Toads Are Safe
Hearing Things I Normally Don’t
Making Me Mad
A Pure Genius
Turpin Dunn
Something in the Night
No Place on Earth More Beautiful
An Argument
My Birthday
In a Silent Movie
Walking Mosquito Hawks
In the Woods Near McPherson’s Pond
Two Storms
Burning
A Communist
Appreciation
A Furious Fire
As Pretty as Heaven
Author’s Note
When I look across the cotton fields of my family’s farm, the flat ground seems to rush away from my feet till it rubs the sky. From my back porch, I can see where my best friend lives. Evette’s tenant house sits on my daddy’s property. Together, we play out in the fields and woods, but on account of her being black and me being white, she hardly ever comes in my house, and I don’t go in hers. My daddy says that’s just the way it is.
Everyone around here knows my daddy because he owns a farm and the Carmichael Dry Goods store in Bennettsville, where he stocks all sorts of stuff except for the best dresses. Me and my other best friend, Beth, sometimes go visit his store after school. We sit on the counter and watch people when they come in. We like to take his elevator up and down, because you don’t have to do anything but look at my daddy’s helper, Russell, pulling on the ropes to make you rise. As a matter of fact, it’s the first elevator in all of Marlboro County, so I suppose a lot of people come to town just so they can ride it.
When I don’t go with Beth after school, my twelve-year-old brother, McCall, who, like a lot of farm kids, has been driving since he was ten, carries me home in our Chevrolet. Our farm is three miles away, so I ride with Daddy or McCall, or I got to walk. The thing is, on account of me being a girl, McCall says, “Darby, you need to sit in back till my friends are gone.”
I don’t like to, but I do it. One by one, his friends leap off the car without us even stopping. They sail from the hood and the running boards, and it’s like watching birds fly away. I told McCall that once, and he said I was as crazy as a polecat, so I told him that girls should sit in the front seat of cars because we’re better. He didn’t listen, though. Instead, he socked me in my arm.
If I come straight home from school, I usually get something to eat from Annie Jane, who cooks our meals. Then I go to find Evette. Behind my house, I weave through my daddy’s favorite flower bushes, his camellias, and past the pecan grove and the dairy and into the cotton fields, where the straight rows lead to Evette’s door. Instead of knocking, I stand in the field and yell for her like she does when she visits me.
If she’s not there, I usually feel lonely. More than anyone, she’s the best person to do stuff with on our farm. Sometimes, though, she has to go off with her mama to pick cotton or boll weevils, or sometimes she just stays and plays with her friends from the black school she goes to, which makes me wish I’d stayed in town with Beth, whose brother has a pet goat and a nice riding cart that he hitches to him. Most every day that goat, Mercury, pulls Beth’s brother up and down Main Street, and if I ask, he always gives me a ride.
If Evette isn’t home, I usually go back through the wide fields and into my yard, where I sometimes set up a penny peek, which is a hole in the ground where you arrange pretty flowers and rocks and branches, like a window display. Other times, I go and pole-vault with an old rake handle or maybe watch Annie Jane make something that she’ll let me taste. My mama says there’s all sorts of entertainment on our farm, and I know it’s true. I just wish Evette was around all the time instead of only a lot.
Even though the black school Evette goes to isn’t as good as the Murchison School I attend in town, she’s near about the smartest person I know. Mama says she gets worn-out books and poor supplies, like old maps and crumbly chalk and that sort of thing. But that doesn’t seem to affect her one bit. Evette’s got a brain like flypaper. Once things get stuck to it, they don’t come unstuck.
Because I like her so much, last fall I did what I sometimes do. I snuck down to the basement and swiped some of my dress-up clothes, then ran across the field as fast as I could so that Mama wouldn’t spot me with my hands full. When I got near Evette’s house, she rushed out, and we shot off into the woods, where we played the fanciest ladies you’ve ever seen. She got to wear the biggest, brightest dress on account of us taking turns with it, and it was so funny, because in a real ladylike voice she stepped from around a tree, and said, “I think I wanna get a diamond so big my arm won’t lift up.”
