LYNN COULTER

THE SINGING THING

Here's a story about a woman you might call the salt of the earth, and about the
strange object she found within the earth (and what she then found within
herself).

IT'S NOT EVERY DAY YOU are hoeing sweet taters out of the dirt when you hear one
commence to moan. Oh, some will say my hair's white as salt nowadays, and
figure, old woman like me has been farming under this Alabama sun too long.
They'd say it's melted my brains into a runny-puddle, like store-bought ice
cream. Well, it ain't. Folks think life's all about science, and medicine, books
and such. Not all of it, though.

You listen. It happened like this.

I was fourteen when I married Ezra, a cotton farmer three times my age and not a
bit of the child in him. I was not a happy bride, for I soon learned Ezra had
married for a help-mate and not a wife. Evenings, he'd light a fire to chase the
chill of the coming dark, but it never warmed me. I scrubbed my hands before
every blaze he built, but it was flame without heat, light and smoke only, like
love without wanting.

I wished I had Ma to counsel me, but she died before we wed. Hers was a hard
life, but she found pleasure with her hands. Ma, see, was a potter. For her,
pots rose true and strong. Sometimes we'd hear singing as she worked her wheel,
but she'd say it wasn't her, that she was just letting loose the sound already
in the clay. It was a gift she had, that singing thing.

After she died and I married, Daddy gave me her old wheel. Sometimes I sneaked
out to Ezra's barn to spin it, but it was no use. My pots flopped and fell. Ezra
didn't like my potting; I was a wife now, he said, and I'd have to help him and
stop playing patty-cakes with mud. I tried not to miss what I didn't have,
thinking if I worked hard at the land, we'd make a good life.

That first summer of our married life passed quick, and by fall, Ezra made ready
to take our cotton to sell in town. "More rain's coming," he said one morning.
He stopped to scrape a clod of mud off his boot. "You better dig them sweet
taters before they rot."

He could make me feel like a fool. Still, lots of men sold goods in town this
time of year, and I hoped he'd buy me a card of silver buttons while he was
there. I'd been wanting them for a dress I sewed.

The day he was to go, I wrapped up a biscuit and poured some of Daisy's milk in
a jar. Daisy didn't give like she should, but we couldn't afford another cow.
He'd stop at a boarding house for supper and not be home till the next night.

I watched him ride off without a backward glance for me, then tied on my bonnet
and set out to the tater patch. It was an Indian summer morning` poplars
dropping leaves, squirrels gnawing twigs heavy with acorns. I knelt down and
stabbed my tater fork in the ground, twisting it to rip out the taters' roots. I
like sweet taters, all orangey inside, and after a while I started humming and
forgetting any sadness. Clouds parted and sun came out, blistering my neck. Then
it began to heat up. Sweat puckered my gown under my arms. Mockingbird had been
singing with me from the trees, but he quit like it got too hot to sing.

A cloud rolled over the sun, giving it an odd look. Sun turned into a sunflower,
black cloud in the middle like the flower's eye, and rays shooting out all
around. I stood up, wiping sweat from my face with my gown-tail. Wind came up,
nice breeze. Nobody around, so I lifted my skirts, let that air blow up my
drawers, and while I was standing there, skirt to my waist, I heard a low moan.

Well, I dropped my skirt, whirled around. Squinted up against that sunflower
sun, figuring it was the mockingbird wailing. But no, I saw him flap wings and
fly away. And I heard that moaning sound again.

"Ezra?" I called, but nobody answered. "Who goes? Make yourself known." Nobody
spoke. Just wind, whistling low. That blighted cloud kept its hold on the sun's
face, rays shot out brighter, like it was pinching the sun's nose, and the moan
came again, louder.

Hair prickled on my arms. I was scared. I was young and didn't know then that
the scariest things you'll face in this life ain't usually boogie-men. "Who
goes?" I hollered again, louder. I picked up my tater fork, held it above my
head like I'd strike out. "Come out, wherever you're hiding."

"Here," somebody moaned.

"Where?" I saw nobody.

"Down here."

It was coming from below my feet. I dropped to my knees, laid my ear to the
ground. It couldn't be, but it was. The ground was moaning. "Help me," it cried.

I scrambled aside from where I'd been digging, raked through the dirt, seeing
nothing but the very tip-end of a tater, the pointy part, and I scratched dirt
from around it.

"That's it," moaned the voice. "Loose this dirt, where I can breathe."

"Somebody under there? Who are you?"

"Ohhh, I'm a pitiful thing. Loose me, won't you?"

Well, I didn't know what I had dug up. Had somebody buried a man in my tater
patch, trying to kill him, and I'd come along just in time? I chopped with my
hoe.

"Stop!" it screamed. "That sharp thing is killing me! Dig me out gentle!"

