Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush Page 5

  “You use it when it be hurtin you all over before?” she asked him. He said yes in a tired whisper.

  Carefully she plugged it in behind the bed. She put the dial on Medium High and waited to see if Dab could stand so much heat. Soon he breathed deeply in and out. The pad went up and down on his chest in a steady motion.

  “Dab?” she said softly. He was dozing, but he could still hear her. “You musta been up all night wit it,” she said resentfully, upset that he had not called her for help.

  “Dab?”

  “Huh?” he answered.

  “Does it hurt you with the pad on like that?”

  “Huh?”

  She would have repeated the question, but she realized he had fallen back in the mind, was the way she thought of it. His mind was somehow less now, she felt.

  “It don’t hurt so much now, do it?” she said.

  “Uh … unh,” he grunted.

  Maybe the pain makes him think better, she decided. And the pain leave him and he cain’t think again.

  “You can doze,” she told him. “I’ll fix you something. What you think you wantin?”

  It took him a minute to answer. She saw his lips part, and so she waited. “Make … something go down … down easy.”

  “Some mush?” she said. She knew how to make good, yellow cornmeal mush.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Some toast wit it?” she said, not worrying a minute about the way she spoke—how M’Vy told her she ought to pronounce words as correctly as she could.

  “Nah’m,” Dab said. “Just milk mush.”

  “All right,” she said. “Take me a minute.”

  She went to the kitchen. Dumb Lady Pricherd had finished in the bathroom. Tree didn’t bother to check it. She would check everything later when Miss Pricherd was at the end of the work and doing the kitchen.

  Probably only sweep the dust up in a damp rag stead of washing the whole darn floor, too. Know her kind.

  Miss Pricherd was now in Tree’s bedroom, running the vacuum. That was something. That was what the list said for her to do. Tree fixed the mush, taking her time. She realized Dab probably needed sleep more than he needed food. She melted a 600 Stress Tab multivitamin with zinc and iron and a 1000-unit vitamin C in the mush. They were almost out of the Cs. She would have to remind M’Vy to replace them.

  M’Vy!

  Tree put the lid on the mush, leaving the wooden spoon in, and turned the burner off. She went to the telephone. On the wall beside it were important phone numbers. Emergency numbers for police and firemen. The ambulance number and the Crisis number because she wasn’t sure but she thought Dab did get hold of some pot sometimes. And all the numbers where M’Vy ever worked with the names of the women of the houses. Tree called the last number and nobody answered so she figured, if M’Vy was working there, she must be out marketing. Tree made a star beside the number to remind herself to call back. She called the next-to-last number. White lady answered, said she never heard of some Viola. Made Tree so mad, she hung up on her. How could she say that when M’Vy had worked there for some time? Just mean, was all, or simpleminded. Tree called a few more numbers but got nowhere. She called the last number again; let it ring fifteen times, but there was nothing.

  She hung up and went back to fix Dab his breakfast. Put the steaming mush in a bowl on a tray with a cup of half ’n’ half and sugar and took it in to him, with the spoon sticking straight up in it, it was that thick. Good mush.

  She stood there beside his bed pouring the milk, just enough so it wouldn’t cool down the mush, and added enough sugar to satisfy Dab’s sweet tooth. It only took her a moment. Eyes closed, Dab had one arm flung up over the pillow. He breathed easily, relaxed.

  “You better, you?” she said. “I got mush right here. Smell it?”

  “Uuum-huum,” he murmured.

  “Well open your eyes! Can you sit up now, Dab?”

  He thought about that a second. She could see his body grow still. “Too afraid to try,” he said thickly.

  “Try,” she urged him. “If you can move your arm up like that—did it hurt to move it?”

  “Huum?” He turned his head, looking up, only then realizing he’d moved his arm. He brought it down slowly to his side. He winced once, but that was all. “Better,” he murmured. “Much, much better.” He sounded intelligent again.

  “Now,” she said, “ease yourself on up the pillow. Don’t strain yourself. Do it easy.”

