Jackson was coasting as the ball fell toward his hands. Then a blur passed him, and he grabbed air. I’m sure he finally located the ball, but unfortunately for him it was tucked into my left arm as I strolled down the sideline for the biggest touchdown of my short career. The stadium was, as one of my favorite TV announcers used to say, “bedlam.” The Canaan bleachers bounced under the crowd. Bojack and Patty were standing side by side, jumping up and down cheering. We had beaten the great Cougars of Jefferson High. We had ended their nine-year reign.
On the field, I was mobbed. In the midst of our joy, guys on the team forgot they hated me or that they should stay away from me. Dee and Tex tackled me. Then the guys picked me up and put me on their shoulders. For a change, I was just about everybody’s hero. It was crazy! I guess it’s like they say: everybody loves a winner. They carried me all the way to the field house, surrounded by our cheerleaders, who had our fans loudly singing the Canaan High School fight song. It was a football moment that I would never forget.
Many college coaches and scouts squeezed their way into the field house. They shook our hands and congratulated us. We drank Pepsi instead of champagne. Coach Kendel was like a limp dishrag of joy. It was his greatest triumph as a coach. He couldn’t stop shouting, “Boys, we did it! Boys, we did it!”
In two weeks we would play for the right to call ourselves the best high school football team in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
NINETEEN
By Thursday of the following week, I was feeling let down. There was no game. Nothing to get hyped about. I missed it both mentally and physically.
At home, things moved rapidly in reverse. All the gains that I’d made faded when I got caught lying about New York City. Mama told me for the millionth time how I embarrassed her and how she couldn’t go outside. Daddy wished out loud that he could get away with kicking me out of the house. I, in turn, spent a lot of time in the woods, sleeping, eating and breaking more bottles by the light of a fire.
I headed out there to meet Patty. I’d introduced her to my circle in the woods, and we’d already made love there twice since New York. Before I crossed the road, Bojack called my name. As he walked toward me, I was thinking that I’d finally get to know why Aunt Mary had allowed him to go to the game. He must have done some pretty smooth talking. Either that or something had gone terribly wrong.
“What’s happening, big man?” he asked.
“The usual,” I replied.
“For you, I guess that’s right.”
We both had to laugh at that one.
“I can’t tell you,” I said as we began to walk into the woods, “how great it was to see you in those stands. It just lifted my spirits. I’ve been trying to reach you to find out how you made it happen. Where have you been?”
“I ain’t answered the phone for a while. Last couple of days, I been helping Mary move out.”
“What?” I was shocked.
“Yeah, we gone divorce again. How about my ass, huh? Married twice to the same woman and divorced twice from the same woman. If I was gone go through all of that, you thank I woulda tried a different woman the second time around. Makes me feel like I kinda wasted some years, you know?”
I nodded. As we found my place and sat down on the ground, he spoke about how good it felt to him to return to Canaan stadium and that the almost-fistfight he had suffered through with Aunt Mary was well worth it. He spoke in a voice tired of being muzzled.
“It ain’t that a football game is more important than marriage, but it’s the freedom thang, you know. To do what makes you happy.”
“Oh boy, do I know.”
“Anyway, there was lots of thangs she wanted and didn’t want. And they was always the opposite of me. One day we just looked at each other, and we knew. So I helped her move out.”
“I’m sorry, Bojack,” I said. “Looks like I ruined your life, too.”
“Oh, no. I see thangs the other way around. I turned on your mind and led you into something you couldn’t know about. I set you up, and yeah, they has been some blowback, but I’m good with that. I got to own it. I earned what come my way all by myself.” He patted me on the shoulder, and there was a noise in the distant underbrush.
“We got company?” he asked.
I nodded and smiled. “Patty.”
“Nice girl,” Bojack said. “I liked her. Ain’t never said that ’bout no white girl, but it’s so. She got it bad for you too, you know.”
