would do you wonders,” he said.
Hazel looked up at the man who stood before her. Sure and certain. She really did wish she could think like him, as clear and positive as the slogans he was always spouting. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” “Can’t never could.” “Failures find excuses and controlled thinkers find a way.” To him it was all a matter of knowing where you want to go, setting your jaw, and moving on in a straight line, without any time-wasting detours. To Floyd, life ought to be the straightest road between birth and death.
But Hazel felt she was living her life in an ever-widening curve, blind at both ends. Not only had she lost sight of where she had come from, she could no longer see where Floyd was taking her. Back in the hills she had had hope. At least she thought it was hope, that vague whispering in her ear that there was something grand up ahead. The whiskey in her daddy’s jug always confirmed it when she had any doubts.
Floyd kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Your attitude determines your altitude,” he said. Then he fixed a plate of Vienna sausages and pineapple ham and took it with him into his den to read the news. A moment later she heard him call out, “I think that colored girl made off with my paper!”
Hazel reached for the Jim Beam bottle in the shape of a pheasant and poured a small bit into her special tumbler. After returning an equivalent amount of tap water to the decanter and grabbing a couple of peppermints from the drawer, she went out to the back porch.
As the shadows lengthened across the yard, she watched two fat mourning doves wobble like a drunken couple under a nearby oak. It was obvious they belonged together. Staggering around in no particular hurry to get anywhere, not caring one bit if they were traveling in a straight line or not. She envied them their tipsy little dance full of stops and starts and unbalanced strides, and how, in all their separate, uncoordinated motions, they remained together.
The doves lifted in flight, breaking her reverie. Davie came toddling around the corner of the house, with Johnny screaming after him.
“Get that rock out of your mouth, Davie. You gonna swallow it and die!”
Should I do something? she wondered. No, Johnny could handle it. Barely five years old and he could do it better than me.
Down below, at the foot of the stairs, Johnny caught up with Davie and grabbed him by the shoulders. Johnny shook Davie firmly, yelling for him to spit. Instead, Davie swallowed hard, then grinned. Did he swallow the rock? Seeing the look of panic on Johnny’s face, Hazel almost cried out.
Before she could utter a sound, Davie, with his face beaming, opened his hand to reveal the rock. He began to laugh. He had fooled his brother, and he was proud of it. Hazel smiled.
Instead of being relieved, Johnny’s face darkened. He reared back and slapped his brother. Hazel could hear the sharp whack from where she sat on the porch, stunned.
She opened her mouth to call out, and again she was checked, this time by the look on Davie’s face. It was one of pure bewilderment, as if he were still trying to connect the sting of the slap with any action on his brother’s part.
Both boys appeared to have suspended their breathing. It was like they were waiting for the weight of what had just occurred to settle, so they would know how it had changed their world.
From Davie’s confused expression, it was obvious that this was the first time his brother had ever hit him. As the younger boy’s eyes brimmed with tears, Hazel could see that reality was slowly setting in. Something inside Davie was beginning to break. She felt it was perhaps a thing so fragile that when it did break, it would crumble into pieces as fine as powder.
She knew she should hurry down the steps and comfort Davie. To hold him. To tell him his brother hadn’t meant it. Tell him it wasn’t important. Lie to him. Anything to keep the pieces together for a little while longer. Yet still she sat there, her limbs heavy, because she knew the truth. Things do break, and there’s nothing a person can do about it.
Davie began to sniffle, and Johnny looked on worriedly, as if he were considering a favorite toy he had thrown in a fit of anger, frantically hoping it would fix itself and go back to the way it was before.
It was Johnny she pitied now. She knew he would never be able to take it back. That some things never could be put like they were before. That you can disappoint people and they really do lose faith in you and there is not a damned thing in the world you could do about it. Before she could decide which one was in need of comforting the most, Johnny did a strange thing. Still with an expression of fear tinged with sorrow, he pushed Davie squarely on the shoulder.
Davie dried his tears. “Stobbit, bubba,” he whined, covering an eye with the back of his hand.
Johnny shoved him again, a little harder this time. “Stobbit!” Davie yelled, angry now.
Johnny shoved Davie harder still. This time Davie pushed back.
Clumsily and purposely, Johnny fell to the ground and his brother climbed on top of him and began flailing away with his tiny fists. Johnny let his brother hit him again and again, on the chest, in the face, refusing to make the slightest gesture to defend himself.
Chapter Ten
BABY MOSES
Vida stood among the fieldworkers who crowded the shade of the general store gallery, drinking her Orange Crush and glaring at the white woman as she veered her big fancy car sharply into the yard. She braked to a stop and Vida noticed she even sported white gloves and a hat as big-round as hubcap.
This was the kind of car her father might have driven, Vida thought, before the world got turned upside down, back when she herself wore starched petticoats and satin ribbons in her hair instead of the sweaty rags of a fieldworker.
This wasn’t the first Vida had seen of the woman. Several times over that summer, upon hearing the approach of the big engine Vida would look up from her row of cotton or behind her as she walked the road to see the woman barreling toward her, going eighty and blanketing everybody in a layer of dust. And always with the little bow-tied boys hanging out the windows, hands wagging in the wind. Once the woman flew by so fast Vida had to dive for the ditch. The woman carelessly tossed an empty pint of whiskey out her window, barely missing Vida’s head.
The white woman might have been drunk, but she never looked happy, not as happy as she should be, with her fancy car and fine clothes and two alive-and-well sons. Spoiled, Vida figured. All white women were. Never knowing when they had enough, and always wanting more. Usually somebody else’s. All the time flaunting their good fortune, speeding carelessly through life, making everybody else eat their dust.
As for Vida, she would be happy if she could just get back what white people had stolen from her. If He did that, she told God, she would never ask for another thing.
Her father used to promise Vida that nothing bad would happen to his Snowflake Baby. After all, Levi Snow had a reputation as the man who could read the mind of God. Yet now Vida often wondered—if her father had truly known how things were going to turn out, might he have done things differently? For instance, if he had known that his sermon that long-ago Sunday was to be his last, would he have perhaps preached on some other text?
If her father, the most revered colored preacher in Hopalachie County, a man favored by God with the largest of churches, had known that before that day was out he would be pleading for his life, he might have chosen to preach on Daniel in the
