Love and Lament Read online

  But the three healthy plants grew fast and strong, and even though Cicero had promised to give Able the fruit of one tree out of four he amended the promise to one out of three. During this time, Cicero ordered bananas from a fruit company in Raleigh, so that they all could get a foretaste of what they were working toward. The bunches were like hands, Mary Bet thought, with big fingers. For the next few days, when she was sewing, or cooking, or cleaning, or playing the piano, or praying, she thought about her hands. She thought of men building skyscrapers that were, so they said, ten stories tall, and she thought of Siler talking with his hands in sharp little bursts and beautiful sweeping gestures.

  One cold night as she was drifting off to sleep under two wool blankets and a down comforter, just feeling her body begin to float into unconsciousness, she heard the door close and a voice rise up from outside. “He’s put a spell on those plants,” her father said. She got up and went to the window and saw him down below, standing in his white nightgown, his feet bare, holding a lantern up to the greenhouse and staring in. “He’s spelling me, that black devil. I’ll spell him!”

  She lifted the sash and called out, “Daddy, what are you doing?”

  He looked up, holding the lantern as though to discern who was speaking. “Nothing,” he said, as brightly as a child caught in mischief, “just checking the plants. Go back to sleep.”

  “Daddy, it’s freezing out. You oughten be outside without a coat. The plants are fine, Daddy. Please.” He looked at the greenhouse, as though staring at his reflection in the dark glass, then back up at his daughter. “I’ll come out and check on them,” she said.

  “No, I’m coming in,” he replied. “They’re fine, I thought somebody might’ve—”

  “What is it, Daddy?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head and went back around to the summer kitchen, where he let himself in, and then she could hear the back door opening and closing, and finally the footsteps on the stairs. She decided to stay put in her room. No need to embarrass him any more. She had a friend whose sister sleepwalked outside in her nightgown, carrying a chair so that she could have a tea party. Maybe that’s what Cicero had just done, though he’d never sleepwalked before that Mary Bet could remember, not even talked in his sleep.

  Under her blankets and comforter again, she shivered and tucked her knees up. What would he do next? She stared into the black darkness to where her door was, and she got up and found her way there and pulled in the latchstring.

  CHAPTER 14

  1905

  THE THREE BANANA plants held through the winter and into the spring, and in the next summer they bore the first known crop of North Carolina bananas, seven arms of small but sweet yellow fruit. Cicero picked one of the two best trees for Able to harvest for his own use—Able sold half the fruit, at a dollar a bunch. They learned that the fruit which ripened on the tree was the sweetest, but would rot within a day or two. Cutting the bunches down when they were green gave them a few days to get the fruit to market before it began to turn the lemony yellow color that meant it was good to eat.

  One of the trees began to develop the telltale brown spots of fungus. Cicero saw them one morning and felt as though a child had developed a rash; his chest tightened with dread. The long green fronds, never as big or healthy as those of the other two survivors, withered back, etiolated into little pale yellow wings, and died. The new clusters were stunted and Cicero let them ripen on the tree. They turned an odd marbled yellow color, and when he peeled one he found almost no fruit inside—it was hard and pulpy, like wood, with long brownish-red veins. The taste was mealy, and he took his butcher knife and hacked off all the fruit of this tree and threw it to the pigs.

  There were now two trees left, still producing good fruit when the first autumn chill set in, and one morning Cicero went out to the greenhouse to speak to Able. He was not sure how he should put what he had to say, because the terms of their deal had never been clear to begin with in his mind. And Able had taken such pride in owning the tree. What bothered Cicero slightly, though he never put it in words to anyone, was that Able never seemed apologetic at all about owning one of the two remaining trees. It was as if he thought he deserved to have it simply because he’d been lucky enough to have one that would outlast the others. When he entered the greenhouse, he found Able checking the plants’ progress.

  “Stumps just keep puttin’ out new leaves,” Able said, “soon as the old ones die. I think these two is just the strongest of the lot. Like you and me.”

  “Yes, well, Able,” Cicero said, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Since Able only glanced up, a flash of white in a dark face behind the fronds, Cicero knew he would have to just go on and speak his mind. Was the air in the hothouse always so steamy, so wet you could hardly breathe, the windows so fogged you could see nothing of the outside but a gray blur? “You see, Able, I know how you love that tree, and I’ve let you harvest it as though it were your own. But now that we’re down to just two trees, I have another deal to propose that I’m sure you’ll think is fair.” He waited, but Able made no sound at all; he just kept studying the trees for dead leaves to prune.

  “I’m proposing,” Cicero said, “to let you keep half the fruit of that tree. That’s more generous than I ought to be. It’s more than our original agreement. What do you say?”

  Able, his eyes uplifted to the thin green hands growing just above his head, said, “It’s your tree, Mr. Cicero. You can do as you please.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say, Able. Just go on picking the fruit as you’ve been doing, but leave it for me to sort through. I’ll see you get your half.” He thought of saying something about how he’d make sure Able got plenty of good bunches, but he decided to leave it at that. As he was heading out, he heard Able clear his throat.

