The Road to Memphis

by Mildred D. Taylor

  Moe gazed at him with a fierce look.

  “Nigger, don’t you eyeball me! Now, you pick it up!”

  Moe didn’t move.

  “Nigger, I said pick up that hat!”

  The stiffness went out of Moe, and he bent to obey. At that moment Troy moved in close and goosed him, and Leon knocked on his head. Moe jumped back without retrieving the hat.

  Leon laughed. “He got the hard head, too, Stat. You the one figure rubbing a nigger’s head bring good luck, come rub his.”

  Statler grinned. “Yeah, you must got a powerful lotta luck in you, boy, you courtin’ a gal like Cassie Logan here. Put that head on down, boy, let me get a good feel at it. Who knows?” he said, reaching for Moe’s head. “Maybe I get lucky with Cassie myself—”

  Suddenly the anger in Moe burst forth like a thunderstorm. He knocked Statler’s arm away with the tire iron, then smashed it full force into Statler’s side.

  “What the—” screamed Statler as he fell to his knees.

  “Nigger, you gone mad?” cried Leon as Statler held his side in shock. “What done got into you?”

  “Y’all get holda him!” ordered Statler. “Y’all get hold of him now!”

  Leon and Troy moved cautiously toward Moe as the rest of us just stood there stunned, watching. “Now, boy, put that iron down ’fore you get into more trouble,” warned Troy. “You put it down right now!” Moe stepped back, holding tightly to the crowbar.

  “I said, get hold of him!” hollered Statler, and both Leon and Troy rushed at Moe, who swung the crowbar as hard as he could. As Troy came at him Moe laid the crowbar upside his head. Leon came at him, and he smashed the crowbar into his chest. Both brothers went down.

  It was all over in a matter of seconds.

  Troy, his head bleeding, lay prone on the ground. So did Leon. Statler knelt, holding his side, staring icily at Moe but was unable to rise. Moe, as if in a dream, stood frozen, gazing at Statler and his brothers, as if he had had no part in what had just happened. The rest of us stood frozen too. Then we heard shouting and came back to ourselves. Someone was coming.

  Moe looked around wildly and threw down the bloody crowbar. Then he turned to Harris, who had already gotten into his truck. Moe took a step toward Harris, but Harris hollered: “Naw, naw, they get me! Like that night on the Rosa Lee! Like that night on the Rosa Lee!” Then he rammed the gas pedal and tore away, up the road, out of the town, leaving Moe and Sissy, too, behind.

  “Harris!” called Sissy. “Harris, come back here!” But Harris didn’t stop.

  Moe turned frantically, searching for a place to hide. But there was no place. There was no escaping in the Ford; it had no tire. There was no place to run either. Then Moe saw Jeremy standing on his truck, staring down at him. Jeremy had seen the whole thing. A moment passed, and their eyes remained fixed on each other. Then, without a word being spoken, a decision was made. Jeremy nodded and motioned Moe onto the truck. Moe glanced around, his eyes meeting mine, then quickly climbed on. Statler, Leon, and Troy, lying on the ground, did not see. Leon and Troy were both out; Statler, looking dazed, faced away from Jeremy’s truck. Jeremy threw the tarpaulin over Moe and jumped down just as Mr. J. D. Dueeze and his wife came running from the garage with Mr. Charlie Simms. Oliver and Little Willie came running too.

  “Lord! Lord have mercy!” screamed Mrs. Dueeze. “Lord have mercy! What happened here?”

  Mr. Simms took one look at us standing there and accused us. “Y’all dirty, filthy niggers! I’ll see y’all hung for this!”

  “Naw, Pa, ya wrong!” cried Jeremy, hurrying over to see about Leon. “They ain’t done nothin’! They ain’t touched ’em!”

  “Then, who done it?” hollered Mr. Simms as Mr. Dueeze and his wife knelt to help the fallen Aames boys. “Jeremy, who done this?”

  Jeremy didn’t answer. He rolled Leon over, and hoarsely whispered his name. “Leon . . . Leon . . .”

  Mr. Simms jerked Jeremy up. “Boy, you hear me talkin’ to ya? You answer me!”

  Jeremy looked blankly at his father. “Colored boy . . .”

  “What colored boy? Where the nigger at?”

  “Moe . . . It was Moe Turner . . . .”

  “One nigger done this?” questioned his father, as if not believing.