I was shaking now, my heart thumping till I could feel the throb in my fingers,
but I couldn't let somebody die down there in the dirt, could I? So I dug easy
but quick, scraping with my fingers, uncovering --what? The toe of a shoe? A
hat? How was it living, under heaps of dirt?

I got a piece uncovered big enough to wrap my hands around, and it looked like
some kind of root, more turnip than tater. I grabbed hold and pulled with all my
might.

"Stop!" it screamed again. "Can't you see I am stuck down here, woman? You are
about to pull my head off!"

Panting, I sat down. "Is this your head?" I prodded with my fork.

"Ouch." It groaned. "You're hurting me."

"How'd you get in such a mess? How are you living down there, all covered up?"

It sniffed. "They put me here. Buried me."

Something awful began to dawn on me. "Who put you there? Nothing can live
buried, without air." It said nothing.

"What are you?" I stuck my fork into the ground like I was done. "I ain't
digging till you tell me who you are, and how you came here."

It sighed, a deep, sorrowful sound that heaved the dirt a little. "I'm Legion,"
it said.

"Have mercy!" I scrambled to my feet.

"Don't be scared. Don't run off, I won't hurt you. Can't, don't you see? I'm all
buried. Please. I'm in a pitiful way."

It touched me, that voice. Like a child's.

"Please," it pleaded. "Just a little more digging."

"Are you telling me," I kneeled down beside the hole, "that you are a devil?"

A sassy tone come into its voice. "There's only one devil."

"Well. I've heard of Legion, and evil spirits being driven out of a boy into
swine. Made them pigs mad, drove 'em over a cliff into the sea. So maybe you are
a demon. But that killed all the demons, drowned 'em in the water."

It was quiet for a minute. Then the voice came again, bragging. "Everybody
thinks we can't swim."

I held my reeling head. "I'm dreaming. Hallucinating mad, out here in the hot
sun."

It was quiet in my tater patch, just Legion sobbing every once in a while under
the dirt, and me watching sweat bead off my face and splat onto my skirt. "So if
you got run off a cliff inside a pig how'd you end up in my taters?"

"It took years," it said, eager. "I've been lots of places. Last time I got cast
out into this dirt. Now burying's different from water. Can't get out where you
can't move, so I've been here many years, hoping rain and wind would wear it
down and release me, like mountains rise out of the earth."

"But you ain't any mountain, and I don't think a decent woman should set
something like you loose, do you?"

It considered. "I'm not bad anymore. I've been thinking for a long time. Moles
have tunneled past me, raised their babies and moved on. Corn's tasseled above
me, left roots and stalks to rot in the ground. I've seen seeds sprout, busting
hard shells toward the sun. I want to come out, too, to go up in the air and the
sun, with all that's living, and if it takes being good to do it, I'll do it.
Please, wouldn't you set one of your own loose, if you could?"

Now that was the thing to say, and it knew it. Started me thinking about having
to put Ma in that dirt, and how I did wish she was with me in the light and air.

"I'm even changing my name," it babbled on. "Not 'Legion' no more. Leon. Ain't
that fine?"

I shook my head.

"Please," it coaxed. "I'll show you how good I can be. Name something you want,
anything, and I'll do it. Only uncover my ears, at least."

"Tempting is sin."

"It ain't tempting. It'd be thanking you, for giving a poor, reformed creature
another chance." I said nothing. "I'll show you," it promised, "how I've turned.
That cow you've got? Daisy?"

This gave me pause. "How'd you know my cow, demon?"

"Leon," it snapped. Then its voice got honey-slick again. "She's been by. I feel
her hoofbeats through the ground, hear you call her. Now I know she don't give
much milk, so what if she gave more? No, she'll give cream." He was excited now,
chattering. "You can sell it in town, help make a living."

I thought on this a spell. It did seem harmless enough. "And what do I have to
do for you?"

"Why, nothing," it said, surprised. "'Cept, just uncover me to my ears. Then
maybe you'll come and see me again tomorrow."

That wouldn't hurt that I could see, so I scraped with my hands till I got the
head out. And lo and behold, it looked like a man, yet none I'd ever seen. Its
face was round as a new moon, yet blank somehow, a slate you could make a mark
on. It blinked, big tears welling up.

"Oh," it said, "I'm so grateful. You'll see, that cow'll squirt pure cream for
you in the morning. What a kindness you've done. Just come back tomorrow, won't
your"

I carried my basket of taters on my hip and headed home, promising nothing, not
sure whether I'd done good or bad this day. Let Ezra worry with it when he come
home, I figured. I had clothes to scrub. I was through with demons.

