Sunday was the only day that Tommy Lee had legs. Every other day of the week he had a faded red 1979 Cutlass Supreme coupe, that somebody had outfitted with levers attached to the pedals, so he could drive himself around. He’d guide the bumping machine with the same tenacity as the men in the log trucks, turn toward the barn, and park off to the side in the grass. In 1983, it was the newest vehicle to ever come on our property. Tommy would swing the big steel door open. The window was always down because back then it was always summer and always hot in Alabama. A pause, followed by one of his crusted, callous hands grasping the thick window seal as if to choke a man. His other hand would leverage his upper half against the velvet interior and lift himself up and onto the ground. His head looked like a child bobbing out of a hayloft as he popped up and down. He’d settle over his nubs and use those big black arms of his like crutches and crawl across the yard to go watch Daddy change out the oil in the tractor. Hank, the youngest of my two brothers, always noticed him first.
“Tommy Lee, Tommy Lee is here, I gotta go,” he’d say.
Whatever we were doing came to a sudden halt as we all raced down the big hill separating our house from the barn, already fighting over who would get to sit in the driver’s seat first, pretending to work the levers to imitate Tommy’s movements. We were in awe of Tommy Lee. We couldn’t understand why a man with that kind of skill would even need legs. But there was a woman he wanted to impress at church, so he and daddy had hatched a plan.
Tommy Lee was sitting back on a decayed broken up hay bale the day it all came together, while holding in his hand a beer that he had one of us kids fetch for him from the cooler. His blue work pants matched Daddy’s except they were cut short and unhemmed to match where his legs ended, just above the knee about mid-thigh.
“Well, what you reckon a set of them things’ll run you?” Daddy asked.
“I bet we could sell to Locke Pierce in those trailers over behind the crossroads. He’s always looking for liquor to go with those mangy whores he’s dealing in.”
Tommy Lee’s laugh curdled up through the rafters of the barn in agreement.
So, Tommy Lee rounded up some copper pipe and Daddy managed to get a few bags of corn out of an old crib behind Grandaddy’s barn and they went to work down on the creek making moonshine. They only had to sell to the that no-good Locke Pierce to get enough money so Tommy Lee could buy him a pair of legs from the pharmacy in town. I’m pretty sure they drank the rest. Once they got the money together, they rode into town in Daddy’s truck, Tommy Lee in the passenger seat. Cadillacs pulling into the pharmacy behind them saw two heads, one black and one white separated by a full gunrack mounted inside the back window. Tommy Lee stayed in the truck. Daddy went in with the cash and did the talking. The only legs they sold were white colored. Black legs were going to cost more, and they would have to special order them. So, Tommy Lee just wore dress pants over them. Daddy said once those women got sight of Tommy Lee upright, they were all over him. He used to joke that more than one day a week with those legs was more than the old boy could handle.
“Oh hush,” Mama would scold “The kids can hear you.”
Tommy Lee wasn’t born with no legs. He was a teenager when the accident happened. He was driving the tractor bushhogging the pasture below his house and he ran up on a stump. The tractor turned on its side and Tommy fell backwards and got caught under the blade. The bush hog rolled over him and severed both legs just above the knee.
Nobody really talked about how they saved Tommy Lee from bleeding to death. His mama was working for my Granny at the time and saw it all happen out the kitchen window. Grandaddy rushed down to him in the truck and tied off his legs with rope until they got him to the hospital. Daddy was at school when it happened. Before that day, Daddy and Tommy Lee were thick as thieves fishing and frog gigging together. As little boys they climbed trees and slid down red earthen banks on their butts, pretending they were sledding in the snow of an Alabama summer day. Of course, they didn’t go to school together, this was the 50’s after all, but they hung out enough to find mischief well into adulthood. In the 80’s this included making and selling moonshine to buy a set of prosthetic legs so Tommy Lee could get laid.
One Sunday afternoon, Jacob, Hank, and I were up by Tommy Lee’s house playing on the round bales Daddy had stored under the oak trees. His was one of three ramshackle shacks with a rusted tin roof and creosote slat siding that had faded to the color of a canebrake rattler. Daddy and Tommy Lee were somewhere down by the creek fishing and drinking, I suspect Daddy was supposed to be watching us. We were bouncing from bail to bail trying to see who could make it all the way up and over the pyramid of rolled alfalfa without slipping down in between the bails and getting stuck. But of course, getting stuck was the funnest part.
It was a sunny fall day, and we had our shoes off. The hay was just a shade lighter than the gold and yellow leaves falling around us. I looked up and saw that set of white legs without a torso propped up against that ratty old sofa they had on the porch and started screaming. I was sure those black folks had sawed some white man in half. The boys were trying to calm me down yelling,
“It’s just Tommy Lee’s legs, it’s just Tommy Lee’s legs.”
