice in one week, one in earth and one in water. He did not want to seem too pesky or accountable, but it all had the itch of connection to him. He said nothing.

  The first problem was Officer Hanson forgot to give Gilroy Hassle his Miranda warning before his hazy admittance. Town authorities could shield Hanson, make no mention of this fact—but a hoarse-toned female state attorney did. The second problem was lack of credible witnesses, no one to unpack Gilroy’s euphemisms: “too much to drink,” “can’t recall,” “just playin’,” “can’t recall,” “slipped,” and “can’t recall.” The final problem was a black baby with no dependents or friends or societal responsibilities was not worth the risk of a fight with the NAACP, or a tiny-boned black attorney driving in from Jackson for a bereaved hardworking victim of “discrimination.” So Mississippi State gave Gilroy Hassle rehab, a grief counselor, and a regular psychiatric check-in package as a sentence, for the disappearance and killing of a black child. And that was that.

  * * *

  The Bledsoe blacks who heard about the accident or slaying or excuse or tall tale were incensed and mourned. They felt forgotten. They shouted out their versions of hostility: “Ain’t shit changed … We always got a white judge, all-white juries, a still–Jim Crow town, white prosecutor, white public defender, black accused, black victim.” This time a black baby just happened to be cut up for the soup. The outraged who knew not to crave justice had to get to work, pay bills, eat, survive. So, nothing about what happened at Singer’s Trailer Park well got a second look. The police were advised to stay quiet at the stations and ignore any telephone calls about “that baby.” Procedurally, it was finished. Otherwise, it was just getting started.

  The most decent of them dreamed about it and the most callous of them stayed silently turned on by it. The well was a crime scene with a question mark around it—not a spot of blood but a death. Most stopped using it for even an emergency. It took a senior couple no one ever saw, who had their young nephews come out sometimes to mow their lawn and drain their tanks, to pump it again. They did not know or understand what had gone on. No news trucks showed up for the story. Just one spectacled reporter, in hopes of a statement or exclusive, parked his Volkswagen outside the Hassle trailer. He waited awhile, approached some of the park’s residents standing near, got little to no answer, went to the door, knocked, waited, walked round the other side, ran up on two lop rabbits humping, then got
back in his car and left. Hall Carter got in touch with Hinckley Springs Water. He convinced all of Singer’s it was time to update—payment plans even, for those who couldn’t pay for a month at one time. In many ways, the well’s neglect signaled the leveling of their neighborhood, a satiation of a wonder that would come back in their lives soon and often. Even with an embarrassment like Gilroy Hassle removed, the fact nothing was done about one of theirs let them know, all in all, time after time, then and now, front and back again, they were always going to be niggers.

  Solemn despised she had no telephone inside or nearby or somewhere, to make a call. She would speak properly and importantly to the brown police officer who carried her up from the road. She would testify. She would tell the whole story up and down, in the middle, side to side. But she bit down on that secret, too.

  * * *

  “How you feelin’ now?” Bev asked Redvine, pushing a pill into his mouth.

  Redvine wasn’t right at the moment. For the last couple of days actually, since the shacked-up girl reported the baby in the well. He lay coiled up in a damp white sheet with a cup of tea steam swirling around his head. He had a thumb in his mouth, not sucking it but just jabbing into his jaw. He thought it was a baby’s foot, pulled up by his rough hand to tickle and play. But the crib was empty. Landon plopped a shot of whiskey at the teacup, took a slurp from the jug, and went back out into the yard to talk to one of the old church boys turned grown Army man. The man had brought him pamphlets. Solemn sat in the kitchen with a box of crayons and a notebook on the table. She stared out of the window at the man whose face used to be plumper. Now it looked square and stern, like his big light boots come up to his calf. She pulled out mint-green and beige crayons to try to put him down on paper in an outfit she was seeing more and more of these days, but it wasn’t working out.

  “You never had bad dreams before,” Bev told Redvine. He stared at her like she was a stranger. She scooted to the edge of the couch. She removed his socks, squeezed the toes of one of his feet in both hands. He relaxed and drifted on back: “It’s so much commotion around here now, my head is banging and banging … The crib is empty.”

  With the police having set foot on Singer’s and neighbors standing outside in summer air to speculate and complain, it had been busy. They were all hot and prickly, on edge. Of course they were disturbed by a child—an innocent child, have mercy—so neglected and carelessly handled. Drowned. And not one of them heard the scream or did a thing about it. What did that make them? Heathens or monsters or a combination? Well, least they knew who did it. Wasn’t nobody on the loose ready to snatch up one of theirs, kicking and screaming with bloodied fingernails at the tip of that there well.

  So Solemn heard her parents say.

  A white man’s feet crunched gravel at their door. Bev and Redvine looked back and forth at each other. She started up, but he shook off his distraction and struggled off from the couch to go see who it was. Solemn put down her crayons and followed him.

  “Good day,” the white man said. He gave his hand. Redvine straightened his back and did the same, wondering how much a blue Jeep like this one here now cost a man.

  “I’m Brett Singer,” the man said. He was stout, wild hair and cat-green eyes.

  “Yes?” Redvine said.

  “From Singer’s,” the man continued. When Redvine was blank, he said, “You know, the owners of this here land?”

  “Oh,” Redvine said. His mind raced. He paid his plot dues that month.

  “Yeah, I ain’t been around too much. So, you probably know the others more than me. I’m back on with the family business, so might be seeing me from time to time…”

  Redvine thought he must be late on his dues, to have a white man come this far out for him. But Bev never missed a beat insofar as bills were concerned. But the crib was empty … Maybe the mail was late, too.

