Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo Read Free Book Online Page A

chickens still had to be fed and cows milked. A farm never put itself on hold. Ben hadn’t crossed the threshold of any church since he left Georgia. He wondered if his ma and pa still went. When he was a kid, they attended service like dutiful Christian soldiers. God’s Valley Baptist Church was a derelict building with crumbling brick stilts and white paint that had sickened to a flaking gray. Weeds gashed through the gaps in the steps. With Sugarfish Pond so close, some days a damp, muddy scent invaded the air. Inside, parts of the floor caved steeply. But fresh, white linen always arrayed the altar, and twice a month a squad of volunteer ladies deserted their sharecropping and farming to scrub the wood pews.
    A week after the pond incident Ben saw the Hutchison family at Sunday services, occupying the same bench they always did—the one set against the wall beside the altar. It was originally intended to accommodate additional worshippers on Easter and Christmas, but the Hutchisons had colonized it like squatters and made it their own private pew.
    What a sight. Mrs. Hutchison, Willful, and five pitiful-looking girls. A husbandless, fatherless clan. Two versions of how that transpired had infiltrated the folklore of colored Dogwood—one official, the other scandalous. The official version decreed that Neale Hutchison had journeyed out of town to purchase farm supplies, and died. His body was never brought back and no funeral was ever held, which lent credence to the scandalous version: that he ran off with “Loose” Louise, a harlot in a shanty out on Ol’ Cane Road with a door painted red, the same as the brazen coloring on her lips.
    Most of Dogwood scorned the official version.
    â€œThat woman lyin’.”
    â€œHow your husband gone die and you don’t hold no funeral?”
    â€œ Widow, my foot. She made it up. Don’t wanna sully her reputation.”
    But regardless of what folks thought of the “Widow” Hutchison, she and her brood were destitute, subsisting on the kindness of their neighbors, costumed in other families’ hand-me-downs.
    Mrs. Hutchison sat spine-straight on the bench in an ancient dress and a white bonnet that had sallowed to a pale yellow. Her five girls sat next to her in rags that had been cleaned up just enough and shoes that hung off their feet in shreds. They had sunken cheeks and ashy skin. Seated next to the girls: Willful. Slumped back, bored, like he couldn’t be bothered. Oddly, he didn’t wear tatters like his sisters. He was almost dapper in his fresh shirt, suspenders, and woolen pants. Even fully clothed Ben could see how muscular he was: stalwart thighs, prominent chest, hulky forearms revealed by his rolled-up shirtsleeves (a no-no in church). Ben’s heart flipped and flopped at the sight of Willful’s long legs spread wide into the shape of an inverted capital V .
    Ben became aroused. It appalled him that his body would go rogue in the house of God. He couldn’t stop looking between those legs. He wasn’t alone. Young girls caught gaping at Willful’s wide-open legs got their heads lurched back into place by fathers or slapped by mothers.
    Because the handsomest boy in Dogwood was also its biggest scoundrel. Everyone knew he frequented that brothel over in Robertville, though where he got the money was a mystery. And when Ned Raymond’s fast daughter got pregnant, Willful had topped the list of suspects.
    When Mrs. Hutchison saw the gaping and slapping, her eyes automatically went to her son. She whispered in the ear of the daughter next to her and that daughter whispered to the next daughter and the message traveled down the bench to Willful. He rolled his eyes, lengthened his shirtsleeves, sat up straight. He made a scene of closing his capital V, so lazily, so dramatically, that it magnified the tension in the little church.
    He turned his head randomly, caught Ben staring, and stared right