The Orphan Mother by Robert Hicks
“Somethin’ about that man chills my blood,” Mariah said. “Always has.”
“Who?”
“Elijah Dixon.”
“Why?”
“I remember seein’ the way he held each of his babies the first time. He just has the blankest eyes. He smiles, says all the right things a new father supposed to. But his eyes—they just dead.”
Tole understood, but he lied, told her he never much paid attention to the man’s eyes.
“I heard something about him. About him and my boy.”
Tole was quiet. Here it would come. She knew. She knew of Dixon, and him. He knew this would come out, and accepted it, but he hadn’t anticipated the fierce love of Mariah and her fearless pursuit of the truth. He had long ago accepted that he was a dead man, and his actual time of dying was just a matter of luck and happenstance. But he never thought his consequences would become Mariah’s. She was too brave for her own good.
“I heard that Mr. Elijah Dixon set up the whole thing.”
“Killing your boy?”
“Yessir. Loud and clear. Seems my boy wasn’t the real target—he was mad that his boys killed the only good cobbler in town, I heard. But Mr. Dixon was the one who arranged everything. The magistrate is the big man who’s killing niggers and white boys who get in his way.”
“You have proof?” Tole asked.
“No.” A pause. “I know it was him and half a dozen other men. That Aaron Haynes out in Hillsboro was one, and Bill Crutcher was another. Not sure who the others are.”
“Why?” It seemed an awfully small word for such a question.
“Money,” Mariah said. “Always is.”
Tole thought about the letters from Bliss.
“One of them took a gun and shot him,” Mariah said, thinking out loud. “It was one of them. They might have come to shoot some other poor bastard, but it was my son they shot.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. I feel it in my bones.”
Tole watched her face as if each twitch and wrinkle could tell him whether she knew the whole truth. He prayed she didn’t.
But hadn’t them white men done the killing, really? They were the guilty ones, not him. They had been beating the boy to death. He remembered the pattern of blood down the side of Theopolis’s face, where a broken bottle had hit him.
Mariah was speaking, barely audible, as if it were a struggle: “I’m scared, Mr. Tole.”
His eyes softened. “I didn’t think you were scared of nothing.”
“I wanted this tribunal. I wanted justice. But I know men like Dixon. I know they won’t let such a thing happen, and they won’t hesitate to kill a worthless old nigger like me to keep themselves high up on that hill.” She was right, and Tole didn’t say anything.
“I’m scared. I can’t lie about that. But I want justice. I want those men who killed my son to be punished. But they won’t be, and I don’t think I can live with that.”
And at that moment the path before George Tole became clear.
They were kin, Tole and Mariah—the killer and the midwife. Death and birth, both began and ended in blood and pain and, most of the time, in hope. They were alike in this way.
If Mariah could hear that thought rattling around in his head, she would laugh at him while cutting it out with a dull blade. And yet this is what he thought: that he belonged to her, like he was a part of her. They had been matched by the same mysterious Creator, that indifferent and inscrutable God that had amused himself by making him, a killer to the bone, into a tender of Confederate graves, and by causing this grave-tender to lose his mind over a woman who breathed life into the world while he snuffed it out. Tole knew what he needed to do.
“You ain’t got nothing to be scared of, Mariah. Those men, whoever they are, ain’t got no reason to bother you.”
“Not worried about them bothering me. Worried about them finding justice.”
“They’ll have justice,” Tole said.
“You’re an optimistic man,” Mariah said. “Too optimistic I reckon. But maybe, when you’re riding with Hooper, you’ll hear things. And if you hear any names, if you learn who those men are with Mr. Dixon, you tell me, you hear?”
He knew he would get those names. He would get them and never tell Mariah he knew them.
“What good will having those names do you, Mariah?” he said. “If you can’t believe they gone get justice, then what use you got in having their names?”
“Because I ain’t going to be grieving and ignorant. At least I will know the truth, and that’s the thing people like me ain’t never get from white people. Never the truth, never the whole truth. And maybe if I have the whole truth and can say it out loud in front of people, then maybe I’ll be free.”
Neither of them spoke. And then, finally, Tole said, “I have some ideas. I think I have some ideas.” He reached over and placed his hand on hers, and she turned her hand so it was palm up, warm in his grasp. They sat like this for a long time, neither of them moving, both bound by grief and sorrow and a desperate desire to, just once, make things right.
Tole would find those men for her. He would bring them justice. He would bring them a reckoning beyond what them white men from Nashville could hand out if they were so inclined. And they would not be so inclined, he suspected. This justice, this reckoning, required blood. He would get that justice, and would probably die doing it, but he would get it for her.
* * *
When he awoke in the very early morning in his own cabin, surrounded by his underworld made of wood and glue and string, he couldn’t remember the long trek back to Franklin, couldn’t remember coming in the door, but could see the muddy footsteps. Songbirds sang, brittle in the cold predawn light. He had slept the easier, dreamless sleep of the almost-forgiven.
