“Hey, now, you girls are gonna wear Russell out,” my daddy called to me.
“We won’t,” I promised. “Besides, he likes pulling the ropes,” I said. But I could tell that Russell really didn’t. After a whole day of hauling heavy things between the first and second floor, he must feel like somebody’s nearly yanked his arms off.
On the way home, my daddy was quiet. “Darby?” he finally said.
“Yeah, Daddy?”
“You embarrassed me today, asking for money in front of all those men.”
Surprised, I sat quiet for a few minutes. “Sorry, Daddy” was what I said back. And I really was sorry. I felt like a bad person for embarrassing him.
“You didn’t know,” he told me, “but these days, after everyone’s paid off their bills from the tobacco and cotton harvest, they start working on the next bill, and we don’t take in much cash. So, to put it real simple, we don’t really have money to waste.”
“Okay,” I answered.
We rumbled through town, past big and small homes. There was a patch of forest before we passed by Annie Jane’s neighborhood. Another patch of forest came after that. Then we were on the open highway, the cotton rows swaying like tiny ballerinas. When we got closer to Ellan, my daddy said, “Can you believe that Turpin Dunn? He actually came in and accused one of my tenant farmers’ boys of trying to steal his chickens. That man doesn’t know when to quit.”
Shocked, I said, “He was doing that?”
“Yeah, and it wasn’t real subtle, either.”
“Daddy, what’s subtle mean?”
“It means, he didn’t do it in a smart way. It means he just threw it out there like he didn’t care if it made me mad.”
In late October, if it doesn’t rain, the afternoons are so bright you’ve got to squint. After school gets out, it’s the worst. Sunbeams get as long and sharp as pins. Also, daylight goes away so fast you’ve got to go inside early, even if you’re having fun.
What’s happy about late October is that my birthday is on Halloween. My mama and daddy always plan something fun for the weekend closest to my birthday, and they invite all my friends from school. They’ve got one rule, though: They don’t want me discussing my party or presents ahead of time. So even if it’s a week away, it can seem a lot further.
Overnight, the weather had turned cold, so, going downstairs for breakfast, I bunched myself in a thick sweater. Scooting past the fake wood paneling in our hallway, I touched it to make sure it hadn’t turned real. Going into the kitchen, I saw Mama and Great-Uncle Harvey at the table, already eating bacon and biscuits with eggs. I was about to slip onto a chair when my eyes noticed something out the back window. Our wash house was billowing steam like the Bennettsville & Cheraw Railroad. Warm clouds flew out of the open door, and I could imagine all my dirty dresses bubbling clean in that big iron cauldron of boiling water that was full up with soap.
“Good morning, Darby,” Great-Uncle Harvey called.
I sat down and said, “Good morning.”
Mama asked, “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. Then, staring at Great-Uncle Harvey, I asked him, “How’d you know it was me?”
“It’s the way you walk, dear.”
As keen as his ears work, they aren’t any bigger than normal. That always surprises me a little. “It’s like you’re part magic.”
“Sorta,” he agreed.
I told him, “I wish you weren’t gonna leave today.”
Mama said, “We’re all sorry he’s going.”
Smiling, Great-Uncle Harvey said, “Course, it’s been a fine trip. I won’t deny that, but now I need to return to my routine. If I don’t, I might get spoiled and not ever leave.”
“I’m gonna send you my article.”
“That’s what I expect.”
McCall thumped down the steps. Banging into the kitchen, he dumped himself into a chair, and said, “Sorry.”
“You’re excused,” Mama told him.
On the third day after my article was out, everyone forgot about it. At school, I was treated like the same regular girl as before. Even at lunch my teachers didn’t praise me. Arriving home, I grabbed what I’d written about Great-Uncle Harvey and carried my newspaper notebook out back. On the fence beside the dairy barn, I sat snuggling in my coat and watching for Evette. Behind me, I could hear cows scraping against wood pens.
When I finally saw Evette and her two brothers kicking up a dust cloud, I ran through the field and yelled for her. Not ten minutes later, me and her chased off and sat in the woods beneath a tall tree with limbs stretching wide and as round as a ball. It was there that I showed her my story on Great-Uncle Harvey.
