Belle City

by Penny Mickelbury

  "But if something's wrong—?"

  "If they want us to know, they'll tell us," he said and called them to the table. "Silas, Catherine. Y'all come on so the food don't get cold."

  Everybody's spirits picked up with the eating of good food. Ruthie's exhaustion abated as Beau regaled them with tales of his illegal whiskey dealing during the thirteen years of Prohibition. Nobody but Pa had known while it was happening, and it still would be a secret had Beau not inadvertently let it slip while talking about something else, but he had, and then was forced to tell all. They never tired of hearing about the risks and the near misses—events that Beau could laugh about now but which, when they happened, frightened him to his core.

  "I do wish I coulda seen the look on Zeb Thatcher's face when he got outta jail and got home to find all his whiskey gone," Pa said, laughing his deep belly laugh. "Y'all didn't know Zeb, hadn't seen him cut the fool the way he could. I give that youngest boy of his, Jonas, real credit. He had to be scared half to death of that man."

  "But it was his own pa, wasn't it?" Catherine asked.

  "Didn't matter none at all. Zeb Thatcher was one mean, evil white man. He hated whatever lived and breathed, his own kin included. If my pa was still with us, he'd tell you 'bout Zeb. That boy, Jonas, used to come over here and talk to 'Mr. First,' he called him. Told him all kinds of things." He looked from Ruth to Little Si. "Y'all always said that boy was y'all's friend. We didn't believe it at first, but it was true."

  "It was," Ruthie said. "He was my friend, but he was more Silas's friend."

  They looked to Silas to speak of his friendship with the white boy, but when Silas spoke, he said, "I'm going north. To Chicago." He spoke in a quiet, determined way, and it took several seconds for all the minds at the table to shift from evil Zeb Thatcher and his not-evil son to what Si had just said. Then there were more full, heavy seconds of stunned disbelief. Then everybody was talking at once. Everybody but Catherine, who was sitting again like a stone statue, her head lowered as if praying. She didn't look at anyone, and especially not at her husband, not even when he stood up.

  "I know what you all think and feel. I've been doing nothing but thinking and feeling for weeks, and I'm convinced that I'm doing the best thing." He looked at his sister. "They made you the school principal and they fired me, Ruthie. I'm happy for you but I'm angry too. I'm the one with the Ph.D."

  "They shut your school down, Si." Beau was on his feet now, too, glowering at his brother. "You can't blame Ruthie for that."

  "I'm not blaming Ruthie for anything."

  "That's what it sounds like, Si. They made Ruthie a principal 'stead of you, so you gon' run off to Chicago 'cause you're mad."

  "That's not why I'm going. You think just because you made so much money on your illegal whiskey that you know so much, but you don't. You don't know anything. You can't even read."

  Beau was stung, but he shot back, "Readin' ain't everything."

  "It's the only thing that is truly important, Beau."

  "You wrong 'bout that, Si. Havin' something to call your own is more important. Something nobody can take from you. Not even white people."

  "Knowledge, Beau. That's exactly what I'm talking about: Nobody can take what I've got in my head, in my brain," Si said.

  "But they can take your job, little brother, 'cause it wasn't yours to start with. It was their job in their school, and they took it from you and all your book learnin' couldn't stop 'em."

  "And what do you have that's yours, Mr. Know-It-All Beau Thatcher?"

  Ruthie jumped up and put a hand out to Beau. He was so protective of her that it sometimes was frightening. He even thought that her own brother—their own brother—was a threat to her. He'd been this way ever since their Ma was murdered. It was as if he meant to keep all harm from her. She reached out to both men, to both of her brothers, but did not speak. She didn't know what to say, but she did know that if she spoke to either brother by name, the other would feel insulted, hurt. She looked at Tobias. Older by two years, he usually managed to have a calming effect on Little Si, but Tobias was watching the food on his plate, his brow wrinkled in a deep frown. What was wrong with him? For the first time in her life, Ruthie resented her big brothers, all of them, including Eubanks whom nobody had heard from in more than ten years. She wanted to yell at them, to chastise them in the name of their mother, but that, she knew, would only make matters worse. Big Si solved the problem.

