Jeffery Allen - Holding Pattern - Stories

Hello, Hatch, Blunt said.

Hello, Blunt.

Blunt removed her coat and hung it in the closet. Her arms were thick inside the sleeves of the red jumpsuit. She removed her hat before the dresser mirror, intent on her reflection. Hair spilled gray and long about her shoulders. With her back to him, she began unpacking the one suitcase, now open on the bed. She turned and smiled. Hummed low deep waters in her throat. You can’t fool me , he thought. Puffy in his snowsuit, he watched her unpack and searched for the correct way to phrase what he wanted to say.

I mean, all that happened twenty-five, thirty, years ago. Blunt chased him out of town with her straight razor. Red, they called him, though I never saw him myself. Clay colored. Bowlegged. A midget. A bad man. Like your father.

Blunt kept his ten-dollar Sears Roebuck guitar and taught herself how to play it.

Then Blunt married the preacher-mortician. I was ten by this time. They’d known each other all along. We moved into his funeral home. It was like a castle, enough rooms to sleep fifty people. Plenty places to wander and get lost.

The preacher always spoke his mind. Children make me nervous. This is what he said. I got a bad heart, and people like me, with bad hearts, also have bad nerves, if you see my meaning. I did. So I kept fifteen feet away from him. Fifteen feet. Measured it.

He was the most disliked colored man in the Rains County. He kept a stable full of horses he had never learned to ride. (His bad heart.) And he had dainty ways like white folks. Always wore a suit and tie in the blazing heat, and walked with his head up high, and breathed like a rusty well pump, and sweated like a fountain. He would place his napkin in his lap when he ate and sweat down into it. He had been in a car accident that scarred up his face pretty bad. (You should have seen it. Unbelievable.) And he never ate meat, since it aggravated his scars. This is what he said: God saw to it to give me the accident, and with it, scars and a bad heart.

The accident had given him the calling to be a preacher, but his sermons put people to sleep. (Christ is fire and water insurance!) That was what led him into the mortuary business. Preachers must eat. He was the picture of success. (They often wrote him up in the newspapers.) With the dead in your corner, you can’t fail. Not that he didn’t have his problems. Rumor had it that he disrespected bodies placed in his care. (I never saw him myself.) He carved tic-tac-toe on skin. He stuffed hollow cavities with marbles. He drained insides with a garden hose. He embalmed with shoe polish. These accusations turned away no customers. He was cheap and allowed payment by installments and gave a free vase of flowers to the family of the deceased and guaranteed his caskets to resist rust and rot for fifty years.

Then this man — his name always escapes me — took things one step further. I was sixteen. One Sunday he entered the chapel shouting and screaming and cursing and woke the snoring congregation. He voiced his charges: The preacher had removed his wife’s neck and put a short log in its place. And the preacher had wrapped that log in a pretty pink scarf to hide the evil deed. (I did see the scarf.) He pointed a sharp finger at the preacher. Your tail is mine, he said. And I got something fo that hefty woman of yours too.

The preacher’s nerves took over after that. He would not let Blunt leave the house. And when he went out into the street, he took me along with him as his eyes and ears. He would look in every direction at once, scars twitching. Then he would put one hand over his heart, desperate to calm it. But the hand would jump every few seconds, like it had been given an electrical jolt. Then the wheezing would start, and I would guide him back to the parlor. This went on for about a week; then he and Blunt grabbed their hats and coats in the middle of the night and caught the first thing smoking.

I heard what you did, Hatch said. I know what you did. Mamma had always told him to respect adults, to speak when spoken to, but Blunt deserved no respect.

She stopped what she was doing and turned to him with her green eyes and wild mascara. Her big shoulders tense and her big hands stiff. What did you hear?

You know.

You tell me.

No, you tell me. Why did you do it? Why? Speak up. Be frank.

She studied him for a moment. Sometimes it just bees that way.

Fine, he said. Neither understanding nor caring to understand, he freed himself from the snowsuit and went into the kitchen, where Mamma was.

Were you good? she asked.

Yes.

Then why are you frowning?

I don’t know.

You’ll have to try harder to be good.

Fine.

Okay.

Fine.

A burly foreigner under an ugly red hat explains to a primly dressed man behind a desk why he wants a Liberty Express card: In our country, it is forbidden to wear fur hats or ride speedboats. The white man issues him the card. He zooms offscreen in a long red speedboat. The camera zooms in on the ugly red hat, buoyant on the water. Bubbles carry it under.

How many times had he seen that commercial over the day’s slow course? They had sat in continual silence, no catching up on lost time, no planning for the found future. Mute monkeys.

Joy, why don’t I prepare dinner?

No, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll do it.

Why don’t we both do it? Blunt smiled.

You don’t have to.

It’ll be fun. We’ll do it together.

I would like that, Mamma said. But why don’t I cook and you stay here with Hatch and let Hatch keep you company?

Blunt hesitated. That’s a good idea.

Mamma went into the kitchen. Blunt and Hatch watched the television.

Quiet day, Blunt said.

Yes.

Shadow and light, her face flickered. What’s yo favorite show?

The Phony from Harlem.

They sat around the round wood kitchen table, with platters of fried chicken, black-eyed peas, corn bread, and candied yams in easy reach. They sat like quiet spectators, as if waiting for the food to perform. A roach crawled onto the table.

Mamma forced a chuckle. These roaches are about to run us out of here, she said.

Blunt smashed the roach with her hand, as swift as a judge’s gavel. Mamma turned her eyes away. Stunned like the roach, Hatch watched Blunt until she rose to wash her nasty hand.

Mamma cleared the table. All three moved into the living room, before the TV, and sat down, not saying anything. Blunt faced Hatch, some half-formed song in her wide throat.

He watched her. When you gon play that guitar? he asked. Blunt was a phony, and he would prove it.

Hatch! Mamma said.

Joy, it’s okay. She looked at Hatch. Why don’t you bring it to me?

Disbelieving, he rushed over to the guitar — invisible inside its armored case — tensed, stooped down, and lifted it. It was light, weightless. He brought it over and set it down at Blunt’s feet. Blunt shifted forward in her seat, crouched over the case, flipped open the latches, and removed the guitar. Clean bright color. Sun and flame. And thick, cablelike strings that hovered an inch above the fingerboard and the sound hole (a deep dark cave). I bet that’s Red’s old guitar , Hatch thought. Too cheap to buy a new one.

Blunt plucked the strings with her right thumb — big as a shoehorn — while she twisted the tuning pegs with her left fingers, releasing long scraping vibrations like those of a dragging muffler. Hands working, she tested the strings some more and nodded to herself when she achieved the desired pitch.

And now, for my next tune—

Hatch did not laugh at her joke.

She cleared her throat. Stroked the strings and set them humming. Opened her mouth wide in song.

Sweet daddy, bring back yo sweet jelly roll