A Thousand Never Evers

by Shana Burg

  From the look of things, that brother of mine threw the honey jar and knocked Jimmy down the stony drop to the bayou. And I reckon Jimmy must’ve caught his foot on the root of a cypress tree, because now he’s passed out cold.

  After Buck takes a second to figure out Jimmy’s not getting up, he bolts after my brother.

  As soon as he does, Elias hops the railing of the Corner Store steps. He sprints across the lot to the bayou, and when he gets to the water’s edge, my brother turns to me and shouts, “Run!”

  Usually I do what my brother says, but when I try to stand, my legs buckle.

  So I sit here on the pavement and watch my brother jump into the bayou. Buck Fowler splashes in after him. Then my brother and Buck vanish behind the cypress trees.

  I can’t feel my bloody knees. I can’t feel anything. So I take in the scene like I’m watching television in Old Man Adams’s living room: Here’s Honey rushing to her brother Jimmy’s side. And there’s Mrs. Worth running out the shop, dropping her ham hocks on the steps, holding her hands over her mouth. Customers are swarming out the store to see what’s what. And, oh look, there’s Jimmy groaning about his leg while he’s loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck. Then Mrs. Worth and Honey slip into the seat beside the driver. They’re off to find a doctor. And that’s the end of the show.

  CHAPTER 7

  July 12, 1963, Night

  When at long last I peel myself off the parking lot pavement, I race across the tracks to the Negro side of Kuckachoo, where there aren’t any streetlamps to light up the dirt roads and news travels faster than shooting stars.

  By the time I stumble through the front door, the blood on my knees has dried, my head pounds, and the fact that this is real and not some made-up television program boils inside me like water in a steaming kettle.

  Mama blinks at me, backs herself against the wall, and whispers, “My baby, my baby.” Then she wails. And one thing’s clear: she’s already heard about Elias.

  I wet a rag in the kitchen, lie on my bed, and rest the cool cloth across my forehead, but as long as Mama keeps screaming, there isn’t a thing I can do to make my head stop thumping. So I start to play a game. I light the lantern and stare at the paper map of the United States hanging on the wall. Each time Mama lets out a howl, I move my eyes to a different state and try to name its capital.

  Lots of nights Elias quizzed me, but now I’ve got to quiz myself. “Alabama…Montgomery,” I whisper. My eyes roam across the southern states. “Tennessee…Nashville,” I say. My gaze gets stuck on Georgia. What’s the capital? I can’t remember, so I get out of bed to check the small print.

  Whenever times get rough, Reverend Walker finds men with guns to stand guard by the railroad track and surround the home of anyone threatened. Folks call it the Reverend’s Brigade. But tonight one of their own is missing, so now the brigade has a different job: find Elias before the sheriff. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the sheriff wants my brother dead after what he’s done to Jimmy Worth.

  But playing the geography game reminds me how smart Elias is. Why, he’s going on to college after he finishes his last year of high school. How many folks can say that? And remembering how smart my brother is makes me feel a whole lot better, because I know he’ll survive whatever trouble chases him down.

  My eyes settle on my television set that rests in the corner just beneath the map. Well, I’ll tell you one thing: if I was teaching geography on television right now, I’d stop the program to make an emergency announcement. “If you find my brother, Elias Pickett, hide him! I’ll give you a big reward.” I think of what the reward would be. Something that would make everyone want to help. “If you keep my brother safe, I’ll give you my very own television.” But then I reckon folks watching my program already have a television, so I’d add, “And I can guarantee my television is bigger than yours!”

  I take the cloth off my forehead and leave it on my bed. I want to go into the living room and hold Mama till she’s calm, but hugging Mama when she’s out of her mind with fright would be downright strange.

  So instead, I climb onto my brother’s bed that’s against the window. Then I lift the screen and stretch my leg down to the overturned bucket. I set my weight gently onto it and stumble onto the pine needles that cover the yard. That’s how I get outside without getting in Mama’s way.

  Even before I whistle and click, Flapjack meows and rubs against my ankles, so I pick him up and carry him to the swing that hangs from the oak tree. My tears fall onto the scruff of his neck. “You were stolen,” I tell him. And that’s the honest-to-goodness truth. He needs to know I’d never give him to those bullies, Buck Fowler and Jimmy Worth.

