Free Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Page A

use the widow’s credit for the tickets,” she said suddenly.
    Hemp put a foot up on the step, leaned an elbow onto his thigh. He looked down at his hand, turned it over. Veins rose up like rope when he flexed his fingers. A needle of wind pricked his left eye. He put up a hand to block it as he looked up at her and said, “Sure, I might could take you.”
    S HE WAS HOPING THE RIDE would give them a chance to talk. But as the train took off, the poor man looked ready to vomit. She had felt the same queasiness when the widow first took her on a train ride, so she searched for a way to distract him.
    Madge took her time looking him over again. Everything about the man was big. Even his head. And everything looked small on him. The shirt choked. The pants strangled the trunks of his thighs. The toes strained the tips of his shoes. He looked strong enough to protect the whole earth. Arms wide enough to shelter her. Being in Hemp’spresence was like standing beneath something cool and shady. The man calmed.
    â€œMy ma died giving birth to me, so I don’t know nothing about her,” he said when she did not hide her rudeness. “The thing I most remember about my daddy was his hands, and they was sure enough big, too.”
    â€œHands ain’t no trifle. You lucky to know that. I don’t know nothing about how my pa looked.”
    â€œThat so?”
    â€œMy mama the only one of her sisters had a child. The sisters figure all they need is each other.”
    â€œThat why you left?”
    â€œWhat you care?” She immediately regretted the bite in her tone. She leaned back and tried to relax. Maybe talking wasn’t the best idea.
    The benches in the railcar were empty except for two men in the back wearing farmers’ hats. Madge squeezed her rooting stick, but as they pulled away from the city, the sight out the window did not meet her measure. She had hoped to find woods like the bottomland forest full of old cypresses in the valley around the Hatchie River, but all she found was more of that flat Illinois prairie that had dominated the land when she’d come up from Tennessee. The desolate sight momentarily caused her to forget Hemp.
    The two stepped off the train, the rail depot little more than a raised wooden platform.
    â€œThis where you taking me?”
    â€œThis where Richard tell us to go for you to find plants. Eighteen miles outside the city.”
    She walked to the edge of the platform, shaded her eyes, and looked. Even though it was already fall, the flowers stretched endlessly. Purple tips bent, angels rearing their lovely heads. A blackbird squawked, a long tail hanging from its beak. A sheet of sky coveredthem, the occasional cloud like a wrinkle. The scene whispered that knowledge was not just to be found in the knobby brush of a tangled forest floor but also in this flat sameness, this rambling underbelly of the Lord King’s paradise.
    Her stomach rolled. To right herself, she eyed an island of trees. A swarm of bees ignited, spread out like a fan, drifted, then disappeared.
    â€œI can’t do nothing with this,” she whispered to Hemp who had moved to stand beside her.
    â€œWhat kind of plants you say you need?”
    Madge shook her head and took off her shoes. She stepped off the platform and walked into the grass. The ground was cold and wet beneath her feet. Her toes sank. She could barely see five feet in front of her. A bird that looked like a chicken hopped out of the high grass nearby. She jumped.
    â€œGirl, that ain’t nothing but a grouse,” he called out, laughing.
    She pulled at a purple flower. It stuck to the ground, its thick stem held fast by the root. She pushed her mouth into its face and bit off its head, chewing thoughtfully. She sensed the life that dwelled in the place and poked at the ground with her stick. Beetles scrambled beneath its tip.
    Afterward, she waited with him for the train. They sat on a bench.