A Feast of Peonies Part 2 by Obi

Usually, it was you, Jame and Li'l Bo. Jame was the oldest at seven; Li'l Bo was the youngest, five. You were cousins. They were first cousins; they were your second cousins. But at Big Ma's house you were more like brothers. Jame had real brothers, three of them. Harold Junior, who was older than Jame, and John and Wallace, who were both younger. But you were special. You were the Three Musketeers; you were tall in the saddle; you were Hoppy, Gene and Roy.

Big Ma was their grandmother. She was your great aunt. Back then, you didn't know what a great aunt was, so she was just Big Ma, the woman who was older than your own mothers and who told your mothers what to do. You threatened Big Ma once, back when you thought she was just another grownup. Big Ma had chastised you unjustly-- at least in your mind-- and you threatened to tell your mama. "Ah'm the mama around here," she told you. "Ah'm the big mama." You told your mama anyway, just like you had threatened. Mama laughed at you, and from then on, you knew who the real boss was.

You were also more afraid of her than your own mothers. Your mothers would coddle you, but Big Ma spanked, and you all knew it. You knew because she told you. "Don't play with me," she would say, "because I spank." You know now that it was a propaganda ploy, but it worked. You stayed on your Ps and Qs in that woman's house.

Big Ma was tall and skinny with big feet and big hands. They were strong hands from working in the cotton fields down south. She was flat chested and she had no hips to speak of. She had a long face with eyes that drooped at the corners. Her hair was mostly grey, but she sometimes wore something in it that make it look blue. For some reason, she thought that blue stuff looked good. Whenever she got the blue stuff put in, she would walk around with her head held just a little bit higher, like she thought she was a queen or something.

The genealogy went like this. Big Ma, a.k.a. Verlene Royce, had a brother named Albert Buchanan who was your grandfather. She had two daughters, Louise, who was Jame's mother, and Martha, who was Bo's mother. Her sons were Wallace, William, Albert and the baby twins, Collis and Reggie. Only the twins still lived at home.

The twins were 16. They were dark and strong and handsome. Collis was the good twin, the artist, the innocent one, the one who smiled and played with the young boys from time to time, and told you jokes. He drew pictures for you whenever you asked. He drew a picture once of a rose, and gave it to Martha. She has it to this day.

Reggie was the bad twin. He sulked and he rarely, if ever, played with you. He couldn't draw, and he resented that Collis could. You used to ask Reggie to draw pictures for you, but they were never the same. You never understood that Collis and Reggie were different even though they looked just alike. In time, Collis began to stifle his artistic talent because he knew it was a source of anxiety for Reggie. Reggie tried once to teach you how to play cards, but you were too young.

It was Collis who discovered the body in the basement.

During this particular summer, you were at Big Ma's house often. She lived on the second floor of a building on 35th Street between Calumet and Giles. Around the corner from her house was a vacant lot. This lot, covered with wine bottles and rusted out cans, broken building bricks and old tires, and overgrown with weeds and tall grasses, was the hunting ground. This lot was the jungle you stalked in, the war zone you fought in, the range where you wrangled and rustled cattle.

Back then, fruit was delivered in crates, cheap wooden crates nailed together with wire hinges on the lid. The grocery store near the lot discarded empty fruit crates out back two or three times a week. These crates fueled your creative powers in countless ways all that summer. Assembled, you used them as vehicles, houses, building blocks for forts, bombs. Disassembled, they supplied the raw materials-- the slats, the nails, the wire, the corners-- for countless childhood projects like crutches, swords or, in this case, your hunting rifles.

The rifles consisted of nothing more than a short slat nailed down to a long slat in such a way that the short slat swivelled like a trigger. You used bricks that were carefully "mined" from the lot to pound the nails into place. The bricks had to be clean, smooth and devoid of the white, mold-like growth that was your clue that the brick would crumble if it were used as a hammer. The final piece was a cross-section cut from a car inner tube like a giant rubber band. You found inner tubes in the same lot, and used broken pieces of glass to cut them into strips. These circles of thin, pliant rubber were the bullets you used. The pieces of inner tube hooked around the front of the gun, then stretched back over the hammer which was really just the top piece of the wood that was also the trigger. The principle was exactly the same as shooting rubber bands with your fingers. When the trigger was pulled back, the hammer went forward releasing the strip of inner tube from the front of the gun. A good rifle could shoot a piece of rubber fifteen or twenty feet.

