Climbing higher for a better view, I straddled a branch of the tree. The pirate was a fiery speaker. He shouted until his face turned red and his one eye bulged. The black patch seemed to be the only thing keeping his other eye from popping out into the crowd.
The drunken men below me made such a commotion that I could only pick up bits and pieces of the oratory, but when I heard my hometown mentioned, I paid closer attention.
“Look at these beautiful young ladies in the audience, the blossom of Southern maidenhood—our pride and our most cherished possession,” said the pirate. “The scurrilous article written by the black editor in Wilmington was an insult to the women of North Carolina!”
Men behind him on the stage stabbed their pitchforks in the air. I got a prickly feeling on the back of my neck. Then the speaker—I had already demoted him from being a pirate—shouted, “That Negro ought now to be food for catfish in the bottom of the Cape Fear River instead of going around aboveground! Send him to South Carolina and let him publish any such offensive stuff, and he will be killed.”
The man ended his speech with a rousing call to action, his voice cracking from the exertion: “Will you save the great state of North Carolina from Fusionism and Negro domination?”
“Yes, we will!” came the roaring response. Men on stage raised their pitchforks to the sky.
“Restore security to the white women of the state?” the orator said.
“Yes, we will!” the crowd shouted. Men in the audience held up their hats. Confederate flags waved from every corner.
“Protect our fireside and loved ones?”
“Yes, we will!” came the answer a thousand strong. Somewhere in the distance, a cannon went off.
“Save jobs for our hardworking Anglo-Saxon brethren?”
“Yes, we will!” The roar was deafening.
“Let every patriot rally to the white man’s party. To your tents, O Israel!”
With that, the one-eyed man finished and wild clapping broke out. He waved and basked in the adoration of the crowd. Each time he tried to leave, more applause brought him back. A man on stage passed him a pitchfork, and he raised the tool like a spear in triumph. Finally, after the crowd had exhausted itself and the cheers petered out, there was a lull as people waited for the next speaker. I looked out into the crowd and spied Daddy at the edge, his head moving right and left in sharp, quick movements, like a squirrel.
I was torn. If I shouted out to him, I’d call attention to myself. But if he didn’t happen to look up, he wouldn’t see me, and I might lose him for good. So I cried out, “Daddy! Daddy, up here!”
Several men below looked up into the branches.
One of the red-shirted men said, “Lookee there. Somebody done treed a coon.”
This set off drunken laughter and merriment.
“What say we have him for dinner,” came a voice from the crowd.
Someone fired a shot into the air, shredding leaves not far from my perch. I was too terrified to move.
Daddy made his way through the throng, frantically moving people aside to get to the tree.
“That darkie pushed me,” one man said.
Suddenly a mob of red-shirted men surrounded Daddy. Beneath me I saw a vast circle of red with black at its center, like a poppy.
Daddy looked dignified, with his wireless glasses and coat and tie still in place after an afternoon in the hot sun. The other men looked messy, with shirts untucked and pant legs half in, half out of their boots. Everyone except Daddy carried a gun.
“Ain’t no nigger lays a hand on one of ourn,” said another man. Sweat stains had turned his shirt a deep maroon under the arms.
I needed to do something—anything—to distract them, and I needed to do it fast. I shimmied down to a lower limb, swung down, and gave the barrel a solid kick. It overturned and clear liquid washed over the table and dripped off the edge.
“What the hell …” Men made a rush for the table and thrust their glasses under the edge to catch the drips.
Daddy yelled, “Station!” I dropped to the ground and took off running, barefoot, and didn’t stop until I had reached the edge of the fairground.
Steering clear of Main Street, I took a parallel road to the train station and sat on a bench on the colored side, grateful for the shabby security of separate waiting rooms.
Daddy arrived not long after, out of breath. When he saw me, he hugged me tight. I was still shaking.
“I’ve been frantic. Don’t ever do that again,” he said. Up close, he felt damp.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, and felt calmer as he squeezed the shivers clear out of me.
“I was worried to death,” he said.