“Me, too,” I told her.
“I’m gonna get a wide floppy hat, too,” she declared, “with flowers on it.”
“I’m gonna do the same.” I walked around as dainty as I could.
“I’m gonna get the longest, fanciest car and a real polite driver who only calls me ma’am.”
I laughed at her. “Evette, blacks can’t own cars.”
Frowning, she said, “Girl, who told you that?”
I answered, “I just never saw it, is all.”
“My aunt in New York City owns a car. She sent us a letter with a picture of it.”
I stopped and gave her a look. “Are you telling the truth?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am. Also, she and my uncle Wilson own a house that’s in a real nice black neighborhood. It’s got four bedrooms and a library.”
That being just about the most amazing thing I’d ever heard, I thought about it all afternoon. When we’d been playing for a while, I asked, “Do your aunt and uncle have electricity in their house?”
“And plumbing and gas.”
Shaking my head, I said, “I just never heard of that.”
“It’s ’cause it’s mostly a secret that blacks can be that way. But when I get older, I’m gonna write about that stuff for a newspaper. That’s what my aunt does. And, when you write for a newspaper, you gotta tell the truth, and I’m gonna be famous for it. I’m gonna tell people things they wouldn’t ever know.”
“Like what?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I just have to think to remember things.”
“You know what McCall told me that I didn’t know? He said that holding a toad doesn’t really give you warts.”
“It’s true. My big sister carried one to school, and she didn’t ever get any.”
“Are you gonna write about that?”
“Darby, you oughta do it your ownself. It’s kinda fun, you know. You just start by saying real things, then you try and say real things most people don’t know. It’s like a puzzle.”
I explained, “I can’t do it, ’cause I don’t spell so good.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Evette answered. “That’s why newspapers have editors. They check to make sure stuff is spelled right.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t like writing so much, either.” Finding some long white gloves in the dress-up pile, I pulled them on up my arms like a movie star. “Editors are people who check spelling?”
“They do other things, too. But the checking spelling stuff is the most important.”
“Mrs. Evette,” I played, “it’s so good to see you. Can you tell me how you know so much?”
“Well, Mrs. Darby,” Evette joked back, “it’s good to see you, too. And it’s ’cause I ask, is how.”
So that’s why I began thinking I might try writing something someday, because Evette made it sound good. Still, mostly I wanted to be a mama and own the prettiest dresses and jewels and show my children how to do that trick where it looks like a person is taking her finger off at the tip.
We eat dinner at six-thirty. Mama rings a bell, and if I’m a second late or wear my hat to the table, she looks at me ster
n. For some reason, McCall’s usually late, and she always gives him the kind of unhappy eyes I can’t stand. My father sits at the top of the table, next to the main dish, and me and Mama and Aunt Greer are scattered around the sides. If McCall saunters in after we’ve commenced to eating, my daddy shakes his head and tells him he can’t go out and play the next day.
“Yes, sir,” McCall always says.
The night of the day that Evette and I played dress-up in the woods, I went to my room after dinner and made a notebook for reporting, which was kind of fun, sewing it all together and making sure the pages were straight. When I had finished, I carried it down to the parlor and asked my mama, who was also sewing, if she knew about toads not causing warts.
“Darby, dear, that’s just an old wives’ tale.”
I wrote down her comment. “Well, everyone at school thinks it’s true,” I told her. “Maybe I should write an article about it?”
“Maybe you should.”
“Maybe I’ll write it for a newspaper?”
“Darby, dear, reporting is a man’s job.”
“It shouldn’t be,” I answered. But I could tell she didn’t like me talking that way, so I tried changing the subject. “Mama, you wanna know something I learned today? I learned Evette’s aunt and uncle in New York own a car and a house.”