  "Beaudry. Silas." That was all he said, but the tone of his voice is what took all the air out them. Yes, he was angry, but there also was hurt and sadness and confusion. The bewildered look on his face was as unnerving as the tone of his voice. His boys. This behavior from his sons, talking against each other. How was that possible? He'd never witnessed any dispute among them that called for voices raised in anger, not even when they were children. He sighed deeply, and the sound he made in his throat was something they'd never heard, not even when his beloved Nellie was snatched from him so horribly.

  Ruthie was at his side in a second, the fatigue that had wracked her body, mind and spirit for days, forgotten. "Pa!" She wrapped her arms around him, and he bent his head into her neck and let her hold him, just for a few seconds. Then he patted her back and eased himself up straighter in his chair. He looked at Silas.

  "Didn't they put you in charge of the school over at the church?"

  "That's not a school, Pa. That's some tables and chairs in a church basement."

  "You're teaching and chil'ren is learning. It's a school." Pa was fully mad now. No trace of sadness or confusion remained. "Everybody over there calls you Professor Thatcher or Dr. Thatcher, just like they ought to. You always complained that the white folks down at the Board of Education always called you Silas. Never would give you the credit for your education. But now you got that, and it ain't enough? It ain't enough that your people give you what you said you wanted: To be in charge of a school and have the people call you by your right name?" Pa waited for an answer and when none came, he asked, "You think the white folks at the Board of Education in Chicago is gon' call you Dr. Thatcher? Is that why you goin' to Chicago? To hear some white folks call you by a certain name? Is it gon' sound better when they say it?"

  Little Si shook his head. "I'm going to Chicago, Pa, because I think things are better for us in the North. There are more opportunities…"

  "More opportunities to starve to death," Beau said. He pointed to the platters and bowls heaped with food. "You think folks in Chicago can grow food like this in the backyard?"

  "I didn't go to school all those years to be a farmer again."

  "Nothin' wrong with bein' a farmer," Big Si said, challenge hard in his voice, "'specially when you own the land that's growin' your food."

  "I didn't say there was, Pa—not for anybody who wants to farm. But it's not what I want."

  "What do you want, then?" Big Si asked, and waited for his son to answer.

  "I want to teach, maybe to write. I want to use my mind, my brain, and I believe I can do that in Chicago better than here."

  "Chicago! Just full of opportunity, ain't it?" Beau snarled.

  "Yeah, Beau, it is," Little Si shot back. "Plenty of opportunity."

  "To freeze to death while you're starving."

  "Is that what you think too, Catherine?" Pa asked quickly before Si could rejoin. "That things are better for us in the North?"

  Catherine, who hadn't spoken all evening, raised her eyes and met the glance of every pair of eyes at the table, except those of her husband. "I'm not going to Chicago with Silas," she said.

  The stunned silence that met those words could have been considered humorous by someone seeing only six wide-eyed people, their mouths gaping, staring at the prim and proper young woman who had lowered her head again to stare at the trembling hands folded in her lap.

  Tobias's wife, Belle, grabbed her pregnant belly and cried out to her younger sister, cried out to ask why, what was wrong? Then she grabbed Catherine and
held her close, the two sisters holding each other and whispering and crying. Belle looked over her sister's shoulder at her husband, pleading with her eyes for him to do something.

  "Si—" Tobias tried, failed, to find some words. He gave his wife a helpless look.

  "Why not, Catherine?" Mack asked, his arm tight around Ruth.

  Catherine raised her eyes and looked at him, giving him a small smile. She and Belle and Mack shared an undiscussed bond: They had married into the closely-knit Thatcher clan, and while they knew they were loved and respected within the family, they also felt that they were, in some sense, outsiders. "Why what, Mack? Why I'm not going to Chicago, or why I don't think things are better for Colored up there?"

  Mack nodded his head. "Both things."

