The Burning Bush: An Alabama Gothic

Ruthie Hurt, 1934

          There was a slop jar under the bed in the front room where him and Mama slept, but Papa wouldn't use it even when he got on in years and had to go at night. By then I was the only one at home, folks wondering if I'd be an old maid, but I didn't care. I liked the old place. 

           Him and Mama kept the front room with the fire, and I slept in the room across the dogtrot where I run and duck under the featherbeds on winter nights, but it ain't bad most of the year. Except when Papa comes out out in his old boots to do his business. His loud old boots. Not to the outhouse in the dark. He wasn't touched, just didn't think fitting indoors or in the clean back yard. So he'd go through the gate out to the chicken yard, aggravating them too, I reckon, but they was used to it. And then I'd wait for him to come clomping back to bed.

So I was listening when he hollered.

It was cold, liable to frost, so I didn't get up. Pretty soon he comes clomping back, and I reckon I'll hear all about it at breakfast. After he got his grits and eggs and wished we could afford real coffee, I ask him, "Papa, what was that last night?"

"What was what, girl?"

"What you was yelling about."

"Maybe nothing," he says.

"Then how come you hollered."

"Well, it looked like something alright, I grant you that. You know that big old thorn bush back of the chicken yard, the one that puts out yellow flowers in the summer but don't do nothing else but set there and dare you to touch it. Well, last night I be dog if it wasn't on fire."

"On fire?" says Mama.

"Shining like the sun. Or moon maybe." I run out on the back porch and take a look, and when I get back, Papa says, "I know, honey. Must've been a vision. Dang thing still there big as life."

"Burning?" says Mama.

"Yessum."

"And it ain't consumed?"

"That's right."

"What'd you do, Ben?"

"Well, like Ruthie says, I hollered, but when it didn't pay me no mind, I come back to bed. It was cold. Fire was cold. Blue-like. That's right, now I recollect, like fire on the moon."

"What'd you say?"

"I hollered."

"A bad word," I told her.

"Once. Then I come in."

"You didn't talk to it?"

"Talk to a bush?"

"I swan, Ben Hurt, if you read the Good Book, maybe you'd know how to behave. You see a bush that burns and ain't consumed, a vision from the Lord like Moses on Horeb, and all you can do is holler a bad word and come back to bed? It's a judgement on me for marrying a man that can't read. If Old Jerry dies this winter and we can't plow in the spring and no money after the summer dry spell, it's a judgement that you turned your back on that burning bush."

"What you want me to do?"

"Did you take off your boots?"

"It was cold."

"Was it muddy?"

"Nome."

"Then it wouldn't kill you to pull off your boots."

"In the chicken yard.?"

  "Show a little respect, Ben."

"Stand there all night barefoot?"

"Just long nough to talk to it."

"And say what?"

"Well, for a start, ask what its name is."

"What its name is?"

"For a start," says Mama.

We live on what's left of the old Grimes place. That's what they call it, name of white folks from slavery days that had a lot more than thirty acres and one field by the creek to plow. In a big old two-story house made out of gray wood that won't never rot long as you keep a roof on it. You can see it used to be painted, and there's old, old plaster and wallpaper we patch up with clay and newspapers, and plaster on the floor upstairs in the rooms we don't use no more. The boys used to sleep up there before they left home, but I don't see how they could stand it.

When I was a little girl, an old white woman called the Widow Brantley asked us outside the store if we was the people that stayed in the old Grimes place. I can't recollect exactly what it was she told Papa, but something about why nobody'd stay in the house. Papa says the place suits us fine, and she laughs, says we best look out for haints. Papa just says much obliged, ma'am. Told us in the wagon going home old Widow Brantley loved telling stories to scare folks, but I did wonder how come the place'd been empty all those years and Papa got it dirt cheap, meaning the dirt was cheap and nothing for the house, and I did see lights up in upstairs windows sometimes, like moonlight but not always when the moon was up.

Two-three days after he hollered the bad word, Papa looks up from his eggs and grits and declares, "Laura."

"Say what?"

"That's her name."

"Whose name?"

"The bush. You told me ask its name was the next I seen it. It's Laura."

"It's a girl bush?"

"Seem like it, honey."