“Hi, guys,” she said as she broke into the clearing, holding a large pizza. “Nice to see you again, Bojack. You like pizza?”
“If it’s got sausage on it. I’ll eat a shoe that a dog pissed on if it’s got sausage on it.”
We all had a good laugh at that one. Patty brought dinner that night because Mama didn’t want to cook for me and yelled at me every time she caught me in the kitchen.
“So what’s up?” I asked. “You look frazzled.”
“I had a major blowup with the folks.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and Bojack picked up on things.
“You don’t mean,” he interrupted, “that your folks be knowing about Evan?”
“Not completely. They suspect that I’m seeing him, but they’re afraid to come out and ask. And they are afraid that I’m serious about this because I stopped talking about what I was missing in Philadelphia and how Canaan was so boring.”
“I reckon it is boring for you,” Bojack said before biting into a slice of pizza. “I like a slow pace in life, and this is even boring to me.”
Patty laughed. “They figure the only thing that could make me forget what I had before is a boy here. Since Dad saw my reaction to Evan at the last game, they’ve been acting funny.”
“Do you think they ever found out about New York?” I asked.
“I’m not positive, but it’s a good bet. All the people at the hotel know us pretty well, and Dad’s been back there since we visited.”
“Well, they your parents. Why don’t they just come on out and ask?” Bojack asked.
“Because they have always raised me to believe that race shouldn’t be considered in any way in dealing with people. If they confronted me, they’d be admitting that they didn’t really mean it. I guess they don’t want me to think that they’re two-faced racists.”
“Race, race, race,” I said. “Man, I get so sick of it.”
“Well, if it got you sick, it’ll probably kill you, then. It ain’t a disease that can be cured, you know,” Bojack added.
“I know what you mean, though, Evan,” Patty said. “Everything in this town seems to be tainted by bad race relations.”
“It ain’t just this town,” Bojack quickly said. “It’s the whole damn country.”
“Well, I don’t understand why it has to be that way,” Patty replied.
“Sheeeeeit. You can talk about mom, baseball, and apple pie all the livelong day, but they ain’t nothing more American than the race problem. Before it’s all over, race problems in the country gone be like battles in the Holy Land. They gone go on forever and ever.”
Patty looked concerned. “You don’t think it will ever be solved?”
“Of course not. It can’t be.”
“That’s a terrible thought.”
Bojack nodded. “It’s damn for real, though. I mean, let’s face up to it. You can’t build a house on a crooked foundation and expect it to settle right.”
“I never thought of it that way,” I said.
“Well, I talked about this very thang with Eliza Blizzard,” he said. “You got to remember the Declaration of Independence. Even while ole Thomas Jefferson was writing all that bullshit about all men being created equal, a ole black nigger was probably bringing him his tea and cake.”
“I don’t like that word,” Patty said.
“You join a long list of folks tired of hearing it. I just need you to feel what I’m saying, so I’m speaking the real deal here. You see, there was also a strong, black buck slavin’ in Tom’s
fields when Tom raped his wife. Eliza say they was a slave name Sally that was his mistress. But I call her raped. What I’m saying is that piece of paper he was writing was supposed to be the foundation of this country, but it was built wrong.”
“I get it,” Patty said. “Hypocrisy makes for poor mortar.”
“There you go,” he said, pointing at her. “A sad, sad truth. So the country is a house slipping and sliding on top of hypocrisy. And I’m sorry, but it ain’t never gone settle right.”
“So what do we do?” I asked. “Just give up?”
“I reckon I have. I ain’t doing nothing positive. You two are, though, just by being friends. But if I was gone answer the question with some kinda moral answer, I guess I say you treat it like you treat crime. You fight it to try to keep it down, under some kinda control, even though you know it ain’t going nowhere. Just try to keep the hard heads on a low profile so most people can walk the streets.”
“Do you hate white people, Bojack?” Patty asked.
“I don’t hate you,” he replied. “But I do hate a fair amount of them. I ain’t gone lie to you now.”
