The Fourth

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 21: The Fourth

Carl started the grill at two in the afternoon.

He had put it on the back concrete pad that Eldridge had poured in 1997 for exactly this purpose, and he had set up the small folding table beside it for the plate of chicken Yvonne had marinated since last night, and he had a cold Coke in the Igloo chest and a towel over his shoulder and his Saturday cap pulled low, and he stood for a moment looking at the small careful life of a back yard on Park Avenue on a Saturday afternoon in July before he lit the coals.

He lit them.

The coals caught. The small blue smoke went up against the pale July sky. The pecan tree, on the other side of the carport, shifted in the small Saturday wind. Somewhere down the block Miss Renita's grandbabies were running through a sprinkler, and their voices — high, laughing, free — came over the fence.

Carl did not, today, have much to do until the coals were ready.

He sat in the folding chair beside the grill. He opened the Coke. He drank. He watched the smoke.

Yvonne had told him, that morning, that Mama had woken up in a good mood. Mama had been on the porch at seven. Mama had walked the names in the new composition book — Tiana had driven over at six-thirty to do the morning with her, the way Tiana had been doing mornings three days a week since June — and Mama had come in at eight and had eaten two pieces of cornbread and had said Carl, this is going to be a day. Yvonne, at the stove, had not known whether a day was an acknowledgment of the holiday or a small private pronouncement from a woman who had begun, in the last two weeks, to let small pronouncements rise out of her without editing them. Carl had said, Yes, Mama. He had left it there.

The coals took twenty minutes.

When they were ready Yvonne came out with the chicken. Tiana came out with the corn. Marcus — who had flown in from Atlanta on Thursday night for the long weekend, and who had brought Naomi over from Whitehaven this morning because the Hightowers had wanted a quiet morning to themselves before coming over at four — came out with the platter of ribs he had picked up from Cozy Corner on Saturday morning because Cozy Corner had been Eldridge's favorite and because Marcus had decided, last year in Atlanta, that on every Fourth he would eat ribs from Cozy Corner whether he was home or not, and this year he was home.

Naomi came out behind them in a small red sundress and a small white hair ribbon and the same red sneakers.

She had decided, at ten this morning when the Hightowers had dropped her off, that today she was in charge of the napkins.

She was carrying, now, a small stack of paper napkins in both hands, and she walked — slowly, carefully, the way she walked when she was on a job — out to the small folding table beside the grill where Carl had put the plates, and she set the napkins down in a neat pile.

"Mr. Carl."

"Yes, Naomi."

"The napkins are here."

"Thank you, Naomi."

"If anybody needs more napkins they tell me. I will go get more."

"I will tell them, Naomi."

"Okay."

She looked at the grill. The smoke was going up. The chicken was on. The small bright charcoal glowed.

She said, after a considering moment: "Mr. Carl. The fire is important to watch."

"Yes, Naomi. It is."

"I will stand here and watch the fire with you."

"You stand right there."

She stood there. She did not, for the next eleven minutes, leave his side. She watched the fire. Carl watched the fire. Mama Tate, on the porch around the corner in the wicker chair where she had been since one o'clock, could hear them through the carport — the small steady stream of Naomi's commentary on the size and shape of the flames, and Carl's low patient confirmations — and she let herself laugh quietly, with her hand over her mouth, because the laugh was a small full thing that had not, in the last several days, had room in the house.

The laugh was the Fourth's first gift.

The Hightowers arrived at four-ten.

Reggie was driving. Sheryl was in the passenger seat. They had brought — per the arrangement Sheryl had made with Yvonne last week — a large bowl of potato salad, a second smaller bowl of the sweet pickles Reggie had put up last summer and had been rationing since, and a flag pin that had been Sheryl's father's in 1973 and which Sheryl had decided to bring because the day called for it.

They parked behind the Tacoma.

Naomi, from the back yard, saw the car through the carport and ran — the small determined run of a four-year-old who had, thirty-five minutes earlier, been promised that her grandparents were coming — and she met Sheryl at the passenger door and hugged her around the legs without ceremony.

"Grandma."

"Baby."

"Mr. Carl and I are watching the fire. It is important."

"I can see that, baby. I brought potato salad."

"Mother Tate said you would."

"Mother Tate is always right."

Sheryl looked up past the car. Mama Tate was on the porch. She lifted her hand. Mama Tate lifted hers back from the wicker chair.

Reggie came around. He kissed Sheryl on the temple. He picked up the bowl. He walked slowly up the path with his small dragging right foot and his usual quiet grace. Sheryl followed. Naomi held on to her grandmother's hand and walked beside her the way a four-year-old walks when the four-year-old has decided that a particular person is the center of the world and will be walked beside accordingly.

They came up on the porch.

"Mother Tate."

"Sister Hightower."

"How has today been for you, Mother Tate?"