  She inhaled and looked at her husband. The look was almost defiant but her words were not. They were sad. "I don't have as much education as Silas, but I can read, and I've read about how Colored are treated up north: Same way we're treated down here, and I don't think I want to go so far from home just to be a nigger when I get there. And they got all manner of foreign people up north—people who can't even speak English, but they can call us nigger. That's one reason I don't want to go to Chicago." She turned in her chair and looked directly at her husband. He met her gaze. "And Silas, you can't tell me for sure that we can have a house in Chicago. We have a house here with a garden in the backyard. And I know we don't have family in Chicago. We have family here—" She stopped suddenly and put her hands to her mouth. She looked around the table. "Oh my Lord. If I don't go with Silas, will y'all still be my family?"

  A great sound erupted from the gathering, voices raised, chairs scraping the floor as people jumped to their feet and swarmed her. Arms grabbed and hugged her, voices joining the assurances that she was a Thatcher "for good and always." She sought Mack and Belle, and the look they shared said that maybe they weren't outsiders after all.

  "Why can't you all feel that for me?" Little Si said. All the pain and anger and resentment Little Si had been holding inside for months escaped in a sorrowful wail. "I tell you I'm going to do something big and important and I get criticism. Catherine tells you she's going to do the exact opposite and you can't show her enough support." If he'd been younger he would have wept.

  "That's not how it is, Silas," Pa said.

  "That's exactly how it is. That's exactly how you all are. Catherine's too afraid of being called a nigger to try to make a better life, and that's fine with you all. Beau runs up and down the road with some cracker selling illegal whiskey and that's fine with you all. Tobias runs a gambling parlor and writes the numbers and sells illegal whiskey and that's all right with you—"

  "Tobias does what?" Beau jumped up so fast he knocked his chair back into the wall, leaving a mark in the paint. "What are you talking about, Si?"

  "Ask Tobias what I'm talking about."

  All turned to Tobias who looked angry enough to chew rocks. Belle grabbed his hand but he shook her off. "You feel better now, Si? I guess I don't have to worry 'bout tellin' you nothin' else 'cause you won't be here to talk to, and right now I'm thinkin' that'll be a good thing."

  "Is that true, Toby, what Si said?" Ruthie asked. "A gambling parlor?"

  "That ain't none of your business," he snapped.

  "It is my business," Pa said.

  "No, Pa, it ain't. I'm a grown man."

  "You're my son and if you're breakin' the law, it's my business."

  "What law, Pa? Something some crackers made up? Every time one of us takes a breath, some cracker makes a law tellin' us we can't take so many breaths. If they got 'em a law says I got sit by and watch my wife and chil'ren starve to death, I'll be happy to tell 'em what they can do their law."

  "But Toby—"

  "But nothin', Ruthie. Mack ain't makin' no money buildin' houses, but I 'spect that's all right 'cause you makin' money bein' the school principal and teachin' French to college students on the side. But I ain't makin' no money cuttin' hair, and Belle ain't making no money curlin' hair, and the reason we ain't makin' no money is Colored folks ain't got no money to buy houses or worry 'bout how their hair looks."

  "But they got money to play the numbers and gamble," Beau snarled.

  "Yeah, Beau, they do. Just like they had money to buy your illegal whiskey. No matter how hard times get, a drink of whiskey and believin' you got a chance to win a few cents or a few dollars—those are things that can keep people from givin' up hope."

  "Me and Beau ain't gon' let you and Belle and the chil'ren go without, Tobias. You know that."

  "I'm a grown man, Pa. I ain't gon' be asking you or my brother or my sister to take care of me and my family. Now, y'all just go on about your business and leave my business alone. Just forget Si ever opened his big mouth."

  "We can't just forget it, Tobias."

  "Then don't think about it, Pa. Don't talk about it. Don't worry about it. Me and Belle and the chil'ren are gon' be just fine." He touched his wife's shoulder. "And the new one is gon' be just fine, too."

  "Just don't you have my wife involved in your illegal activities," Little Si said, meaning to have the last word but instead igniting another firestorm over the fact that Belle actually worked alongside Toby in the gambling room, which occupied the flat above their barber shop/beauty salon where Beau had lived before he moved in with Pa.