  “Yes, sir, Pa . . . . He . . . he had a crowbar. That one yonder, on the ground.”

  Mr. Dueeze picked it up, recoiling at the sight of the blood. “Lordy,” he said. “Lord . . .”

  Mr. Simms swore an oath. “Lowdown filthy animals! This here what happen we give ’em too free a rein. This what happen!”

  Mrs. Dueeze looked up from where she was kneeling beside Troy. “Would y’all leave that be for now and help me see to these boys here? We need to get them some help!”

  Jeremy slipped from his father’s grasp and knelt beside Statler. “Stat . . . Stat, you all right?”

  Statler looked at him and closed his eyes.

  “Lord, these boys is hurt bad,” said Mrs. Dueeze. “Hurt real bad. Troy, he’s bleeding something awful ’round the head.” She looked around, searching for help. Her eyes settled on two little colored boys who were running up to see what was going on. “Henry!” she cried. “You run get Doctor Cranston for me! Run quick, now! Homer, jump in that truck there and lay on that horn! Get some folks up here to help us!” The two boys quickly obeyed. Little Homer jumped into Statler’s truck and began honking wildly. Little Henry took off down the street screaming to high heaven.

  Mr. Simms looked down, aghast, at his kin, at all the blood, and started in questioning Jeremy again. “Where that nigger gone off to?”

  Jeremy slowly raised his head and looked at his father. “It . . . it happened so fast, Pa. I . . . I was on the truck finishin’ the loadin’ . . . heard all the commotion.” He glanced over at his truck, and my heart, already beating hard and fast, began to race. “Seen Moe swinging that crowbar—”

  “Well, where’d he go off to, boy?” asked Mr. Dueeze. “You gotta seen.”

  Jeremy looked over at us. I felt my heart would burst. “He . . . just gone off . . . down the road . . . .”

  Mr. Simms studied Jeremy through narrow, dangerous eyes. “You seen all this, why ain’t you helped? What your cousins doin’ bleeding on the ground and you ain’t got a mark on ya?”

  Jeremy whitened. “It . . . it happened so fast. Wasn’t time—”

  “Wasn’t time for you to stop that nigger from gettin’ away either?”

  “I . . . he took off so fast, Pa, and I . . . I wanted to see to my cousins. I’d’ve gone after Moe, but I figured he wouldn’t get far on foot and—”

  Statler groaned, then supporting his weight with one arm, he sat up and called weakly, “Uncle Charlie . . . Uncle Charlie . . .”

  Mr. Simms hurried over and knelt beside him. “What is it, son?”

  “That nigger . . . Harris Mitchum was here. He was driving a truck.”

  At that, Sissy’s eyes went wild. “Naw, Harris, he left here by hisself—”

  I caught her arm and dug my nails in before she could say more. In silence I looked at her, warning her to keep hers.

  Mr. Simms kept his eyes on Statler. “What happened, son?”

  “Couldn’t see exactly, Uncle Charlie. Felt dizzy. But Moe, that nigger done this, he gone. What ’bout Harris? He gone too?”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “Then, Moe, he gone with him, then.”

  “Don’t you worry, now, boy. Just lie on back. We’ll get him, I promise you that. We’ll get both them niggers.”

  “Naw!” cried Sissy. “No, not my brother!” But Mr. Simms paid her no attention as he and Mr. Dueeze jumped into Mr. Dueeze’s car and took off down the road after Harris. People from the town came running toward the garage. Even the old gray men had left their bench and were heading to see what all the commotion was about. The boys, Sissy, and I moved away from the trucks and huddled together at the far end of the lot beside the Ford. There we told Little Willi
e and Oliver what had happened. We also told them where Moe was. They looked at us in disbelief. We said little else as we stayed to ourselves and kept watch on the truck.

  Soon we saw Stacey and Clarence coming up the street. They passed the townspeople and came over, surprised to see Christopher-John, Little Man, and Sissy with us. “Sissy, girl, what you doing here?” demanded Clarence first thing.

  Stacey said, “What happened?”

  We told them.

  “Where’s Moe now?” asked Stacey.

  I nodded toward Jeremy’s truck. “There.”

  Stacey gazed past the crowd of people to where Jeremy was standing beside his truck conferring with Sheriff Hank Dobbs and Deputy Haynes. “He know?”

  “He knows, all right. He told his daddy it was Moe hit his cousins.”

