Mudbound Read online

  “Right after dinner, bout four five hours ago.”

  “Well, in that case, this is gonna hurt some.” He reached down into his bag and pulled out some pieces of wood and some strips of cloth.

  “Can’t you give me some more medicine?” I said.

  “Sure I can,” he said, “but it won’t take effect for another fifteen or twenty minutes. And I don’t have time to sit here and wait on it. Mrs. Turpin’s expecting me home for supper.” He handed me one of the pieces of wood, smaller than the others. There were marks all over it in curved rows. “Put that between your teeth,” he said.

  I put it in my mouth and clamped down on it. Sweat broke out all over me and I could smell my own fear, and if I could smell it I knew Doc Turpin could too. Couldn’t do nothing bout that but I told myself I wasn’t gone cry out, no matter what. God would see me through this like He seen me through so much else, if I just had faith in Him.

  What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.

  “Now, boy,” he said, “I’d shut my eyes if I was you. And don’t you move. Not if you want to keep that leg a yours.” He winked at me and grabbed my leg by the knee and the ankle.

  In God I will praise His word, in God I have put my trust. I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.

  He pulled up sharp on my ankle and the pain come, pain so bad it made whatall I had before seem like stubbing a toe. I screamed into the stick.

  Then nothing.

  LAURA

  WHEN HENRY TOLD ME Florence wouldn’t be coming back, I felt something close to panic. It wasn’t just her help around the house I’d miss, it was her company, her calm, womanly presence in my house. Yes, I had the children, and Henry in the evenings, but all three of them were unspeakably happy on the farm. Without Florence, I would be all alone with my anger, doubt and fear.

  “It’s only till July,” Henry said. “Once the cotton’s laid by, she should be able to come back.”

  July was three months away—an eternity. I spoke without thinking. “Can’t we lend them one of our mules?”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. “Lend” is a dirty word for Henry, akin to the foulest profanity. He distrusts banks and pays cash for absolutely everything. At Mudbound he kept our money in a strongbox under the floorboards of our bedroom. I had no idea how much was in there, but he’d shown me where it was and told me the combination of the lock: 8-30-62, the date Confederate forces under the command of Robert E. Lee crushed the Union Army in the Battle of Richmond.

  “No, we can’t ‘lend’ them a mule,” he snapped. “You don’t just ‘lend’ somebody a mule. And I’ll tell you something else, if Florence and those boys don’t get that seed in real quick, they’ll be using our mule all right, and paying us for the privilege.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s just like with the Atwoods. If they don’t have a mule and they can’t get the work done on time, they’ll have to use one of ours. Which means they’ll have to pay us a half share in cotton. It’s hard luck for them, but good for us.”

  “We can’t take advantage of them like that, Henry!”

  His face reddened with outrage. “Take advantage? I’m about to let Hap Jackson use my stock to make his crop. A mule I paid good money for, that I’m still paying to keep fed. And you think I ought to let him use it for free? Maybe you think I should just give him that mule outright, on account of Hap being sick and all. Why don’t we give him our car while we’re at it? Hell, why don’t we just give him this whole place?”

  Sounded like a fine plan to me.

  “I just think we owe it to them to help them, honey,” I said. “After all, Hap hurt himself working for us, trying to repair our property.”

  “No. Hap hurt himself working for Hap. If he didn’t repair that shed, his tools would rust, and his income would suffer for it. Farming’s a business, Laura. And like any business, it carries risks. Hap understands that, and you need to understand it too.”

  “I do, but—”

  “Let me put it another way,” he said. “I sank everything we had into this place. Everything. We need to make some money this year. If we don’t, our family’s in trouble. Do you understand that?”

  Like the Union Army at Richmond, I was utterly defeated. “Yes, Henry,” I said.

  He softened a little, gracious in victory. “Honey, I know this has been hard on you. We’ll see about finding you a new maid just as soon as the planting’s done. In the meantime, why don’t you go to Greenville tomorrow and do a little shopping. Buy yourself a new hat and some Easter dresses for the girls. Take Eboline to lunch. Pappy and I can fend for ourselves for a day.”