By then Tommy Lee’s mama had come out on the porch to see what all the commotion was and just shook her head and went back inside, apparently not wanting to fool with us on her day off. Somehow my brothers got me calmed down and we walked home through the pasture, stopping to jump on the back of Eli, the sentinel mule we had to keep watch over the calves. By the time we got home I had forgotten all about Tommy Lee and those legs.
Hank and Jacob went from watching Daddy farm to driving the tractors themselves. Their lives moved with the farm seasons- hay, calving, hog killing, and breeding. I never found a place in that world as a young woman, so it was easy to leave it all for college when the opportunity came. I got a scholarship to study liberal arts in Birmingham and I took it. Nobody blamed me for taking off. It was as proud a moment for Mama and Daddy as when Jacob bought that first tractor. I studied all the liberal arts they had and fell quickly into working with poor people in Atlanta doing legal aid. My brother’s called me a bleeding heart, and we razzed each other every time I made the trip home, which became less and less. I helped people facing eviction, dealt with workers’ rights and eventually went to law school to fight the good fight head on.
One night, after spending a week arguing in court with a blue eyed lawyer whose accent was as bad as mine, he asked me out for bourbon at Johnny’s Roadhouse. Nine months later we were engaged. Mama put on the dog. Daddy put on a tux. They rented a big tent up on the hill in the middle of the pasture with music and food. Everybody in the county came out. I was whirling around in my ivory couture giving hugs and kisses to family, old friends, and work friends when I saw Tommy Lee walking towards me. He and daddy didn’t see much of each other since Daddy’s heart trouble kept him at the house. Tommy was spruced up in a pair of tan britches and a mustard short sleeved shirt with a tie. He had a cane and was wearing those legs and grinning. I left my rounds to meet him on the grass and gave him a big hug. My forehead brushed the scruff of his cheek, and I picked up the scent of Aqua Velva.
“What you be living in Atlanta and ain’t got no more black friends than that? I was hoping to get lucky”
He pointed his cane to a sparce round table with two sets of black couples, co-workers of mine and my husband’s. They were flanking a couple of white ACLU lawyers, one of my bridesmaids and her date.
“You know none of them Atlanta women are good enough for you, Tommy Lee,” I quipped.
But I immediately knew what he was asking. I looked around this gallant sea of celebration and realized he was right. I swallowed his scrutiny of my party. I looked back at Tommy Lee. His arms were thinner and his hair greying. I had never noticed what a bright smile and eye twinkle he had. I could still smell his aftershave on my skin. Granny and Grandaddy had long since died but Tommy Lee and those legs were still part of the landscape, a reminder of a boy doing what should have been a man’s work.
I recalled the summer Jacob’s dog, Mose died. We all went to the creek to bury him, but the ground was too hard to dig the hole. Daddy couldn’t get the shovel any deeper than a few inches. He went and got Tommy Lee to bring the backhoe over and we all watched while Tommy hollowed out the red earth for a grave. When he was done, Mama, Daddy, Hank, Jacob and I all stood and had a funeral for Mose. Tommy stayed up on the backhoe with sweat beading on his face and back, the sun beating down. That day, I thought Tommy Lee didn’t want to have to bother the treacherous climb on and off the machine to join us for our family ritual.
But now I knew, that’s not why he stayed on the machine. Tommy Lee was not our family. He was our responsibility. He resided in the gap between the generations of land that rooted us to this place. He never came to our door. He never sat at our table. I could see Tommy Lee in the barn with Daddy. Parking his car in the grass with the workers. I saw Daddy wave to him before coming up to the house to join us, Tommy Lee never followed.
It was getting dusk, and the sky was pinkening over the hill where my wedding was perched. The fireflies were starting to come out. Tommy Lee looked at the table of lawyers like he might go join them. I watched him walk the perimeter of the crowd. His aged body moving slowly, the arthritis in his torso hitching his movements to a plodding pace. He pointed at someone; it was my brother Jacob. I watched as Jacob stopped what he was doing and immediately went to retrieve a golf cart. I wished Tommy Lee would stay, but I knew he wouldn’t. I watched Jacob settle the old man into the front seat. With a beer balanced in his lap, my brother drove Tommy Lee down the hill to his home. He’d likely park in the swept dirt front of the old house, help Tommy Lee out of the golf cart. He might offer to help him up those loose steps, but Tommy Lee would motion him away.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it.” Jacob would say.
And Tommy Lee would climb those steps himself, just like he has done all his life, to the inside of a house that I will never see.