  “Jeremy did that?” Stacey asked, sounding surprised that he would, and I found that surprising after what had happened on the Rosa Lee.

  “He just about had to tell him since his daddy saw all of us and figured we had something to do with it. Besides, Statler told his uncle about Moe anyway. Jeremy told him Moe ran off down the road.”

  “What I wanna know,” said Willie, “is how the devil we going to get Moe outa here? All these people ’round, and here he is, sitting right in the middle of them. How do we get him out, man?”

  “What I wanna know is what ’bout Harris?” cried Sissy. “These folks think he done helped Moe get away!”

  “We worry ’bout Harris soon’s we finish worryin’ ’bout Moe,” said Willie.

  “Maybe you worry ’bout Moe first, but Harris, he my brother, and he my first worry!”

  “Hush up, Sissy!” said Clarence. “Hush up and just take it easy. Give us a minute to study this out.”

  Sissy cut her eyes at Clarence, folded her arms across her chest, and turned angrily away. Clarence looked back to Stacey, waiting for his solution to the matter. “Well, Stacey, what you think?”

  I spoke before Stacey could answer. “Mr. Jamison’s still in town, isn’t he?”

  “Far’s I know,” Stacey replied. “Said he had to go home to get his sister ’fore he heads for Jackson.”

  “Well, why don’t we go get him? Maybe he could help us.”

  “No,” Stacey said quickly. “No, we best take care of this ourselves for now anyways. Best not bring him into it.”

  I looked at him and agreed. I understood his thinking, but that didn’t solve our problem. “Well, what’ll we do then?”

  Stacey looked again at the truck and was thoughtful for some time. Finally he said, “We’ll get Jeremy to take him out.”

  “Jeremy!” Willie exclaimed. “Man, you crazy—”

  “You gotta be crazy, Cuz!” objected Oliver. “That’s his kin Moe done near to killed!”

  “You think I forgot that?”

  Oliver shook his head in disbelief.

  “You really think he’d do it?” I said.

  “I can ask.”

  I, too, shook my head. “I don’t think you ought to.”

  “No other way, Cassie. Don’t see any other way.”

  “Well, where could he take him?”

  “Jackson. He could take him to Jackson.”

  “All the way to Jackson after what he did to Harris?” I wasn’t ready to trust Jeremy that far.

  “All I can do is ask.”

  “You’re crazy,” Oliver muttered again.

  Christopher-John moved in closer. “Stacey, maybe we oughta all just go back home and talk to Mama and Papa—”

  “No time,” said Stacey.

  “But—”

  Stacey held up his hand, warning us into silence. The sheriff and his deputy were on their way over. They were stopped by one of the old gray men. Jeremy was now alone at the truck.

  “Well, if you’re going to talk to him, you best go talk to him now,” I said.

  Stacey nodded, glanced around at us, and started toward Jeremy. I tagged along with him, for I was hoping I could talk to Moe. As we approached the truck I could feel Jeremy watching us with eyes that were nervous and frightened and looked about to weep.

  “Heard what you done,” Stacey said softly when we stood beside him.

  Jeremy glanced around nervously. There was no one near. “Ain’t done nothing.”

  “Need to ask you to do something else.”

  Jeremy looked at him.

  “Need for you to take Moe on to Jackson.”

  Jeremy’s lips parted, and for a moment he said nothing. Then he said: “You know what you asking me? They find Moe in my truck, I’m already in a powerful lot of trouble. I don’t even know how Moe’s gonna get outa the truck without my Pa seeing. I already done took a awful chance—”

  “I know. But they find Moe, you know what they’ll do.”

  Jeremy glanced over at the sheriff and shook his head. “You askin’ something awful hard of me, Stacey.”

  “I know that.”

  “I . . . I just can’t. My pa and me, we s’pose to be going to Bogganville—”

  “’Ey, you, boy!” called the deputy. “You, boy, Stacey! Sheriff Dobbs said he wanna talk to you and your sister! Come on!”

  We glanced at Jeremy, then moved slowly away. I wanted to whisper to Moe, hunched down like some cornered animal under the tarpaulin, but there was no time. Stacey and I turned and made our way through the crowd back to the Ford where Sheriff Dobbs was now busy talking to another one of the old men from the mercantile. The boys and Sissy stood nearby. After several minutes Sheriff Dobbs finally addressed us. “Understand Moe Turner was the one gone crazy ’round here,” he said. “Hear he came in with y’all. Heard y’all was with him when he took that crowbar to these boys.”

