The Sweetest Hallelujah

His trumpet would bring her the most money. She might even get enough for the sale to pay off her doctors and have some left over for her funeral. She got his trumpet case out of the closet, then went into the kitchen for a rag to wipe off eleven years of accumulated dust.

Saint had taken better care of his trumpet than he had his wife. A good polishing was probably all it needed.

Betty Jewel snapped open the case, picked up Saint’s silver horn. And out tumbled the necklace.

Heart-shaped.

Rose gold.

And inside, the frames meant to hold photographs were empty.

Betty Jewel had cried then, and she was pressing her hand over her mouth, hard, to keep from crying now.

“From my heart to yours,” Saint had said when he’d given it to her. “From the one who loves you best.”

The locket was the only real piece of jewelry he’d ever given her. But more than that, it had been a symbol of hope. They’d just finished their first big gig together in Chicago. The fans loved them, the money was good and the future was a shining road they’d travel. Together.

“As soon as we get a chance, we’ll have our pictures made for the locket. You and me, baby. Forever.”

Drugs sucker punched that chance and then dealt their future a knockout blow. The locket had vanished along with Betty Jewel’s dreams. He’d probably meant to pawn it, him with his drug-addled brain, then had stuffed it down in his trumpet case and forgotten about it.

She had been first to come back home. By the time he’d followed, pleading with Queen to take him in, begging Betty Jewel to give him a second chance, she already had a cleaning job and was supplementing it by teaching voice and piano. The extra income was precious little. Few people in Shakerag could afford formal music lessons. In her neighborhood, if you wanted to learn music you picked up a blues harp and tried to find the songs in your soul.

The necklace in her hand tore her in half. She ought to sell it. They could use the money. But parting with it was like letting go of every dream she’d ever had. It was a shining little symbol of hope, one whose loss she’d mourned through the years. And now it was back, a locket that would be a nice keepsake for Billie. She idolized the Saint and would be thrilled to know he’d bought it. Betty Jewel wanted Billie to have something wonderful to hold on to after she was gone. On the other hand, she hated the idea that Billie would treasure the necklace because it came from Saint.

Betty Jewel leaned her head on her dressing table, too sick and tired to know what to do.

Facing your own end didn’t make you a bit wiser than if you thought you had all the time in the world. Betty Jewel dropped the necklace into the bottom of the sock, folded it over twice, then put it at the bottom of the dresser drawer.

Beyond the curtains, the sky was taking on a pink glow. Betty Jewel climbed into her bed, clothes and all. She felt like a woman entangled in a giant ball of yarn. Pull the wrong thread and everything around you unraveled. If she could sleep for a few hours, she might wake up clearheaded enough to know what do.

When Billie woke up, God hadn’t given her any answers. She was still in her yellow shorts, which meant time saved if she could sneak out of the house without her mama or Queen seeing. They’d have a holy conniption fit about her wearing yesterday’s clothes. Queen always said, If you ain’t got pride, you ain’t got nothin’ …

Billie didn’t want wise sayings. What she wanted was breathing room. She followed breakfast smells to the kitchen, then reached under the covered platter on the table and grabbed a buttermilk biscuit.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans sang “Happy Trails to You” from the Philco radio, which Billie took as a good sign. A glance out the window proved her right. Queen was out in the backyard hanging clothes on the line strung between the oak tree and a scraggly apple tree that was too sorry to bear fruit, so Billie didn’t have to waste time saying grace. If Queen caught her in the kitchen, she’d make her say grace, even though the biscuit was in her pocket.

The hall was empty, too. Billie made a beeline for the front door. As she passed the den, she heard her mama on the phone speaking real low like people did when they were telling secrets. She might as well speak up. Billie knew she had cancer.

But you could bet your britches she wasn’t planning on sitting around the house waiting for her mama to die. Being ten didn’t mean being stupid. When you needed help, you asked for it.

Careful not to let the screen door slam, Billie skipped down the steps and raced off. Just her luck, old Miz Quana Belle was out in the yard weeding her Canadians. She perked up, suspicious, her voice following like a cloud of buzzing bees.

“Chile, where you goin’ in them tore-up shorts? Does yo mama know?”

