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A Feast of Peonies by Obi, Chapter 2
A Feast of Peonies
by
Obi
II
Usually, it was you, Jame and Li'l Bo. Jame was the oldest at seven;
Li'l Bo was the youngest, five. You were cousins. They were first
cousins; they were your second cousins. But at Big Ma's house you were
more like brothers. Jame had real brothers, three of them. Harold Junior,
who was older than Jame, and John and Wallace, who were both younger. But
you were special. You were the Three Musketeers; you were tall in the
saddle; you were Hoppy, Gene and Roy.
Big Ma was their grandmother. She was your great aunt. Back then,
you didn't know what a great aunt was, so she was just Big Ma, the woman
who was older than your own mothers and who told your mothers what to do.
You threatened Big Ma once, back when you thought she was just another
grownup. Big Ma had chastised you unjustly-- at least in your mind-- and
you threatened to tell your mama. "Ah'm the mama around here," she told
you. "Ah'm the big mama." You told your mama anyway, just like you had
threatened. Mama laughed at you, and from then on, you knew who the real
boss was.
You were also more afraid of her than your own mothers. Your mothers
would coddle you, but Big Ma spanked, and you all knew it. You knew
because she told you. "Don't play with me," she would say, "because I
spank." You know now that it was a propaganda ploy, but it worked. You
stayed on your Ps and Qs in that woman's house.
Big Ma was tall and skinny with big feet and big hands. They were
strong hands from working in the cotton fields down south. She was flat
chested and she had no hips to speak of. She had a long face with eyes that
drooped at the corners. Her hair was mostly grey, but she sometimes wore
something in it that make it look blue. For some reason, she thought that
blue stuff looked good. Whenever she got the blue stuff put in, she would
walk around with her head held just a little bit higher, like she thought
she was a queen or something.
The genealogy went like this. Big Ma, a.k.a. Verlene Royce, had a
brother named Albert Buchanan who was your grandfather. She had two
daughters, Louise, who was Jame's mother, and Martha, who was Bo's mother.
Her sons were Wallace, William, Albert and the baby twins, Collis and
Reggie. Only the twins still lived at home.
The twins were 16. They were dark and strong and handsome. Collis
was the good twin, the artist, the innocent one, the one who smiled and
played with the young boys from time to time, and told you jokes. He drew
pictures for you whenever you asked. He drew a picture once of a rose, and
gave it to Martha. She has it to this day.
Reggie was the bad twin. He sulked and he rarely, if ever, played
with you. He couldn't draw, and he resented that Collis could. You used
to ask Reggie to draw pictures for you, but they were never the same. You
never understood that Collis and Reggie were different even though they
looked just alike. In time, Collis began to stifle his artistic talent
because he knew it was a source of anxiety for Reggie. Reggie tried once
to teach you how to play cards, but you were too young.
It was Collis who discovered the body in the basement.
During this particular summer, you were at Big Ma's house often. She
lived on the second floor of a building on 35th Street between Calumet and
Giles. Around the corner from her house was a vacant lot. This lot,
covered with wine bottles and rusted out cans, broken building bricks and
old tires, and overgrown with weeds and tall grasses, was the hunting
ground. This lot was the jungle you stalked in, the war zone you fought
in, the range where you wrangled and rustled cattle.
Back then, fruit was delivered in crates, cheap wooden crates nailed
together with wire hinges on the lid. The grocery store near the lot
discarded empty fruit crates out back two or three times a week. These
crates fueled your creative powers in countless ways all that summer.
Assembled, you used them as vehicles, houses, building blocks for forts,
bombs. Disassembled, they supplied the raw materials-- the slats, the
nails, the wire, the corners-- for countless childhood projects like
crutches, swords or, in this case, your hunting rifles.
The rifles consisted of nothing more than a short slat nailed down to
a long slat in such a way that the short slat swivelled like a trigger.
You used bricks that were carefully "mined" from the lot to pound the nails
into place. The bricks had to be clean, smooth and devoid of the white,
mold-like growth that was your clue that the brick would crumble if it were
used as a hammer. The final piece was a cross-section cut from a car inner
tube like a giant rubber band. You found inner tubes in the same lot, and
used broken pieces of glass to cut them into strips. These circles of
thin, pliant rubber were the bullets you used. The pieces of inner tube
hooked around the front of the gun, then stretched back over the hammer
which was really just the top piece of the wood that was also the trigger.
The principle was exactly the same as shooting rubber bands with your
fingers. When the trigger was pulled back, the hammer went forward
releasing the strip of inner tube from the front of the gun. A good rifle
could shoot a piece of rubber fifteen or twenty feet.