  I brush my cheek against Flapjack’s fur and feel how it’s smooth in one direction but prickles in the other. Together we swing in silence, back and forth to the rhythm of Mama’s wails, while neighbors carry trays of food into the house.

  And it seems like forever till Delilah comes on outside. She strings her skinny body onto the swing to sit beside Flapjack and me.

  Most times being with Delilah makes me feel more alive, because I never know what she’ll do next. She might wear a rope bracelet round her ankle or walk on the white side with her head held high. But tonight, even though I sit beside her for hours, I feel nothing but dead inside.

  Later, after most of our neighbors have gone home to bed, Delilah whispers, “Tomorrow we can jump double Dutch,” and I know things must be even worse than I thought, because like I said, after she finished fifth grade, Delilah swore off jumping for good.

  After we say good night, I tiptoe up the steps into the front room where Mama’s on the couch, eyes puffed out worse than ever. I try to give her some comfort. “Elias is smart,” I tell her. “Strong too.”

  Then Uncle Bump lumbers in from the kitchen and sits on the bench across from the couch. “You go on to sleep,” he tells me.

  So I lug myself into the bedroom. All of a sudden, that nook I share with my brother seems bigger than the United States of America. And of course, I’m not going to sleep. How can I?

  Instead, I stand behind the sheet that hangs across my bedroom doorway and listen. For years, Elias and me practiced eavesdropping through this sheet. Between us, we could make sense of the softest whispers.

  But without him, it’s hard to understand it all.

  I only hear these words from Mama: “He goin’ home.”

  Those are enough words for me! I can’t stand how she talks like my brother’s never coming back. I’ve got to stop myself from bursting into the living room to set her straight. But I know that what’s going on, it’s more than any of us can handle. And I don’t want to yell at Mama and upset her worse than she already is.

  Then—I don’t know why—I get into Elias’s bed instead of my own. Under the sheet, I close my eyes and breathe that too-much-baseball smell mixed up with the smell of sage from the farm. My belly rises and falls. I hear my own breath. Then I feel a river in my chest. And even though my eyes, they’re shut, I see sunlight. Glittery bits. Yellow and orange. Everything round me sparkles.

  “You here?” I whisper.

  My brother tells me he is.

  CHAPTER 8

  July 12, 1963, Night

  It’s the middle of the night when someone rushes through the side door into the kitchen. I bolt awake in bed. I hear a tapping sound. Through the sheet, I hear Mama say, “Rub it on the bottom of your sneakers!” and Uncle Bump say, “Take this!” Then the side door bangs shut and there’s a splash.

  I jump out of bed and fly into the kitchen. My eyes sting. Real bad. And there’s Mama cutting an onion, sobbing too. Why Mama’s chopping vegetables at a time like this, I’m fresh out of ideas.

  “Get in your room!” she shrieks.

  Uncle Bump stands by the side door, his hand on the knob. He doesn’t say a word till Mama heaves out another sob. Then he tells me, “Do as she says.”

  I’ve got no choice. I run back to my room and flop down
on my brother’s bed. In the moonlight, I see the map on the wall. I imagine Elias outsmarting the sheriff and all his deputies. I’m lost in this vision till it lures me to sleep in a better world, a dream world, where my brother darts down hidden paths and dashes across farms and little-known brooks.

  That’s where I stay till a bark from a dog tears through me.

  My heart, it freezes like the icebox.

  I run to the front door. Uncle Bump’s already there. A minute passes. Then a hound dog leads the sheriff up our front steps.

  “Step aside,” the sheriff tells us.

  “He ain’t here,” Uncle Bump says.

  “Oh, he’s here all right,” the sheriff says. “This hound don’t lie.” The sheriff pets the dog’s head.

  Then I see Buck Fowler creep up the steps behind the sheriff. Buck’s drenched. His teeth chatter.

  I run to my room, collapse on my bed, bury my face in my pillow. Seconds later, the hound’s leash clangs against my bedroom floor. I look up. There’s Buck Fowler standing in my room, pulling the sheet across my doorway, so I can’t see Mama and Uncle Bump anymore. He’s hiding something behind his back.

