“Just what they planning on doing down in here?” asked Uncle Hammer.
Papa told him what Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Moses had said. He also told him about the visits of both Mr. Farnsworth and Mr. Granger, and the government’s fifty-percent cotton tax.
Uncle Hammer was silent when he finished. He thought a moment, then said, “What you gonna do ’bout the tax?”
“What can we do ’bout it?” questioned Papa. “They got us between a rock and a hard place. We gotta plant like everybody else, contract or not, with that tax. Won’t get any government money on them acres we don’t plant, but least we oughta get the same selling price on our cotton.”
Uncle Hammer let out a deep sigh. He had the same worried look Papa had had after he had first heard about the tax. “Well, one good thing—they take you back on the railroad, you won’t have to totally depend on them crops. That’s more’n a lotta folks.”
Papa rubbed his fingers on the table in a slow, thoughtful motion. “Well . . . I don’t know ’bout that.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be going to the railroad.”
“You don’t think you’ll be able to get back on?”
“I’ve asked him not to go.”
Uncle Hammer looked over at Mama. “Oh?”
“David, he been lookin’ for outside work ’round here,” Big Ma explained.
Uncle Hammer drank the last of his clabber milk. “Any luck?”
“Not so far,” said Papa.
Again Uncle Hammer glanced at Mama. “You don’t get anything, David, you still planning on staying?”
“You and me both know I can’t stay, that be the case.” Mama’s face tensed. Papa looked down the table at her; she looked away. “Course with my leg broke last spring and I ain’t been back, I might not even be able to get back on the railroad, less’n I jus’ happen to get there at the right time and the right man’s in charge.”
“Then you’ll have to be deciding soon,” Uncle Hammer concluded.
Papa nodded. “That’s right,” he agreed, his eyes still on Mama. “Soon. . . .”
* * *
Later in the day, when Papa mentioned to Uncle Hammer that he had to go over to the Wigginses to fix their grist mill, Uncle Hammer dug into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. “Why don’t you drive over? It’ll give you a chance to see how the car rides.”
Papa grinned. “Bet it don’t ride like that Packard.”
Uncle Hammer grinned back. “Man, ain’t nothing in this world gonna ride like that Packard.”
Since no objections were voiced about our going along, the boys and I eagerly climbed into the car with Papa and Uncle Hammer. As we sped past the cotton field, Uncle Hammer said: “Every time I think ’bout that fire, it just makes me sick.”
“Make me sick too,” Papa admitted. “But just you wait. This year’s crop’s gonna be good.”
“Another fire don’t come up. . . .”
Papa glanced at him and half smiled. “Let’s hope not.”
When we were on Granger land, Uncle Hammer waved a hand toward the forest path leading up to the Averys’ place. “You seen much of the Averys?”
“See them up at church but that’s ’bout all. Mostly they been keeping to themselves.”
Uncle Hammer shook his head. “I know it must be some kind of hard on them. It’s a crying shame that— What’s this up here?”
Up ahead where the Harrison and Granger roads crossed stood Jacey Peters with Joe Billy Montier and Stuart Walker. As we neared they looked up. All three appeared a bit apprehensive upon seeing the approaching car, but when Stuart saw who we were, he relaxed and continued talking to Jacey. Joe Billy, however, moved toward his car as if ready to leave.
“Now, what she think she doing?” Uncle Hammer’s voice had changed. The warmth which had been there only a moment before was gone and his body had stiffened, now on the alert.
Papa slowed the car, but before we were at a full stop, he cautioned, “Now watch it, Hammer.” He rolled down the window and spoke to Jacey. “You goin’ somewhere we can give you a lift?”
Jacey looked embarrassed. “No, sir, Mr. Logan. I—I’m just on my way home from the store.” Jacey lived farther down the Harrison road on the Granger plantation.
Papa looked from Jacey to Stuart, who eyed him insolently. With his eyes steady on Stuart, Papa said: “Your papa give you leave to talk ’long the way?”
“N-no, sir. I just got stopped a minute ago and I was going on right now—”
“Then go on then,” said Papa, “before your mama gets worried.”
Jacey nodded and moved off to obey. “See you, Jacey,” Stuart called after her. Jacey, clearly unsettled, glanced back at us in the car and hurried down the road.