Chapter 27
Tole
July 30, 1867
First, Tole decided the swig of sharp whiskey he’d had on the porch with Hooper would be his last. He was three days sober, which was three days longer than he’d gone in years. Since the war, he had been sober only one other time, just after Miles died, those first couple of weeks when he couldn’t bring himself to even look at a bottle. He’d thought, then, with the optimism of the damned, that perhaps he’d never have another drink his entire life.
And then the terrible dreams—that one terrible dream—began. The same dream every night: him in a dark shed, building a baby’s crib with pieces of lumber he’d found on the side of the road. But when he finished, what he held was a coffin. He could feel the warmth of the coffin’s wood as he pushed it toward the shallow hole.
The night of Miles’s ninth birthday, just a few weeks after they buried him, Tole started drinking again.
And here he was now, trying again. He doubted any man had failed at getting sober as many times as he had. He knew the first few days were the hardest, and he was well past that point. His hands were shaking less. He stopped choking up blood and vomit into the bucket next to his bed. He started aiming a bit straighter, steadier. He knew if he could make it past that first few days, he might be able to call himself a sober man.
In the park by the Presbyterian church, he’d seen the old minister having lunch now and again, usually sitting alone on a wooden bench, throwing crumbs to pigeons. And while Tole wasn’t one for church, he had some questions he needed answered, reckoned maybe he ought to have a talk with God, one last time, before he saw about what he’d planned for next—seeking revenge for Theopolis Reddick.
In the tree-softened streets, with a light breeze painting the leaves, the park felt becalmed, peaceful, out of time. The minister had a mouthful of chicken when Tole reached the bench, and Tole removed his hat and waited.
“Can I help you?”
“Yous a priest?”
“Minister,” he corrected. “Something troubling you?”
“Your church here, it let Negroes inside?”
“No. Your church is down the street, in the Bucket.”
“But perhaps I can help you,” the minister said finally, swallowing.
“Thank you.”
“How can I help?”
“Name’s George Tole.”
“Elder Dawkins. You from Franklin, Mr. Tole?”
“New York.”
“A Calvinist Negro from New York?”
“My mama raised me and my brother as Baptist. That mean you can’t talk to me?”
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that.”
“I ain’t been inside a church since I was a kid.”
“Your relationship with God is very strained, I take it.”
“I ain’t got no relationship with God.”
“You do, whether you believe that or not. You’re talking to him right now.”
“No. I talking to you. You a man I can see. I don’t believe in no God who hides up there in the sky.”
“He understands that. People sometimes go their entire lives not speaking to him, but he’ll be there to listen if you change your mind.”
“I ain’t gonna change my mind. Already told you I don’t believe in him.”
“Then I guess I’m confused why you’re here.”
“I guess I just wanted him to know that.”
The minister was quiet.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“My little boy. He die when he just eight years old. You know if he’s up there in heaven?”
“My condolences. I’d have a hard time thinking of too many reasons why God would deny a boy so young. You say you don’t believe in God. You believe in heaven?”
“I think maybe I do. For people like Miles, I think there’s a heaven.”
“May I ask how he passed?”
“He dead because of me. He had dysentery, and then one night he found my bottle of whiskey, just eight years old, and choked to death on it till his face turned a kind of purple I won’t never forget.”
Tole stared down at his feet, at the fine pair of boots that a dead man had gifted him.
“I ask you one more thing?”
“Certainly.”
“Every night before I go to sleep, I tell him I’m sorry. You think he can hear me? Or I just wasting my time?”
“I don’t think anyone can answer that for you, Mr. Tole.”
“All right then.”
Tole thanked the minister for his time.
“Mr. Tole, remember, the door to that church in the Bucket is always open for you, should you change your mind.”
Chapter 28
Mariah
July 29–30, 1867
The backwoods woman, Lizzie Crutcher, had mentioned sheds. So had one of the women who cleaned the lumber family Hayneses’ house. Something about men, meeting in a backyard shed. Plotting.
It was enough for Mariah.
The Dixons had a shed, and Mariah decided she would discover the truth for herself. To hell with the white man’s tribunals and circuses. She had faith she could do that much. She would discover those names.
She wouldn’t rely on her spies and informants—Hooper and May and George Tole and all the rest. She wouldn’t sit idly by, waiting for a name to roll into her ears and a great ringing bell to start its peal. She’d figure this out for herself. She’d ask, and hunt, and find those men, and she’d take their names like rare jewels to the tribunal, and the tribunal would smite the evildoers into everlasting darkness. Or they’d just hear her say the names, at least. She had given up predicting the actions of white men long before.
When she entered the Dixon house that morning, let in the back way by Margaret the cook, she noticed that Margaret averted her eyes as if she had something to hide.
Evangeline was in the parlor, her brood nowhere in sight or hearing. The mistress lay stretched upon the couch, propped up against pillows. Mariah looked at Margaret, recognizing Evangeline’s symptoms, and Margaret nodded. Yes, Margaret’s eyes said. The lady been in the laudanum.
Evangeline shifted and stood up on teetering legs, and without speaking began to putter around the house, straightening the tea service.