  Dab pushed with his feet until he was sliding, pushing the pillow up against the headboard, until he was half-sitting. Opened his eyes. They looked clear. He reached for the tray. Tree placed it on his lap as lightly as she could, in small stages. She did not let go of it until she was sure the pressure of it wouldn’t hurt him.

  “It okay,” he told her. “Just my legs and my back ache now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “We gone have to see about that.” If I can’t reach M’Vy, what do I do with him, she wondered.

  She thought about the only other adult she could turn to. Not her! But if I have to, I will.

  She went out, headed for her bedroom, satisfied that Dab could feed himself. She found her room cleaned, the bed made. Smelled Pledge furniture polish.

  Didn’t tell her to change the sheets, she thought. But she ought to know.

  Lifting the bedspread, she found clean sheets under a clean pillow.

  Good! Wouldn’t be nice, have to sleep on some dirty ones another week. Never could put on sheets too good. Pullin them corners on clear tight.

  Tree went to the living room and found it hadn’t been straightened from the night before. There wasn’t a huge mess, but it needed dusting and vacuuming so it would smell fresh, like her bedroom.

  What she do, go work in the kitchen so she can eat? Tree rushed out but then slowed down so as to walk normally and not act like a spying child. When she got to the kitchen, Miss Ole Lady Pricherd hadn’t been there. The mush had got hard and caked on the sides of the saucepan where she had poured it out. Everything was just as Tree had left it. She looked around her. All of a sudden she went still, hearing a sound. In an instant, she was racing from the kitchen. And bumped her hip on the edge of the table, she had been in such a hurry. She fell low with the shooting pain of it and limped along. It took her time to straighten again. She was by the living room, in the hall, with tears smarting her eyes.

  “No!” she whispered, hurrying as best she could.

  No!

  It was the hall through which she and Dab left and entered the house each day. At the far end of the hall was the little room, the walk-in closet of a room that was hers to play in. It was hers.

  Mine!

  Standing there, clutching the doorknob of the closed door to the little room, was Cenithia Pricherd. In the other hand, she had Tree’s instructions for cleaning the house. She had heard Tree coming, seen her limp into the hall. She was poised now, in exaggerated concentration, studying the list.

  “Uhn-uhn,” Miss Pricherd said. “Nothing bout this room on the list. This room I always dust, even if it be for only some storage. Uhn-uhn. Now why it not on this list!”

  She stared at Tree. “Girl, what chew got in there?”

  Tree crept toward her, shaking her head.

  “Maybe you brother keep some stolen goods in here. Got something tough goin, too. Yo’w alone so much, wouldn’t put nothing past you. See your mama, tell her, too. Yo’w got it made! What you got in here!”

  “Miss Pricherd, no!” Tree shouted. At that moment, she knew why she’d been saying no, why she’d left the little room off her cleaning list. She reached for Miss Pricherd’s hand, too late. Ole Lady turned the doorknob and had the door wide open.

  Junk of the house piled around the floor. Tree’s round table was clear. Dead set through the middle of it was the dude like no other. In a wild beating of Tree’s heart, the terrible, cold miracle of him appeared before her eyes in the pose he always took. He did not look at them. He stared outward
or inward, who could know? He was dressed in his silky, dark finery, one hand cupped to his ear.

  Cenithia Pricherd whinnied like a horse. “Y-ow!” she hollered, in agony. “Y-ow-ow! Y-ow-ow!” and fell to the floor in a clump of trembling bones.

  Tree bent over her, holding her by the shoulders, while Brother Rush stood his wooden ground. He was visible for three or four seconds more. Then he faded in a waning of mystical light.

  Tree tried lifting Miss Pricherd but fell to her knees herself. Who could have imagined that Brother Rush would come again so soon? Something began to rise in Tree. It came, hard and loud, bubbling through her lips. She stared at Ole Lady Pricherd out cold. Her shoulders shook. She threw back her head. And laughed.

  “Oh. Oh!” she laughed. “Whew! Keyed up. Oh. Oh.” She couldn’t stop herself.

  That picture. Miss Pricherd seeing him through the table.

  It did not occur to her to be surprised that Miss Pricherd could see Brother Rush.

  Man, I could’ve sold tickets! Whew!

  Calming herself, she placed a hand on Miss Pricherd, who seemed to stir.

