Dust On the Bible

CHAPTER ONE

Brass Mirror

On a Saturday morning, Lilleitha stood at the woodstove and baked her backside. Waves of warmth cast a spell over her. She stared at whatever she faced—slabs in the wood box, an enamel dishpan on the shelf, Grandma’s knives stuck behind a wood slat nailed to the wall. Steam rose from the iron kettle so silently she could hear whispers coming through a crack in a windowpane. It was hardly October and already a cold morning. She served herself grits Aunt Theda had left simmering on the back of the stove. A pan of biscuits rested on top of the iron skillet where the fatback had been fried.

She listened for family sounds, a door slamming or voices, whether Grandma or Grandpa, Archie or Uncle Freeman. Even the yard hens were quiet, as was the cow in the barnyard and the mules in the stable. Eventually a hound moaned under the steps. Lilleitha’s mother was often at the barn milking the cow by the time she got out of bed, even on school mornings when she hustled to catch the bus. Some parents complained about the pupils’ long ride to Cane Shoals School, but Lily didn’t mind it. She liked to be going places. What she did mind was being in the class with Vera, who had by mean tricks taken charge of practically all the sixth grade girls.

It wasn’t unusual to hear Grandma spurt out, “Ohhhh, nowwwww! Where’d I put my glasses!” for she was often misplacing this or that. Even with nobody around, she talked out her complaints, and on any given morning, that might be a dull knife or an empty water bucket. Nobody liked to haul out to the well to draw water.

Then there was Grandpa, whose temperament could be gauged by the heft of his footsteps on the floorboards, which registered room-size tremors when he was irritated. And if it looked like a rainy day, he could be counted on to shake the house, for cotton was still in the field. Most nights at the supper table he and Uncle Freeman talked about the cotton they needed to complete another bale and who would take it to Hudson’s Crossing to be ginned.

As the nights grew longer and colder, the family spent more time in the small kitchen, the only warm room. It was what made the Reinhart home different. It was effectively a one-room building, separated from the main house by a covered plank walkway and just big enough for the iron cook stove, butcher table, and dish shelf.

In recent history, kitchens had been built as part of the house as the inconvenience of going outside to the kitchen had taken precedence over whatever danger the fires posed. Aside from that, once electricity became available, people expected to have electric stoves.

The cook stove was mostly Aunt Theda’s territory, though Lilleitha was expected to keep up the supply of wood and carry out the ashes. Every day after school she toted stove wood from the woodpile and stacked it on the walkway at the kitchen door. Grandpa and Uncle Freeman regularly stocked the woodpile with logs and slabs, which they sawed into pieces short enough for the stove. Those pieces that were too thick had to be split with an ax, which Lily did. She was also responsible for chipping splinters from pitch-filled pine knots Uncle Freeman brought from the woods. These, along with corn cobs, were used to start fires.

Though allowed to use a knife or ax, Lily was strictly forbidden to touch matches. Starting fires and lighting the lamps were duties reserved for adults.

The kitchen could accommodate the family for breakfast because the seven members of the household ate at different times, which had become their custom after a couple of bone-chilling mornings in the dining room. Lily’s mother, uncles, and grandfather ate early breakfasts and left to do chores, but Aunt Theda or Grandma was usually in or about the kitchen anytime. On this particular morning Lily alone sat at the side of the rough-hewn wood table pushed against the wall. Something about her solitary breakfast gave the emerging day an added chill.

From the house a door slammed shut, and before anybody entered the kitchen, Lily knew from the footfall it was Archie, her mother’s youngest brother who had graduated from high school the previous May.

He rushed in, drew up at the cookstove, and turned his back and front to the heat. With a rag in hand, he opened the small door and used the poker to shake the grate enough to sift embers into the chamber for ashes. He took a couple pieces of firewood from outside the door and shoved them in the stove before serving himself a breakfast.

They sat at the table and ate in silence, Lily leisurely staring at the stove.

“Where’s Aunt Theda?” She avoided mention of the matter on everybody’s mind.