Once all of the building and testing and range testing were done, you started the hunt. This is the part where you crawled through the lot on your stomachs like soldiers careful not to disturb too much of the grass. The key was to wait for the prey to alight, then shoot it. You hunted butterflies and grasshoppers. The flight of the rubber bands was so unpredictable that you rarely, if ever, actually hit the mark. And if you did hit it, there would be so little force that the game would simply crawl from under the debris and fly or hop away.

More often than not, you would catch butterflies by stalking them slowly, sneaking up behind them, and pinching their wings between your fingers. Butterfly wings are fragile. Pinching them always left a white residue on your fingers, and usually crippled the butterflies. Sometimes, you would give a wounded butterfly to the ants crowding a crack in the sidewalk. At other times, you felt virtuous and humane in letting the critters go after having walked around with them for an hour or so, after holes had been eaten into their wings by the sweat between your fingertips.

Grasshoppers were different. You used the same technique, and pinched their back legs. But they were stronger than butterflies. Sometimes, they could snatch themselves from your grasp. When they couldn't, though, they would Œspit tobacco' on your fingers. You showed the Œspit tobacco' phenomenon to you mother, and she gagged. You did, too, when she told you the bug was having a bowel movement from fear. You didn't hunt many grasshoppers after that.

Being the oldest, Jame was the biggest. He was thin and brown with wide eyes, a wide smile and gaps between his teeth. Back then, you always wanted to be older than you were. You had been given a double promotion in school, and, consequently, you were always the youngest and smallest person in class. Ergo, you were always being picked on and teased. In your mind, being one year older would have made such a difference. Being one year older, you would have been less shy, more popular with the other kids, better able to fight back. Jame, by contrast, was one year older. He already was where you desperately longed to be. It always amazed you to see him cry, because he always seemed to have arrived at that magical point in the future when life was without problems. Yet, he cried a lot. He needed to cry as often as you did. Maybe more. In fact, his left thumb was flat, shriveled, faded and always wet because it was always in his mouth because he was always crying.

Jame told fantastic stories with terrific sound effects. His primary character was Harry Hachmann, World War II Messerschmitt ace for the Third Reich. Harry came into being one rainy afternoon when you were playing with a couple of plastic model airplanes you had built. Jame had built a purple Messerschmitt; you had built a blue P-38 Lightning.

Naturally, the fiercest air war in the history of aviation broke out in Big Ma's living room that very afternoon. The Messerschmitt won because Jame's sound effects were so much better than yours, the roar of the engine was so much louder and heavier, the bullets struck with so much more authority. Since it just wasn't American for the Messerschmitt to win most of the time, you changed planes. Now he was the Lightning, and he won all of the time. Finally, you decided that he should fly both airplanes, one in each hand. The result was magic. The planes dove and climbed nose to tail, wing to wing, sputtering, stalling, rolling first left, then right. Machine gun fire strafed the walls and ceiling and the big, black cast iron stove in the middle of the floor with such thunder and clarity, Li'l Bo and you ducked to avoid being hit. Jame twirled his arms like a windmill by leaning his torso at the angle, then spinning his whole body. The effect was stunning. In the end, the good guy won, but Harry Hachmann always parachuted to safety.

Your most vivid memory of Li'l Bo is from a couple of years earlier. He, his parents, your parents and you lived in a basement apartment on South Michigan Avenue. Li'l Bo was always wet and smelly and in need of having his nose wiped. You were always surprised when no one ever turned him down. No one ever helped you blow your nose anymore, but they always helped him. You resented that a lot.

You remember this period as much for a dream you had one afternoon when you were sick as for anything else. You had been sick with a high fever for what seemed like days. You were poor. Your parents had no money for a doctor. The reason they shared an apartment with Li'l Bo's parents is because you were all poor. In this dream, you wanted to leave your body-- for good. You opened your eyes from the dream, and saw your parents staring helplessly down at you. You knew what they feared, but you did not care. In fact, it seems the person who was you in the dream had left the room, and was headed for the Œother side.' The gatekeeper was an old, black man wearing a white beard and puffy, white hair, and dressed in white clothes. He nodded his approval for you to go. Then suddenly, he changed his mind. He summoned you back.

"But I thought I would never have to go back again," you whined in the dream.

He whispered something to you in your ear. The you lying sick in the bed couldn't hear what was being said, but you felt as if you were being tricked. But then in the dream you expressed an understanding of the situation, and reluctantly agreed to come back to this side. "You've got a lot of work to do," the old man said. A day or two later, you were up and sipping soup.

