Five Miles to Paradise

26

A storm was coming. The wind was picking up, and black, heavy clouds were building in giant walls. Angry and intense. The air was changing. You could feel it. Charged. Electric.

T-Bone hurried to finish before the rain started.

In the South, weather is a capricious mistress. At the drop of a coin, a bright sunny day, liquid with humidity, can suddenly turn vicious. 

A thunderstorm, racing with the speed of demonic chargers, unbridled and wild, can gallop past, churning and ripping by with merciless hooves of destruction, whipping through at breakneck speed, and gone before you know it.

The heavenly mantle overhead, like a chameleon, turned from smiling day to angry night. Clouds towered ever higher in rolling madness. Lightning cut across the sky, in hot-white flashes from cloud to cloud or in jagged veins from heaven to earth. The wind pitched and rolled like the pounding surf.

Animals, sensing its approach, sought shelter beneath any rotten, fallen tree or scooped hole. Horses whinnied, their eyes wide, and danced nervously in their stalls. Bird songs ceased.

Perhaps, it was at this moment that T-Bone looked up and saw Early standing by his truck. Something told him to look up at that instant, even though he was hurrying to finish his work. There was a strangeness in the way she stood, so still, yet awkward. Askew.

It caught T-Bone's attention, forcing him to put down his tool and go to her.

She stood in the center of a scattering of flowers, stems broken, and petals strewn on the ground. Her basket had fallen on its side, abandoned, where she'd dropped it. She stood on a carpet of chaos and color.

"I was gathering flowers for the house," she said, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment.

"Miss Early, ma'am. Let ole' T-Bone heps. What's wrong? Miss Early? Miss Early?"

"I saw them in the breeze," she said, looking at her hand, covered in blood.

"Oh, Miss Early! Whut you done done?"

She held her scissors loosely in one hand. In the other was a piece of red and white material, stained with the blood from a cut on her palm. She held tightly to the blood-soaked scrap, and it took several seconds for T-Bone to realize that she held a piece of one of his flags in her hand.

"So pretty, Thayard. So beautiful. You cannot imagine just how beautiful they were, Thayard."

"Oh! Miss Early!"

She jumped, suddenly startled from her trance, bewildered, and looking lost. A haunted shadow flickered across her eyes, but she relaxed a little when recognition dawned upon her, and she saw it was only Thayard.

"Thayard! Have you finished?"

"Miss Early! Miss Early!" T-Bone said.

The old black man was beside himself. He pointed to her bleeding hand, not daring to touch the pale, delicate skin of a white woman.

"Oh! Thayard," she said, "I don't know what came over me. I don't even remember cutting myself. Look! What have I done? I have destroyed your flags. I'm sorry, Thayard. I'm . . ."

"Don't you fret none 'bout dem flags, Miss Early. They's fine. But yo' hand. Les' go down to the creek, 'n wash it, Miss Early. See's ef we can get dat blood ta' staunch a liddle."

"Yes. Yes."

She allowed T-Bone to lead her to the stream a short distance away. They crouched down near the clear, running water, and Early let the blood dilute and wash away. T-Bone rinsed out the portion of the flag that Early had cut off with her scissors and tied it around her palm. It made a very good bandage.

"Les' git you back ta' da house, Miss Early."

He led her back, like a small child, and when they reached the entry, she slipped the rose gold ring from her finger and handed to him.

"Take this, Thayard. It's the least I can do."

"Oh, no, Miss Early. I can't. No, ma'am."

But Early insisted, and the old Negro could not stand to see the tears that filled her eyes.

"Take the ring, Thayard! You must! You must! It's the least I can do."

He put forth his calloused palm, but she dropped the delicate circle into his shirt pocket. She pulled him towards her by his shirt, and kissed him squarely on the lips.

She laughed, a low and devilish sound.

"There, you bastard!" she suddenly screamed. "Now, you can say you've tasted a real woman!"

When he said nothing, she became angry. She spat in his face.

"Get the hell out of my sight," she said, slapping him violently across the cheek with her flag-bandaged palm.

T-Bone's jaw dropped. His face turned ashen. He ran to his truck, abandoning his tools, and sped away. When he arrived home, winded and confused, he bolted up the steps and slammed the door behind him.

Later that evening, as he sat on his bed to undress for sleep, he removed his shirt. The ring fell from his pocket. He picked it up and placed it in a small wooden box that sat upon a crude wooden shelf.

He did not light the candle that night. 

Instead, he lay atop his quilt in his silent, empty room, staring into the darkness, feeling like a man whose days were numbered.