Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

by Mildred D. Taylor

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked Little Willie. “What’s everybody waiting ’round for?”

  “And where’s Stacey?” demanded Little Man.

  Little Willie smiled. “Stacey inside with Miz Logan. He got whipped today.”

  “Whipped!” I cried. “Why, can’t nobody whip Stacey. Who done it?”

  “Your mama,” laughed Little Willie.

  “Mama!” Christopher-John, Little Man, and I exclaimed.

  Little Willie nodded. “Yep. In front of everybody.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling very sorry for my older brother. It was bad enough to be whipped in front of thirty others by a teacher, but to get it by one’s own mother—now that was downright embarrassing.

  “Why’d Mama do that?” asked Christopher-John.

  “She caught him with cheat notes during the history examination.”

  “Mama knows Stacey wouldn’t cheat!” I declared.

  Little Willie shrugged. “Well, whether she knowed it or not, she sho’ ’nough whipped him…. Course, now, she give him a chance to get out of it when he said he wasn’t cheatin’ and she asked him how he got them cheat notes. But Stacey wouldn’t tell on ole T.J., and you know good and well ole T.J. wasn’t ’bout to say them notes was his.”

  “Cheat notes! But how’d T.J. get cheat notes? Stacey got rid of them things this morning!”

  “Come noontime though,” replied Little Willie, “T.J. was in them woods busy writing himself another set. Me and Moe seen him.”

  “Well, what the devil was Stacey doing with ’em?”

  “Well, we was in the middle of the examination and ole T.J. slips out these cheat notes—me and Clarence here was sittin’ right behind him and T.J. and seen the whole thing. Stacey was sittin’ right side of T.J. and when he seen them notes, he motioned T.J. to put ’em away. At first T.J. wouldn’t do it, but then he seen Miz Logan startin’ toward ’em and he slipped Stacey the notes. Well, Stacey didn’t see Miz Logan comin’ when he took them notes, and by the time he saw her it was too late to get rid of ’em. Wasn’t nothin’ Miz Logan could do but whip him. Failed him too.”

  “And ole T.J. just sat there and ain’t said a word,” interjected Clarence, laughing.

  “But knowin’ Stacey, I betcha ole T.J. ain’t gonna get away with it,” chuckled Little Willie. “And T.J. know it too. That’s why he lit outa here like he done, and I betcha — Hey, Stacey!”

  Everyone turned as Stacey bounded down the steps. His square face was unsmiling, but there was no anger in his voice when he asked quietly, “Anybody seen T.J.?” All the students answered at once, indicating that T.J. had headed west toward home, then surrounded Stacey as he started across the lawn. Christopher-John, Little Man, Claude, and I followed.

  When we reached the crossroads, Moe Turner was waiting. “T.J. went down to the Wallace store,” he announced.

  Stacey stopped and so did everyone else. Stacey stared past Jefferson Davis, then back down the road toward Great Faith. Looking over his shoulder, he found me and ordered, “Cassie, you and Christopher-John and Man go on home.”

  “You come too,” I said, afraid of where he was going.

  “Got something to take care of first,” he said, walking away.

  “Mama gonna take care of you, too!” I hollered after him. “You know she said we wasn’t to go down there, and she find out, she gonna wear you out again! Papa too!” But Stacey did not come back. For a moment, Little Man, Christopher-John, Claude, and I stood watching Stacey and the others heading swiftly northward. Then Little Man said, “I wanna see what he gonna do.”

  “I don’t,” declared Christopher-John.

  “Come on,” I said, starting after Stacey with Little Man and Claude beside me.

  “I don’t want no whipping!” objected Christopher-John, standing alone in the crossroads. But when he saw that we were not coming back, he puffed to join us, grumbling all the while.

  The Wallace store stood almost a half mile beyond Jefferson Davis, on a triangular lot that faced the Soldiers Bridge crossroads. Once the Granger plantation store, it had been run by the Wallaces for as long as I could remember, and most of the people within the forty-mile stretch between Smellings Creek and Strawberry shopped there. The other three corners of the crossroads were forest land, black and dense. The store consisted of a small building with a gas pump in front and a storage house in back. Beyond the store, against the forest edge, were two gray clapboard houses and a small garden. But there were no fields; the Wallaces did not farm.