Papa watched her until she had turned up the path leading to her house, then he put the car in gear and started backing away.
“Now how come you went and sent her away?” Stuart called with an easy insolence. “We was just getting into some good conversation.”
“Come on, Stuart,” said Joe Billy in an attempt to ease gracefully out of the encounter. “Let’s go.”
But Stuart continued. “Seems to me what’s between us and Jacey is our business.”
Uncle Hammer retorted: “And just what is the business?”
Stuart smiled. “What you think? What other business we’d have with a nigger bi—”
Before the word was out, before Stuart realized that he had made a terrible mistake, the car door swept open and Uncle Hammer cannoned out of the moving car. Papa, practically stripping the gears, put the car in neutral and leapt from the other side to halt Uncle Hammer before he rounded the car and reached Stuart. Stacey too jumped out, running after Papa. Little Man, Christopher-John, and I sat wide-eyed watching, afraid, for we now knew what could happen to Uncle Hammer if he touched Stuart.
“Hammer! Hammer, now hold on!” Papa cried, reaching him before he reached the retreating Stuart. “We’ve had enough trouble! Leave it alone!”
“That peckerwood needs his neck broke—”
“Get him outa here!” Papa shouted at Joe Billy as he pushed against Uncle Hammer. “Both of y’all go on. We don’t need this kind of trouble. Go on!”
Joe Billy nodded and elbowed Stuart to get into the car, but Stuart, realizing that Papa was not going to allow Uncle Hammer to touch him, grew insolent once more. He knew that the power was in the color of his skin, and when Joe Billy put his hand on his arm to pull him toward the car, he jerked away. Eyeing us with a superior smirk, he slowly walked over to the car and got in. When they had driven away, Papa released his hold on Uncle Hammer, but Uncle Hammer was no longer fighting him. He had stopped at the sight of the white boy’s insolence and had stood watching him with a coldness greater than I had ever seen in him.
“You all right?” Papa asked.
“What you think?” said Uncle Hammer and came back to the car. Papa and Stacey followed. I sat waiting for someone to say something; no one did. Uncle Hammer was too angry to talk and Papa knew it. There could be no reasoning with Uncle Hammer when he was angry.
When we reached the Wiggenses’, I pulled Stacey aside. “What was Jacey doing with them boys?” I questioned.
Stacey turned away without answering. I pulled him back. “I wanna know!”
“Now how you think I know!”
“How come Uncle Hammer got so mad?”
“’Cause when a white boy’s ’round a colored girl, they’s up to no good, that’s why. You jus’ remember that.”
“Well, don’t get mad at me! I ain’t done nothin’! Anyway, how come I gotta remember it?”
“Let go, Cassie.” Stacey pulled away and headed for the barn, where Little Willie was waiting.
Christopher-John, having witnessed the encounter from the Wigginses’ front porch, hurried over as Stacey walked away. “What’s the matter, Cassie?” he asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t know, and I certainly didn’t know
what Jacey Peters’ talking to Stuart Walker and Joe Billy Montier had to do with me. I wasn’t interested in any kind of boys.
6
On Sunday morning Uncle Hammer, neat and dapper as always in a brown serge suit, backed the car out of the barn. All the red mud which had gathered around its fender and splotched its yellow body was gone, for Uncle Hammer and the boys and I had washed it after our return from the Wigginses’. One thing Uncle Hammer couldn’t abide was a dirty car. He had worked silently, his anger still bottled inside, but by suppertime his mood had softened, and this morning as we prepared for church he was once again laughing and warm. As he had done yesterday, he handed Papa the keys and told him to drive. All of us except Mr. Morrison, who was not a churchgoing man, piled into the car. Papa started the engine and we swept down the drive into the road.
At church Papa parked the Ford next to Mr. Wellever’s Model A, the only other car amidst the battered farm wagons. As always, Uncle Hammer was greeted enthusiastically, for he was one of the few people who had ever ventured north from the community and, in the eyes of the people at Great Faith, had made quite a success of his move. The fact that he had arrived walking only a few months before had not dented people’s conviction that he was doing well up in Chicago, for hadn’t he come down in a car just like Harlan Granger’s just a year ago? It didn’t matter that he had had to give it up; after all, everybody had hard times. It didn’t matter either that the Ford was ten years older than the Packard. It was better than anything they had ever had, and Uncle Hammer’s supposed prosperity somehow reflected on them.
