A short tale of the conjure-woman Mamma Lucy and the passing of a man, for no other reason than that it happened…
Mr Aloysius Clay
Once, when Mamma Lucy seemed young and the days seemed mellow, a man whipped his two-horse carriage through the streets of a small Georgia town. It may have been in Barrow County, though some say it was Gwinnett. Only the dead would remember the details.
The horses, two grey mares of good parentage, were none too happy at this haste or the whip on their flanks. They threw their heads back, whickering when they were struck, and as the carriage turned too fast onto the road out of town, they baulked. In the middle of the road stood a tall black woman in a print dress, one eye white as curds and gold as honey.
The man cursed mightily as the carriage skidded across the road, close to overturning. He drew the horses to a halt next to a broken hitching rail, and leaping from his seat he advanced on the woman, whip in hand. He was a fine man whose rich, embroidered weskit barely buttoned over his paunch, a fine man with silk in his weave and folding money in his pockets. The black woman was a stranger, and a poorly dressed one at that, patched and shoeless.
“You could have killed me,” he said, his brow dug deep like a plough furrow. “You ignorant–”
“Maybe you shouldn’t a’been whippin’ them on so hard,” The woman spoke without respect or insolence. “Every beast knows kindness.”
Red cheeks above burnside whiskers, he swore and laid his whip on her instead, cutting cheap cotton and raising a weal across her belly. She stumbled back, and though she made no cry, she dropped her battered carpet bag at the blow.
He raised his hand a second time, then saw he had an audience. The two brick-shouldered men on the corner were giving him a sour look, even though she was a coloured, and a gaggle of bonneted ladies were coming up the street. He scowled and turned away to yell at the horses.
When dust and carriage were gone, one of the onlookers shuffled closer. He glanced at her torn dress, paused, and then tried some words out to no one in particular.
“Got me a few taters in the house. Boiled up a mite too many.”
Mamma Lucy smiled, showing more teeth than one of the grey mares. Following him no great distance to the edge of town, she set herself down behind his shack and began to take a needle to her dress. He went inside, and when he re-appeared, he had a bowl of potatoes and greens which he put beside her.
“Name’s Samuel Ellis,” he said.
“Mamma Lucy.”
He was clearly trying to weigh up her age and her place, but he couldn’t get there. After eating, she washed up in a tin bowl and watched the man chaw.
“Ain’t many like you round here,” she said. “Bein’ so easy on coloured folk.”
He looked away, awkward at her directness. “Some is, some ain’t. Most are in the hand of that Mister Aloysius Clay you jes’ met, even the preacher. He lays on white folk too, when he has a mind. Owns the lumber yards, the ferry and the fields. And the Banner-Herald, so as it says durn much what he thinks.”
The woman nodded. “Met a few like that. Cain’t say you sound fond o’the man.”
Samuel winced. “Best not talk thataway, specially on account of…” He looked at her dark arm, not that far from his. “He rides out some nights, they say. Iffen you know what I mean.”
She did. Even so, it wasn’t her path to be an angry woman, only a watchful one, so she said nothing to that. Her belly hurt where the whip had landed, and her feet were moving her north, on account of an itch between her shoulder-blades. Georgia would be a long time healing, she reckoned.
There was nothing between the two of them, sat there behind a one-room shack, save a Samaritan’s instinct. Whether that came from the Good Book or a good heart, made no difference to her. After an easy enough silence, he bade her fortune, and went off to the fields, back to his work as an overseer for Clay.
Seeing the sun had a mind to move low, Mamma Lucy wove roots and a few fingers of dust into a flannel bag. She slipped that under his porch, and headed out of town.
Samuel, a man who never used the stick whilst doing his job, married well a few months later, much to his surprise.
***
Must have been thirty years later when Aloysius Clay was set to meet his Maker – or someone from a warmer place. He lay on goose-down and cotton, cotton better than any print dress, with his two fine sons at his side and a gaggle of servants waiting in the bedchamber or the hallway outside. Most of them prayed, but few of those prayers held anything good for their master. There was a white hood and robe in his study, and the only cross he really liked had a way of burning in the night.