  “This your brother’s bed?” the sheriff asks.

  I don’t answer. I glance across the room. The sheriff pushes Elias’s bedsheet against the dog’s snout while Buck stands behind him, holding up a flashlight. And I wonder, who made Buck the sheriff’s special helper?

  Through the sheet that hangs across the door frame, I hear Uncle Bump and Mama whispering real frantic.

  Now the sheriff bends down on the floorboards to search under both beds. Then he stands up and shrugs. And I reckon he doesn’t see anything worth seeing in my room except my unplugged television set in the corner. He saunters over to it.

  I know what’s about to happen, so I cross my arms over my stomach, as if I can soften the blow.

  The sheriff kicks my television. Hard. The glass screen shatters to bits, and the sheriff and Buck bust their sides laughing.

  “You all right?” Mama calls. Her voice cracks.

  I want to tell Mama I’m okay, but looking at my set, I can’t.

  “Hush up!” the sheriff snaps.

  I swallow.

  Then the sheriff turns to Buck and says, “I’ll check out the rest of this dump. Why don’t you show this colored girl what you’ve got?”

  The sheriff yanks his hound back to the living room, pulling the sheet on the door frame closed behind him.

  Buck stays here in the bedroom with me. With one hand, he holds the flashlight under his chin. His face lights up like a ghost’s. Then he pulls his other hand out from behind his back.

  I hear myself scream.

  He’s got my brother’s sneaker! If he’s got the sneaker, he could have Elias too! I want to strangle Buck Fowler with my bare hands, but he stomps out my room before I get the chance.

  Mama and Uncle Bump come racing in.

  Uncle Bump touches my hair. Mama sits down next to me on the bed and hugs me tight. We all shiver with fear while the sheriff and Buck rummage through the rest of the house.

  Then the front door bangs shut and the dog’s leash clangs down the steps. We hear the sheriff and Buck circle the house again and again. While they do, Mama sweeps up the broken glass and Uncle Bump whispers, “I’ma find a way to fix that screen, and soon as I do, I’ma get a TV antenna for the—”

  “Shhh!” Mama says.

  The sheriff and Buck are stopped just outside my window. “Hound’s not picking up any tracks leading from the shack,” the sheriff says.

  “Well, the tracks the hound picked up from the bayou to the shack must be old,” says Buck. “And if these tracks are old, he probably did get caught on the bottom of the bayou. As you know, coloreds can’t swim.”

  I watch the blue vein on Uncle Bump’s forehead bulge out his head. Soon the bark of the hound and the mumble of voices fade, but the racket of my heart in my ears is louder than before.

  A couple minutes pass till Mrs. Montgomery shouts through my bedroom window screen. “I been watching. They’s gone!”

  Mama gets off my bed and drags herself to the front door, where she tells Mrs. Montgomery the latest. And at long last, I’ve got Uncle Bump to myself.

  Hard as it is, I spit out the words to say what Buck held in his hand. Lord knows I could never tell Mama. She’d likely die on the spot.

  “Hmm,” Uncle Bump says after I tell him. He rubs his finger over his beard. “Your brother’s smart.”

  I can’t imagine what he’s talking about. Buck Fowler’s got Elias’s sneaker, probably found it on the bottom of the bayou. Like Buck said, Elias could be on the bottom of the bayou too.

  Uncle Bump sits on the edge of my bed. “You’re not a little girl no more,” he says. “But your mama? She don’t see it that way. You’ll always be her baby. And Elias too. Always, forever, no matter what.”

  “I know,” I say and lean my back against the wall.

  “I’m thinking you’re old enough to keep a secret,” Uncle Bump says. Then he tells me this: Just before the sheriff barged into our house, Elias stopped home to say goodbye. When he did, Mama rubbed onion on the soles of my brother’s sneakers and poured whiskey over his head to throw off the sheriff’s hound. “Then I gave your brother the gold pocket watch, so he can sell it for cash if he needs to,” Uncle Bump explains.

  The whole while he talks, my heart plunges real slow into my belly.

