They Tell Me of a Home: A Novel

by Daniel Black

  Around noon, Willie James summoned me to come get lunch. He had gone to the General Store and bought bologna, crackers, potato chips, and two peach Nehi sodas. We sat underneath a grove of small trees at the back end of the field as we ate.

  “It’s hot as hell today, man,” Willie James protested, breaking the awkward silence.

  “Shit, this is crazy!” I confirmed.

  “Folk have heatstrokes behind this kinda heat.”

  “I know! I don’t remember it being hot like this when we were kids. Was it?” I sulked.

  “It probably was. We jes’ didn’t pay no’tention.”

  “It’s deep, what you start paying attention to when you get grown.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Willie James passed me a soda and broke out in uncontrollable amusement.

  “What are you laughing about?” I was giggling, too, primarily because he was.

  “Remember the time Daddy sent you to the store to get some nigga toes?”

  “Oh, shut up! Daddy made me make a complete fool of myself!”

  “Did you really ask dat white man to sell you some nigga toes?” Willie James was crying with glee.

  “Shut up!” I said, pushing him playfully.

  He bellowed merriment from deep within. “What did he tell you, T.L.? I forgot.”

  “Man, you ain’t forgot! You jes’ wanna make fun of me!”

  “No, no, no! For real! I forgot! What did he say?” Willie James struggled hard to appear serious although suppressed mirth contorted his face.

  “He told me,’Son, you don’t need to buy no nigga toes. You got ten of’em!’”

  Willie James lost control of his faculties and spilled soda all over himself. He rolled on the ground laughing unashamedly and tried unsuccessfully to regain his composure.

  “Man, dat’s the funniest thing I ever heard in my entire life!” he said, resuming a position next to me. “Daddy shoulda been’shame’ o’ hisself, sending you to dat white man talkin’’bout some nigga toes! You didn’t know dat nigga toes is Brazilian nuts?” Willie James started rejoicing all over again.

  I chirped along. When I thought about it, it really was hilarious.

  “What about the time you cussed out Ms. Sandidge, Willie James, when you thought she wasn’t listening?”

  “Who told you about that?” Willie James shouted.

  “Grandma.”

  “Man, I got a whoopin’ you wouldn’t believe!”

  “What did you say, Willie James?” I asked delightfully.

  “You know what I said, fool!”

  “No, I don’t! I wasn’t there!”

  “But you still know! You said Grandma told you!” Willie James was trying his best not to retell the story, but I wouldn’t let up.

  “Ah, come on, man! I never knew exactly what you said. You know Grandma didn’t tell it exactly like it happened!”

  “OK, OK.”

  I was attempting to listen attentively, but my jubilation wouldn’t be contained.

  “We were standing behind the church. Scooter had jes’ got a whoopin’’cause he sucked his teeth at Ms. Sandidge. She was the Sunday school teacher for the kids, and everybody knew she didn’t hear too good. Anyway, she asked me to stand up and read Hezekiah, chapter ten, verse five. I stood up and searched desperately for Hezekiah in the Bible. Suddenly, Ms. Sandidge screamed, ‘There is no such book as Hezekiah in the Bible, young man! Now sit down! If you read the Bible as you should, you wouldn’t be so stupid!’ That’s when I mumbled under my breath, ‘I ain’t as stupid as yo’ stupid ass.’”

  Willie James and I split our sides.

  “Well, Ms. Sandidge heard me. The other kids did, too, but they acted like they didn’t hear so I wouldn’t get in trouble. ‘What did you say, young man?’ she asked me real slow. ‘I ain’t said nothin’, Ms. Sandidge,’ I said, scared to death. ‘Oh yes, you did!’ She grabbed me by the ear and took me out behind the schoolhouse and tore my ass up! I swear she beat me for about thirty minutes. She came back in and acted like nothin’ happened.

  “When Sunday school was over, Carol Ann, Ole Man Blue’s granddaughter, came outside to find me. I was sitting on the old well behind the church steaming mad. ‘You all right, Willie James?’ she whispered.

  “Why was she whisperin’?” I asked Willie James to evoke his drama.