Clay breathed slow and hard, a walrus in his dying. James, his eldest, had a head full of debts and what might be in his father’s safe; Eli wanted off and away, as soon as he could throw his handful on the old man’s grave. To be swimming in rare waters like Boston or New York, that was his hope. Neither was half as tainted as their father, though both had a way to go from the old man’s shadow.
Not long after ten that evening, James lifted his head. He heard talk at the door downstairs, and he had no argument with a break from the vigil, so he went down. By the fancy-carved front door stood a maid, hopping from one foot to the other, and a gangling black woman in a faded dress.
“Came to see Mr Clay,” she said, husky tones on the Georgia night. “We go way back.”
He thought of effrontery and nonsense, but there was a strange eye on him, and a wisp of something else in the air, like sage burning on a cold hearth.
“It’s fine, Sara.” Puzzled at himself, he led the woman up the grand stair, and into his father’s place of dying. The black butler, who had pressed close to the wall, took a look at the newcomer, after which he crossed himself and left the room; others slid back, unsure.
“You ‘member me, Mr Clay.” It didn’t sound like a question. “Mamma Lucy, they call me these days. Did back then, thinkin’ on it.”
Aloysius Clay opened mean eyes, crusted round with a man’s last hours.
“I don’t owe anything, especially to you damn coloureds.” His words were laboured but clear.
“Ain’t here to collect, son. There’s another on his way for that.”
Eli sucked in his cheeks, hearing the way the woman spoke. He looked at his brother James, who shrugged. The old woman sat down on the edge of the bed, a fluid movement before the brothers could do anything. She stroked the counterpane.
“Mighty fine quilt for a fine man. Well now, last time I saw you, you was madder’n a wet hen, using the Lord’s name for this an’ that, ready to be skinnin’ me and those two fancy grey mares. Black or grey, didn’t matter to you what colour a soul was wearin’.” Her big teeth shone around the room, yellow as candle-light. “But that was a while ago. Came to tell you a word or two, afore you pass.”
“I don’t–”
“You surely don’t, Mr Clay.” And she spoke that word or two, plain for any to hear.
Though she didn’t hold much with looking too far forward, there were times when it was needed. She spoke of trees that wanted to die of shame at what they carried, of war in Europe again, and black men bleeding out next to white men in the snow. She spoke of new days, and folk who sat and drank where they needed to, not where they were told, days when the colour of lips didn’t change a kiss. Of men and women who no longer needed to carry the hates that Clay had grown in his fields…
There was a fair amount more, and no one managed a movement or murmur until she’d finished. James and Eli thought of their father’s white robes, and of how it was time to be shot of them – James maybe with guilt, Eli with relief. Cousin Amy, who’d been to more than one fortune-teller at the fair, knew she’d heard truths you didn’t get though turning cards, and swore off those gaudy stalls for life.
“It won’t be right,” said Mamma Lucy, stroking her worn carpet bag. “There’ll be loss, and murder, and mistakes. But the plain fact is, Mr Clay, if it ain’t quite right, sure as the Lord you’ll still be wrong. Dead, and dead wrong.”
He lifted himself on one elbow, then fell back, unable to speak. She smiled, and it was a gentle smile.
“Been to the crossroads, Mr Clay, and had me a talk or two. Ain’t got no bad feelin’ left for you, but every soul serves a purpose. When you go down, and you surely are going down, you’ll be carryin’ those words with you. There’s folk long passed who need to hear this. Cain’t do no harm, may do some good for once.”
His eyes widened, and he drew in one long breath. His family and servants waited, but it was clear he wouldn’t be taking another. Mamma Lucy nodded.
“Said my piece, and now it’s yours.” She closed the dead man’s eyes with her big thumbs, and straightened up, looking the others over. She spotted Clay’s lawyer by the papers he carried, and the perspiration that struggled down his temples.
“You won’t be needin’ to lay him deep,” the old woman to the lawyer. “He ain’t no doubt as to where he’s a-headin’.”
The lawyer swallowed, and sweat made the ink run on his papers. He knew far too much of Clay’s business, and wanted shot of it all. There was a girl he’d met in Atlanta…
Mamma Lucy’s clouded left eye turned on the two sons. “Some here’ll listen; some won’t. But do or don’t, ain’t no call for any o’you to be Mister Aloysius Clay.”
And that was the third time that the conjure-woman walked through Georgia.
John Linwood Grant 11/17
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