Wind and Its Vectors

Wind from the southwest caught a corner of the barn, raising its voice. Delivering death, was how Zion Kinion heard it, but that was too much to lay on any wind. January in Southside. High lonesome was how winter wind was going to sound. Ratchet in hand, he stopped to listen. He was rebuilding the engine of a 1973 Firebird. The car was up on blocks. He had seen it advertised and driven to Bristol with a trailer intending to pay the owner his asking price, and did. Some day they would invite him to be in a parade. Here was the vehicle he would drive. When he was done restoring it, the Firebird would be cherry. The only question was what color it wanted to be.

He went back to the engine, phone handy on a rolling tool bench in case of a work call. He was a realtor, which gave him a flexible schedule but meant he was pretty much always on call. Then Keisha was there with a thermos of coffee. Bundled against the weather, she poured him a cup.

“You’re supposed to be sick.”

“It’s not that kind of sick, Daddy.”

She looked away, and he let it drop. His daughter was a junior at Broadhope County high school. She was filling out and began to have a womanly look. An eye and her hopes on UVA, she had been inducted into the National Honor Society. But it was in Zion’s nature to be aware, the way you were aware of the weather, of all the things that could go wrong. Drugs, deadbeats, distractions. Lately she was experimenting with her hair. To her father, it never looked the same two days running.

His phone rang. He listened to the woman on the line and told her he would come by inside the hour.

“Two things,” he told Keisha, putting away his tools.

“What?”

“Stay off your phone, and find something to make for dinner. Your momma don’t need to work all day, then come home and cook for the family, not if you’re here and can do it just fine.”

She acknowledged having heard but made no further commitment. He remembered to thank her for the coffee.

He drove his truck to what had been the Daughtry farm, outside Red Post on county road 669. Going down the drive, he appraised the property with an eye to a listing price. Two hundred and twenty acres, Mrs. Daughtry had told him on the phone. Plenty of pasture, and the fences were in good shape. So were twin facing barns, and the silo attached to one of them. The house was old and old-fashioned. Cost a lot to heat with an oil-burner. Looked like the original siding, maybe some asbestos in it, but it had been repainted white fairly recently.

Mrs. Daughtry met him at the door.

“Please come in, Mr. Kinion.”

She was in her middle seventies and shuffled a little, one foot reluctant to cooperate. A broad, open face with a beak of a nose, mobile black eyes, and the soft skin some older women seemed to grow into with their years. The white hair in a bun gave her a no-nonsense look. No makeup. She gave every indication of being a sturdy person.

He followed her through the house, which had a pleasant lemony smell, to a sunroom on the south wall. The room was paneled in pine, and the blinds were up. A couple of chairs faced out to the yard where a pair of bird feeders hung on wrought iron shepherd’s crooks. On a deal table, a pair of binoculars lay on a bird book.

“Do you know your birds, Mr. Kinion?”

“Call me Zion. I know a few. My granny knew more. Used to know the calls, too.”

“Years ago, I taught biology at the community college. One semester they gave me an ornithology course. I had to work hard to come up to snuff, enough to teach undergraduates, anyway. You can call me Abilene. When I was a little girl my daddy liked to tell people I was so pretty, the State of Texas named a city after me. Sit down, please.”

She offered him coffee; he said he had just drunk some. She was curious about him, that was obvious.

“I did some research on you,” she told him. He did not mind her blunt manner; it went with her stalwart appearance. “You are consistently in the top two or three realtors in the county, year after year.”
“I’ve been lucky.”

“I doubt luck enters into it. Your clients are Black and white about equally, the best I can make out. That is something, around here, it is really something. But you know that.”

“A good deal is a good deal. My job is to put them together.”

She shook her head. She did not find his answer acceptable; she knew he could say more. But she chose not to pursue it. She told him about her husband. Dead twelve years. At different times Minor Daughtry had grown tobacco and raised beef cattle. Growing restless, he took a gamble. He put everything they had into hogs when that seemed smart, and then the bottom fell out of the market. They were gutted.

