Strange Fruit, page 35
But Dottie’s low sobs went on, a little endless stream of sorrow threading its way between the creaks of the porch swing and Mrs. Pusey’s plaintive words.
Preacher Livingston and Roseanna sat on their shed in the dark. Roseanna had sent the twins to bed early, and now she had opened the shutters and let in some air, for though she could hear the girls talking softly in their bed, they had undressed in the dark as she bade them do.
“Ned,” she said, “I want to get the twins up to Atlanta, soon as we can.”
“A month fo school! They can’t go now, Rosie.”
“I won’t have them stay another minute in this place! I can’t stand the worry.”
Preacher Livingston turned to his wife. “There ain no runnin away from white folks, Rosie, you oughter know that well as me. There’s ways to git along wid white folks if you hunts round for um. I’ve spent my whole life ahuntin … and I’ve found some—glad to say—I’ve found a few.”
“I know you have,” Roseanna said, and hesitated. “But they’re ways we don want our chudren atakin … do we, Ned?” Roseanna was talking very simply now and without her airs. “We want something better for the twins than we had, don we? Sometimes I feel—” she hesitated again, “sometimes I most feel I’d rather kill them with my own hands than have them—go through,” her voice sank very low, “what I’ve—been through … and other colored women like me.”
Preacher Livingston moved uneasily in his chair.
“There’s ways to git along, I’m tellin you! Colored folks don have to git in trouble wid white folks. Hit’s their own fault when they does. There’s ways. There’s always been ways …”
From where Willie Echols and his wife Mollie sat—and their friends—under the chinaberry tree, you could see the glare of the dry-kiln, plain.
“Tom Harris musta turned out a million feet of lumber right there this summer,” Lewis said, and wheeled his go-cart around to see the glow better.
“Yeah. But to hear him talk … when Saddy night comes, there ain’t a dollar.”
“Rich folks always talks hard times. You git used to it.” Lewis laughed good-naturedly.
“I never have and don aim to git used to it. I aims to git a few of them dollars one of these days. What we need is to organize for a living wage. If we was to—”
Mollie laughed a deep fat laugh. “Willie’s all time talkin bout organizin. I tell him he’s wastin his breath. All Tom Harris ud do would be to turn him off and hire a nigger in his place.”
“Oughter run the last one out the county,” old Mrs. Lewis said firmly.
“Ma, you gittin kinder hard on—”
“Reckon we got one less anyway!”
“God yes! Warn’t it a sight!”
“I never seen it,” Mollie said. “Musta been terrible! Never could bear to wring a chicken’s neck, and I knowed it ud be moren I could stand.”
“I went,” gray-haired Mrs. Lewis said, and her lips grew grim. “It was a tumble sight, but you coulda stood it.”
Lewis laughed, and lifted a stump of a leg over the side of the go-cart where it could get the air. “I never went. Never did like to mix up in a thing like that. But Ma always said atter she seed me come outa that belt with both legs tore off she could look at anything.”
Ma looked at Lewis now. “Well, you warn’t no purty plaything, I tell ye that.”
“It coulda been worse,” Lewis said. “It shore coulda been worse. And I’m about afeared of them wild talkers as anything. Now you take Tom Harris. He done purty good by me. Give me a hundard dollars and paid my doctor bill. And I reckon he’ll be givin me a job as night watchman purty soon.”
“A hundard dollar won’t buy you no new legs,” his wife retorted.
Lewis did not answer at once, and when he spoke, he spoke softly. “Well, Ma, mebbe hit don do no good to talk of it.”
They were quiet for a time, just sitting there resting and watching the glow from the kiln.
Echols laughed. “It was a sight, that nigger! Swingin there. Got what he deserved. What every one of em deserve. But Mollie woulda fainted dead away when he begun to smell.”
“Lawd, don’t talk about it!” Mollie said, and made a face. With a plump hand she eased up one of her breasts a little where it was chafed.
“Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy,” screamed a child inside the house.
