Glorious Hell

A writing assignment after the poem 'Po Boy Blues'.

Glorious Hell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I looked down to the bottom of the pond. I closed my eyes. “Ma’, if you can hear me,” I whispered, wincing as a lump formed in my throat. “When I was home, de sunshine…” a tear rolled down my cheek.  “It felt like gold. Oh, it felt like gold. Since I come up North, the whole damn word turned cold.”

Papaw Blue was inside still. “I was a good boy, Ma’. Never done no wrong. But this world… this world is weary. An’ the road is hard, and long. I fell in love with a gal who nobody else saw, oh, do I love her.” I drew in a deep breath, sobbing. “I’ll see you soon, Ma’.” And then I jumped.

 

 

 

 

The day I was brought into this world was beautiful. It was by the pond in the Ol’ Cottage. A small, black, family of three live on it, me, Ma’, and Pa’.  The birds were singing songs to me, flying over the undisturbed, green, grass. My ma loved my dearly, oh boy did she. She always gave me the best of what she had, which wasn’t much. My pa taught me to fish, and made me strong. My ma sowed me blue overalls, took me to church, and taught me to talk like a man.

I loved all things living on that land. I would run barefoot through the dirt and catch butterflies, where after Ma’ would have ta put me in the bathing bin to get clean.

I would sing songs to the birds and watch the reflection of red and yellow dance off the water as they fluttered past.

I was a good boy. Never done no wrong. I would say my prayers each night before bedtime. I would attend church every day.

 

You could say that things were cursed afta’ Pa’ left Ma’ and I.  He left for Mexico. I never saw him after that.

Ma’ got us on a train to Michigan to Grandma and Papaw Blue’s ranch. Ma’ had moved away from there a few years back cause Pa’ needed work in Geogia. 

Things changed quite a few. No more was there time for me to play in the fields. I was put to work in the barns, milking the cows into rusty buckets. I helped Papaw with the troughs, and pulled the tractors across the fields. Muscles started growing on my arms. But being a curious young lad, I wanted to see all of the farm. So one day, I decided to explore the back of the house, which was fenced off mysteriously.

I walked through the screen door and into the back fields. The grass was long since dead. There was a pile of rocks ten paces away from the door. I walked over to it, cocking my head. There was a cross sticking up from it. There was a large rock. Something was engraved in it, but it meant nothin’ to an illegible po boy. So I stood up and went on. There was a line running through the sky, just above my head. Different colored cans hung from them, clinking together lyrically. Their colors bounced across my dark skin, reminding me of the Ol’ Cottage birds.

That’s when I saw the pond. I knelt down next to it, being careful not to fall in. One thing that my ol’ pa’ never got around to was teaching me to swim. Not like he knew how.

The water rippled out around my fingers where I felt the water, moving the lilies across the pond.

Then I saw it.  Down at the bottom. There was something white. I squinted, trying to see it through the moving water. But I couldn’t make it out before Grandma caught me.

“Charles! Wha’ the hell ya’ll think you’re doing?” Grandma shouted from the door. I jumped, turning around. She stormed over to me, grabbing my ear firmly. “You don’ belong back here, you hear me boy? I never wanna see you on this part of the farm again!” she dragged my back inside by my ear. I yelped all the way into the house.

Nobody had ever shown me such anger. I began to sob, calling for my ma’.  She rushed over to me, putting her hands on her hips.

“Now Charles, you know you shouldn’t have done that. You deserve what you got.”

 “Yes, Ma’,” I said quietly, wiping my nose. Grandma let go or my ear with a grunt and went back to washing the clothes on the washing board.

“C’mon, Charles,” Ma’ said. “Lets get you washed up for dinner.”

 

I suppose that what was meant to scare me away only made me more curious. So a few nights later when Ma’, Papaw Blue, and Grandma were sleepin’, I snuck out.

Grandma locked the back door, so I had to wriggle under the fence to get in. I clutched a candle in one hand, and in the other a rope.

I knelt down next to the pond, setting down the rope. The candle only reflected light off the water. So there was nothin’ I could see, not to the bottom at least. I looked around for something. Anything.

I looked up. Of course.

I inched slowly up the tree, swinging myself up onto a branch. The colored jars were hanging there innocently. I slid to the very end of the branch, stretching my arm out as far as it would allow.

I managed to untie the red one, then climbed back down with it in my hand. The candle was still there alight.

I unscrewed the cap and picked up the candle, holding it at the top.

“Damn!” I hissed, dropping the candle in the jar. My thumb was burnt. But nothing was gonna stop me from discovering my mystery. Not a little burn, as my pa’ would’ve said. I screwed the cap back on, with the candle in it, and put it under the water.

Instantly, the water lit up bright red. I looked around the pond with swift eyes, when all of a sudden I felt hands o my shoulders.

I wheeled around to see Grandma. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you, now?”

I shook my head quickly. “No, Grandma, I was jus’ lookin for my penny, it fell in!” I lied, studdering my words.

“Don’t lie to me boy. You know what happens to people who’ve seen it!?” she hissed.

Again, I shook my head.

Without warning, I was shoved in the freezing water.  I flailed, kicking, trying to get a breath. But those same hands were holding me down. I gulped down a mouthful of water, choking, screaming. I hit at her hands, kicked at her face, screamed for help. But it was no use.

As I sunk to the bottom, I saw it.

They were bones.

 

People say if God loves them, he’ll save them. But hell, it wasn’t God that saved me. Love saved me. In the same moment I was dying, the rope was pulling me up. On the other end was my ma’. Now, I wasn’t awake at the time, but boy, when I did wake up, I felt so alive.