“I’m convinced it had something to do with his death,” Abilene told Zion. “I don’t mean that he took his own life, because he surely did not. But he had the stuffing knocked out of him. I believe it weakened his resistance. First illness that came down the pike, it found him susceptible.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“The time has come for me to move.”

“Do you plan to stay in Broadhope?”

“Not a bit. I have my eye on a little town in South Carolina. On the coast. Picturesque, I think is the word. These old bones of mine want warming. I am heartily tired of Virginia winters.”

As if to make her point, the same wind that had caught the edge of Zion’s barn came around the corner of the farmhouse and moaned. When it died down, Abilene handed him the binoculars.

“Do you know the nuthatch?”

“Afraid I don’t.”

“Have a gander.”

He looked. On one of the feeders, he saw a handsome bird with a longish nose, claws gripping the wire mesh, feeding on sunflower seeds. It had a sleek and sporty look. Crisp black, white, and gray came together in a clean design of converging lines.

“I’ve heard people call that Confederate gray,” said Abilene, “but I don’t suppose that’s a word you would choose.”

“No, ma’am, it’s not. Do you have a figure in mind to list your property at?”

“I thought that was your job.”

“I find most people have a number in their heads. I’d like to walk around outside, do a little thinking, and then knock on your door again with a suggestion. That sound okay to you?”

She told him it did. For twenty minutes he wandered taking pictures with his phone. The place would definitely appeal to the Amish, who were drawn to Broadhope by the price of farmland, lower in Southside than it was up north. An Amish family with a bunch of kids would move happily into the Daughtry farmhouse, which had five bedrooms. He saw the yard full of buggies, draught horses with muscular necks in the field by the barn, milk cows grazing. A defunct way of living in America, hanging on in muddy prosperity.

He climbed the porch steps but did not have to knock. She was at the door, looking out at him with an expression he was unable, despite a lifetime of reading faces, to decipher. He told her the price at which he thought she should list her farm. She nodded, listening from a mysterious distance. She thanked him. That was it.

That evening at the dinner table he told Janet that Mrs. Abilene Daughtry wanted him to sell her property but could not bring herself to do business with a Black man. Janet did not think that was a problem.

“You don’t need her business, Zion.”

They were eating lasagna with garlic bread at the kitchen table. It was a well-appointed room painted a cheerful yellow. Like the house, the barn where Zion kept his tractor and worked on the Firebird, the rolling acres they sat on, the kitchen had eye appeal. A couple years back, the editor of a Richmond magazine, in search of a story he called New South-ish, had approached Zion about doing a photo spread and article. New Black prosperity on old land, something along those predictable lines. Janet kind of wanted to let them do the article. She was photogenic. Her skin was what you got if you heated caramel and stirred in cocoa powder. And she was proud of what they had done with the property, a labor of years; the labor of their life together. But a cautious instinct kept Zion from going along. Things being what they still were, he worried that being a story in a glossy magazine might be bad for business.

The peremptory way Janet dismissed Mrs. Daughtry, it meant she’d had a bad day at work. She had an administrative position in the clerk’s office at the county courthouse, where office politics were what they were everywhere. Walking through the door in the evening, she liked leaving it behind. Almost never talked about work. Keisha studied her mother. An increasingly adult presence in the house; something Zion was still getting used to. Alexa, younger by three years, had excused herself and gone to her room. She would be on her phone. School nights, they gave her thirty minutes of uncensored phone time. The house functioned on the honor system. It was presumed you respected the rules.

“I hate to let a good listing go,” Zion said.

“Because of the money?” Keisha wanted to know.

“That’s part of it.”

Janet told her to clear the table.