Mama laughed. “Don’t believe everything that girl tells you, Darby.”
“But she said she’s got a picture to prove it.”
“Really? You should ask her to see it, then.”
“But I believe Evette, so I don’t have to.” Who knows what Mama thought about me saying that. I was scared to look at her.
In 1878, back when cotton growing earned money, my granddaddy built our house and named it Ellan after the town in Scotland that his granddaddy came from. It’s a big house, with three floors and wide hallways and pretty windows. It’s painted white and has long steps that climb up to the front door and porch, where Mama sometimes sits, hiding from the sun in a rocking chair. Chimneys run all through the insides of Ellan, and we got electricity and plumbing that Daddy bought in 1916, the year before I was born. The floor is dark, and on the walls somebody painted a fake wood grain that I love because I sometimes check to see if it’s real, but it never is.
From the road, our house looks like a mansion, with its whiteness and windows and porches that come off the second and third floors. You can’t see the peeling paint and chipping wood at all. Rising up around the house, giant trees look like flagpoles before their limbs open halfway to the top. And on account of my daddy collecting camellia bushes, in the fall and winter we always got bright flowers around. When he’s not home, I sometimes break one off and put it in my hair. Then I go hide so Mama won’t see me.
In back, we got about twenty little half-tumbling-down outbuildings for holding things, including one where me and Beth wrote THE DARBY AND BETH SKOOL. When my mama saw it, though, she said that the teachers don’t know how to spell, so me and Beth crossed out SKOOL and wrote SCHOOL, which looked better anyway. Later, off in the woods, me and Evette put a sign on a tree that said, THE EVETTE AND DARBY SCHOOL.
When I wrote my newspaper story on toads, I sat in the Darby and Beth School and thought for a few hours before I even started anything. It wasn’t nearly as fun as Evette made it sound, either. In a way, it was like work. Frustrated, I finally started my article by saying that toads are different from frogs because they’re uglier and got shorter legs. And both those things are true. Following that, I said that my mama called the wart story an old wives’ tale. Then I said that McCall reads all the time, and he wants to be a doctor, and he found out that toads don’t give warts, either. Last, I wrote how a girl I knew had carried a toad all day, and she never got a single wart, “and that’s the truth,” I put at the end.
Since McCall had been late for dinner the night before, he was home, so I carried my newspaper story up to his room for him to see.
Sitting on his bed, he read my article and looked right at me. “Darby,” he said, “this isn’t so good.”
“Why?”
“Mostly because you only got one paragraph. You need to break it up different. You gotta have an introduction and middle part and end, and you gotta spell things right.” Scratching notes beside my sentences, he said, “See?”
“Yeah,” I said, hating writing.
“Aside from that, it’s okay.”
“You think?” I asked, perking up.
“Sure. A lotta people don’t know about toads.”
After dinner, I fixed my story. Then I took it to Daddy, who was sitting downstairs and drinking a glass of headache medicine. “You think this is a good newspaper article?” I asked him.
Holding my notebook, he read what I’d written. “It’s very good,” he told me.
“You think if I ask, Mr. Salter will put it in the Bennettsville Times, since you know him?”
“You’ll have to check with him, honey,” he said, squeezing one of my shoulders.
Before Mama wakes me in the morning, somebody starts the fire in my bedroom. I stand beside it when I put my clothes on, but no matter how cold I get I try to be quiet. My aunt Greer shares my room, and I don’t wanna make her stir.
Mama, McCall, Daddy, and me sit at the big table for breakfast. After saying grace, Daddy passes the grits and sausages and eggs that Annie Jane makes. When my daddy’s done, he goes out and gives instructions to his farm hands. Then he drives to Carmichael Dry Goods in the Buick. Not too much later, me and McCall leave for school in the old Chevrolet.
