Boys Life

those apple dolls whose faces shrivel up in the hard noonday sun. I had seen handfuls of fresh snow scraped off the Ice House’s pipes; the Lady’s soft cloud of hair was whiter. She was wearing a blue gown, the straps up around her bony shoulders, and her collarbone jutted in such clear relief against her skin that it appeared painful. So, too, did her cheekbones; they seemed sharp enough to slice a peach. To tell the truth, though, except for one feature the Lady wouldn’t have looked like much but an ancient, reed-thin black woman whose head trembled with a little palsy.
    But her eyes were green.
    I don’t mean any old green. I mean the color of pale emeralds, the kind of jewels Tarzan might have been searching for in one of the lost cities of Africa. They were luminous, full of trapped and burning light, and looking into them you felt as if your secret self might be jimmied open like a sardine can and something stolen from you. And you might not even mind it, either; you might want it to be so. I had never seen eyes like that before, and I never have since. They scared me, but I could not turn away because their beauty was like that of a fierce wild animal who must be carefully watched at all times.
    The Lady blinked, and a smile winnowed up over her wrinkled mouth. If she didn’t have her own teeth, they were good fakes. “Don’t you both look nice,” she said in her palsied voice.
    “Thank you, ma’am,” Mom managed to answer.
    “Your husband didn’t want to come.”
    “Uh… no, he’s… listenin’ to the baseball game on the radio.”
    “Was that his excuse, Miz Mackenson?” She lifted her white brows.
    “I… don’t know what you mean.”
    “Some people,” the Lady said, “are scared of me. Can you beat that? Scared of an old woman in her one hundred and sixth year! And me layin’ here can’t even keep no supper down! You love your husband, Miz Mackenson?”
    “Yes, I do. Very much.”
    “That’s good. Love strong and true can get you through a lot of dookey. And I’m here to tell you, honey, you got to walk through many fields of dookey to get to be my age.” Those green, wonderful, and frightening eyes in that wrinkled ebony face turned full blaze on me. “Hello, young man,” she said. “You help your momma do chores?”
    “Yes’m.” It was a whisper. My throat felt parched.
    “You dry the dishes? Keep your room neat? You sweep the front porch?”
    “Yes’m.”
    “That’s fine. But I bet you never had call to use a broom like you used one at Nila Castile ’s house, did you?”
    I swallowed hard. Now I and my mother knew what this was about.
    The Lady grinned. “I wish I’d been there. I swanee I do!”
    “Did Nila Castile tell you?” Mom asked.
    “She did. I had a long talk with little Gavin, too.” Her eyes stayed fixed on me. “You saved Gavin’s life, young man. You know what that means to me?” I shook my head. “Nila’s mother, God keep her, was a good friend of mine. I kind of adopted Nila. I always thought of Gavin as a great-grandchild. Gavin has a good life ahead of him. You made sure he’ll get there.”
    “I was just… keepin’ from gettin’ eaten up myself,” I said.
    She chuckled; it was a gaspy sound. “Run him off with a broomstick! Lawd, Lawd! He thought he was such a mean ole thing, thought he could swim right up out of that river and snatch him a feast! But you gave him a mouthful, didn’t you?”
    “He ate a dog,” I told her.
    “Yeah, he would,” the Lady said, and her chuckling died down. Her thin fingers intertwined over her stomach. She looked at my mother. “You did a kindness for Nila and her daddy. That’s why whenever you need somethin’ fixed, you call Mr. Lightfoot and it’s done. Your boy saved Gavin’s life. That’s why I want to give him somethin’, if I have your permit.”
    “It’s not necessary.”
    “Ain’t nothin’ necessary,” the Lady said, and she showed a little flare of irritation that made me think she would’ve been plenty tough when she was young. “That’s why I’m gone do it.”
    “All right,” Mom said, thoroughly cowed.
    “Young man?” The Lady’s gaze moved to me again. “What would you like?”
    I thought about it. “Anything?” I asked.
    “Within reason,” Mom prodded.
    “Anythin’,” the Lady said.
    I thought some more, but the decision wasn’t very difficult. “A bike. A new bike that’s never belonged to anybody before.”
    “A new bicycle.” She nodded.