He got busy for a couple of days and Abilene Daughtry fell out of his mind. In the office in downtown Briery, Joanna Farley stopped in to say goodbye. He had sold ten pretty acres she inherited from her grandmother for more than she had expected. On the money she made she was moving to Arizona, starting what she called chapter three or chapter four of her life, depending on how you numbered previous significant events. For a little while she had thought, wrongly, that something sexual might happen between them; his temptation had been momentary. Now she showed him a picture on her phone of the guy who was picking her up at the Phoenix airport. The man wore a Stetson and had a sun-reddened face.

“We met on Facebook,” Joanna told Zion. “Under that cowboy hat he’s kind’a bald. He don’t really hide it, though, only in pictures. I mean, he ain’t pretending he’s young or anything.”

“I wish you all the luck in the world, Joanna.”

“Luck is exactly what I don’t got or am likely to get.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “I thought…”

He did not care to hear her out, but that was small on his part, it was selfish, and he told her to go on.

“I thought, you and me, Black and white… I don’t know. It was going to be cool. Like, fuck the world, this is a beautiful thing us two got going.”

Going out the door she stopped, turned back, twisted her mouth into a wry acknowledgement that she had said the wrong thing the wrong way. When she was gone Zion sat at his desk for a couple of minutes. He imagined, tried to imagine, a time, a friendship, a situation in which color did not count.

He was giving the Firebird project more time than maybe he ought to, but the work gratified him. One reason was, it brought back his father, who had been a mechanic. When he was in high school Zion spent good afternoon hours in the Briery garage where Aaron Kinion worked, hanging around with the gearheads, running errands, learning to time an engine, do a valve job; old school stuff. Once in the barn, he took a call from Abilene Daughtry.

“I’ve decided not to sell,” she told him.

“All right. Thank you for letting me know.”

What she meant was, she was not going to call on his professional services. Another realtor would list and sell the farm. So be it. Ten bucks said an Amish family snapped it up. The property was ideal for their antique needs, and they often paid in cash. The transactions were painless; no anxious waiting for a mortgage to go through, no escrow worries, no contingent sale of the buyer’s home.

Janet was right. He didn’t need the listing, or the aggravation. But there was something in Mrs. Daughtry’s voice. He did not know what to call it. Not a hesitation, or a doubt. Something different, and more specific than that. He imagined her in a retirement colony on the coast in South Carolina. An apartment with a very small patch of grass. Clean sidewalks, and a handy grocery. She would make sure she got out to stretch her legs every day, rain or shine. Likely she would take along her binoculars. Maybe they had nuthatches that far south, he had no idea.

Distress. That was what he heard in her voice. It brought out in him an urge to be helpful, her color confusions be damned. If he said anything to Janet, his wife would tell him that Abilene Daughtry was not his problem.

After the call he went to the door of the barn and stood there looking out, arms crossed on his chest. A winter afternoon not quite bleak because of the quality of the sunlight, which was inquisitive without being hostile. A mild steady wind agitated the yellow grass in the fields and in the yard, where wild onions grew erratically in clumps, begging to be mowed. The rose bushes in Janet’s garden waved, displaying their thorns, and the frost-fired leaves of the liriope bushes twitched. A line of black walnut trees that paralleled a fence row shed branches the way they did every winter, as if they had so many they could afford to be careless. What he saw gave him a rooted sense. Home, and the particulars of home. There was a reason he sold real estate.

The next day he was in the office filling out papers for a listing in Pamplin when Keisha called. Not something that happened. When she needed to communicate, which was seldom, she texted.

“What’s wrong?”

“Will you come pick me up?”
“At school?”

“Yes.”

He resisted the urge to interrogate her. Drove to the high school, saw her on the sidewalk in front of the double doors of the front entrance, her collar turned up against the cold. She looked away as he approached and slowed down. He came to a stop. She got in. Looked at him wondering how to give him her news, which must be bad.

“What happened, Keisha?”

“I’m suspended.”

“How come?”

“This boy and I…”

She was struggling to speak, and he drove away from the scene of the crime. At the McDonald’s, he took his place in the drive-through line and ordered a Coke for both of them. Parked in the lot. His soda tasted bitter.