  “You get our dues?” Redvine asked.

  The young man wiped a stream of sweat from around his temples.

  “Oh, well, the office would know about that,” he told Redvine. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well, what can I do for you, sir?”

  “I’m just coming along to check on y’all folks out here,” the man told him. “Considering all that’s gone on and everything.”

  Bev went to the kitchen to listen in. She nodded at the man.

  “What’s gone on?” Redvine asked him, Solemn watching behind.

  Mr. Singer looked shocked.

  “Least so far as we’re concerned,” Redvine said.

  “W-w-ell,” the man stammered, “with the baby and the well and the news, we just checking in with all you folks. Making sure everything’s all right.”

  In all the six years or so since the Redvines had been out there on those fields, just one of about five dozen trailers or mobile homes or manufactured digs or vans with no hard addresses (and even a few tents once in a while), no one from town or Singer’s or anywhere really had ever checked on them before.

  “We’re fine,” Redvine said. “But we thank you kindly for your concerns.”

  “You know the family, the parents?” the man wanted to know.

  “We don’t know anybody out here,” Redvine answered. “We keep to ourselves.”

  The man stood still.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” Redvine said.

  “You’ve said enough,” the man told him. “Glad to hear everything’s okay with you.” And the two men braced in a silence Bev’s pots and pans broke.

  “Take good care.” The man waved at them. Redvine watched the Jeep drive away. Hall Carter pulled up right behind it, with Hinckley water coolers in back of his car.

  * * *

  At the weekend, one week after her daddy got sick and mumbled out of leaving home (even to do the right thing, be good), at this type of event Solemn had never attended and would never again, she noticed her mother did not speak at all to the woman from Singer’s, stuck to a front pew with her hair tied up. The women near her looked like witches, dressed in all black with wide hats. Just no brooms and cats roaming the yard.

  “Can I go see?”

  Bev thought about it and then nodded yes. For her, as a mother, it was too much.

  In Solemn’s walk up close after the singing and the humming and long talking, the baby’s lips looked as if it had just sucked on blueberries or grape freeze pops. It had no rise or fall under a white gown, just a line of buttons in a stretch of fabric as still as the well’s surface now. Its eyes were two crusted slits in a head. A line of people stood behind Solemn, connected like one—all leaned on someone, touched somebody’s back, held someone’s hand, linked another’s arm. Solemn knew in her own way what this was. And more important, no one could change it back to what it had been.

  A woman with perfume powder spilling out of her dress nudged Solemn forward. The woman had never seen the baby before, but she wanted to keep the line going—maintain the sense of decorum, stave off the breakdowns that would inevitably flow if the show went on for too long. The relatives had driven or bussed in that morning. The fried chicken and pork chop and sweet potato pie smell crept from the basement into the pews. Bev had already said they would not eat there. Just pay respects. Hand fans flicked faster in the attendees’ hands. Solemn looked up to see her mama wave her back.

  Then the baby said, What you say?

  I gotta hurry up … My mama want me. And this lady behind making it hard for me.

  Oh. I don’t even know her. They don’t know me.

  I know you.

  I know you, too.

  And I saw your daddy, too. I saw him.

  You see your own?

  What you say?

  Solemn rubbed velvet inside the strong bed the baby rested in. The impatient lady behind her was so outwardly so, rude even, eager to see what she had never known the child looked like anyway. So Solemn tapped the baby’s claylike hand and moved along.

  I said, meet me at the well, okay?

&nb
sp; * * *

  Before, during, and immediately after the baby’s funeral, Pearletta exhausted the attention and strength of her family and friends. They couldn’t get through to her. Nor could they convince her to leave those six-hundred square feet behind, not even after she paid a few empathizing boys to accordion the baby’s side out back into the whole of the trailer—like a second-degree burn healed flat in no time. It was over now. Nothing worked. Not music, church, prayer, money, flowers, baptism offers, covered dishes left at the step, and, most of all, not vacations. Not even to Louisiana, her brother offered her. Oakland, her sister said. Pearletta turned down these offers to come “stay awhile.” Even from her parents—her same childhood bedroom cleaned, cooled, crisped down to lint off the floor. She felt she couldn’t be away from where her child spit and played and breathed and learned to walk. She was unsure how to visualize her baby and herself outside the trailer.

  So she stayed clenched to their old nest like a leech, her ruminations dug in like tentacles. Least she wasn’t the only one being talked about in all of it. There was a God. A courthouse janitor told his nephew (who parked a van in Singer’s in lieu of rent) to spread this: “Gilroy came to the courthouse in handcuffs but he walked out in a silk tie.” So least everybody could say they never saw any sad daddy put a good tie on that quick.

  All the talk fluttered around her. Nothing worse than losing a child but being blamed for the loss. Other women were the worst. Throughout Bledsoe, the story of “that woman” was spread. Underneath their own maternal crowns, they doubted her.

  “You never put no man before your child.”

  “She shouldn’a moved all the way out there where cotton used to grow anyway.”

  “I wonder if she even loved the poor thang … she never showed it off.”

  There were none among them to remove the apprehension shown to any black person who attracted controversy, whites, or public interest. And Pearletta had attracted it all. The smartest thing to do, in their eyes, was to treat Pearletta with the cordial manners they all grew up on. It went quicker that way. Their antidote to mourning, hunger, heartache, dispossession, repossession, a white: it was the same. Treat it like it isn’t there.