  “’Cause she didn’t want me to jump on her and whip her ass’cause I was so angry! I’m tellin’ you, T.L., the fire in my eyes woulda scared anybody.”

  Willie James made the ugliest face he could to represent what he felt that day. “Anyway, I started tellin’ Carol Ann’bout how I was gonna whoop Ms. Sandidge’s ass good. I said, ‘I’ma catch dat bitch by herself one day and snatch dat wig off her head and kick her ass like I’m stompin’ roaches. Goddamn deaf ho’! She always pickin’ on me! Keep on fuckin’ wit’ me.’ All of a sudden, Carol Ann’s eyes became real big. I wasn’t paying her no’tention, though, because I was too mad. ‘Who de fuck she think I am?’ I went on. ‘Some goddamn child? Hell, dat ho’ don’t know me. Muthafucka. I bet I kick her ass, what chu bet?’ I looked up to see if Carol Ann was listening to me, and boy, you woulda thought I saw a ghost. Ms. Sandidge had been standing behind me the entire time! ‘Oh no, Ms. Sandidge! I was jes ‘trippin’! You know I was trippin’! Me and Carol Ann was shootin’ de breeze and talkin’. You know how it go.’ Ms. Sandidge didn’t say a word to us. She told Momma and Daddy.”

  “You have to be lyin’!”

  “Naw, I ain’t lyin’! She told them every single word I said. When Daddy whooped me, he made me scream out a cussword real loud every time he hit me. I screamed, Bitch! Daddy hit me again and I hollered, Muthafucka! Daddy struck me again and I yelled, Ho! Daddy kept this up until I shouted every word I had called Ms. Sandidge!”

  We rolled on the ground, crying, like two helpless little boys.

  “Willie James, you were a straight fool! That beats any story I’ve ever heard!”

  “Yeah, I was crazy. Me and Scooter.” Willie James calmed. “Dat was my man. Me and him stayed in trouble. He was cool until it came time to get de whoopin’. He’d get real quiet’cause he couldn’t stand to get no whoopin’. Most times, he’d stand there and take de beatin’ without ever sayin’ anything. He was pretty amazin’. I miss ole Scooter.”

  “I wish I had known him. And Shelia, too. Did they look alike?”

  “Yeah. Jes’ alike. Most identical twins do.”

  “They weren’t identical, Willie James. They weren’t the same gender.”

  “I don’t know how you explain it, but they were exactly alike. I mean exactly. People confused them all the time. Momma and Daddy, too.”

  I didn’t dispute his testimony because I wasn’t there, but the prospect he was right troubled me.

  “Momma said they was identical twins in every way,” Willie James maintained.

  “What?”

  “I took her at her word and went on’bout my business. You best do de same.”

  I grunted but held my peace.

  “Yeah, I miss ole Scooter,” Willie James reminisced again. “He was great, but he was too fragile. Dat’s why he shot hisself.”

  I turned my head suddenly toward Willie James. “Momma said he drowned.”

  “I know what Momma said, but it ain’t de truth. Scooter shot hisself. I know’cause I was there. We was out rabbit huntin’ one evenin’ alongside de river and Scooter started cryin’. I didn’t know what was wrong, so I asked him. He said, ‘I been thinkin’, Willie James, ‘bout dyin’.’

  “‘Why you thinkin’’bout dyin’, boy?’ I asked him.

  “‘I don’t know. I jes’got a feelin’.’

  “‘You ain’t fittin’ to die, is you? You too young.’

  “‘You ain’t neva too young,’ Scooter said, gazing off into space.

  “Since I didn’t know what else to say, I didn’t say nothin’. I spotted a rabbit a few minutes later and followed him, hoping to have him for dinner. I heard a sho
t behind me. I turned and saw Scooter on de ground and de snow around him soaked with blood like a red snow cone. I screamed, but nobody heard me. We was too far away. At first, I hoped some other hunters mighta shot him by accident, but after a moment of panic I knew. I put his head in my lap and rubbed his forehead as I cried. He was tryin’ to tell me he wanted to die, but I didn’t want to hear him.”

