He grins. “We called him Dippermouth them days, he had such a wide ol’ smile.”
“So you really believe in those spells?”
He looks confused or offended. Or both. “‘Course I do, Seam. I seen ‘em work. There used to be a ghost on St. Ann Street. I swear. I seen her — hollow eyes, snowy hair. She’d hang out on the steps of the old opera house and, at night, disappear into a rooming place over to St. Ann and Royal. One of the ladies I sold ‘taters to told me this particular haint was a woman who’d kilt herself after finding her man with a lover. She rose from the grave one night, snuck into the lovers’ room, and turned on the gas, phyxiating ‘em both. The lady who told me this, I went with her one afternoon, right into the haunted room. She had her some goofer dust and sprinkled it all over the place. None of us ever saw that ol’ ghost again.”
I pour him another beer. He sits quietly now. Whether or not his tales are even remotely true, he has a past he can call on, I think. Maybe that’s what Cletus Hayes means to me. Whatever the reality of his relations with Sarah Morgan, whatever his connection to me, I can make him my personal ghost, a badge here in a community haunted by tragic luck. I squeeze Bitter’s hand.
After rinsing the dishes we sit in the yard near the mud-dauber shack, splitting another beer. Stars spackle the sky. “If you’re thinking of staying awhile, maybe it’s time you move inside,” he says. So. My probation’s over. “Shack’s good for a night or two, but it ain’t no long-term deal.”
“I was considering a motel — ”
“Hush. I got a big, fat couch in there.”
It’s not all that big, but I thank him anyway.
“If you black, stay back; if you brown, stick around; if you white, you right,” Bitter says. “That’s a saying we used to have here, kind of a joke on how the honkies saw us. Your mama knew it. O’niest explanation she ever give me for why she move.” He massages his chest, just below his collarbone. “I think she thought she was gonna save you. And maybe she did, who knows?”
“Well — ”
“It took bravery for her to change her whole life, Seam.”
“I suppose.”
“And maybe you ain’t lost all that much, after all. You here now, right? Something I didn’t ‘member this morning, come to me later. There’s a fella knew your daddy real well, name of Elias Woods. Used to hang out at Etta’s ‘fore he move south of town. I got his address ‘cause I done some carpentry work for him once upon a time. Don’t have no phone, I know of, but you might want to go see him. Might be he could tell you more’n I can ‘bout your pa.”
“Wonderful. What’s his story?”
“Cain’t rightly say. Ain’t seen him in years.”
I rub my eyes. “While I’m down this way, I’d also like to see the field where Cletus Hayes was hanged. Seems like it’s part of my story, somehow. Something I ought to witness.”
“Pretty grim vacation. You know where it is?”
“I’ve got a vague idea — though for years the army tried to hide it. A few intrepid historians have managed to pinpoint it, generally.”
“Well now, you start using them fancy words, it’s time for me to go inside and get that couch ready for you.”
I nearly tell him Enough of the “uncle” routine; you understand my “fancy” words perfectly well, but I’d only upset him, and I’m not sure it’s just a routine, after all. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Not everyone wears a mask.
He sprinkles out our beer dregs. Frogs chirp in the bayou a few miles away. Crickets treak. He bends down, pressing his chest, then picks something loose from the lawn: a mistletoe sprig, dropped from a tree. He dangles it over my head, leans close, pecks my cheek. “Glad you here, Seam.”
I take his hand. Lord, he’s frail. It occurs to me I’ve returned to Houston too late — when the most tangible link to my past may be about to collapse. “Me too, Uncle Bitter. Thanks.”
5
LOCUST TREES throb with cicadas. The city’s old grid pattern gives way to the new: the faded remnants of east-west streets poke through grass and weeds, petering out where fresh roads, following the latest commercial lures, tug the city in whole new directions. Driving south through Houston, on my way to find Elias Woods, I’m reminded why I was drawn to city planning, a job that combined my love of history with memories of my first bruised neighborhood.
