Catfish Alley

by Lynne Bryant

  I think over the places I've shown Roxanne Reeves: the old Union School, Dr. Jackson's house, the Queen City Hotel, Catfish Alley, the church. Kind of a pitiful collection of places, I guess. But I can't imagine my life without any of them. And it's been interesting to watch Roxanne over these last few weeks. At first, she was so jumpy and nervous all the time, I thought I'd have to tell her to find somebody else to help her. But the more we spend time together, the more relaxed she gets. I think she's right comfortable with me now. And I could tell she was especially struck with Clarence Jones and Brother Daniel. White women sometimes get ideas in their heads about all black men being dangerous. If she had only known all the good men I've known in my life.

  It would make a big difference if Brother Daniel could talk Billy into putting the Queen City on the tour, but there's so much work to be done there. And there's not much chance of getting the Union School — not with Del Tanner owning the property.

  I'm not sure that my old heart could stand any more dealings with Del Tanner anyway. I've spent the better part of my life trying to stay away from that family. I push myself out of the chair to go in and check on the pie. No matter how old I get, I remember Zero every time I make a pecan pie. It's Grandma's recipe, and whenever she'd make it Zero would hang around the kitchen begging for the first piece. She'd fuss at him about cutting it too soon, before it was set up good.

  Lord knows, I wish Zero had stayed away from those Tanners. No one could ever prove anything, not in Mississippi. But I've always known in my heart that Ray Tanner had something to do with what happened to Zero. I take the pie out of the oven and set it on the table to cool. Maybe I'll get Walter to take me by to see Adelle today. We could go to the Harvest Festival together. I always find it soothing to be with Adelle. She loved Zero as much as I did. I know she wouldn't want me to have anything to do with Del Tanner. She had to nurse his daddy, Ray, when he was dying with emphysema. That was enough. I still don't know how she did it. She was even there when he died, and he was a mean old cuss every second until he took his last breath.

  I come back out on the porch, and Walter is headed for the house holding a basket full of mums. He's been in an ornery mood today. Doesn't like Halloween much.

  "You got my mums there for me?" I ask, taking a look in the basket he hands me.

  "Yes'm," he says, as he starts to walk away.

  "Why, Walter, these are all cut so short. I can't put these in a vase." Walter just hangs his big old head and looks at the ground.

  He knows better. How many times have I had him cut flowers for me for church?

  "Now, you just get back out there and cut some more. And leave the stems long enough for that tall green vase of mine." He takes the basket and turns. "And this time go out there behind the barn and cut some of those nice sunflowers back there to go with them."

  "Yes'm," he says without looking at me.

  I try to be understanding because I know Walter hates this season. I've told him at least three or four times that this Harvest Festival is nothing like the Halloweens he remembers, but he won't hear it.

  Children can be pretty hard on other children like Walter. He's always been what folks called different. As I watch him working on a second bunch of mums, I remember him as a third-grader, all full of smiles and just as helpful as a boy could be. But that's about as far as Walter was able to get in school. He kept going until the tenth grade and the teachers kept passing him on through. There wasn't anything called special education in those days. He tried so hard to fit in and make friends with the other boys, but they treated him badly, and I think Halloween must have been the worst. Those boys were always playing mean tricks on him.

  After the Calhouns died, back in the seventies, I finally moved up here to this big old house to rattle around in it all by myself. Thankfully, they left an account open at the bank for me to pay the taxes. I hired Walter full-time and let him live in the little house where I grew up. His mama and daddy passed away not long after the Calhouns, so it all worked out just fine. Walter's been a big help to me. He doesn't have much book smarts, but he can do anything with his hands. I've been able to keep this place running, and with the Lord blessing me with such good health, I don't need any hired help besides Walter just yet. I feel a stab of worry thinking about what's going to happen to Walter after I'm gone and remind myself that I need to look into some arrangements for him.