Ezra didn't come home that night, of course, and when I woke next morning, I
thought I'd had a crazy dream. "Too much sun," I told the cat that lived off the
mice in our barn when I went to milk Daisy. "Ezra'd lock me in the mad-house." I
scooted a stool beside Daisy's warm hide. Her breath was a cloud in the cold
air. I pinched her teat between my fingers and squirted milk into my tin bucket,
whssh, whssh.

Then I stopped. It got quiet. Pigeons fluttered in the rafters over my head. Cat
dived for something in the hay, missed, come up sneezing from the hay-seed. A
ray of sun stabbed through a crack in the roof above us, lit up Cat's black fur.
She come over to me and I felt of her hair, all warm where the light had been
playing. "Cat," I said, "do you suppose?" I dipped my finger into the bucket and
touched it to my lips. It was pure cream.

So I was digging up a demon in my sweet potato patch.

I carried my cream to the kitchen, filled me a jelly jar and Cat a saucer and
sat down to drink. She drank all of hers, too, then sat cleaning her whiskers,
studying me with slanty green eyes.

She came over to rub against my shin. "That was a treat," I warned. "Don't count
on it every day, for you are no fancy-cat." She hopped into my lap and balled
herself up for a nap, like she didn't believe a word of it.

I flung her off. "Shoo! I got no time for the likes of you." I slung the rest of
the cream out the door, into a patch of violets growing by the steps, and wiped
out my jar at the sink. Cat clawed to go out, and when I opened the door to let
her, I saw what I couldn't believe. Them violets was blooming, and here it was
fall, the flowers as wide across as your thumb is long, heart-shaped, and blue.
Some of that cream had coated the leaves like candle wax and dripped slow onto
the ground, like the plants was crying tears.

It was noon before I got up my nerve to go back to the taters. Part of me was
excited as a child with a birthday cake, part of me scared I was messing with
something I didn't know about. Part of me was thinking, shovel more dirt on top
of that thing, make him put Daisy back like she was, and part of me was
remembering how I heard of Egyptian princesses so rich they bathed in cream. If
he can make a cow give cream, I wondered, what else can he do?

When I came to my tater patch, I saw my demon laying there half-dug up, like a
rock in a field. "You back?" it called, happy as a lover to see me. "Did you
enjoy your cream?"

I stood over it, arms crossed over my chest, hardening my heart. "Plain folks
don't need cream ever day."

"Then sell it. Pocket that money and surprise Ezra." He sighed. "He works so
hard. Now will you set me loose?"

Well, I knew I had to be careful of what I was about to do. "Slow down a minute.
How am I to know you're not tricking me, that I'm not setting sin loose on the
world by digging you up?"

"Oh, sin's already loose. Think on it. It's living that sets sin loose. Ain't a
newborn baby the most sinless thing you know? Then it gets to be a child that
heaves a stone through a storefront window to steal a penny candy, or a woman
that lies with another's husband, and by the time a man or woman's old and their
backs are stooped and twisted, so are their hearts. No, living brings out sin.
Preachers credit such as me way too much for evil."

Meadowlark on a far-off fence post started to sing. I sat on the ground and
sifted dirt through my fingers, thinking. Dirt was full of shiny mica, like
scales some silvery snake had shed. "You see?" asked Leon. "You'd be doing no
harm. Uncover me a little more, see if you don't like me."

"Maybe if you would do me another favor."

Its lips turned up in a pretty smile. "Name it."

I looked toward the horizon, where I'd see Ezra coming home. "You could make
Ezra buy those buttons I've been wanting."

"Is that all?" laughed my demon. "Why wait till he comes home?" When he spoke
again, his voice was a whisper. "Put your hands to your collar. Don't look.
Touch. Run your fingers down your shirt-front, slow."

I touched my collar. The little broke button that I knew was there, the one that
pricked the hollow of my throat every time I bent over, was gone. I felt a new
button, smooth as ice, damp as dew. I slid my hands down my shirt, both hands.
Shivers run over me. What had he done? "I'm afraid to look," I cried.

"Just feel," said he. "You don't have to look."

I slid my hands low, lower, closed my eyes. Seed pearl buttons? I wondered.

"Plucked out of oysters' throats," he said, as if I'd spoken aloud.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, rubbed up and down my shirt. Heat rose from me,
shimmered in the air around me, like wheat waves in wind.

"Ain't you pretty? Ezra counts such a waste, don't he? But you'll turn his head
when he sees you." He hummed a song I didn't recognize.

Old women say the devil sings church hymns backwards, and I stopped, scared.
"But what'll I tell Ezra when he asks where these come from?"

"Why, say you found 'em." He slanted his eyes like Cat, looked at me sideways.
"Ain't it true, you've found what you need?"

I couldn't speak, yet he kept talking. His voice came out of the trees all
around me, like wind, whispering down, blowing, a strange and singing sound, but
his lips quit moving. "Just like I hear Daisy's hoofs above me, I hear your
heartbeats. Ezra doesn't give what you need, does he?"