When Billie got to be a grown-up, she was going to let little kids have secrets of their own. She was going to mind her own business. And she was going to find a way to be the boss without having a single willow switch in her house.

As Billie outran the buzzing cloud of questions, she glanced over her shoulder every now and then to see if Alice was out and about. But there were no signs. She guessed even the dead had to rest sometimes. All that tree climbing and floating on top of church steeples and materializing under windowsills had to be hard. Billie felt sorry for her.

She hoped her mama didn’t end up haunting the blue house on Maple Street when she died. She hoped Betty Jewel went straight to Heaven. Billie didn’t know if it had streets of gold like Queen said, but she’d bet its park had a better swing set than the one in Shakerag. And she’d double-dog dare anybody to tell her the library in Heaven would be run by somebody mean as old Miz Rupert. Billie pictured somebody in a flowing white robe with a crown of stars on her head showing Mama to a roomful of books that still had all the pages inside.

Of course, if her mission succeeded, her mama wouldn’t die.

When Billie came in sight of Tiny Jim’s Blues and Barbecue, her steps slowed. The juke joint was shut tight, the front door locked, the shades down. Night was when it came alive, neon flashing, patrons jiving, music and laughter and smoke swirling as thick as molasses.

This was a place for grown-ups. Billie wasn’t supposed to be here unless she was with Queen or Mama. But she’d lost count of all the things she’d done that she shouldn’t. Lied to her mama. Put a bullfrog she’d caught in Gum Pond in old Miz Rupert’s chair. Kept her eyes open when the preacher prayed, though Queen had told her closed eyes showed respect to Brother Joshua Gibson and God the Father Almighty, and open eyes could send you to hell a poppin. Last year Billie had even sent a letter to the North Pole telling Santa she hated him for not bringing her a bicycle.

She marched past the front door of the honky-tonk toward the alley that led around to the little house where Tiny Jim and Merry Lynn lived. Though she told everybody she wasn’t scared of anything, that was a lie. Billie was afraid of getting cut into six pieces and nuclear bombs that could turn everybody to dust with the push of a button and cottonmouth moccasins and the wrath of Queen. But her biggest fear was being left motherless.

She decided to strike up a bargain with God before she entered the alley. “God, if you’ll keep Queen from finding out I’m here, I promise to shut my eyes during the preacher’s long-winded prayers. I bet you get tired of listening to them, too, don’t you? Your friend, Billie.”

At the last minute, she remembered to say, Amen, and then she entered the alley. This time of morning while most folks were in their houses eating molasses and biscuits, the alley was creepy. There was no telling what was waiting to grab her. Just in case God got busy with a more important prayer, like one from President Eisenhower, Billie balled up her fist. It never hurt to be ready to fight.

Something screeched, and she flattened herself against the brick wall. Was it a haint? Or was it a dangerous stranger, come to snatch another little girl away from Tiny Jim’s? Billie didn’t want to end up floating in Gum Pond in a cotton sack.

By the time a gray cat streaked by with its ribs poking through matted-up fur, Billie was shaking with relief. That was another thing. If she could be in charge of things, she’d make it against the law to starve animals and let them run loose all over Shakerag scaring little girls, even if they weren’t supposed to be in the alley in the first place.

Humming “Lead On, O King Eternal” to show anybody listening she wasn’t scared, she walked past the garbage cans. One of the lids was off. She hoped the cat had done it and not somebody up to no good. Just in case, she picked up speed. When she got through the alley, she had to bend over and catch her breath.

The scent of barbecue was strong out back. Tiny Jim’s pits were smoking, and Billie could smell the meat slow-cooking on the coals. When he took it out of the pits, it would be so tender it would fall off the bone. You could cut it with a fork.

A curl of pork-scented smoke followed her all the way to Tiny Jim’s front door. It had once been green but was now blackened from constant companionship with smoke pits. Billie lifted her hand and knocked.

Anybody else seeing the gigantic man who opened the door would have turned tail and run. But she knew him as the man who sent his gold Chevrolet Bel Air to pick up Queen and her pies, the man who passed the collection plate on Sunday, the man who showed up at your door at Christmas with a smoked ham, even if you hadn’t told a soul you had nothing to eat for supper but a strip of fried fatback.

