And If I Die

by John Aubrey Anderson

  The dog slept.

  The birds were in their nests; the woods were after-rain quiet.

  The calico came out of hiding and curled up against the dog.

  The fireflies were out in abundance—a hundred points of light, blinking quiet poems of peace.

  And Mose sat back with his coffee.

  The memories of his distant yesteryears were as bright as the fireflies. He’d lived sixty-eight years under God’s guarding wing, watching the events of his life—and of the lives around him— order themselves like a flight of geese . . . moving forward, well aligned, pointing toward one purpose.

  In the fall of 1899, his daddy was killed while helping build a gin over in the Mississippi Delta. After the funeral, his momma left the little town of Moores Point and moved five miles south to Cat Lake to live with the only kinfolk she had left—her husband’s granddaddy. She’d been a widow for two months when she became a mother.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He was born right there in that tiny cabin on the east side of Cat Lake. His great-granddaddy helped birth him and named him Moses Lincoln Washington after two great men. He said Moses led his people from the captivity of a nation; Mr. Lincoln led his from the captivity of war. Folks called his great-granddaddy Preacher Washington; Mose called him Pap.

  Mose was learning to crawl when Boone Finley came through Moores Point. Boone was a soft-spoken man with wide shoulders and a wider smile. The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad—the Yellow Dog—was building its way south toward Yazoo City, and Boone was helping lay the track. He attended church on his first Sunday in Moores Point and made the acquaintance of Mose’s momma. Two weeks later, when the track was ready to take the steel-driving man south, Boone asked the young widow to go with him.

  She sat at the small kitchen table, cradling the child and having a difficult time painting sadness over her excitement. “He’s got a good job, Pap, an’ the folks on the railroad know he’s a steady man. I reckon I just can’t let him go.”

  Pap wasn’t trying to act sad; he thought he could see what was coming, and he was praying. He spoke matter-of-factly, “Boone’s got what it takes to be a good man, baby, but he ain’t quite there yet. Till he gits there, he’s gonna be fiddle-footed.” He shook his head at the thought of her leaving. “An’ the end of the track can be a hard place for a baby boy.”

  “I was comin’ to that, Pap. Boone’s lookin’ to have steady work through the end of next year. Is it okay if I leave the baby here—just till me an’ Boone gets settled?”

  “I think that’d be real fine, baby.” Pap’s prayers had been answered. “The good Lord will see to it that me an’ young Mose an’ this here dog’ll come out on top of whatever comes our way.”

  Mose’s momma was packed and gone inside an hour. She was off the porch and halfway to the road when she remembered she hadn’t kissed her baby good-bye.

  Preacher Washington was fairly well off for a black man. After the surrender, Major Parker came home from the war and made him a free man. The Major gave Preacher the fine little cabin on Cat Lake, a good mule, and forty acres of prime cotton land; Cat Lake and Pap’s piece of ground sat smack in the middle of the Parker plantation. Preacher lived in the tree-shaded cabin by the lake and farmed his forty acres. He outlived his former owner, and he outlived the owner’s children. Now, the resident Old Mr. Parker, grandson of the Major, lived in the big white home on the west side of the lake and ran the plantation. Old Mr. Parker’s son, Mr. R. D., ran the Parkers’ gin in Moores Point.

  Preacher firmly believed all men should own a good dog, and when his boy turned three, the old man brought home a Walker coonhound pup. She was mostly white, with black and tan markings. Except for Sunday church, the little tricolor female rarely left Mose’s side.

  Mose was tall for his age, and by the time he was five, he was picking his share of their cotton and driving his great-granddaddy’s wagon a little. In the fall of his eighth year, on a warm Saturday morning, Pap was busy overseeing the picking of the small crop and asked Mose if he thought he and the dog could take a load of cotton to the gin by themselves.