“I declare! J. L.’s havin a nightmare agin! That boy bolts his rations so fas he—”
“Mommy, mommy,” sobbed the little fellow as he came running out of the house and down the steps, “they’ll git me … they’ll git me … I seed em …”
“Nobody aimin to git ye! Hit’s niggers they burn—they ain’t agoin to burn you. Get on back with ye to bed, boy.” Echols laughed, gave the boy a playful push.
Nobody had ever seen Willie in better spirits, and everybody joined in the laughter as Mollie turned the little fellow around and sent him back.
“Well,” said Mrs. Lewis, “we better be agittin home and to bed ourselves. It’s atter nine o’clock.”
Mollie and Willie sat on for a time under the chinaberry tree, until the Nine O’clock passed.
“Late tonight,” Mollie said.
“Late half the time.” Willie stood up. “Never was a train to run on time. How about bed, old woman?”
“Well, I don’t care if I do.” Mollie pulled her two hundred pounds out of the low cane-bottom chair and followed Will into the house.
It did not take them long to get to bed. Nor long for Willie to pull Mollie’s big soft body to him.
“My!” Mollie sighed after a time, “my … you ain’t been like this in a year!”
“Ain’t felt like this in a year,” Willie laughed and reached for her again.
Tom Harris sat on the south porch of the Harris home while his wife watered her pot plants. Although it was dark and long after supper, Anne was carefully watering each fern, begonia, geranium, night-blooming cereus. Slowly and carefully. And Tom knew that she was deeply troubled.
He sat in his big porch rocker as she moved from shadowy pot to pot, herself a deeper shadow.
She emptied the watering-pot on the asparagus fern, sat down near him, rocked slowly back and forth in the darkness. Tom waited, knowing Anne was trying to say something; after a time she would find slow words.
Beyond them, on College Street, a car stopped. A voice called, “Harriet!” Waited. Moved on.
“I don’t want the girls to go out tonight,” he said.
“They’re both here. I’ve told them.
“Tom,” Anne said, “I worry about Charlie. If one of my boys turned out—I wish you’d speak to him.”
“What do you want me to speak about, Anne?”
“I don’t know … he never goes to church—doesn’t take interest in the things we’ve taught our children to believe in.”
“Charlie’s all right, Anne.”
“How do you know? Sometimes I wonder if we ever know our children …”
“All we can do, Anne, is the best we can and trust God to do the rest. Charlie’s all right. Fine boy.”
“I’m a little tired,” Anne was standing now, “I think I’ll go to bed. Papa,” she was at the door, “try to talk to Charlie.”
Tom sat on the porch after Anne had gone, looking into a darkness that was too black for his eyes to see through.
Charlie came out of the house, sat down. “Hello, Dad.”
“Howdy, Son.”
You could hear the singing over at the tent. From the sound of it, not many people were at the meeting.
“Dad, you were right—reckless, this afternoon.”
“Well … I don’t know.”
“I don’t think many men would have done what you did.”
“It didn’t do any good.”
“They might have killed you. Pretty ugly crowd.”
“It didn’t do any good.”
“Maybe it did more than you know. Maybe some of those watching felt … as I did.”
“I don’t know, Charlie. I’m too old to know—anything.”
“You’re younger than any child you’ve got—and a better man.”
“Too old to figure out things like this.”
Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him, all creatures here below …
“Some of the boys doing that burning, Son, were our men from the mill. Hard-working. Good to their families. Two of them stewards in Sarah Chapel.”
Praise Him above, ye heavenly …
“I can’t understand why they’d want to do it.” Tom sighed.
Praise Father, Son and …
“So many leaving the county, it’s got folks nervous—” He stopped.
“Sometimes, Dad, when I think of the South all I can see is a white man kneeling on a nigger’s stomach. Every time he raises his arms in prayer he presses a little deeper in the black man’s belly.”
“Hate to hear you say a thing like that, Charlie. There’re things hard to understand about the South … I know. But without God, it’d be worse. Lot worse.”