  Stacey and the other students were standing in the doorway of the store when Little Man, Christopher-John, Claude, and I ran up. We squeezed through so we could see inside. A man we all knew was Kaleb Wallace stood behind the counter. A few other men sat around a stove playing checkers, and Jeremy’s older brothers, R.W. and Melvin, who had dropped out of school long ago, leaned sleepy-eyed against the counter staring at us.

  “Y’all go on to the back,” said Kaleb Wallace, “lessn y’all wanna buy something. Mr. Dewberry got the music goin’ already.”

  As we turned away from the entrance, Melvin Simms said, “Just look at all the little niggers come to dance,” and the laughter of the men filled the room.

  Christopher-John tugged at my arm. “I don’t like this place, Cassie. Let’s go on home.”

  “We can’t leave without Stacey,” I said.

  Music beckoned from the storage room where Dewberry Wallace was placing round brown bottles on a small table as we crowded in. Aside from the table, there was no furniture in the room. Boxes lined the walls and the center floor had been cleared for dancing—several older couples from Great Faith were already engaged in movements I had never seen before.

  “What they doing?” asked Little Man.

  I shrugged. “I guess that’s what they call dancing.”

  “There he go!” someone shouted as the back door of the storeroom slammed shut. Stacey turned quickly and sped to the back of the building. T.J. was fleeing straight toward Soldiers Road. Stacey tore across the Wallace yard and, leaping high like a forest fox, fell upon T.J., knocking him down. The two boys rolled toward the road, each trying to keep the other’s back pinned to the ground, but then Stacey, who was stronger, gained the advantage and T.J., finding that he could not budge him, cried, “Hey, wait a minute, man, let me explain—”

  Stacey did not let him finish. Jumping up, he pulled T.J. up too and hit him squarely in the face. T.J. staggered back holding his eyes as if he were badly hurt, and Stacey momentarily let down his guard. At that moment, T.J. rammed into Stacey, forcing the fight to the ground again.

  Little Man, Christopher-John, and I, with the others, circled the fighters, chanting loudly as they rolled back and forth punching at each other. All of us were so engrossed in the battle that no one saw a mule wagon halt on the road and a giant man step out. It wasn’t until I realized that the shouting had stopped behind us and that the girls and boys beside me were falling back that I looked up.

  Mr. Morrison towered above us.

  He did not look at me or Christopher-John or Little Man, although I knew he had seen us, but walked straight to the fighters and lifted a still-swinging Stacey off T.J. After a long, tense moment, he said to Stacey, “You and your sister and brothers get on in the wagon.”

  We walked through the now-silent crowd. Kaleb and Dewberry Wallace, standing on the front porch of the store with the Simmses, stared at Mr. Morrison as we passed, but Mr. Morrison looked through them as if they were not there. Stacey sat in front of the wagon with Mr. Morrison; the rest of us climbed into the back. “Now we gonna get it,” shuddered Christopher-John. “I told y’all we shoulda gone on home.”

  Before Mr. Morrison took the reins, he handed Stacey a handkerchief in which to wrap his bruised right hand, but he did not say a word and it wasn’t until we had passed the crossroads leading to Great Faith that the silence was broken.

  “Mr. Morrison…you gonna tell Mama?” Stacey asked huskil
y.

  Mr. Morrison was very quiet as Jack the mule clopped noisily along the dry road. “Seems I heard your mama tell y’all not to go up to that Wallace store,” he said at last.

  “Y-yessir,” said Stacey, glancing nervously at Mr. Morrison. Then he blurted out, “But I had good reason!”

  “Ain’t never no reason good enough to go disobey your mama.”

  The boys and I looked woefully at each other and my bottom stung from the awful thought of Mama’s leather strap against it. “But Mr. Morrison,” I cried anxiously, “T.J. was hiding there ’cause he thought Stacey wouldn’t never come down there to get him. But Stacey had to go down there cause T.J. was cheating and—”

  “Hush, Cassie,” Stacey ordered, turning sharply around.

  I faltered for only a moment before deciding that my bottom was more important than Stacey’s code of honor “—and Stacey had to take the blame for it and Mama whipped him right in front of God and everybody!” Once the truth had been disclosed, I waited with dry throat and nauseous stomach for Mr. Morrison to say something. When he did, all of us strained tensely forward.

