Horrible Harvest

Her train come and went. Didn’t neither of us notice. The past does that at times. It wraps you up and keeps you hid from the day you’re setting in. You just get locked into all the awful and wonderful that turnt you into a saint or sumbitch. I come to realize long ago that I’m a mess of used to be’s that made me about the biggest sumbitch that ever was.

“Your daddy was just about the worst person I’ve ever heard tell of in this world,” Allison said.

I twisted to find comfort on the wooden bench. “Maybe – by an inch or two.”

She looked at me wonk-eyed. “You saying there’s good in him?”

“Lord no. Ain’t a speck of good in him. I’m just saying the rest of us ain’t that much better. Daddy done bad things. Horrible things. Downright evil things. Fact is most of us ain’t a bad turn away from murder and the like. Shit luck and opportunity will drive even the most godly among us to act with sword over prayer.”

“Well, that is about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“S’pose it is that.” I stood to give relief to my backside. “They don’t make these damn benches for setting at long stretches.”

She remained seated. “You said Felix was a good man. You saying you didn’t mean it?”

“No. I meant it. I’m just saying good and bad depends on a lot of this and that.”

“What, for instance?”

“Well, for instance, the stable manager. One of his used to be’s was sister killer. He kilt his own. Got her pregnant when she was but twelve, and he was near twenty. He stabbed her a dozen times in the neck and chest to try and hide what he done to her.”

She placed her hand over her mouth for no reason other than folks find comfort in such a thing when they come upon distressing news. “That can’t be true.”

“It’s true. When you get yourself murdered, folks do some digging on why such a thing might happen, and it didn’t take long to find the stable manager’d done a stretch in lock-up in Ohio for killing his pregnant sister.”

She didn’t say a thing as she sat processing this news.

“He was a fella who’d done a terrible thing, and you’re now thinking Daddy was the Lord’s instrument for bashing his head in. ‘Fore that, he was a good fella who didn’t deserve Daddy’s wrath.”

“You saying Felix done bad things, too?”

“‘Course he did. Nothing like the stable manager, but he was a soldier in an army that come on desperate times. You do a lot of bad to set yourself right in such a situation, and on top of that, he run with the Bunning Brothers. We weren’t a traveling bunch of preachers spreading the gospel and goodwill. We were thieves and thugs spreading lies and fear – ‘Course, I s’pose that ain’t much different than preaching.

“The point is it’s rare for a fella or gal to be all one thing or the other. It’s easy to be saintly in good times. I ain’t met man nor woman who didn’t bend towards bad when times went hard. You out a job it’s ‘cause your boss turnt greedy and hired on a black fella who’ll work for half what you get paid. You’ll go a week or two without work ‘fore you turn towards thoughts of ringing that black fella’s neck. Another week or two, and you’re choking the life out of him.”

“Well, that’s just wrong,” she said.

“You think that ‘cause things are good for you, and you can’t imagine doing such a thing.”

“No, sir. I think that because I’d ring my boss’s neck.”

I give a chuckle. “The problem with that is now you ain’t got a job to go back to.”

She chuckled back. “But I’ll feel damn good about myself.”

“And now you’re onto my point. Good and bad, they’s done by everyone when one or the other is called for. What you gotta figure out for your ownself is if a thing being done matters more than why a thing is done.”

“What do you figure?”

“I don’t. I leave that to popes and philosophers. I just do what needs done. The good and bad of it ain’t up to me.”

She fanned herself against the stifling heat of the train station. “Surely, you know one person in this world that is, if not all good, so good St. Peter will let him pass through the pearly gates with a wink and a nod.”

I give her assertion some thought.

“You’re momma? She was a good woman, no?”

“Momma was too broken to be good. She was a worrisome woman who hated herself too deep to do good. She didn’t never hurt no one or bear false witness toward another, but she never saved her boys from a beating neither. I got deep affection for her, but I can’t say she was altogether good. If’n I had to pick someone who was good as good can be, it’d be Gladys, Douglas’s woman.”

“In what way is she good?”

“In more ways than most.” I looked to a group of folks fresh off a train as they milled about the station. “I can tell you, but I suspect we’re waiting for a train that ain’t coming.”

She looked at the arrival board. She give a soft laugh before saying, “We done missed it.” Looking at me, she added. “Which means, we’ve time for another story. A Gladys story.”

“I’ll oblige you, but sooner or later, we’re gonna get your ass on a train and send you the hell home.”