“Good mornin’, Billie.” Tiny Jim peered back down the alley behind her, looking for Queen and Mama, she guessed. He opened the door wider. “Come inside. You just in time for breakfast.”

Queen always said, Be polite. Just because folks is offerin’ you food don’ mean they got it to give. Her stomach rumbled, and on the spot she decided to part company with polite. Besides, the cold biscuit in her pocket didn’t compare to the mouthwatering smells inside this house.

He led her to a kitchen where the linoleum didn’t have cracks. The curtains had lace on the bottom and looked brand-new. There was a cloth on the table, too, as white as Tiny Jim’s big teeth.

“Do you like bacon or sausage?” She nodded and he piled both on her plate, then added two hot biscuits. “I bet you like butter and jelly on your biscuits, a growin’ girl like you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You got manners. I like that.” He spread a big cloth napkin and tucked it into the neck of his shirt. “I done said grace. Go ahead and help you’self.”

He was the kind of grown-up who didn’t make up foolish conversations at the table, just sat there and let you enjoy your food in peace. Billie started to ask, Where’s Miz Merry Lynn, then she heard her. A low moaning coming from down the hall.

“Is Miz Merry Lynn coming to eat?”

“After a while. I keep her a plate warmin’ in the oven for when she’s ready.”

The moaning down the hall turned to a high-pitched keening. It sounded like Miz Quana Belle’s hound dog last year after her pups got toted off to new homes.

“Mr. Tiny Jim, do you know how to find my daddy?”

He took the napkin from under his chin, folded it into a square and pressed it between hands as big as Virginia hams before he laid it on the table. Then he sat real quiet, looking at her. It wasn’t the kind of stare that made Billie squirm, just a sad kind of look that made her wish she could say something respectful about dead Alice. Queen always said, Speak kinely of the dead.

“Mr. Tiny Jim, I’ll bet your little girl was nice.” He nodded. “I’ll bet you’d never take her off and cut her in six pieces.”

“You oughtn’ be thinkin’ such things.” He pushed his chair back, reached over and lifted Billie onto his lap. “I wish you was my little girl.”

Billie pictured her life as Tiny Jim’s little girl. She’d have bacon and sausage every morning. She could go to the juke joint when she pleased because her new daddy would be watching her like a hawk. She’d have her own room with new curtains that had pink lace on the bottom and shiny linoleum floors that didn’t have cracks.

But it would be Alice’s old room, and she might have to sleep with the dead girl’s cold breath whispering in her ear, her floating head perched on the lamp shade, her chopped-off legs standing in the door so Billie couldn’t get past without screaming for help.

Tiny Jim turned his sad eyes down the hall where the sounds coming from Merry Lynn reminded Billie of a starving cat.

“Thank you just the same, Mr. Tiny Jim, but I’ve got a real daddy.”

“Saint could put the mojo on that horn of his.”

“Will you help me find him?”

“Billie, he was a great jazzman and a good friend, but I done reckon he’d be no ‘count as a daddy.”

“Why not?”

“He had problems.”

“What kind?”

“Big ones. The kind little girls not s’pose to worry they purty heads over.” He kissed her on the top of her head. “Now, you run on home befo’ yo mama and Miz Queen catches you.”

“I gotta find my daddy. He’ll know how to make Mama well.”

“I don’t reckon the Saint nor nobody else can do that, sugah. Yo mama’s in a bad way.”

“I won’t let her die!”

Tiny Jim just sat in his chair a long time, shaking his head and watching her with eyes as mournful-looking as a red-bone hound dog. Billie believed he was a nice man, but that didn’t mean he was going to put her in his Bel Air and drive off across state lines looking for the Saint.

“You won’t tell I was here?”

He winked. “I reckon a little mouse done eat them sausage and biscuits.”

She thanked him for breakfast, then went back outside where the alley and the barbecue pits and the garbage cans looked the same. The cracks in the caked dirt path and the oak trees and sagging light lines sprinkled with black birds hadn’t changed. The sun was coming up just like it always had, and nothing about the way folks stirred from their houses and headed off to work said this day was any different from the rest.