"Today has been one of the good ones, Sheryl. The Lord has been the Lord. My hand worked well this morning. I walked the names slow. Tiana was with me. Yvonne has been making me laugh all afternoon. Carl is grilling. I have the whole family under my roof today. It is a good day. You sit down. I want to look at you for a minute before we have to do the work of the afternoon."

Sheryl sat.

Reggie set the bowl on the small side table and went inside to the kitchen with it.

Mama Tate and Sheryl sat for a moment on the porch while Naomi — who had ruled herself back to Carl's grilling within sixty seconds of arriving — went around the carport to resume her fire-watching duties.

"Sheryl."

"Yes, Mother Tate."

"I want to thank you for this afternoon."

"Mother Tate. You don't have to —"

"I am going to, baby. You are going to sit in this chair and let me. You and Reggie have brought that little girl into this house eleven times since May. You have let her sleep over twice. You have let her spend Saturday afternoons with Marcus. You have not, in any of those arrangements, presumed to let go of her. You have been her people. You have also let us be her people. That is not a thing I thought I would see. I have known many grandparents in my time who were in your place, and not one of them was as open-handed as you and Reggie have been. I am watching you, Sister. The Lord is watching you. You are doing a thing that is costing you. I want you to know that I see it."

Sheryl's eyes filled.

"Mother Tate. I did not expect to do it this easy."

"It has not been easy, Sister. I know it has not been easy. You have been doing it anyway. That is the definition of faith. I have been saying, in my own prayers, for two months: Lord, whatever I did for Patrice in 1989 or for Calvin in 1978, whatever small obediences You counted to me, please use the count for Sheryl and Reggie Hightower. Help them to bring the little girl well. Help them to not lose what they have earned. That is the prayer I have been praying. I am going to keep praying it for as long as the Lord lets me."

Sheryl nodded.

She did not, for a moment, trust her voice.

"And I will be praying the same one back for you, Mother Tate."

"That is the right answer, Sister. That is the two-way shape the keeping is supposed to have."

They sat together quietly.

The small steady stream of Naomi's commentary came from around the corner. Carl's low answers. Yvonne and Tiana in the kitchen laughing at something Reggie had said when he had come in with the potato salad. Marcus on the phone in the living room briefly — something about his work — his voice muffled.

The porch held them.

They ate at five.

They ate on the porch, because Carl had brought out the small square table they had used only for porch meals since the early nineties, and Yvonne had set it with the good blue plates, and Tiana had put out the small blue-rimmed glasses, and Reggie had brought the sweet tea from the kitchen, and Marcus had called Naomi over to help him fold the paper napkins — which she did with her small grave concentration, three swift triangular folds per napkin — and the eight of them had gathered on the porch and had taken their seats around the small table.

Mama Tate sat at the head in Eldridge's porch chair, which had been brought out from the front room and set at the head for the afternoon.

Carl sat to her right. Yvonne to her left. Marcus beside Yvonne, then Tiana, then Reggie at the foot, then Sheryl, then Naomi — in her small red sundress, in the chair between Sheryl and Mama Tate, with a small cushion Tiana had brought to raise her up.

Mama Tate looked around the table.

She did not, for a moment, speak.

Then she said: "Carl. Son. Bless the food."

Carl lowered his head.

He prayed briefly. He prayed the way Carl prayed, which was plain and quiet and without strain. He thanked the Lord for the day, for the food, for the hands that had prepared it, for the eight at the table, for the child at the table, for the grandparents at the table, for the great-grandmother at the table, for the brother at the table, and — in the last beat, the line Carl never skipped — for the absent.

And Lord, we lift up those who are not at this table but whose names are in this house. We lift up Eldridge. We lift up Aliyah. We lift up Mother Wells. We lift up those in the cloud. We ask You to let them feel, in whatever way You think fit, that they are remembered at this porch this afternoon. Amen.

Amen, said the others.

Naomi, in her chair, opened her eyes and said: Amen, Mr. Carl, with the small considered amen of a four-year-old who had been taught to finish a prayer with her own mouth.

They ate.

The afternoon went the way the good afternoons had been going when they were given. Marcus told a story about his work — a small funny story about a client who had insisted on a font Marcus had thought was wrong — and the table laughed. Tiana told a story from the unit. Reggie told a story about Aliyah at seven, which was the first story Mama Tate had heard about her great-granddaughter's mother as a child, and the table quieted as he told it because Reggie was a quiet talker and quieting was the only way to hear him, and the story — of Aliyah at seven refusing to come into the house from a rainstorm because she had been waiting on a particular frog she had been tracking all summer — made Naomi laugh in the small delighted way of a child hearing a story about her mother that fit the mother she dimly remembered.

Sheryl reached over and stroked Naomi's hair while Reggie told it.

