The Sound of Molasses

Barbara Fryrear

   Uncle Homer poured coffee from the dark blue enamel pot that sat at the back of the wood stove. The coffee was black and steamy in his thick white cup. Big Mama wiped her hand on her apron and poured herself a cup, too. Then Big Mama cut generous slices of fatback with the butcher knife on the board. She poked up the fire and fried the bacon, turning it from time to time with a wood-handled fork as it crackled and sputtered and popped in the skillet. When the bacon was yellow-clear and crisp and smelling just right, Big Mama lifted it out onto a paper to drain. Then she took a pan of biscuits from the warming oven by the stovepipe and laid it on a folded dishtowel on the kitchen table.
   After she uncovered the cut-glass butter bowl and set the molasses pitcher out, she stood back, hands on hips and asked, "What'll it be, Suzy Q?"
   Suzy Q chose butter and molasses.
   Uncle Homer said nothing as he gulped the biscuit and bacon and slurped his coffee. He snuffled as he chewed, and there was a biscuit crumb riding up and down on his mustache. Suzy Q watched it, fascinated, till he glared at her and complained.
   "Now what's the matter with you? Never see a real working man eat breakfast before?"
   She quickly shifted her eyes to the saucer of dark molasses and yellow butter. When she mashed them carefully with her fork and then stirred like Big Mama mixing a butter cake, it blended into a pale honey color. She broke a biscuit and sopped it in the mixture. The sweet goo ran down her wrist as she tried to move it from the saucer to her mouth. Pretty soon the oilcloth got sticky all around her saucer. One blob landed on the linoleum rug. When she got down from the chair and patted her bare foot in it, it made a sort of smacking sound. Like Mama blowing a kiss goodbye.
   "Better bring in another slab of bacon, son. This one is getting thin," Big Mama said as she cleared the plates into the dishpan and wiped up the mess.
   That meant a trip to the smokehouse.
   "Please, Uncle Homer, take me with you!" Suzy Q begged.
   The smokehouse was off limits to her. It was dark and windowless and scary. There it sat, just off the path to the privy. She passed it every day because she was using the privy all by herself now. Big Mama had made Uncle Homer move the latch down so she could reach it. Soon no cold pot for her, except at night of course. But the smokehouse, even with a grown-up along, had never been allowed in all the weeks since Mama had brought her here.
   "Pu-lease, Uncle Homer . . .?"
   Big Mama nodded to Uncle Homer. He got the flashlight and muttered, "All right, Suzy Q. But you better look quick, 'cause I haven't got time for a grand tour."
   There was straw on the floor of the smokehouse. A darker place never was. It smelled of pepper and bacon fat, and something she had sniffed in the peanut loft one day when she was hiding.
   "Suzy Q, can't you see where I'm headed and stay out of my way?" Uncle Homer said, the tip of his heavy shoe nudging her bare little toe.
   Suzy Q couldn't see what Uncle Homer saw. He was tall as a bois d'arc tree, and she had to stand tiptoe just to watch when Big Mama rolled the biscuit dough. She jerked her foot away, fast as she jerked her hand when she tried to steal an egg from the old broody hen.
   "Whu-oh!" Uncle Homer said. "I thought I smelled a rat! And sure 'nough."
   The rats were pink and blind, all five of them. They looked like a bunch of primroses in his big hand, almost transparent in the flashlight beam. She loved them instantly.
   "Let me hold them, pu-lease, Uncle Homer!" she begged, dancing in the old straw. Slaughtered pigs, gray from salt-and-pepper curing, hung close around them like ghosts.
   "Can't have these growing up and eating our dinner."
   He ignored her as he latched the door and headed for the house. She had to trot to keep up.
   "Look what I found," he said, showing the baby rats to Big Mama. "Old Kitty won't go hungry tonight."
   Panic struck Suzy Q. "Pu-leeeease, don't let him feed them to the cat!! Let me have them! Let me have them! Pu-leeeeeease!"