He didn’t let go for a long time. When he did, he looked down at my bare feet.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I had lost my jacket and my only good pair of shoes, and my Sunday pants were in tatters. I was going to catch it from Mama when I got back home. The only plus was that without anything to wear, I might be able to avoid Sunday school.
“It doesn’t matter one bit,” he said. “You’re safe and that’s all that counts.” He hugged me again.
“Who were those men in red shirts?” I said when he let go.
“I asked around. They’re called—no surprise—Red Shirts. It’s a Klan-like organization out of South Carolina, and as far as I can tell, their sole purpose is to terrorize people before the elections. If you ever see them in Wilmington, I want you to stay as far away as you can.”
He explained the political situation to me, and I did my best to follow. Lewis and me against Tommy and his gang I understood, but when more than two sides were involved, I lost track. It made me feel good, though, that Daddy talked to me as an adult.
He said that the Republicans, Lincoln’s party and the one preferred by most Negroes, had joined forces with the Populists and farmers to form the Fusion party, which now controlled the state legislature and the governor’s office. The Democrats vowed to win the power back in this election. Their white supremacy campaign was whipping up fear of Negro domination, particularly in the eastern part of the state, where blacks outnumbered whites.
“The Democrats have whites thinking that we black folk will steal their jobs, harm their women, and ruin their lives. If people are afraid, they’ll do anything.”
“Why do they hate us, Daddy?”
“Ignorance. People hate and fear what they don’t understand. The best thing we can do is get to know our white neighbor, work with him, show him what makes us tick—that we’re no different from him.”
“But we are different, aren’t we?” I asked. “We have dark skin.”
“White and black are natural attributes. Crows aren’t black because they dip themselves in ink every day. Seagulls don’t become white because they wash themselves every day. Black and white are an integral part of who they are. That doesn’t mean one is better than the other.”
“Aren’t white people better than us?” I asked.
“Not better. Different. Everybody is an individual. It’s like hair. Some people have red hair, some brown, some blond. But that doesn’t mean we’re different inside.”
People with red hair didn’t have to sit in dirty train cars, I thought but did not say. I wondered if editing what you said was part of growing up.
What I did say was “I don’t think the Red Shirts would agree with you.”
“You’ve heard the saying ‘Every crow thinks her own bird the fairest’? It’s common to find one’s own kind the most beautiful. From the seagull’s perspective, white is more natural and beautiful. The opposite is true for crows. Who’s to say white is more beautiful than black? Who sets the standard?”
“I’ve seen crows and seagulls fighting over scraps at the wharf,” I said.
“That’s why we need good government—to make sure things are equal, to counteract man’s tendency to grab the spoils for his own kind and cut out the others. Look at Wilmington. Blacks and whites work closely togeth
er on the Board of Aldermen.”
Suddenly I felt scared for Daddy. Was he up for reelection? When I asked him, he said, “Not until next year. The upcoming election is for state and county officials. The campaign’s going to be far dirtier than I imagined. But I refuse to be dragged down to their level of hatred and half-truths. It’s not dignified.”
I trusted Daddy. He was the smartest person I knew. But given what I’d seen that day, I wondered if this might be one instance where Boo Nanny was more on the mark when she said, “Trust white folks if you wants, but might as well put you hand in a pit of vipers.”
The train arrived. I had been humiliated by having to ride in the colored car on the way to Fayetteville, but on the way home, I was mighty glad to have our own car, dirty and smelly though it was. I certainly wouldn’t forget this birthday. It confirmed what I had been feeling in the days leading up to my birthday: I didn’t want to grow up.
NINE
A dark-skinned man stood on a crate giving a speech in the middle of our street one hot Indian summer day in late October. I recognized Crazy Drake, a harmless neighbor who cycled in and out of the Negro loony bin in Goldsboro. When he wasn’t speechifying, he goose-stepped around the neighborhood with a stick for a rifle. Today he was dressed in a beaver hat with a bushy tail down the back. Around his neck he wore a handwritten cardboard sign like the ones children wore at school that said DUNCE. Perhaps that was what his should have said, but his sign said MAYOR.
