Burning Blue

Yellow and Blue (1915) by Charles Demuth. Image via Artvee.

Here’s a story Gram used to tell me: Once upon a time there were two sisters who’d married two brothers and lived across the street from one another. Each morning they rose early to work in their gardens, and in the evenings, they sat out on their porches, put their feet up, and hollered across the road to each other. One day a man with a crooked cane came limping down the road. He walked slow, breathed heavy, and kept his head down to shade himself from the setting sun. The sisters were so caught up in their talk that they didn’t see him until he was nearly upon them. Had they known the man, they would have spoken, but neither had ever seen him before.

After, the one sister called across the road to the other and said: In all my life I ain’t never seen a man so black.

The other sister bucked her eyes and said: Black? The man I saw come down through here was white.

And when the one sister said this, the other cocked her head. She’d known her sister to tell a lie now and then but never one so bold.

You must think I’m some kind of fool.

I didn’t before, her sister replied, but I sure do now.

At this, the one sister huffed. She’d always suspected her sister thought she was smarter than her, and now she’d finally admitted it. She stood, turned her back in anger, and walked into her house. It was then that the man came back down the road walking the other way. The sister who’d stayed outside gasped. Where before she had seen white, now she saw black.

The man stopped, looked the woman over, and decided to himself that something about the way she stood there looking wide-eyed at him was sweet. He limped over to her fence post and rested his crooked cane against it.

The man tipped his hat and said: Now ain’t you something to see.

The woman smiled up at the man, for he was head and shoulders taller than her, and said: I might be.

Now here the story changes based on what kind of mood Gram is in when she tells it. Sometimes the man lies his way into the woman’s house, claims to be sorely in need of her facilities. The version I like best is the one where the woman just invites him in. But in the one I’m telling you, they don’t do nothing more than stand outside talking.

After, the man tipped his hat to her again and walked on, leaving her surprised at both her words and his. How could a man talk to a woman like that — a married woman, no less — make her feel all kinds of ways, and then just pick up and leave like it didn’t mean anything?

She was getting ready to cross the road and apologize to her sister when she saw the man’s crooked cane lying on the ground. She picked it up: the handle was still warm with his touch, and when she put it to her nose, it smelled like linseed oil and him. The man never came back for his cane, and the woman spent the rest of her life wide-nosed, lusting after his scent.

The moral of the story