by Sam Halpern
“Whadyasay, stranger?” he asked.
“Hi,” I said.
Dad kind of leaned back in his chair. “You see how Bob fixed up his bike?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Looks great.”
Bob stuck his hands in the pockets of his Levi’s. “I added a light up front, and a rack in back. It’s gonna make gettin’ back and forth t’ classes a lot easier.”
“Yeah,” I said again, turning sideways and looking out the screen door. “It’s really nice. How ’bout givin’ me a ride?”
Bob looked out through the twilight and said, “Well, guess I could. We got a headlight if it gets too dark. Let’s go.”
I ran outside and got on the luggage rack and waited. Man, he was slow. When he got there, he said to hop off until we got out in the lane because he didn’t want to risk chipping the paint on the yard gates.
The minute we were through the front yard, I got on the luggage rack again.
Bob shook his head. “You can’t ride there. Get on th’ seat.”
“Where you gonna sit if I’m on th’ seat?”
“I’m not,” he answered. “I’m gonna help you learn t’ ride. It’s your bike, Samuel. Happy tenth birthday, six months late. Have a good time this summer.”
I couldn’t believe it! Then I saw the whole family standing behind us and I let out a yell and grabbed Bob around the waist and gave him a hug and everybody started laughing and saying, “Congratulations!” and “Mazel tov!” and “Happy Birthday!” We had a big old time.
Learning to ride took longer than I figured because it was a man’s bike and it really stretched me to reach the down pedal even with the seat low. I took a hundred spills. I didn’t worry about the skinned knees and hands, just about hurting the bike. I couldn’t wait to tell Fred but I wanted to be able to ride before I showed him. In a couple of days I could stay up. Then, in just a few hours, it seemed like I could do everything.
The next morning, Saturday, I headed for the Mulligans’. Climbing the big hill from our gate to where it got easier was tough, boy. I had to stop beside the sweet apple tree and push. When I reached the top of the hill it was pretty much flat to the Dry Branch turnoff, then downhill steep for a ways, then it flattened to the Mulligans’ gap. I come down that last stretch flying. Fred was on me before I scooted to a stop.
“Samuel, where’d you get that bike?”
“It’s mine,” I said, trying to catch my wind. “Bob give it to me. Want a ride?”
“Lordy, yes, hun’ney,” he yelled, and got on the rack.
It was mid-afternoon before we got back to the Mulligan house. When we pulled into the yard, Fred went inside for a drink of water and I sat on the bicycle puffing. Thelma Jean came out and walked to just in front of me.
“Hidey, Sam,” she said. “Your new bike’s not very purty. It shoulda been brown ’stead of blue. Old blue bicycles got by everybody. You ought take hit back and make them paint hit brown. You know, that old headlight of yorn ain’t nothin’ but a flashlight all fancied up. Hit won’t be a month ’fore the batteries go dead and leak. You better take them out right now,” and she reached down to take hold of my headlight.
I caught her hand and said, “Leave it alone. If it needs fixin’, I’ll fix it!”
That was the only thing wrong with going to the Mulligans’. You had to put up with Thelma Jean. She was dumb and stunk all the time. Just then Fred stuck his head out the door and said his ma wanted me to come in and say hi.
I parked the bike against the house and followed Thelma Jean inside.
The living room was crowded. It was small to begin with and Mamie and Alfred’s bed filled a quarter of the space even though it was shoved into a corner. There were only two chairs, one being Mamie’s rocker, and the other more of a stool than anything else because it didn’t have a back. Alfred was sitting on it. Bea and Pers Shanks were there and they were using the two kitchen chairs. That didn’t leave me anyplace to sit because Fred, Annie Lee and her new boyfriend, WK Lensfort, and Thelma Jean took up all the space on the bed.
I was pooped, boy. I leaned my shoulder against the wall and sort of catnapped. Pers and Alfred were talking about crops and things and Mamie talked with Bea and kept an eye on WK and Annie Lee on the bed. Fred had told me Mamie didn’t like WK being around Annie Lee because he was twenty-five and Annie Lee was only fourteen.