I clapped my hands over my ears, squeezed shut my eyes, but he sang on. "There's
Indians, some say, who fish with their own flesh. Cut strips of skin for bait in
winter, when they can't find any other. Their arms and legs are pocked and
puckered, their scars, wrinkled hollows. They do it to feed their families, they
use up themselves, until they scrape the bone."

"I'm a good wife," I cried.

"You are," said he.

I slumped to the ground, dragged my shaking fingers through the dirt. "Reckon
you can do lots of things, Mr. Leon. Do me one last thing, before I get my
shovel. You see, Ma's buried in the ground, like you. What would you say to
raising her up, as long as we are doing one another such favors?"

He clucked his tongue, smiling, and this time his lips moved. "Raising the dead,
my, my. You've got me mixed up with Someone Else. I would if I could, of course.
But I can do something about that potter's wheel you love so much." He stopped
smiling, looked hard at me, his eyes glinting silver as that mica in the dirt.
"Now dig me up."

He said this like he was commanding me to do it, when all he'd said before was
so pretty and sweet. And I wanted to do it, I confess. Sunflower sun come back
out, steam spewed from the earth. Sweat ran under my arms. I opened my mouth to
say, "No," but nothing came out.

"Fetch a shovel," he said.

There was nothing to do but do it. I ran and grabbed a shovel and dug, him
giving orders all the while, like I had no choice. I worked till I uncovered his
hands, and then he started digging with me, pulling himself up, freeing one leg
and then another, climbing out of his pit. His clothes were moldy and worn. Dirt
caked his bare feet. Panting, he stretched out on the ground and closed his
eyes, and I lay down beside him, my dress wet with sweat, fingernails broken
from clawing, eyes gritty with sand.

Then he turned to me and smiled. He fingered those seed pearl buttons on my
shirt, pulled gently and the threads broke, tumbling them into his hands. He
opened his mouth and put one pearl on his tongue. When he leaned toward me, I
heard the singing again. It was like he had tasted something sweeter than I'd
ever known and wanted to share it with me, and, grateful, I took what he
offered.

A WHISTLING WIND stirred me from a sleepless dream I'd fallen into. My demon was
standing over me, and I jumped and clutched my clothes about me. "Where are you
going?" I asked, teeth chattering, cold. "Look." He pointed behind me. I turned.
On the horizon, the sun had spilt its yoke like a fertile chicken's egg,
bleeding onto the road below it. Ezra's wagon was coming down that road, a
shadow against the red. "Go to your barn," he said.

I scrambled to my feet. "Ma's wheel?"

He smiled and pointed to the barn. I pelted for it, threw aside the bolt that
held the door and dropped to my knees beside the wheel. A lump of clay lay
there, and I pressed my hands in it. And as I knelt there, my sweat melted that
clay and the wheel began to spin. Faster and faster it spun, and the clay wasn't
cold and slick anymore, but warm, like a living thing, like the heat of my hands
was in it, and it wrapped around my fingers, forming over me. Shapes rose from
it, the finest pots you'll ever see, and other things, things I didn't know and
couldn't name, shapes that spun and shifted until they lifted off my wheel and
whirled in the air before me. And in their dancing and whirling, the plate under
my hands spinning, my hands gliding over the wet and slippery clay, I heard a
voice, my voice, begin to sing.

Ezra said he found me sitting on the hay beside the wheel, all manner of strange
and twisted forms of clay beside me. It seemed a long time since he'd come down
the road, but he said he'd just seen me run to the barn. "Are you hurt?" he
asked. He shoved one of the clay creatures with his boot, but it only rocked
back and forth in the hay and did not budge. "What's this?" He stooped to pick
up a pot as twisted as a snail's shell. "These pots won't hold."

I looked about me, and saw what I had done. "You're wrong," I said. "They'll
hold."

That autumn passed to winter, then spring, and another summer. Once, only once,
I tried to tell Ezra about what had happened, but his face went hard as the
ground he plowed, and he said he didn't want to hear a foolish tale I'd dreamed.

So, friends, this is what you must know. Ezra chided me no more about potting.
Every day I went back to that old wheel, and soon my pots lined the wails of the
barn and filled every shelf in the house. I stacked pots between the beds of
larkspur and rows of collards, and underneath the pecan trees growing along the
road. People passing stopped to look, but no one bought. It did not matter to
me. Ezra said my pots looked unnatural, but he left them alone. He left me
alone. Aloneness rose in me over the years, strong as sap in spring, but it was
not loneliness. I knew then it didn't matter, nor would it again, how cold Ezra
lived his life beside me. Life's heat and fire was inside me. It had always
been. I'd found my singing thing.