  "Number one, Si, keep your mouth off my wife. And number two: If you care so much about what your wife is doing, stay here and look after her 'stead of running off to Chicago." And that was the last word.

  Ruthie was never so glad to be going home. She'd always enjoyed spending time with her family. Today was an exception. She'd been exhausted when she arrived, and if the situation with Catherine and Little Si drained the last energy from her, the news of Si and Belle's newest enterprise pierced her with what felt like thousands of pain darts. It was the first time that they'd all taken leave of each other without declarations of their love.

  They barely looked at each other as they cleared the table and fixed bowls and plates of food to take home, and they all but ran to the front door in an exit that was more escape than leave-taking, and the knife-sharp cold air that met them told how the temperature had dropped during the afternoon. As Ruthie and Mack hurried to their car, she looked to see if Catherine and Little Si would travel home together. She saw Pa grab Little Si's arm, saw Little Si pull away and run down the front porch steps, saw Catherine get in the car with Belle and Tobias. That's when the tears started. Mack looked over at her but he didn't speak. He didn't know that there was anything he could say that wouldn't make an already awful situation worse. She fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes and blew her nose, but she still stared straight ahead without speaking. Their drive home was a short one and tonight, a direct one as it already had been decided that that the children would stay the night with their relatives.

  The house was dark and teeth-chattering cold. They hadn't been home since leaving for church that morning and all the brightness and warmth of playing children—of family—had long since seeped out. Mack hurried to light the fire in the living room, a small one, just to knock the chill off, and then he rushed upstairs to light the one in their bedroom—a bigger one of both wood and coal chunks that would burn hot and bright for a while, before slowing to a simmer that would warm them through the night. Ruthie lit a similar one in the big potbelly stove in the kitchen and put the kettle on. Mack had been so upset by the goings-on at the table at Pa's house that he hadn't eaten any dessert or had an after-dinner cup of coffee. He'd want both now. So would Ruthie, for that matter. He'd also want to talk to her and hear what she had to say about what they'd learned about her brothers, for Mack knew only what she said to him when they were seated at the kitchen table, warmed by the heat from the stove and the coffee and the apple pie. "I want to see it," Ruthie had said. "Whatever it is that Tobias and Belle are doing, I want to go there and see it with my own eyes."

  Mack knew h
e should have expected this. Ruthie would not pass judgment on any person, and especially not on a member of her family, without firsthand knowledge of the situation. When Beau's rum-running activities came to light, while everybody else was expressing fearful shock, her first question to him had been, "How'd you happen upon that enterprise, Beau?" She understood perfectly the forces that had driven her brother and sister-in-law into illegal activity. What she'd want to know is why they chose that one, and how were they making it work. That it was risky—dangerous, even—was a given, for being Colored was risky and dangerous.

  "I want to see it for myself, Mack."

  He nodded his understanding. "I know you do, but you also know if Colored are doing anything illegal—and making money at it—white folks know about it, or they soon will. You know that."

  "Yes, I surely do. Quite a few Colored people earn all of what little money they have telling white people what we're up to."

  "So, if they haven't been raided or arrested yet, either they're paying some cops to look the other way, or it's just a matter of time before the raid happens, and I don't want you to be one of the ones arrested."

  She gave him a long, speculative look, then took his hand and kissed it. "Then I guess neither one of us will know what a gambling parlor looks like." She stood up and began clearing the table. Her back to him, she said, "I must say, Mack McGinnis, that you have gotten right clever in the wife-managing department."

  "I wouldn't call it that," he said.

  "That's why you're so successful with it," she said.

  They both enjoyed the warmth of the moment, then Mack said, "You're not mad about what Tobias and Belle are doing, are you?"

  "No, I'm not mad. They're right: They have to do whatever is necessary to take care of their family. But I am...maybe not frightened, but...worried. You?"

  Mack nodded. "Yeah, me too. Worried. But here's what I think, Ruthie: I think maybe the police already know and Tobias is paying them to look the other way. This Depression has made poor folks out of everybody."

  "We were already poor, and they just keep finding ways to steal another penny or drop of water from us."