On Emma's Bluff by Sara Elizabeth Rice, edited by davebccanada (comprehension books txt) 📖

Cindy could hardly lift her legs. As they ascended, the sun beat down on them. Then the once pliable steps stiffened and splintered beneath them.   With a crack of lightening, the stairway split in two, the bottom steps crumbling away. Cindy looked down to see the loose lumber tumbling down in a slow spiraling motion. The air had become wintry grey. Cindy knew that the ruined boards that were left could barely support them. The ground floor appeared to be hundreds of feet away. Cindy and Emma clung to each other as the step they shared began to sag.

Craning her neck upward Cindy searched for a way out. Ten feet below them the stairs ended. At the top of the stair was a door. Blood dripped from it, and an axe was driven into the wall above it. She could hear the door creak as if whatever was behind it was slowly making its way out. Snatching Emma's hand, she surveyed the skeleton framework that supported them. They would have to shinny their way using beams and crossbeams to reach the bottom. Pushing Emma ahead of her, Cindy waited while her friend scooted cautiously down a post. Cindy dropped to a crouch, to grasp the crossbeam beneath her. From the corner of her eye she saw the blackened narrow boots that stood behind her.

Her own screams awakened her.

Roy Wilson sat on his back porch rocking. He had heard Emma come in. The girl was late and he was glad that it had been he, instead of Elizabeth who had sat up to wait.

His thoughts consumed him as he slowly rocked. A shotgun lay beside him. Something was happening and it was happening too close to his home. The incident on the river had shaken him. Looking back he was certain that it had been nothing more than a branch or a torn line that had snagged him, but he was spooked. Something indefinable told him they were not safe in their own home. Elizabeth had been right this time. They were fools to sit and wait for it to happen again. No, someone would have to see that no more lives were taken, someone who knew these woods, knew this river; someone with a lot at stake.

Joy Hutchinson was mad as a wet hen. She had fallen asleep the night before, only after crying her eyes out for hours. She had punched her pillow and cursed him.

Joy was stunned when Bill refused to come for the regular Saturday night supper with her folks. His excuse had been that he wanted to spend a quiet night at home with his own parents. His sentimentality toward his ‘aging parents’ and his fear of growing away from them had actually brought tears to her eyes as she listened to him. " No, wonder, I love him so much, " she had thought.

But by eight o'clock, after she had helped her mother with the dishes, she realized that this was the second Saturday night for which he had an excuse. As she lay across her bed with a teen fashion magazine the weight of the past week came back to her. The shock, the funeral, had she really thought she had put that behind.   That realization of the grief she was still suffering over the loss of her friend, Angela, just over powered her. "I want Bill," she cried out, "he ought to be here tonight. Just got to call and at least talk to him."

Mrs. Simmons had been disturbed by the tone in Joy's voice. "Honey, he left here over an hour ago. Isn't he at your place yet."

The question hit Joy broadside. "Why no...."

"Bill said he had a date, so I know he remembered. Do you think something might have happened to him?" Mrs. Simmons was now noticeable anxious.

"No ma’am, I just remembered where he said he was going first." Joy's voice was cold. "Please, don't tell him I called you. I don't want him to know what a ninny I am." Joy hung up the phone, not waiting for a response. " That son of a bitch! What a crock! Does he know what my daddy will do to him?"

Emma had gotten up early Sunday morning to go to church with her Aunt Liz. Elizabeth was born and raised Presbyterian. But because there was no longer a Presbyterian church in The Bluff, she regularly traveled the twenty miles to Yazoo City to attend Sunday morning worship. Roy never went.

When she first got up, Emma was alarmed because her mouth was swollen and red. "Lord, if this is only from kissing, how do married folks survive,“ she thought. She felt light on her feet as she moved about getting dressed.

It was the second Sunday in October and the crisp air bit their skin as niece and aunt walked across the gravel to car. The sun hung sort of golden and low. It seemed to Emma that she could smell the cool water from the river.

"Good gravy, Emma, where did these come from?" Elizabeth, who had bent to pull her stored Bible from under the front seat like wise pulled out a pair of shiny, narrow, black boots.

Lucille May sat on the bench in her kitchen with a child on her lap. The child that was not more than a year old babbled and spit alternatively. The three year old sat on the dirty wooden floor drinking from a bottle. He refused to give it up, so Lucille had long ago quit trying to make him. From the bedroom off the kitchen, she could hear her seven year old crying as his older sister, only eight, tried to wash his face. Lucille, who had lived in the same shotgun shack since she married Eddy May, was worried.