She and a boy, a senior, had been caught smoking a spliff out behind some sheds where athletic equipment was stored.

“What’s his name?”

“He goes by Mr. Beats.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“William. William Hunley. Does Momma have to know? I can fix it, Daddy. It was a mistake. A stupid mistake. But I can fix it. You know I can, and I will.”

“Your mother and I, you know how we operate. You’re not going to disrespect her by hiding this from her, and neither am I.”

She exhaled, nodded. She had known his answer before she asked the question. Zion did not allow himself to feel the slightest bit of satisfaction that she had called him, not Janet.

“What else aren’t you telling me?”

“He’s not my boyfriend, if that’s what you mean. We’re not having sex. We hang together, that’s all. He’s smart and he’s funny and I think it’s okay to have a good time sometimes. Mr. Beats makes me laugh.”

Her teenagerly contempt, its breathtaking casualness, could have done it, snapped the cord of restraint that was holding back his anger. He did not let it. His built-in pessimism had certain advantages. It allowed him to visualize with piercing clarity some of the ways he could make a bad situation worse. All he had to do was behave as a pissed off father, standing on his parental prerogatives.

He drove her home. On the way, he asked her to lay out her plan to fix things, step by step. She was a smart kid and had her mother’s practicality, her father’s common sense. He knew she would reach the point where she recognized there must be a meeting with the school administrators, attended by Janet and Zion. At the meeting, they would come to an agreement to superintend their daughter in a way that had not, until now, seemed necessary. Consequences. The honor system had been breached. Keisha would see that.

Dinner was hard on her, and just as hard on Zion. Janet did not take the news calmly. Her eyes were red and swollen from anger, and Keisha’s from the tears of mortification.

Alexa was thrilled by her sister’s transgression. She turned to her father and asked him, “Did you ever smoke marijuana, Daddy?”

He told her to go to her room. Hearing danger behind his quiet words, she stood and left the table with a show of meek obedience.

The evening was long; long. The January wind had shifted vectors and came at the house from the north, delivering not death but disappointment. All the things that could go wrong. Many did.

In the morning, Zion woke uncharacteristically late. He lay in bed listening to Janet and Keisha talking in the kitchen. Their voices were intimate, recognizing and naming things nobody else was going to know about. Mother and daughter. It was not a conversation that could be interrupted. He read the news on his phone for twenty minutes until he judged it was okay to go downstairs.

After breakfast he drove to the office. Strictly speaking he did not really need to maintain an office in Briery. With his phone and a computer at home he could manage just about anything that came up. But there were people who trusted the solidity of an office building. They would be leery of dealing with a realtor who didn’t keep one, see him as not quite legitimate. Also, it was good, sometimes, to have a place to go. He sat at his desk for a few minutes. He thought about his father, about the Firebird, and Keisha’s plan to rehabilitate herself. She would do it, get back in the UVA track. He chose not to think about Mr. Beats.

A text came in from Joanna Farley. She was in Phoenix. The man in the Stetson had failed to show.

He was writing an email to a woman from Northern Virginia who had inquired about a property Zion had listed ten months ago and been unable to move, when his phone rang.

“Zion Kinion?”

“Yes.”

“This is Abilene Daughtry. I fell. I think I’ve hurt myself. Can you come out?”

“Are you okay? Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

“Just come yourself. You remember that back pasture you walked out to? It’s fenced, but the gate is not locked. I’m out by the creek. I think you’d better come in your truck. You’ll see me.”

He drove ten miles over the speed limit and reached her farm in thirty minutes, wondering whether he ought to overrule her and call an ambulance. Decided not to. The temperature had moderated, and the earth was softer than it had been. There was mud under the grass, and he had to put the truck in four-wheel drive in order not to fishtail.

She was sitting on the bank of her creek wearing what used to be called a car coat. Her head was wrapped in a dark red scarf against the wind. Her left leg was bent at an ugly angle. She looked at him as if wondering how it was that he had shown up, just when she needed a hand.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. I blacked out for a second, and then I must have fallen. My ankle might be broken. Left foot. It hurts something fierce.”