“Yeah,” said Alfred. “That’s right, three hundred dollars’ worth of strawberries, and they didn’t take but a little while t’ pick. Old Berman, he brought th’ crates, and th’ kids and Mamie did most of th’ pickin’. Got one hundred and fifty dollars for my part. Easiest money I ever made.”
“Boy, boy, Alfred, that’s great,” Pers whispered. “Y’ know, them berries ain’t done yet.”
“That’s what I think too,” said Alfred. “With the hog and tobacco money, I’ll have enough for my mules, a plow, secondhand disc harrow, and maybe a few other things. I can’t make all I need for rentin’ for two years, but that’s okay ’cause old Red Bill says he’ll wait.”
“Red Bill sure can be a cuss though, can’t he? An’ that idjit boy o’ his gives me th’ willies.”
Alfred laughed. “Red Bill’s meaner’n a by-God’s fifth cousin. Hit’s just good bidness makes him want me t’ crop his place, though. Idjit don’t bother me. Five, six years from now I’m gonna own a little piece a land just like you.”
“I hope so, Alfred. I sure do.”
During the next week, I taught Fred to ride. He caught on quick and we would take turns pedaling. Trouble was, we didn’t have anyplace we needed to go. Somehow just pedaling lost its fun and in a couple weeks we found ourselves doing the same things we were doing before I got the bicycle and wishing we had a reason to use it.
17
I was no longer acclimated to the Kentucky heat and humidity and was exhausted by the time I returned to my hotel room, having driven to Clay’s Ferry, then around Bourbon County. I ordered a burger and fries from room service, ate them with bourbon on the rocks, and fell asleep with my clothes on.
I awoke at three in the morning feeling restless, and decided to go for a drive. Once the lights from Lexington were behind me, I was enveloped in darkness, save for my headlights and the awakening in the east. There was no one on the road, so I slowed to thirty and opened the front windows. The air was warm and fresh, and smelled of newly mown hay.
Nora would have loved this ride, I thought. For all her feisty nature, Nora had the soul of a poet. She used to write me letters for no particular reason. I would come home tired and discouraged, go into the bedroom to change into casual clothes, and there on my pillow would be a handwritten note expressing the depth of her love and belief in me. Frequently there would be a P.S.: “Tonight I’m going to test your manhood.” She would, too! Sometimes after a rousing liaison, while we were still gasping, she would say: “Brooklyn did this to me.” Nearly a half century of marriage and I never cheated on my wife.
Tears began to blur my vision. She had pushed me into this odyssey, but now, instead of lessening my pain, the journey brought it back, along with memories better left forgotten.
Nora would never have known anything about my years on Berman’s if it hadn’t been for Mom and Dad. In retrospect, this trip began during our first visit to the farm in Indiana. Nora had asked Dad about our years in Kentucky, what it was like being a Jewish sharecropper, about the people we lived among and how they related to Jews. She listened with fascination as Dad claimed that he faced very little anti-Semitism among the Kentucky farm folk. The always inquisitive Nora had countered: “Tell me about your life in Kentucky.”
Dad had been born in Eastern Europe and, at age twelve, was sent by my grandfather during a pogrom to live with an uncle in America. Dad never returned to the old country. Over the years in Kentucky, he had acquired the great Southern art of storytelling. Nora was fascinated, and the more stories he dredged up, the more Nora wanted to hear. Eventually, of course, they came to the time we
lived on Berman’s.
I never spoke to Nora about my years on Berman’s. Whenever she asked about Kentucky, I always finessed her in my best hillbilly drawl, insisting that I made the best moonshine of any twelve-year-old in our parts. During that first visit to our farm in Indiana, I was standing behind Nora in Mom and Dad’s kitchen when she asked Dad for stories about me. Dad saw me shake my head and treaded very carefully.
“Did he get the scar on his arm on Berman’s?” she asked.
My father smiled at her. “Nora, I’m going to have to plead privacy here. Samuel is a man now. You’ll have to ask him about those years. I hope you understand.”
Nora turned immediately toward me.
“We’ll discuss it later,” I said, hoping that she would forget.