  “Miss Pricherd? Miss Pricherd?”

  Bet you be careful about every closed door from now on. Hee! Fear you gone see something. How you gone open the bathroom door or a closet door? Oh!

  Tree giggled herself free of the pain that had been in her hip. It was not long before Miss Pricherd came to her senses. And for the next hour, Tree had her work cut out for her. The first thing she had to do was keep Miss Pricherd from fainting away every five minutes at the thought of the ghost. She accomplished this by some smooth talking and by fixing the Ole Lady a complete breakfast. Bacon and orange juice, an egg omelet, which was a Tree specialty. At the end of the day, Tree fed her enough coffee ice cream to get her good and mellow. Nothing to it.

  Chapter 6

  THERE SEEMED TO BE night in Tree’s house. Even when it was day, often she would have to turn on the lamps. Dab was in bed in this late afternoon and the false night within the apartment. He was lazing more than he was sleeping.

  “Nothing hurt so much that I cain’t turn myself over,” he told Tree. His long fingers touched his face, probing as though to see if it were broken.

  Miss Pricherd had finally got herself together and gone home. She admitted she hadn’t had anything to eat since the night before. No supper of any kind. No evening snack or anything.

  “That why you seeing things,” Tree convinced her. “I’d be seeing stuff, too, if and when that be my case.”

  She had Ole Lady Pricherd believing that what she had seen through the table in the little room was merely shadows playing tricks with her eyesight. That she was weak and feeling faint from the lack of nourishing food. Tree even led her back to the little room so she could see for herself there was nothing there.

  “Got to be sure,” Miss Pricherd whispered, coming on reluctantly behind Tree.

  Tree prayed Rush wasn’t in there, a ghost through the table.

  Just stay away till she out of the house! Lay low! Tree begged in her thoughts. Dude, I know you come back here to see me. To take me out again.

  She entered the room and there was nothing ghostly anywhere. No feeling of cold and no mystery of haunting light.

  “See?” she showed Miss Pricherd.

  “But it was the most real thang I ever had come over me, too,” said Miss Pricherd. “Never gone let mysel get so short, I don’t eat for that long again. Uhn-uh.”

  “Well, I’ll pay you today everything you owed,” Tree told her. “But first you must get this here room done, please.” She knew how to sound polite.

  “Stay while I clean it,” Miss Pricherd ordered.

  Tree stayed, sitting sideways on the windowsill, watching the outdoors and lifting her feet when Miss Pricherd went by with the vacuum.

  “Bet somebody give yo’w good money for this mess,” she told Tree as she dusted off the junk stacked all around.

  Tree didn’t take up the conversation. She glanced hard at Miss Pricherd to see if she might be thinking about swiping some things from the little room.

  Wouldn’t do that if I was you, Tree thought. Never can tell what be watching you!

  She smothered a smile in her hand. Best not get too friendly with Miss Ole Lady, she thought. Maybe Brother want her to see him just to keep her straight. Oh, I wish I coulda told her. But she never would recover. Probably all this time, believer in ghosts. Believer in a Holy Spirit. And never seen nothing but scared she might. I coulda said it was the Holy Spirit but what she gone do about it? Make this place some miracle shrine. Shoot. Let her think it was hunger. And hope Brother don’t come back while she here.

  Miss Pricherd finished up the house better than she ever had. Tree made sure to give her plenty coffee ice cream, which was Dab’s favorite kind, right after she’d done the little room and before she started on the living room. After eating the ice cream, Miss Pricherd had been almost nice. But she eyed Tree every moment she could whenever Tree was in her vicinity.

  Thinking maybe I’m a soft touch, Tree thought. Thinking about getting what she can but she not so certain. When she through, I’ll give her an apple to take home, plus the money she made today.

  She gave Miss Pricherd the apple in a lunch sack, paid her and let her out of the house. Telling her good-bye and being slightly standoffish. Tree locked all the locks again. It was five o’clock, she realized suddenly, and time to get another supper ready.

  Where do the day go. Where did it go, she corrected herself, for M’Vy said she must talk and think the English language properly.

