A BRIDGE OF BREATH
m
Club with her finger in
his
fly-and Floydell Lucas,
his
wife, bent
over a cradle at home singing a lullaby-and a lot of other things.
(We are
all
broken over the cradle, Boy.) Nobody's hands are clean
in Charity. But let Charity flick its old toad's tongue after the gay
green and golden summer flies-and let them croak away that same
old croaking tune. They don't want anybody to
be
anything that they
can't understand and give a name to. They had to have some ready
label to lick and stick on you; and when they couldn't figure me out
because I wanted different things from what they in Charity wanted
-they started bullying me and torturing me. They were
all
really
afraid of me-and most of them envied me, really envied me.
"The whine and shriek of the planeing
mill
was always in my head,
as though they were dressing ship-lap in my brain. And that hard
little mouth of hunger pressing hot against my soul. To be fed! Who
could feed it in Charity? Oh Charity, I would thou wert cold or hot;
but because thou art lukewarm I will spew thee out!
"I take along some memories. The sight of the black watertower
squatting like a fat-bellied reptile over Charity eggs; and the old
house smelling of O-Cedar Oil; that old yard of guineas and cackling
hens and the manure of cows. But Boy we had a time of it didn't we?
You little frightened thing, always frightened. On one Easter Sunday
I taught you a secret. We rolled away some stone, remember?"
"And you don't know how hard I prayed in the bam in the sunsets
I thought were the burning end of the world, Folie. You made me
feel so full of sin that I never mentioned your name to anybody;
and when once and a while they would say your name I would
tremble and think they knew. When the Riverbottom Nigras came
into town to tell that they had seen the Devil walking in the sloughs
of the riverbottom I knew it was you come back and I had nightmares
at night and never left the kitchen all day, sitting trembling by the
woodstove. I thought I heard you at the windows, scratching; and
once I am sure I saw you sitting in the Beantree with the three black
hens that lived up there. You were my first discovery of Sin and when
the preacher spoke about Sin it always had your face. I have just
found your real face, Follie my Follie."
"Oh Boy I had to have some drama in a life. I had rhapsody in
me. But it
all
just got too big and too beautiful for me. It devoured
