Strange Fruit, page 12
“You goin to keep yo hands offn him! You hear! You tetch him again count of white folks an I’ll beat you till you can’t git offn da floor. He good as anybody, you hear! Good as anybody!” Words so heavy they seemed to fall back on his own chest as he said them.
“He ain good as white folks. I got to learn him dat. I gotta do it, Ten!”
“Gawd Jesus, I hate the sight of one! Hate livin in Deen’s back yard. Told you a hundard time it’d be better in the quarters where we’d be free to do as we like. I don want ma boy brung up wid no white boy—don want none of it!”
“They’s good to us, Ten.”
“Good to us!”
“Good as they knows how to be.”
“Tell you, I hate the sight of one!” And Ten walked quickly to the mantel and picked up the blue and white glass vase that once had been in the Deens’ parlor and was now Mamie’s one fine house ornament and hurled it to the floor, smashing it into a hundred fragments. You could hear the ring of the broken pieces, clashing as they rolled on the floor.
“Lawd, Lawd,” she cried and hushed quickly, and now her hands sought her apron, twisting it in a tight knot as she stood looking at her husband.
And Ten satisfied a little, eased a little now, walked out on the shed and squatted there, staring into the dark yard.
Mamie found the broom, slowly swept the pieces into a paper and put them in her apron, followed him to the shed. “Hit’s easy to break things. Ten,” she said, “mighty easy to break things. Ain’t easy to mend em up again. Dat what I want my boy to learn early. Want him to learn early dat no matter what, white folks is always right! And you treats em always respectful.”
“It means I’m white,” Tracy whispered, “and you’re black,” eyes never leaving the shed where the two stood talking, deep shadows against the lamplighted cabin. “It means,” he went on and he felt a strange new swelling pride rising in him, “I’m always right, I reckon.”
“How come?” asked Henry dully.
“Cause I’m white—you heard Mamie!”
“Do skin make the diffunce?”
“Reckon so,” Tracy said, losing his new confidence a little, “yep, reckon it do.”
Black boy and white boy stood there in the darkness, watching the grown folks’ trouble, and slowly Henry turned and went to the cabin, and slowly Tracy went to the big yellow house.
After Ten lost his leg they moved to Baxley, for Mamie and Ten together could look after a little patch of cotton while Ten settin around in the Deens’ back yard with nothin on his mind, as Mamie said, jes got black-sad bout things and made a grumblin world for everybody. They moved to Baxley when Henry was thirteen and left him living in the Deens’ back yard. It was not easy to leave him there, for Ten was dead-set against it. Mamie made no argument, wanting only peace in her family, but she told Mrs. Deen she wished her boy could stay here where he could get a little schooling and be around folks who knows things. She made no argument with Ten, for all he would say is, “I ain leavin my boy in no white folks’ yard.” The day came for them to leave. Uncle Pete’s wagon had been borrowed to cart their baskets and the old trunk and the boxes and Mamie’s rocking-chair to the depot. Everything was piled high on it, Mamie was dressed in her good black dress, and Ten in his Sunday suit and Henry in his Sunday suit and his new shoes. Tracy was at the wagon, helping them put in the last box and suitcase. The two boys were strangely quiet as they ran back and forth, never looking at each other, lifting and loading and doing all the last things that a final leaving requires of folks. Suddenly Henry dropped the old suitcase he was lifting into the wagon, sat down on it and began to blubber; and Tracy began to cry too. Both of them like little children, with no attempt to hide their tears. Mamie was already on the wagon seat, sitting primly with her hat on, and her hands, in their black cotton gloves, folded in her lap. She looked at Ten, looked at the crying boys, looked at Ten, her placid face suddenly set in its rarely determined lines. She crawled down, pulled out the old box in which Henry’s things had been packed, unfastened a basket, pulled out two quilts, handed them to Henry. She looked at Ten again, who looked away.