  I didn’t want a new hat, I didn’t want to see Eboline and I especially didn’t want a new maid. “All right, Henry,” I said. “That sounds nice.”

  THE GIRLS AND I set out early the next morning. On the way I stopped at the Jacksons’ to check on Hap and drop off some more food for them. I hadn’t seen Florence since the day of the accident, and her haggard, unkempt appearance alarmed me.

  “Hap’s terrible sickly,” she said. “His leg ain’t healing straight and he been running a fever for three days now. I’ve tried everything but I can’t get it to come down.”

  “Do you want us to get Doc Turpin back?”

  “That devil! Never should a let him lay a hand on Hap in the first place. Half the colored folks who go to him end up sicker than they was before. If Hap loses his leg on account of that man . . .” She trailed off, no doubt contemplating various gruesome ends for Doc Turpin. My mind was racing in a different direction: If Hap lost his leg, I’d never get Florence back.

  And so I went shopping in Greenville—not for hats and Easter dresses, but for a doctor willing to drive two hours each way to treat a colored tenant. It would have been easier to find an elephant with wings. The first two doctors I saw acted like I’d asked them to do my laundry. The third, an old man in his seventies, told me he didn’t drive anymore. But as I turned to leave, he said, “There’s Dr. Pearlman over on Clay Street. He might do it, he’s a foreigner and a Jew. Or you could go to niggertown, they’ve got a doctor there.”

  I decided to take my chances with the Jewish foreigner, though I was unsure what to expect. Would he be competent? Would he try to cheat me? Would he even agree to treat a Negro? But my fears proved foolish. Dr. Pearlman seemed kindly and learned, and his office, though empty of patients, was well-kept. I’d barely finished explaining the situation to him before he was getting his bag and hurrying out the door. He followed me and the girls to Hap and Florence’s house, where I paid him the very reasonable fee he asked and left him.

  By the time we got home it was almost dark. Henry was waiting on the porch. “You girls must have bought out half of Greenville,” he called out.

  “Oh, we didn’t find much,” I said.

  He walked over to the car. When he saw there were no packages, his eyebrows went up. “Didn’t you get anything?”

  “We got a doctor,” said Amanda Leigh. “He talked funny.”

  “A doctor? Is somebody sick?”

  I felt a flutter of nervousness. “Yes, Henry, it’s Hap. His leg’s not healing. The doctor was for him.”

  “That’s what you spent your whole day doing?” he said. “Looking for a doctor for Hap Jackson?”

  “I didn’t set out to look for one. But there was a doctor’s office right next to the dress shop, and I thought—”

  “Amanda Leigh, take your sister in the house,” said Henry.

  They knew that tone and obeyed with alacrity, leaving me alone with him. Well, not quite alone; I saw the old man at the window, lapping up every word.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?” Henry asked. “Hap is my tenant, my responsibility. If he’s sick, I need to know about it.”

  “I just happened to stop by their place on my way to town. And Florence said he’d gotten much worse, so I—”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t have taken care o
f it? That I wouldn’t have gone and fetched Doc Turpin?”

  He wasn’t so much angry as hurt; I saw that suddenly. “No, honey, of course not,” I said. “But Florence doesn’t trust Doc Turpin, and since I was already in Greenville . . .”

  “What do you mean, she doesn’t trust him?”

  “She said he didn’t set Hap’s leg properly.”

  “And you just took her word for that. The word of a colored midwife with a fifth-grade education over a medical doctor’s.”

  Put like that, it sounded ridiculous. I had taken her word, unquestioningly. And yet, as I stood withering under the heat of my husband’s gaze, I knew I’d do it again.

  “Yes, Henry. I did.”

  “Well, I need you to do the same thing for me, your husband. To take my word for it that I’m going to do what’s best for the tenants, and for you and the children. I need you to trust me, Laura.” In a thick voice he added, “I never thought I’d have to ask you that.”

