Free The Bernice L. McFadden Collection by Bernice L. McFadden Page B

hellos. When the humming stopped she raised her hand to her throat and began to stroke it.
    At the bridge, Doll looked around and saw that there wasn’t a soul in sight.
    “Mingo?” she said in a voice far away from the one that had beckoned him from across the road.
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “Would you like to have me?”
    “Ma’am?”
    “Have me. You know, the way you’ve had so many other women.”
    “Ma’am?”
    “Fuck me. Do you want to fuck me, Mingo?”
    He looked across the bridge toward Nigger Row. “I must be losing my goddamn mind,” he muttered with a laugh.
    “No, you’re not,” Doll assured, and pressed her hand against his crotch.
    Beneath the bridge, on the Candle Street side, Doll became an animal; a spitting, scratching wildcat that Mingo struggled to gain control of. Above them, the sounds of shod feet, bicycles, and the clomping of hooves and the rolling wheels of buggies masked the sound of their lovemaking.
    “Our Father, who art in heaven—” Doll croaked as Mingo pounded into her.
    “Stop that!” he warned.
    “Hallowed be Thine name …”
    Mingo closed his hand over her mouth.
    After he was done with her—wait, I think the correct thing to say here is: After she was done with him — Mingo patted Doll on her ass and said, “Fix yourself up, you look a mess.”
    She hadn’t taken offense when Mingo pressed his filthy hand over her mouth, but for some reason the pat to her bottom struck her as impolite and disrespectful.
    “How dare you,” she hissed, and then struck him hard across his face. “Don’t you know that I am the wife of a reverend?”
    The assault took Mingo by surprise. His hand curled into a ball. “W-woman,” he stammered between clenched teeth as he patted the damp soil in search of his cigarette. When he found it, he slipped it between his lips and began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.
    “What’s so funny?” Doll asked.
    He didn’t answer her question, he just kept laughing, even as he tugged his trousers up around his waist.
    August was sitting in the living room when Doll walked into the house covered in mud. At the sight of her, he sat straight up and his face went bright with alarm.
    “Doll, what happened to you?” he asked as he stood and moved toward her.
    Doll looked stupidly down at her soiled clothing. “I think I fell down the river bank.”
    August frowned. “You think?”
    “I did,” Doll mumbled. “I slipped down the river bank.”
    “My goodness!” August declared as he took Doll gently by the elbow and guided her up the stairs. “Are you hurt?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Why were you walking so close to the edge?”
    Doll tried her best to remember, but couldn’t. “I lost the oranges,” she whispered. “The bag broke and they tumbled into river and I went after them.”
    “You went after them? Oranges? You went after some stupid ole oranges?”
    Doll nodded ashamedly.
    August snaked his arm protectively around her waist. “Thank God it was the oranges that rolled into the river and not you.”

Chapter Fifteen
    By April of 1927, most folk in Mississippi couldn’t think of anything but rain, mud, mosquitoes, and flooding.
    Not a drop of rain had fallen between May and July of 1926, but on the first day of August the skies opened up and remained that way for a very long time.
    Bullet rain. Bucket rain. Rain as soft as rose petals. Mist.
    You’d think that so much water would have washed the stench of sin right out of the air, but it didn’t. The water infused it, transforming it into an invisible vapor that hung in the air like fog.
    Sin was what was on August’s mind when he shrugged on his gray slicker and shoved his Bible into one of the oversized pockets. Retrieving an umbrella from the stand in the small vestibule, he opened the door and stepped out into the downpour.
    It was Good Friday and he was headed to the church a few hours early to go over his sermon. It gave him no pleasure to be thinking