  In years past, when the wagon went to the gin, the boy and dog clambered up and rode in the back, playing on top of the cotton or napping in the sun. Ten minutes after Pap asked his question, the barefoot boy and his dog were on the wagon seat. The boy sat with the reins loose in his hands, straight and relaxed; the dog was alert, expectant. They were waiting on final orders from the boss.

  “Folks here ’bouts know who you belong to, so they won’t be botherin’ you. If you come on any troublesome strangers, you let ’em talk to the dog.”

  “Yessuh.” Mose nodded, and the dog sneezed.

  “It’s Saturday, an’ there’ll be boys at the gin. You doin’ a man’s job today, so don’t be lettin’ ’em pull you into no shenanigans; you ain’t got the time.”

  “Yessuh.”

  Pap put a sawed-off piece of hoe handle on the floor by the boy’s feet and a Bible on the seat. “Just let the mules alone an’ they’ll take you across the bridge an’ straight to the gin.” He touched the Bible. “You can get in some readin’ while you on the road.”

  “Yessuh.” The boy reached over and put the Bible on the floor by the makeshift club.

  “Mr. R. D. Parker’ll be at the gin, an’ he knows me. If you got any questions, you ask him.”

  “Yessuh.” Mose knew what R. D. Parker looked like. Mr. R. D. and his wife lived with the Old Parkers in the big house across the lake.

  Pap pointed at the hoe handle. “An that ain’t for fightin’, it’s for sho’ ’nuff bad trouble. Understand?”

  “Yessuh.”

  “You ain’t full growed yet, boy, but you doin’ a man’s job. If the trouble’s bad enough for you to pull out that stick, don’t be holdin’ back. Understand?”

  “Yessuh.”

  “You need anything else?” Pap asked.

  Mose smiled because he knew the answer. “No, sir. I got this dog, an’ this here stick, an’ I got God.”

  Pap smiled back. “An’?”

  “An’ I always got my guardian angel.”

  Pap reached up to pat him on the leg. “God sho’ done me a good turn when He let me have you for my boy.”

  The Parker Gin was five miles from Cat Lake and a world away.

  Two hours after they left the quiet of the lake, he and the dog pulled into a long line of wagons waiting to have their cotton sucked into the gin. A confusion of what looked like two dozen workers, all of them black, circulated in the gin area. Those who were operating the machinery or moving the cotton bales were preoccupied with their jobs; the rest were constantly yelling at each other. Every surface within a hundred yards was coated with a thin snowfall of white lint. The drivers of the other wagons, seemingly heedless of the noise and activity, napped here and there in the shade or stood in small pockets and visited while they waited their turn to unload their cotton. The wagon stopped and the dog stood up and stretched. When her boy didn’t climb down to mix with the other boys, the dog went back to her nap.

  Several ramshackle saloons backed up to the alley across from the gin. They were payday-busy; their back doors were open, and noisy music competed with the machinery from the gin. Black men and women came and went through the doors—talking too loud, laughing louder.

  An hour or so later, Mose’s wagon was sandwiched between the gin’s loading platform and the back door of a whiskey joint called The Delta Belle; Mose was immersed in reading his Bible. He caught the movement of the wagon in front of him and clicked at his mules without looking up. The mules were leaning into the harness when a man stumbled out the back door of the Belle, bumped into the mule on the right, and went to his knees in the dirt. Mose held the team and waited while a skinny white man with a full beard struggled to get to his feet. When the man got up he slapped the mule with his hat and cussed at Mose.

  The dog sat up and growled at the shabby-looking white man.

  Mose shushed
the dog and did like Pap taught him; he ducked his head while saying, “Sorry, boss.”

  The white man didn’t reply, and Mose raised his eyes to watch the man stagger over to stand by the stairs to the loading platform; he was drinking a clear liquid from a Mason jar. The jar disappeared inside the folds of a soiled coat, and its owner lurched up the steps. The dog was standing on the wagon seat—trembling slightly, her hackles up—tracking every move the man made.

