“An’ it din’t take long fo us ter figger out what wuz ter be done. We scrambled up an’ jumped outer dat boat lickety-split an’ we wuz all swimmin’ fo our lives dat nex’ minute, an’ when we walked up out er dat mud onto da bank, we wuz ’bout da happiest four young scamps in all Louisiana. Den we jes’ had ter git home wiffout any white boys seein’ us. We knew we wuz likely ter git whupped fo bein’ gone so long, but we still lit out runnin’ up dat ribber till we got ter where we knowed where we wuz. An’ dat rain, it didn’t stop till we got all da way home.”
Henry stopped, but we were all still staring at him.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“We got our behinds whupped somethin’ fierce,” chuckled Henry. “It still hurts when I think ’bout it. My papa wuz a good man, an’ he din’t put up wiff no foolishness from me.”
When Katie and her two uncles walked out of Mrs. Hammond’s store lugging several bags and parcels of supplies, Ward glanced up at the threatening black clouds approaching from the direction of Rosewood.
“That looks like a nasty storm,” he said. “I say we get on our way home . . . and fast.”
“It’s coming this way, Ward,” said Templeton. “Maybe we should stay in town and wait it out.”
“We don’t know when it’s going to unload.”
“Looks like it’s already raining back home. I say we make a run and hope it stops or swings around us. We don’t want to be stuck in town several hours.”
“Yeah, you’re right—let’s go.”
They put their parcels in back, along with the sacks of feed and some garden seed from Mr. Watson’s, then jumped up onto the wagon and headed out of town as fast as they dared push the two horses and still manage to keep their seats.
“What’s Sister Nelda have to say?” asked Templeton.
“I don’t know, Uncle Templeton,” replied Katie. “I haven’t opened the letter yet.”
“Why not? Open it up, girl.”
“I don’t think I could read it bouncing around like this.”
“I’ll slow down, then,” he said, easing the horses back to a gentle walk.
Katie tore the edge of the envelope, took out the single sheet of white paper, and began to read. Her two uncles waited, not exactly patiently but glancing over at her every so often, obviously curious.
Finally she set the letter down in her lap and sighed thoughtfully.
“Well . . .” said Ward impatiently.
“She, uh . . .” Katie began, “she invited me to Philadelphia for a visit.”
Ward and Templeton glanced at each other in surprise.
“She apologized for not keeping in touch,” Katie went on. “She said they have had some difficult times in the last few years, but that after reading your letter, Uncle Templeton, she realized how important it was to keep in touch with family and, with me not having a mother now, wondered if I would come to Philadelphia for a while. She mentioned a finishing school for young ladies.”
“There, you see—she doesn’t think we’re suitable,” said Ward, obviously perturbed.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Ward,” said Templeton. “Just because she invited Katie for a visit doesn’t mean—”
“Why didn’t she write us, then?” asked Ward. “She never answered your letter. She only wrote to Katie.”
“She did say at the end to give my uncles her best,” said Katie.
“There, you see, Ward—nothing so sinister at all.”
“Yeah, I suppose not,” mumbled Ward. “But . . . I don’t know—it still seems a mite peculiar, her saying nothing to us about Katie visiting. But Nelda was like that—she never had much use for me. She was different than Rosalind.”
It was silent a minute or two.
“I suppose in a way you’re right, Ward,” said Templeton at length. “It was always Rosalind who was looking out for her two brothers. I guess that’s why we both stayed closer to her over the years. She’s the one we went to see, not Nelda.”
“Yeah, Rosalind was good to us, all right. Richard never had much use for us, for me anyway—meaning no disrespect to your pa, Katie—but Rosalind, though she might grouse at us, she’d never turn us away.”
“In a way, you know, Katie,” said Templeton, “Mrs. Hammond back there is right—you are a lot like your mother. And you’re looking more like her all the time too, just like the lady said.”
“I will take that as a compliment,” smiled Katie.
“And, you know, maybe Nelda’s right too—it wouldn’t hurt you to go to a finishing school. Maybe you ought to go for that visit.”
“Uncle Templeton . . . a finishing school!”
“You’re getting older, Katie. We’ve got to think about your future—yours and Mayme’s too. Some education would be good for you both. I want my daughter and niece to have the best.”
“Why don’t we send them both to Nelda’s finishing school?” suggested Ward with a twinkle in his eye that looked strangely like his brother’s.
“Somehow I do not have the feeling Nelda would be altogether receptive to that idea,” said Templeton. “And I doubt, even in the North, that they mix their races quite like we do at Rosewood.”
“Did you tell her about Mayme, Uncle Templeton?” asked Katie.
“Well, in a roundabout way,” replied Templeton. “But I didn’t actually tell her about her mama and me in so many words. I figured getting her used to the three of us together here was enough for one letter.”
“We have to tell her,” said Katie. “Do you mind if I write back and tell her about Mayme? I won’t say anything you don’t want me to. I could never even think of going to Philadelphia without Mayme.”
“So you think you might go for a visit?”