“You stayin here, Henry,” she said firmly, “and you to mind Miz Deen. She to be the same as yo ma, you hear! She say somethin, you do it. You to tote in the wood, and do what she say and go to school when school takes in, come November. You to mind, you hear?” And firmly she kissed him and crawled back up to the seat of the wagon, eyed her husband sharply, turned back and waved at her son whom she had left to grow up in the Deens’ back yard.
Henry had grown up there. He did what his mother told him to do. He toted wood, he went to school when school took in come November, he made the fires; and there was plenty of time for him and Tracy to play together. Sometimes they’d go fishing, and sometimes at nights, Tracy would go out and study his lessons in the little cabin by Henry’s fireplace, to keep him company. But sometimes, if you happened to step out on the Deens’ back porch, you’d see a boy lying on his stomach in a cabin all alone, staring into the fire, mouth a little open, eyes staring into the flames, as the light flickered across a face that looked as if it had never quite belonged to anybody.
Tracy turned from the picture of Mamie smiling down upon him from the mantelpiece, and looked now at her son.
“When have you heard from Aunt Mamie?”
“Hit’s been a time.”
“When have you written?”
Henry laughed.
“You scoundrel, you haven’t written.”
“I aims to. Seem like ain never no news to tell her. Fust time some’n happens, I aims to write.”
Tracy laughed again, started toward the door. “Better be getting along.”
“Wait a minute,” Henry bounded over to a flower bed, gathered a handful of mint. “Fill yo mouf wid it. Hold it tight, den spit it out.”
Tracy took a sprig, chewed a leaf or two, left the little cabin where he had spent so much of his life.
EIGHT
Out of the back doors went the cooks home to Colored Town. Some with bundles under their arms for the family they’d left there. Toting or not toting; no one paid much mind. Slow and heavy-footed, or sashaying along, tongues darting words at every black passer-by, or silent and still—they went to the cabins rimming the town, a shadow behind Maxwell.
College Street children played under big oaks, running after lightning bugs as the dusk came on. And the few men who had lingered uptown now locked up, stopped by the post office, went south to their homes.
North of the depot, in Tom Harris’s milltown, folks sat in chairs under chinaberry trees, shifted their snuff, spat into the road, chewed slow their tobacco. Smell of sawdust and tar in the air, and smoke from the dry-kiln black against the sky.
“Well,” Mollie Echols said to the others, “who’s going to the meeting?”
“Not me,” her husband said, “not me. No goddam meeting for me. I don’t aim to listen to Tom Harris thank the Lord another time for being so good to him. How about me? Why ain’t God good to me? I say!”
“Well, I wouldn’t go taking the Lord’s name in vain just because you don’t think Tom Harris treats you right!” Mollie eased her chafed breast up a little. “You know well as me hit’s a sight worse to do that than what you’s accusin him of.”
“I don’t aim to go,” Willie said. “Shore don’t aim to. All them College Street folks with their airs and their money! No goddurned revival for me. Not if the preacher was to climb the tent pole like he done before, I’d not go. Even if he was to set up there a week, I’d not go!” And Willie’s thin angry face twisted into a grin as he spat into the road.
“I tell you, you goin to be punished for talking thataways, God will call you to account for it sure as the world!”
“He don’t mean it, Mollie,” Lewis said softly and eased the stump of his leg to the edge of the cart for a little air.
“Willie’s all time talking crazy talk about wages!”
“Call it crazy! That’s right. Call it crazy!”
“He pays you much as he pays the others, don’t he?” And Mollie shifted the weight of her two hundred pounds from one hip to the other.
“Shore he does. Exactly enough to starve on. And talking about shutting the mills down now because business is slackin a little. What we need is a union!”
“Listen at him! Ain’t he wild! Talking like them Russia folks!”
“Sometimes I’ve thought we’d do the same as him if we was in his place,” Lewis said, and lifted the other stub of leg to the edge of the cart for a cooling.
I’d shore like to be in his place,” Willie said. “That’s right. I’d shore like to have the chance to be there.” And Willie coughed and having begun, coughed on and on.