Once all of the building and testing and range testing were done, you
started the hunt. This is the part where you crawled through the lot on
your stomachs like soldiers careful not to disturb too much of the grass.
The key was to wait for the prey to alight, then shoot it. You hunted
butterflies and grasshoppers. The flight of the rubber bands was so
unpredictable that you rarely, if ever, actually hit the mark. And if you
did hit it, there would be so little force that the game would simply crawl
from under the debris and fly or hop away.
More often than not, you would catch butterflies by stalking them
slowly, sneaking up behind them, and pinching their wings between your
fingers. Butterfly wings are fragile. Pinching them always left a white
residue on your fingers, and usually crippled the butterflies. Sometimes,
you would give a wounded butterfly to the ants crowding a crack in the
sidewalk. At other times, you felt virtuous and humane in letting the
critters go after having walked around with them for an hour or so, after
holes had been eaten into their wings by the sweat between your fingertips.
Grasshoppers were different. You used the same technique, and pinched
their back legs. But they were stronger than butterflies. Sometimes, they
could snatch themselves from your grasp. When they couldn't, though, they
would ‘spit tobacco' on your fingers. You showed the ‘spit tobacco'
phenomenon to you mother, and she gagged. You did, too, when she told you
the bug was having a bowel movement from fear. You didn't hunt many
grasshoppers after that.
Being the oldest, Jame was the biggest. He was thin and brown with
wide eyes, a wide smile and gaps between his teeth. Back then, you always
wanted to be older than you were. You had been given a double promotion in
school, and, consequently, you were always the youngest and smallest person
in class. Ergo, you were always being picked on and teased. In your mind,
being one year older would have made such a difference. Being one year
older, you would have been less shy, more popular with the other kids,
better able to fight back. Jame, by contrast, was one year older. He
already was where you desperately longed to be. It always amazed you to
see him cry, because he always seemed to have arrived at that magical point
in the future when life was without problems. Yet, he cried a lot. He
needed to cry as often as you did. Maybe more. In fact, his left thumb
was flat, shriveled, faded and always wet because it was always in his
mouth because he was always crying.
Jame told fantastic stories with terrific sound effects. His primary
character was Harry Hachmann, World War II Messerschmitt ace for the Third
Reich. Harry came into being one rainy afternoon when you were playing
with a couple of plastic model airplanes you had built. Jame had built a
purple Messerschmitt; you had built a blue P-38 Lightning.
Naturally, the fiercest air war in the history of aviation broke out
in Big Ma's living room that very afternoon. The Messerschmitt won because
Jame's sound effects were so much better than yours, the roar of the engine
was so much louder and heavier, the bullets struck with so much more
authority. Since it just wasn't American for the Messerschmitt to win most
of the time, you changed planes. Now he was the Lightning, and he won all
of the time. Finally, you decided that he should fly both airplanes, one
in each hand. The result was magic. The planes dove and climbed nose to
tail, wing to wing, sputtering, stalling, rolling first left, then right.
Machine gun fire strafed the walls and ceiling and the big, black cast iron
stove in the middle of the floor with such thunder and clarity, Li'l Bo and
you ducked to avoid being hit. Jame twirled his arms like a windmill by
leaning his torso at the angle, then spinning his whole body. The effect
was stunning. In the end, the good guy won, but Harry Hachmann always
parachuted to safety.
Your most vivid memory of Li'l Bo is from a couple of years earlier.
He, his parents, your parents and you lived in a basement apartment on
South Michigan Avenue. Li'l Bo was always wet and smelly and in need of
having his nose wiped. You were always surprised when no one ever turned
him down. No one ever helped you blow your nose anymore, but they always
helped him. You resented that a lot.
You remember this period as much for a dream you had one afternoon
when you were sick as for anything else. You had been sick with a high
fever for what seemed like days. You were poor. Your parents had no money
for a doctor. The reason they shared an apartment with Li'l Bo's parents
is because you were all poor. In this dream, you wanted to leave your
body-- for good. You opened your eyes from the dream, and saw your parents
staring helplessly down at you. You knew what they feared, but you did not
care. In fact, it seems the person who was you in the dream had left the
room, and was headed for the ‘other side.' The gatekeeper was an old,
black man wearing a white beard and puffy, white hair, and dressed in white
clothes. He nodded his approval for you to go. Then suddenly, he changed
his mind. He summoned you back.
"But I thought I would never have to go back again," you whined in the
dream.
He whispered something to you in your ear. The you lying sick in the
bed couldn't hear what was being said, but you felt as if you were being
tricked. But then in the dream you expressed an understanding of the
situation, and reluctantly agreed to come back to this side. "You've got a
lot of work to do," the old man said. A day or two later, you were up and
sipping soup.