  “I ain’t gonna tell her,” he said quietly.

  Christopher-John sighed with relief. “Ain’t going down there no more neither,” he promised. Little Man and I agreed. But Stacey stared long and hard at Mr. Morrison.

  “How come, Mr. Morrison?” he asked. “How come you ain’t gonna tell Mama?”

  Mr. Morrison slowed Jack as we turned into the road leading home. “ ’Cause I’m leaving it up to you to tell her.”

  “What!” we exclaimed together.

  “Sometimes a person’s gotta fight,” he said slowly. “But that store ain’t the place to be doing it. From what I hear, folks like them Wallaces got no respect at all for colored folks and they just think it’s funny when we fight each other. Your mama knowed them Wallaces ain’t good folks, that’s why she don’t want y’all down there, and y’all owe it to her and y’allselves to tell her. But I’m gonna leave it up to y’all to decide.”

  Stacey nodded thoughtfully and wound the handkerchief tighter around his wounded hand. His face was not scarred, so if he could just figure out a way to explain the bruises on his hand to Mama without lying he was in the clear, for Mr. Morrison had not said that he had to tell her. But for some reason I could not understand he said, “All right, Mr. Morrison, I’ll tell her.”

  “Boy, you crazy!” I cried as Christopher-John and Little Man speedily came to the same conclusion. If he did not care about his own skin, he could at least consider ours.

  But he seemed not to hear us as his eyes met Mr. Morrison’s and the two of them smiled in subtle understanding, the distance between them fading.

  * * *

  As we neared the house, Mr. Granger’s Packard rolled from the dusty driveway. Mr. Morrison directed Jack to the side of the road until the big car had passed, then swung the wagon back into the road’s center and up the drive. Big Ma was standing by the yard gate that led onto the drive, gazing across the road at the forest.

  “Big Ma, what was Mr. Granger doing here?” Stacey asked, jumping from the wagon and going to her. Little Man, Christopher-John, and I hopped down and followed him.

  “Nothin’,” Big Ma replied absently, her eyes still on the forest. “Just worryin’ me ’bout this land again.”

  “Oh,” said Stacey, his tone indicating that he considered the visit of no importance. Mr. Granger had always wanted the land. He turned and went to help Mr. Morrison. Little Man and Christopher-John went with him, but I remained by the gate with Big Ma.

  “Big Ma,” I said, “what Mr. Granger need more land for?”

  “Don’t need it,” Big Ma said flatly. “Got more land now than he know what to do with.”

  “Well, what he want with ours then?”

  “Just like to have it, that’s all.”

  “Well, seems to me he’s just being greedy. You ain’t gonna sell it to him, are you?”

  Big Ma did not answer me. Instead, she pushed open the gate and walked down the drive and across the road into the forest. I ran after her. We walked in silence down the narrow cow path which wound through the old forest to the pond. As we neared the pond, the forest gapped open into a wide, brown glade, man-made by the felling of many trees, some of them still on the ground. They had been cut during the summer after Mr. Andersen came from Strawberry with an offer to buy the trees. The offer was backed with a threat, and Big Ma was afraid. So Andersen’s lumbermen came, chopping and sawing, destroying the fine old trees. Papa was away on the railroad then but Mama sent Stacey for him. He returned and stopped the cutting, but not before many of the trees had already fallen.

  Big Ma surveyed the clearing without a word, then, stepping around the rotting trees, she made her way to the pond and sat down on one of them. I sat close beside her and waited for her to speak. After a while she shook her head and said: “I’m sho’ glad your grandpa never had to see none of this. He dearly loved these here old trees. Him and me, we used to come down here early mornin’s or just ’fore the sun was ’bout to set and just sit and talk. He used to call this place his thinkin’ spot and he called that old pond there Caroline, after me.”

  She smiled vaguely, but not at me.

  “You know, I…I wasn’t hardly eighteen when Paul Edward married me and brung me here. He was older than me by ’bout eight years and he was smart. Ow-ow, my Lord, that was one smart man! He had himself a mind like a steel trap. Anything he seen done, he could do it. He had done learned carpentry back up there near Macon, Georgia, where he was born. Born into slavery he was, two years ’fore freedom come, and him and his mama stayed on at that plantation after the fightin’ was finished. But then when he got to be fourteen and his mama died, he left that place and worked his way ’cross here up to Vicksburg.”