“Now see! What I tell you! Letting yourself get all upset over nothing’s brung on your old coughing spell. Ever since I knowed Willie,” Mollie sighed, “he’s been wanting something he couldn’t get. And J. L.’s goin to be just like him. Ain’t satisfied with nothin!”
Cena eased the snuff from her lower lip, let it drop to the sand. “If they warn’t so many niggers, might be folks would git more money.”
“Way they streaking north now won’t soon be no niggers.”
The older man, Lewis, was watching the smoke from the dry-kiln, letting his eyes drift with the sparks in the darkening evening. He turned, looked at the two women. “Willie and me’ll just set here and let you women folks go to the preaching. I’m sorter lazy, I reckon, don’t seem like I want to walk that far.” And Lewis smiled at his old joke as he sat there in the go-cart, legless for eight months, since he got caught in the saw belt.
“If Willie wasn’t so no-count, he’d push you down to the tent and let you hear the preaching. Hit’d do you good to hear it. The man can shore preach, he can make you see hell and torment so plain, I declare, it gives you the shivers. Preacher Dunwoodie’s got the power, if I ever heard it. He’s got the power of the Holy Ghost in him.” And Mollie called J. L. and the other younguns from the spur track and with her friend Cena started toward the tent.
In the south of town on College Street and the side streets, men slowly rose from porch chairs, saying, “Well … it’s about time for the meeting. Must be.” And waited in their cars while the women powdered their faces and freshened up a little. Then they drove up College Street, stopping now and then to pick up a neighbor.
The town quivered, a great hollow bowl, struck by its guilty conscience. Whether you came to the tent or stayed at home you could not escape the meeting. A few hardened their hearts, and others smiled uneasily saying, “This kind of thing is for the ignorant.” But only Editor Reid said boldly, “There is no God,” and even Editor Reid did not add, “There is no sin.” Men knew they had sinned and a dread of God’s anger lay upon them. Only old Brother Graves who had had the Second Blessing could say tranquilly, “I am without guilt.” And even his triumphant testimony to God’s power to rid the human heart of temptation was marred by Sister Graves’ twisting her shoulders noisily against the back of the pew as he testified.
The song had changed now to What a Friend We Have in Jesus. The pianist was jazzing the rhythm, urged on by the enthusiasm of Brother Trimble. Mill people were filling the left benches, people from College Street and the side streets hesitated, settled on the right. The two benches in the dark corner reserved for the colored folks were empty save for the Reverend Livingston. He had not been able to persuade Roseanna to come with him, though others would, when their work was done, join him and listen to the white folks’ preacher talk about the white folks’ God. And sitting there on their Jim Crow benches would sing the white folks’ songs; would go and feel good in the going, for they knew their place and humbly accepted a white God as they accepted His white children.
But some, like Bess, had not found it easy to mind their manners when the white folks invited them to gather up the crumbs from their Lord’s feast. “Reckon I’m choosy,” Bess said to Non, after Mrs. Stephenson had invited her to attend, “but when I pick a God, I’ll pick a black one, black and kinky-headed! So black,” she’d laughed but there were tears in the sound, “that He’ll scare the wits out of white folks. Some day I’m afraid I’ll blow up and say things Mama used to tell us she’d wear us out for saying. Sometimes,” she whispered to Nonnie, “I’m afraid I’ll—” she stopped, turned to her small son, who gaped at her in plaintive fascination, “Jackie, I’ve told you six times to go to bed!”
Non stood at the gate and listened. Across White Town came the singing. Yes, Bess was angry with the white folks.
Non thought now about her plump little sister. So plainly she could see her: honey-colored, worry lines around her gray eyes deepening these past months, a mouth that used to be wide open in laughter or talk, set now in tight lines … Bess had stopped singing, though she used to sing all the time and used to talk of some day singing maybe up North on the stage. But now she didn’t talk any more about the stage and she didn’t sing any more either. Bess was a cream-colored little luster jug, squat and pleasing, who longed to be a fancy crystal vase. If she could know the relief of letting things be! Non hadn’t minded when Mrs. Brown spoke to her about the meeting. They don’t mean any harm, these white folks, when they say things like this. No harm, really. You can forget them, so easily, if you’ve a mind to. You can forget everything except the one thing that matters to you. It’d always seemed strange that people like Bess could get upset over so many things. As if everything in the world you looked at was of the same height and size and shape and you wanted it all instead of the one big thing you really wanted.
