The Emancipation of Evan Walls

by Jeffrey Blount

  Since I had never flown before, Patty gave me the window seat. I watched the lights of Tidewater twinkle and fade as we broke through the clouds. Patty then told me how this trip came to be.

  “I got this idea a while back, and I’ve been working on Mom for quite some time. I just kept telling her that I was bored all the time. After a while, she asked me to tone it down because I was really getting on Daddy’s nerves. So, I struck a deal. You let me go to New York to see a play once in a while, and I’ll shut up about boring old Canaan. I convinced her that I was old enough. And we have an apartment in the hotel, so it would be sort of like being at home. She came through with the credit card and some cash.”

  “Excellent strategy,” I said, impressed.

  “I thought so,” she replied. “And speaking of that, you never told me how you got your folks to agree.”

  “Well, it was easier than I thought. I told them that some of the team was getting together at Dee’s place. I suggested I just stay the night, and they wouldn’t have to come out late at night to get me. And I knew Daddy didn’t want to be driving through a white neighborhood in the dark.

  “They were definitely shocked, and for a moment I could see some anger rising in Daddy’s eyes. But I think the three of us knew that we had turned a corner in our relationships. For whatever reason, things are looking up. They get to be proud about football, something acceptable by everyone. I get to work on being somebody without them trying to halt the process. We can pretend it’s not happening, you know. The football overwhelms it, anyway.

  “With Mark gone, I don’t think they want to risk losing another son. I just need to not rub it in their faces. Stay under the radar, and I think I’ll be okay. I’m in a really good place, Patty. I feel like I’m beginning to get my parents back, I get to play the greatest sport in the world, I get to be me, and I have you.”

  “Yes, you do,” Patty replied.

  I smiled. “Despite Taliferro Pitts, it’s hard to remember when I had it this good.”

  “Okay, that’s the last time you get to say that name this weekend.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  •••

  We got into the city late. I watched Patty operate, giving directions to the cab driver, dealing with the city itself and the Essex House, where they knew her and treated her like royalty. They looked at me curiously, but I was quiet, and Patty offered them no explanation.

  We were tired, and we decided to go right to bed. Even though it was what I wanted, I was uncomfortable when we entered her bedroom and I saw that there was only one queen-sized bed. Patty acted as if it were no big deal. She went into the bathroom and came out in an oversized T-shirt. She looked at me as if to say, “Aren’t you going to get undressed?” So, I went into the bathroom and came out in gym shorts. We got into bed. Patty said we had a long day ahead, and we smiled and kissed each other goodnight. This time, I could savor her kiss, and I did. I was well aware of every sensation it created in me, and I loved the warm feeling of her body against mine. I turned out the light, and Patty fell asleep in my arms.

  The next day we were up early. We ate breakfast at some famous place, and Patty pointed out a movie actor who strolled by reading his paper and sipping on a cup of coffee. When we left, we headed to Central Park. We walked around for an hour and ended up at the zoo. Next, we were off to Times Square, where we bought theatre tickets. She showed me where the big ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, and explained that almost a million people had come out the night she’d done it with her mom and some friends. “It was pretty cool,” she said. “But once is enough for me.”

  “Anything’s got to be more fun than watching Guy Lombardo and listening to grownups talking while they sit around eating black-eyed peas,” I recalled, thinking back to the days when we used to spend New Year’s Eve at Mama Jennie’s house.

  Next, it was on to the Empire State Building, and then we hopped a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty.

  We finished touring around four and went back to the hotel for a nap, and then we had dinner and Patty took me to a play. An extraordinary day for a country boy.

  After the play, I stood by the window of her room, looking out at an empty Central Park bench right under a streetlight. The light seemed to cast a halo over it. Pretty soon, a couple sat there, and she put her head on his shoulder. I was wondering what they might be talking about and admiring the pretty picture they made when Patty called to me.

