Wordell’s eyes were unwavering.
“She—she said you can play it pretty good too. I always kinda thought I’d like to play something, but I ain’t never had nothing to play on. . . .”
I stopped a moment to watch him. He was, of course, watching me, and when I stopped talking there was only silence.
“Now, Stacey,” I continued, “he got a windpipe. Jeremy Simms gave it to him, but he don’t play it none, and if I asked him to let me play it, he wouldn’t let me.”
Again I stopped. Again there was silence.
Seeing that my discourse on music was getting me nowhere, I decided to try another tack. “I—I was sorry to hear ’bout your head. Big Ma said it bled something awful. . . . I hope you’re feeling a whole lot better now.” I paused, knowing there would be no reply, then went on. “Miz Lee Annie said Joe was with you when you hurt yourself. Said he cried most of the night scared you was gonna die.” I thought a moment. “Joe’s your best friend, ain’t he?”
Something, though I was not sure what, changed in Wordell’s eyes. They had never been cold, but now they seemed softer somehow.
“You know, I like Joe,” I said truthfully. “Now some folks make fun of him ’cause he’s like he is, but Papa said that ain’t right. Papa said each of us got something to do in this life, and if we do a good job at that, then we can be right proud. He said Joe’s job is to keep the school and church looking nice and to ring that bell, and Joe does a good job at it too. Only one time I know of he didn’t ring that bell like he was s’pose to, and that was that Sunday you—”
I stopped abruptly, realizing too late that my talk had led to a subject that could possibly set Wordell off. But when I looked directly at him, his eyes seemed to encourage me to go on, so I did.
Frowning, I thought very seriously about Wordell and Joe and Doris Anne and that bell. “You know, I never did understand that, ’cause Joe, he always rings that bell and he was the one that had Doris Anne, but then somehow Doris Anne was up there ringing that bell and you was there and Joe wasn’t.”
I stopped, rethinking that Sunday morning.
“But then when we was going into church, I seen Joe runnin’ off to the woods after you . . . and he hadn’t been with none of us down outside the church. . . .”
This time when I stopped, I did not look at Wordell; my mind was too busy trying to figure out where Joe had been. Then I remembered what Papa had told Mr. Ellis: that he thought Wordell had only gone up to the belfry to get Doris Anne down. Then it came to me, something I should have seen a long time before.
“It was Joe!” I exclaimed. “It wasn’t you at all! It was Joe took Doris Anne up there, and you jus’ went to get her down! And Papa knew it too, didn’t he? But he didn’t tell it ’cause you didn’t want him to, didja? You let them folks blame you for something Joe done! How come you done that, huh? How co—”
Wordell stood up. With that one liquid movement I was immediately aware once again to whom I was talking. Wordell was no longer looking at me and I could not see his eyes. He walked over to the woodpile. The head of the axe lay embedded in one of the logs. With one yank at the handle, he pulled it out and started around the woodpile toward me, his hand nestled tightly around the handle just below the head.
I began to back away, looking over my shoulder toward the kitchen door. I wanted to holler for Mrs. Lee Annie, but I couldn’t get the words out. I thought about trying to make a run for the door, but when I had planned my escape route, I hadn’t figured on the axe and I was afraid to turn my back on Wordell. I kept my eyes steady on the axe, wondering what Wordell was about to do. Some ten feet from me, he stopped and raised the hand that held the axe.
Without further indecision, I turned and fled, believing that at any moment I would be cut down. Then it happened.
I fell.
Terrified, I looked over my shoulder at Wordell. He was staring at me curiously, the axe still raised. For several long moments he gazed at me in total silence, then raising the axe to shoulder level with his hand still just beneath the head, he stretched out his arm and pointed the axe toward the woods.
“Your brothers,” he said, “they gone down there.” Then without another glance at me, he walked to the woodshed and disappeared inside.
I scrambled up, thankful to escape, and dashed down the path leading into the forest, but it wasn’t until I came to the stream called the Little RosaLee, and found Little Man and Christopher-John haunched on its bank throwing pebbles in, that I realized that for the first time Wordell Lees had actually bothered to speak to me.
