Deacon King Kong(91)

She paused, remembering. “Well, he was sawing it. He was drunk and you was a little bitty thing. And he was swinging you back and forth like a rag doll, working that crosscut saw to death, sawing at that tree.”

She chuckled at the memory.

“You done your best, but you got tired. Back and forth you went and finally you dropped off. And your daddy was so drunk he loosed his end of the saw and stepped to you hard. He picked you up with one hand and hollered at you in a way that I never forgot. He didn’t say but two words.”

“‘Saw on,’” Sportcoat said sadly.

Hettie sat thoughtfully a moment.

“Saw on,” she said. “Imagine that. Talking to a child that way. There is nothing on this earth so low as a mother or father who treats their child cruel.”

She scratched her jaw thoughtfully. “The world was just becoming clear to me then. Seeing how we lived under the white folks, how they treated us, how they treated each other, their cruelty and their phoniness, the lies they told each other, and the lies we learned to tell. The South was hard.”

She sat and pondered a minute, and scratched her long, lovely shin. “‘Saw on,’ he said. Hollering at a little bitty boy. A boy doing a man’s job. And he was a drunk his own self.”

Staring at him, she said softly, “And despite all that, you had so much talent.”

“Oh, them old-time days is good and gone,” he said.

She sighed and gave him that look again, one of patience and understanding, one he’d known since they were both children. For a moment, the smell of fresh red earth seemed to float into his nostrils, and the aroma of spring flowers, evergreen pine, cucumber tree, sweetgum, spicebush, goldenrod, foamflowers, cinnamon ferns, asters, and then the overwhelming smell of moonflower drifted into the air. He shook his head, thinking he was drunk, because at that moment, lying amidst the junk of a basement boiler room of the battered Watch Houses in South Brooklyn, he felt as if he had drifted back to South Carolina, and he saw Hettie sitting atop her father’s pony in her backyard, patting its neck, the pony standing near her daddy’s garden, the tomatoes, the squash and collard greens. Hettie looking so tall and young and pretty, gazing out over her daddy’s beautiful yard full of plants.

Hettie closed her eyes and raised her head, sniffing the air. She said, “Now you can smell it, can’t you?”

Sportcoat remained silent, afraid to admit that he could.

“You used to love the smell of plants,” she said. “Any plant. You could tell every plant, one from the other, just by its smells. I loved that about you. My Plant Man.”

Sportcoat waved his hand in the air. “Oh, you talk of old things, woman.”

“Yes I do,” she said wistfully, staring out over his head. She seemed to be looking at something far away. “Remember Mrs. Ellard? The old white lady I used to work for? I ever tell you about why I left her?”

“’Cause you gone to New York.”

She smiled sadly. “You’re just like the white man. You change every story to suit your purpose. Listen to me for a change.”

She rubbed her knee as she began her story.

“I was fourteen years old when I started looking after Mrs. Ellard. I cared for her for three years. There wasn’t nobody she trusted more than me. I made her food, did her little exercises and things with her, gave her all her medicines the doctor gived her. She was very sick when I come on, but I had nursed white folks since I was twelve, so I knowed my business. Mrs. Ellard wouldn’t go to the doctor unless I went with her. She wouldn’t move till I come in the house in the morning. She wouldn’t go to bed at night unless I tucked her in. I knew all her little ins and outs. She had a good heart. But her daughter was something. And her daughter’s husband, he was the devil.

“That husband come to me one day saying some things was missing from the house. I asked what these things was and he got mad and said I was backtalking him and owed him eleven dollars. He had a fit about that eleven dollars. He said, ‘I’m gonna take it out your next pay.’

“Well, I knew what that meant. The old woman was dying, see, and they wanted me out. I had just got paid when he accused me of stealing that eleven dollars and I only made fourteen dollars a week, so I gave two weeks’ notice. But the daughter said, ‘Don’t tell my mother. She’ll be upset about you leaving and she’s dying and it’ll make her feel worse.’ She promised me my pay and a little extra to keep quiet on it. So I agreed.

“Well, I seen what they was doing. They didn’t know more about caring for poor Mrs. Ellard than a dog knows a holiday. They complained about her, throwed things into her food which she wasn’t supposed to eat, let her lay in her own filth, and forgot to give her medicine and all them things. I was just a teenager, but I knowed it was trouble. However the knife fell, I knew where the sharp end was gonna land, so I made ready to leave.

“About three days before my time was up, I come into the room to feed Mrs. Ellard and she started crying. She said, ‘Hettie, why you leaving me?’ I knew then that the daughter had spit out a lie. The doorknob hadn’t bumped me in the back when that worthless daughter was up in my face pretending to be mad with me for telling her mother I was leaving. I knew that meant I had just worked two weeks for nothing. I knew right then whatever little pay I was supposed to get, well . . . that was gone, see.”