Preston L. Allen

Mamie Girl

Mamie met him after Sunday service, as she sometimes did, down in Old Man Mahoney's orange groves, which were in bloom.

It was a very warm day and a good long walk through the dirt streets of Goulds, at least two miles from the tent where they had had the church meeting, during which he had signaled to her. When she got there she was so worn out from the walk that she sat down in the shade on a small wooden bench that one of the hands had left. Mamie had her Bible with her, but she was too ill at ease to open it while she waited for him to show. She sat fanning herself from the heat, worrying and waiting.

Mamie didn't hear him come up behind her. The first thing she knew was his tender hand on the side of her face and his heady shaving tonic smell mixing in with the pollen of the orange blossoms all around them, and then his lips were on hers. She kissed him hungrily, though she was nervous still. He must have felt it in her because his hands stopped roving over her dress and his lips broke away from the kiss.

She said, “I need to—.”

He said, “Shusssshhh,” putting a finger to her lips.

She heard it then, the rumble of an engine. Somebody was driving up the lane. He backed away from her four giant steps and turned to one of the orange trees like he was inspecting it, like that was his business there, as though anyone would believe that a black man in a sharp suit and tie in 1942 would have any business to be inspecting orange trees.

They thought maybe it was an army truck because the soldiers, who were stationed at the base just outside Goulds, Florida , liked to use the fruit trails to practice their maneuvers—and of course, to steal and eat the fruit straight from the branches. But the rumble turned out to belong to the engine of someone's old beat up Ford, and the someone turned out to be Chet Mahoney, the owner's oldest boy, who oversaw this section of the grove during picking time.

Chet Mahoney slowed when he saw them and an ugly grin spread across his face as he approached. You couldn't fool Chet about a thing like this. There was no point in even trying. He may not have had the brain power to keep up with his schooling, but he sure understood the ways of black folk, he claimed. He was all of sixteen with a lean, hairless face dusted with freckles and a dark olive-colored army cap on his head that he got from one of the soldiers. He leaned out of the open window of the slow moving Ford and tipped his hat at Mamie, “Top of the mornin' to you there, Sister Mamie. I see you're catchin' a good shade in my trees. There'll be plenty of oranges enough for you to pick when the season comes. Don't you worry none about it.”

Mamie shook her head at him, “Mornin' to you, Mr. Chet.”

Chet cackled and called to the man in the sharp suit, “Top of the mornin' to you too there, Rev. I see you're out here smellin' all the pretty flowers and whatnot. Turn around so I can talk to you, boy.”

Chet engaged the brakes on his old Ford and it groaned to a complete stop.

Buford Morrisohn turned around to face him.

“My, my, my, that's one fine suit you got on there. Then again, that's one fine gal you got there, too. Prettiest one I ever seen you with, am I right, Rev.?”

“Yes sir,” Buford said.

“How's the wife?” said Chet, his blue-gray eyes twinkling with mischief.

“She's just fine.”

“That's good. She at home I suppose?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“And you're out here with this one. Ain't this that preacher lady?” Chet nodded his head, like my, oh my, you black people are something else. “Well, I'll be pushing off now, Rev. Don't you all go messin' with my trees, now hear? If I find any of my buds missing, I'm gonna know who to come after.”

Chet drove off slowly down the dirt track and when they couldn't hear his engine anymore, Buford came and put his arms around her and kissed away her tears, which had begun to fall. As he held her, she knew that she would love him forever. He took her further into the grove where it was safe, and he lay her down on a bedding of leaves. He was tender and generous in his love making, as he always was, but she wanted him to know how she felt, so she urged him with her hips for more. He cried out when he came with open-mouth joy.

She was quite happy now, the nervousness gone, as she got back into her dress and patted her thick mat of hair back into place under her kerchief. He lay stretched out on the ground, propped up on his elbows looking at her, chewing a blade of grass, and she felt loved. She leaned down to his face and kissed him. Then she kissed his neck and his strong shoulders. He spit out the blade of grass and pulled her down as though they might do it again in the shade of the trees. She felt so full of love that she just had to tell him.

“I love you, Buford,” she told him through a mouth stuffed with his kisses. “I will always love you.”

His hands were roving again. It felt so good. There had to be a way out of their problem. There just had to be. She did not hate Glovine, but she knew that Glovine was not his true love. This, this here, was true love. There had to be a way for them to be together. He kissed her lips. His hands went under her dress. She spread her knees for him. He knew just how to touch her so that she lost control. He was biting her neck. He was pinching the flesh between her thighs. The flesh between her thighs began to twitch. It was at that moment that she said to him, “Buford, I am carrying your child.”

He stopped kissing her. Her world stopped spinning.

“Buford.”

“You better go,” he told her with an icy stare. Then he stopped looking at her altogether.

He broke away from her and stood up. He had a broad chest and a narrow waist and long, lean, muscular legs. His body was hard from working the fields and fruit picking and it glistened with the sweat from their loving. She averted her eyes. He still didn't have his clothes on. She was 34, yet shy as a maiden, for she had only recently been introduced to the mysteries of the body. He was 40, incredibly handsome, well respected, college educated, and married to her cousin, Glovine, the daughter of her Aunti.

Why had she done it? Oh Lord, why? To get this far up in years so pure and safe from sin only to make such a mistake as this.