“Trouble is, you can’t be a Christian in the South. You can’t be one even if you want to, in the setup we’ve got down here! Everybody gouging his living out of somebody beneath him—singing hymns as he gouges—”
“It’s your saying things like that, Son, that worries your mother. Know you don’t mean it way it sounds. Know you mean something else. I’ve lived a long time, Charlie, I can’t live without God. Can’t live without Him,” Tom’s voice was a whisper. After a moment he went on, “A lynching’s a terrible thing. I know it’s wrong to kill a man, no matter what his color. I know you got to be fair to him. But you can’t make a Negro your social equal!”
“Why?”
“You know you can’t do it! Turn em loose down here and before you know it, you’d have—” Tom stopped.
“What you reckon would happen, Dad? What you reckon?”
Tom didn’t answer.
The two men sat looking out into the darkness.
Harriet came from the living room where she had been reading, and slipped into a chair. “I’ve always wondered how a lyncher feels,” she said. “Now I know.”
The two men did not answer.
“Every Southerner knows, of course. We lynch the Negro’s soul every day of our lives.”
The men did not answer.
“In all this town no one had the courage to try to stop it.”
Charlie said quickly, “Except your own Dad—”
“Son, I’d rather you didn’t discuss such things with your sister.”
“Oh, Dad, don’t be silly! What did he do, Charlie?”
Charlie hesitated, glanced at his father, told her briefly.
Harriet sat without speaking; then quietly went over to her father and kissed his bald head.
“I was too late,” Tom said softly.
No one spoke again. After a while, Tom stood. “I hope some day you young folks will find the answer. Hope some day you’ll find how come it all started and what can be done about it. Well … think I’ll turn in. Kinda tired out. Good night, Sister.”
“Good night, darling.”
“Night, Son.”
“Night, Dad.”
Brother and sister sat on in a long silence.
“Too late,” Harriet whispered. “What’s the answer, Charlie?”
“I don’t know one. Only thing I can see for anybody with sense to do is to get out!”
“Run away … Nice and easy. Smart people run away. Or maybe it isn’t so smart. You can’t run away from a thing like this. It’ll follow you all over the world.”
“Right now, I have some ideas,” Charles said slowly. “If I stay here twenty years, I won’t have them. Now I see things without color getting in the way—I won’t be able to, then. It’ll get me. It gets us all. Like quicksand. The more you struggle, the deeper you sink in it—I’m damned scared to stay—” He laughed.
“Everybody’s scared,” Harriet went on softly. “White man’s blown himself up to such a size, now his own shadow scares him. Scared to do the decent thing for fear it will only do—harm. When every day by not doing—”
The only sound on the porch was the crunch of their rockers.
“Did you see it, Charlie?”
“From the edge.”
“Who did it?”
“Mill folks—farm folks—Bill Talley and his crowd got it going.”
“Was it—pretty bad?”
“Thing that got me the most,” Charlie said slowly, “was the hate on folks’ faces. Even on the women’s. It wasn’t Henry they were hating—or any Negro. It was—I don’t know. Being poor couldn’t do it—”
“It might help.”
He went on after a little. “Yeah, but it couldn’t do it. Not that kind of hate. Some of those men were at that revival last night at the altar … praying to be saved. This afternoon they burned a man to ash.”
“You remember—” Harriet was feeling her way now, “the time we went with Gus to Milledgeville to see his mother? We saw a man there in the asylum who said he was God—you remember? He was out in the ward—they let him go loose—putting everybody ‘in their place’ … Telling everybody where they could sit and stand and how to speak to him. They said he picked up a chair one day and almost killed a woman because she wouldn’t stay where he had put her … The doctors called it paranoia. It doesn’t seem to me white folks are very different—from him.”
“All of us nuts, huh?” Charlie laughed.
“I don’t think there’s much difference,” Harriet said. “How about giving your sister a cigarette?”
“I’m willing—but you know how Mother feels …”
“O.K. Pass it up.” She laughed, sighed. “What would happen, Charlie,” she said after a little, “if for one day here in Maxwell you and I would do the human thing? Just act human and sane and decent—for one day. Would you have the courage?”