“I don’t know. I’m not interested in finishing school. But she is kin. It seems like, now that I am nearly grown, that maybe I ought to get to know her.”
“Oh-oh!” exclaimed Ward.
“What?”
“Didn’t you feel that? I think I felt a drop of rain.”
They glanced up. The storm clouds were blacker than ever and nearly directly overhead.
“We’d better get these horses moving!”
We all became quiet and reflective. Henry’s story, I think, reminded us all of our former years as slaves.
“Micah,” said Jeremiah, “when we were together in da army, I recall you tellin’ me dat you had a hard life. But you wuzn’t no slave, wuz you?”
“No, Jake, I never was.”
“You ever picked cotton, Mister Duff?” asked Emma.
“No, Emma,” smiled Micah. “There’s not much cotton in Chicago.”
“Well den, son, you’s got somethin’ ter look forward to!” chuckled Henry. “You can’t be black in da Souf wiffout pickin’ cotton. Jes’ consider yo’self lucky, son.”
At the words, Micah grew pensive. These people around him had all had a much harder life than he had. Nothing of what he had had to endure compared with how dreadful and demeaning slavery must have been. It was part of the cruel heritage of his race that he had not experienced.
Maybe his life hadn’t been so hard after all. Being a Negro in the North was nothing like being a slave in the South.
Jeremiah’s voice interrupted Micah’s reverie.
“Den what made yers a hard life, Duff?” he asked.
A strange and far-off look came into Micah’s eyes. He drew in a deep breath, then sighed with the hint of a smile, though a sad one.
“Do you really want to hear about it?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, Mister Duff—please tell us,” said Emma. “I likes hearin’ stories ’bout everybody.”
Micah smiled again.
“All right, then, Emma,” he said. “How can I resist a request like that?”
As Micah began, his voice got quiet. It almost didn’t seem like the same voice at all, like it was coming from far away. It almost sounded like he was telling about someone else altogether.
And i
n a way, I guess he was. The boy he told us about might have once been him . . . but it wasn’t him any more.
We all got quiet too as we listened to the boy’s story.
BOY IN CHICAGO
15
A BOY OF ELEVEN DUCKED OUT OF SIGHT IN A DARK alleyway of Chicago’s dreary waterfront district, where respectable people did not venture out at this hour. His skin was as black as the shadows where he hid.
All the local flatfoots knew the youngster, and none would have given him worse than a box on the head or a surly warning or two, even if they had caught him red-handed. That he had to steal a loaf of bread, or a piece of fruit or meat if he was lucky, to keep himself alive was well known to the neighborhood the boy haunted. So was the fact that his mother would probably not be alive without what he shared with her. The meager earnings from her disreputable trade selling her body mostly disappeared down her throat in the form of whiskey, rum, or gin.
By the time her unwanted son was of an age to beg, she sent him out with a forlorn expression and tin cup. By the time he could run fast enough to keep from getting caught by unwary shopkeepers, she taught him to steal. He had been doing both ever since and had grown proficient at both trades. He begged by day in those sections of the city bordering on respectability. He stole by night wherever food was to be had, and wherever shadows and alleyways offered refuge and escape.
Over the years he had learned every nook and cranny of the bustling metropolis for two miles in every direction from what he called home, though a more disgusting environment could scarcely be imagined for human habitation. Many nights he curled up in his own little corner on a dirty thin pad on the floor, wrapping a single blanket around him, with words and sounds coming from his mother’s bed no child should have to hear.
But he was too young to understand, had no idea why sailors of all races, skin colors, and origins came and went every night, and thus was not badly damaged by it. Like most children of adverse circumstance, he possessed a remarkable capacity to adapt and to make the best of the sordid condition fate had thrown at him. He had probably slept cuddled to the warmth of his mother’s side—certainly as an infant, surely as a young child, but he did not remember it. No human affection within his memory had touched his cheek, no kiss graced his lips. Out in the city, he saw men and women kissing, he saw parents and children hugging and walking hand in hand, but he did not know what any of it meant.
His life could not in any way be called pleasant. But it was filled with variety and interest, which for a child are as important as food for the mind and heart as is bread for the body. What he lacked in companionship from his mother he made up for in the infinite sights and sounds of the city. From the smile of a stranger, the pat on the back to accompany a penny tossed in the cup from a passing businessman, from the affection of a hundred dogs of the city who knew him as a roamer like they, the tough words of the beat cops who secretly watched out for him, even from the angry scolding of the shopkeepers and their wives as he passed . . . from all these, life somehow reached out and smiled at him. Even strangers were his friends. The human creature is a social animal and will derive companionship of soul from the unlikeliest sources. It will be fed by even the hint of a smile or twinkle of the eye from a passerby where no more vital companionship-food is to be had.
He turned at the end of an alley into a flight of rickety outside stairs, where he bounded up two at a time in near total blackness. It was after ten o’clock. About halfway up he heard a door close above him. A dark figure loomed on the landing, nearly indistinguishable from the blackness of the sky. Heavy footsteps began tromping down the stairs.