  I turned around and she stood across the room, nude in the dim light of the one lamp we’d left on. To me, her body was perfect. I was deeply moved as well as sexually aroused by the symmetry of her figure. She smiled, and I felt loved.

  She came and stood before me. As she began to unbutton my shirt, I placed my hands on her hips, paying particular attention to how her wonderfully curved body moved beneath my touch as she undressed me.

  I’d always wondered about the day when I would be naked with a girl. I imagined that I would be embarrassed, wondering if she would find something strange about my body. If I had enough to offer, you know. But I was fine. I was so consumed by the heat of the moment that it never really crossed my mind. I felt heat all the way down to my bones.

  I walked with her to the bed. We hadn’t said a word up to that point and continued in silence as we lay side by side. We just looked at each other for a while. Patty softly brushed her hand over my face.

  “I know,” she said, “that you probably never thought your first time would be with a white girl. It must be doing things to you inside.”

  “Truthfully, Patty, I haven’t thought about anything or anybody but you.”

  “Well, that’s what a girl likes to hear,” she said, smiling. “It’s just that I know you carry around so much extra baggage. You can drop all of that tonight. I will never willingly hurt you by taking advantage of your honesty. So drop all your defensiveness, and try to relax. It’s our first time, and we’ll always remember it. Let’s try to get as close as possible, body and soul, with nothing between us.”

  “Okay, no extra baggage.”

  I trusted Patty completely.

  “And don’t worry. I’m protected. I have a diaphragm.”

  “Oh, man, I hadn’t thought about it. I’m glad you did.”

  We laughed about it as we began to kiss. Some time went by, and then we looked at each other. She rolled over on her back and pulled me on top of her.

  Then, she whispered, “Stop.”

  “What is it?” I was all of a sudden tense, afraid that I’d done something wrong.

  “Nothing bad,” she said. “I just want to feel what this is like.”

  I closed my eyes and lay my head beside hers. I felt like I was a part of her body. I felt whole in a way I never could have imagined.

  She pressed on my lower back and I moved inside of her. We kissed. And when we were finished, we wrapped ourselves around each other and looked into each other’s eyes. After a while, she got tired, and I watched Patty Cunningham fall asleep. It was the best moment of my life.

  SEVENTEEN

  The chatter coming from inside my house that Sunday morning surprised and momentarily disoriented me. Mama and Daddy never missed church unless they were really ill, and I couldn’t remember a time when they were both too sick to go. So, I approached the back door cautiously, growing angry at the fact that my plan had not worked out.

  No one was supposed to be home when I got back from New York. I began to wish that my relationship with my parents had not gotten better, because they wouldn’t have cared where I’d been. I’d just have to lie.

  But when I looked through the window, I saw Mama sitting at the table with her head in her hands. Daddy was nodding at something Aunt Mary was saying, and Ethel Brown was urging Aunt Mary on. What are they doing here?

  I opened the door, and Aunt Mary turned and walked right up to me and shouted in my face. “If I was your mama, I’d take a hot iron to your Uncle Tom ass!”

  She then went over and kissed D
addy and told him to do what he had to do and that Mama Jennie wasn’t around anymore to stick her nose in his business. Then she left and slammed the door behind her.

  Ethel Brown left next, after kissing Mama. “Take care, girl,” she said. Then she walked past me and said, “Boy, you should be ashamed of yourself. So ashamed.”

  “Some people,” Mama Jennie had said, “can’t get away with nothing. They ought to always deal above the table.” I realized that I was one of those people and never should have gotten myself into this mess. At the same time, I felt like anything was worth suffering through for what I had shared with Patty.

  Daddy set out to trap me in the lie by asking how Dee was doing. I felt there was no need for this little parental game.

  “You know I wasn’t there,” I said, and Mama burst into tears.

  Over the years, she had tried off and on to protect me by urging me to give up my dream. It hurt her back when Daddy beat me. But now I looked at her and wondered if she felt she’d had enough.