I should have known better. After we pulled away from Mom and Dad’s gate to begin our journey home, she looked across the front seat. “Tell me about your life on Berman’s.”
I must’ve sighed very deeply because her eyes searched my face in obvious wonder. I asked what was bothering her. Why should she want to know about my childhood? She already knew about my years in high school. Why was Kentucky important?
“Because I’m getting ready to marry a man who is hiding three years of his life.”
I answered that I didn’t ask about her personal life and that she was the woman I was going to marry. Her response: “Ask anything you want.”
I didn’t want to know about Nora’s personal life before she met me. “Do I have to?”
We drove about twenty-five miles in silence. It wasn’t deep-freeze, arm-folded silence, but it was unsettling. I decided to tell her some, but not all. She sensed that the rendition she was hearing had been abridged but already understood enough about her man that she was willing to proceed in bits and pieces over the years.
One night after Mom died, I was having difficulty getting through the loss, and with a few stiff drinks in me, I brought several things into the open. We had been married quite a few years by that time and Nora knew me well. When I finished my story, she told me there was something I should do. I thought she was talking about seeing a psychiatrist and before she could continue I told her that it would be a cold day in hell before I went to a shrink.
Nora laughed. “That’s not what I want you to do. But I do think you have a problem. You need to go back to Kentucky, Samuel. You need to go back to Berman’s.”
I asked her why. How was going back to Berman’s going to help me get over my mother’s death?
“Probably nothing to get over your mother’s death. That will come with time. But I don’t think you’ve made peace with things that happened on Berman’s. It’s going to make loss of any kind more difficult for you. Fred was your friend and you really cared about him. He’s gotten word to your father more than once that he wants to see you, yet you refuse to go.”
I told her there was nothing in Kentucky for me now and going there would be a fool’s errand. She replied that I was unhappy with people in my field of work, that we rarely saw other faculty members, that I was becoming a recluse at my beautiful little college, and finally, that my problems, which she felt were partly due to my past, weren’t going away until I dealt with them.
I resented that assessment. I replied that my students liked me, my family loved me, and I didn’t give a diddly damn about the pompous asses on the faculty. If my colleagues in the world of comparative English literature didn’t like me, that was just tough!
Nora was at least partly right—I got over Mom’s death, Dad’s death, and the deaths of my siblings. Each was devastating, and through it all, the love and support of Nora and the girls kept me sane. Now, Nora was gone. I still had the girls and I loved them, but my rock had disappeared. And here I was, back in Kentucky, looking for . . . what? I didn’t know.
By the time I reached Old Cuyper Creek Pike, the glow in the eastern sky had lit up the clouds. A couple of miles down the pike, I recognized a small, redbrick building on the right side of the road that I had missed previously. Sixty years before, it had been taller and had a belfry. The Colored Baptist Church. I stopped and began wandering the grounds. The building was in disrepair and looked abandoned. I rounded a wall and walked to a window to see inside.
“Who you is, and whatchu want’n in our choich? We still owns this choich ’n’ you trespassin’.”
I jumped. In the window I could see a form behind me. I turned toward it. The speaker was a black man I judged to be about ninety. He was nearly six foot, skinny, and dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweater. His shoes were high-top work shoes, nearly identical to those worn by the farmers of my childhood. There was now enough light to see a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap and snow-white, extremely short, wiry hair extending below the cap’s rim. His face was dark brown and deeply wrinkled, as were his hands. The right hand was missing a thumb.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to be trespassing. I lived in this neighborhood many years ago and I have fond memories of this church.”
The old man stared into my eyes, unblinking and suspicious, and came forward to within a couple of feet. “When you lives heah?”
“Over sixty years ago.”
The wrinkled head raised but his eyes never left mine. “Yo daddy a croppah or lan’lawd?”
“Cropper.”
“Who you crops on?”
“The landlord’s name was Berman. Farm was about a mile past the Dry Branch Road.”
The thumbless hand rubbed the white stubble chin with its knuckles. “Don’t know no Berman. I crops all time ovah ’round Spears. Who you is?”