My first boss used to quote Le Corbusier to me: “Architecture or revolution. Revolution can be avoided,” meaning if we build better buildings, we’ll shape happier lives. An unfeasible ideal but, as the boss used to say, worth fighting for.
“When’s the last time you saw a decent porch?” a planner once asked me. “Your grandma’s house, right? Homebuilders nowadays, they don’t know a porch from their own patooties.” His unfeasible goal was to save Dallas by heralding the second coming of the porch. “I don’t know how we’ll do it,” he said, “but I’ll bet we can lock in some porch incentives in the land development code.” He sent me out to measure distances between sidewalks and front doors, to count porches or note their absence, to see whether space existed for chairs or a swing … he wanted me to research blackberries; he remembered a blackberry vine around his own grandmother’s porch and was convinced the plant could humanize our neighborhoods. The first field guide I turned to said “BLACKBERRY: any of various erect-growing perennial brambles that bear black or sometimes whitish fruits.” Black or sometimes whitish: unlocking that phrase, it seemed to me, was the key to humanizing our cities, but I couldn’t explain this to my planner.
I loved doing research at night: passing houses in the dark, seeing the lighted windows, the warm shadows of those inside. The city seemed cozy, then, safe.
One night, I drove through a tired neighborhood across the Trinity River from downtown Dallas. One of the older areas. Skyscrapers blazed like free-standing chandeliers. The air was hot. Frogs chrr-ed. The river smelled both fetid and sweet, like apples gone bad. I was counting porches — quite a few over here, though most were ancient and saggy — when something moved on a parked car in the street. I glanced over: a mud-brown owl the size of an open accordion. It swiveled its head to watch me. Eyes yellow as fall leaves. Ruffled air, a soft chop: another owl landed nearby. Then another appeared, settling on a bent, unreadable sign. All around me, feathered beats grew thick as walls; the night became a house of wings. A Goya dream. I felt exhilarated, frightened. The birds called to one another, a chorus so mournful, I thought a sob had escaped the sky. The birds blinked at me as I inched the car down the street. Their calm, after my initial shock at their presence, relaxed me. I didn’t feel judged. Or even quite real. A piercing detachment suffused their gazes, as though they saw past surfaces. I felt stripped of my body and skin — no bothersome hair, no menstrual spotting to worry about — reduced (in their eyes) to pure, natural movement. I couldn’t sustain it, but for a moment I felt more at home in the world than I ever had: a current of light or heat. A pickup turned the corner, loose headlights swaying like dance-floor strobes. The owls scattered.
Now I pass rickety porches, reminders of that night. A smell of coffee on the breeze, from a nearby processing plant. Rust. Car exhaust.
Reinerman Street is on my way, so I turn and park by the yellow house. Corn leaves rustle in the old lady’s vegetable patch. Teenagers circle Brock’s Combo Burger in dirty, dented cars, yelling at one another, flirting. Bitter’s hoo-raw hasn’t changed the neighborhood’s looks for me or given me a clearer glimpse of history, but as with the owls, I feel an uneasy shifting in the air, as though the present weren’t quite real. It’s the same sensation that overcame me when, on return visits here, Mama told me, “You don’t belong here anymore. This is not your place now.” I could almost feel my identity slip, like a cheap, tossed-off mask — but what was beneath it, I hadn’t a clue. The teenagers’ voices grow murky, a rush of underwater bubbles. Sweat soaks the back of my shirt. I picture Cletus’s face and feel myself melting into him, a thrilling freedom, a scary drift. Eyes closed, I know myself to be walking, walking … my body heavier, more massive in the upper arms and thighs, burdened, tight … the day’s a scorcher so I remove my cap. My buddies do the same. A streetcar clatters behind us, but we prefer to stroll rather than sit in the back of a car, enduring a white conductor’s contemptuous stare. It’s the morning of Thursday, August 23, twelve hours before the riot for which we’ll eventually hang. For now, on R&R, we’re carefree and happy. Unarmed.