Only Billie knew. Sometimes you could be going along thinking you’d enter fifth grade in the fall and walk home with your best friend every day to find cookies your mama had left on the kitchen table. Then a conversation heard through a keyhole could change everything. Suddenly you’d be on an unfamiliar path without a map, without a clue where you were headed or how you were going to get there. And nobody cared that you were walking home by yourself in a sun already so hot you could fry an egg on your front porch steps. Nobody noticed that when you passed by A.M. Strange Library, sorrow dripped from dead Alice’s cedar tree and trapped you if you didn’t know how to run.

Billie ran home so fast the sun couldn’t even catch her shadow.

Six

THE FIRST THING CASSIE did when she woke up was put on her white pique robe with the pink piping, then step outside to get the paper. She wanted to see if that haunting little ad she’d seen in the classifieds of The Bugle was also in the Sentinel. It was a daily and four times as thick as the weekly newspaper. Still, Cassie had never tried to get a job there. Joe had always believed it was because Cassie was first and foremost a housewife who had only taken a part-time job to have a little something extra to keep her busy. Letting him think that had been easier than explaining how she could get by with expressing her unpopular opinions in The Bugle because Ben wasn’t about to fire her. In small Southern towns, big connections kept crusading women with radical opinions safe—as long as they were all talk and no action.

Cassie had beat the mailman. She stood in her front yard beneath a catalpa tree, shading her eyes for him. The hot air was so sharp it looked like stars. The canopy of the catalpa tree had grown so thick nothing could get through, not even heartache. A cardinal swooped from its branches and zoomed right past her head, so close its wings hummed like a harmonica riff. It was the kind of day where anything could happen. Time could rewind, her womb could bring forth a child, or Joe might come around the corner saying, Surprise, it was all a mistake.

“Morning, Cassie.” The mailman waved the Sentinel at her, then trotted across the lawn. With his short, stumpy legs, wide face and toothy grin, J. D. Cotton looked like a friendly troll. “I brought you some fresh tomatoes. My garden’s just run over with them.”

“You’re spoiling me, J.D.”

“Pretty woman like you deserves it. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” You might as well take offense at the Easter Bunny. As long as J.D. was on the route, housewives in Tupelo could expect fresh tomatoes and okra in their mailboxes in the summertime. Kids could expect letters from the North Pole at Christmas. Cassie took the heavy sack from him. “It looks like it’s going to rain. Wait here and let me get Joe’s rain slicker for you.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

Cassie hurried inside, set her tomatoes on the kitchen cabinet, tossed the Sentinel on the table, then rummaged in the hall closet for Joe’s raincoat. There was no use hanging on to it.

Still, when she handed the yellow slicker to J.D., her heart broke in two.

“I’ll get the coat back to you, Cassie.”

“Keep it, J.D. I should have gone through Joe’s things months ago.”

J.D. waved as he left to continue his route, and Cassie hurried into the house.

It was today’s dedication ceremony that had Cassie on edge. She had better things to do than stand in front of a crowd and make an empty speech about how much renaming the baseball field meant to her. She couldn’t hug a baseball field.

She brewed Maxwell House coffee, then sat down at her kitchen table with a cup while she scanned the Sentinel for signs of the woman who wanted to give away her child. Seeing none, she called Ben at home.

“Who placed that Dying Woman ad in The Bugle, Ben?”

“Woman up in Shakerag. Goober said it was somebody calling herself Betty Jewel Hughes. Name sounded familiar because her husband used to be a famous bluesman.”

“I want to do the story.”

“This is the wrong time for a white woman to be poking around Shakerag.”

“All the more reason, Ben. Somebody has to speak out for these people.”

“They’re sitting on top of a powder keg up there just waiting to blow wide open. Can’t let you do it, Cassie. It’s too dangerous.”

“A dying woman and a little girl about to become an orphan? Come on, Ben. That’s a story, and we need to tell it.”

“It’s none of our business. Go to the baseball field today and enjoy the ceremony.”

“Just be Joe’s widow. Is that what you’re saying?”

“If you go to Shakerag and stir things up, there’s no telling what will happen.”

“I’m not going to stir things up, Ben. I’m going to help save a little girl.”

Ben’s sigh was audible. If she could see his expression, she knew it would be long-suffering. Though he blustered and tried to keep his best friend’s wife safe, Ben was proud of Cassie’s spunk. Whatever she did, he would support her.

“Dammit, Cassie.”

“Thank you, Ben.”