I extended my hand. “My name is Samuel Zelinsky. My father was Morris Zelinsky. Did you know anybody who lived down toward the river?”
The unblinking eyes under the baseball cap continued to stare and ignored my hand. Then, slowly, he raised his own hand and we squeezed a handshake since he was thumbless. I could feel calluses. He was still doing rough work at an age when most men just slept through the day, if they existed at all.
“I’s Ruggles White. Whatchu doin’ heah at our choich this time of th’ mawnin’?”
“If I told you that I was just looking for where I came from, would you believe it?”
The old man smiled, exhibiting a mouth that still had a lot of teeth. “Yeah. You old. Lookin’ all you and me is good fo’. Too old fo’ mischief. I come t’day t’ see my mama. She back there,” and he pointed the absent thumb toward a graveyard. “What you knows ’bout this choich?”
“Sometimes on Sundays I would stand on the edge of the road and listen to the singing. It was beautiful. I was just a boy, but I loved it. Couldn’t go in, of course.”
The baseball cap nodded up and down. “Yeah, we could sing it out. Whatchu like best?”
“‘Go Down, Moses.’ You had a man whose voice was so deep it sounded like faraway thunder. Go down Mo-o-oses,” I began and we continued together. “Wa-a-ay down in Egypt’s la-a-an’. Tell old Pha-ar-o-o-oh . . . let my people goooo.”
We both started laughing.
“That Collis Yates. He had a ches’ on him big as a barrel. Man, he could sing it out. Lawd himself prob’ly like listenin’ t’ Collis. He gone now. They all gone. Ain’t no peoples come here no mo’. Everybody go to de new choich in Lexington. This here property bein’ sold. Dey gone even move de graves. Ain’t right.” He tilted his head and lifted his saggy eyebrows. “You finds anybody you huntin’ fo’?”
I shook my head. “I’ve checked a lot of mailboxes . . . about ready to quit.” Then I reeled out a dozen or so names to see if he knew them. He shook his head until I mentioned Bert Raney.
“Mistuh Raney! Yeah, I knows him. He own that farm ’cross d’ road. He full o’ mischief, but I likes him. He dead now. He own right over deah,” and he pointed.
Bert Raney’s old place! I knew precisely where I was now. I could feel my skin tingle. A hundred feet beyond that fence I had forged one of my earliest links with Christianity.
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sp; I said my thanks and goodbyes, then crossed the road, climbed the fence, and walked to a mystical spot. I reached up and clutched the air. Sixty-odd years previously, my hand could have been wrapped around a tent pole. It was about this time of the year. What a day that was . . .
18
Just after the Fourth of July, Fred come over all excited. There was going be a revival near Harper’s Corner.
“Hit’s gonna be great. We just got t’ go, hun’ney!” he said, sitting down on our front lawn and checking his slightly stubbed toe.
“What’s so special about this one?” I asked. “There’s always revivals goin’ on.”
“Hit’s Holiness! Th’ Reverend Joe Don Baker’s gonna be th’ preacher!”
Fred could tell that I didn’t know the name and was disappointed. “He’s the one on radio . . . WLEX . . . don’t y’all never listen t’ WLEX?”
“Sure we do. We get all our market reports on WLEX.”
“Well, th’ Reverend Baker comes on on Sundays. I’m surprised you ain’t heard of him. He’s gonna to be there in person! Everybody’s goin’.”
It sounded like fun. “You, me, Lonnie, and LD?”
Fred shook his head. “Oh no, they ain’t Holiness. Lordy no! LD’s pa’d beat th’ stuffin’s out of him if he went t’ anything but First Christian. Lonnie’s ma won’t go neither.”
“Don’t your folks care if you go?”
“Naw,” Fred answered, picking at a callus on his heel. “Mama said she figured she’d rather have me in church than anyplace else. Figure you can go?”
That was going to be hard. When we first moved in, a preacher had come over to see Mom and Dad about Naomi and me going to the regular church meetings and Dad had told him that when we come of age we could go if we wanted, but not until then. “I don’t know,” I answered slowly. “Prob’ly not.”