“It needs some changing.” Steam flittered about her mouth before disappearing.
“Why?” I asked, worried that she was still jealous and trying to make me scared about newspaper work.
“’Cause, Darby, see here how it ain’t so smooth?” Evette flipped to a page of my story and read me some.
“So what?” I said, rubbing my hands together to keep them warm.
“My aunt says you gotta finish one idea ’fore you jump into the next. See, the way your uncle can read bumps don’t got one thing to do with the way he listens to birds. Understand?”
I did, but it was hard to admit. “I guess.” Feeling kind of dumb, I said, “Maybe . . . maybe you could help me with it? I wanna make it good on account of how nice Great-Uncle Harvey is.”
Evette smiled her pretty smile, which is sort of like Beth’s except her lips are darker. She said, “Oh, you can make it good. You can make it real strong, ’cause it ain’t half-bad. It’ll be as easy as pie, almost.” Then me and her got working and didn’t finish until the sun started melting like butter, and I got confused again about how the earth circles and spins through space.
Walking back to her house, Evette shivered, and told me, “Think like this: The earth spins all by its ownself. It’s like one a them tops. While it’s doing that, it’s also makin’ a wide circle round the sun. You got that?”
“No,” I said, feeling dense.
“It don’t matter.”
Near her house, I said, “You think my article’s okay?”
“It’s real good,” she answered, flittering around playful-like with her long, patchy coat. I looked down and saw that above her falling-apart shoes, her socks were wide open and fraying at the tops.
“Evette?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“How come you can write so good, but you don’t talk right?”
She shrugged. “Guess ’cause I talk like my mama and daddy and brothers, but I writes like my teachers.”
I nodded. “Thanks for helping me.”
“I like doing editing,” she said. Turning, she ran down a narrow row and into her little yard. Walking up the bouncy, creaky steps, she spun and waved. Waving back, I felt glad she was my friend. Then she yanked back her ripped screen door and passed through the big door behind it.
That night I woke up scared again, or I thought I did. Searching around for a ghost, I saw Aunt Greer sitting up in her bed, breathing clouds of steam into the cold air. That’s how I knew something was happening. “What’s going on?” I asked.
Aunt Greer didn’t answer. One thing about her is that she doesn’t like to be surprised or frightened. She gets tearful from it. That’s the reason she sleeps in my room. She says that she has to be close by a person or her heart feels like it’s about to burst.
Outside, King was barking and I heard faint voices. Curious, I got up from my bed and was about to head out the door when Aunt Greer hissed at me. “Darby! You can’t leave.”
I hung on my toes. “Come on with me, Aunt Greer,” I whispered.
“I can’t,” she said worriedly. “You gotta stay.”
On account of her, I was stuck, so I rushed into the bathroom, where I stood on the water closet’s seat and cracked the window.
Right away, I heard my daddy talking. H
e said, “. . . and some aspirin, some compresses, and a disinfectant of some sort.”
“What kind of disinfectant?” Mama asked.
“Rubbing alcohol or moonshine. Just something!”
Mama answered, “Okay,” and I could hear her race through the downstairs.
My daddy asked someone, “Where’s the boy?”
A black man answered, “He at my house, sir.”
“Which is where?”
Another black man said, “Mr. Carmichael, it’s up the roads a short ways.”
“We’re gonna take my car over,” Daddy said.
“But . . . but, sir, oh, Lawd, that boy, he needs hisself a doctor bad.”
“Then we’ll take him to Bennettsville.”
The black man sounded worried. “Who gonna see a black boy at this time a night? Who gonna?”
“Dr. McNeil,” my daddy answered.
When Mama came back, Daddy and the two black men raced through the darkness for the car barn. A moment later, the Buick was cranked and clacking wildly from the coldness. Its bright lights flicked on and it banged out from the barn and down our driveway toward the big road. Then, except for Aunt Greer’s crying, the house and yard went quiet.
