“So what happened to Leroy?”
“Oh, the government got involved and finally made the states open the schools to black kids or the schools wouldn’t get any money at all. Took years.”
“How could it take that long?”
“With all deliberate speed. That’s how fast they had to integrate.”
“What does that even mean?”
He shook his head. “Exactly, Red. Exactly.”
We raked a little more before I asked him, “Did he go back again – Leroy – once they finally let him in?”
“Well, if you were sixteen, would you like to join a class of sixth graders?”
“No. That’s crazy.”
“I guess that’s how he felt.” He paused and looked at me. “Do you know what he is now?”
I figured it was going to be one of those stories like Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe he skipped high school and went right on to college. “What?”
“A janitor.”
“Just a janitor?” As soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew they weren’t real respectful, considering that’s what Mr Walter was.
“Just a janitor,” Mr Walter repeated.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a janitor,” I said quickly.
“No, there’s nothing wrong with being a janitor.” He stopped raking and looked over at the front door of the school. “What’s wrong is not having a choice.”
The breeze picked up and there was a chill in the air as we finished raking in silence. When he shook out his rake for the last time he bent down and picked something out that was caught between the tines. “See this?” He held it out to me, and I opened my hand. I barely felt the acorn fall onto my palm.
“You know what that can become, right?”
“Sure. An oak tree.”
“Not all of them, though. Some of them get left on the ground.” He took the rake from my other hand and eyeballed me. “Thank you, young man, although I hope you won’t be needing to help me out again any time soon. You understand me?”
I rolled the acorn between my thumb and fingers. “Yes, sir, Mr Walter.”
It was getting dark as I sat on the front steps of the school, waiting for Mama to pick me up. I heard the door open behind me and looked around to see Miss Miller, her flower-power bag loaded up with papers and her suede purse slung over her shoulder. She surprised me by sitting down on the step next to me. “Are you waiting for your ride?”
“Yes, ma’am.” It was weird having a teacher sit right next to me. It felt like we were a couple of teenagers or something.
She smiled. “How did it go with Mr Walter?”
“Fine.” I was still twirling the acorn around in my hand.
I guess my “fine” didn’t sound too fine because she said, “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking…”
“That is like music to my ears, Red.” She put her purse down next to her flowered bag and leaned over, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on one hand. “ ‘Just thinking’ is about the best thing anyone can do.” She turned her head towards me and rested her head on her palm. “Do you want to let me in on what you’re just thinking about?”
I shrugged. “Those kids – black kids – who weren’t allowed to go to school for four or five years. How could that happen?”
She lost her smile and didn’t sound like a teenager any more. “I wish I had a good answer for that.”
“I don’t see how people could get away with it. I mean, not here. Not this country. Not in Virginia.”
She looked down at her nails, clenching her fingers into a fist. “Virginia was one of the worst states. It was a Virginia senator who introduced the Southern Manifesto.”
“The what?”
“It was a document all about the different ways to keep schools from integrating. The senator – Senator Byrd – and his buddies in other southern states wanted to keep blacks out of the schools.”
“You mean it wasn’t just in Farmville?”
“Farmville – Prince Edward County – was the worst, but it happened other places. Lots of other places.” She stared at the steps.
I shook my head. “That’s just crazy.”
She was still staring at the steps, like she didn’t hear me.
“How come I never heard of it before?”
She turned her head and stared at me like she’d just realized something. “That’s a very good question.” She was making me uncomfortable the way she kept staring at me. I was glad when her ride showed up, until I saw that it was Mr Reynolds and how big they smiled at each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Boy Like You
A couple of days later, Miss Miller made an announcement. “Class, I have a surprise for you.” She was smiling, almost giggling, and her face was pink. “A guest speaker.” She nodded at the little window in the door to someone out in the hall, and the door opened.
I don’t know if I was expecting Marvin Gaye to come in, or what, but I sure was shocked to see who did walk through that door. Mr Reynolds! Poindexter himself!
“Class, Mr Reynolds graduated from Harvard Law School, the finest law school in the country.” She paused to let that sink in, but it seemed like the two people most impressed were Miss Miller and Mr Reynolds. She cleared her throat. “Also, Mr Reynolds has studied the civil rights movement and has agreed to talk to us about it, so I want you to give him your undivided attention.”
I crossed my arms, sank down in my desk, and glared at him.
Poindexter went pink and stuttered, “H-hello…students.” He stared at us like we were a pack of wild dogs and took a few deep breaths before talking about boring court cases until the whole class was about asleep. Even Miss Miller was twirling her necklace and jiggling one of her feet, I swear just to stay awake.
Bobby Benson saved us by catapulting an eraser off his ruler so perfectly that it hit a thumbtack holding up the map of the world with such a bang that the map flopped down, held up by one thumbtack in Alaska. Miss Miller gave us her mean-teacher look as we busted out laughing, but at least it got her to make old Poindexter hurry along to another topic, which she whispered to him.