Li'l Bo was really Bo the Third. His father, Big Bo, was Bo, Junior. You never met Bo, Senior, and you were glad that you hadn't. The reason is that you, too, were a junior. In your mind-- and Jame and Li'l Bo concurred-- Œthe Third' was to ŒJunior' as ŒJunior' was to ŒSenior.' ŒJunior' was a lot bigger than Œthe Third' because Big Bo was a lot bigger than Li'l Bo. ŒSenior' was a lot bigger than ŒJunior' because your father was a lot bigger than you. Therefore Bo, Senior, must have been as big as King Kong. The day you made that connection, the Messerschmitt and the Lightning fought on the same side to shoot King Kong standing wide-legged on Big Ma's couch. Good thing, too! Mouth bombs were no match for a belt.

Near the end of that summer, one morning over breakfast, Collis mentioned that he had seen someone tugging a trunk into the basement the night before. He was talking to Reggie and Harold Junior. One of them suggested that they go down and take a look. Collis wanted to call the police.

"Shoot," Reggie said, "Ah'm goin' down and look."

They didn't want him to go alone, so Collis and Harold Junior agreed to go, too.

The backyard was paved with concrete. The steps to the basement led under the wooden porches. Once at the basement door, Reggie began losing his nerve. He and Collis debated the wisdom of this venture while Harold Junior tried to shoo the Three Musketeers away. Naturally, you wouldn't be shooed. You were, after all, the Three Musketeers. Finally, Collis agreed to lead the way.

Reggie gave Collis the flashlight, and he nervously pushed the door open. They tiptoed in, and you tiptoed in behind them, close enough to touch one of them if one of you got scared.

The basement was cool and musty and felt good after being in the sun. The floor was cluttered with junk, wheelbarrows, bicycles, bed springs, hoses, pipes and rags. A heavy grime covered everything.

Collis spotted the trunk resting by the back wall. It was the only clean object in the room. His hand shook, and the beam went dim. He shook the light deliberately to get it bright again. He told Reggie to open the trunk.

"Ah'm not gon' open it," Reggie said.

"Here then, hold the light."

Reggie held the light while Collis approached the trunk. He paused a few seconds to steel himself. He pulled at the latch. It was stuck. Finally, it gave, and he pried the lid open a crack.

"Peek in," he told Reggie.

"Just throw it open," Reggie said.

He did.

In the dim light and between the bodies of the big guys in front of you, you only caught a glimpse of the contents. It was red, and you think there were some pieces. You tried to get a better look, but the beam jerked wildly before it went out leaving you in pitch darkness, and the guys in front were nearly trampling you to get to the door.

Jame, Li'l Bo and you ran out into the yard. You thought Collis, Reggie and Harold Junior were behind you. By the time you looked around, they were half way up to the second floor going two and three steps at a time. You heard loud shouts from the kitchen, and Big Ma ordered you to come up, too.

Within minutes, the yard was crowded with police and on-lookers. From the porch, you saw them haul the trunk out to a waiting truck. The police came upstairs. It was the only time you had ever seen white people in Big Ma's house. They questioned Reggie and Harold Junior. They questioned Collis.

"Did you see who put the trunk down there?"

Collis paused. "Yeah, I saw him. He looked right at me."

You were with him that night, just the two of you. You were on the back porch breathing in the warm summer air. You felt special having him to yourself. And he made you feel special the way he rubbed the top of your head with his hand. He pointed out the brightest star in the sky and told you it wasn't a star. It was a planet. You wondered how he knew. You heard a scraping sound. Someone was dragging something heavy down the alley in short spurts. Collis heard it, too. You both looked towards the alley, but the noise was behind the building. He pointed to the North Star and the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, and you strained to count the stars in each. By the time you finished counting, the scraping sound was in the yard below you. Collis stood up to see who it was. The pause in Collis' attention irritated you. You stood up too and looked between the slats of the back porch railing to see the charcoal grey figure of a man slowly dragging a trunk on the ground behind him. Judging from the way the man strained with each lunge, the trunk was heavy. His back was to you and Collis. He was pulling the trunk towards your building. You wondered what the man looked like, and just then, Collis cleared his throat. The man was caught completely by surprise. He spun around and planted his behind on the trunk as if to keep the lid from popping open. He looked wild-eyed from one porch to the next until finally he saw the two of you. He opened his mouth slowly, but he said nothing. He glanced again wildly from porch to porch and all around the yard. Then he looked back at Collis. This time the wildness in his eyes was gone. Now his eyes were cold like the eyes of a snake. The look in his eyes scared you and you hugged Collis' leg for comfort. The man narrowed his eyelids, and the muscles at the base of his jaw began to flex. Collis flinched. He was scared, too. The man jerked his gaze at you, and moved his head from side to side to get a clearer look, but the railing slats prevented him from getting a clear view. The man looked at Collis again as if to make sure he had the details right, then he wheeled around and pulled the trunk with renewed energy. The trunk thumped down the concrete steps that lead to the basement. You had wanted to count some more stars, but Collis whisked the two of you back inside.

