“He could have come to Jesus but
instead he come to me.”
Those were the words that Maddie
June Stanley said that day offhandedly as I rose to leave. I had been visiting
with Maddie June all morning. We’d been talking about old times, her bringing
me up to date, since it been years since our last visit. But now it was time
for me to go. We hugged, and I began walking toward the hall when she said what
she just said. The words stopped me, and I turned in the doorway of her huge
pre-modern kitchen and stared at her. As she spoke, she began sliding a fresh
cup of hot, black coffee across the roughened, worn maple table that served as
her version of a work island. She was not one to ask, but it was clear she was
asking now. I dropped my purse off my shoulder and sat back down. This woman
who had mothered me so graciously years earlier now needed me to give her the
attention a good daughter would, though we weren’t related.
“He was 10 or so, street-weary but
road-wise,” she continued. “I cain't even imagine how that baby boy was out
there all by hisself with so many of them government agencies hunting down kids
and pickin 'em up. When I asked his name, he said Just Max. He meant it like
that–Just Max. And that day started looping me off in a new direction and ain't
never looped me back.”
Maddie June just came to life as
she talked about this boy. Her eyes twinkled like I’d never seen. She’d always
been warm-hearted, but it was like something was missing from her life. She
mothered so many people that it never occurred to me she still wanted a kid of
her own. You see, she ran a boarding house in an era when boarding houses were
remnants of western movies or what pre-dated hotels in the east ends of most
towns and cities. But Maddie June wasn't someone to be dictated to by anyone’s
conventions ‘cept her own. When her husband got crushed to death at the steel
foundry in Bessemer, just outside of Birmingham, she used the one thing she had
in this world, a rambling three-story house, and turned it into a place where
strangers entered and left as family. That’s the only frame of reference Maddie
June had—family. She was a beacon in the dark nights of many a soul, and I
suspect that’s how Just Max found her.
I never knew Maddie June’s age.
Sometimes it seemed like she just came into the world straight growed-up and
settled into the slot prepared for her. Aside from a few wrinkles and a bit
thinner hair than when we first met, she looked pretty near like she did that
day I climbed up her front stairs praying for a new beginning. She was always
forthcoming with me and everyone else for that matter. So when she started
telling me her tale about Just Max, I had no reason to disbelieve, for I too
had found this old house one drippy, cold January morning years ago. She took
me in that day and raised me up until I could go it on my own. When I moved
away, we kept in touch with yearly phone calls until this day when I finally
got to visit her after all these years.
She got back to her story. “He was
sandy-haired, skinny as a pole, with a face that was mostly eyes – big, wary-looking
brown eyes, the color of blackstrap molasses. They looked too old for such a
young'un. I 'spect he'd seen more than his share. The first meal I made 'em
disappeared like he was a hoover it got vacuumed up so fast. He weren't given
to talking like some kids his age who don't give a body a moment's peace. If he
wasn't eatin', he just stared straight ahead like he was looking into something
I couldn't see. Occasionally he'd sigh.
“I have this little room off the
backside of the kitchen here. That one there. She pointed to a renovation she'd
made since I'd lived here. It was warm in there and caught the east light each
morning making it easier to decide to give the day a chance. I could a used
that after Joshua got killed, when deciding whether to git up or not was still
an issue. Just Max looked like he too might need some help from Mother Sun to
make that choice each day, so I stuck him in there, sorta like a hen tucking
her chicks under her wings since I spend most my time in this here kitchen. You
know.
“Early on he got useful like he
knowed if he started helping me out, I'd be less likely to turf him. I think,
as I look back, being turned out was something he knew all too well. Yet, like
a young colt, being too fenced in didn't work for him neither. So I just let
him make his place in amongst mine, and Just Max and I got real comfortable.”
Maddie June stopped talking as she
lit up a cigarette, perched it on the edge of her lips and began making too
much noise with her big cleaver de-boning chickens for today’s stew, to be able
to talk. I shifted around on that stone-hard chair, trying to get my behind in
a place I might could stand it for the rest of her story. Once she didn't need
her focus on the cleaver, she blew a long stream of smoke off her last drag,
stubbed the cigarette so she’d be able to re-light it and nodded her head as if
she had been seeking agreement with herself and finally got it.
“I don't sleep far from this back
room. You know, just across the hall in what used to be, when Joshua was alive,
a workroom of sorts where he built his model ships. That foundry cast ship
parts after the war, and Joshua caught the bug. He fell in love with them big
boats even though all he ever seen was pictures of 'em. Some of his models is
still out there in the living room. He did real good work. But as I was saying,
I was close enough to Just Max's room to hear all the yelling, then crying then
yelling some more that first night he was here. It didn't surprise me. A child
that young in his position must a see'd more than he cared to about the world’s
mean side. But that first time, I only listened, nothing else, not wanting to
butt into his life juss yet. But it was scary, whatever was going on. The next
couple of nights it happened again, like he was having a discussion with
someone, him yelling, then crying and whimpering like a dog that just been
whipped. But after that first week, it all but stopped.
“The days turned into weeks and
then into months. Just Max came and went as it suited him. He always checked
with me first thing each morning, however, to see what he could help me with.
When he took on a bigger job, I'd give him a bit of money so he’d have
something in his pocket other than lint. I also found some decent clothes for
him at Salvation Army and a warm coat. Winter wasn't too far off.”
Maddie June stopped to refill my
coffee cup and hers and set a plate of fresh baked biscuits in front of me. I
was thinking of all I’d planned to do on this short holiday I was taking,
seeing a few other old friends and eating at my favorite place in Birmingham,
but I knew I was needed here. So I relaxed into what felt like was going to be
a long story.