   "Oh, all right," Big Mama conceded. "But just for awhile. Go find a soft scrap from the scrap box." Then she turned to Uncle Homer. "You better set a trap, son, for the mama."
   "No use. She probably wouldn't come back for those babies anyway, after strangers have handled 'em," Uncle Homer grumbled, and headed back out to the smokehouse.
   Big Mama lined an empty matchbox with the piece of blue gingham Suzy Q brought her. It matched her apron. She laid the baby rats in it and handed the treasure to Suzy Q.
   "Now don't you go getting attached to these, 'cause they can’t stay. We can't go around having grown rats in the house. Nothing would be safe. They're yours for a while. Just don't go getting attached to them now."
   They were so enchanting. Little bulgy places instead of eyes. All curled up in their small gingham crib. Her finger touched one tentatively. It felt tender and silky smooth like the piece of moleskin on the medicine shelf. She lay, tummy down, on the Sunbonnet Girl quilt on her bed so she could study them by morning window-light. They slept all snugged up together like the curls of wood shavings Uncle Homer made when he whittled. A piece of broomstick propped the window open to catch any chance breeze. The grown-ups' voices carried clear on the warm air, between the pulses of the locusts.
   " . . . Enough mouths . . . already."
   "Aw, now, Homer, she doesn’t eat much . . . "
   "Ag's a big girl . . . her problems. . . . gonna grow up . . . running home to Mama?"
   " . . . Bad-mouthing your sister . . . I'll not hear any more now." Big Mama's voice got lower. ". . . west field . . .?"
   Homer's voice fell lower still. Suzy Q could scarcely hear it. “ . . . Tomorrow . . . no rain . . . no use . . . "
   She heard the thump and slosh of the churn on the screen porch. Usually she watched and waved the flies away for Big Mama. But today she avoided that important job so she would have more time to tend her new charges. She couldn't get enough of them. She drank in every teensy bit of their tiny beings, down to the way their tails tucked under their pink bottoms and up between their tiny legs. She was lost in an ecstasy of admiration.
   "I love you forever," she whispered into the gingham-lined matchbox. "My very own babies."
   She carried them out onto the east porch and sat in the sun, swinging her legs off its weathered edge by the stacked-rock foundation. The cat woke from a nap and started rubbing his sorry gray-striped hide against her bare leg.
   "Go away, ol' Kitty!" she hissed. "You can't have my babies!"
   Suzy Q gathered the box close to her chest, scrambled quickly through the screen door into the parlor, and hitched herself up onto the big rocking chair. The seat felt cool on the backs of her legs. She pulled a corner of cloth over her sleeping babies. Then she bent forward and pushed hard with her ankles and calves till the old chair began slowly to rock. In a high breathy voice she sang:
   "Frog he went a-courtin' an' he did ride, Ah Hum! Ah Hum!
   "Frog went-courtin' an' he did ride, sword and pistol by his side, Ah Hum!"
   (Mama would be so proud! She remembered all the words, just like Mama sang them to her, right down to the oh so bitter end!)
   "He went right in an' took her on his knee, Ah Hum! Ah Hum!
   "An he said, 'Miss Mouse, will you marry me?' Ah Hum!"
   She sang the whole wedding party. Didn't miss one—lady bug, bumble-bee, Parson Rook, Ah Hum! The owl, the little red ant, Ah Hum! The fly, the little brown snake, that pesky little black dog . . .
   The big old chair rumbled and squeaked out of time to her song.
   ". . . Ah Hum!
   "Next came in was an ol' tomcat,
   "Swallowed Miss Mouse as slick as a ra . . . Uh Oh!"
   She cast a mother's eye into the crib. They didn't seem too upset. She changed her tune:
   "Three blind mice, three blind mice—" She should have started with "Five blind rats," but her course was set now.
   "They all ran after the farmer's wife,
   "Who cut off their —"
   She hugged her precious ones and scrambled down out of that chair and up the narrow stair to the spare room. She clambered onto an old trunk and contemplated the infants again. They were beginning to squirm. She picked one up and examined it.