  “That’s where he met you, ain’t it, Big Ma?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  Big Ma nodded, smiling. “Sho’ was. He was carpenterin’ up there and my papa took me in with him to Vicksburg—we was tenant farmin’ ’bout thirty miles from there—to see ’bout gettin’ a store-bought rocker for my mama, and there was ole Paul Edward workin’ in that furniture shop just as big. Had himself a good job, but that ole job wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted himself some land. Kept on and kept on talkin’ ’bout land, and then this place come up for sell.”

  “And he bought himself two hundred acres from that Yankee, didn’t he?”

  Big Ma chuckled. “That man went right on over to see Mr. Hollenbeck and said, ‘Mr. Hollenbeck, I understand you got land to sell and I’d be interested in buyin’ me ’bout two hundred acres if yo’ price is right.’ Ole Mr. Hollenbeck questioned him good ’bout where he was gonna get the money to pay him, but Paul Edward just said, ‘Don’t seem to me it’s your worry ’bout how I’m gonna get the money just long as you get paid your price.’ Didn’t nothin’ scare that man!” She beamed proudly. “And Mr. Hollenbeck went on and let him have it. Course now, he was just ’bout as eager to sell this land as Paul Edward was to buy. He’d had it for goin’ on nigh twenty years—bought it during Reconstruction from the Grangers—”

  “ ’Cause they didn’t have no money to pay their taxes—”

  “Not only didn’t have tax money, didn’t have no money at all! That war left them plumb broke. Their ole Confederate money wasn’t worth nothin’ and both Northern and Southern soldiers had done ransacked their place. Them Grangers didn’t have nothin’ but they land left and they had to sell two thousand acres of it to get money to pay them taxes and rebuild the rest of it, and that Yankee bought the whole two thousand—”

  “Then he turned ’round and tried to sell it back to ’em, huh, Big Ma?”

  “Sho’ did…but not till eighty-seven, when your grandpa bought himself that two hundred acres. As I hears it, that Yankee offered to sell all two thousand acres back to Harlan Granger’s daddy for less’n the land was worth, but that old Filmore Granger was just ’bout as tight wi
th a penny as anybody ever lived and he wouldn’t buy it back. So Mr. Hollenbeck just let other folks know he was sellin’, and it didn’t take long ’fore he sold all of it ’cause it was some mighty fine land. Besides your grandpa, a bunch of other small farmers bought up eight hundred acres and Mr. Jamison bought the rest.”

  “But that wasn’t our Mr. Jamison,” I supplied knowingly. “That was his daddy.”

  “Charles Jamison was his name,” Big Ma said. “A fine old gentleman, too. He was a good neighbor and he always treated us fair…just like his son. The Jamisons was what folks call ‘Old South’ from up in Vicksburg, and as I understands it, before the war they had as much money as anybody and even after the war they managed better than some other folks ’cause they had made themselves some Northern money. Anyways, old Mr. Jamison got it into his mind that he wanted to farm and he moved his family from Vicksburg down in here. Mr. Wade Jamison wasn’t but ’bout eight years old then.”

  “But he didn’t like to farm,” I said.

  “Oh, he liked it all right. Just wasn’t never much hand at it though, and after he went up North to law school and all he just felt he oughta practice his law.”

  “Is that how come he sold Grandpa them other two hundred acres?”

  “Sho’ is…and it was mighty good of him to do it, too. My Paul Edward had been eyein’ that two hundred acres ever since 1910 when he done paid off the bank for them first two hundred, but ole Mr. Jamison didn’t wanna sell. ’Bout that same time, Harlan Granger ’come head of the Granger plantation—you know, him and Wade Jamison ’bout the same year’s children—and he wanted to buy back every inch of land that used to belong to the Grangers. That man crazy ’bout anythin’ that was before that war and he wantin’ his land to be every bit like it was then. Already had more’n four thousand acres, but he just itchin’ to have back them other two thousand his granddaddy sold. Got back eight hundred of ’em, too, from them other farmers that bought from Mr. Hollenbeck—”

  “But Grandpa and old Mr. Jamison wasn’t interested in selling, period, was they, Big Ma? They didn’t care how much money Mr. Granger offered ’em!” I declared with an emphatic nod.