The assignment was simple: The protagonist finds a wicker loveseat in the middle of the road.
This is what I made of it.
Wicker Loveseat Right out there on the road to Chopshaw, Alabama, straddling the center rut, was a wicker love seat. From a half mile away Wisson Berryboy thought it was a cow. It could have been a cow although pigs and chickens were more common on the Chopshaw Road. Either way Wisson didn’t give it much mind, and he kept on walking. The sun, even through the thin scrim of clouds, was a force against his face and he mostly looked down at the flat-packed, sand-dust shoulder. Such dust as he raised with his thick brown brogans settled quickly; no breeze.
From a quarter mile away Wisson determined that if it was a cow that he was seeing, it was a dead one, or at least a downer fixing to die. At a hundred yards he saw that it was furniture. When he drew parallel to it he stopped.
Some wicker is painted white and sits on a veranda and creaks when you first settle into it. Other wicker, older wicker, wicker that’s been retired from the veranda, might spend its last years out of doors, under a tree, fading into a soft, bleached, straw color. But this wicker, the wicker that Wisson Berryboy was studying, had been stained and finished to a dark red-brown that shined as though varnished or shellacked. Wisson had never seen wicker in a proper living room in a white man’s house, but he imagined that if ever that might happen, this was the piece that would fit.
With that thought Wisson began to consider what he should do. If he were to continue walking toward town and if something were to happen to this piece of wicker and if he had been seen near it, there might be blame. And at seventy-eight years, the last thing Wisson wanted was blame for something happening to a white man’s property. It didn’t look heavy and he decided to just move it to the side of the road and then walk on, but having taken only a single step he caught sight of a plume of dust rising from the road to the east. He stood by as the plume approached in the form of a brand new, black, DeSoto sedan. The car slowed and a man wearing a cream colored suit with a matching hat called from the window, “Why don’t you move that damn thing? Is it yours?”
“No, Sir,” said Wisson. “It’s not mine at all. I’m just minding it.”
“For who?”
“For Mister Dick.” Randolph Dick was a white man who Wisson considered might just have a set of wicker like this. And if he had such a set and this one piece had fallen to the road, and if he had seen Wisson walking, why it would be just natural that he would ask him to mind it until he could send someone to retrieve it. And surely if it were not Mister Dick himself, then it was another white man from not too far away who would have made the very same request.
“Randolph Dick?” asked the man. He consulted briefly with a woman sitting next to him. Then he said to Wisson, “I could take that loveseat to Randolph Dick myself. You could put it in my trunk and I could carry it to him.”
“Well, Sir, Mister Dick didn’t say nothing about moving this here furniture.” And that was the truth. Wisson Berryboy felt safer with the truth than with the merely plausible.
“So you’re just going to stand here and wait?”
“I’m just supposed to mind it for a while.”
“Fine,” said the man, clearly disgusted. The DeSoto kicked dust and left.
And now Wisson had a problem; having been seen with the love seat he could hardly leave it, but also having refused to have it moved he had made a certain commitment. He resolved to mind the furniture for a while as he had said. He pulled the loveseat to the shoulder and sat down on the ground next to it. It never occurred to him to sit on the loveseat itself. The wicker cast a dappled shadow and that was enough.
He must have dozed because he didn’t hear the clattering pre-war Ford until it was nearly upon him. In the Ford were three young men of varying shades of black, but all with the very same eyes. They were the sons of Pamela Bacon and they lived not too far from Chopshaw, down the Old Dam Road and a bit east. Wisson didn’t know they had a car now.
“Hey,” called the one who was driving.
“Hay is for horses,” said Wisson.
The driver’s door opened and the first lad slid out, all slow and loose in his limbs. The two others followed through the same door. “Well then, how do you do, Mister Berryboy? That better?”
Wisson nodded, “Better. When did you get a car? Is that your car?”
The second boy said, “Momma’s friend. He’s got two cars.”
The driver, Maurice, said, “Mr. Berryboy, how come is it that you’re sitting by the side of this road with a sofa?” The third son of Pamela Bacon snickered. His name was Charles.
“I’m to mind this here wicker loveseat for a little while for Mister Randolph Dick.”
“Is he paying you?” asked Charles.
“Yes,” said Wisson. “Mister Dick is paying me two dollars to mind it here until dark.”
“What happens after dark? Is he sending a car? How did it get here?”
“You don’t need to concern about any of that,” said Wisson. “That’s all Mister Dick’s business. And mine.”
“We’ll mind it with you,” said Maurice. “Keep you company.”
Wisson thought for a minute that he wouldn’t care for any company, but then decided that it might be more comfortable sitting in the old Ford than on the ground so he didn’t object.
Wisson awoke an hour later in the front seat of the Ford and saw that two of the Bacon boys, Charles and Maurice, were sitting on the loveseat and their brother Pinchon was talking with a fourth person. This fourth person was known as Alan but nobody knew his last name. He lived in a shack out behind the deserted peach cannery and kept pretty much to himself unless he’d been drinking, which he appeared to be doing at this moment. Wisson got out of the car.
“No,” he shouted. “That loveseat isn’t for sitting on. We’re just to mind it.”
The boys stood up. Alan took a swig from a bottle in a paper bag and stared at Wisson.
The air was cooler now and the shadow from the loveseat longer. Wisson told Maurice Bacon that he was disappointed to see him sitting on the wicker and he was sure Mr. Dick would have been upset to have seen it, too. He heard a rustle and turned around to see the paper bag passing from Pinchon to Alan.