"That's crazy," says Mama. "The Lord ain't named Laura."

"All due respect to Moses," says Papa, "this here might be somebody else.."

Then Mama says humph like she does when she don't like what she hears, and then humph again, and we all chewed on our breakfast for a while till she found her tongue.

"What else it say?"

"Beg pardon?"

"The burning bush. It was burning?"

"Yessum."

"What else it say?"

"Well, nothing."

"You didn't ask what it wanted."

"Lands sake, I done what you told me, woman!"

Humph says Mama again.

"Reckon you'll see Laura tonight?"

Papa just raised his shoulders.

"Well, Ben Hurt, the next time you see her, if you see her, pull off your boots and ask the pore lady what she wants. Spirits don't light up a hen yard for nothing. She may need you to fetch something."

"Sho. Sho I will. Purty little thing too--"

"You seen her?"

"Well," says Papa, looking away, "not what you'd call clear as day. But it was somebody in the fire looking out at me, showing up clear enough to see she was a--a well-growed woman."

"What was she wearing?"

"If I see her again, I'll ask what she wants. Uh-huh. I'll do that for you, Mama."

That afternoon I walked all around the thorn bush. It was the same as always, sharp and twisted. A big old bush, fat at the bottom, dead limbs all in with the live ones. Pointy yellow leaves was just starting to fall after the other trees done give up. It was a mule-headed old bush leaning over me daring me to touch it, the last thing in the world from looking like a white lady.

Papa was anxious to see her again, I know, cause he clumped out three times that night, but wasn't till maybe a week later, when he was sopping ribbon cane on cornbread cause we run out of flour for biscuits, Papa looks up and says, "Well, now I know."

"Know what?"

"What she wants."

"You talked to her?"

"Uh-huh. We had us a good little talk last night. Turns out she wants me to dig her up."

"Where is she?"

"In the dirt, I reckon. Says if I dig her up and tell somebody, she'll pay me good."

"That don't make no sense."

"Well, it's what the lady said." Papa looked off and smiled. "She was right clear this time."

So he went out back with a pick and shovel and commenced chopping around the old bush, aggravating the chickens. Like I said, Papa wasn't young, but he wouldn't let me help, so it was slow going, digging around the old bush close as he could get without getting stuck. I fetched him water and sat watching, but Papa said it was man's work, even when he had to stop and cough and spit before he could dig a little more. I wondered, even if Old Jerry made it through the winter, if Papa was up to to plowing in the spring. Wondered what we'd do for money next year since everybody done lost their cotton to the drought and boll weevils and we barely made a little corn. We owned the old farm free and clear, but we'd have to go to the seed store, and after another bad year Mr. Bentley might come after the farm, haints and all.

Papa let me chop roots and dig some seeing I could get in close, and I was there the next day when it pitched over. Like I said, the old bush had a lean to it, and Papa was chopping on the other side when it cracked and rolled over at me. She didn't mean no harm. It come over slow, popping little roots, so I had time to jump back and see what done reared up in the hole.

Laura was tied up in the root ball like string on a package, a hand and half a leg maybe all that was missing. She was bare dirt-colored bones with long hair still on her skull and wrapped like a yellow rope all around her neck. She was grinning, proud  to be cut loose I reckon. And in her arms, tied up in the roots like she was, was a rusty old box. Papa and me hollered, so Mama was out there when he hit the box with the shovel and it spilled gold and silver all in the hole.

"See, Mama," says Papa. "She said she'd pay me good."

Papa figured he kept his promise to tell folks, telling Mama and me, so he counted the coins into a bucket and knocked Laura back in the hole and covered her up. The old thorn bush he poured coal oil on and burned good this time. The money he buried in coffee cans under the house, saying we'd spend just a tad at a time, but we did get real coffee and flour and shoes. Old Jerry died that winter, so we got us a young mule. Papa hired Booker down the road to whitewash the house, and this summer he came back courting. Next spring, if Papa gets his rheumatism, my Booker can plow. Right now he's fixing up the upstairs for us to live in.

This story by Bill Green appeared in Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Winter, 2016. It is part of Alabama Gothics, a cycle of tales set around Russell County, Alabama. Here's another story from the collection.

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