It took a while for Mama to soothe Aunt Greer, who cried an awful lot. As upset as she was, though, she didn’t squeal on me for going into the bathroom, and I was glad for that. Even though it was only a few feet away, I would’ve gotten in trouble for leaving her alone.
McCall came in and sat himself at the end of my bed, and with all of us gathered that way, Mama told what happened. She said that there was a sick and infected black boy on Mr. Turpin Dunn’s farm, and that the sick boy’s daddy had come for Evette’s daddy, and Evette’s daddy had come for our daddy. It was real confusing.
“Why didn’t the sick boy’s daddy go fetch Mr. Dunn?” McCall asked.
Mama said, “He told us he was afraid to because of Mr. Dunn’s bad temper.”
McCall bounced on the bed. “I think it’s on account of Mr. Dunn being in the Ku Klux Klan. Everyone knows he’s —”
“McCall!” Mama scolded him.
I said, “Is he really?”
Mama shook her head. “You children mind your manners. How Mr. Dunn spends his time is his own private business.”
I asked, “You think the boy’s got the measles?” It was the only big disease I knew anything about.
“I don’t think,” Mama answered, swaying Aunt Greer back and forth like a little girl. “There’re a million diseases out there.”
McCall said, “He probably stepped on a nail. That’ll get a person real sick.”
“That’s more than likely,” Mama agreed.
Aunt Greer finally sat up. Sniffling and breathing so that her chest banged up and down, she whispered, “Those men gave me such a start.”
“They gave us all a fright,” Mama told her, patting at Aunt Greer’s hair.
“Didn’t scare me,” McCall declared. “I was just curious.”
Mama gave him her schoolteacher look. “I’ve had enough from you, McCall.”
“Sorry,” he said like he was innocent, then, secretly, he pushed his toes up under my covers and pinched my feet with them.
“McCall!” I yelped, and Mama grounded him for two days.
My daddy didn’t get back till breakfast time. Sleepy-looking, he trudged upstairs and into the kitchen and sat himself at the table.
Mama said, “Is the boy okay?”
My daddy shook his head. “No, he isn’t.”
“Is he dead?” McCall asked.
“Yes,” Daddy said softly. “Yes, son, the boy died about an hour ago.”
My mama was quiet before she asked, “Do they know what illness he had?”
“Yeah, it was very obvious,” Daddy told her.
“What?”
“Well, to put it straight, he was beat to death.”
“Oh, my land,” Mama said to herself, studying the tabletop.
I stared down at my breakfast.
After a few moments, McCall declared, “Mr. Dunn did it. I heard some —”
“McCall!” Daddy cut him off. “Listen up. I don’t want you saying that to anyone. You don’t know what happened except for the boy died. I’m warning you right here and now.”
Hurt from getting scolded so hard, McCall answered, “Yes, sir.”
But I felt sure McCall was right. Mr. Turpin Dunn had killed the boy because the boy had tried to snatch a chicken. I’d heard Mr. Dunn talk about it in my daddy’s store. I wanted the sheriff to come and take him to jail. I even said, “Is Sheriff McDonnell gonna come, Daddy?”
Daddy took a tiny bite from the plate of food Annie Jane had just set in front of him. “No, he won’t. Reason is, it was just a black boy.” He looked smack into Annie Jane’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he told her, “but it’s the truth. The sheriff won’t look into that type of thing.”
On the morning that the black boy died, I went to school feeling like my brain was dangling above my head instead of being inside of it. I was so mad at Mr. Dunn that I didn’t want to think about him or the little boy, who I kept picturing lying dead at the doctor’s office. It seemed like the worst thing that could ever happen to a kid . . . getting beat to death.
Later, even though I didn’t feel excited anymore, I skipped lunch and went down the street to the Bennettsville Times to show Mr. Salter my story about Great-Uncle Harvey. Pushing through the half-glass front doors, I went in slow.
Mr. Salter looked up, and said, “If it isn’t Darby Carmichael, Bennettsville’s favorite writer!”
“Hello, Mr. Salter.”