Nonnie heard her coming now down the path. The rapid thud of her feet through the dusk was as familiar as katydids and screech owls, as the rustle of palmettos.
Once she tried to tell Bess what the night meant to her but Bess said, “Listen. If it’s good, don’t waste it on me! Put it down and sell it. They’ll buy anything a Negro writes these days, so surprised we can spell.” All the nights of her life she had listened for Bess’s quick steps on the path, and after her, their mother’s slow, heavy ones. Sometimes in the old days, when they were late coming from work the house back of her would grow big and empty, its verandas would creak with ancient talk, and she would turn her back to it and look straight toward White Town. She would hold tight to the picket fence while the night sounds poured into her ears, and only when she separated from them that first quick thud of Bess’s step would her hands loosen. Bess would say as she opened the gate, “Have you done your lessons, Nonnie? Where’s Eddie?” And Mummie would say in her deep slow voice, “How’s my baby? Give Mama a kiss, sugar lump.”
She had feared the night and loved it. Like the swamp. All her life she had been afraid of it, afraid of the swamp and the night, of their loneliness. And yet they were a part of her, as was no living creature, except Tracy. Except Tracy. Except Tracy and his child. She put her hands where she knew the baby lay. She tried to imagine it as it would be when it came. Of course it would be like him. It must be him … She had forgotten the night. She was holding her baby, and Tracy was there, and somehow things had come clear in their life, defined, unmistakable. And he had reached out and touched it and whispered, “It’s exactly like you, only my eyes of course.” And they both were laughing. It was like her—creamy skin, dark curls, but plump and soft against her hands. And it turned and solemnly looked at them both and its eyes were blue, like Tracy’s—happy, not troubled like his. Always they’d be happy eyes—she’d see to that—never—
The dream ended. Tracy … so far away tonight. It was as if she could never again bridge the distance. Thinking of him now made the distance greater, as if something were pulling him away and she could only stand and watch his going. She was cold and afraid. The swamp behind her, the night, were ugly and threatening. The rattle of palmettos near the fence, an evil sound. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she had made it all up. Maybe it wasn’t any of it real—hers and Tracy’s life together. Maybe Bess was right when she said as she said so often, “Non, you don’t know what real life is!” When she had thought she knew the only real thing there was in life for her …
Bess’s steps grew near, and the sound of them quickly steadied her. Tracy needed her. She had to hold to that. Needed her, and cared. Nothing could change that. Nothing anyone could do or say could change that. She must not worry about foolish, imaginary things, making up dangers, like Bess, to scare herself with.
Bess said as she reached the gate, “Where’s Jackie?”
“At Miss Ada’s. I’ll run over for him. You’re late.”
“Supper was late. Everything wrong today. Even my dinner didn’t please, though God knows the preacher ate enough. Lord, I’m hot! I—Nonnie, you look half sick!”
Nonnie smiled at her sister’s searching glance. Ed would say, “Old Bess, drumming up trouble.”
“I’m well and happy and hope you’re the same,” she laughed and suddenly felt that she was.
“Well, they’re not! The Stephensons. Mighty upset over something. Tried all day to figure it out. Know I sound dirty-minded, but I believe Grace is going to have a baby.”
“Oh, Bess—she’s a child!”
“Mrs. Stephenson found out today she’d missed her period two months. Took her to Dr. Deen. They came back like ghosts.” She shifted the bundle in her hand and slapped at a mosquito. “Lord, think of it! Raised three daughters, got them safely married off. Now this.”
Nonnie was silent.
“Always nuzzling around her folks. You wouldn’t think she’d be up to tricks like that, would you?” Bess shifted the package under her arm.
Nonnie said, “I’m pregnant too.”
Bess stared at her. “I don’t believe you.”