Well, the truth is, she had always loved him. She had loved him from the day he showed up ten years ago. She hadn't been so old back then and she made a vow to herself as soon as she saw him, “If this one comes to court me, I will accept. His passion for the Lord equals mine.”

But this thing between them—this illicit, but so wonderful love—they had been sharing it now for three months. It started right after the cane season ended. It had come on the night of fire and brimstone when Buford had preached the house down and Mamie who had no professional musical training but had been blessed with a musical ear from the Lord had been mashing the piano keys like she had thirty fingers. It was the mightiest tent meeting ever in these parts. Close to fifty had been saved, plus four white people. The Holy Spirit was going to and fro throughout the earth. But the devil was, too.

Their hands touched as they were rejoicing outside the tent at the end of the service, which had gone way beyond midnight. Their hands touched and they knew. Well, Mamie had always known. She had been carrying Buford in her heart for ten years, but he hadn't even noticed her. How could he? How could any man notice her with her beautiful, bright-skinned cousin Glovine around? But that night when their hands touched, Buford knew it too. They kissed, first as brother and sister in the Lord, but the first kiss let the devil in. They fled the tent and the presence of the Lord for a place where they could be alone. When they kissed again it was in the murky, midnight darkness in the field of harvested cane. When they kissed again, Mamie began to know the mysteries of love between a man and a woman that had been kept from her all of her life. They were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They were the songs in Song of Solomon. They were fornicators and adulterers in a field of cane.

Oh why, Lord, why?

How could the Lord allow this to happen to them of all people?

She blamed it on the devil and on her music, and she never played an instrument again. Buford, for his part, did not pass blame. He refused to give what they were doing a name. He preferred to refer to it as this thing.

Now he was dismissing her, “Get on up from here and go, woman. Leave me alone.”

“I love you,” said Mamie, looking up at him desperately.

He was hauling on his underwear, which was bright white and starched. His sharp dark suit that he had folded so neatly and set in the branches of one of the trees he now pulled down angrily. He stepped into his pants. He put on and buttoned his white shirt and then fastened his tie with quick, nimble fingers. He said, “All I sacrifice for this church. I don't have to live down here and take this. Had the Klan come to my house. Had white men box me on the face because I have an education. But I stay—I don't run away—I stay. Because things have got to change, and this is the thanks I get. I thought you were different, Mamie girl. I believed in you, but you're just like the rest of them. I can't believe you would do this to me.”

“Buford, what did I do? I only told you that I am pregnant. I would never hurt you. I know it is my fault. I know it,” she said, climbing to her feet. She tried to put her arms around him, but he pushed her away. He was so angry he was shedding tears.

“Trying to trap me.”

“No, Buford. I love you.”

“Messing up my marriage. Messing up my good name.”

“I would never.”

He put up his hands. “I've got to go, Mamie. If you, of all people, are going to stab me in the back like this, then I've got to go.”

“I'm not stabbing you. I love you.”

He studied her face, then. Was she telling the truth? Then he said, “The truth is, I love you too.” He seemed weak. He groaned from somewhere deep in his soul. He went and held onto a tree with one hand for support. “But Glovine—oh, poor Glovine.”

She was crying now too. “I had never been with a man before. I had never been with anybody but you. The devil got a hold of me.”

He said, “What are you going to do? What are you going to do to me, Mamie, now that I am at your complete mercy?”

She put her hand in his. “I won't hurt you.”

She had no other choice because she loved him. She opened her arms, and he let her hold him. She led him away from the tree, and they sat down upon the bed of leaves where she found her Bible. She set the Bible in her lap and they read it together, and he promised to love her, and she, of course, would always love only him, and they confessed their sins to each other, and they promised to sin no more.

Afterwards, she felt better, though she was afraid of what it was going to be like to go it alone. Of course, he could not leave his wife. That would be a sin. Of course, he could not leave South Florida —he had to be here to fight the fight for the Faithful. Of course, he could not leave—she would never see him again if he left, and she did not want that to happen. These are the wages of her sin. She would have to raise the child alone and never name the father, for she loved this great man of God.

And if there should ever come a day when, God forbid, that Sister Glovine should die, then he would marry her, his true love, he promised. This is what he told her sitting in the shade of the orange grove in bloom, and she believed him.

It was going to be hard. But she would do it, because she loved him and she believed him.

She would be a scorned woman because she had made so many enemies in the church through her fervent evangelism for the Lord. Now her enemies would punish her indeed—but only for a while—the Lord only lets His children suffer for a while. It was going to be hard, but Mamie would bear it for the God she served and the man she loved. Furthermore, she would have a child to love her and to remind her of their covenant.

She would wait, then, upon the Lord to fix the things that her own sinful nature had messed up. She would suffer as she deserved to, and she would wait. Good things come to those who wait upon the Lord. And Mamie loved Buford more than anything in the world. He was her good thing.

Thus, Mamie Culpepper sat talking with Buford Morrisohn on their bed of leaves in the grove in Goulds until the sun had moved to the west and their shadows were growing long. They had been talking for more than two hours. They had to leave soon or risk being missed. She did not want to let go of his hand. But she knew that she must. She looked into his handsome face and she saw the hope for her future. She looked into his handsome face and she saw love. His face made a slight movement and she thought that he was leaning towards her for a kiss, and so she leaned into him, hoping to be kissed one last time until the Lord shed his grace upon them.

But Buford was not about to kiss her—he had just come up with an idea that he wanted to share with her.