5
“Christopher-John, come on. Claude ain’t comin’.”
Christopher-John glanced back at me, then looked hopefully again up the forest trail where for two years his friend Claude Avery had come running with his brother T.J. to meet us each school morning. But this year Claude had only occasionally come down that path, and then because his mother made him. Always a shy boy overshadowed by his older brother, he had retreated into a lonely world of his own since last summer, and no one, not even Christopher-John, could enter it. When Claude did come to school, he separated himself from the other students and often could be seen sitting on a stump at the woods’ edge mourning for T.J. in sobbing, hacking spasms that made everyone turn away from him, embarrassed.
“Come on, Christopher-John,” Stacey said gently. “He ain’t likely to come.”
“Maybe he just late this morning, Stacey. He come twice last week, ’member?”
“I remember we was late too twice last week,” I grumbled, not wanting to think about Claude or T.J. or any of what had happened.
Stacey looked at me reproachfully. “If he’s comin’, he can catch up,” he told Christopher-John. “But we’d better go on now. We can’t be late again.” With that he walked on, with Little Man and me falling in stride. Christopher-John took one last expectant look up the trail, then followed.
At the crossroads we turned northward off the Harrison Road and began to listen for the Jefferson Davis school bus which plagued us throughout each school year. At this time of year its coming was particularly bad, since the narrow, winding road was usually soft with sloppy red mud and the wide gullies on either side of it were filled with water, making it difficult for us to hop onto the steep forest bank for refuge. Now as we heard the bus approaching, we scrambled onto the bank, where we watched in silent resentment as it passed, then jumped down again. Continuing on our way, we were soon halted by a familiar cry ringing from the forest.
“Stacey! Hey, y’all! Wait up a minute!”
Running heedlessly down the steep decline was Jeremy Simms. We had not seen him since Christmas. Already ridiculed by the students at Jefferson Davis because he had chosen to be our friend, he had since the trial become an outcast as well, for talk had begun to spread among the white community that perhaps what T.J. had said about R.W. and Melvin’s having had something to do with the murder of Jim Lee Barnett might be true. As far as I knew, no one had ever come right out and accused either of the Simmses—after all, it had only been T.J.’s word against theirs—but the bad feeling and the talk had gotten so intense that both boys had gone north to Jackson in late December and had not come back. Shortly after, Jeremy’s mother had taken Jeremy, his sister Lillian Jean, and four younger brothers and sisters to Jackson as well.
“Hey, y’all,” Jeremy said, out of breath and grinning widely as he approached. “I . . . I was ’fraid I was gon’ . . . gonna miss y’all.”
I glanced at Stacey; there was no expression on his face. “When you get back?” he asked.
“Last night. Pa wanted us back in time for plantin’. He picked us up in Strawberry—we come down from Jackson on the bus. It was ’bout midnight ’fore we got back. Ernest and Leroy, they was so sleepy they ain’t even up yet, but I . . . I wanted to see y’all.” He stared at us, his happiness genuine.
“Where’s Lillian Jean?” I asked dryly. “She come back?”
“Naw,” Jeremy
replied. “She’s in school up there in Jackson and she most likely gonna stay.”
“Good!” I said. Jeremy eyed me knowingly. He was quite aware that Lillian Jean was someone I could easily live without.
“Hey Little Man, you grown since I seen ya?”
Little Man held up his head. “I’m always growing.”
Jeremy smiled. “I reckon so. . . . Christopher-John, you all right?”
Christopher-John nodded. “You?”
“Just fine.” He paused a moment, then said, “I—I sure missed y’all.”
Stacey glanced over at him, then back at the road as we started walking again. He had never quite known what to think about this strange white boy who had offered his friendship even when we had not wanted it and had defied his family to be our friend. It was true that his brothers had helped cause T.J.’s destruction, but Jeremy had had nothing to do with that. Jeremy had simply always been just Jeremy.
Stacey put out his hand. “It’s good to have you back.”
Jeremy took Stacey’s hand and pumped it eagerly. Relief was on his face.