“Get out of the way, kid!” said a deep, surly voice as he stood with his head against the railing to let the man by. As soon as he was gone, the boy raced the rest of the way to the top and inside the filthy hovel lit dimly by a lone candle.
“Hi, Mama,” he said. “I brung you a roll an’ a couple er sausages—dey’s fresh too, Mama, from jes’ dis mornin’. I stold ’em from da man wiff da meat cart fo you, Mama.”
A few mumbled words were all the thanks he received for his evening’s labors. He expected nothing more. A few minutes later he was curled up in his corner, silently munching on the day-old crust he had kept for himself. He had pulled his blanket up over his head and was sound asleep twenty minutes later when the door opened again and the next customer walked in.
Day followed night, night followed day, in the endless succession of moments from which destiny is written and character fashioned.
The boy did not know his life was miserable because he did not consider it miserable. It was simply his life and he lived it . . . and went on. Misery is only misery to those who pity themselves in the midst of it. For those who seek to make the best of it, the same circumstances are pregnant with opportunity waiting to be born.
His mother rarely went out, for the fact was—she was not well. Though they shared the same hovel, in truth he rarely saw her. She still lay snoring and half drunk in her bed when he rose and left each morning to begin his daily round of activities as a street urchin, beggar, and budding thief. He usually returned once or twice a day to leave what few coppers he had inveigled in the streets, and then went out again.
But more and more she was in bed at these times too. The cough, which had been growing ever since the previous winter and now seemed constant, he hardly noticed. He heard such things all day from people in the city and thought nothing of it. He was unaware that it was a deep cough and wracked her lungs with increasing pain. The gradual failing of her liver from years of hard drinking and poor nutrition did nothing to help her condition. Whether it was pneumonia or consumption that eventually killed her was never looked into—she was not the sort whose passing the city mourned. Nor did she have friends who would have known the difference, or even cared. In the end, if tuberculosis was the cause, her lack of intimacy with him no doubt saved her son’s life. For as severe as her cough became during her final weeks, mercifully the infection never reached him.
It was merciful too that he himself did not have to bear the burden of the discovery of the body at such an impressionable age. The landlord arrived early one afternoon to take out his wages for rent in flesh, as was his weekly custom, and found a corpse awaiting him rather than a warm body. The woman whose earthly life left no mark of eternal value on this world as she had passed so fleetingly through it, had now gone to see what the next world could make of her. Behind her she left but a child—the most precious and lasting legacy of humanity. Perhaps he might, in time, if not redeem the squalid existence she had led, at least bring redemption to her memory through his own life.
He arrived late that same afternoon, a few pennies and the huge wealth of a shiny nickel clutched in his excited little palm, to see a policeman standing at the bottom of the stairs talking with the landlord. A premonition swept over him—he had never before seen a white policeman this close to the building he called home.
“Dere he be, Officer,” said the black man, nodding the boy’s direction.
Almost the same instant he glanced up at the landing above. Two men were coming out of the topmost door carrying a stretcher with a blanket over it—a blanket bulging with an indistinct but recognizable form beneath it—the shape of a human body. He glanced again at the two men.
“Your mother’s dead, boy,” said the policeman.
He might not know human affection, but he knew what dead meant. The depths of its mystery did not occur to him at that moment, only the stark fact that his mother’s voice had been silenced, that he would never see her again, and that he was now alone in the world.
Only a moment more he stood, unable to comprehend the totality of what this change meant.
The two men continued talking. Only fragments of their conversation reached the ears of his spinning brain.
“. . . have a father?” asked the policeman.
“. . . you kiddin’, Officer . . . half da men in Chicago . . .”
S
uddenly the boy turned and darted away.
“Hey . . . hey, boy!” called the policeman. “Come back . . . we’ll try to—”
But he was gone.
He ran and ran and ran. Whether he cried he could never remember. To run himself to exhaustion was the sole remedy for his confusion and anguish. When he came to himself a few hours later, his fingers were still clutched around the eight cents, and he was aware that he was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger.
Old habits returned. He pilfered half a loaf of bread and an apple or two and gradually, sometime after nightfall, returned to the only home he had ever known.
He crept up the stairs, somehow knowing that it would be best for the landlord not to be aware of his presence. The door opened to his touch, for it did not even have a lock. He crept inside and to his familiar corner.
Now at last he cried . . . cried himself into a sound and dreamlessly forgetful sleep . . . and slept until morning.
He rose as usual, took one last forlorn look about the place, cried briefly again to see the vacant bed of his mother, empty and lifeless, and then left, never to return.
STREETS FOR A HOME
16
EVEN THE STREETS OF A CITY, WHEN ONE HAS someone else to live for, can give life and energy and even smiles. But when mere survival is the only objective, the streets of a city become cold and hard. And such they now became for the young black orphan.
The faces from which he had always derived the camaraderie of shared humanity now became adversarial. His own contentment, which had reflected twinkling eyes and teeth ready to glisten in a bright smile toward friend or stranger, now took on a calculating expression of suspicion, greed, and wariness. The innocence of childhood vanished, replaced by the cunning of avarice. The pickpocket replaced the boyish opportunist.
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