  “Yeah, we know you won’t there. ’Cause we had police here in this house, like we was criminals or something. You know how embarrassing that was for us. Asking us about the whereabouts of our son. But I reckon you don’t care that your mama feel like she can’t go out of the house.”

  “Police?” I asked. My mind was spinning.

  “Yeah, that’s right. That’s what I said. PO-LICE!” He was getting angrier. “And since you don’t know nothing about that, I reckon you don’t know that your white boy you was supposed to be staying with spent the night in the hospital.”

  “What!” I thought, Jesus. “What happened to Dee?”

  “I guess if you knew, you woulda been beat up, too. But no, here you is all nice and clean.”

  “Where was you?” Mama asked, looking up from her hands.

  I just stared at her. “I can’t tell you, Mama,” I said.

  She started crying again and then came to me.

  “Look at what you done to us,” she said. “All this mess you and that damn Bojack conjuring up. Lost all your friends, and trying to lose ours for us. Causing your daddy trouble on the job and at church. You ain’t got an ounce of respect for the woman who bore you and sacrificed so much to raise you. You broke my heart. You hurt me to the core. You run your brother away, and I swear you trying and trying real goddamn hard to put me in my early grave.”

  “I’m not, Mama.”

  “The hell you ain’t. You ain’t never gone get nowhere or have nothing. You know why? ’Cause you don’t do what the Bible say. Honor thy mother and father and your days will be long on this earth. You!” she shouted, her finger in my face. “You working a real short life.”

  Then she picked up a glass of Kool-Aid and threw it into my face and all over my white sweatshirt. She walked away, and from down the hall I heard her saying, “I’ll be damned glad when you old enough to get out of my life.”

  I’d lost my mother for good. Daddy just looked at me and turned away.

  •••

  I ran out the door and over to Bojack’s house. Luckily, Aunt Mary wasn’t at home, and he was working in the yard.

  I don’t know if he heard my heavy footsteps or my frantic breathing. He looked up at me a while before I got to him, dropped his rake, picked up his beer, and sat on his front steps.

  “I been expecting you,” he said. “Where’s Mary?”

  “I don’t know. She just left our place a few minutes ago.”

  “I reckon we better go around yonder then.”

  “Okay.”

  We went out to the shed and sat. He told me that Mama and Daddy had known since late Friday night. Taliferro beat Dee badly enough to put him in the hospital. While I slept in Patty’s fancy New York City apartment, an ambulance took Dee to Obici Memorial Hospital, and a police cruiser took Taliferro to the town jail.

  In a few hours, much of Canaan’s black population surrounded the local police station.

  “It was just crazy that they did that,” Bojack said. “I couldn’t believe it. And some people say Eliza Blizzard ain’t had no real impact on black folks. But not a damn one of them woulda had the guts to do that if she ain’t dropped the hammer on Ray Coon and gave folks some fight.”

  A line of officers came out to meet the crowd. They held their nightsticks tightly, prepared for some serious head-bashing.

  Reverend Walker had been chosen spokesman. But before he could speak, the sheriff came out and told them that Taliferro was inside and wouldn’t be released anytime soon.

  The reverend spoke up. “You listen here, Sheriff. We have brought bail money for the boy. We want him out. We know what y’all do to us in places like that.”

  “Well, boy,” the sheriff replied, “I believe you must have been hearing some bad rumors or something.” He laughed.

  “First off,” the reverend replied, “I ain’t no boy, and second, I don’t deal in rumors. We got enough firsthand witnesses in this town. Now, I got enough money here to give to the judge to pay Taliferro’s bail, and I suggest you take it.”

  “You threatening me, boy?”

  “If that be what it takes. And I ain’t no boy!”

  The sheriff and his officers began to laugh, and the crowd got louder.

  “Well, I don’t like threats,” the sheriff said. And he nodded down the row of officers, who started rubbing their nightsticks in hopeful anticipation.