A small crowd had gathered when we arrived, but Big Ma soon broke it up, shooing us inside as the bell began to ring for Sunday school. An hour later, when Sunday school was over and everyone escaped for the half-hour break before service, the crowd began to form again. The boys and I squeezed in among the men, finding their gathering more interesting than our own friends this morning.
“Didn’t I tell ya, Page? Didn’t I tell ya?” said Mr. Tom Bee. “When ole Hammer come walkin’ down that road at Big Meetin’ I said he ain’t gon’ be walkin’ long. No sir! There was some folks said once you sold that Packard most likely you wasn’t gon’ get another one. And here you come in this fine yellow thing!” he exclaimed with admiration, choosing to ignore in his enthusiasm the car’s age. “Always did fancy yellow—”
“Yeah, it’s nice all right,” put in Mr. Silas Lanier; “but y’all ’member last year when Hammer come home in that big ole fine Packard like Mr. Granger’s? Now ain’t nothin’ gonna ever be fine as that.”
“’Member it?” cried Mr. Tom Bee. “’Member it! Owwww, Looooord, have mercy, that thing sho’ did do me good. Ole Harlan Granger was ’bout fit to be tied when he seed ole Hammer with that car.” He chuckled with satisfaction. “Sez to me, sez: ‘Tom, how you reckon Hammer come by a car like that?’ And I sez, I sez: ‘I sho’ly don’t know, Mr. Granger . . . but ain’t it fine?’” Again Mr. Tom Bee laughed heartily, exposing his toothless gums. “Ow-weeel That there thing done me so much good. Sho’ did. . . .”
“Well, I likes this one,” said Joe, who had been standing a little outside the circle admiring the car.
“Boy, what you know ’bout what you like and don’t like?” questioned Mr. Page Ellis. “You know ’bout as much ’bout cars as I do ’bout white folks’ politickin’ . . . nothin’!”
“I knows what I like!” contended Joe, as all the men except Papa and Uncle Hammer laughed at his childlike defense.
Papa, who was standing nearest Joe, asked: “How come you like it, Joe?”
The laughter died as the men noted Papa’s seriousness.
“I likes the color,” Joe spoke up. “I likes yellow. One of these here days I’m gon’ get me a car and go on up North and visit Hammer. That be all right, Hammer?”
“That’d be fine, Joe.”
Mr. Page Ellis snorted his disbelief.
“Well, I is! Gon’ get me one just like Hammer!”
“You like this car better than that one I had last year?” Uncle Hammer asked.
“That one with all that gray and pretty insides and looking like Mr. Granger’s?” Joe spurted out excitedly.
Uncle Hammer nodded. “That’s right. I didn’t have it long.”
“No, sir, sho’ didn’t,” Joe agreed. Then after a moment’s pause, he added, “But ya had it long ’nough.”
Uncle Hammer smiled in appreciation of Joe’s frankness.
“It was sho’ nice all right . . . but this here, it’s better ’cause that one ’minded me of it raining all the time. This here, it ’minds me of the sunshine.” Joe timidly put out his hand and ran his callused fingers gingerly along the car’s hood. “I sho’ wish I could take me a ride—”
“Boy, get your hands off Hammer’s car ’fore you get it dirty!” ordered Mr. Ellis.
“My hands ain’t dirty! They clean as yours—”
Papa put a hand on Joe’s shoulder, quieting him, and glanced at Uncle Hammer. “It all right with you if I take Joe for a short ride? There’s time yet ’fore church.”
Uncle Hammer nodded. “Go ’head.”
“Ya mean it? Ya mean it?” Joe gushed. “Gon’ get me a ride in Hammer’s car!” Excitedly and with a triumphant look at Mr. Ellis, who had ridden in neither the Packard nor the Ford, he climbed into the front seat.
“David,” said Mr. Silas Lanier, “’fore you go, there’s something I wanna find out. Any union men come by your place yesterday?”
“A Morris Wheeler and a John Moses.”
Mr. Lanier nodded. “Said they had. Thought I’d check. What you think?”
