The Twelve-Mile Straight. Eleanor Henderson

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      One morning in that blazing and interminable month of August, when Elma arrived with her wagon at the crossroads store, a man she didn’t recognize offered to help her carry the eggs inside. No one else was about—not Jeb Simmons nor his son Drink, no one playing checkers on the porch. Or had she seen the man before? The sun was in her eyes. She could manage fine, thank you, but he wouldn’t hear of it. She held the door open for him while he carried in the crate, placing it on the shop counter, behind which Mud Turner eyed her, cigarette hanging from his mouth.

      Overhead, a ceiling fan spun. Elma stood with the man just inside the door. “Must be nice to step off the farm,” he said to her, and that was when she placed him—the sharp-edged suit, the neat mustache. He took off his hat and introduced himself: Q. L. Boothby, the editor of the Testament. He’d driven down from Macon that morning. Wasn’t it a fine morning? But already so hot. “A good morning for a Coca-Cola, Miss Jesup. What do you say?”

      Behind the counter, Mud raised an eyebrow. The last time Elma had had a soda was with Freddie, at Pearsall’s drugstore in Florence. Winter, before she was showing, before he’d stopped calling on her. They’d just seen Anna Christie at the theater next door, Elma’s first talkie, and her heart was still pounding with the thrill. Ordering her soda, she tried to imitate Greta Garbo’s voice—“Gimme a vhiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don’t be stingy, baby.” Freddie laughed. Excepting the colored one, there were no saloons to order a drink from in Florence, just the cotton mill, where it was mostly the men who drank from mason jars on their porches. Elma’s father wouldn’t let her set foot in the mill village, but here she was, out on the town with her fiancé, Freddie Wilson, whose family owned the biggest business in town, the whole glittering evening, her whole life, before her, and who cared how Freddie got his money, it was the way her father got his money too, and it was buying her a movie and a soda. The bubbles fizzed in her belly. Or was that her baby, kicking already?

      Elma tasted that ginger ale now, cool and sweet, the tinkle of the ice cubes as she stirred them with her straw. She looked at Q. L. Boothby, his hat still in his hands. He was as finely dressed a man as she had seen, his black Oxfords shiny as a piano, a blood red handkerchief flaming from his breast pocket.

      She said, “Sir, you don’t scare off easy, do you?”

      He said, “I won’t take much of your time.”

      From Mud he bought two bottles of Coca-Cola and carried them to the checkers table on the porch. Elma might have learned her lesson about daydreaming, but for a moment she imagined that they were on a date. That they were somewhere else and she was someone else and the man across from her was her fiancé. She thought a fiancé might be better than a husband. The promise of a mate, without the burden of one. The beginning without the end.

      “How are the babies?” Mr. Boothby asked.

      Elma twisted the cap off her Coke and watched its breath escape from the bottle. She’d had no more sleep than a mule the night before. Winna Jean had been up crying half the night, and she’d only sleep at Elma’s breast, with Elma propped straight up in bed. And Wilson had a case of the runs so bad that Nan had to cut more diapers out of an old sack apron and double them up, and slather lard on his poor red behind. It was best that Elma should be so tired, that she should sleepwalk through those nights. Then there wasn’t enough sleep between them to worry about which baby which of them cared for, or whether Elma should feel grateful or guilty or bitter that there were two of them to care for the babies, and two babies instead of one. Elma said, “The babies are fine.”

      “Appears to me you must be plumb tired of all the attention those babies bring. Sweet as they are.”

      Elma took a cautious sip of her soda. Yes, it did taste just as sweet as Heaven. He was warming her up, breaking her down, but it did feel good to sit on a porch and talk to a stranger. “I only want to keep them safe. All types of people coming in, it agg’avates em.”

      Mr. Boothby held up his hands, as if to show they were empty. “I understand, I understand. I’ve got children of my own.”

      Here Elma’s fantasy paled a little. Now she pictured Mrs. Boothby. Did she have an electric kitchen up in Macon, with a Frigidaire and an electric stove?

      “I have no interest in your babies, Miss Jesup, miraculous or not. I’m a newspaperman. We call our publication the Testament, and we do pride ourselves on seeking the truth.” Mr. Boothby lowered his voice when he said, “It’s the Negro Mr. Jackson I have an interest in.”

      Elma folded her hands in her lap to hide their shaking. Bill Cousins passed by on his way into the store, tipping his hat and saying, “Morning,” his eyes taking them in. Elma felt her heart speed up. No one, of course, would believe Mr. Boothby was a friendly acquaintance, let alone a suitor, but if Bill Cousins recognized the man in the suit, he didn’t say so. If he did, he might incite a mob against Elma herself. She might be burned at the stake for talking to a big-city reporter, even if they didn’t know his politics. There were things no one wanted known by the outside, and no one knew that better than Elma. When the door had closed behind Bill, she said, “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Boothby, but the Negro СКАЧАТЬ