  “Well, I didn’t see it,” said Stacey. “I just came up from Mr. Jamison’s office.”

  “He tellin’ the truth on that, all right,” said one of the gray men. “That boy done all this devilment, and the rest of the nigras, they got in that car and come down this way. Other boy here and that soldier boy gone in with Mr. Jamison.”

  The sheriff turned to the rest of us. “Well, y’all seen where Moe gone?”

  We all said he had just run down the road.

  The sheriff looked at us as if he knew we were lying, then he started in questioning Stacey again. “What y’all doing in town anyway? Heard y’all was working in Jackson.”

  “Came down for Reverend Gabson’s funeral. On our way back to Jackson now.”

  The sheriff grunted.

  “Fact . . . we’re supposed to be back at work come evening. Like to get going, that be all right with you.”

  Sheriff Dobbs showed little interest about that. Statler Aames hollered for him, and he said, “Y’all wait right here.” He left us and went over to where all three of the Aameses still lay on the ground being tended by the doctor, Mrs. Dueeze, and some other town folks. The sheriff leaned over Statler. “Yeah, what is it, Stat?”

  “That boy Moe, y’all catch him yet?”

  “Not yet, but we will. Don’t worry none ’bout that.”

  Statler’s eyes left the sheriff, and his look was wild. “Where’s my cousin? Where’s Jeremy? Jeremy!”

  Jeremy was still leaning against the rear of his pickup. At the call he straightened, and his ashen face grew even whiter. The sheriff motioned him over. “Come on, Jeremy! Come on here. Keep this boy from straining hisself hollering so.”

  Jeremy glanced back at the tarpaulin and went over. “What—what is it, Stat?”

  “You seen what that nigger done to me, ain’t ya? Ya seen it! Just gone crazy all of a sudden and hauled off and hit me and my brothers. Well, I ain’t gonna stand for it! Ain’t gonna stand for no nigger doin’ me thataway! I ain’t gonna stand for it, ya hear? Wherever that nigger is, he’s mine! He can run, but he can’t hide!”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “You keep an eye out, now.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Jeremy, then stood back watching as Statler, Leon, and Troy were lifted onto th
e back of a truck. As the truck rolled down the street toward the doctor’s office, Mr. Simms and Mr. Dueeze returned.

  “See y’all ain’t found him,” said Sheriff Dobbs.

  “Naw, but we will,” said Mr. Simms. “We will. I ain’t gonna rest ’til we get him.”

  “Well, we gettin’ ready to go lookin’ now. Got plenty of men lined up.”

  Charlie Simms nodded, then turned to Jeremy. “I’m gonna stay on here and help look for that nigger,” he said. “We find him, we gonna learn him better’n t’ raise his hand to a white man. Now, you get that load on up to Bogganville. It’s late and they ’spectin’ it.”

  “Yes, sir, Pa.”

  “You tell George Goods and Joe Hanley what done happened here. Tell them to keep they eyes open for any new niggers showin’ up ’round there.”

  Jeremy nodded and turned toward the truck.

  “You keep watch on that oil, now, Jeremy. See that engine don’t burn up!”

  “Yes, sir, Pa.” He reached the truck, opened the door, and looked back. His eyes rested on us, but I couldn’t read them. He said nothing. He just got into the truck and drove away, north toward Bogganville.

  “Stacey!” said Sheriff Dobbs. “I’m gonna let y’all go on, but I’m gonna be keepin’ an eye on y’all. I see this car of y’all’s back this way, y’all gonna have a whole lotta explainin’ to do, ya hear me, now?”

  “Yes, sir, we hear.”

  “Just so’s I know y’all don’t get addle minded on down the road and decide y’all smarter’n me, I’m gonna send some men down to follow y’all out and block that road off. Y’all decide to double back, ain’t gonna do no good. Y’all just gonna end up spending jail time ’long with Moe. Y’all understand me, now?”

  Stacey answered for us all. “We just want to get back to Jackson.”

  “All right, then.” He turned and called to a group of men some feet away. “Mr. Boudein! You and Mr. Josias there and your boys, y’all mind following this Logan boy on out and keepin’ watch on that road awhile? I’ll send somebody to spell y’all later on.”

  Mr. Boudein gave a nod, and the sheriff said to us, “All right, y’all go on.”