So Mamie leaned in to receive what was not a kiss, but an open mouth from out of which Buford said, “I got a poem for you, Mamie girl. It just came into my head for you.”

And he spoke the poem to her.

The words were King David beautiful as she listened to them but not too easy to figure out. There were parts in it that made her think it was about the hardness of hearts that have turned away from God, and something about a long journey on a narrow and twisting road in eternal darkness, and one part about love between hellfire and gentle rain. She did not quite understand it completely, but it made her very sad.

He said to her, “What do you think?”

She said, “It is beautiful.”

And he took her in his arms and kissed her.

Though they had already been away from their people for too long, he undressed her and made love to her tenderly once again. This time his loving did not make her cry out in joy, but filled her with a sadness that was more perplexing even than his poetic words.

* * *

When Mamie got home, the Holy Spirit hit her like a heavy hand and knocked her down to the floor where she received a vision from the Lord, which was the interpretation of Buford's poem.

They were two angels so bright and fair that she had to shield her eyes with her hand. One held up a sacred scroll, the other a golden sword. She thought the one with the sword would strike her, for there was wrath on his countenance, but when she looked again she saw that behind the first two angels was another, the Angel Beautiful and his face calmed her soul. He came and stood between the first two and he spoke these words of truth: “His heart is hard. Your journey is long. The Lord will not suffer the fire to consume the rain.”

With that, the three angels ascended into the heavens and disappeared from sight.

Mamie cried out, “Praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.”

The next day, bright and early, she met Private Cooper, and she was ready for him because she had understood the vision to mean: The Lord will provide a father for the child.

The fire (the ministry) was Buford's passion.

The rain (tears from the pain of child bearing) was her passion.

He was handsome in the way that other women found men to be handsome—big, husky, tall, much taller than Buford, and with pretty skin—though Mamie, to be honest, had been expecting something else.

It was his age. He was so young. She figured maybe twenty-five, and here she was in her mid thirties. But there he was at her Aunti's door with the early morning sun coming up behind him (the sun being the symbol of the Angel Beautiful), and not asking to see her Aunti, but to see her, Mamie Culpepper.

He had his hat in his hands and his head was bowed in gentlemanly greeting. His reddish brown hair was slicked back on his head in the style of the day, but she saw no signs of pomade in it—his hair was naturally fine-textured. He was one of those mixed boys. When he lifted his head again, it was done slowly, deliberately, so that he could take in the full measure of her. Mamie felt only a slight embarrassment at his inspection of her because she had been expecting the Lord to deliver and thus put on her best dress, the yellow one, and best shoes, the ones with the unbroken straps. She had combed her lustrous hair into submission and tied her prettiest kerchief over it (the yellow one). The young man smiled in approval and then set his face for serious courting.

He said to her, “You are a vision of loveliness this fine morning, Sister Culpepper, I must say, and it behooves a good Christian man such as myself to inform you of how happy I am to serve a Lord and savior who blesses the world with flowers and birds and pretty smiles such as yours.”

Mamie couldn't help but blush. Nevertheless she said to him, “Thank you, kind sir, now it behooves a good Christian woman such as myself who has many important errands to run on this fine day, which the Lord has given us, to ask the young man to state his business plain out so that she might get to her appointed tasks.”

He responded with nervous gestures, as his confidence was slightly shaken by her directness—he bit his bottom lip and folded and unfolded the brim of his hat, which was still in his two hands in front of him. “Well,” he said, “My name is—.”

Mamie said, “I know who you are, Jefferson Cooper. You're from one of them islands down there.”

“Yes. Jamaica ,” he stammered.

“You've got two last names for a name.”

“My middle name is Thomas.”

“That's a last name, too.”

“But you can call me Jeff,” he said, with a wink. “Well, as you know I work as a—.”

“I know what you do. I've seen you pick fruit. You're fast.”

He beamed. “Thank you.”

“The rest of us can't hardly make a living you're so fast.”

He looked down at his shiny, spit-polished wingtip shoes and mumbled, “Sorry.”

“I've seen you at the tent,” Mamie said. “And I've heard you preach.”

“You've heard me preach,” he said, lifting his eyes again. His chest swelled with pride. He said to her confidently, because he knew he was a good preacher—all of the girls who were trying to get their hooks in him loved his preaching: “So you like my preaching, huh?”

“I've heard better,” Mamie said.

Cooper stumbled backward, then regained his stance and his composure. He said, smiling—O but she did love his smile, “Well, kind lady. My business is with you, if you must know. Now if I could have a glass of cold water on this good morning—.”

“You came to my house so early in the morning for water, Cooper? Is that your business?”

“Well, ma'am, no. But I could sure use a glass of cold water to wet my throat, then I'll set down and state to you my business plain. Would you be so kind, ma'am? And call me Jeff. Or Jefferson if you prefer.”

Mamie was beginning to doubt the Lord. This is the one, this boy? He had on a dark jacket and a white shirt, but no tie. He had a red rose pinned to the lapel of his jacket. She said to the young Jefferson Cooper, “Boy, what are you doing here all dressed up for? What do you want from me?”

From behind her she heard Aunti, coughing her harsh early morning cough and asking—“Mamie, what's all that racket so early in the morning? Who you talking to outside?”

Mamie turned and shouted back—“Nobody. Go back to sleep, Aunti.”