  I finish my coffee and take my cup inside. Time to get ready for the Harvest Festival. I wonder if Brother Daniel invited Billy. I chuckle to myself. That would just tickle Mattie Webster pink!

  Chapter 12

  Del Tanner

  I am bone tired. But I've got to sort out that damn trunk and see if I can find any of those legal papers. I'm still pissed off at having to go through all of this rigmarole. That banker, Jack Baldwin, is just trying to make my life miserable because he can. Daddy wouldn't have had to go through all of this. His word was all he needed.

  I dig in the deep drawer on the side of my desk and finally find the ring of keys I threw in there after Daddy's funeral. I find the heavy silver skeleton key that I think belongs to the trunk. I try it, and sure enough, the lock gives way easily. Finally, something goes right.

  Opening the trunk, I feel like Daddy is in the room with me. I'm breaking a sweat and my hands are shaking. Memories of being a boy are grabbing hold of me and I have to stop for a minute.

  I remember Daddy standing over me, tall as a tree, the sun behind him so I couldn't clearly see his face. I was just coming up from the riverbank near the sawmill. I must have been about eight years old. That would have made Daddy about thirty-nine years old. I had started helping out at the sawmill, picking up scrap lumber and doing odd jobs. But that day I sneaked off early to go fishing with a new friend I made. His name was Joe and he was the son of one of the mill workers. The problem was Joe was colored.

  Daddy spied me and Joe coming back from the river, holding a stringer of crappie between us. We were planning to split the catch and surprise both of our mamas with supper.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Daddy boomed.

  I remember getting this sick feeling of dread in my stomach. I looked at Joe and he looked at me and he quick dropped his side of the stringer and ran off. I can still see those fish, lying there in the sawdust, their dead eyes staring up at me from the ground.

  "We was just fishing, Daddy. We got done with our chores, so we went down to the river for a little while. Caught some good crappie. Look." I pointed to the fish on the ground, hoping to distract him from whatever reason he was so angry. When Daddy got mad, I was never sure what set him off.

  He grabbed my arm and shook me so hard I dropped my fishing pole. "Boy, what do you mean going off and fishing with niggers? Ain't you got no pride? Don't you ever let me see you messing around with them again, you hear me?"

  "Yessir," I said, bracing myself for him to hit me. It didn't come yet. He wasn't finished yelling.

  "You see that boy there? Look at him."

  Daddy shoved my shoulder and I turned around to look at Joe, who'd done run over to stand by his own daddy. Joe looked scared, too. Only his daddy stood with his arm around him. I remember thinking he looked like he was protecting him. I nodded my head to let Daddy know I was listening.

  "If you start making friends with niggers, pretty soon they're going to think they're as good as you. And then the next thing you know, they're going to take your job, and then they'll take over the whole town." Daddy jerked me around again to face him. "So you keep with your own kind, you hear me?"

  "Yessir," I said, real quiet, and I was wondering what job I was going to have that a nigger couldn't do.

  After that, I didn't have no more colored friends. I made sure to find the boys whose fathers thought like mine did. It was easier that way. Together, we reminded each other that we were better than blacks — smarter, richer — and that it was our God-given responsibility to be in control. That made our daddies proud. That's
just the way things are around here. And ever since I took over Tanner Lumber, that's how I've run my business. I make sure the blacks stay in their places. And now I'm having to follow instructions from one just because I need money.

  I take off the lock, open the trunk, and start going through the top tray. There's stacks of old receipts, bills, lumber brochures, and almanacs. Daddy always was a stickler for reading the almanac. I find a brown envelope marked Tanner Lumber. Good! Maybe these are the papers I need for the loan. Then I notice another envelope, thick and yellowed, stuck in the fabric lining on the side of the tray. I might not have seen it, but the fabric has started to disintegrate with age.

  I decide to start with this one and I notice it's addressed to Mr. Ray Tanner and has the address of the lumberyard on it. The postmark is 1932. There's no return address.

