This Bitter Earth Part 21

"Ned ain't had no reason to do it."

"Ned hated the coloreds."

"True. n.i.g.g.e.r's what killed his brother in Alabama."

"So you know for yourself he ain't look kindly on them."

"You saying you like them?"

"Nossir, but I believe in G.o.d and I don't hate n.o.body."

"They animals, they ain't people."

"They a living creature."

"Yeah. So you saying Ned had you lie to revenge his brother?"

"Yessir."

"Uh-huh."

"I don't want this on my conscience no more."

"Uh-huh."

Lappy walked after five years and three days. Forty of the eighty dollars he'd had in his pocket that night was returned to him.

He dressed himself in the clothes he had been wearing when he was convicted and asked the men he'd spent every waking moment with during those five years if he still looked good in his clothes.

They'd laughed at him and shook their heads, amused that Lappy seemed oblivious to the fact that his clothes were board-stiff and stinking with five-year-old dried blood and vomit.

Janey, Jane Ann Clementine, sent her maid's young son to meet Lappy when he stepped from behind the large iron gate of the prison.

"Ms. Janey said to give you this," the boy, who was no more than twelve years old said, handing him an envelope. "She said I'm to take you to Elijah's place."

Lappy opened the envelope and found six crisp ten-dollar bills staring back at him. He stuffed the money into his breast pocket and followed the boy the ten miles into Carnery.

They arrived at a small green-and-white house just before nightfall. The boy knocked on the front door and then hurried away.

When the door opened Lappy came face-to-face with what he thought was a woman. She was wrapped in a blanket that covered her from the neck down. She had amber skin, high cheekbones and wore makeup that seemed a bit too heavy for the hour.

"You Lappy Clayton?"

"Yeah."

The woman stepped back and swung the door open. Lappy stepped into a large room that was broken into three smaller rooms by three walls. Each wall had a cross painted or hung on it. There were candles burning in every corner and a single bed sat in the center of each room.

"Toilet out back. Water pump there too," she said as she eyed Lappy. "You got some good hair," she added.

Lappy looked down into the small face and thought about how it would feel to have those tiny pink lips kiss his neck. He hadn't had a woman in five years.

"Where's Elijah?" Lappy asked, giving the house a once-over before taking a step toward the room to the far right.

"Where's your teeth?" the tiny pink lips asked.

"Got knocked out."

"I know a man that could fix that for you." There was a pause and Lappy saw the tiny pink lips stretch into a devious smile. "Did it happen in jail?"

"Nah, before that."

"But you were in jail, right?" The voice became excited.

"Yeah," Lappy responded, thinking that he would have those lips on his neck, and elsewhere, quite soon.

"Me too."

Lappy c.o.c.ked his head. "Yeah, where?" Lappy knew some women that had been in jail. This one didn't look like any of them. If they went in soft, they definitely came out hard. This woman standing before him didn't even look rough around the edges.

"Evensberg."

Lappy laughed. "Nah, baby, you must be confused. Evensberg is a male prison."

"Uh-huh, I know."

Laughter.

"I'm Elijah, pleased to meet you." Elijah smiled deviously, s.n.a.t.c.hed a glance at Lappy's crotch and then extended one delicate hand toward him in greeting.

It was a halfway house that had been set up by the good Christian white women of the Salvation Methodist Church. Lappy figured that all or at least most of them had had a piece of some black d.i.c.k at one point or another in their lives.

The old ones that came to pray over them hardly ever looked at the men. The young ones, well, it was all they could do to keep their eyes fixed on anything else but the men.

Lappy knew that look: curiosity straining behind their good Christian values and the prejudices that had been instilled in them at home. He saw the moisture that formed beneath their noses, the way they licked their lips after each sentence and how they giggled their way through the Scriptures.

He wanted to f.u.c.k them all, but most of all he wanted to kill them, because in them he saw Janey, Jane Ann Clementine, and he blamed them all for what she'd done to him.

He ran his tongue along the empty s.p.a.ce in his gums and thought about the whips the guards had used to open up the skin on his back just before sending him out to work, bareback and beneath the scorching sun, and how bad it hurt when the bleeding wounds began to fester in the heat.

Lappy Clayton looked at those women and thought about all of those things and clasped his hands tightly behind his neck and grinned.

He crossed his legs and smiled as he recalled the child in the field of wildflowers: her yellow ribbons, the scent of the earth as he drove her body into it. He could still feel her fists pounding against his neck and face and the sputter of her final breath as it wafted across his cheek.

But best of all, whenever he wanted to, he could go to that place in his mind and see how easily her womanhood gave way to the sharp edge of his blade. Just thinking about it filled him with joy and his chest swelled with laughter.