  The drunk’s unsteady foot was on the top step when he found himself confronted by a black wall in the form of a certain Willie Edwards. Willie was Mr. R. D.’s head man at the gin for at least three reasons: he was smart, he knew how to handle men, and he was only slightly smaller than a pair of draft horses. The big black man said something Mose couldn’t hear, and the white man started yelling and cussing loudly enough to be heard over the racket surrounding them.

  Being this close to a quarrel between grown men, especially between a white man and a Negro, made the boy uneasy. He wanted to get off the seat and move away from the confrontation, but Pap had trusted him with the wagon. He looked to see what the other drivers were doing.

  Every man in sight was staring at the two men on the loading platform; if anything, they were more troubled than the young boy. A cluster of drivers near Mose’s wagon watched the action and talked in hushed tones about the white man. Mose heard one say, “That there’s one of them trashy Pommer folks. He been bad drunk since yesterday.”

  Mose didn’t know that he’d ever seen any Pommers, but he’d heard the talk. Folks said they were a “nest of po’ white trash what lives in them shanties out to Mossy Island.” The same folks said the Pommers were moonshiners.

  The white man tried to push the black giant out of his way and lost his balance. Edwards caught Pommer’s arm to save him from falling, and the drunk’s cussing got louder.

  One of the other drivers laughed nervously. “He ain’t gonna git by Willie.”

  Pommer was waving his arms and yelling, working himself up to take a swing at Willie, when a young white man Mose recognized stepped out of the gin office.

  Mose leaned toward the group of drivers. “What’ll Mr. R. D. do to that man?”

  If the man who turned to answer him was surprised to see a seven-year-old boy driving a wagon, he didn’t show it; colored folks grew up early in cotton country. “Whatever it takes. His poppa owns this here gin.”

  “Mm-hmm,” a second driver agreed. “An’ folks knows Mr. R. D. totes a mean gun.”

  R. D. Parker had Willie step back and spoke to Pommer without raising his voice. Pommer turned his anger on the young white man and continued his ranting. Each time the drunk paused for breath Parker would say quiet words and point at the stairs.

  When Pommer backed a step and moved a hand inside his coat, one of the drivers said what every man there already knew. “Uh-oh! He goin’ for his knife.”

  Willie Edwards was as quick as he was big. Before Pommer could slip the skinning knife from its scabbard, the giant grabbed the white man by his greasy collar and the seat of his britches, swung him out like a sack of cotton, and dropped him face-first off the platform. The man landed on the ground by the front wheel of Mose’s wagon—the sound of breaking glass accompanied his impact. The pocket of men next to Mose’s wagon retreated to the far side of the alley.

  Parker and Edwards stood on the edge of the platform and watched as Pommer used the front wheel of Mose’s wagon to pull himself up, climbing the spokes like a ladder, cussing as he climbed. The air around the man was saturated with the stench of sour sweat and moonshine-soaked clothing.

  Mose didn’t want to be within reach of the man’s knife, and he wanted to get away from the smell. He was sliding to the far side of the wagon seat when Pommer’s fingers grasped the side of the wagon; his face came into view a second later. The fall from the platform had cost the belligerent drunk part of a front tooth; blood from his nose and mouth was dribbling into the thick beard, mixing with a thick crust of dried snuff.

  “What’re you lookin’ at, boy?”

  Mose fastened his eyes on the floor of the wagon. “Nothin’, boss.”

  Pommer’s smile transformed his face into a mask of wickedness. “I think you’re lookin’ at my face, boy. I reckon maybe you’d think I’s prettier if’n you didn’t have no eyeballs.”

  Mose’s knees were trembling. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor of the wagon—and saw the wooden club. “No, suh, boss.”

  Parker watched the man by the wagon and knew instinctively where he would focus his meanness. He started down the steps two-at-a-time, saying, “Hold it there, Ced.”

  Ced Pommer muttered garbled profanity at Parker and reached for a handhold on the wagon seat . . . and everything seemed to happen at once.