“Oh, that’s right!” he said, like she’d told him that already but he’d forgotten. He started talking about Massive Resistance, which was what Miss Miller had told me about on the steps. Schools were supposed to be for white and black kids, but white people kept coming up with ways to block black kids from going to school – even throwing rotten tomatoes at the kids! Just when it was getting interesting, Bobby made a loud yawn.
Miss Miller jumped out of her chair like she was a lion going after prey. “This is an important part of our history, class!”
“No offence, Miss Miller,” Bobby said, “but what does a bunch of black kids not going to school a long time ago have to do with us?”
Mr Reynolds held his hand up to stop Miss Miller and looked at the ceiling. “What state is it, again, that you all live in?”
There were some giggles and a few kids called out, “Virginia.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, rubbing his chin. “And were any of you alive in 1964?”
More laughter. “That was only eight years ago,” someone said. “Of course we were all alive!”
Mr Reynolds quit playing dumb and stared at us hard. “Well, I guess it does concern you, then, doesn’t it? This is your world. What are you going to do about it?”
Nobody was laughing after that. Because he talked about some other things that happened – not in Virginia, but he pointed out that it did happen in the United States, and, last time he checked, Virginia was part of the United States. He told us about buses getting blown up and civil rights workers in Mississippi being kidnapped and found dead. Mr Reynolds was pacing around the room and got so heated up he took his suit jacket off. “Now I’ll tell you about a boy named Emmett Till.”
Miss Miller sat up straight in her chair and opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but Mr Re
ynolds was on a roll.
“He was a kid. About your age. A boy like you. He was beaten, cut, mutilated—”
Miss Miller’s eyes went wide and she stood up from her desk, her chair making a sharp scrape on the floor. Mr Reynolds didn’t notice, though, because Emma Jean and some other girls were too busy going, “Ew!” and “Gross!”
“Do you know what else they did?” His face was red and his eyes were big.
Miss Miller rushed towards him, her mouth open to say something, when he threw his jacket behind him. It would’ve hit Miss Miller in the face if she hadn’t put her hands up so fast to catch it. He didn’t seem to hear the snickering, his face was so sweaty and angry.
The door opened and Mrs Pugh stood there, breathing fire. That’s how I realized that Mr Reynolds, for all I didn’t like him, was a pretty good storyteller because normally I couldn’t miss the hammering of Mrs Pugh’s high heels coming down the hall, even with the door closed.
“May I speak with you, Miss Miller?” Only it came out more like a command than a question.
Miss Miller, still holding Mr Reynolds’s jacket, slunk to the door and closed it behind her, but not before we heard Mrs Pugh hiss, “I don’t remember giving permission for a guest speaker!”
Most of the kids were looking at the door, but I couldn’t help getting caught up in the Emmett Till story. Something about it seemed almost familiar, although I was sure I’d remember a story like this, so I couldn’t have heard it before. While most of the other kids strained to hear what was going on in the hallway, I listened hard to Mr Reynolds.
“Imagine. Imagine having just turned fourteen, you’re away from home, visiting relatives.”
I swallowed hard, as I saw Thomas’s face in my mind. He was fourteen. He was away from home, visiting relatives.
“People say you made a smart-alec remark,” Mr Reynolds went on. “Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, but several men come to your relatives’ house in the middle of the night, demanding that you be handed over to them and threatening your relatives with death if they call the police. They grab you, throw you in a pickup truck, and take you to a barn, where they interrogate you and pistol-whip you until you cry for mercy.”
“No,” Miss Miller said from the hallway, in a small voice, and I flinched.
“Did they lynch him?” Bobby Benson asked.
My heart started pounding harder than it already was, and my breathing got real fast.
Mr Reynolds shook his head. “It wasn’t that painless. The horror was just beginning. Imagine being thrown, bleeding and crying, into the back of the pickup, to a shed.”
“You need to learn a thing or two!” Mrs Pugh’s voice cut in from the hallway.
I cringed. She sounded exactly like Glen Connor.
“They drag you into the shed—” Now Mr Reynolds was acting out the role of one of the bullies, picking up an imaginary Emmett Till and throwing him on the ground, giving him a kick, picking him up again, and throwing him right in front of my desk, then stomping so hard in front of my desk that I jerked. I could almost feel it, and I looked down at where Emmett Till would be, seeing Thomas.
“No!” I didn’t even know it was me until after the word came out.
“Imagine,” Mr Reynolds said, looking at me, “three grown men grabbing you, kicking you, beating you, maybe putting a gun to your head.”
“No,” I breathed, shaking my head, trying to stop him. “No.”
“Then,” Mr Reynolds went on, “they load your bleeding body into the pickup yet again and drive you to another shed, where they do the same thing, until you’re in such pain and fear you’re calling, begging, for your mama. And people outside can even hear you.” He looked down.
“Someone stopped to help him,” Lou Anne said, her voice high, “right?”
Mr Reynolds shook his head slowly. “They’re scared. They feel helpless. They walk on past.”
“That’s terrible!” Lou Anne cried.
I was mad at those people, like Lou Anne was. But I also understood them. Because I was one of them.