Yvonne, across the table, caught Mama Tate's eye. The small glance between mother and daughter said many things. The afternoon was the kind of afternoon they had not been able to predict. The afternoon was the kind they would be grateful for regardless of what followed.

After dinner they had the peach cobbler Tiana had made this morning and a small scoop of vanilla ice cream for everyone. Naomi ate her whole serving. Mama Tate ate a small portion, slowly, and said quietly to Sheryl — who was on her right — Sister, this cobbler is a Mississippi cobbler. Tiana learned it from me and I learned it from my mother. You have just eaten a hundred and twenty years of one kitchen. Sheryl laughed wetly and said I felt the hundred and twenty years, Mother Tate.

At six-forty the sky began to turn.

Reggie and Carl cleared the table. Yvonne, Tiana, and Sheryl went inside to do the dishes. Marcus took Naomi down the path and across the street to the small empty lot where Miss Renita's grandbabies were already setting off the small black snakes and the sparklers that, in the old Memphis tradition, preceded the serious firecrackers in the small window of light before true dusk. Mama Tate, on the porch in her chair, watched them cross the street.

Naomi, halfway across, turned back and lifted her hand.

Mama Tate lifted hers back.

At eight o'clock the neighborhood began.

It was not, on Park Avenue, an organized display. The city did not, in Orange Mound, do a show. What happened on the Fourth in this neighborhood — what had happened since Mama Tate and Eldridge had moved onto the block in 1962 — was that the families on the surrounding streets set off their own small displays from their own back yards, and the sky filled, over the course of an hour, with the small bursts of a hundred households celebrating in their own way.

Mama Tate had watched it from this porch for sixty-four summers.

Tonight she sat in the wicker chair. The others had drifted into a small loose configuration around her — Yvonne and Tiana on the porch boards at her feet, the way Yvonne and Tiana had been sitting on porch boards in front of her chair all year; Marcus in the second wicker chair with Naomi on his lap because Naomi had, halfway through the first sparkler, decided she was tired and had wanted a lap; Sheryl and Reggie on the small side bench Carl had brought up from the carport; Carl in his own wooden chair against the porch post.

The first shell went up somewhere over Saratoga at eight-oh-four.

It burst red.

Naomi, on Marcus's lap, made the small oh sound a four-year-old makes when she has decided a thing is beautiful and wants everyone on the porch to register the decision. Marcus kissed the top of her head.

The second shell went up.

It was blue.

Mama Tate, in her chair, did not speak. She watched the sky.

She had watched this sky with Eldridge for forty-six years. Eldridge had been the one who had loved the Fourth. Eldridge had, every year from 1962 until 2007, gone out after dinner to the small empty lot with a small bag of his own fireworks — the simple ones, the ones Orange Mound men bought at the roadside stand on Lamar the week before — and he had set them off on the edge of the lot while Ola Mae had watched from this porch with the small bowl of pecans she would shell through the hour. Eldridge had never been the man who did the big displays. Eldridge had been the man who did three or four small ones, slowly, with a cigar in his mouth, and had come back to the porch afterward to sit beside his wife and watch the neighborhood's larger ones with his hand on her knee.

Mama Tate thought, in the small private chair she was sitting in tonight, that she had not allowed herself to think about Eldridge and the Fourth since he had gone.

She thought about him now.

She let herself think about him.

She thought about his hand on her knee. She thought about the small smell of the cigar. She thought about the year — 1979, maybe? — when he had come back from the lot with his jacket on fire at the sleeve, and had, without comment, beaten it out against the porch railing, and had sat back down, and had said, Ola Mae, that was close, and she had laughed so hard she had lost the pecan in her hand, and he had — she remembered it now, sharply, the small specific memory rising undiluted — he had leaned over and kissed her on the temple and had said, You are my Fourth of July, baby. The rest of this is just loud.

She closed her eyes for a second. She let herself feel the memory.

She opened them.

The sky over Saratoga flashed green.

Naomi, on Marcus's lap, said green, Mother Tate, as if Mama Tate might not have seen it.

"I see it, baby."

"That's my color."

"It is a fine color, Naomi."

"Mr. Marcus."

"Yes, Naomi."

"Do you have a color?"

"I think blue."

"Yvonne?"

"I like the gold ones, baby."

"Grandma?"

"Red, baby. I have always liked red."

"Grandpa?"

"All of them, baby. I do not play favorites."

Naomi laughed. "Grandpa. That's not an answer."

"I know, baby. I am bad at that game."

The small chorus of laughter was the chorus a family makes on a porch when the shape of the family is being honored quietly by the act of being in the shape.

Mama Tate, in her chair, let her eyes go back to the sky.

