Even so, Canaan stuck with me. With each step I took in college, I dragged along the pain of growing up there. I thought about how wrong it was that I had to endure the long road between blacks and whites, both trying to keep me in my place. I wondered what little black boy or black girl I left behind in the same predicament. I thought of Eliza Blizzard, who’d once said, “I hope you will always find a way to help your people.”
In my junior year I had an idea and spoke to a trusted professor about it. He suggested that I double major in business and economics as a way to bring my idea to fruition. I followed his advice and he helped me create a framework for a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing help and guidance to all of the little snowballs and oreos out there who loved to read. I began to feel like this was my mission. If, as people say, things happen for a reason, what happened on my porch was an introduction to destiny. It just took all of the ensuing years for me to see it. This was what I was meant to do. I didn’t want to play football anymore. My life’s work was clear.
That afternoon, I met Bojack in the parking lot by my dorm. I joined him in his pickup truck and smiled. Whenever something important happened in either of our lives, we always seemed to end up talking about it in that truck.
Bojack was stunned when I told him that I would not be playing in the NFL.
“How long you been thanking like this?” he asked.
“A couple of years. I would have stopped playing football, but I needed the scholarship money.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone other than my professor. And especially you. I didn’t want to break your heart.” Bojack nodded as I told him that I needed to help children like me. It was a calling. He said he couldn’t argue with that, and we sat quietly for some time.
“Well,” he said. “I ain’t no college professor, but I still thank you should play football, but for a different reason than I woke up thanking about this fine day. I won’t even try to stand in the way of what’s on your heart. Hell, it’s like what I was preaching at you on the porch lo those many years ago. But I’m sittin’ here thanking, how you gone do it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Where you gone get the money to get started with your plan to help kids like you?”
“My professor’s been trying to get me in the door with some investors.”
“But he having a problem, right?”
“A little.”
“Yeah! See, you still black, and them kids you want to help, they still black. People ain’t in no hurry to throw down them greenbacks for our children. Am I hittin’ on it?”
Sadly, I nodded. My professor, who was white, had been somewhat embarrassed by the responses he’d received while trying to help me find funding. Black children were not near the top of anyone’s list.
“Well, there you have it, then. This is why you need to play football. Now, hear me out. You already a star. Ain’t but a handful of pro players come from schools this small. You already in them sports magazines. I saw you on the cover of one in the Colonial Store just the other week. And I imagined some people who won’t in your corner back in the day had to see that too. I hope it grated ’em to the bone. But damn,” he said, laughing. “I done got myself off topic.
“Here’s what I’m saying. Use the fame, little brother. When you a star in the NFL, and you will be, doors to the money gone fly open by theyselves. You ain’t gone need no professor. People gone want to help you, just to be near you. I know where yo’ heart is and I loves that. I am so proud of you for it. But you need to use every God-given talent you got to get you there. Remember back in the old days, I told you how you got to use yo’ brain and yo’ athletic ability to win?”
I smiled and nodded, thinking, Who could have ever predicted that it would come around like this?
“Well, it worked for you once. It will again,” he said. “And one more thing you gots to do.”
“What’s that?”
“I know we ain’t heard from her in a while, but we got to track down Eliza Blizzard for this.”
“Yes, I had been thinking along those lines myself.”
I looked at the big grin on my lifelong friend and decided that I would play football to help me help the kids like me. “Thank you for your wisdom,” I said.
“Hey, I’m the game with you. Trust in old Bojack,” he said, before slumping in his seat. “Whew! Now, I’m ’bout wore out. I done used up all my thanking for the next couple of weeks.”
I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. Bojack was everything.
Later that day, April 28, 1981, I was drafted into the NFL. The commissioner said, “With the second pick, in the second round, the New York Giants select Evan Walls, safety, from the College of William and Mary.”
1993
LURAY, VIRGINIA
EPILOGUE
I finished my mid-July saga five days before the opening of what would be my final training camp. It took me an entire month to tell Izzy the whole story. I opened up a little at a time, breaking off when the memories became too much, and resting until I felt restored enough to continue. Izzy took it as it came and either had a hug for me or gave me Jennie to hold onto when things got rough.
When I uttered the last words, the three of us were rafting on the Shenandoah River. We were in a little cove, and our two rafts were secured by ropes tied to cinderblocks on the riverbed. Izzy drank a soda while I sipped beer. Jennie lay asleep on Izzy’s chest. It was a warm, sunny day. We waved now and then to people in canoes or other rafters drifting by. I closed my eyes to feel the rhythm of the water.
A great part of my burden had been the tension from hiding my childhood from Izzy. Now it had been lifted, and strangely enough I felt sad. It had been bottled up inside me for so long. It had been a part of what made me whole, even if it kept me unsettled. Now that I had freed the dragon, I didn’t know if I’d miss it or not.
“I just love this place,” Izzy said. “We should have bought the other A-frame up the road, you know.”