Archie shrugged.

Grandma Angeline, whose hefty neck and shoulders suited her authority, entered the room, limping more than usual. “I’m not ready for this cold weather. If it don’t warm up some, I might as well go back to bed.”

“Ma, can I borrow two dollars?” said Archie.

“What you want with two dollars?” Grandma’s voice rumbled as usual, as if she weren’t worried about Archie like everybody else in the family. Because he had been born some time after all the rest, he had been brought up as much by his sisters as his parents. Lily’s mother Florence, the oldest, had already graduated from Cane Shoals School when he was born.

“I want to buy a emery hone.” He had the best knife on the place and kept it sharp.

“Don’t you have one?”

“It broke.” He had made a deal with Tib, who owned the nearest store, to sell the wood duck decoys he made.

Grandma poured herself a cup of chicory coffee and sat with a groan in the only other chair. “Tib sells emery hones?”

Archie shook his head. “Pa said I could have the pickup to drive to Hammond’s Store when he gets back.” Hammond’s, the biggest store within twenty miles, was in Hudson’s Crossing.

Nobody asked where Grandpa had gone. For over a month he had been getting up every sunny morning except Sunday and going to Sugar Bottom to pick up the negro hands who picked cotton.

Though they were talking about a knife sharpener, Lily detected an undercurrent of concern in Grandma’s manner. The previous December, Archie had registered with the draft board when he turned eighteen, as required by law, and had been classified 1-A. Uncle Freeman, who had gone to Local Board Number Three in Hudson’s Crossing with Archie, had registered three years earlier in 1940, when it had been required of men aged twenty-one to thirty-one. Uncle Freeman’s draft status of II-C placed him down the list behind other boys in the county because he was a son doing farm labor, work considered necessary to national defense.

Their low-key tension over Archie’s 1-A classification had intensified since Grandpa had run into Melvin Pope, who was on the draft board, and found out a new quota had been issued requiring additional men from the county to be conscripted.

Of the negro hands who picked cotton, there were three who had agreed to work on Saturdays. Even if Florence went to the field with them, Lily was allowed other chores on the weekend. After her mother milked the cow, Lily walked Clio into the pasture and staked her out where grass continued in vigor despite the retreating sun. At the barnyard, she shelled corn, filled the water troughs, and fed the hogs. Patty Pie, the family sow ever since Lily was in first grade, usually had about a dozen piglets every year. The shoats Bister and Curly had been born the first of March in a litter of ten. Patty Pie had crushed three of the piglets, leading Grandpa to suspect she was getting old for breeding. As soon as he weaned the litter, he sold the piglets, except for Bister and Curly, saved for butchering.

Lily split wood and carried it to woodboxes or stacked extra on the porch. As the weather grew colder, more wood was needed for the stoves and fireplaces.

When she heard the sound of the mailman’s car on Cane Shoals highway, she ran to meet it. She could tell by Mr. Hallman’s hangdog look that he was sorry about delivering the letter with the U.S. Department of Army imprint on the envelope and addressed to Archie.

Lily put the letter on the dining table where it disposed the room to frequent visits. Aunt Theda took a look and said it might be something that went out to every boy that registered. Grandma inspected it and rubbed it between her fingers. “It feels bad to the touch.”

Archie drove the pickup into the yard, got out with a new knife sharpener, and started for the house. Lily rushed to him with the envelope. He glanced at it and looked at Lily before tearing it open. “Shit!” he said after reading it and handed it to her. The notice that his induction would likely take place in twenty-five days spread to family members like a contagion.

* * *

As Lily dressed for school Monday morning, she put aside her coat and wore a sweater, for more moderate autumn temperatures had returned. She caught the school bus and left as Grandpa returned with a pickup load of negroes to pick cotton.

When the bus dropped her off in the afternoon, Lily found Archie and her mother Florence in the field picking alongside the hands. She put away her books and went to the field. The longer she picked, the longer the row seemed. It stretched like elastic, going on and on...