  He left me standing by the car. The sun had slipped below the horizon, and the temperature had dropped. I shivered and leaned against the hood of the DeSoto, grateful for its warmth.

  HAP

  WHEN I COME TO, Doc Turpin was gone and I was still alive, that was the good news. The bad news was my leg hurt like the dickens. It was all bandaged up so I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it all right. Heat was coming off it and the skin felt dry and tight. That was a bad sign, I knew that from tending to mules.

  “Doctor said you should get to feeling better in a day or two,” Florence said.

  But I didn’t feel better, I felt worse and worse. The throbbing got real bad and I was in and out of sense. I remember faces floating over me, Florence’s, the children’s. My mama’s, and she’d been laying in the clay going on twenty years. Then come a strange white man bending over me, a settle-aged man with a gray beard and one long eyebrow thick as a mustache.

  “This is Doc Pearlman,” Florence said. “He gone fix your leg.”

  He picked up my wrist and held it while he looked at his pocket watch. Then he shined a light in my eyes and put his eyeball right up next to mine and looked in there. “Your husband is in shock,” he said, in a funny accent. He started shaking his head like he seen something that disgusted him, I reckoned he was mad on account of having to doctor a nigger. I didn’t want no angry white man doctoring me and I told him so but he went ahead anyway and started taking the bandages off a my leg. I let into thrashing.

  “Hold him still,” he said to Florence.

  She came and held my shoulders down. I tried to push her off me but I was too weak. I couldn’t see what the doctor was doing and I had a bad feeling.

  “Has he got a saw?” I asked her.

  “No, Hap.”

  “Don’t you let him cut my leg off. I know he’s mad but don’t you let him.”

  “You got to lay still now,” Florence said.

  The doctor bent down to me again, so close I could smell the pipeweed on his breath. “Your leg wasn’t set properly, and it’s in flames,” he said.

  “What?” I started fighting Florence again, trying to get up, but I might as well to been wrestling Goliath.

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s just swole up is all. That’s what’s causing your fever.”

  “I’m going to make you sleep now,” said the doctor. He put a little basket over my nose and mouth and dribbled some liquid on there. It had a sickly sweet smell.

  “Please, Doc, I need my leg.”

  “Rest now, Mr. Jackson. And don’t worry.”

  I tried to stay awake, but sleep was tugging, tugging. The last thing I remember is him bending down to get something out of his bag. There was a little knitted cap on the back of his bald head, looked like a doily, and I wondered how he got it to stay on there. Then sleep took ahold of me and swallowed me up.

  WHEN I WOKE UP it was morning and my leg still hurt, but less than before. This time I was glad of the pain till I remembered ole Waldo Murch and his arm that had to be took off back in ’29. Waldo swore that arm still ached even though it wasn’t there no more. I’d seen him myself plenty of times, rubbing at the air, and I wondered if it was that kind of imagine pain I was feeling. But I guess God must a decided He’d humbled me enough cause when I pulled the blanket off there was my leg, all bandaged and splinted up. I’m here to tell you, seeing you got two legs when you thought you was down to just one is a mighty glad feeling.

  I could hear Florence moving around in the other room and I called out to her.

  “I’m fixing your breakfast,” she said. “Be right there.”

  She brung me a plate of brains and eggs. Soon as I smelled it my stomach let into growling, felt like I hadn’t et in a week. “Take this first,” she said, handing me a pill.

  “What is it?”

  “Pencil pills. They to keep away the infection. You got to take em twice a day till they all gone.”

  I swallowed the pill and tucked into the food. Florence put her hand on my forehead. “Fever’s down,” she said. “You was plumb out of your head yesterday. Sure is a good thing that doctor showed up. Miz McAllan brung him all the way from Greenville.”

  “She went and fetched him by herself?”

  “Yeah. Drove up in the car with him following her.”

  “When you see her, tell her we’re much obliged.”

  She snorted. “You lucky you still got your leg after the job that butcher done on it. Doc Pearlman was considerable mad about it, I mean to tell you. Said Doc Turpin didn’t deserve to be called a doctor.”