  M’Vy didn’t come home after five, or six o’clock, either. But by six o’clock, Brother Rush was back.

  Tree checked the little room exactly one hour after she let Miss Pricherd out of the house. Going down the silent night hall with its ceiling light on.

  She stood at the closed door, paused with her hand on the brass doorknob. She had been drawn irresistibly to the room but she could not at once bring herself to turn the knob. In the movies, people looked through keyholes. But this door had only a button beside the knob inside. Push the button and the door was locked. By turning the knob again, the lock was released. Now the button was broken inside and the door never would lock.

  How come nothin ever get fixed get broken in this house, Tree wondered. And thought of Dab. Who gone fix him?

  She made sure he had everything he might need throughout the day. She helped him up and into the bathroom two times.

  What will happen if sometime I cain’t get him up in time, she wondered.

  Today she had got him up. He was only aching, he told her. Inside herself was a scared place, anxious, where lay coiled her troubled thoughts about the sickness he had, whatever it was.

  She heard no sound on the other side of the door. “Nothing to stop you,” she told herself. “He ain’t hurt you or anybody else.”

  She opened the door on a peculiar light. It brought her a sudden, crushing sadness. And next there was Rush, big as life. Tree sucked in her breath. So good-looking in those same sharp clothes! She knew fear—how could she help not knowing it? Still, she was overjoyed to see him.

  She whispered at him through the table, “I’m so glad to see you, Brother. My brother be sick, too.”

  That suddenly, she had thought again of Dab. Rush made no response standing there. He held his pose, one hand up to his ear. The other hand had that one sign, that space. A shining space, as if it were an outline of an oval, shining with daylight. If she went closer, Tree knew she would go through the space. She knew Rush had come to take her out.

  “If I should go, what’s to become of Dab?” she said to Rush. She saw him as clearly as she saw anyone. But now she knew something she had not before taken time to think about.

  “You a dead man,” she said out loud. “Be how they pose some dead in them old-timey pictures I see once before M’Vy saw me looking and taken them away. Some grown-ups posed and lots of dead babies. Babies holding bot
tles and Teddy bears just the way they would when they alive. One man lyin in the coffin reading the newspaper. Somethin! Say he wanted to be the first man to die that way, but he didn’t make it. Paper say somebody else die before his dying time. Did they pose you standing up with your hand to your ear?” She heard her voice stop.

  He did not speak. He stayed through the table.

  “Wait. I know what.”

  She left the little room and went quietly to Dab’s room. “Dab, see if you can get yourself up again. Come on with me a minute. I got to show you something.”

  “Huh?” he said. Gently Tree took hold of him, directing him out of the bed. “I’m just lying down,” he said sweetly. “Be suppertime?”

  “Comin soon,” she said. “But come on to the little room with me. There’s somebody there. No kind of robber, though, so don’t you be fraid. You ever seen a ghost?”

  Dab smiled broadly and nodded at her, but she could tell he didn’t understand what she meant.

  “Hurt you to walk, Dab?” she asked. Carefully she led him across the room and through the door into the hallway.

  “My side hurt all the way up and down,” he told her.

  “Which side?”

  “Right side, all the way up to the back of my head, and then down the back of my knee and my right foot, too.”

  “That sure be something funny,” she said. She had kept him going down the hall. Now they were at the end where the door was closed to the little room.

  “It won’t hurt you,” she told him. “Dab, it want to take me out and I want you to come, too.”

  “You got a date to go out on?” Dab said. She didn’t answer. She opened the door. There was a peculiar light. Rush hadn’t changed a bit. He held the bright, shining space. Around the edges of the space, they saw greenery waving in the breeze. Smelled summer blossoms.

  Dab was fascinated. Tree knew he would be. Nothing standing still ever scared him. But moving figures confused his mind. On television, life moved too fast for Dab, so rarely did he watch it. Yet he could concentrate on anything standing still. Why he loved statues in the park, Tree knew, and pictures on the walls at the museum. He would put his face so close to museum pictures that the guards would come up to him and tell him to move back. “Dab, you tryin to get inside the pictures,” laughing, Tree had once told him. And he answered, “Yeah! Yeah!”