“Why don’t you hate me? Because of Evan?”
“That’s got a lot to do with it, but I don’t hate nobody no more just ’cause they white. I’m willing to give even white folks a chance these days.”
“How come?” I asked.
“I reckon I learned a little bit watching how people be treating you. Every white person ain’t out to kill you, and I guess I’m just getting tired of hating. It just eat you up inside, and you end up dead from it and them devils still living and laughing. Hell, I ain’t gone kill myself for nobody. So I don’t waste my time hating no more. I just stay within myself and do the thangs I like to do. The rest I just let roll off me.”
“You keep your shoulders strong and smooth,” Patty said with a smile.
Bojack looked at me and laughed. “You been passing out the wisdom, huh?”
“Every chance I get,” I said.
TWENTY
We, the very proud Canaan Hogs, won our first state championship 41 to 7. We couldn’t figure out why the other team was even on the field. We all agreed that the real championship had been the game against Jefferson. But we weren’t giving it back, and it was just the first of two championships we would win during my varsity years at Canaan High. We rolled into the new year on an incredible high, which, for me, soon collapsed like Wall Street on Black Tuesday.
Until Eliza Blizzard came to Canaan, February had always been thought of as simply a very cold month. Since Eliza, who forced the acknowledgment of Black History Month, February was hotter than July.
For starters, The Canaan Courier refused to print any “provocative” editorials written by blacks proclaiming the month theirs. Of course, anything promoting blacks was incendiary, so no editorials or letters to the editor were published. It refused requests by blacks to run small ads honoring the great blacks of history, even when blacks offered to pay double the advertising price.
“That’s a unique hatred there,” Ethel Brown said to Mama one day. “White folks usually don’t mind swallowing they pride when a dollar be involved.” So the local blacks, led by their ministers, picketed the paper.
All over town, blacks put up posters of people like Booker T. Washington and Harriet Tubman. White people tore them down. Fights broke out, and all blacks involved were promptly jailed. Then more blacks marched on the jail to get them freed.
In the schools, tempers flared daily. Especially in history classes. While the other kids battled over their racial pride, Patty and I remained quiet, glancing at each other once in a while for support.
Rosetta Jones and Eugenia Pitts loved history this time of year. They turned every discussion toward race, and in most cases, they were right. They had studied up on the few great blacks mentioned in our history books, and when a situation arose where a white man was getting the credit for something a black had done, the two girls let it be known. This the white teacher and a few of the white kids could understand, since history has always been unfair to black accomplishments. But none of the whites could stand it when Eugenia and Rosetta chopped up the pedestals on which white heroes stood.
“George Washington ain’t shit,” Eugenia shouted.
“Do not swear in my classroom!” the teacher shouted back.
“What you mean by that?” one white boy named Willie asked Eugenia.
“I mean he ain’t shit,” she replied.
“Eugenia!” the teacher shouted again, but no teacher could control her.
“He was an honorable man,” Willie said. “How about the cherry tree?”
“That ain’t true,” Rosetta yelled. “Every year you white kids bring that up. It’s like you got a brain freeze about that. Got your heads in the sand.”
“It’s true!” shouted a chorus of white students.
“I’m sorry,” the teacher said. “There’s no evidence to prove that. It’s just a nice story as far as anyone can tell.”
“See there,” Eugenia said. “Just ’cause you white, you thank you know everythang.”
“I don’t care what you say,” Willie replied. “He’s the father of this country, and he is honorable.”
“Well, I’m in this country, and he ain’t my damn father. And maybe you can explain what’s so honorable about owning slaves.”
“George Washington didn’t own any slaves,” a white girl named Tammy said.
Rosetta looked at the teacher. “Give it up, teach!”
The teacher curled her mouth in disgust at Rosetta calling her “teach,” but she answered. “He was a slave owner.”
“That ain’t in our history book,” Willie said, feeling that he now had the edge.