  “Reckon Doc Pearlman ain’t from around here,” I said.

  “No, he’s from somewhere over to Europe. Australia, I think he said.”

  “You mean Austria. That’s the place Ronsel was where it snowed all the time.”

  Florence shrugged. “Whatever it’s called, I’m mighty glad he ended up here instead of there.”

  “How long am I gone be laid up?”

  “Eight to ten weeks, if there’s no infection.”

  “Eight weeks! I can’t lay here till June!”

  She went on like I hadn’t said a word. “Doc said we got to keep a sharp eye out for it. And you got to keep that leg real still. He’s coming back on Monday to check on you, said if the swelling was down he’d make you a cast.”

  “How am I gone chop cotton in a cast? How am I gone preach on Sundays?”

  “You ain’t,” Florence said. “The children and me gone do the chopping, and Junius Lee gone drive over from Tchula and do the preaching, and you gone keep your weight off a that leg like the doctor told you to. If you don’t, you could wind up a cripple, or worse.”

  “And if I do and we have to go back to sharecropping, we’ll never get out from under Henry McAllan.”

  “Can’t worry bout that now,” Florence said. “God’ll see to that, one way or another. Meantime you gone do what the doctor told you.”

  “The contentions of a wife are a continual dropping,” I said. “Proverbs 19:13.”

  “And a prudent wife is straight from the Lord,” she shot back. “Proverbs 19:14.”

  Woman knows her Scripture, I’ll give her that. Got no book-learning but there ain’t nothing wrong with her memory.

  “I better get out to the fields,” she said. “Lilly May will be here if you need anything. You rest now.”

  Lingered along, lingered along. Laid in that bed knowing my wife was out doing my work for me. Couldn’t even do my business without one of em helping me. I tried to put it off till Florence and the boys got home but one day I couldn’t wait and I had to ask Lilly May to come help me with the pan. There’s some things a daughter should never have to do for her daddy. Made me wish I’d a just crapped myself and set in it till Florence got home.

  Meantime she and the twins was just about done in from working in the fields. Florence’s hands was all blistered up and I seen her rubbing her back when she thought I wasn’t looking. She didn’t complain though, nary a word, just went on
and did what had to be done. They worked straight through, even on Sunday, and Florence don’t hold with working on the Sabbath. They had to do it though. Had to get them fields planted before Henry McAllan decided to bring in his mule.

  Monday rolled around and Doc Pearlman come back just like he said he would. He took the bandages off a my leg and looked at it. “Goot,” he said, which I took to mean good. “The swelling is gone. We must make the cast now. For that I will need boiled water.”

  Florence sent Lilly May to do it. Meantime, Doc Pearlman was checking me all over, looking in my eyes and listening to my heart and wiggling my toes. He didn’t seem to mind touching me. I wondered if all the white people in his country were like him.

  “Florence says you from over to Austria,” I said.

  “Ya,” he said. “My wife and I came here eight years ago.”

  Fore I could think what I was saying I said, “Our son Ronsel was there. He’s a tanker, fought under General Patton.”

  “Then I’m grateful to him.”

  I shot a glance at Florence. She looked as fuddled as I was. Speaking real slow to be sure he understood me, I said, “Ronsel fought against Austrian folks.”

  He got a kindling look in his eye, made all the hairs on my arms stand straight up. “I hope he killed a great many of them,” he said. Then he left the room to go wash his hands.

  “Well, what do you make of that?” I said to Florence.

  She shook her head. “All kind a crazy white people in the world.”

  THE RAIN CAME the next day, a big hard rain that packed the fields down tight as wax. Nothing we could do but set there and watch it and fret for two days till it finally cleared up. Florence and the children went back out to the fields, even Lilly May. Field work was hard for her with her bad foot and all but there wasn’t no help for it.

  I laid in the bed with my leg propped up, itching and cussing. Felt like I had a bunch of ants crawling around under my cast, looking for their next meal. There was no way to scratch either, the cast went all the way from my ankle to the top of my thigh.