  I open the envelope and pull out what looks to be a postcard. The back of the card is faceup when I slide it out of the envelope. The writing scrawled across the yellowed message area is hard to read, but I can make out the date, December 1931. I can read the first word of the message. It's Daddy's first name, Ray. The rest of the writing is smeared and blurry.

  I turn the postcard over and find myself looking at a photograph of a young black man strung up from a huge tree. His body is suspended in the air from a tree limb that reaches out over the water of a river below. That tree looks like the old live oak behind that big house downtown that overlooks the Tombigbee. Riverview, I think. I always pass that tree when I'm fishing down there. Underneath the tree, with big grins on their faces, is a group of five men, hands on their hips or in their pockets, looking at the camera with pride, like a man looks when he poses with the first deer he's ever shot.

  The man in the front of the group, the one who looks to be the leader and is actually holding the black man's feet to keep him still for the camera, is smiling the broadest. I pull the postcard closer and adjust my glasses. I recognize the face and my stomach turns in on itself. Smiling at me from a photograph of a lynching in 1931 is my own father, Ray Tanner.

  I can't get that picture postcard out of my mind. In every black man I look at — at work or around town — I see that boy's face, all puffed up and hanging from that tree, nose bloody, eyes swollen shut. It turns my stomach. I can't concentrate on nothing. I don't even associate myself much with blacks, except for hiring them for the lumberyard. I make it a point not to. Daddy raised me to be suspicious of them and make sure they always stayed in their places. Daddy was a son-of-a-bitch, but I never thought of him as a murderer. Until now.

  I've always been comfortable with what Daddy taught me. He always said we didn't have to go around talking about it, but that it's clear in the Bible that God created colored folks as a lesser race. They're meant for service. That's just how God made things. They just ain't as smart as white people. Daddy always said, "Just because slavery ain't legal no more don't mean niggers are equal." All through the years, even through all that business about civil rights in the sixties, I never questioned Daddy's word.

  I think about that loan officer, Jack Baldwin, who's still waiting on me to produce a deed for the property. He seems smart enough. I find myself wondering if anybody ever threatened his life. I have to stop this! This is craziness. This is just the way it is and who knows? Maybe that hanging all those years ago was justified. It probably was, I tell myself. Daddy wouldn't string up some black man for no reason.

  This last thought makes me feel a little better and I decide to stop in to the cafe downtown for lunch. I have my usual fried chicken, butterbeans, and corn bread, followed by a big piece of apple pie. I'm just coming out of the cafe, finishing a conversation with two of my buddies from the county extension office, when a sign catches my eye. I realize I ain't really noticed it before. I say my good-byes to the two men and stand there looking at this sign that hangs over the door to an upstairs office. The office is one of those small places on the second floor. There's a hardware store on the first floor and you get to this office by one of them narrow staircases from the street.

  The sign says Purvis Photography. I know

  I've seen that before somewhere, but I can't place it. Then I remember. Purvis Photography was on that postcard of Daddy's I found. But there's something familiar about this place, too. Could this be the same place I went to get that high school senior picture Mama insisted on? I walk closer to the door and read the sign painted on the upper glass window of the door. Purvis Photography Serving Clarksville Since 1922. I'm pretty sure this is the same place I came to get my picture taken. I try the door, but it's locked.

  Then I notice the sign says For Sale by Owner, Tours by Appointment Only. I pull a small pad of paper out of my shirt pocket and write down the phone number. I'm not sure why I'm doing this. I ain't going to call these people. Hell, they ain't going to remember a postcard from 1931. But then, they might keep records. I shake off that sick feeling again. I got work to do.

  I'm late for supper again this evening. Alice ain't happy. When I open the back door into the kitchen, she's standing at the sink washing dishes. She don't even look up. I try coming up behind her and kissing the back of her neck. She likes that. But she pushes me away with her elbow.

  "Where have you been?" she asks, never taking her eyes off the casserole dish she's washing.