“So what does that tell you about the history books?” Patty asked. The white kids looked shocked.
“Thanks,” Rosetta said. “But I don’t need no help from you.”
“You don’t understand, Rosetta,” Eugenia said. “Patty likes dark meat, so she sticks up for ’em.”
“What you talking about, girl?”
All the students in the class perked up, becoming one giant ear. The teacher also seemed interested, and what I had felt blowing in the wind on the day Eugenia saw us kiss finally landed in my lap.
“Tell ’em, Patty. Tell ’em about the day I caught you and Snowball kissing behind the cafeteria,” Eugenia said.
People looked around the room, their mouths open, their eyes glowing with the acquisition of such juicy knowledge. The secret was out, and Patty and I looked at each other helplessly.
“You freaking witch!” I shouted at Eugenia. “Go fly your broom somewhere else.”
Eugenia, never one to turn from a challenge, jumped up from her desk and ran over to me. I stood to meet her. She hauled off and smacked me twice before the teacher was able to move between us. I pushed the teacher aside and punched Eugenia right in the mouth. There was a pop, like when I hit Bojack’s hand. Then, there was blood and the bell ending class. Patty grabbed my hand and yanked me out of the room as the teacher tried to help Eugenia.
By the time Patty and I got to my locker, rumor had it that she was pregnant with my black baby. And fact had it that the principal wanted to see me and that Taliferro was out to do me in once and for all.
Patty and I were holding hands, as there was no more need to hide. We were standing by the door of Patty’s next class, talking about how I should go to the principal’s office and get things over with. In mid-sentence, my head was forced into the doorframe in front of me. It split the skin of my forehead, and blood ran down my face.
I turned around to find that I was encircled by students, and Taliferro Pitts was standing angrily in the middle of them.
Patty was pulled away from me. When I went after her, the crowd threw me back in front of Taliferro. Eugenia, still in a frenzy, took out her revenge on Patty, slapping her several times in the face. Patty was thrown to the floor. I ran for her again, but Taliferro
jumped into my path.
“This is it, muthafucka,” he said. “Now you best believe I’m gonna kick your natural-born ass. Nobody hits my sister.”
As I looked around him to Patty on the floor, I conjured up all the hatred I’d felt toward those who’d stood against me. And I just did not care anymore. I knew that Patty and I were history. She was as good as on the plane to Philadelphia. And that being the case, there was nothing left for me. Though Mama Jennie had told me not to think it, I hated my life. Patty was all that had kept me going. If she was going to be taken, then I really didn’t care if I died. I suddenly felt free.
So, like Bojack had taught me many years ago, I dipped my shoulder and surprised Taliferro, who, because he could see the unabridged rage on my face, seemed suddenly too afraid to make the first move. I drove him into the lockers behind him and tried to free Patty at the same time. She was just sitting there, crying, held down now by several boys. The sight simply ripped at my heart.
Students started to roar. A few teachers tried to get through, but the students were having none of that. This fight had been long awaited, and they wouldn’t have it ruined.
Taliferro shoved me off of him and then punched me, sending me back into the middle of the hall, where he rushed me. We exchanged a flurry of punches. We knocked each other off balance, and we parted a moment to recover. As we faced off again, the look in his eyes told me that he was definitely seeing a very different Evan Walls, that he had gotten himself into something that he didn’t want but that he couldn’t back down from, and this gave me more confidence and released more of the power of my anger. I figured he could tell that I knew it was all over for me and that I no longer cared what happened. Carefree, careless, and crazed. Those are the only kind of people who frighten the likes of Taliferro Pitts.
I got off the next punch, which dazed him, but he managed to punch me back. Then there was another flurry of fists. I couldn’t even feel it when he hit me, yet I could feel the solid connection of my fists against his body and head. I felt like I moved him when I hit him, and finally I dropped him to his knees with a hard right hand. To this day, I can feel it connect.
The Emancipation of Evan Walls Page 25