Aunti coughed again. “What man you out there talking to, Mamie? That the insurance man? That Rev. Morrisohn?”

Now she could hear the squeaking of springs as Aunti was getting out of bed to come see what all was going on. Mamie stepped outside the door and closed it behind her, and then she took the young Jefferson Cooper by the hand and began to lead him away from the small wooden box she called a house. No way was she ready for gossips like her Aunti to start piecing together rumors about her and Jefferson Cooper until she was sure that he was the one the Lord had sent.

She had his hand and she was leading him down the dirt road to the Piggly-Wiggly's, which had a porch, which she avoided because it was too public. Not us on the porch, no way. Not yet. There will come a time for porches if he is indeed the one. She took him to the alley behind the Piggly-Wiggly's. When she got there, she backed him up against the wall and got right up in his face. He smelled good too, like two whole bouquets of flowers. “Now, Cooper, you know I'm not a young woman, so I've got no time for games. I'm tired of asking you why you came to my house this morning and you beating around the bush. So let's just get down to it. You tell me if the Lord sent you. You tell me if you,” but she could not finish.

Now it was she who was losing her confidence.

Here she was in the alley of the Piggly-Wiggly's with this handsome, well dressed, fine smelling young man and about to ask him if he loved her and they hadn't said but maybe a dozen words to each other since he came to town about a year ago and started preaching and picking and she was pregnant for a married man and soon to be found out and the Lord had to help her out of this mess—He just had to, He just had to. But how could she ask a man who was practically a stranger whether he loved her when she still loved Buford?

Feeling guilt ridden and dishonest as the lyingest liar, she backed away from Cooper with her head bowed.

“If I what?” he said to her.

“If nothing.”

When she looked up, he had that beautiful smile on his face again. He still had his hat in his hands. He was such a big, humble, good-looking young gentleman. She wouldn't mind having a son like him, but a husband? He said to her, “If I what, Sister Culpepper?”

She sighed. This was not going to work. She waved him off. She said, “It was just something I had in my head is all, Cooper. Go your way.” She made a move as if to leave the alley.

He cleared his throat and stood up straighter and blocked her exit with his big body. “Well,” he said, “I do know that you're the only woman around here who's worth anything.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I'm on fire for the Lord. These girls around here, they're looking for husbands. They'll tell a man anything. But I've been watching you since I came.” He smiled his handsome smile. “I must tell you, kind lady, I think you're beautiful.” Then he quickly added, “And you are on fire for the Lord.”

Mamie put her hands on her stout hips. “Beautiful?” At the entrance to the alley, she could see that the small town of Goulds was waking up now. There were cars and bicycles bustling about. She saw an open-top army car roll past with two white soldiers in it. An old brown and black lop-eared mutt entered the alley and trotted up to them, his tail wagging, his mouth open, begging food. Mamie shushed the dog away. She said to Cooper, “We need to go somewhere to talk, young man,” and she took his hand and led him out of the alley.

Aunti was on the porch of their house, leaning over the wooden rail talking to Old Black Spensser the milkman and fix-it man. Aunti spotted Mamie and Cooper and waved them over, but Mamie waved back at her—no—and led Cooper down the road in the opposite direction, to Main Street , which was the only partially paved road in town.

There was a filling station and a general merchandise store, owned by the Andersons, who were first cousins of the Mahoneys. Andersons ' had a little sweet shop set up in the back, where they served breakfast to the colored soldiers and to the colored and Mexican laborers who worked the groves. It was out of sight from the main road, which offered the privacy Mamie sought, and it was cozy, so she led Cooper there.

He pulled out one of the wooden chairs for her, and she sat down, then he sat down. Manners too, she thought, smiling despite herself.

She said, batting her eyes like a coquet, “Now what is this I hear about you being in love with me, Cooper?”

His mouth fell open. “In love?”

“Yes.”

He set his hat on the table. She watched as he struggled to regain his composure, through musing and a great deal of eyebrow furrowing. The young man was clearly thinking it through. Much to her surprise and satisfaction, he said, “Well, I must say that you are a direct one. But it is interesting. You do have all the qualities that I desire in a Christian woman. You are beautiful, you are close to God, and you've been watching me since I got here.”

“No such thing, Cooper!” she retorted, attempting to trip him up again as she had at her door this morning. She enjoyed watching him stumble. She found it endearing, a man so off-balance in her presence. It made her feel beautiful. Maybe he was the one. At any rate, she was having her fun with him. She was enjoying his attention. She discovered that she quite enjoyed being spiteful. This flirting business, it was so against her nature, but she took right to it.

“Well now,” Cooper said, clearing his throat. He had long beautiful hands, except for a scab on his right hand from some field related injury and he picked at it absentmindedly with his left thumbnail. “Well, now. That's not what I heard.”

“What did you hear, sir?”

“That you have been watching me with interest.”

“Who would tell you such a thing, sir?” She shook her head, tut-tutting.

“You haven't been watching me?”

“No.”

“But—.”

“I am on fire for the Lord, sir. I don't have time to be watching men,” Mamie said with a pout. She had seen other women pout when flirting with men, and so she pouted now because she had always secretly wanted to. But when Cooper gave her a strange look, she figured that it was the pout that was inappropriate at this point and so she stopped doing it. She regretted that she had such little experience in these matters, such little experience as a flirt.

“Hmmm. It is interesting,” Cooper mused. “You are well spoken of. You are well admired. You do the Lord's will. You are beautiful—.”

