"Well, they say it's in the bloodline, but I ain't seen any evidence of whatever madness touched him up as a boy in his kindred. 'Course, he always was a bit different, and I suppose folks will grasp at any explanation that suits, like as not. Wouldn't want to tar his kin with that brush, though."
She paused to inhale that rich-royal smoke and meets my eyes as she sets it in her lungs. There's a bright blue flicker deep in them as if she's saying
I know you, Bill, I know what you're driving at, you don't fool me with your travelling ways and your thank-you-kindlys, but I likes your company so I'll forgive you and then she exhaled and that rich-royal smoke unfurled into the murky Alabama night.
"'Course, they say that things can be weakest when you give em the most support, and he had no shortage o'that in his time. His daddy hardly ever hit his mamma, and there was always bread on the table, and what more could you ask for? Even went to school, most days. Was gonna make something of himself."
I grunted and stared out over the water.
"You best be listenin' to me, William. You ain't too old to be smacked over the head for bad manners."
I indicated I was listening, paying close attention to the way that the sinew of her bony old neck was dancing along in time with her words. She pursed her wrinkled lips at me in an incredible grimace and I caught myself speculating on how far from the grave she was. There was still so much fire in her - they wouldn't be taking her old bones down to the churchyard for years yet, she wouldn't let them, she'd kick open that coffin and demand to be taken back to her porch to berate the dogs and dote on her grandkids. They didn't make them like her anymore and she knew it.
"Well now, then he up and decided to travel, didn't he? Hopped on one of those trains that pass through in the night sometimes, riding in the back with the hobos and the drifters, eating old boots and worse to get by I'll be bound. Disgraceful way to behave, but at least some of them are Christians. By the grace of God he made it to the sea and then that's the last we heard of him for a time. His parents were beside themselves - well, when they were sober. His daddy went over the ravine a year later and his mamma kept on with the devil's drink for years. Thank the good Lord he was the youngest and his brothers and sisters all grown and moved on with their lives. Good children, all of them - except for the eldest who got in some kinda trouble with the law and stopped sending letters. Still, every family gotta black sheep."
I wondered who the black sheep was in her family. Perhaps it was her, defying them all for years of her life, drinking and cursing like a sailor, refusing the nursing home, refusing the medicine, refusing everything but church and chores. More than that, I wondered what had befallen him overseas, and where he went.
Perhaps he sailed over the sea to smoke hashish with brown-skinned men with funny foods on their breath, and lost himself in the skirt of a doe-eyed
bibi with flowing brown hair. He might have sat in cafes in Paris and watched the bitter, dissatisfied owner lament the arrival of yet another publisher's rejection letter for his poetry, not understanding a word of the fast-paced, garbled French. He might have been almost drowned, and then almost saved. He might have broiled under the sun of an African savannah, and seen a lion at a distance through a camera lens. He might have fallen sick and laid awake all nights under a pale December moon, seeing in the new year with fits and starts and shakes fit to afflict the worshippers of the Devil.
He might have done a lot of interesting things.
"And what did he do, when he came back? I'll tell you what he did, he went and bought a
car." So much scorn concentrated into those three letters. "And instead of settling down with a nice girl and carrying on that fool's bloodline of his and making something of himself, he drove from end to end of the country. Memphis, Missouri, Newark, all manner of sinful places a good Christian soul shouldn't find themselves in by the grace of God and no mistake. And what did he do when he reached the end of the country?"
I can't imagine, Mama. Threw himself in the sea, I expect.
"If he had any sense in that fool head of his he would. No, he turned around and started right back in the opposite direction. Treading ground he already trod, now that's just plum foolishness."
A pause.
"Take me back inside, Bill. The chill's reaching into my bones. There'll be time again for talk come sunup."
Treading ground you already trod, Mama?
"None of your sass, boy. Get your hide indoors."