  “This here’s a fine tree,” Able said. “You won’t be disappointed, nawsuh. I’ve kept it in tip-top shape.”

  “I know you have, and I know you haven’t neglected the others at the expense of that one. And I’d ask you to consider what would happen if the other tree over there were to die?”

  “I spec we’d have to share and share alike,” Able said.

  “Yes, I’d find some equitable arrangement.” He made a jovial little laugh that sounded false to his own ears. “Able,” he said, “I hope you won’t think I’ve gone back on my word. I believe if you cogitate on it, you’ll come to the same conclusion I have.”

  “Yessuh,” Able said, “I surely will cogitate.”

  Cicero eyed the younger man—he had never known him to be surly or disrespectful; he wouldn’t stand for it from any employee. Able looked back briefly, nodded and smiled, then seeming to recognize what was being asked, said, “I’ve cogitated on it, Mr. Cicero. And I believes you’s right. This tree is a fine tree, but I am not its master. Nawsuh, not by a sight.”

  “All right, then,” Cicero cut him off. “Just leave out what you pick, and I’ll sort it and set your pile over by the door.” He went inside and it was not until that evening that he told Mary Bet the new arrangement he’d made with Able. “I don’t know why I should feel guilty over it,” he said. “It seems a fair arrangement, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” Mary Bet said, though she was thinking of something Joe Dorsett had said to her that afternoon. He was nineteen now, she eighteen, and he told her he had decided their secret engagement had gone on long enough; they should get married next year and he wanted a firm promise. He was saving up his money from his job at the chair factory to buy her a diamond engagement ring on credit at McAdo’s jewelry store. She was not sure whether she wanted to give Joe her firm promise.

  “Able’s mother was a house girl for your grandmother Margaret,” Cicero said. “He’s a good worker, but he thinks I owe him an entire banana tree just because I—”

  “Daddy, I don’t care about your banana trees and your workers. It’s all you ever talk about. Bananas bananas bananas. I don’t want to ever see another
banana.” Mary Bet stopped, aghast at the words that had flown from her mouth. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean to—” She put her napkin to her mouth, afraid she might say something else she’d regret.

  Cicero sat there in silence, his hands on the table for support, his napkin dangling from his shirtfront. He nodded and smiled, but his eyes looked sad and faraway. “I guess I do go on,” he said.

  “No, Daddy, I had no right to speak up to you. I’ll go to my room.”

  “Then I’ll be left alone.”

  “In peace.”

  “I don’t want that,” Cicero said. “You know I don’t. You’re all I have left. You and—well, everybody thinks I belong in the loony bin, just for growing tropical fruit.”

  “Someday—” Mary Bet started, then wondered if this was a good time to bring it up. But perhaps a better occasion wouldn’t come along for some time. “Daddy, Joe Dorsett wants me to marry him. When I turn nineteen.” She sat still, listening to the sound of her voice in the silence, looking at the remains of supper on her plate.

  “Well, is that what you want?” Her father’s voice had gone very quiet and steady; he looked old, more like her grandfather Samuel than he ever had.

  “No, Daddy,” she said. But she was thinking how romantic it would be to go away on a honeymoon with Joe, off to the seashore.

  “I don’t see how he could provide for you. He’s a good talker, but I don’t know if he’ll ever amount to much. What’s his rush? He ought to get himself an education so he can take up something, like the law or medicine. I wish I had studied law, but the war came along and then there was no money for going off and studying.”

  Mary Bet nodded politely, then stood and began clearing away the dishes. She was afraid if she sat another moment with her father she would not be able to hold her tongue; she was already burning with anger at him and shame for her earlier outburst. But her father seemed lost again in his own business, that glasshouse of his that was picking his pocket like a flimflammer, and consuming every minute of his waking hours and seeping into his dreams as well. There were times when she honestly wanted to go out there and leave the doors open and put out the fire so that the banana plants would die. Then maybe her father would quit his obsession with getting rich on some fantastical scheme that made him a laughingstock around town. People kept coming to the Alliance, but the new store up the Greensboro Road was cutting into his business. Cicero was not keeping up with the latest pills and powders and housewares, and Mary Bet worried about what would become of him when he had to quit.

  Over the next few weeks, the banana plant that Able had tended and harvested as his own developed the rot. Cicero saw Able bending over and carefully cutting away the brown spots near the base of the tree one morning. He said, “It’s no use. You might as well let it go. Get what fruit you can off it. You can keep it all. I should’ve just let you have all of it anyway. I’ve brought this on myself.”

  “I don’t know what make it do like that.”

  “Of course you don’t, Able. I’m not saying you do. I can tell you what makes it rot like that. It’s a banana tree, and it’s not meant to grow in North Carolina soil. Look outside there and tell me how many such trees you see growing. Do you see any banana trees?”

  Able looked at his boss and shook his head. “Nawsuh,” he said, taking on his most subservient tone. “I don’t see any banana trees.”

  “No, I don’t reckon you do, even if you could see out these godforsaken fogged-up windows. There’s a draft in here that would kill a mule. You can’t caulk up these windows. It still gets in. You might as well chop that tree down. This one too—it won’t last. It’s all a waste.”