I laughed. Izzy said that every year. Our good friends, the Wilsons, always loaned us their place the week before training camp started so Izzy and I could enjoy intense one-on-one company before the long, grueling season began. I was always against buying the house just down the road from Glen and Ava because I was afraid I’d get traded across country, and one house was trouble enough to sell in a hurry. Izzy would wave her hand at me and tell me that I was a household name in New York, a sure bet for the Hall of Fame, and that I would be a Giant until the day I quit. She was right. I was thirty-three, still a Giant, and I was going into my final season.
But this had nothing to do with anything. I think the silence was killing Izzy. She could see the confusion on my face. She didn’t know how to approach a conversation about my life until my emotions had leveled out somewhat. A house on the Shenandoah was safe conversational ground.
Later, when a tear or two had dried on my cheeks, she spoke.
“I’m so sorry, Evan.”
“Oh, I don’t want you to feel sympathy for me. It’s not what I need. I’m decades past when it could have helped,” I said, thinking back to times when I had come home from school longing to be consoled by my parents. I thought back to the days when Mark’s sympathetic gaze would turn away from me, fearing the sting of our parents’ displeasure.
“What can I do for you, then?” she asked. Her sincerity touched me.
“Nothing that you haven’t been doing for years. You are absolutely wonderful, Izzy,” I said. I meant it, which is why I sat in my raft feeling tremendously selfish. It should have been obvious to me over the years what I was doing to her with my silence.
“I thought I was protecting you as well as myself,” I continued.
“Excuse me,” she replied. “I don’t follow.”
“Until now, I never really understood what my silence was doing to you.”
“Oh, honey. I’m okay, really. I just worry for you.�
�
“It’s a worry that you didn’t need. I don’t know why you married me. First of all, I’m black; and secondly, I was a young man without a past.”
“You being black certainly raised concerns for me, but my being white must have given you pause as well. But you know the fact that you’re black never troubled me. I couldn’t have fallen in love with you if it had. I really never thought of it as a negative.”
“What about the other?”
She smiled shyly. “You tend to fall in love before you know every little thing about a person. I did that with you. I mean, I found it weird that you kept your past from me, but at the same time I had a feeling that you weren’t an axe murderer. You were too gentle. You had too big a heart. I was afraid, though, that you hadn’t been loved, and you didn’t want me to know about whoever’d shut you out. Bits and pieces clued me in. I remember the look of sadness in your eyes when I first asked you what your parents would think of us. You said, ‘What they think will never be a problem for us.’
“I have heard you talk in your sleep and then cry. The vibe I was getting was not that of a crazy man but of a man with a wound of the heart. I didn’t marry you to heal you. I did it because I loved you. And Bojack also assured me that you were a good person.”
“Oh, he did, did he? He never told me he talked to you about this. What did he say?”
“He came back to see me in the church right before our wedding. He said, ‘They didn’t say I couldn’t see the bride beforehand.’ I laughed. You know I adore him. He said that if I were worried, I shouldn’t be. He said that you were the best person he had ever known, but that there was a part of your life that you no longer wanted to think about. He told me that even though he lived in Canaan, he rarely spoke about it to you.”
I nodded.
“Don’t worry about my love,” she said. “It will always be here for you.”
“Thank you,” I said as I reached into the water and pulled out another beer, which was in a bucket off the side of my raft, cooling in the river.
“I have wondered, though, why Bojack is the only black person really in your life. I have wondered why Glen is the only good friend besides Bojack, why you shun all black gatherings held by some of your teammates when they sense some kind of discrimination on the part of the team, why you know no black women, why you won’t go to black colleges that ask you to speak, why your life, in a sense, is that of a white person’s.”
She paused and looked at me for a reaction, but I was blank.
“Are these questions fair?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate black people?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid of them?”
“Yes.”
I was embarrassed to admit it out loud. Even to Izzy. Most of my life I’d struggled with this question. I guess I felt that as long as the fight went on internally—if I never let the words slip out of my mouth—there would be no definitive answer. Admitting it, as I had finally done, would and did mean that I had really lost touch with black society. It was a hard reality to swallow.
“Why?” she asked gently.
An ill-at-ease chuckle escaped without warning. “Every time I’m in a situation where I am introduced to someone black, I just know that they’re sizing me up and that they can instinctively tell there is something wrong with me. I start to feel as if I’m being psychologically attacked. I pull an emotional cloak around me, but they always see through it. As they shake my hand and tell me how great I am, and what a role model I am to their children, I look through their smiles and know that in their heads, they are saying ‘Uncle Tom.’ I clam up and get away as quickly as possible, because I can’t stand the scrutiny.”
“Do you really believe you’re an Uncle Tom?”
“I don’t know. I used to feel that I wasn’t. In my heart now, I really don’t know. What do you think an Uncle Tom is?”
“You’re asking the wrong woman, but I guess it means a black person who has turned his back on his culture and society.”
