The Dry Grass of August(58)

I hugged Davie. “Shhh, shhh.” I walked around and around, holding him close until his crying slowed, breathing through my mouth because his britches smelled so bad. I grabbed a diaper from the stack on the dresser and sat on the bed with him, rocking him back and forth, then lowering him to the spread. “Hush, hush, sweet boy. Gone change your diaper.” I sounded like Mary.

Mama came out of the bathroom in her robe, her hair in a towel turban. A cloud of soapy-smelling steam followed her. She handed me a warm washcloth. “Wipe him good.”

I pulled the diaper off Davie. “What’s an integrator?”

“People who want to send you to school with colored children.”

I wadded up the diaper, dropped it on the floor, and cleaned Davie’s bottom, sprinkling him with baby powder. He kicked his legs happily.

Mama straightened. “And the word is ‘integrationists,’ not ‘integrators.’ Some people are prejudiced and ignorant to boot.” She went in the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Davie clapped his hands and reached for me. “Doobie.”

By next week, he wouldn’t remember Mary.





CHAPTER 23

Stell Ann was as sad as I was, but her way of handling it was to get busy. When I got to our cabin, she was straightening it, putting dirty clothes in a pillowcase. I wished I could be that way. “Where’s Puddin?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Stell’s eyes were swollen. She hadn’t combed her hair or washed her face, so unlike her.

“Does she know about Mary?”

Stell shrugged.

I ran outside, saw a speck of pink through the trees. Puddin’s favorite T-shirt. She sat in a carpet of pine needles beside the outhouse, staring into the distance.

“Puddin?”

“Nobody told me.” She scratched her knee. “Is she dead?”

I dropped down beside her, trying not to breathe in the odor coming from the outhouse.

“She must be dead or she’d come home,” Puddin said.

I put my arms around her, held her. We walked together back to our cabin.





Stell and Mama took the kids to lunch. I wasn’t hungry and Mama didn’t insist. I put on my bathing suit and went out into the hot noon sun. The concrete apron at the pool burned my feet. I dove in and breaststroked to the far wall before I came up. A woman was settling herself into one of the lounges. “You sure are a good swimmer.”

“Thanks.” I ducked my head, slicking back my hair.

“Are you on a swimming team?”

“Back home.” I swam the length again, coming up near where the woman sat.

“Where’s home?”

“Charlotte, North Carolina.”

“Oh, goodness, you must be one of the girls got attacked on Lillington Avenue.”

“How’d you know?”

She reached for her Coppertone. “I live just around the corner from where it happened. Sally said y’all were from Charlotte.”

She had kind eyes and curly hair going from red to gray. Old as Meemaw, but thin and healthy, which made all the difference. She rubbed oil on her shoulders. “That bruise on your arm—from last night?”

For a second I was confused. Had Daddy hit me? Didn’t matter, my answer would be the same. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know who attacked you?”

“Some men.” I wanted her to hush.

“And—was it your sister, too?”

“Yes, ma’am, but we’re okay.”

“I’m glad you’re all right.”

I needed to say something out loud. “Mary, our maid, she’s missing.”

“Oh, yes, the Nigra girl who was with you.” She poured Coppertone on her shins. “I’m sure Sheriff Higgins is doing what he can.”

I ducked under and swam away fast. At the other end I climbed out and ran back to the cabin.

I had to find somebody who’d know how much Mary mattered, somebody who would do something, go looking for her. Out where the tent meeting was, lots of coloreds lived around there.





I trudged back up Zion Church Creek Road through afternoon shadows that striped the red clay. A man and three children stood in a circle in the field, holding fishing poles, heads bowed as if they were praying. Was it the same family from yesterday, the girl who was diving from the float? The wind carried a rusty smell like Rainbow Lake at Shumont. Birds flew up from the tall grass. Wires stretched between phone poles along the road and down a driveway to a brick house with sagging shutters, a vegetable garden in the front yard. A small, round colored woman was cutting corn off the stalks, dropping the ears into a bucket. The mailbox by the driveway said Ezra Travis. I walked toward the house, past corn plants rattling in the afternoon breeze.

I stopped by a thick azalea shrub between the garden and the house. The woman looked at me. She was darker than Mary, shorter, fatter. A white apron covered her pink print dress. She slid her knife into the pocket of her apron. “Yes?”

“Are the Travises at home?”

“I’m Mrs. Travis.”

“I’m trying to find—”

The woman said, “And you are?”

“Oh. June Watts.”