The second one came years later when he'd almost forgotten about the girl in the field. She was a beauty, that one was. Feisty and forbidden is how the men of Rose described her. She was easy for Lappy to get: She liked money, and the color of his skin intrigued her. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were still heavy with milk when they met and would leak whenever they made love.

They'd argued about a woman she'd suspected Lappy was seeing, and he was and had admitted it before shoving her aside and walking out. The scene that followed was horrible. She ran up to him in the street, jumped on his back and began clawing at his face. Lappy threw her off, slapped her twice and started off again. "I'll kill myself!" she screamed. "I will!" she cried before turning and running off.

Lappy had just laughed at her.

"What the h.e.l.l are all of y*all looking at?" he'd asked the people that had hurried out and onto their porches to see what the commotion was about.

No one replied, but one man met Lappy's gaze and their eyes held steady before Lappy blinked and the man turned and started after her.

"Grace Ann." Lappy sighed.

Taking her life had been sweet. He'd loved her hard, biting at her breast, taking in the milk and then spitting it back into her face. She never let go of him, even though her face was twisted in pain and his hands were wrapped around her neck locking her screams away in her throat.

She melted beneath him and he dragged her naked body across the gray sandy sh.o.r.e and into the waters of Miracle.

The current craved her and tugged relentlessly at her until Lappy knew he would not be able to hold on to her body much longer.

He pulled the knife from his pocket and sliced at the taut skin around her neck, the soft skin of her belly. He took his time, carving long deep fissures into her flesh while the waters yanked and s.n.a.t.c.hed at her.

Finally, he let go and allowed Miracle to have her, and placed that b.l.o.o.d.y memory neatly beside the first.

Chapter 21.

THE house was quiet except for its settling sounds, which sounded so much like tired breaths. Every so often Joe would cough or the baby would cry out in her sleep, but otherwise, there was just silence.

Sugar lay on her back on the small twin bed she shared with Mercy and stared at the thin cracks that covered the ceiling like spiderwebs and wondered, once again, why she had come back to Bigelow in the first place.

Mercy sneezed as if hearing Sugar's thoughts, reminding Sugar that she was the reason for her return.

Yes, Mercy was one of the reasons she'd come back. Jude had made some demands too.

It was strange, Sugar thought, being back in the house among those people. Even stranger was Pearl's easy acceptance of the truth that Joe had kept hidden from her for so many years.

Pearl seemed genuinely happy to have her back and had spoken to Sugar as if she'd never left and none of the bad things had ever happened, and after a while Sugar eased herself into the flow of Pearl's words and the ugliness of her past all but disappeared.

Sugar turned onto her side and her eyes fell on the soft thin curls that covered Mercy's head. The milky rays of the moon lit on the child's hair and set it ablaze in the darkness of the room.

For the first time in a long time Sugar felt content and safe. She moved closer to Mercy and draped her arm over her waist. She wanted to curl into Mercy, the way Mercy had curled into her when she was eight years old. Those times were safe and content times too.

Sugar's eyes grew heavy and she had almost slipped into sleep when the fluttering sounds outside of her window dragged her back.

She was immediately seized by fear and then sadness.

Bad times never seemed to have a hard time finding me, Sugar thought as she pulled the quilt up to her chin.

Joe and Pearl lay facing away from each other, their backs barely touching. Joe stared at the door while Pearl watched the snake-like limb of the rosebush brush against the window.

Neither one of them slept and each knew the other was awake. Years ago, when they slept facing each other, arms and legs entangled, they would have spoken a few words before slumber took them, but now, old wounds bruised, some reopened; there was nothing left to say.

Joe closed his eyes against the darkness while Pearl thought about clipping some of the new pink roses to set on Jude's grave.

Gloria changed position for the fourth time that night. She wanted to get up, turn on the light and ask Seth, again, what had happened between Sugar and him.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? All what I heard ain't sound like nothing, sound closer to something. So what was it?"

"Nothing."

"She your sister, but you didn't know that when she was here last time, right?"

"Right."

"But everyone else knew, right?"

"No."

"I know I didn't know, but I'm just your wife."

Silence.

"Your daddy said he felt like your mama always knew. So why didn't you know?"

Silence.

"Seth, were you sweet on her or something?"

Silence.

"Seth?"

Seth never really put his foot down with Gloria. Had always allowed her to have her way, but this, this was too personal to talk about, too painful.

"And besides that, you got me and our baby down here, making it sound like your mama was on her deathbed. Humph, she looks better than me, Seth. That woman don't look like she ailing at all. So when we leaving?"

"When I say."

"When you say?" Gloria sat straight up in the bed, folded her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and smirked. "When you say?"

Silence.

"Seth Taylor, our baby can't be down here in this heat and dust and for goodness' sake that girl Mercy look like she got something that's catching. Ain't you worried about the baby... me?"

"I'm tired, Gloria."