“Wanted to ask you something, missus,” Mariah began.
“Oh, Mariah, delighted to see you.” Evangeline didn’t seem delighted at all. “The baby’s doing fine. Just fine. Margaret will make you some nice lemonade and a snack. Would you like some nice lemonade and a snack?”
“No ma’am. Just came for more information.”
“Information? What are you talking about?”
Margaret disappeared into the depths of the house. Evangeline watched her go.
“You want to know more about my husband,” she said when Margaret had gone.
Mariah said nothing.
“They’ll be out there tomorrow night, I think.” Evangeline waved her finger toward the window facing the shed. “That’s where they’ll be. Who knows?”
Mariah nodded, knowing who they were, just not knowing their names. Her husband and his cronies. The men who had murdered her son. The men who were trying desperately to keep the world the way it was, the way it had always been, the way one now-dead black cobbler would have understood and stood up against and would have said: No more.
“How you know?”
“My husband said something about visitors coming by after dark. That’s what he always means.”
“After dark they be there?” Mariah asked.
Evangeline didn’t seem to hear her. “I have become resigned to the disappearance of my husband into something I don’t want to understand. I take care of this home, but at times what I see fit to do with it is to burn it to the ground and salt the earth.”
What could Mariah say to that?
“And this is the last I’ll ever speak to you about it, Mariah Reddick.”
* * *
The next evening, after dusk, they each arrived separately on horseback, all of them heavy with beard and wearing black. There were fewer than she’d expected. Elijah Dixon bustled around greeting everyone. Mariah watched from the kitchen, where she had commandeered from Margaret the food meant for the guests. I’ll do the delivering, she’d told Margaret, taking her headscarf. They never look close enough to recognize me. She crossed the yard to the shed. Below one of the shed’s high windows, an old bench faced west, and there she sat down with the basket of food. If she sat still with her back against the wall, it would be impossible to see her through the window. For a moment she was afraid that the smell of the biscuits, steamy and sweet, would give her away, so she draped her skirts across the top of the basket.
Pacing, shoes scraping and thumping on the bare floor. Their voices clarified out of the foggy murmur.
“—family out on Lyon Road. You so sure you need it?” This voice rattled and squeaked, like its owner had ages before lost his voice from shouting.
Voices chimed in.
And then she heard Elijah speaking. “Of course we need it. We have the two parcels adjacent, so it’s not even a question. How much did you offer?”
“Eighty,” said Squeaky Voice.
“Eighty? Christ, you’ll bankrupt me.”
“No I won’t, because they turned it down.”
“They turned it down? Eighty?”
“Let’s burn them out.” Deeper voice, gruff. One she recognized.
Dixon: “You threaten them?”
Squeaky: “Sure I threatened them. Then I offered the eighty.”
“What they say?” another voice, younger.
“I tell you they turned it down. They’re homesteading and they’re not wanting to leave, the husband said. Man by the name of Polk.”
Gruff Voice: “They got a barn?”
Squeaky: “Yeah.”
Mariah could tell that they all understood what that meant: that they didn’t have to even say what that meant. Mariah knew, too. If they have a barn, the barn can be burned down. Several barns had gone up in flames recently—farmers bringing in their hay, packing it too
“Aaron, you go out there later this week,” Dixon said. “Ask Mr. Polk one more time, nicely. Go up to eighty-five. Just ask them once.”
Aaron’s was the higher voice. Aaron Haynes. “Ah hell,” he said.
“Just do it,” said Dixon. “You’re good with a tinderbox. Just hang around that night and take care of the barn. Then stop by there in a couple of days and offer them sixty.” He guffawed.
The talk went on. Mariah didn’t understand much of it, reference to land and stock and railroads wanting to be built, but she understood the gist of it: Dixon and his men were buying up great forested tracts of land, selling the lumber, and preparing to sell the land to the railroad as it expanded from Nashville south to Franklin.
Finally the shed went quiet, and Mariah could only hear the sound of a whiskey jar being slid across the table. A shuffling of feet, more creaking of the floorboards. They were getting up. She lunged from the bench and ran down the path just as she heard one of the men say, “So, I’ll let you know what Mr. Polk has to say.”
And then Mariah remembered the basket on the bench. She saw it there in the dark under the yellow glowing window. She saw it steam, and the door begin to open. She could feel the tears beginning to form at the corner of her eyes as she ran—leapt!—back to the bench and snatched the basket into the crook of her arm. The door had opened but no one came out. She could no longer feel the cold air, she felt hot all over, and when finally one of the men had turned to go down the step from the door of the shed, she was there at the bottom waiting with their traveling food, breathing hard, her scarf pulled low to just above her eyes.
A skinny man was first down the steps, a limp in his right leg, face covered in black hair nearly up to the bottom of his eyes. He was saying something in his squeaky voice about feed and drought, something entirely innocuous and false, as if he knew she was listening. When he saw her there, smiling and bearing gifts, still catching her breath, he grabbed a biscuit as if it were all he ever expected, to have Negro women standing by handing out food.