  “He was six years old talking like an old man?” I asked, amazed.

  “Yeah. Him and Shelia was some unusual twins. They was like old people in little children’s bodies.”

  “I wonder why Momma told me he drowned?”

  “’Cause that’s what I told her. She had already lost Shelia the year before and I didn’t want her to hurt no more than she had to. I told her we was huntin’ back by de river and Scooter slipped in, hit his head on a big rock, and drowned. It wasn’t true. I put his body in de water and held it under for a minute so his clothes would be wet, making it look like he drowned. I struck him in de head with a big rock so Momma and Daddy would think he hit his head when he fell in. They never knew he shot hisself in de head.”

  “Do you ever intend to tell them the truth?” I inquired, horrified.

  “Nope. I did them a favor and I’d do it again.”

  Willie James’s confidence forced me to drop the issue. I sat there, trying to ascertain how he had carried this secret for a lifetime.

  He stood up and stretched, a sign it was time to return to the field.

  “Ole Scooter’s in a better place than we are, li’l brother.”

  “Amen,” I stammered guardedly.

  “I’ll see you back at the house this evenin’. Thanks for the help.”

  “Sure,” I mumbled as he walked away. “Thank you for the truth.”

  10

  By sundown, I was exhausted. I despised farming, and now I knew exactly why. The last ten years had removed me far enough from the fields of Arkansas that I forgot what manual labor felt like. I had become a laborer of the mind, one who theorizes about the world and writes books to share those thoughts. More particularly, I had become a fiction writer. Nothing intrigued me more than to tell stories of how black people survived and how we created laughter in the eye of the storm. I wanted my words to heal hearts, incite joy, evoke tears, and initiate change. As a freshman at Clark College, I realized the magical power of literature and marveled that a person could take language and alter my existence without ever knowing me. I wanted such power in order to get on the inside of people and help them fix things. My dream was that, one day, one of my poems or short stories would make people cry or love themselves into their own liberty.

  So, when I left Arkansas, I started writing. The stories people told at the Meetin’ Tree became my text and gave me foundation for understanding the art of good literature. Students from all over the world gathered at Clark, and many of them made great additional characters for my stories. I started writing poems first, however, because I wanted to see if, in a few words, I could achieve profundity.

  “What are you doing?” my friend Marsha asked one day.

  “Writing a poem,” I returned casually.

  “What’s it about? Can I see it?”

  I wasn’t feeling very secure. “Maybe later when I finish it.”

  She left, only to return moments later.

  “Well, can I see it now?”

  I was sitting in the Brawley Hall lounge. It had gotten dark and I had not bothered to turn on the lights. She didn’t, either.

  “I bet it’s goooood!”

  “You might be disappointed,” I whimpered timidly.

  We decided to go outside under the streetlight since the weather was nice.

  “I’d rather read it to you myself, if you don’t mind. It’s kind of rough and I’ve made some marginal changes.”

  “Go for it,” Marsha encouraged excitedly.

  “It’s called ‘The Black Bouquet.’” I faltered a moment and then began reading:

  “I am that flower you picked and vased,

  Cut off from roots as such debased;

  No seed to come again next year,

  Turn brown and die alone in here—

  you call me beauty

  “Arranged among the other ones,

  My friends the rose, the chrysanthemum,

  Placed on mantle high and bright,

  Our death will come soon one fortnight—

  and still you call us beauty

  “Bouquet you call us in this vase,

  And look on us with prideful face;

  As though you’ve done a wondrous thing

  To rid us of our petaled wings—

  and dare to call us beauty

  “Tossed in the trash with no remorse,

  Dismissed, forgotten, no recourse;

  ‘There will be more next year,’ you say,

  But we’ll not ever see that day—

  and still you call us beauty”

  “Oh my God!” Marsha clamored. “That was incredible!”

  I was afraid she wasn’t going to like it.

  “That was the most beautiful poem I’ve ever heard in my life!”

  She hugged me tightly, with tearstained eyes. “You’re a writer, Thomas. I can’t believe it! You are a real-life, bona fide writer! Write something else right now and let me hear it!”