Ma’ was holding me to her chest, pleading to me to wake up. I did, eventually. When I woke up it was just breaking dawn, the sun was trying to poke over the flat expanse of land.

There was something wrong, though. Something in her eyes.

And it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. Grandma was there, five yards away, dead.

“Ma’,” I said quietly. She looked down at me and began to sob heavier sobs, weeping.

“Charles! Oh Charles, Charles,” she chanted my name.

“Ma’,” I stated louder, clearer. She stopped, opening her eyes that were still dripping with tears. “Ma’. You killed her, didn’t you,” I demanded.

“Oh Charles…”

Now, I could see Grandma. The knife was still showing through her night dress. I broke out into hysterics.

 

I took me two weeks to recover physicly. But mentally, I would never recover. I hadn’t told anyone why I had out there, or what was at the bottom of the pond. But nodoby asked.

I spent the rest of my days out there, sitting by the pond. I would stare down there at the bottom, crying, sometimes talking to her.

It was a girl, I figured. At the bottom was a girl. She had a story, but it had never been told. She had been curious just like me about the bones that lied before her at the bottom. But she was drowned too, and nobody heard it.

So she was just like me. I felt the somehow, she was the only one I could talk to for this reason.

Nobody bothered me no more. Nobody made me do no work. Ma’ would sometimes come out and sit with me, asking me about things so simple and fair. She would bring me lunch in the day. Papaw Blue, as it turns out, had pulled Grandma off of me, and pulled me up. Ma’ had killed Grandma.

I don’ like to think of those things though, so I think it’s fair I don’t.

 

Days passed on like leaves blowing in the wind. Nothing seemed to have purpose anymore.

I started growing taller, I started growing hairs on my chest. But that didn’t feel like nothing to me. Cause I knew that the girl at the bottom had never gotten to see that. So how was that fair, that someone like I, could enjoy it?

I tried to ignore it for her sake. After all, she was my only friend.

And one day, I found her journal. As Ma’ read to me, she was infact a girl. Her name was Morgan. She wrote about the farm, and how she loved to count the clouds. There were things in there too, though, that made me want to cry. Like about her mothers death.

That really got to me.

If her mother died, why did I get to have one? I didn’t do nothing better than her.

I thought about that. I thought about that real hard. I love my Ma’ too much to do anything to her.

 

The season passed from summer to fall, to winter. The storms began to blow, and I was bound inside. I sat at my widow and stared out at her. A lot of the times, I couln’t see out my window.

Ma’ caught the cold. She was ridden in bed. Me and Papaw knew that we couldn’t afford to get her medicines to treat her. We just could give her all the remidies we could. So, since she couldn’t do much (but then again, nor could I, the weather was so harsh), Ma’ taught me how to write. And read.

She taught me to read with Morgan’s journal. And by the time I could write as well as a white kid, it was turning to spring. Ma’ was getting weaker and weaker, but the spring air was helping her. We all thought she was going to make it. We knew that she would recover.

I finished writing in Morgan’s journal. Sometimes, she wrote back, too. But nobody else saw it.

I remember what she thought of one of my journal entries:

Morgan,

It be spring again, and I am starting wonder what you did to deserve so different from me. We could have suffered the same fate, but I got to live. My Ma’ could’ve passed this winter. She didn’t. So what makes me so special?

 

She wrote back.

 

Charles, I was bound to just sit out here, like you’re doing right now, for the rest of my life. But you, you can still leave, and do something special with your life. You can help someone. I would never have done something like that.

 

That made me think. I asked Ma’ about it. About fate, and life.

“Charles, from the moment you were born, I knew you were going to do something special. You were meant to be on this earth.” Then very unexpedidly, she died in my arms.

 

I buried her in the front of the house, in the flower bed where she would’ve wanted it. I couldn’t bury such a beautiful person in such a haunted, messed up place as the back yard. I visited her every day and said my prayers over her grave.

Life went on just like it had. Papaw was getting old, so I had to do work again. It gave me little time to talk to Morgan, but I felt her presence, still.

I thought about what I would do. I had to do something special.

 

Morgan,

I’ve been thinking about what I should do. I know now that I have to do something special… I just can’t figure out what it is.

 

I wrote one day, watching the sun set. She wrote back wisely.

 

Sometimes, something so small can change everything. Sometimes, if you just set a sheep free, it can save a whole family who’s hungry. Maybe that family will go on to stop slavery.

 

This time, there was nothing to think about. I knew what I had to do.

 

I did everything I could for Papaw Blue. I gathered honey from the spring combs, I harvested and canned all the food on the farm. I moved the pens and the animals to the side of the house where he could easily reach them.

I gathered all the wood my arms would allow me to cut and bundled it by the door.

 

I stepped out to the backyard.

The air was hot and sticky. The journal was tucked under my shirt, so nobody would ever have to see it.

I looked down to the bottom of the pond. I closed my eyes. “Ma’, if you can hear me,” I whispered, wincing as a lump formed in my throat. “When I was home, de sunshine…” a tear rolled down my cheek.  “It felt like gold. Oh, it felt like gold. Since I come up North, the whole damn word turned cold.”

Papaw Blue was inside still. “I was a good boy, Ma’. Never done no wrong. But this world… this world is weary. An’ the road is hard, and long. I fell in love with a gal who nobody else saw, oh, do I love her.” I drew in a deep breath, sobbing. “I’ll see you soon, Ma’.” And then I jumped.

 

I finally found out what the gravestone said, by the way. It said

 

Life is Hell, and when you die, it feels glorious.

 

Maybe everyone else could hear Morgan, after all.

Author's Note

ignore spelling, grammar, scientific matters, please.