“You said that one already.”

He kept picking at the scab with his thumbnail as he counted off her attributes, each of which she smugly agreed with. “You are beautiful. You are sensible. You are virtuous. You are chaste—I have never seen you in the company of any man, and everyone speaks highly of your character.” He nodded at her.

She continued to eye him, but with less coquettish fervor and less high mindedness. Chaste. Too late for that one, she thought sadly. “Go on, Cooper. State your case. I am listening.”

“I know that some say that I am too young to be seeking a wife—there, I've said it—I am seeking a wife, and I don't have time for games either, Sister Culpepper.” He stopped talking as he lifted a silk handkerchief of white from an inside coat pocket and dabbed at his forehead, drying the beads of sweat that had appeared there. He replaced the handkerchief and went back to speaking and agitating the horrible little scab with his thumbnail. “I came by your house this morning,” he said, “to begin a proper courtship of you, if you will have me, in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord. The Lord is calling me to build a church, and I need an help meet to be at my side. Someone with the courage to do what the Lord asketh us to do.”

“An help meet,” she said.

“Yes.”

So there it was. There was the offer. She would be an help meet. She would be his wife. It sounded like the Lord, but was it?

She said to him, “Just how old are you, Cooper?”

“I'll be 21 in December.”

“What!” Mamie rose in high-minded outrage from her seat. She would not be made a fool of. Oh the gossips of Goulds would love that one. Old Mamie done took up with a little, bitty boy. “Mr. Cooper,” she announced, “it was good talking to you, but I do believe that this attempt at courtship is over.”

“But—.”

“You're too young.”

He put up a finger and said calmly, “Don't let my age fool you, Sister Mamie. I've lived many lifetimes in my 21 years.”

“Twenty,” she corrected.

Cooper was unperturbed. He did not rise from his seat. He said, “Sarah was 99 when she got pregnant for Abraham.”

Mamie said, “I'm not old as Sarah.” Pouting.

Cooper gave her his handsome smile in honor of the appropriateness of her pout. Despite herself, she was pleased to have pouted appropriately at last.

He said, “I serve the Lord today because he saved me from a life of shame and degradation. If it wasn't for the Lord, I'd be dead. There are nine of us in our family. I am the oldest child. I left home and joined the merchant marines at the age of 13 so that I could send money back to my mother. We never lived good back home because daddy is a drunkard and a gambler, who begged more bread in his life than he ever earned. He has seven more outside children that we know of. At fourteen, I was a mess boy on an oil tanker running the sea lanes to England and France and Italy . The pay was good. I had enough money to send home to my blessed mother and enough to keep me in much drink and mischief. I got to see the world. It is a pretty big place. It is a pretty beautiful place, Praise God. But life is hard for a seaman, especially when you're colored. The sea is unforgiving and so are the white men you work with. I learned to defend myself. At the age of seventeen, I killed a man.”

Mamie was aghast, but interested. A murderer.

Cooper urged gently, “Sit down, Sister Mamie,” and it seemed to her that the presence of the Lord was upon him and she did as she was told. She sat down and she listened as he completed his narrative.

“From the moment he set eyes on me, this fellow, a big bearded Swedish man, he hated me. He rode me night and day attacking the quality of my work, calling me ugly black bastard, calling me shiftless and lazy. I took it all from him. I took it all, because I didn't want any trouble. I even stayed away from the card games that we would have at night. I took to drinking more. One night, the Swede seemed to have had a change of heart, he stuck his head in the cabin, which I was sharing with two other colored boys, and he invited me to the game that night. He said they were short a player and he had heard I was a good card player and a good fellow. Well, this surprised me as well as the two fellows I was rooming with because he used to ride them as much as he rode me. So I went into his cabin, where they were supposedly having the game, but nobody was there yet. So he and I were just sitting around when he started to ask these questions about my accent, where I was from, what life was like for me growing up in the islands. Things like that. So I answered him and we talked like that for a while. Next thing I knew, the Swede had gotten up and attempted to perform an abominable act on me. I pushed him off. He got angry and began calling me names that challenged my manhood. The devil got a hold of me and I took a swing at him. He swung back. We went at it then, grappling in the room, knocking over the card table that was set up for the game. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds, but I was younger and quicker. I soon got the better of him. Instead of surrendering, he pulled out a knife and lunged at me, cutting me right here.”

Cooper opened his coat and then lifted out the tail of his shirt to reveal the long scar that ran from his third rib down into his pants, like black railroad tracks on his apple cider skin.

He explained, “It goes down almost to my knee. He got me good. But I had a knife, too. Before he could lunge again, I had pulled out my knife and gutted him like a fish. There's nothing else to say about it. He fell back on his bed and died. It was that easy. Then his cabin door opened and the other seven players showed up and caught me with my knife in this guy's guts. I tried to explain what had happened. I showed them where he had cut me. It did not matter to them how badly hurt I was. The important thing in their mind was that I had killed this white guy. They beat me up pretty bad. They took me up on deck, and one of them proposed that they shoot me and throw my body into the water. The rest of them agreed. If I ever needed the Lord, I needed Him right then.”

Mamie was listening with rapt attention and watching his handsome features as he spoke.