  “Well, I reckon the people out here don’t much care about what you think about threats. All I know is that you better take this money and let that boy in there loose. If a white man had beat up a black boy, he’d be at home by now watching the game on TV. That’s of course if y’all woulda arrested him in the first place. And I’m here to tell you that we gone have it the same way for us tonight.”

  Reverend Walker threw the envelope of money at the sheriff, who let it rest at his feet for a little while and then he spit on it. The crowd, now more than a thousand and growing, began to get agitated. Then the sheriff stomped on the money and ground it into the cement. Some people rushed the building. Several of the policemen were dragged into the crowd. Other officers fired their pistols into the air, and when the commotion stopped, they aimed them into the crowd.

  “Now you niggers get yourselves together!” the sheriff yelled. “Next one of you moves one sloth-footed goddamn inch is shot.”

  Reverend Walker then stood on the roof of a police car. All around him, people stood shouting at the police.

  “Now!” Reverend Walker shouted. “There are no fools here in this street tonight. We all know the deal. But let me say something to you. You can shoot them guns and kill some of us, but those police over there being held, they will be dead too, along with the rest of you. Look down that street, sheriff. There are so many people, you can’t even see the end in either direction. And we know you ain’t got no reinforcements on the way. So, like I say. You can kill some of us, but God shall have his revenge on this night when these nice churchgoing folks out here show you what a lynching is really like.”

  The sheriff went inside and came out with Taliferro. He picked up the envelope of money and shoved Taliferro toward the crowd, which had broken out into a chorus of “We Shall Overcome.”

  “The police,” Bojack said. “They come to your house before all that happened at the jail. Rumor mill say Flak been saying that Taliferro actually wanted you. He came after you and Dee ’cause he heard you was staying at Dee’s house. He figured that was about the ultimate Uncle Tom thang to do. And he was gone make you pay for it. When Dee wouldn’t tell him where you was, Taliferro jacked him up. Then the cops came to your house to see what happened to you. If you was dead or alive or whatnot. And folks figure that make you for sure Uncle Tom, ’cause the police don’t usually go nowhere to check on no black folk.”

  “It must have been the Flea’s dad.”

  “Oh, that little white boy on the team?”

  “Yeah. His real name is Perry, but we call him the ‘Flea’ because h
e’s so small. Flea told me he’d filled his daddy in on how Taliferro had it in for me.”

  “Well,” he said. “Where was your behind?”

  “You gotta promise not to tell a soul.”

  He nodded, looking concerned.

  “Patty took me to New York for the weekend.”

  “Damn! That’s something. All the way to New York.”

  I nodded.

  “And where you stay at?”

  “Patty’s folks have an apartment in a hotel. I also saw a play and went sightseeing.”

  “Where did you sleep?”

  “With Patty.”

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You never know about teenagers these days.”

  “You can’t tell anyone.”

  He laughed. “Hell, I ain’t crazy. I might get shot just for knowing about such sin.”

  I laughed with him.

  “Well, Mr. Lover,” he said. “What you gone do now?”

  “I need to go see Dee.”

  “I reckon that’d be the right thang to do. I would take you, but—”

  “I understand. I’ll take that old bike you fixed up way back when.”

  “I think you a little too big for that thang.”

  “It’ll do.”

  As I rode the bike, I felt my heart pumping hard; partly from the riding, but mostly from the anxiety of awaiting Dee’s reaction to me. Even though he didn’t know where I was going, he’d kept his mouth shut and taken a beating for me. I felt good about our friendship and wanted to tell him so. I wanted to let him know that I owed him.

  When I got to his house, I saw his mother going in their front door, dressed like she’d just gotten home from church. Though I’d always thought she liked me, I could tell she wasn’t thrilled to see me at that moment. I mean, there I was, panting, looking half-crazed with my stained clothes. But it had to do with more than that. As I approached her, she asked me to stop at the sidewalk.

  I was stunned. I could hear Chauncey Mae in my head saying, “Boy, didn’t I tell your black ass that white folks will cut your behind loose at the drop of a hat? They ain’t going through no changes in order to be the friend of no nigger.”