The Twelve-Mile Straight. Eleanor Henderson

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       NINE

      

      THE COUPLE ARRIVED IN SEPTEMBER IN A BEAT-UP MODEL T WITH a license plate from New York, the colossal silver lily of a phonograph player blooming from the back window. The puppies barked alongside it as it made its way up the dusty driveway. For a few clenched heartbeats, as they stepped out of the car, Elma was sure they were there to see the twins. The story had reached across the telegraph lines all the way to New York City, and here they were to take their picture, to record them on their gramophone. She had the bone-tensing fear that they might take the babies too. When they asked for Juke, said they’d heard in Florence that he might be looking for hired help on the Wilson farm, Elma felt her heart relax, and then cool into a flat, dull stone. Her pride was hurt, just a little. Their names were Sara and Jim.

      They sat on the back porch, admiring the babies on Elma’s lap, while they waited for Juke to come in from the field. Nan poured them iced tea, and the man said, “You folks do like it sweet, don’t you?” Elma’s heart stuttered when the woman asked if Wilson was Nan’s, but she kept her voice steady. “No, ma’am,” she said. “They’re both mine.”

      Juke took them in on the spot, even though they were outsiders to Florence, even though he had enough willing hands in town. “Can’t pay you a penny,” he said, “but I can give you three meals and a roof.” He took them in, Elma suspected, because they were young and white and new to town—they’d come all the way from New York, almost as far as Canada, where no one had ever heard of the Gemini twins or Genus Jackson. “New Yawk!” Juke said, putting on his best radio voice. “Y’all talk just as straight as a skyscraper, ain’t you?”

      “Not the city,” Jim corrected him. “We’re from Buffalo.”

      Juke shrugged. “At’s a city, ain’t it? What you kids doing down this way? Don’t you know everyone here’s running north?”

      They’d been up and down the coast between Buffalo and Georgia and beyond—all the way down to Indian River, Florida, where they’d worked in the citrus groves that summer. They still had a crate of grapefruit in the backseat of their car, along with a basket of wool from a Vermont sheep farm and bolts of fabric from a garment factory in New York City. Because her father asked her to, Elma helped them carry their things to the tar paper shack behind the big house. Genus had left nearly nothing behind, and what he did have Juke had ordered that they burn. The shack had been swept clean. Now boxes and suitcases filled the room, overflowing with books and trinkets and clothing, a banjo, a guitar, the phonograph, fabric in orange and purple and periwinkle blue, a bolt of lemon yellow spilling from the bed to the floor. The couple moved busily about, saying how comfortable the cot was and what a pretty view, as though they were moving into a fancy new hotel. Elma watched from the doorway, arms folded.

      “You must have loved growing up here,” Sara said to Elma. She dug into the peel of a grapefruit and scalped it with her fingernails. She had fast, small hands, calloused and strong, her bare arms golden brown from the sun. Her face was square, with broad cheekbones and coffee bean eyes, and she wore her black hair in a braid down the length of her back. She handed Elma a wedge of the fruit. She had no idea who’d lived in this shack, did she? Elma didn’t know whether to be disgusted or relieved.

      Elma pressed it tentatively to her lips, tasting the bitter and the sweet. She nodded at Sara’s question—was it a question?—filling her mouth with a brave bite now so she wouldn’t have to speak.

      “Isn’t it a marvel?” Sara said. “Here it’s peaches, right? You grow any Georgia peaches on this farm?”

      Elma shook her head. “Just cotton, mostly. Some peanuts and corn.”

      “Jim, we got to get our hands on some Georgia peaches.”

      “If you say so,” Jim said, putting on a twang. He held out a palm and Sara deposited a piece of grapefruit in it. He lifted his fedora in thanks, and under it Elma saw that his head was nearly bald. “You’re a Georgia СКАЧАТЬ