Sweat was beaded up on Obie’s forehead and there were damp stains spreading beneath his arms. The air between them stank of unwashed clothes, and the odor of food gone bad was drifting out the open door to the house. Not for the first time, she wondered what this old man did when she wasn’t around for him to tell his lies to.
“Eleven years old,” Obie said harshly. “Eleven years old ain’t nothing. Eleven years old ain’t spit.” He put his hands on his knees and scooted himself closer to her. “If you’re not careful,” he went on, “you going to end up just like your granddaddy. I was there when he walked off. He never said a damn word to nobody. He just walked off that field of play and was gone like a little bit of smoke. Syville, he told us not to worry none, that old Madewell Brown would come sauntering back in his own good time. But you know what? He never did. He got himself lost somewhere and wasn’t no better than the rest of us.” Obie moved back in his chair and turned his face away.
“You go on now,” he said, his voice tired and hushed. “You take your damn sass and get away from here. I got no time for the likes of you.”
Rachael pushed off the railing and jumped down. “I got to get home anyway,” she said.
“Yeah,” Obie said, without looking at her. “Sure you do”.
Rachael walked over to the edge of the porch. She stood there for a moment and then looked back at the old man. “I remember,” she said, and she said the words in a singsong voice, her hands on her hips. “I remember you once told me that Sully Greene run off to Mexico with a sweet, brown-skinned woman.” Her eyes were half closed and her head was moving from side to side. It made Obie think of little girls playing games of skip rope.
“You told me,” she went on, “that Sully Greene went off to live in a place where there wasn’t no snow or hardship. You said it was a place where you could walk down the street without shame. Then last week you told me different. You told me he got both his legs cut up by some white men down in Louisiana for looking wrong at a white woman. You said they dumped poor Sully in a drainage ditch. His legs bleeding so bad that the water turned milky with blood.”
“I never did,” Obie said quickly. The corners of his mouth were stained brown from tobacco juice and a thin stream of saliva ran down his chin. “And you ain’t got no home neither. You just a damn charity case.”
Rachael took the steps down off the porch, her skinny hips moving. “I don’t have a granddaddy,” she said, without so much as a glance back. “I don’t care what you say. I never had a granddaddy and I don’t believe a word you say. You just a crazy old man telling me lies.”
“I said go on now,” Obie said, waving an arm. “You get on away from here.”
Obie Poole had come back to South Cairo on a bitter winter day in 1959, thirty-seven years after he’d left. He came back on the north-south railway train that let him out on an open wood platform not far from the river.
“Obie Poole’s come back,” he muttered, his breath hanging in the air. “Obie Poole’s done come home.” He put his suitcase down beside him and looked around at where he’d once been a boy. At where they’d all once been boys.
A wet snow was falling and the air was gray and cold. A few yards away from where he stood, the river was flowing heavy and full and quiet. Already, the raw damp that rose from the surface had begun to settle deep in his hips. The joints in his ankles and wrists felt stiff and swelled up. He hunched his shoulders away from the weather and let his eyes rest down the shoreline.
He remembered that there’d been a string of houses that had stretched for a mile or so along the riverbank, but all there was now was one caved-in place after another. Most had slid off their stone foundations and were flattened out like a giant hand had pressed down on them. Thin, scrawny saplings grew out of the gaping windows and the roofs were stripped down to bare wood. The few places that had withstood the years were boarded up, the yards trashed out and weeded high.
Wondering what had happened here, Obie glanced across the river at Cairo. A run of tidy houses that hadn’t been there before sat high up on the riverbank, their yards spaced with gray oaks. And where the Cairo Slaughterhouse should have been was a long run of rubble that spread all the way down to the water.
Sweet Jesus, Obie thought. Where’d that damn train leave me anyway?
It was snowing harder now and though it wasn’t much past midday, light was fading fast. Cold water was dribbling down the back of Obie’s neck and his feet were numb and aching. The road that led away into South Cairo was a mess of black mud. Each side was strung with high grass and water was rising in the ruts. About a half mile off, a small garage sat in a hollow of trees. He remembered buying hard candy and packets of chew tobacco there as a boy. A faded cola sign hung over the front door, smoke was snaking out of the stovepipe. The sight of it calmed Obie down a little bit and made him realize that he’d been standing out in this cold long enough.
As he made his way through the slush along the side of the road, a couple of pickup trucks swung around the trees and headed toward him. The first one sped up as it passed by, sending up a splatter of mud that splashed cold against his trouser leg. The other downshifted hard with a grinding of gears and pulled up beside him.
Two white boys were inside the cab. The driver was drinking from a soiled paper cup and staring out at him through the open window with a little grin on his face. The other one was slumped up against the passenger door.
“Hey, old man,” the driver said. He leaned forward and switched off the engine. “What the hell you doing out in the cold wet?” He was a tall, skinny boy, his hair long over his ears. A few black hairs were growing on his chin and his skin was smooth and flushed. He was grinning wide now, like he’d been waiting his whole life for the day Obie Poole finally came home.
“I ain’t doing nothing,” Obie said, moving his eyes away. “I’m just walking down this road.”
“You always go walking with a suitcase?”
“Well, I just come home,” Obie said. “On that north-south train. I been off playing ball for a time and I just come home.” He hefted his suitcase a little as if to walk away, but he stayed standing where he was.
The boy in the passenger seat twisted his head. He took one look at Obie and let out a low moan. “C’mon, Lee,” he said, the words slurred. “I got to get home.”
“Ain’t you a little old to be playing ball?” Lee asked, taking a sip out of his paper cup. The boy beside him moaned again and then laid his head back against the door frame. “I thought baseball was for little boys.” Down the road, two men were standing outside the old garage. They stood there for a while looking, then turned and went back inside.
“Hey, old man,” Lee said again, and now his voice, too, was slurred and thick. His hand was resting on the edge of the open window and what was in the cup was spilling out onto the road.
The day was growing bitter cold. A flat, gray sky hung low over the trees and snow was beginning to build up on the grass. There wasn’t a breath of air. The only sound was the ticking of the truck engine as it cooled.
Obie glanced over at the pickup. The driver had stopped grinning and was staring off at the river. His eyes were dull and empty, as if whatever had once been in there had taken off and left. Obie felt a surge of fatigue go through him. He thought that this boy looked like every other white boy he’d ever seen in his life.
“I played ball for thirty-seven years,” Obie said softly. “And I just come home for a little peace of mind. I don’t want no trouble with no one.”
The boy suddenly shook his head hard. “Whew,” he breathed out. “We sure had us a time, didn’t we, Billy?” He pushed back in his seat and looked over at Obie.
“I heard what you said, old man,” he said. He leaned his head out the window and the snow that fell, fell on his hair. “You one of those colored ballplayers, aren’t