He motioned for me to sit in a chair near his desk. “All of Bennettsville liked your article,” he told me, ramming a stainy hand through his funny hair, hair as black as night.
“Thank you, Mr. Salter.”
Spying my newspaper notebook, he said, “I hope that’s another one. Is it?”
I said, “Yes, sir, it is. It’s about my Great-Uncle Harvey, who’s blind from the measles.”
Mr. Salter sat on the edge of his gigantic desk. “I’m interested in the sound a that. Is it as good as the last?”
I smiled. “I think. You wanna see?”
He lifted a hand for my newspaper notebook, and I gave it to him.
I explained, “It’s at the end.”
Turning to the last page, he read it, then started over and reread it. Unlike my story on toads, he didn’t smile once.
Finally, I asked, “You don’t like it, sir?”
He looked at me. “Did you write this?”
“Yes, sir.”
Studying it again, he said, “It’s an altogether different type of story.”
“I couldn’t think of anything else to say about toads, is why.”
He placed my notebook on one of his legs. “What I mean is, it’s written real well. I mean, sure, it’s got problems that I’ll fix if I take it, but it’s good. It’s touching, even.”
“You don’t think it’s cute, Mr. Salter?”
“Well, not so much.” He handed my notebook to his helper, instructing him to read it. Turning back toward me, he said, “It’s cute in that you care so much for your uncle, that’s clear. But it’s not cute like the other story.” He stared at me. “To be honest, it’s so different from the last story, Darby, it . . . it makes me worried that you didn’t write it yourself.” He gave me the kind of look that makes me squirm, the kind that my mama can give.
“The . . . the only thing different is that I got my friend Evette to help fix it up.”
Chewing at a fingernail, Mr. Salter thought and thought. Then he finally said, “Can’t recall whose daughter she is right offhand. What’s her daddy’s name?”
I hesitated. “It’s Elwood.”
“You know their last name?”
“Yes, sir. It’s Robinson.”
Mashing his chin with his fingers, he thought on that name some.
“She’s . . . she’s a tenant fa
rmer’s daughter who’s one of my best friends. I can see her house from my bedroom window. It’s right behind Ellan.”
Mr. Salter’s helper handed me my notebook. As bald as a post, he smiled, and said, “It’s a beautiful story. It really is.”
“Thank you, sir,” I answered real softly. But I was still worried they weren’t going to take it.
Mr. Salter said, “Darby, was her daddy involved in what happened to that black boy from Turpin Dunn’s farm?”
“I think a little bit, yes, sir.”
Mr. Salter looked at the far-off ceiling. Then he stood up, walked around his desk, and flopped in his chair, which gave a good squeak. “She helped you write it?” he asked.
“Kind of, sir. She helped me smooth it up.”
Smiling, he picked up a pencil. “She must be awfully smart, Darby.”
“She is, sir. But I wrote it.”
Mr. Salter stared at the top of his big old desk. “Darby, if I run your story, and I want to, I gotta say that your friend Evette helped. Give credit where credit’s due. Now, problem is, she’s black. You know? We never have run something from a black person. In a ways, we just can’t. So I’m thinking that I’m gonna say it’s “written by Darby Carmichael and edited by her friend Evette.” I’m not gonna give her last name, and I’m hoping people’ll think she lives in Charleston or something. Is that okay? We aren’t gonna lie about it. But we aren’t gonna open up and say it was edited by a black girl, even if she is real smart.” He winked at me.
All shook up with joy over the idea of getting Evette’s name in the Bennettsville Times, I jumped off my chair, causing it to spill over backward onto the floor. Surprised by the noise it made, I set it straight as fast as I could, and told Mr. Salter, “Doing it like that is perfect.”
Laughing, he said, “You seem happy about it.”
“I am, sir. Evette’s gonna be excited to get called an editor. That’s why.”
“Well, all right.”
I placed my newspaper notebook onto his desk. “Like before, should I leave this for you to copy?”
“That’s right,” he said, grinning extra-wide.
“Thank you, Mr. Salter.”
“Thank you. You did the work.”
Darby Page 5