Li'l Bo was really Bo the Third. His father, Big Bo, was Bo, Junior.
You never met Bo, Senior, and you were glad that you hadn't. The reason is
that you, too, were a junior. In your mind-- and Jame and Li'l Bo
concurred-- ‘the Third' was to ‘Junior' as ‘Junior' was to ‘Senior.'
‘Junior' was a lot bigger than ‘the Third' because Big Bo was a lot bigger
than Li'l Bo. ‘Senior' was a lot bigger than ‘Junior' because your father
was a lot bigger than you. Therefore Bo, Senior, must have been as big as
King Kong. The day you made that connection, the Messerschmitt and the
Lightning fought on the same side to shoot King Kong standing wide-legged
on Big Ma's couch. Good thing, too! Mouth bombs were no match for a belt.
Near the end of that summer, one morning over breakfast, Collis
mentioned that he had seen someone tugging a trunk into the basement the
night before. He was talking to Reggie and Harold Junior. One of them
suggested that they go down and take a look. Collis wanted to call the
police.
"Shoot," Reggie said, "Ah'm goin' down and look."
They didn't want him to go alone, so Collis and Harold Junior agreed
to go, too.
The backyard was paved with concrete. The steps to the basement led
under the wooden porches. Once at the basement door, Reggie began losing
his nerve. He and Collis debated the wisdom of this venture while Harold
Junior tried to shoo the Three Musketeers away. Naturally, you wouldn't be
shooed. You were, after all, the Three Musketeers. Finally, Collis agreed
to lead the way.
Reggie gave Collis the flashlight, and he nervously pushed the door
open. They tiptoed in, and you tiptoed in behind them, close enough to
touch one of them if one of you got scared.
The basement was cool and musty and felt good after being in the sun.
The floor was cluttered with junk, wheelbarrows, bicycles, bed springs,
hoses, pipes and rags. A heavy grime covered everything.
Collis spotted the trunk resting by the back wall. It was the only
clean object in the room. His hand shook, and the beam went dim. He shook
the light deliberately to get it bright again. He told Reggie to open the
trunk.
"Ah'm not gon' open it," Reggie said.
"Here then, hold the light."
Reggie held the light while Collis approached the trunk. He paused a
few seconds to steel himself. He pulled at the latch. It was stuck.
Finally, it gave, and he pried the lid open a crack.
"Peek in," he told Reggie.
"Just throw it open," Reggie said.
He did.
In the dim light and between the bodies of the big guys in front of
you, you only caught a glimpse of the contents. It was red, and you think
there were some pieces. You tried to get a better look, but the beam
jerked wildly before it went out leaving you in pitch darkness, and the
guys in front were nearly trampling you to get to the door.
Jame, Li'l Bo and you ran out into the yard. You thought Collis,
Reggie and Harold Junior were behind you. By the time you looked around,
they were half way up to the second floor going two and three steps at a
time. You heard loud shouts from the kitchen, and Big Ma ordered you to
come up, too.
Within minutes, the yard was crowded with police and on-lookers. From
the porch, you saw them haul the trunk out to a waiting truck. The police
came upstairs. It was the only time you had ever seen white people in Big
Ma's house. They questioned Reggie and Harold Junior. They questioned
Collis.
"Did you see who put the trunk down there?"
Collis paused. "Yeah, I saw him. He looked right at me."
You were with him that night, just the two of you. You were on the
back porch breathing in the warm summer air. You felt special having him
to yourself. And he made you feel special the way he rubbed the top of
your head with his hand. He pointed out the brightest star in the sky and
told you it wasn't a star. It was a planet. You wondered how he knew.
You heard a scraping sound. Someone was dragging something heavy down the
alley in short spurts. Collis heard it, too. You both looked towards the
alley, but the noise was behind the building. He pointed to the North Star
and the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, and you strained to count the
stars in each. By the time you finished counting, the scraping sound was
in the yard below you. Collis stood up to see who it was. The pause in
Collis' attention irritated you. You stood up too and looked between the
slats of the back porch railing to see the charcoal grey figure of a man
slowly dragging a trunk on the ground behind him. Judging from the way the
man strained with each lunge, the trunk was heavy. His back was to you
and Collis. He was pulling the trunk towards your building. You wondered
what the man looked like, and just then, Collis cleared his throat. The
man was caught completely by surprise. He spun around and planted his
behind on the trunk as if to keep the lid from popping open. He looked
wild-eyed from one porch to the next until finally he saw the two of you.