“You know I—I didn’t know how y’all was gonna feel,” he said as we began walking again. “I mean, after what R.W. and Melvin done—I mean what some folks say they done—” He reddened at the correction, glancing over shyly to see if we had noticed. None of us said anything; after all, R.W. and Melvin were his brothers.
“That’s done with now,” said Stacey without emotion. “It wasn’t your doing.”
Jeremy nodded, his face showing the guilt he felt despite Stacey’s words. Then he dug into his shirt pocket. “Look here, I brung something for ya.” Pulling out a paper-thin package wrapped in tissue paper, he opened it carefully to reveal a picture of himself. Beaming proudly, he laughed. “Don’t I look funny? Ma had it made up in Jackson. I ain’t never had no picture made before.”
I peeped over at the black-and-white photograph. In it Jeremy looked scared and uncomfortable, but the warmth and shyness which were so much a part of him showed through clearly. “I don’t think it’s funny,” I said frankly. “I think it’s nice, Jeremy.”
Jeremy looked at me, surprised. He seemed touched. “You really do? Ma said I shoulda smiled.”
I restudied the picture. “Nope. It’s just fine like it is.”
“Here, then, why don’t you take one?” he said, thrusting the picture at me in a spur-of-the-moment gesture. Then he pulled it back. “Wait a minute.” He dug into his pocket. “Got a pencil here somewheres.” He found the pencil and, stopping, wrote on the back of it in a slow, awkward hand, “To Cassie, From Jeremy.”
“Thanks, Jeremy,” I said as I took it from him.
He grinned, pleased, and pulled out a second picture. “And Stacey, this here’s for you . . . I mean if you want it.”
Stacey hesitated before taking the picture. “Yeah . . . thanks, Jeremy.”
“I wrote something on the back.”
Stacey flipped the picture over. Written simply was “To Stacey Logan, my friend for always.”
Stacey, looking ill at ease as he often did when Jeremy displayed signs of affection, nodded stiffly and shoved the picture into his shirt pocket without saying anything further. Since I had no pockets, I slipped my picture into my reader.
“Well?”
We all looked over at Little Man.
“Well what?” I asked.
“Well, don’t Christopher-John and me get no picture?” he demanded.
Jeremy looked surprised. “Well, I—I only had two.”
Little Man scowled at him as if that were hardly an adequate excuse.
“I tell you what though. I get me a chance to get back to Jackson again, I’ll go have some more made. That be all right?”
Little Man sighed in acceptance—if that was the best Jeremy could do.
“Me too?” asked Christopher-John.
Jeremy chuckled softly. “Course you too,” he said, then stuffed his hands into his pockets and talked all the way to the crossroads in spurts of enthusiasm, in that awkward way he had, about his trip to Jackson. At the crossroads he said good-bye to us, then turned back toward home.
“Ain’t you going on down to Jefferson Davis?” said Stacey.
Jeremy looked down the road toward the whitewashed school and shook his head. “Don’t wanna go back there no more.” He lowered his head and kicked at the road. Without his saying why, we knew. “’Sides, with R.W. and Melvin in Jackson, Pa need me to help him, and he says seventh grade’s more’n ’nough education, now’s I can read and write and figure . . . that’s more’n him. . . .”
He said good-bye again, waved, and walked on. The boys and I watched him go. Jackson hadn’t changed Jeremy a bit. He was still the same old friend.
* * *
“C-C-Cassie, how y’all c-c-come to get this land?”
I glanced over at Dubé Cross sitting at the other end of the front porch looking out at the fields as his two younger sisters, Lannette and Hannah, swayed gently on the swing. It was Saturday morning and they had come for Mama’s review session, but finding themselves the first to arrive, they had chosen to sit on the porch until the others came. I was keeping them company.
“Grandpa bought it.”
“B-b-but how? How he mmmm-manage it?”
I was pleased by Dubé’s interest and was happy to tell him. “Well, Grandpa Paul Edward bought it long time ago, in 1887. Had himself some money saved from furniture making and he bought two hundred acres from a Yankee. Then come 1918, he took himself a loan and bought them other two hundred acres from Mr. Jamison.”
“M-M-Mister Jamison?”