Eldridge, she said, without words, in the small interior place she had been speaking to him from for eighteen years. You would have liked it tonight. Marcus is home. Yvonne is beside me. Carl is in the chair. Tiana is on the boards. The Hightowers are on the bench. The little girl is on a lap. The sky is full. The Lord has been the Lord. I did not expect another Fourth with this many people on the porch. He gave me one. Thank Him for me. I will thank Him myself before I sleep, but you tell Him too, from your side. The work has been good.

She paused.

I will be there with you in my own time, baby. Not yet. The Lord has more for me to do. But not long either. I am tired. I have been thinking about you more. I used to think about you most in the mornings. Now I am thinking about you in the evenings. The evening is the harder time. The evening feels like the way it felt before you went. I have been telling the Lord that I would like, if He is arranging things and He has room in the arrangement, to go the way you went — not the heart, not that — but clean. Quick at the end, after the slow. You hear what I am asking. You ask on my behalf.

She paused again.

But not yet, baby. Not yet. Naomi is on the porch. I have more to do.

She opened her eyes.

The sky over Saratoga flashed white, then red, then white again.

Naomi fell asleep on Marcus's lap at eight thirty-seven.

She fell asleep in the small full way of a tired four-year-old at the end of a big day, with her hand in a small fist against Marcus's shoulder and the small red sneakers hanging down. Marcus did not move for a long time. Marcus had not, Mama Tate suspected, held his daughter asleep before. She watched his face. She watched the small soft change the holding put on it.

Sheryl, on the bench, wiped her eyes.

At nine they decided to go inside. Sheryl and Reggie would take Naomi home — Naomi would wake briefly in the car seat and then sleep the rest of the way, as four-year-olds do — and they would come back in the morning for breakfast because Mama Tate had insisted.

Marcus carried her carefully to the car seat. He buckled her in. He closed the door. He stood at the driver's side for a moment talking low with Reggie. Then he came back up the porch and sat down next to Mama Tate on the boards.

"Mama Tate."

"Yes, baby."

"That was the best day I have had in a long time."

"I know, baby."

"Thank you for making the day. You are the one who made it. You do not always see that. The family gathers around where you are. The day was where you were. That is the gift."

"Marcus."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You are going to be the man who makes the day in the next generation. You have been watching it done your whole life. You have the hands for it. You will make your own."

He nodded.

He did not, for a moment, speak.

After a while he said: "Mama. You tired?"

"I am. Tiana and Yvonne will clean the kitchen. You go in with Carl. Watch the last of the fireworks on the porch if you want. I am going to sit here for one more minute. Then I am going to bed."

"Yes, ma'am."

He kissed her temple. He went inside.

The porch quieted.

Mama Tate sat alone in the wicker chair.

The sky over Saratoga was still going, in the small late bursts of the last of the neighborhood's displays. A child somewhere two blocks away was laughing at something Mama Tate could not see. A small wind moved through the pecan tree. The July heat was kind tonight — not the heat of August, not yet — and she sat in the wicker chair in her Saturday dress and her small gold cross with her hand on the arm of the chair Eldridge had bought her.

She closed her eyes.

Lord. Thank You for the afternoon. Thank You for the porch full. Thank You for the child on the lap. Thank You for the husband I have been missing tonight in a specific way. Thank You for every soul at this porch today and every soul on the other side of the cloud that was with us anyway. I am tired. Take me to bed. Get me up tomorrow if You want me up tomorrow. If not, You know. The keeping is in good hands. The work is in good hands. The family is in good hands. Whatever You do with the next hours, I am Yours.

She opened her eyes.

The last firework of the evening — a green burst, Naomi's color — flashed over Saratoga and faded.

Mama Tate rose, slowly, from the wicker chair. Her hips made their announcement. She acknowledged them. She went inside. Yvonne and Tiana were in the kitchen finishing the last of the dishes. Marcus and Carl were in the front room watching the tail end of a ball game. The screen door closed.

She walked to her bedroom. She took off her dress. She hung it on the hook. She put on her nightgown. She sat on the edge of the bed. She closed her eyes.

She said, once more, the small interior thing:

Eldridge. Good night, baby. I thought about you more than usual today. You were here. The whole porch felt you. The Lord let me feel you. I am going to sleep now. You keep watching.

She lay down.

She slept.

The house held her. The others, in the front room and the kitchen and the spare rooms, settled into the small late Saturday quiet of a house that had had a good day and knew it. Outside, the last of the neighborhood's fireworks went off over Saratoga, then over Park, then stopped, and the sky went back to the summer stars.

The keeping continued.

The Lord was the Lord.

The Fourth of July — her sixty-fifth Fourth on Park Avenue, her eighteenth Fourth without Eldridge, her first Fourth with Naomi — had been a good one.

She did not, in her sleep, know yet that it would be her last.

The long evening had begun. It was still early in the evening. The Lord, who had arranged the afternoon, would arrange the next ones too, in His time, at His pace, with the same quiet care He had been using in her kitchen since 1974.

She slept.