   The July heat made a fever in the house downstairs. There was more breeze up here. With no rain in sight, Big Mama had opened the windows. "Better draft," she explained.
   Uncle Homer's voice sounded peeved. "Waste of good chicken."
   Heavy brogans clumped across the floor and a screen door squeaked and banged. Soon a flurry of excitement rose from the chicken yard. Squawking and flopping resounded on the summer air. Then quiet.
   "I'll be needing more wood for the stove, son. Can't stop plucking just now if I'm to have this ready in time."
   "Dang it, Mama!" Uncle Homer was hollering from the yard. "We got no use for more babies around here! Can't you understand? You raised your babies already. You got to learn to stand up for yourself more, Mama. It just isn't right."
   The blunt little mouths made sucking noises, and nuzzled the gingham. The windmill creaked and clanged and sighed. She heard the crack of axe splitting wood.
   "Ag’ll be back when she gets on her feet."
   "You're living in a dream world."
   "Maybe I am, son. Maybe I am. But —"
   The rats smelled kind of like turnips cooking. The odor cloyed. They became more insistent in their squirming and sucking. They were not enchanting at all, but alien little beings whose needs pulled at her in a mysterious unwelcome way.
   "You know I'm right, Mama."
   "Listen here, Homer." Big Mama's voice was loud and stern now—and a little scary. "I'm tired of listening to your griping! What she eats should be no concern of yours. She's got at least as much place here as that scrawny old cat there! I'll hear no more about it."
   The screen door slammed shut. Only the axe broke the ensuing silence with its rhythmic thwacks.
   Suzy Q put the squirmy thing back in the box and sat staring out the window. Big Mama's garden lay bleached by the noonday sun, the tomato plants turned scraggly like tattered bits of khaki, the tan leaves half-concealing the last of the red-orange crop. The cornstalks and okra stood straight and full of fruit in the Texas heat. Locusts screamed in unison from the peach trees. She could smell the dust, and the chicken frying.
   "Suzy Q! Big Mama says come wash up for dinner!" Uncle Homer's voice came from somewhere below.
   She poked her finger into the box and one little mouth fastened on it and sucked insistently. She shuddered and pulled her hand away.
   Step by determined step, she carried her small burden at arms length down the stairs and out onto the porch. Standing on its edge, she took one of the tiny rats by its little string of a tail and held it up in the noonday sunlight. It soon ceased jerking and grew still so she could study the soft skeleton through the pink translucent flesh. The cat studied it just as intently from the dirt by the porch step.
   "Here, ol' Kitty!" She tossed the baby rat into the eager maw. The cat took one chomp with its mouth open, and bolted the bite down. He wove back and forth before her, eyes fastened on her hand. A loud purr and twitching tail bespoke his anticipation.
   "The next came in was an old tomcat, Ah Hum! Swallowed Miss Mouse as slick as a rat," she sang softly as one by one with great deliberation she picked them up, Ah Hum! and tossed them. She watched, fascinated, as the cat gulped each small pink morsel. Five gulps and the cat's dinner was done.
   "We got no use for more babies 'round here," she said firmly, laying the box down by the screen door. Big Mama could not abide carelessness.
   Then she wiped her hands on her dress, and went inside to her dinner.

* * *

Biographical Note: Barbara Fryrear’s work has been published in Windhover, Duck Soup, CCWriter, several issues of New Texas, The Texas Poetry Calendar and the first issue of Wild Plum. She received the Carl Award for poetry, and is looking for an agent for her novel about ancient Crete. She graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with honors in history from the University of Texas in Austin in 1949. Now a Life Member of the Trinity Writers’ Workshop, Barbara lives on an acre in Irving, Texas, occasionally getting up from the computer to feed the feral cats and birds, trying to keep them sorted out, and looking for her glasses. Some day she will find time to go through her grandmother’s journals and old family letters to which she has fallen heir. See also Barbara's story "Daughters of Memory."