Eddy had been missing for five days.   Her older boys had gone out looking for Eddy on Friday night and had come home baffled.   Eddy had simply disappeared. They were good boys, the oldest had just turned seventeen, but she figured they still had a lot to learn.

This morning she was waiting for her sister, Verna, to show up and carry the young ones to preaching. Then she would set out looking for her husband in the one place the boys would not have thought to look, in the river, dead.

Lucille had always known about her husbands rambling ways. She had even become good friends with some of the women who bore his illegitimate children. He remained her man.

Her mamma had taught her as a young girl that a man was different from a woman. Men, well, they had a weight on them that women could not understand. To be a man meant busting ass every day just to stay one.   So men folks all had their weaknesses to comfort them. For some it was the bottle, for some gambling, for some it could even be a cocky pride that kept ending them up in fights. For Eddy, who was always a fine looking man, a man who could pass for much younger, it had always been women. That Eddy loved her, Lucille had never doubted. But how he could burn for the flesh of another woman was just part of what made him a man. In the folded flesh of another woman he was safe to wear out his fears and frustrations. Lucille loved Eddy, and she would have never considered denying him this need of his.

The problem with Eddy's carousing was the husbands and boy friends he offended. More than once he had come close to losing his life at the hands of an angry man. "Reckon his time done run out," Lucille spoke to the baby in her lap. She kissed the child's coarse head.

She would have to hurry after her sister arrived.   It was a long distance to the cabin where she would get the herbs and knowledge that could retrieve her husband from the bottom of the Sunflower River.   It was an ancient rite that she would perform, one that black folks never spoke of in a white world.

The sermon bounced off Cindy's ears as she sat in the back row of the First Baptist Church of The Bluff.   Two pews up she was watching the backs of Joy Hutchinson and Bill Simmons.   A lot was going on up there.

Bill, who had walked in late, had sat matter-of-factly next to Joy, his arm swinging over the back of the pew around her. Cindy had watched as Joy turned toward him and spat out some insult and then slid down the pew away. He had scooted slowly after her and grabbed her shoulder to keep her from retreating further. They now sat, with Bill's arm firmly encircling her, his head slightly bent toward her. Though no words were audible, she watched as Bill mouthed a story into Joy's ear.

Now Cindy was keenly aware that just the night before Bill had been out with Emma.   She stewed in her seat. "What is that asshole doing? " she almost spoke out loud. What ever it was, it was having the desired effect on Joy. She turned to look directly at Bill. Though her lips were firmly pressed together, Cindy could see the warmth Joy's eye radiated toward him. "That son-of-a-bitch," Cindy muttered under her breath.

Bill had said nothing about calling her, but Emma still jumped every time the phone rang Sunday afternoon. Aunt Liz had prepared a hearty meal of fried chicken, potato salad, biscuits, garden grown peas and peach cobbler. Emma had hardly eaten a bite.

After the late lunch, Emma had sat on the back porch with her aunt and uncle trying to read her history assignment. She rarely read any of her assignments.   Her mind would not focus on the book today either. She gave up and went to her room to sit in one of the windows and think her thoughts. She found herself thinking, " I will be glad when the leaves fall and I can see the river from my room." As she sat there she noticed the sunlight playing off her dresser mirror. On the dresser she noticed the letter and papers. She scooped them up with glee and went back to the window to read them.

The afternoon had become warm and Lucille sat on the riverbank with a kerchief tied around her neck. It had been late in the morning before she had reached Hattie's. Hattie lived on the bank of the Yazoo River, which ran in to the Sunflower near by.

Hattie was closer to Rolling Fork than she was to The Bluff. The old woman had been standing on her screened porch when Lucille entered the yard. She held the screen door open for Lucille to join her. Hattie was a large squat woman. Lucille had no idea of her age, but the grey head had not changed since Lucille was a little girl.

They spoke very little. Hattie had never asked a question. Lucille always felt as if Hattie knew what her visitors were going to say before they said it.

Hattie occupied a special place in the black community. She was called when babies were born, when folks took sick, and when they died.   Occasionally other special problems would come up that Hattie could handle. Hattie had once told Beatrice Simpson where here grandmother had hidden a pearl necklace. Of course, many still did not believe in her ways. But Lucille did not care about what others believed. She was only interested in the special ingredient that would raise a dead man from the river.

With the flickering reflection of leaves on the water, Lucille now stood in a densely wooded area of the Sunflower River. In her right hand she held a small pouch made from a flour sack. In her left four wooden chips. Hattie had told her that she had to collect the chips herself. They had come from the cypress that grew close to the water, each from a different tree, from a different