  Pommer pulled his knife.

  Mose dove for the club.

  A man nearby yelled, and Parker vaulted the stair railing.

  The dog growled and went for Pommer’s throat.

  Mose dropped the club and grabbed for the dog.

  Pommer screamed and tumbled backward, taking the boy and dog with him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Pommer’s beard probably saved him from a bad mauling.

  Mose was spraddled on top of the pile, trying to pull the dog off the man. The hound had a mouthful of the greasy hair, snarling and shaking it like she would a boar coon. The drunk was fighting the dog and wrestling to get on top of his attackers, trying to bring the knife into play. He made one swipe with the blade, cutting the dog’s ear before Mose got his arms around his bodyguard and rolled clear.

  Pommer was on all fours, scrambling after Mose, when Parker kicked his hands out from under him and stomped down on his arm; the gin man was holding Mose’s sawed-off hoe handle. “You can put up the knife, Ced, or I can break your scrawny neck. You choose.”

  Pommer couldn’t move his arm. He nodded.

  Parker stepped back to let the man up. “I don’t have time to mess with fools, Pommer. When you get drunk, you stay clear of the gin.”

  Pommer got to his feet and propped himself against the loading dock. The drunk confirmed that alcohol can always be depended on to erode good judgment by saying, “Next time, I might be seein’ how high an’ mighty you an’ that big buck’ll be if’n I bring one of my brothers with me.”

  “You do that, bub.” Parker leaned the hoe handle against Mose’s wagon and smiled at the thought of something that would plant a seed of horror in the man’s heart. “Come on a Saturday, Ced, an’ every colored man in town can watch while I let Willie beat the both of you like a pair of borried mules. Now scat, before I decide to start the show today.”

  Pommer tried to sneer at the staring faces around him—not an easy thing when your nose and lips are split and bleeding. As he passed by Mose he growled, “I’ll be seein’ you an’ that dog again.”

  The dog growled back. Mose held his arm around her neck and told her to hush.

  Pommer shuffled down the alley, weaving from side to side, and turned toward Main Street.

  Parker waited until the drunk was away from the gin and turned his attention to Mose. “You all right, boy?”

  It was the first time a white man ever asked Mose a question. He released the dog and stood up. “Yessuh, we fine. He cut Lady’s ear some, but she been done worse by a bad coon.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Moses Lincoln Washington, boss.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Parker stroked his cheek while he studied the boy and his companion. “You’re Preacher Washington’s boy?”

  “Yessuh. His great-grandson.”

  “How old are you?”

  Talking to Mr. R. D. wasn’t much different from talking to Pap. “Goin’ on eight, boss.”

  “Seven? How’d it happen that you brought that wagon to town by yourself?”

  Mose stood straighter and almost smiled. “Pap sent me, boss. He busy with the pickin’.”

  Parker thought for a moment then said, “Tell P
reacher I said I don’t want you bringin’ the wagon up here by yourself. Tell him to send a regular driver an’ hold you back for a few years.”

  Mose’s shoulders sagged; the white man didn’t think he was man enough to do the driving. “Yessuh, boss, I’ll tell ’im.”

  Parker said, “Tell Preacher I don’t want to risk havin’ the team get away from you.”

  Mose kept his eyes on the ground. The mules were both well trained and steady, but he knew better than to argue. “Yessuh, boss, I’ll tell ’im.”

  Parker turned back to the steps, but the arrival of a new Packard motorcar stopped him. A young woman wearing a bulky duster and riding boots jumped down from the driver’s seat and ran toward him. He braced himself, and Young Mrs. Parker, the former Virginia Allen of Indianola, shocked her audience by tackling him around the neck and letting him lift her off the ground. When she kissed the man on the lips, Mose got busy looking at something else.

  “It’s wonderful!” she squealed. “And it’s faster than the train, and it doesn’t blow cinders!”