Cooper said, “The Lord is a miracle worker. Praise God! Before they could shoot me, there was a mighty explosion. Our tanker had been struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat. The ship was crippled. Furthermore, we were transporting oil. The exploded fuel was burning so hot the hair on my body was cooking. We were on fire. We were going to burn or blow up before rescue got to us. There was no way out of this. To make matters worse, the Germans hit us again with two more torpedos. Finally, there was a tremendous explosion and the ship split in half. I was flung into the sea. As I was fighting for my life against the searing flames and the mighty currents trying to drag me under, I remembered the name of my God and I called out to Him and He heard me. It was a black night, but the flames were bright and I soon spotted something floating on top of the water. It was a lifeboat. I swam to it and got in. The Lord's mighty hand was on that lifeboat and he steered it away from the deadly pull of the sinking ship. Everything else floating was being sucked down into the black water by the whirling pool created by the sinking ship. Everything but the little lifeboat that I was on disappeared in seconds. Then it was very quiet. There is nothing more terrifying than the infinite quietness when you are alone in the middle of the ocean at night. There were not even stars in the sky. I kept my eyes open, but there was nothing to see. Everyone else was gone. All night I kept my eyes open, looking for survivors, but there was no one. In the morning when the sun came up, there was much debris in the water and two floating bodies among the wreckage. I recognized the Swede's body. The other was the body of the man who had come up with the idea to shoot me. I took their bodies as a sign from the Lord. It was a warning of what should have justly been my fate. There were other things floating in the ocean. A wooden crate with a canteen of water in it, four tins of salted pork, and a blanket. Another crate floated near and when I opened it, it was empty except for a Bible. I made that water and that salted pork last for three weeks. I covered myself by day in the blanket to protect from the sun, and at night I slept in it to protect from the cold. I read my Bible every waking hour. The Psalms were of a special comfort to me. The Gospels gave me hope that the same Jesus of Nazareth who had died on the cross for me was keeping me alive now and would eventually save me. But why? Why should a sinner like me be allowed to live? To serve Him, that's why, Praise the Lord! There were no oars in the boat, so I floated until I was picked up. I floated for 22 days and was picked by a Spanish freighter on the day my last drop of water ran out. It was another sign from the Lord. When all hope is gone, trust in the Lord.”

When he had finished, Mamie looked at him indeed as a man who had lived many lifetimes in his short life. She looked at him as a man she could love, given time. She saw herself as the seaman adrift at sea with no hope, but then a crate floats by with fresh water and food and a Bible. She was adrift and Cooper was the crate floating by. He was fresh water. He was food. He was the Bible.

But there was a problem. When she looked at Buford, she felt her body call out to him. When she looked at this young man Cooper, she felt nothing. He was a beautiful man, but she did not desire his touch. She did not desire to touch him. If she took up with him, as clearly the Lord intended, she would have to be with him sexually. She would have to do it. She could not imagine it, but she would have to do it as his wife. This beautiful man, why couldn't she desire him?

Oh, maybe this was not even the Lord! Maybe this was all in her head.

He was looking across the table at her with love. He had reached across the table and now he was holding her hand. She became aware of the scab picked raw on his hand. She was repulsed. She could not go through with it. He was beautiful, but he repulsed her. She would repulse him right back, and end this crazy thing.

“Cooper,” she told him, “I'm not twenty-five. I am not thirty. I am thirty-four years old.”

“And as beautiful as a spring morning.”

She set her face. “And I am pregnant.”

Cooper squeezed her hand. “Yes. That is what Rev. Morrisohn told me.”

Mamie became cold, very cold, starting with the hand holding his picked-scab hand and chilling all the way up her shoulders and spreading throughout the rest of her body and soul. Cooper had that handsome smile on his face again. She saw now that it was the smile of a damned fool.

“Rev. Morrisohn told you?”

Cooper whispered, “Nobody else has to know. What we do, we do in the name of the Lord.”

Mamie was furious, but she hid it under a pleasant, ladylike smile. “Let's do it then.”

Fool.

* * *

So two weeks after Jefferson Cooper began to court Mamie Culpepper, they were wed—they did it in the name of the Lord and to keep her reputation clean.

Cooper was the natural choice to fix it.

He was not a man inclined to run wild with women, for the Lord had changed his heart on a lifeboat on the high seas. Furthermore, he was a loyal disciple of Buford Morrisohn, not a damned fool, as Mamie had called him in her heart. And it was Brother Morrisohn who had spoken to him about the fine church lady who would be brought down low because of a certain callous act—a fine church lady who was in desperate need of a fix, and a quick one.

Now Cooper, a man who had survived in the face of certain death, was not one to compromise the Commandments of the Lord regarding fornication and adultery—of course he would have preferred a virgin for a wife—but neither was he an automaton or a marionette who ascribed a literal and fixed translation to spiritual principles. In short, Cooper believed that we are all born in sin and shaped in iniquity, and no man should be another's judge. Should he who had taken a man's life look with scorn upon the face of a woman who, at the age of 34, had yielded, after resisting it valiantly for years, to the spiteful sexual nature of sin and corruption?

Cooper had believed that the Lord would provide him a wife who was beautiful, which Mamie was, who was strong in the Lord, which Mamie was, and who was chaste, which Mamie, Brother Morrisohn had informed him, indeed was, despite the loss of her maidenhead.

Forced sexual engagement at the hands of the spiteful white teen Chet Mahoney might have robbed her of her virginity, but not her virtue. Neither would it rob her of her place in their spiritual community, if Jefferson Cooper had any say in the matter.