“’Bout the union?” Papa took a moment as the men waited. “Well . . . if I was a sharecropping man, I might consider it. What they had to say made sense. Only thing is this here business of unionizing with white folks. I don’t much trust that.”
“Well, I sho’ don’t trust it,” said Mr. Wiggins, Little Willie’s father. The Wigginses, like us, owned their own place. “Don’t trust nothin’ white folks gonna be part of.”
Mr. Lanier agreed, but said, “Thing is, though, I think he’s tellin’ the truth of it. We got us a better chance of gettin’ something done ’round here, we all join in together.”
“Well, I tell y’all,” said Mr. Ellis, “I jus’ don’t know what we gonna do, Mr. Granger don’t let up on that government money. We plantin’ less and gettin’ less money too.”
“Ah, man, waitin’ for Mr. Granger to give us that money’s like waitin’ for hell to freeze over,” Mr. Lanier scoffed.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Mr. Tom Bee agreed.
Mr. Lanier rubbed his chin, then shook his head at the dismal prospects. “Well, seem like maybe the union’s the best way to go then. Leastways, see what them union men got in mind to do.”
All the men were silent. Then Mr. Ellis said, “We go joinin’ unions ’round here, some heads gonna roll. Mr. Granger done already told me that. Said anybody joins can jus’ get off his land.”
And once again the men were silent.
“David, come on!” Joe called from the car. “Gonna have to ring that bell any minute now!”
“David, you think it’s all right?” Mr. Ellis asked as Papa turned to the car. “’Bout the meeting?”
Papa met Mr. Ellis’s eyes. “What I think ain’t as important as what you think. We ain’t affected the same way.”
“But you goin’ to the meeting?”
Papa glanced over at Uncle Hammer, then back to Mr. Ellis. “Most likely,” he said and got into the car.
Little Man and Christopher-John scrambled in for the ride, but Stacey and I remained with Uncle Hammer. For several minutes the men continued to talk of the union, then of their crops, their families, and what life could hold for them in that far-off place called the North. Then Mr. Page Ellis said: “Hammer, I ’magine David done sho’ ’nough started somethin’ by takin’ that boy Joe for a ride, ’cause that’s all he gonna be talkin’ ’bout from
now on. Now if he’d had a chance to ride in that Packard—”
“Lord, never woulda heard the end of it,” laughed Mr. Tom Bee.
“Seems to me like that Packard’s all I’m hearing ’bout as it is anyways. Just how you come to sell it? Payments get too high?”
Everyone in the circle looked around searching for the man who had spoken. Our eyes settled on a heavyset, dark-skinned stranger standing a little outside the circle. The man was smiling at Uncle Hammer. The rest of us looked curiously from the man to Uncle Hammer, for no one who knew Uncle Hammer would have dared ask him such a question.
Uncle Hammer studied the man. Finally, he said, “I know you?”
“Name’s Jake Willis,” said the stranger with a broadening grin that revealed two gold teeth. “Come down visiting with my friend Jesse Randall here and his folks.” He gestured toward a short, thin man standing behind him. I knew the man. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Moss Randall, who lived over near Smellings Creek. Mr. Jesse Randall looked just a bit uneasy as Jake Willis continued to talk. “Course I know who you are,” he said. “Should. All I been hearin’ ’bout since I got to church this morning is Hammer Logan.” The grin was still on his face, but there was something in his tone which made me uncomfortable.
“You from ’round these parts?” Uncle Hammer asked, not returning his smile. “I know most folks far as Strawberry.”
“No sir, as a matter of fact I just come from Jackson a couple of weeks back. Heard they was gettin’ ready to set up some government jobs down here. Thought I’d be here waiting for ’em when they come.”
Uncle Hammer nodded, his eyes steady on the man, and Jake Willis went on.
“I’m sure hoping I can get one too. I hear tell the government’s set aside some jobs for colored so’s the white folks don’t take ’em all.” He laughed. “Course now, I know even if I do get lucky and get me a job, I know I ain’t gonna near ’bout be making no kind of money to go and buy me no Packard—”
“Jake,” interrupted Mr. Randall, looking haplessly from Uncle Hammer to his friend, trying to stop him. “Jake—”