  When Uncle Bump’s through, he reads right into my mind. “You know your brother had to run bookity-book. That hound was after him. But before he left, he told me just one thing: to say a special goodbye to you.” He pushes aside my hair and kisses my forehead. “Now try to get some rest,” he says. “There’s still a couple hours ’fore mornin’.”

  But something about the way my bottom lip trembles seems to make Uncle Bump talk some more.

  “My opinion ’bout it? Your brother planted his sneaker there in the bayou. Must’ve wanted the sheriff to think he drowned.”

  By the time Uncle Bump leaves my room, he sounds real confident about his theory. Me? I get out of bed to check on the television. But soon as I see it, I feel sick all over.

  My sleep, it’s short and fitful.

  It’s the crack of dawn when I wake to a tangle of voices. I pull on my dress and step outside to the porch. The neighborhood men are too busy listening to the reverend read from the Delta Daily to notice me.

  The reverend holds the newspaper open in his hands. “‘The Negro assailant, Elias Pickett, seventeen, ran out of the Corner Store and, without provocation, attacked Kuckachoo High School’s star quarterback, Jimmy Worth, also seventeen. When the assailant attempted to flee into the bayou, receiver Buck Fowler, eighteen, who also plays defensive tackle, led the search for…’”

  All I can say is it’s a good thing Mama isn’t on the porch, because soon as the reverend finishes, Uncle Bump strings together a bunch of curse words.

  “Now surely you remember Emmett Till?” the reverend asks.

  “Uh-huh,” I say. And that’s when Uncle Bump notices I’m here. He puts an arm round me while I remember what happened to that fourteen-year-old boy. I was only four years old when two white brothers murdered him. It happened in the town called Money. Some folks say Emmett Till whistled at the white lady who worked in the shop. Others say he called her “baby.” Either way, he was out of line. But he wasn’t from Mississippi. He was from the city of Chicago, in the state of Illinois, way up North. Emmett didn’t know how things are down here. And those boys, his friends, they dared him to do it. They hardly expected it would get him killed.

  “As you know,” the reverend says, “they tied Emmett’s body to a cotton gin fan. Then they threw him into the river to swim home to the Lord who gone and made him a Negro in the first place.”

  Every time I hear about Emmett, I can’t help but wonder, How could grown men murder a teenage boy? I asked Mama this a couple times, but wouldn’t you know it, each and every
time she changed the subject. And when I asked Uncle Bump, he just said, “There’s some questions that ain’t got answers.”

  Now Reverend Walker looks to the sky. “Listen, Lord,” he says. “You can’t take Elias the way you took Emmett.”

  I want to tell the reverend to hush up. I want to tell the reverend that sure Buck chased Elias into the bayou, but my skinny brother’s strong as a hailstorm. I want to tell the reverend Elias can outrun anyone, white or Negro don’t matter. But there’s so many sobs coming out my throat, I can’t say a word.

  Uncle Bump pulls me closer to his side. “Shhh…,” he says.

  I feel dizzy. Things look fuzzy. And I can’t quite believe my brother, he’s gone.

  Most of the men here are members of the Reverend’s Brigade. They’ve been up all night, searching for my brother without luck. Now they rub their red eyes and set off for the day’s work.

  Uncle Bump stays on the porch with the reverend, while I lug myself back inside the house.

  If there’s anyone dead, it’s Mama. She’s lying on her bed, heavy as a sack of unshelled beans. Stale tears cling to her cheeks. I climb onto the mattress, lie down beside her, and fix one of her limp arms round my waist. Then I curl my body into the nook she makes when she rests on her side. “Don’t fret,” I tell her. “He’s still with us.”

  But Mama? She doesn’t find comfort in my words. She turns over and hugs the pillow, not me, in her arms.

  CHAPTER 9

  July 17, 1963, Night

  Tonight at dinner, after we worry ourselves sick talking about Elias, we dish all about the Garden Club. Ever since Old Man Adams went and died last month, the Garden Club has held a bunch of meetings to figure out what to plant on his land. But Mama, Uncle Bump, and me agree: their meetings are nothing but a bunch of hooey.

  “This garden belongs to all Kuckachookians, Negro and white,” I say, and swallow my last bite of beans.