The police took Collis down to the station to look at some pictures. Then it was quiet, quiet as if things were normal, as if nothing had happened, as if no body had been found.

But they were not normal. Things were changed; Collis was changed. He didn't play with you as much any more. He didn't laugh and joke as much. All of a sudden, life was serious.

You don't remember hunting much after that day. Maybe life had become too serious to hunt butterflies. Or maybe Big Ma had decided the neighborhood had become too dangerous to spend much time outside anymore. Collis saw the man again more than once after that day, and he was afraid because he believed the man was stalking him. He stayed in the house a lot depressed. He notified the police each time, but they always came too late.

You saw the man just once after that night. There was a tavern down the street from Big Ma's house that was notorious for its loud music and the fights that used to spill out onto the street. Sometimes you could see the fights from Big Ma's front room window. People were always arguing in front of the place as well. Sometimes the arguments turned into fights. Or maybe they were just loud and determined conversations that used a lot of foul words like the one you remembered between a large, dark-skinned woman and a small light-skinned man. Watching from the window, you could see the woman towering over the man with her hands on her hips and her head moving from side to side. You opened the window a crack to hear.

". . . and motherfucker, I will kick your puny little ass." With that pronouncement, she hit him, and he staggered back a couple of paces. She reached to hit him again, and he pulled a straight razor from his pocket. He flipped it open. Now everything was different. The crude expression of contempt and loathing on her face quickly shifted to one of chagrin and embarrassment and fear. She looked around wide-eyed at the people who had gathered to watch her berate her man. She wanted to run, but after all that big talk, she couldn't. He slashed at her and she threw up her arm to block it and got cut on the forearm. A thin stream of blood appeared. He slashed her again, this time on the other arm. Another stream of blood. Now all of her pride was gone. She sank to her knees to plead with him not to kill her. He slashed her again on the first arm, then again. A piece of something pink fell away. He slashed her across the left side of her face. She collapsed on the sidewalk resigned to her fate. Blood was everywhere. He looked down at her, then folded the razor and put it back into his pocket. The onlookers moved out of his path as he walked away.

Two weeks later, Big Ma and you were walking past that tavern on your way to the ŒL.' The woman was out front again only a few feet from where she had been lying. She had white bandages from her wrists to her elbows on both arms and a bandage on her face. She was laughing loud and drinking with the man you and Collis had seen from the porch. He was laughing and drinking, too, until he realized that you were staring at him as Big Ma dragged you along behind her. He must have recognized your eyes, because he stopped talking mid-sentence. He stopped laughing, too, and returned your stare. You turned to get Big Ma's attention. When you turned back around, he was gone.

Collis and Reggie began to exchange clothes whenever they went out. They were, after all, twins. Maybe the man would be fooled. Then one day, the man was fooled. He saw Reggie dressed like Collis, and chased him for half a mile before Reggie got away. Reggie ran into the house terrified. He told Big Ma and Collis what had happened, and Collis sighed as he made up his mind to stop living in fear. He made a supreme effort to be his old self again. No more hiding inside; no more exchanging clothes.

That winter, Collis was killed. He had gone to ice skate with some friends on a patch of ice near the butterfly lot. He skated around for awhile, playing tag with his friends on the ice, flying back and forth as if it were summertime. He stopped to rest, poised on a log at the edge of the ice. Just then, someone shot him. His friends thought he was clowning, thought he had fallen off the log for sport. When they couldn't get him up, they called the police who came to take away the body. They questioned his friends, but nobody saw anything. Or if they did, they certainly were not talking.

Some say he was killed by the man he had seen tugging the trunk to the basement. Others say he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. As far as you knew, neither crime was ever solved.

Copyright (c) 2003 by Obi

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