Maddie June took a big swallow of
coffee and started again. “Can you believe it, he stayed for four years and everthing
went smooth. That boy got under my skin and into my heart like no one I ever
knowned.
“Then one day, some man, a Mr.
Jackson come to my house, flashed his credentials. He said he was looking for a
boy named Peter Stanley. The man was one of them Dick Tracy types, you know. I
thought he was going be the truant officer for I never did get that boy to go
to school. He seemed to learn what all he needed on his own. So I asked this
Mr. Jackson why he was bothering me ‘cause I didn't have no kids of my own and
no relatives 'cepting my dead husband."
“‘Would that husband have been Joshua
Stanley?’”
“Why yes sir, it would. Why you
asking? He’s been dead for years.”
“He didn't say no more that day, that Mr.
Jackson. Juss nodded his head and said something about checking his records and
that maybe he’d be back. When Just Max came in that night I mentioned that a
Mr. Jackson had been round to see me. Just Max stopped surveying the fridge
like it was the display at the automat and turned slowly to face me. Just Max
was fourteen by then but always seemed older than his years. He pulled the
chair back from the table and set down on it like he was much older."
I said to him, “Who you running
from, darlin' boy? I may be a country woman, but I seen a thing or two in my
time.” There was something a little more here than chance that Mr. Jackson come
to talk.
“Then Just Max reached across the
table to a plate of hot biscuits and bit off a chunk of steamy bread while he
thought ‘bout my question. I told him he wouldn’t be in any trouble with me, so
the truth will work best for us both. So, I asked him, ‘What do you know about
all this?’”
“He had to eat the whole biscuit afore
he felt fortified enough to say anything, or so it looked like. With his last
swallow, he sighed long and hard, blowing his breath out through lips like an
old dog. I couldn't help but smile, he was so dear to me and in a tough spot
right this moment. I sat down across from him with my coffee. He reached across
the table and took it from me, took a sip and slid it back like we were bonding
in some strange way. One of his fingers landed on mine as he returned it, and
for a moment stayed there gently petting my finger.”
By now Maddie June’s eyes were
blinking hard, tears being ever so close. In all the years I’d known her, I’d
never seen her cry. It was like she had to stand tall for all the rest of us,
only now it was just her and a few country contractors and salesmen who stayed
in this house. But the past had come to the fore and wouldn't leave without its
due.
She continued. "'I’m gonna have to
leave, Miss Maddie.’ That’s what he said.”
“No you ain't. A boy doesn't leave
his mama for no good reason.”
“There is a good reason, but I cain't
tell you. I just cain't.”
“What could possibly matter more
than what you and me have made here – a home and a family – you and me?”
Maddie June turned away when she
spoke her next few words to me. “I couldn't have knowed what he knew, what he
found impossible to tell me. I can understand it now. If only I could have
understood it then. Maybe I could have changed things. Maybe I could have got
him to stay.”
The room was so quiet when she
finished that last sentence that I could hear the tick on her old wind-up Baby
Ben. It was counting off seconds of our two lives, seconds perhaps better gone.
She turned back to me and sat
across the table much like it must have been on the day she was reliving. She
swallowed nosily and took in a big breath which she let out slowly. Then she
smiled what most would describe as the look of an angel, sweet and loving.
“You see, in a way, he was mine. My
boy. He was Peter Stanley, just like he was Just Max. He couldn't bear to see
the pain in my eyes if he was the one to tell me that. Cause he would have also
had to tell me that my beloved Joshua had a lady friend for who knows how long.
But long enough to give her Peter. I suppose when Joshua got killed, there was
no one to let her know. She must a thought he'd abandoned her, now with the
complication of a child. If she did, she didn't know him any better than I did.
For a kid was what he wanted most, and I couldn't give him one. And maybe she
pushed the boy out, if she was struggling to survive. Or maybe when Peter got a
tad older he wanted to know his Dad and set out to find him. I should have
cottoned on to something when I found one of Josh's model ships in Just Max's
room. The boy told me at the time he loved big ships, but I never put two and
two together.
“It's hurtful to find out someone
you trusted betrayed you. But there's something much worse. To lose a child.
Something in me knew he was more than just another stray, only I never stopped
to listen. Since I wasn't one for religion, I didn't set to praying for his
return. Stead I juss kept sending out love, love so real that it might wrap
round him and keep him safe…and maybe, juss maybe bring him home someday.”
“How long's it been, Maddie June?”
“Ten years now. He'd be
twenty-four.”
“Why didn't you ask Mr. Jackson to
find him? He did once before.”
“No, that just wouldn't have been
right. If he comes, I want him here of his own accord. When he gits a bit
older, he'll realize, one way or another, that people get through the hard
spots. That they survive, and when he does, Just Max will be climbing up those
stairs once again, only this time as a young man, handsome as ever I'm sure,
and wiser. I just keep my sign up outside as I always have, my beacon. You
remember that. Only I added a bit to it a while back.”
The conversation had ended at that
point. I knew Maddie June was better for having been able to tell that tale to
someone she knew would care. The little room off the kitchen was in shadows now
as the afternoon sun lit the other side of the house through the tall library
windows in the front drawing room. She saw me to the door, hugged me like I was
still that child of year's past and kissed my cheek. Maddie June was a blessing
to this earth.
As I climbed down the steep set of
stairs that descended to the street, I turned and read the sign that had been
hanging there for years. The paint was faded except for a new line that had
been added to the bottom which I'd missed when I arrived. It now read:
Maddie
June's Boarding House
Y’all
welcome here,
especially
you, Just Max.
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