“Don’t you know? The Jamisons used to own a lotta land back in here. ’fore then, this here was Granger land.”
Dubé looked truly surprised.
I told him then about how part of the Granger plantation had been sold for taxes during the Reconstruction and how the Yankee, Mr. Hollenbeck, had bought it. I told him about Mr. Hollenbeck’s selling it off again in 1887 to a number of farmers and how Mr. Jamison’s father had bought a thousand acres of it and Grandpa two hundred. I told him also how Harlan Granger had started buying back the land in 1910, and how by 1918 he had managed to get it all again, all except the first two hundred Logan acres and the second two hundred Grandpa bought from Mr. Wade Jamison. The thing I didn’t tell him was all Mr. Granger had done to get our land since then.
Dubé shook his head, impressed. “One of th-these here d-d-days, gonna have myself a place. Nice p-p-place like th-this of m-my own.” His eyes swept the land. “Y-y-y’all some kkkk-kinda lucky.”
I followed his gaze, knowing that it was true.
More students arrived and Dubé and his sisters joined them inside. Most of the students, like the Crosses, were from day-laboring or sharecropping families and, accustomed to their own one-room, tar-papered shacks, some with no more than a dirt floor, they moved shyly into our house which, with its five rooms, was larger than most and even a bit on the grand side, I suppose, with a fireplace in each bedroom, a door leading to the outside from each room, three porches, and space enough for the family to live comfortably.
Some of the boys and girls seemed intimidated by the life-size facial photographs of family members which stared down at them from the walls in Mama and Papa’s room, and by the massive, sturdy furniture, built by Grandpa, which filled the house, and they touched nothing if they could help it, as if afraid they might break something. But there were others, barefooted and ragged, who when they thought no one from the family was watching ventured to run timid fingers along the frame of Mama and Papa’s bed and stare in amazement at its pine headboard reaching halfway up the twelve-foot wall; to poke a finger in the feather mattress unlike their own stuffed with corn husks; to stand shyly before the full-length mirror in the chiffonier gazing at themselves; to trace the curve of Grandpa’s rolltop desk, now Mama’s; and to sit down gingerly before the fireplace in one of the four cushioned, wicker-backed chairs, closing their eye
s as they sank deep into its comfort.
With examinations less than a week away, students soon overflowed the sitting area, but Mama, unperturbed, opened up other rooms and, dividing the students into groups, moved from one room to another reviewing lessons, answering questions, and assigning review exercises. Students worked long and hard without a grumble, and since the boys and I had to study anyway, we sat right there with everybody else. But as soon as Mama dismissed the sessions, we shot out back to find Papa and Mr. Morrison. Crossing the backyard, we ran through the garden gate and along the path that separated the cotton field from the garden, through the orchard with its apple, pear, peach, and fig trees, and into the open pasture. At the pasture’s edge, just beyond the orchard, was the old one-room tenant shack where Mr. Morrison slept and just beyond that the bull’s pen. Papa and Mr. Morrison were standing there as we ran up.
“Don’t get too near that fence,” Papa warned us.
Mr. Morrison waved languidly toward three-year-old Dynamite, who was staring sourly out at us. “How much you s’pose he weighing now?”
“Oh, I’d say somewhere ’round a thousand pounds. His daddy’s a good couple of thousand—you’ve seen him. Henry Harrison’s twelve-year-old.”
“Yeah, I seen him all right. That’s a mean bull he got and this one’s comin’ up just like him.”
Papa grinned and nodded toward Dynamite. “I don’t much care how mean they get, long as they’re good stock and do the job.”
Mr. Morrison agreed. “You sell him now, you ain’t gonna get near ’bout what he’s worth.”
I looked around sharply. “Papa, you ain’t thinking ’bout selling Dynamite?”
Papa pulled one of my braids. “Gotta sell something, honey.”
There was no argument I could make to that.
“You can hang on to him,” Mr. Morrison continued, “he’d more’n pay for himself. What with him bein’ able to breed now, you could develop yourself a right fine stock.”
Papa stared thoughtfully at the bull, but did not reply.
Mr. Morrison glanced at Papa’s somber face and added, “Course, you know all that. . . .”