Charles laughed. “Let’s go in. You ask too many questions.”
Brother Saunders quick-stepped until his left foot synchronized with the evangelist’s.
“Of course,” he said, “this trouble is bound to hurt the revival, though the crowds will pick up better than that handful tonight.”
The two men walked on in silence across the business blocks and down College Street.
“I doubt though,” Brother Saunders said, “that we’ll get back the enthusiasm we had.”
Brother Dunwoodie pulled a strand of moss from above his head, dropped bits of it on the sidewalk as they went down College Street.
Suddenly he spoke. “I don’t condone a thing like this afternoon. I feel nothing but condemnation for such blood-thirstiness.”
“Nor I,” Brother Saunders replied. “But it doesn’t do any good to criticize people—not at a time like this. Only stirs up more bad feeling between the races. It don’t do to talk about these things. Makes them worse! Now it’s always been my policy to keep out of controversies and politics. A servant of God has no business mixing in such matters. Our job is the winning of souls to Christ.”
Brother Dunwoodie sighed, “And sometimes it seems to me the devil can beat us all out of sight! Well,” he raised his voice to a more cheerful level, “here’s my corner. Good night.”
“Good night,” Brother Saunders said.
It was not far from the Harrises’ side gate to the porch but far enough for Brother Dunwoodie to hear his steps echo in hollow mockery the minister’s words—and his own.
“Yes,” he sighed, “everywhere you turn, the devil’s setting a trap for you.”
Sam Perry sat before his desk. He had been there all evening. And though Aunt Easter now and then came to the door she did not go in, for there was a look on Sam’s face which made Easter walk softly and stay on her side of the house. Once he said, “Go to bed, Auntie, I don’t want supper.” And Mrs. Perry had not urged him to eat.
Someone knocked on the door, and Sam put his hand to his gun. It was only Dan, who smiled at the gesture, came in.
“I was afraid you was asleep, Sam, but I had to come. Tempy’s been so nervy all night I can’t do nothin with her. She screamin and takin on like she done time she went dumb, and I feared she might be going off again into one of her spells. Maybe if you’d give her some of those powders, Sam, to make her drop off to sleep—”
Sam said yes, she probably needed to sleep, and turned to prepare something for her.
Dan sat there quietly, his dark brown face sagged with fatigue, hands resting on his knees.
“Dessie’s not come home,” he said evenly, “but I reckon she to the Harrises’.” He rubbed his hand slowly over the bald part of his head. “If she ain’t, I reckon there’s nothin I kin do about it.”
Sam measured the powder and rolled it in little papers.
“I reckon in a time like this, better tend my own business and leave other folks’ alone.”
“That’s right, Dan. You’re dead right,” Sam said. “Tend your own business and to hell with everybody else’s.”
“Well, I don know,” Dan half smiled, “but I sorter figure long as it’s hot and folks needs plenty ice and I kin go round and ring a bell and sell um ten to fifty pounds and save a little money and keep my mouf shut and tend to Tempy I’ll likely stay out of trouble and git along. Least I figure it that way.”
“Yes, Dan, you’ll always get along, I believe.” Sam suddenly smiled. “I believe you always will.”
The air was still. Down by the branch it would be cooler, but here at the office the day’s dust still lay in the air.
In one of the cabins somebody lit a lantern. One of the sick ones worse maybe, or dying. Sam Perry mighty near right. Two more had died and five more sick. Well, they’d all been stuck with that needle now, so maybe it wouldn’t get worse. But what a carryin on! Thought they’d sure have to hog-tie one wench and—
Even when you try to help the darkies, they buck it. Like the privies. Never would use them. Lot rather squat behind a palmetto. A lot rather! More like children than grown people. Maybe more like animals than either. But likeable. Yeah …
Cap’n Rushton chuckled. Couldn’t help but like the crazy fools. Reckon that’s why he stayed out at the still so much. Rather be around them than most folks in Maxwell.
