Free Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo Page B

the white folks caught them.
    But always, his most vicious worry was When will I see him again? Days—sometimes few, sometimes many—divided their meetings. The separation gnawed, so Ben employed himself in disciplined work to alleviate it. He drove himself like a soldier, fulfilled each job his ma assigned, and voluntarily took on more. He worked so hard, so efficiently that, for once, she couldn’t invent a reason to complain at him.
    The day after he received the locket, the Reverend Ledger’s wife paid a call on his ma. She munched sweet potato pie and drank sassafras tea while he sat in a corner shucking corn. Mrs. Ledger was a proper colored lady and a proper preacher’s wife. She was tall and mostly trim except for a mildly protruding belly that Ben figured to be the consequence of eating desserts in the homes of her husband’s congregants.
    â€œMy Trina gettin’ to be quite the young lady,” she said of her eldest daughter. “She practically engaged to the Reverend Glover. You know, the pastor over in Weldon Grove?”
    Ben’s ma frowned. “He gotta be over thirty. Trina how old? Sixteen? He even proposed yet?”
    Mrs. Ledger cut her pie to polite pieces with a knife. Ben had never seen anyone treat dessert so formally. “Not yet. But he will. I ain’t worried.”
    â€œIn this family, we don’t count our chickens till they’s hatched.” Ben’s ma called to him. “Ain’t that right, boy?”
    â€œYes’m.”
    He went back to the corn and paid no attention to the women, until he heard Willful’s name.
    â€œThat sorry Hutchison boy,” Mrs. Ledger said, “is up to no good. Again. He takes what little money the family got and gambles it away or spends it on whores and corn liquor. Just like his no-good pa. Now Miz Hutchison and those girls almost starvin’.”
    â€œBoy,” Ben’s ma called, “take a basket of eggs over to the Hutchison place.” She turned back to her guest. “Them hens been workin’ overtime. We got extra. If that fool woman rations ’em right, they’ll have food for a few mornings at least.” Back to Ben: “Give the eggs to Miz Hutchison or one of the girls, not Willful.”
    â€œOh, Miz Hutchison and the girls ain’t home,” Mrs. Ledger said. “They at the church.”
    â€œDoin’ what,” Ben’s ma said. “Prayin’ for food?”
    â€œIt’s their turn to clean it.”
    â€œThey need to be workin’ them fields.”
    Mrs. Ledger put her fork down, firmly. “Sister Charles, starvin’ or not, the Lord’s work still got to be done.”
    The locket jangled in one pocket and the Keats poems filled the other as Ben sprinted up the road, anxious for the look on Willful’s face when he arrived. He laughed out loud at their unexpected luck. They might not have time for reading. Didn’t matter. As long as they could kiss for a while. He hoped the church was plenty dirty and that the Hutchison women took their time.
    He headed straight to the barn, swung through the door, and saw Trina Ledger, on her back in the hay, Willful on top of her, his backside pumping up and down, his thrusts accompanied by a slapping sound while Trina moaned.
    That morning’s breakfast sludged up Ben’s throat. A bitter ooze. He felt faint.
    The muscles in Willful’s back constricted as he worked that bitch, the preacher’s daughter who was supposed to marry another preacher and whose mother had stuffed her face on his ma’s pie as she boasted about her young lady of a daughter.
    They didn’t realize anybody had come in. Willful kept pumping. Sweat cascaded off him. His dark skin glistened. Rage displaced Ben’s urge to faint. He remembered he still held the basket of eggs. He pounced onto the hay and began pelting Trina at close range.
    â€œBitch! You bitch! You