  “It’s not that easy, girl,” I chuckled. “Poems come to me when they get ready. I can’t simply grab a sheet of paper and decide to write one.”

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. At least not for me.”

  “As soon as you write another one, let me know. I’ll be glad to listen.” Marsha stood there studying me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t believe it.” She threw her head back and examined the sky as though searching for understanding. “You are so good, Thomas. Your poem went all through me. It rhymed and flowed like Langston Hughes or Sonia Sanchez. You’re gonna be famous. I can feel it.”

  “I doubt that,” I said, hoping she was right.

  “No, I’m serious. Sometimes I feel things before they actually happen, and this is one of those times. I’m serious! I can feel this. You’re like a caterpillar waiting to transform into a beautiful butterfly. You know what I mean?”

  I gaped at Marsha, dumbfounded, as I remembered Sister’s jarred caterpillar under her bed.

  “Wait and see.” Marsha walked off nodding her head.

  I didn’t know whether I’d be famous or not. I merely wanted to write. Finally, I had moved a human being with my own words and experienced what God must have felt when He made the world—a sense of sheer ecstasy for having created a universe of possibilities out of nothing. I wanted to write again immediately, but my mind was blank. Instead, I sat under the streetlight watching other students go by, wondering what their lives were like, what they longed to do, to become. A pretty, mocha-complexioned sister waltzed by with her head hung low and I wanted to reach out and touch her and ask what I could do to make her life better. I didn’t, though. Maybe she would read one of my poems one day, I hoped.

  The day I arrived back in Swamp Creek I had several of my poems with me. I had intended to read them to anybody who cared to listen, but after getting home and discovering levels of impending drama, I dropped the idea. Swamp Creek was not a place for writers. People there loved words, but they weren’t interested in changing their ideas. I didn’t tell Momma or Daddy I had become a writer. They would have wondered why I got a Ph.D. if all I wanted to do was write.

  By the time I got home from the field, night had descended. I parked the tractor by the barn and began strolling toward the house.

  “That field ain’t no joke, is it?” Willie James was leaning against Daddy’s 1960 Chevy smoking a cigarette and drinking a Corona. I hadn’t seen him standing there.

  “Boy, you scared me to death,” I said, startled.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you. Jes’ wanted to speak.”

  We were sil
ent for a moment.

  “Yeah, that field wore me down, man. Bobbin’ up and down all day drained me dry.”

  “I do it for a living.”

  “I’m glad I don’t,” I said, immediately wishing I could retract my words.

  “It ain’t bad after a while. You gets used to it. Ain’t nothin’ else to do.”

  “There are a lot of other things you could do, Willie James.”

  He sighed heavily. “Like what?”

  Mosquitoes were in attack mode, and although we were losing the battle, our valiant fight was admirable.

  “You could always go back to school.”

  “No, I can’t. I wasn’t good the first time. You know school was never my thing.”

  Yes, I knew, but I thought the suggestion alone might boost his self-esteem.

  “Maybe you could start your own business then.”

  “Doing what? And with what?”

  “I don’t know, Willie James. I’m trying to help.”

  “I never said I needed help.”

  “I know. I thought maybe you needed something else.”

  “Something like what?”

  “Like a life.”

  “Who said I ain’t got a life? I ain’t got yours, but mine is OK with me.”

  I thought to apologize but instead became silent and let it go.

  “I’m gon’ be round heayh the rest of my days, I believe,” Willie James asserted after several minutes. “When you leavin’ anyway?”

  “Saturday. The Greyhound bus comes through Swamp Creek around five in the evening.”

  “Oh! We can get a lot more work outta you befo’ you leave, huh?”

  “Don’t start!”

  We both grinned, although we knew working those fields was no joking matter.

  “I guess you done seen a lotta things and people from all ova de world.”

  “Yeah. The world is amazing, Willie James. People are different in some ways yet very similar in others.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “About what?”

  “The rest of the world.” Willie James’s eyes were glued to the ground. He sounded like he wanted to cry. “What’s it like when you leave this damn place?”