He opened his mouth slowly, but he said nothing. He glanced again wildly
from porch to porch and all around the yard. Then he looked back at
Collis. This time the wildness in his eyes was gone. Now his eyes were
cold like the eyes of a snake. The look in his eyes scared you and you
hugged Collis' leg for comfort. The man narrowed his eyelids, and the
muscles at the base of his jaw began to flex. Collis flinched. He was
scared, too. The man jerked his gaze at you, and moved his head from side
to side to get a clearer look, but the railing slats prevented him from
getting a clear view. The man looked at Collis again as if to make sure he
had the details right, then he wheeled around and pulled the trunk with
renewed energy. The trunk thumped down the concrete steps that lead to the
basement. You had wanted to count some more stars, but Collis whisked the
two of you back inside.
The police took Collis down to the station to look at some pictures.
Then it was quiet, quiet as if things were normal, as if nothing had
happened, as if no body had been found.
But they were not normal. Things were changed; Collis was changed.
He didn't play with you as much any more. He didn't laugh and joke as
much. All of a sudden, life was serious.
You don't remember hunting much after that day. Maybe life had become
too serious to hunt butterflies. Or maybe Big Ma had decided the
neighborhood had become too dangerous to spend much time outside anymore.
Collis saw the man again more than once after that day, and he was afraid
because he believed the man was stalking him. He stayed in the house a lot
depressed. He notified the police each time, but they always came too
late.
You saw the man just once after that night. There was a tavern down
the street from Big Ma's house that was notorious for its loud music and
the fights that used to spill out onto the street. Sometimes you could see
the fights from Big Ma's front room window. People were always arguing in
front of the place as well. Sometimes the arguments turned into fights.
Or maybe they were just loud and determined conversations that used a lot
of foul words like the one you remembered between a large, dark-skinned
woman and a small light-skinned man. Watching from the window, you could
see the woman towering over the man with her hands on her hips and her head
moving from side to side. You opened the window a crack to hear.
". . . and motherfucker, I will kick your puny little ass." With that
pronouncement, she hit him, and he staggered back a couple of paces. She
reached to hit him again, and he pulled a straight razor from his pocket.
He flipped it open. Now everything was different. The crude expression of
contempt and loathing on her face quickly shifted to one of chagrin and
embarrassment and fear. She looked around wide-eyed at the people who had
gathered to watch her berate her man. She wanted to run, but after all
that big talk, she couldn't. He slashed at her and she threw up her arm to
block it and got cut on the forearm. A thin stream of blood appeared. He
slashed her again, this time on the other arm. Another stream of blood.
Now all of her pride was gone. She sank to her knees to plead with him not
to kill her. He slashed her again on the first arm, then again. A piece
of something pink fell away. He slashed her across the left side of her
face. She collapsed on the sidewalk resigned to her fate. Blood was
everywhere. He looked down at her, then folded the razor and put it back
into his pocket. The onlookers moved out of his path as he walked away.
Two weeks later, Big Ma and you were walking past that tavern on your
way to the ‘L.' The woman was out front again only a few feet from where
she had been lying. She had white bandages from her wrists to her elbows
on both arms and a bandage on her face. She was laughing loud and drinking
with the man you and Collis had seen from the porch. He was laughing and
drinking, too, until he realized that you were staring at him as Big Ma
dragged you along behind her. He must have recognized your eyes, because
he stopped talking mid-sentence. He stopped laughing, too, and returned
your stare. You turned to get Big Ma's attention. When you turned back
around, he was gone.
Collis and Reggie began to exchange clothes whenever they went out.
They were, after all, twins. Maybe the man would be fooled. Then one day,
the man was fooled. He saw Reggie dressed like Collis, and chased him for
half a mile before Reggie got away. Reggie ran into the house terrified.
He told Big Ma and Collis what had happened, and Collis sighed as he made
up his mind to stop living in fear. He made a supreme effort to be his old
self again. No more hiding inside; no more exchanging clothes.
That winter, Collis was killed. He had gone to ice skate with some
friends on a patch of ice near the butterfly lot. He skated around for
awhile, playing tag with his friends on the ice, flying back and forth as
if it were summertime. He stopped to rest, poised on a log at the edge of
the ice. Just then, someone shot him. His friends thought he was
clowning, thought he had fallen off the log for sport. When they couldn't
get him up, they called the police who came to take away the body. They
questioned his friends, but nobody saw anything. Or if they did, they
certainly were not talking.
Some say he was killed by the man he had seen tugging the trunk to the
basement. Others say he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. As
far as you knew, neither crime was ever solved.
Copyright (c) 2003 by Obi
For information about A Feast of Peonies, click here:
http://www.penknifepress.com/Shownovel.cfm?NOVELNUM=1
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