  "Last minute, some of the boys making a delivery today from over in Alabama wanted to go over to J.T.'s for a beer. We got to talking and one thing led to another, and ... well ... the time got away from me," I say. What I don't say is that I was trying to get that picture postcard out of my mind. It's like some ghost keeps creeping up behind me. I needed a few beers just to stop my hands from shaking. This whole thing has me all out of sorts.

  "Supper's in the oven if you want it. Just be sure you don't leave dishes for me to wash. I'm going to bed." And with that Alice walks out of the kitchen, leaving me standing by the sink.

  I pull the plate of food out of the oven, pour myself a glass of tea, and take both back to my office. I have got to make myself look for that deed. I sit down at the small desk and stare at Daddy's trunk sitting across the room from me. I left the postcard in there, and I didn't look at anything else the other night because I just had to stop. That postcard was enough for one night. I try to eat, but I just can't seem to bring the fork to my mouth. I push the plate away and dig in my pocket for the key to the trunk.

  This time when I open the trunk, I set that envelope with the postcard in it aside real quick and keep on looking through the rest of the papers in the tray. I breathe a sigh of relief when I find the old file folder labeled Tanner Lumber. The file contains the documents I've been searching for. I turn back to my cold supper and take a couple bites of corn and meat loaf. At least Daddy kept something useful. I'm still wondering what else is in that trunk. I smile to myself, thinking he's dead now and he can't do a damn thing about me looking through the whole thing.

  I pull out the shallow tray to see what's underneath in the larger hollow of the interior. I set the tray on the floor next to the trunk and look inside. What appears like a set of sheets or maybe a tablecloth is folded up real neat on top. I reach in and touch the fabric and it feels like rough cotton. I take a side of it and pick it up. As it falls open, I notice that it has two openings cut in the front for eyes and it's sewn like a hat with a sharp point. I look in the trunk again and pull out a long white robe. The robe has a big red cross on the front of it. All of a sudden I realize that what I'm holding in my hands is a Ku Klux Klan hood and the robe that goes with it.

  I can't move. I just sit there staring at the robe. I know about the Klan. A man can't grow up in Mississippi without knowing about the Ku Klux Klan. But I've always steered clear of anything to do with them. I figure I got enough to worry about without trying to terrorize a bunch of niggers or Jews. As long as my boys do what they're told and turn out a good day's work, I'm fine with that.

  So my daddy was a member of the Klan. That explains that postcard. Only he was
n't wearing this getup in that picture. I wonder what else he might have done. I'm getting that sick feeling again and I have to drink some tea. I think about Daddy lying in that hospital bed, still smoking like a chimney through that tube in his throat, cussing any black nurse who came in his room.

  Them nurses was real patient with him, too. I remember one in particular. She was black as night and tall and skinny, but she was a kind woman. She just ignored the old bastard when he cussed her and called her nigger to her face. It was her who washed Daddy's body and got him ready for the funeral home. I remember how her being so calm helped me when Daddy's hatefulness made me want to get the hell out of that room and never come back.

  Why had he hated them so much? What happened that night when the black man in the postcard was lynched? I put my hands on my head and squeeze. I've got to get these questions out of my mind. Without thinking any more, I pull the notepad out of my shirt pocket and pick up the phone. I dial the number I wrote down earlier for Purvis Photography. The phone rings several times, and I'm fixing to hang up when a man's quivery voice answers.

  "J. R. Purvis. May I help you?"

  I ain't prepared with what to say. "Uh, yessir ... I'm calling about an old photograph I found ... It was, uh ... a postcard of my father's ..."

  "The photography business closed more than forty years ago, sir," the old voice answers.

  "I was, um, well ... I was wondering if you keep records ... if I could talk to somebody ..."

  I hear the person on the other end of the line clear his throat. Then in a much stronger voice, he asks, "What's your name?"

  "Delbert ... Delbert Tanner."