The morning after I wrote my story, I took it to school with me so that during lunch I could show it to Mr. Salter, who owns one of the two newspapers in town. Sitting in arithmetic, my mind wandered on to Evette, and I wondered what she would think when I showed her how fast I had become a writer. I thought for sure she’d be real proud of me.
At lunch, I straightened my dress and spit on my hands to wipe the dust off my shoes. Then I ran through the yard, over a few blocks, and up the steps to the newspaper office, where Mr. Salter and another man sat at two desks, working.
“Well, hello, Darby,” Mr. Salter said.
“Hello, sir,” I answered, and the walls of the newspaper office seemed about forty feet high, near about as tall as a Georgia pine.
“Can I help you?”
I nodded.
“Your daddy need something?”
“No, sir, Mr. Salter.”
He stared at me. “Okay, Darby, do you need something?”
“Nothing real big,” I said, “except for I wrote a newspaper article, and I wanted to know whether you might put it in your paper.”
“Well, Darby, what’s it on?” he said, smiling.
“Toads,” I said. “About how it’s not true they cause warts when you pick ’em up.”
Mr. Salter stood and put a hand to his chin so that he could think on what I’d just told him. He asked, “What got you to write an article?”
“On account of my friend saying it’s fun.”
He went over to the window behind him, then came back. “I’d have to see it before I say yes or no. Can you drop it by here later?”
My heart nearly stopped cold. “I don’t need to ’cause I got it with me, sir.” I gave it to him.
Opening my newspaper notebook, Mr. Salter read it slow, and I was sure he was relieved to know about toads; he smiled the whole way. “Darby, would you let me edit it a little?”
“You mean fix the spelling, Mr. Salter?”
“Mostly, yes. You can come back by and pick up your notebook after school. I’ll have it copied by then.”
I nearly jumped for joy. “Sure,” I said. Then, with my skinny knees nearly knocking like a woodpecker on a tree, I asked, “You think I can do some more articles?”
“If you write ’em, I’ll look ’em over.”
Smiling, I believed he meant that I could.
When I got home that afternoon, I was so happy that I skipped one of Annie Ja
ne’s snacks and rushed off through my daddy’s camellia shrubs and into the cotton rows. For almost an hour, I waited for Evette. Standing close by her house, I hollered for her until I knew she wasn’t home. Then I trudged back to Ellan and sat on the back steps, wanting to tell somebody about getting my story in the paper. Fidgety, I got up and started kicking a ball against a fence. Then I found my pole-vaulting stick and aimed at the hurdle my daddy had rigged for me.
I ran at the hurdle, jabbing my stick into the ground and swinging into the air and over the low bar, the same way I always do. On the other side, my feet dug into the bed of soft sand, and I was suddenly full up with so much happiness that I decided to go again. And while I was backing up, I thought that Evette was right, that it was nice to be a newspaper girl. I even thought that I might be the best and most natural one who ever lived, even better than all the boys and maybe even better than Evette, because she wasn’t going to be in a newspaper any time soon. Still, one thing scared me. How was I ever going to make myself think of a good second story? It seemed like it would be real hard to find anything as easy and near as misunderstood as toads causing warts.
After my daddy said grace and we started eating dinner, I said, “In case anyone wants to know, the newspaper story I was writing is gonna be in the Bennettsville Times. Mr. Salter told me so today.”
Mama said, “Really?” She put a surprised hand against her chest.
“I never thought you’d even go ask him, Darby,” my daddy said.
“One thing about you, Darby,” Mama said, “you’ve always been stubborn.”
Daddy chewed and swallowed a fork’s worth of ham. “When’s the story going to run?” he asked.
“What do you mean run?”
“When’s Mr. Salter going to put it in the paper?”
“Oh,” I kind of hemmed. “Well . . . he told me he thinks it’ll get runned next week.”
Smiling, Daddy said to Mama, “I suppose he thought it was sweet.”
I shook my head. “I think he just liked it.”
McCall declared, “Darby, it’s true. He thinks it’s funny, is all.”
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