She never spoke of the thing that the boy had done to her, and Cooper did not press the issue. It was a lady's prerogative to choose not to speak of such indelicate matters. She was a fine wife otherwise, and passionate, though a little unimaginative in the bedroom, which, of course was further indication of the intactness of her virtue.

She had a big, soft body that was a wonder to look upon. Her breasts were indeed the cassava melons that the Song of Solomon spoke about. Her wide hips were a delight to behold. Her skin was black and starless as the perfect night.

She knew her Bible, he had to admit, better than he did, and thus was a great assist in the penning of sermons. He would watch and listen as she expounded on scripture and then he would recapitulate her energy and ideas when he preached.

She was neither frivolous nor lazy nor a nag and she was proud, though not of her beauty, as are some women, but proud of being a woman, a lady, and she was content to follow his lead, though he was young and she had been independent of husbandly leadership well into her mid thirties. There was never a need to rebuke his Mamie or to remind her that the man is head of the house as Christ is head of the church. In fact, it was she who demanded that he be the man by letting him control all of the money they earned from their joint labors in the fields of fruit. She always reminded him to send money to his mother and siblings back in Jamaica ; she was not jealous of his mother. She understood the love of a mother, having lost her own dear mother less than seven years earlier.

She always spoke with a gentle tenderness to him, a wifely deference; she always called him Mr. Cooper, or Cooper, in public and “husband” in private, even while making love. He found it amusing that she blushed when he called her baby or darling or lover. She preferred to be called wife, or Mrs. Cooper, but she was proud of their marriage and she cherished her wedding band, which had cost him a week's worth of unloading trucks for the Andersons '.

She said that the ring was too good to wear because someone might try to steal it. She preferred to carry it in her purse or in her bosom wrapped in tissue paper. She was always pulling it out, showing it to her women friends, or in a moment of leisure setting it on the table and watching it with quiet sighs.

He liked to watch her come and go in that yellow dress and kerchief. She had a way of walking that demanded attention, especially now that the baby was beginning to show. He liked to watch the way men watched her, the men who had not been worthy of her, the men she had passed up on because they were not saved enough, the men who had passed up on her because she was too saved, the men who had allowed her to reach her thirties without a mate. Their nets had missed this great catch, but their missing out had allowed her to grow strong in the Lord. She was a woman easy to love and Cooper loved her with all his heart.

The baby, when it was born, he decided, he would love it too. He anticipated that he would have to ignore for a while the sly smiles and titters of the others who would make untoward suggestions about the baby's ancestry spelled out in its skin. But years later, he knew that the baby's complexion would not matter at all, for he himself was fair-skinned and thus many would simply come to assume that the mix of the child was that of his yellow skin with Mamie's black.

It was the Mahoney boy who caused all the trouble.

Come citrus picking season, the boy would have that smirk on his face every time he came near Mamie. When he came near, Mamie would freeze up, like someone who had lost the control of her limbs. Sometimes her basket of oranges would spill. At times like these, Cooper would go to his wife and put his arms around her and she would become calmer. The freckle-faced boy would stare at them with stupid fascination, then say something arrogant or vicious before driving off: “Watch it there, Sister Culpepper. Don't go spilling my oranges. Time's a wasting and time is money. Pick ‘em up. You help her there now, Rev. Cooper.”

Then he would drive off, cackling. It angered Cooper to see his wife have to submit to this torture, never mind that the boy publicly disrespected their marriage by calling her Culpepper and him Cooper.

One day the boy came by, driving slowly past in his truck as he was wont to do, and Mamie spilled her oranges, and he shouted to her, “Watch it there, Sister Culpepper. Don't go spilling my fruit.”

Had the boy driven off immediately things might have turned out better for everybody, but he did not. He waited there laughing. In fact, he stopped his truck. It sat there in park while he laughed.

Cooper, who as always, was nearby, had heard the boy's words. This time he had said it different: “Don't go spilling my fruit,” which in the mind of a man steeped in the King James Version of the Bible was a far cry from “Don't go wasting my oranges.”

The boy might as well have shouted to all the pickers that Mamie was carrying his seed, his fruit.

Cooper felt as though every eye among the pickers was upon him, accusing him of being less than a man to this good woman who had been so badly wronged, and as he felt their scorn burn into his back the Spirit of the Lord left him and he was filled with wrath. He should have prayed, but he did not. So the devil took good hold, and Cooper walked right up to Chet Mahoney sitting in that old Ford.

Chet Mahoney kept right on laughing. He didn't ask why the big picker preacher was standing in front of his car, the big picker preacher whose wife he figured was pregnant for the old black reverend. Chet just kept right on laughing as the big man reached inside the car with one hand and grabbed him by his thin neck and used the other hand to slap his face until there was much blood and pain and finally, unconsciousness.

There was a smart picker there named Amos, who spent a lot of time at the altar because of his drinking and gambling, and he admired young Cooper who had prayed with him often, so he told two of the Mexicans to get in Chet's car and drive the boy back into town, but drive slow. “Get him to a doctor,” Amos told them, “but don't be too clear on what all happened. We got to give Cooper a fighting chance.”

The Mexicans said, “Si,” and the car began to roll slowly down the road.