“Now what is this? What is this? Pinchon, what are you doing with that bag? Nothing you need in there.” Pinchon grinned.
Alan passed the bag to Wisson. He hesitated, but it had been a long day so he took the bag and took a full swallow. The cheap whiskey burned, but it cleared his eyes and settled him down a bit.
An hour later the sun was down and only a thin band of indigo hovered in the west. The bottle was half empty and Wisson was sitting on the loveseat. He figured he was protecting it.
“Mister Dick isn’t here yet,” said Alan.
“No,” said Wisson. “And it’s near full dark, pretty near.” He was preparing to ask the Bacon boys to give him a ride home. He lived with his daughter, only about five miles down.
But then there was a scuffle in the weeds and two people stepped out and onto the road. The boy led the girl by the hand. She whispered something to him and he hitched up his pants. He was Antonio Brown, tall, light skinned, broad shoulders and not yet sixteen. She was MayAnne Spencer and MayAnne Spencer was known to be good for only one thing and it appeared that Antonio Brown had just learned about that one thing in some detail. MayAnne had a homely face but her body had been full grown since she was eleven.
In the twenty minutes it took for the sky to become full dark, Alan’s bottle was empty. MayAnne said, “That nasty old car got a radio?”
“Yeah,” said Charles, “but there’s something wrong with the speaker. It don’t play good.”
“Let me see,” said Antonio, and he slithered on his back under the dashboard. “Just a loose wire,” he called, and in seconds he had the latest song from Big Momma Thornton blaring through the tinny speaker. “And that’s not all.”
He snaked his way from under the dashboard and onto his feet. He held one hand behind his back. “Look what I found.” It was a nearly full bottle of Lord Standish Sloe Gin.
The moon came up and the level of the Lord Standish Sloe Gin went down. Twice Maurice had to start the Ford to recharge the battery. There was a slight breeze and a slight chill and about ten o’clock Pinchon and Charles dragged some brush and dry tall grass to the side of the road and lit it with a kitchen match. Alan figured the fire was far too small and went off to find some real wood. He hauled back a twelve foot elm branch which he proceeded to stomp into relatively small and burnable pieces.
MayAnne and Pinchon danced in the half-light a dozen feet from the fire. Maurice and Alan jitter-bugged and Wisson found himself wagging his foot to the beat. The gin left a sour candy taste in his mouth and only another swallow would clean it out for a few minutes. Between songs on the radio MayAnne and Pinchon left the light of the fire.
“He’s too young for all that,” said Wisson.
“Thirteen,” said Charles. “Not too young. I was fifteen before I met a willing girl.”
“How old are you now?”
“Sixteen. Mister Berryboy? How old were you your first time?”
“People ask the damnedest things nowadays. Whoever would have thought? A sixteen year old boy asking a grown man…an old grown man…about things like that. Truth is I don’t rightly know. I didn’t mark it on a calendar or anything.”
Charles asked, “You don’t remember your first time?”
“Oh, I remember just fine. Just fine.” He collected his thoughts for a minute. “School teacher’s daughter,” he said finally. “Older than me. Skinny shy girl. But she knew what she was about. I think I might have been your age. It was while my momma was still alive and she passed when I was seventeen. Maybe the summer before that.” Wisson Berryboy smiled. “Oh yes, I remember just fine. I remember a lot more than I’ll tell.”
Pinchon and MayAnne returned. Maurice had found more wood. Wisson was feeling tired.
There was a high sharp cry and Wisson saw that Alan had MayAnne by the arm and was leading her to the shadows, but she was having none of it. She tried to pull away but he held firm and she snapped back to him like an elastic band and cracked his face with her free closed fist. He stumbled backwards, still hanging tight to her arm and the pair lost their balance and fell, MayAnne on top of Alan and Alan slamming flat on his back into the fire.
Alan was screaming before he touched the embers and MayAnne, now free, was slapping him with both hands as the soot and ash and a massive shower of sparks sprayed around them. The hem of her dress caught fire and she just kept slapping. Charles and Maurice and Pinchon grasped and grappled at the pair to pull them from the fire and each other.
At last Maurice and Charles held Alan, one at each arm, as he bellowed that they were grabbing where he was burned. They didn’t let go. Pinchon had MayAnne on her back and had swatted her burning skirt until all it did was smoke. Her eyes never left Alan.
Wisson saw it all and he turned to catch his breath just in time to see that stray sparks and bits of burning elm had found the wicker love seat. Small flames ran up the left arm and started across the back. Wisson snatched up the blanket and threw it over the flames. He pulled back the blanket and sent a rolling cloud of white smoke upwards. Charles and Maurice and Pinchon stood by him. MayAnne sat by the fire still muttering curses at Alan. Alan was gone.
“Well now,” said Wisson. “Well now. This is a kind of a problem.”
Charles said, “Yeah. Mister Dick. What’s he going to say?”
“Hmm,” said Wisson Berryboy. “Hmm. If this here wicker was found to be damaged, I expect there would be trouble.”
“But?” asked Charles.
Wisson smiled and reached for the scorched arm. “Here. You grab the other arm.”
They dragged the love seat over to the remains of the fire and tipped it onto its back. It caught in seconds. It burned bright and fast and satisfying. Even MayAnne was grinning in the orange light.
A short while later they spread the ashes of the fire and of the loveseat and of the evening and scuffed it all into the dust leaving only a slightly darker patch of road for the morning to find.
The sons of Pamela Bacon offered Wisson Berryboy a ride home and as he settled into the back seat he thought to himself, “And the hell with you Mister Randolph Dick.”