“For what? If you go up there, you’re fired.”

“I know.”

“I’m not kidding this time.”

“Bye, Ben. I’ll see you at The Bugle this afternoon.”

“I’ll be at the dedication, Cass.”

The dedication. One more reminder that Joe was gone.

If Cassie had her way, she’d wear slacks and a T-shirt to the dedication of the baseball field. Fashion meant nothing to her; comfort, everything. But there was her father-in-law to think about, dear, old-fashioned Mike Malone, who would be mortified if she showed up looking anything less than a proper lady, as befitted his son’s widow.

She put on a yellow linen sundress with a white bolero and matching pumps, even gloves, for Pete’s sake. A glance at the clock told her she was a full fifteen minutes early. She wished she could break herself of obsessive punctuality. She was so anxious that nobody be inconvenienced waiting for her, she always ending up wasting a lot of time waiting for them. And now that she was all dressed up, she couldn’t run out to her garden and pull a few weeds or start any little thing that entailed getting dirty.

Deciding to brave her former Empty Room, Cassie turned the doorknob. Her rocking chair beckoned—nothing to fear there—so she sat down to watch for her sister-in-law. The sight of her favorite pictures made her smile, but she couldn’t say she felt the sort of favorite-retreat contentment Fay Dean had predicted.

At the sound of tires, she looked out the window and saw Fay Dean coming up the walk with Mike. Cassie hurried to the door and kissed her father-in-law’s cheek.

“Mike, what a lovely surprise.”

“I wanted to come by early and see if there was anything you needed me to do.”

“That’s sweet of you, but I think I have everything under control.”

“Pshaw. You need some help taking care of Joe’s house. Where are those insurance papers?”

“I’ve already paid the house insurance, Mike.”

“I’ve told you, I’ll take care of all that, hon. No need for you to try to do a man’s job.”

“Daddy, Cassie’s not senile. The only thing she needs is an occasional shoulder to cry on.”

“Well, she for damned sure doesn’t need a psychiatrist. One of my mailmen saw her coming out of O’Hanlon’s office and asked if she’d gone mental.”

“For God’s sake, Daddy. Who gives a shit?”

Mike stormed off to the front porch, and Cassie said, “Leave Mike alone, Fay Dean. He means well.”

“I swear to God, Daddy’s going to drive us both crazy.”

“I don’t know about you, but it wouldn’t take much to push me around the bend.” That brought a laugh from Fay Dean, which was exactly what Cassie intended. Though she waded knee deep into every controversial cause, she tried to avoid personal conflict.

You never say what you’re thinking, Joe had told her that awful summer she’d lost her third baby, the summer it felt as if he had vanished to the moon and she was left behind trying to see into outer space. Yell, scream, cry … Just, for God’s sake, don’t shut yourself off from me.

“Are you ready?” Fay Dean linked arms, and Cassie pushed the uncomfortable memory from her mind. “Let’s get this over with.”

They climbed into Mike’s steady Chevrolet sedan, and as they drove the few blocks to the baseball field, Cassie found herself struggling to recall the exact shape of Joe’s jaw, the way his dark hair had felt against her cheek, the way he’d pull his harmonica from his pocket and start playing so his music came through the door before he did. Even the smell of Joe’s old baseball jacket could no longer bring her husband clearly to mind.

Blistering in the sun beside Mike and Fay Dean, Cassie was thinking how love can waylay you when you least expect it. She was thinking how one minute you can have your future mapped out and the next you’re arguing over whose fault it is you can’t carry a baby full term.

And if the sound of a blues harp happened to float by on the breeze, as it was doing now, you might actually believe it was a sign. Was it Joe, telling her he’d always loved her, even during those hard months after they’d lost the third baby and drifted apart?

Last night she’d gone outside to stand under the stars. Venus had shone down on her, a heavenly reminder of the grace that had enabled her and Joe to get past their hurt and come back together.

Shored up by memories, she went onto the baseball field where the mayor would call Joe a hero.

Leaving her gloves and bolero in the car and clutching Joe’s posthumous award under her arm, Cassie entered The Bugle’s offices on the corner of Spring and Court streets. They were in a venerable building in the center of town with twelve-foot tall windows and ivy climbing the redbrick walls.