Silence at the Lock

Chapter 3

3

Sarah turned to look at me then shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I was shot.”

She said this like it was no big deal. I was speechless. To be shot means—at least most of the time—that someone pointed a weapon, a weapon they had to load with a bullet with the intention of doing injury to someone or something, at you and then pulled a trigger. This seemed to warrant more than a shrug.

I recovered my tongue and said, “What! Who shot you?”

“The men that hanged my mama.” She stood and started to walk a few steps away.

“Wait! Why did they shoot you?” I hurried to her side. “Did they claim you tried to steal something, too?”

“Oh no, they shot me because I came at them with a knife when I saw they’d lynched Mama. They had reason to shoot me.” She walked closer to the river. “They glad they did, too, or they’d be the dead ones.”

I felt heat flush my neck. I didn’t like talk of violence, even when I understood the reasons behind it. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted people to just be civil, to be kind. Even though I’d seen people try to bulldoze gravestones, burn down schools, and intimidate teenagers all to cover up their own hatred, I still wanted to see people as mostly good. I knew I was being naïve, but I was pretty okay with that.

But then, I saw Sarah glance back at her mother, and I dropped my head. Who was I to call for gentleness in the face of such violence? Who was I to judge? I scuffed my bare heel into a patch of grass.

Sarah had walked a bit further on toward a big boulder a few feet further along the river’s edge, and now she leaned back against the stone. I made my way over to her and leaned beside her. The rock was warm on my back, and I realized that the air had begun to chill as the sun dropped behind the mountains around us. I’d need to figure out how to get home soon.

“How old are you?” Sarah’s voice broke my silence.

“Seventeen. You?”

“Same. You go to school?”

“Yep, eleventh grade.” I paused. “Everybody goes to school through twelfth grade at the same school in Terra Linda now.” Back when Sarah had been alive, she probably had already done all the years of school she could in a school for black kids, maybe at a Rosenwald School for rural black kids like the one where Charlotte taught. Maybe through eighth grade or so.

“That’s good. I guess. Everybody get along?” She was staring out across the river at the hill just beyond where the sycamore leaves were starting to leaf out.

“Mostly,” I said. “Better than it used to be.” I felt sure of that statement.

She looked at me then. “It’d have to be, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t hardly be worse.”

Again, she had a point. We sat still for a moment longer, and then I said something I never thought I’d need to say. “Do you want me to help you cut your mother down? From that tree, I mean?”

Sarah squinted just a bit and leaned toward me. “Yes.”

So we stood up and made our way back to the tree. I felt in my pockets for the pocketknife I often wished I carried like the boys around here, but I had nothing but a couple of dollar bills and a wrapper from a Caramel Cream that I’d eaten on the way home from school. Sarah looked at a loss too.

Then, I saw my bowl full of cheese doodles back over by the lock. It was one of Mom’s good bowls. Light-green “stoneware,” she called it. Heavy. I made my way over and dumped the doodles on the ground, knowing I’d be the biggest hero of birds nearby. Then, I strolled over to the lock wall and threw the bowl against it.

The bowl broke into a bunch of pieces, and I selected one large triangle with a sharp edge. Sarah nodded, and I put the shard in the front pocket of my jeans and began to climb. Never had I been more grateful for those big trees in the churchyard and all the times I’d hidden during Vacation Bible School evenings.

I could hear Sarah climbing up behind me, her bare legs rasping against the tree trunk. We carefully climbed out onto the limb, and I watched Sarah wrap her legs over the tree branch like it was part of a set of monkey bars. Then, she lowered her body down so that her hands reached under her mother’s arms. I carefully tucked Sarah’s dress between her knees—I was the only one who could see her, but still, a girl deserves some decorum—and began to saw at the rope.

It only took a few minutes before the thick cord gave way, and I heard Sarah grunt as the weight of her mother’s body shifted to her arms. I scrambled quick as I could over Sarah’s legs and back down the trunk so that Sarah could lower Bo’s legs into my arms. The woman weighed more than I thought she would, and I almost dropped her. But I was not going to let that happen, so I stiffened my arms and widened my stance as I braced Bo’s belly against my face. When Sarah got down, I let her mother’s upper body fall into her waiting arms.

Then, I walked away as the daughter cradled her mother and sobbed.

I didn’t know what to do. Was it even possible to bury a ghost body? And if so, how? I was pretty sure we couldn’t dig a body-sized hole with a shard of green bowl. But I couldn’t just leave Sarah there with her mom’s corpse. So I did something I’d only ever seen in movies—I gathered the branches that had fallen in the late-summer storms and laid them side by side. Then, I pulled down a big grapevine that had climbed up the lock walls. I did my best to lash the logs together with the vines and made a body-sized raft.

At some point, Sarah came over to help, leaving Bo’s body leaning against the boulder. She looked almost as if she could have been taking a quiet spring nap there in the sun.

When the raft was ready, we carried Bo over and laid her gently on the logs. Then, we lifted the raft between us and took it down the slippery slope of grass to the river. I offered to say a prayer, but Sarah said, “No. God knows what I’m feeling. He knows my mama. No need to put words to it.” I gave her a steady gaze then, looking to see if she were just being bitter and might regret that choice, but she seemed fine with it, solid. Still.

She gave the raft a gentle shove, and we watched her mother’s body float down the Maury River, back toward Terra Linda, her home.