Then Amos told Cooper, “You in trouble, boy. You need to get on out of here fast. I have my old car. Take it. Go south first, ‘cause they gonna be lookin' for you to head north. All the roads'll be blocked. Stay down in Homestead for a few days, maybe a few weeks. Keep out of sight. Don't talk too much to nobody. Then when the Klan done did its first run at you, the army'll be mad at ‘em and they'll have to rest up on their roadblocks. That's when you want to head north. Then go fast and go far, boy. Go on up to Jacksonville at least. Go on up to Georgia if you can stand it. Stay up there for a couple months, then send for your wife and child.”

Mamie began to cry.

Cooper shook his head. “Why can't I take her?”

“Boy, is you crazy?” said Amos. “You go running down to Homestead with your wife, they'll know it's you for sure. They'll probably hurt her as bad as they hurt you, if the pain of seeing you strung up don't kill her dead first. She's carrying a child, boy! Now go on. Get on out of here. God love you, Cooper.”

Old Amos embraced Cooper and passed him the keys to his car. Then Cooper embraced his wife. The sun was high in the sky. Shadows were short, the air was sweet smelling, and their kiss, through tears, was the last one they would ever kiss, though they did not know this at the time.

He told her, “I love you, wife.”

She told him, “I love you, Mr. Cooper.”

And then he was gone.

The sheriff came first, poking his nose around, calling it investigating. He was in the employ of the Mahoney's as well as a second cousin. He slapped some of the young men around pretty hard, but they each told him the same story: Cooper stole Old Amos' car and fled north.

The Klan came that night, burning more than a dozen wooden houses, and beating several young men pointed out by Chet as having been in on it, but killing no one. This angered Chet, who walked around now with his head bandaged in white like a high priest of righteous wraths. Chet demanded blood and vengeance, but it was picking season. Every able body was needed to bring in the crop. The baby came next.

They named her Isadore. Isadore Cooper. She was born early. By everybody's recollection it was only a six and a half month pregnancy, and there was some gossip about why that was.

Did Mamie and Cooper, two stalwarts of the Faithful, engage in sexual communion before marriage?

What of the rumor that Cooper had slapped the Mahoney boy senseless for offending Mamie? What of the rumor that the boy was the baby's father? And how could that be when the baby was so dark?

How could the baby even be Cooper's and be so dark? Was not Cooper a fair skinned man?

The people of Goulds gossiped themselves into a self righteous ecstasy and concluded that all would be resolved when Cooper came back to retrieve Mamie and the child. They were eager to see how it would all come out.

But Cooper had been gone two months now, and there was no sign of him. Everyone felt that it was safe for him to return, if he was careful about it, and collect his wife and child because the Klan had found a boy about Cooper's height and complexion up around Ft. Lauderdale and worked out its blood vengeance on him. This boy was a known thief and troublemaker, so he has not sorely missed by anyone, except for the white girl he had been shacked up with, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief that now Cooper had a fighting chance because the white sheets and blazing crosses weren't coming out at night anymore.

The gossips noted that these days Mamie rarely left home and never without the company of her closest family and friends, her cousin Glovine, Glovine's husband the Rev. Morrisohn, her Aunti the old midwife, and her infant child Isadore, over whom she doted. By all accounts Mamie was a good mother to the child, but there was clearly a pall of sadness and expectation hanging over her, and it had something to do with the child. Mamie seemed ever in a state of agitation.

Then there came a day, when the word out on the street was that Cooper had snuck back into town the night before and vanished again before the white people had even awakened.

The evidence was plain before everybody's eyes. Old Amos's automobile was parked outside his shack again. Everyone assumed, then, that this meant Cooper had come and collected Mamie and the baby. But how did he transport them away if he had given back Amos' car? There were rumors of a mysterious bus and then some talk of a friend with a car who had driven down with Cooper. There was even talk of Rev. Morrisohn's brokering a deal with Old Man Mahoney so that all was made right and Cooper and Mamie need no longer fear harm from any white man.

This rumor held the most power and survived the longest because there were quite a few who could testify to having witnessed Rev. Morrisohn's being present at Mamie's house on the night that Cooper had snuck back into town. The same would testify that the Rev. Morrisohn (sometimes without his wife) was often at Mamie's house late into the night.

The same would also testify that the facts are these. Cooper drove back into town on the night in question. He parked the car in front of Old Amos' clapboard house and then went inside to say something to Old Amos. Perhaps goodbye. Perhaps thank you for saving my life. Fifteen minutes later, wearing a large hat to conceal his features and a full suit of military style khakis, he emerged in seemingly good spirits from Amos' dwelling and walked with the old pep in his step down the dirt road past eight similarly built shacks. He went inside. There was a shout, perhaps of joy. Perhaps not. Then a few minutes later, he emerged from the dwelling of his wife and walked due north and was never seen in these parts again.

The same would also testify that when Cooper emerged from the dwelling of his wife, she emerged from it also following behind him, frantically beating her breasts and pleading with him to come back. But Cooper did not look back. Had he looked back, he would have seen Rev. Morrisohn emerging from the dwelling as well, with the baby Isadore in his arms, sleeping peacefully, swaddled in her little blanket with only her dark face exposed to the night. Had he looked back, he would have seen Rev. Morrisohn put a hand on Mamie's shoulder and say something into her ear that made her head fall to her chest and made her begin to sob uncontrollably and then follow him back into the house.

The same would also tell you, that Cooper saw none of this because he did not look back. He just kept heading north, on foot, in his khaki style army suit.

Cover Design: Joseph McNair