“Isn’t that me? You just asked me why I lived a white person’s life.”
Izzy was getting angry. “What’s it called when a culture turns its back on one of its own?”
“I’m just one person,” I responded. “I guess you’re expendable if you don’t toe the line.”
“Well, you tell me. Who’s Tomming who?”
“If I knew that, I guess, I wouldn’t have this struggle. For the most part, I’m just me, and I believe in what I’m doing and how I live my life. But there are times when I’m around black people that I lose faith. I find myself trying to show that I know what’s going on, and that I’m still a part of the group. Just like I did when I was a little kid. For instance, sometimes I’ll be driving along with the windows down, and I’ll stop at a light. I’ll see black people standing on the curb, and I’ll turn to an all-black radio station, just in case they can hear.
“There are other things, too. Sometimes I feel the need to try and change the way I walk if I’m in front of black people. It’s like they can tell I’m a Tom by my stride. But even as I try to walk the walk, I’m moving quickly, trying to escape them because I know that they have seen through to the real me. I don’t want to hear them talk about how I have let my people down.
“And then there are the times when I’m approached by a group of black folk to sign autographs. I find myself trying to grasp for the right language and handshakes to show them that I’m hip to whatever I’m supposed to be hip about. It’s ridiculous, I know. I tell myself not to let these things happen, but I’m ruled by the moment at hand and some deeper problem that I’d rather leave buried in my subconscious.”
“Sweetheart, it sounds like you are still trying to get Canaan to accept you.”
“Maybe so.”
“Do you not want anything more to do with black people?”
“No, it’s not that. Deep inside, I still want to be accepted. I just can’t get past believing that no one will have me. I turned down Hampton Institute to go to William and Mary for that reason.”
“Does that make you angry?” Izzy probed.
“Only when I’m in the situations I just told you about. Then I get angry at them for making me feel I need to change in order to be accepted.”
“What do you feel about them the rest of the time?”
“Indifference.”
“What about black women in particular?”
“I’m afraid of them most of all. I’ve never dated a black woman, and I’ve never had a black female friend since I was a kid. Not only do I feel black women think I’m a Tom, but I’m also a wimpy Tom. They threaten my ego, and also I feel I’m hated because I’m married to you. I feel like there’s no way I can win with them, so I don’t even try.”
“Do you feel like you’ve betrayed them? You know. So few black men and all.”
“No, I haven’t betrayed anyone. I just got tired of trying to convince people. Like I said, I went where I was wanted. It wasn’t that I was looking for a white girl when I met Patty Cunningham, or you. It’s just that when I met both of you, I was accepted without conditions. I didn’t have to have whatever it is that a real brother is supposed to have. I got tired of being told I wasn’t black enough or cool enough, and then at the same time being told I’m a traitor if I’m not with a black woman. Like I said, I don’t even try.”
“What do you think the black guys on the team think about you?”
“I don’t really know. Over the years, a couple of white guys told me that they say things about me, that I think I’m better than they are. A few times, I’ve heard the ‘He must think he’s white’ refrain.”
Izzy looked sad.
“Honey, what about the nonprofit? Why do you hide behind your partners? You built this thing from the ground up with your money. You’re using your brainpower, your degrees to specifically help black people. You have taken care of more black people than any one of your teammates. When you’re givin
g away houses to needy black families, why don’t you, for a change, show up at the door and hand them the keys? When you are helping to provide access for young African Americans to universities and corporate America, why aren’t you on television and in the papers standing by them after you’ve opened up the world to them? You have Eliza out front, and she’s getting all the credit. I love her, but you should step forward. Then people would know your heart. You are still a soldier of the cause.”
“Izzy, I’ve just been away too long. I have no frame of reference to draw on if I ventured into these situations.”
The conversation stopped because Jennie began to move around and we didn’t want to disturb her nap. Izzy stared out at the water, slowly peeling the label off her soda bottle.
“Being black in America carries more than just the obvious burdens, huh?” she asked.
I nodded. “And these things make me worry about Jennie. I dread the day when she is confronted with the knowledge of her heritage.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“No, she won’t. It’s impossible to be fine when someone—check that, a whole society—is telling you that you’re less because of what you look like. Do you remember how much you cried when we visited that Civil War battlefield and they called you ‘nigger lover’ and chased us away? Remember how scared we were? Do you remember how much that hurt?”
“Yes, and you tried to run out on our relationship.”
“I didn’t want to put you through any more of that crap. Like I shouldn’t have wanted to bring Jennie into this world. When I think of her future, I wonder if we should have had her. You were an adult and in our relationship of your own free will. Jennie had no choice. She didn’t ask for the trouble she will face. I’m afraid that she will come to me one day and say just that.”
“All of this is true, but if people didn’t have babies for fear of the trouble they would face, there would be no mixed-race and, for certain, no black children.”
I nodded. “I guess that’s true.”
The Emancipation of Evan Walls Page 27