“If I call an ambulance, they’ll be able to do more for you than I can.”

“I don’t want an ambulance. Help me get up.”

Not an easy thing, getting her on her feet, helping her hop and hobble to the truck. He held her up, and she put her weight on him. The truck was high off the ground, a Ford F-150, and he had to lift her up into the cab the way you lifted a child. He drove back across the field, going slowly so as not to jostle her because the up-and-down motion hurt. At the house, he stopped.

“Is there somebody I can call? A son or daughter?”

“Our children moved away years ago.”

“I could take you to the E.R. in Briery.”

“In the house, in the sideboard, it’s a bottle of rum.”

“You want a drink?”

“Just bring it. And two glasses.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

He found the bottle, and two tumblers from a cupboard in her tidy kitchen. He had no idea what was happening. Because of his temperament his curiosity was decorous and did not draw attention to itself.

In the truck, she said, “You do the honors, will you?”

He poured two minimal shots, covering the bottom of the glass and a little more. She took hers but did not drink. Held it in both hands. He had no taste for rum in the middle of the day and waited.

“Minor had a girlfriend. Sally Barksdale. She was Black. Did you know her?”

She stopped, realizing her mistake. Her husband’s girlfriend was Black. The realtor was Black. They must know each other. He gave away nothing of his reaction.

After a moment she said, “It went on for years. He thought it was a secret.”

“But you knew all the time.”

She nodded slowly. Absently sipped her rum. “Here is the odd thing. My husband had a low opinion of Black people in general, and he was not discreet. In fact, he was in the habit of coming out with nasty comments. Minor could be cutting.”

“He was a racist.”

“That’s what people would call him today. Still and all he was more than fond of Sally Barksdale. She worked at Willis Mills, back when that was a going concern. Tall and rangy, with skin so black sometimes it looked blue. Had two sons. Minor did nice things for them. Bought them fishing poles, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like he wasn’t trying to hide it.”

“Oh, he thought he was being clever all right. But he was a man. You haven’t tried the rum.”

He tried it. Knew thereafter he would associate the taste of that particular liquid fire going down his throat with Abilene Daughtry, and more.

“Sally came to Minor’s funeral. We’re Baptist. At the churchyard she stayed in the back. Very proper. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

“I wonder myself.”

His phone in its cradle on the dash lit up with a text from Keisha. He glanced at it. Momma said I have to tell you this. Mr. Beats is white. Don’t be mad. He wasn’t mad, but he could not, just then, take his attention away from the elderly woman with the broken ankle in the seat next to him, so he did not know what it was he did feel.

“Shall I tell you what I think?” he said to Abilene.

“Please do.”

“I think you felt bad because you decided you were not going to list your farm with me. It was hard for you to consider. In a funny way – I’m not saying I understand it – telling me about your husband’s girlfriend tries to make up for that.”

She looked down at her ankle. “I’m sure it’s broken.”

“We’ll go to the E.R.”

“Not yet.”

“What am I waiting for?”

“When Minor said something outrageous about Black people, I always told him to hold his tongue.”

Zion could have smoldered, could have lashed out. Chose not to. This was what he had, the ability so to choose.

“I’m awfully tired of winter weather,” Abilene told him after a few moments’ quiet between them. Her voice was wistful. It made him think of a gray scarf, shot through with silver threads. “I keep thinking about South Carolina.”

He finished his shot. She finished hers. He carried the bottle and the glasses to the porch, left them on a table between two wicker chairs from which the white paint was peeling. Got back into the truck. Drove slowly down the long driveway, then turned right onto the highway, heading toward the hospital in Briery. The tires were loud on the pavement.

Midnight blue, that was the color he was going to paint the Firebird.

Once, he went over a bump and she winced in pain.

“You okay, Abilene?”

“Promise me you’ll get top dollar for the farm,” she said.

He promised.