I looked down at the floor and remembered seeing Thomas lying helpless next to me, the blood streaming down his face. In slow motion I saw the rope fall between us and the terror in his eyes. And then they were dragging him to the tree. Stop it, guys! I don’t know if I thought it or said it, but I jerked when the door opened.
Miss Miller came back inside the room, gently closing the door behind her. Mr Reynolds went on talking but it seemed to take a moment for Miss Miller to hear. I didn’t hear him any more, either. I was just staring at the floor, seeing Thomas, seeing the horror on his face, feeling his heart beating a mile a minute just like mine was, and wishing, wishing so hard that I could help him, that I could stop what was happening.
“And then they gouged his eye out while he was still alive!”
“Stop!” Miss Miller screamed at the same time I did.
My heart was beating so hard I was panting and my forehead was wet with sweat like I’d sprinted all the way up the mountain behind Kenny’s.
“That’s enough, Bill,” she said, her voice quieter now, but firm, like you’d talk to a little kid who was having a tantrum.
It was like someone had shaken Mr Reynolds and he realized where he was.
“They’re children,” Miss Miller whispered.
“Just like Emmett,” Mr Reynolds mumbled, looking down at the floor in front of me.
I was gripping my desk, staring at the spot at my feet, frozen but shaking at the same time, and my heart was still pounding. I swear, if the fire alarm had gone off right then I wouldn’t have been able to move. I would’ve just sat in my seat, hearing everyone run out and I wouldn’t have cared. Because I’d have sat right where I was, staring at that spot, staying with Emmett Till and Thomas.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Emmett Till
After school I headed straight to Miss Georgia’s. There was something I needed to see. An album. Not the flowered or plaid photo albums of her grandnieces and nephews and even kids she didn’t know who, for a long time, didn’t go to school. Those were the albums she let me see. I’d always been jealous of those kids, imagining them running around playing all day and not having to go to school. Now I knew why – they weren’t allowed to go, and that was a whole lot different than getting out of going.
The album I wanted to see was the black one. I’d only seen it that one time, when I was about five years old, but I didn’t understand it then. Miss Georgia was babysitting me and had gone to pull some okra out of her garden. I was happy to discover a new album, but pretty soon I saw it was mostly yellowed newspaper clippings with a few pictures of people. I was confused when I got to the newspaper photo of an old stuffed rag doll with a ripped up face. It reminded me of the ugly Thumbelina baby doll Rosie got from her cousin after her cousin was done messing it up. It wasn’t Thumbelina, but it did start with a T. It was a shorter name, and I thought maybe it was the boy doll that went with Thumbelina because it had on boy clothes.
When Miss Georgia had come through the door with her basket of okra, I held the album over my head so she could see the picture, just like the librarian did at story time. “How come you got a picture of this doll? It’s even uglier than the one Rosie—” but Miss Georgia had dropped the basket of okra, grabbed the album out of my hand, and snapped it shut before I finished.
She put it up high on her mantel. “That ain’t an album for you to be lookin’ at,” she said, real cold.
I was so surprised at how she was acting that she was picking the okra up off the floor before I asked, “Why not?”
“You’re too young. Too young to see that.”
“When will I be old enough?”
She never told me, but I knew the answer now. That album was about Emmett Till.
I smelled the smoke of Miss Georgia’s fireplace before I got there. That’s when I realized it must be cold out because I was shivering like it was the dead of winter.
Miss
Georgia lost her smile when I said, “I need to see Emmett Till. It’s time.”
She froze for a long moment but then gave one nod, walked slowly over to the mantel, and pulled the album down.
I read all the newspaper articles about what those guys did to Emmett Till and looked at the pictures of his body. I even read about how they got away with it and said later that they murdered him, but nobody did anything about it. Both men were living normal lives, free, while Emmett Till was dead, and his family would never be normal again.
We didn’t talk because what could you say about something like that? And, like I’d told Miss Miller on the first day of school, there wasn’t anything you could do about it now, anyway. I spent a long time sitting on Miss Georgia’s hearth rug while she sat in her chair, both of us staring into the fire.
All I could think about was what happened to Thomas. It was almost twenty years after something as horrible as Emmett Till, which you’d think would stop people from ever doing anything like that again, but it was still happening. “When’s it going to change?” I said into the fire, so quiet I didn’t think Miss Georgia heard.
But she did. “I don’t know, Red. I don’t know.”
I told her something that I hadn’t thought about much until now. “There are a few really little kids at my school who are black. Sometimes the white kids play with them at recess but mostly they don’t. They eat by themselves in the cafeteria, too. Rosie says the junior high has more black kids, but they all sit separately, too.” I looked at Miss Georgia, her face streaked with colour in the firelight. “Segregation is supposed to be over.”
“Change don’t happen overnight.”
“It’s not overnight, it’s been years.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. “It all depends on history.”
I snorted. “Yeah, like I said, history’s stupid.”
“So, change it.”
“What? You can’t change history, that’s the whole point. It’s already happened.”
“Not your history.”
“My history?”
She leaned forward, took the album out of my hands, and put it in her lap, staring at the black cover. My history? Was she talking about Emmett Till and what white people did? About Thomas and what I did? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but it was too important not to. “What do you mean?”