  Cicero went over to the long worktable where they separated the arms into clusters and small bunches, and he took up his butcher knife. He came up to the tree where Able was working and grasped the nearest leaf, a man-size green leaf with brown blotches around the edge. Able opened his mouth wide. He shook his head. “They get like that sometime,” he said, the beginnings of panic in his voice. “It don’t mean it’s gone to the bad.”

  “It’ll be gone soon, though,” Cicero said. He leaned over and began hacking at the base of the leaf, tearing it down to the fibrous stem. He kept chopping and chopping, but it was too tough to give way easily to such a small knife. “I need an ax,” he said. “Or a sword.” He stood up to catch his breath, a wildness taking hold of him that felt liberating, like being dunked in the Rocky River by the Reverend Lassiter when he was a boy in knee pants. “A machete would be perfect, like they use in the tropics. Do you have one?”

  “I’ll get one tereckly,” Able said. “Wait right there, Mr. Cicero. Don’t strain yourself with anymore choppin’ till I’m back.” Able hurried out and around to the back of the house. Instead of pausing to knock, he let himself in and walked right into the parlor and called out for Mary Bet.

  She was upstairs getting herself ready for school. She came to the head of the stairs, holding the unpinned part of her hair up, took the comb from her mouth, and called down, “What is it, Able?”

  “It’s your daddy,” he said. “He done gone crazy.”

  Mary Bet jammed the hairpin in so that her braid held, and came tripping down the steps and followed Able out to the greenhouse. Her heart beat high in her chest, because she had known all along that something like this was going to happen. Something bad. When they were inside the greenhouse, they could not at first see Cicero. The banana tree at the far end was stripped of leaves to head height, the detritus lying all around the base of the plant. They heard a groan and one of the leaves moved. Then they saw the prostrate figure of Cicero beneath the leaf—a long emerald chrysalis, the human caterpillar a bearded old man in stained white shirtsleeves. “Daddy?” Mary Bet cried out.

  She went over and pulled the leaf off her father and took the green-smeared knife from his hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right,” Cicero replied. “Can’t a man take a nap in his own house?”

  “Let’s get you up and inside,” Mary Bet said. She and Able came around and, grabbing him by his armpits, hauled him to a sitting position.

  “I can do this myself,” he complained. “I’ve done it since I was a boy. You needn’t fuss. You should all try sleeping beneath a banana leaf—it’s refreshing. I’m going to tell Doc Slocum to recommend it. Might even try experimenting with an infusion.”

  When he was on his feet, he looked around at the leaf litter and, shaking his head, said, “That’s not a pretty sight.”

  “I take care of it fo you,” Able said.

  “I’d appreciate that,” Cicero said. “I can always count on you, Able. I think I’ll go in and dress for work. Mary Bet, why aren’t you in school? Aren’t you late?”

  “No, sir,” she said, “I’ll be fine. Don’t you want some breakfast? Essie’ll be here right away.”

  “I’ve had my coffee and tomato juice. That’s all I require. Why is everybody acting so softheaded?”

  “We were just worried, Daddy.” Mary Bet nodded to Able as she slipped her arm through her father’s and walked him back out of the greenhouse and toward the summer kitchen. “You’ve been under a lot of strain.”

  She saw that he got upstairs to his room, and then she waited in the parlor, pretending to get her books together until she heard him come down again. “I’ll walk with you this morning, Daddy,” she said.

  That afternoon she went to meet Joe as he was coming back from the factory. The steam whistle from the sawmill shrilled at four o’clock. She had thought of so much to tell him she could hardly hold it all in her head and she’d had to write it down during Miss Birdsong’s French class, which was unfortunate since it was Miss Birdsong who had encouraged Mary Bet to attend this extra year of school so that she could help teach the younger students and decide if she wanted to go into teaching herself. She was thinking of this and of what she’d written in Miss Birdsong’s class about how her father had begun acting like her grandfath
er Samuel, when she realized she was a block past the old Buckner house and nearly in view of the chair factory.

  She wondered if Joe had gone home early for some reason. It was a cloudy, chilly autumn day, with colored leaves full on the trees and the air sharp with the smell of wood smoke and coal smoke. Mary Bet wrapped her brown knit scarf against the wind on her cheeks and kept walking, studying every face coming the other way.

  At the bending and chair factory, a dreary three-story brick building with two chimneys and no windows except on the front and back, Mary Bet stopped and glanced around. She looked up over the barn-style double front doors to the two tall windows on the second floor—they were like sad eyes peering out toward the farm across the road. No more workers emerged from the red-painted doors. Inside on the sawdust-strewn dirt floor were a couple of sturdy carts standing idle at loading platforms, stacks of lumber, an overhead block and tackle, and some large metal machines whose purpose Mary Bet could not divine.

  As she started away from the building, she heard a voice behind her. “Mary Bet!” he called out. She turned around and there was Joe walking toward her, his derby shading one eye and his hands in the pockets of his long corduroy work jacket. He looked as if everything were a little too large for him, including the building itself, and she wished she had not seen him here in his workplace.

  “You’re late,” she said. “I thought I’d missed you.”