From around the corner, I heard the fish man chanting, “Bring out de dishpan. Here come de fish man.” The children playing nearby crowded around the fish man’s cart to watch the crabs jump up and click their claws. This left Crazy Drake speaking to an empty street. His voice rose and fell in the cadence of the best Negro preachers, but as Daddy and I got closer, I realized he was talking gibberish. Like people speaking in tongues, he used many recognizable words, but sentence by sentence, the words made no sense.
“Hello, Drake. How are you this fine day?” Daddy said. We were walking the ward to encourage people to vote.
“Right pert, suh.”
“You must be awfully hot in that hat.”
“This be my good-luck hat. You voting for me, suh?”
“I’m certainly going to the polls on November eighth, and hope you will, too.”
“I aim to, suh.” He tipped his fur hat and then returned to his oratory.
After we got down the street out of earshot, I said, “Can Crazy Drake vote?”
“Son, please don’t call him that. Labels blind us to our common interests.”
Nobody in the neighborhood would know who I was talking about if I referred to plain old Drake. I didn’t even know if that was his first or last name.
“But he’s crazy.”
“He hasn’t had the advantages you have. Never judge a man till you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.”
Crazy Drake, I noticed, wore no shoes. His toenails were pitted and yellow, like jingle shells.
“Can he vote?” I asked.
“You have to be male, of age, registered, and an American citizen, but otherwise, anyone can vote.”
“Even if they’re daft?” I said.
“Sanity is not a requirement.” This set off a lecture about his cherished democracy. It didn’t take much to get him going. “What if people decided you couldn’t vote because you were poor or uneducated? Before you know it, democracy’s at stake.”
I wondered if Crazy Drake—I mean, Drake—could read and write. Was he the one who had penned MAYOR on the sign around his neck?
Daddy continued: “I proposed to the aldermen that we purchase Drake some shoemaker’s tools so he could make a living and stay out of trouble, but I couldn’t drum up any support for giving money to a crazy Negro when there are so many white people looking for work.”
“So the aldermen call him crazy, too,” I said, testing the waters for a challenge. Lately I had started to question Daddy and not just take everything he said as the gospel truth.
“That proves my point,” he said. “They couldn’t see how they would benefit if Drake had a trade that kept him off the street. Common interest.”
Daddy and I started canvassing on Fourth Street. I tagged along with him for a while to see how it was done. We knocked on several doors where no one was home. One woman scolded us for working on the Sabbath and slammed the door in our faces.
At one house we found an older man at home. When he shuffled to the door with a cane, Daddy introduced himself and encouraged the man to support the Republican ticket.
“Why Republican?” the grizzled old man said.
“It’s the party of Lincoln, the party that freed you and gave you the vote. You can return the favor by keeping them in power.”
Next door we found a man digging a hole in his yard. When Daddy asked if he was going to vote, the man leaned against the shovel and said, “I ain’t aimin’ to fool with it myself. No siree. You stick yo’ finger in the fire, you shore to git burned.”
“A vote is the strongest right a citizen has. If we don’t exercise that right, we’ll never have a voice,” Daddy said, but the man remained unconvinced.
The man three houses down said, “I don’t do no voting, no suh! That ain’t nothin’ but trouble. I show up to there, they shoot me fo’ true.”
“All this talk about violence—it’s rumor,” Daddy said. “The Democrats are trying their best to scare us away from the polls. You don’t have to worry. Your right to vote is protected by the Constitution.”
“The Constitution don’t mean nothing when I be laying there, cemetery-dead.”
I was nervous about going out on my own, but Daddy said we could cover more territory if we worked opposite sides of the street.
I did the best I could, though by nature I was shy and didn’t like to talk to strangers. Several men were convinced they would lose their jobs if they showed up at the polls. Why would they believe a twelve-year-old boy who assured them that this was not the case?
After three hours of canvassing, I could think of only one, possibly two men who would go to the polls because of my efforts. I felt discouraged.
“Democracy is hard work,” Daddy said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “But it’s what makes our country great.” He was a proud citizen and never had any doubts. Around me, at least.
But one evening not long afterward, I was on the back porch collecting kindling and he didn’t know I was there. Through the window I saw him come into the kitchen and slam the white people’s newspaper on the table, opened to the editorial page.
“Drat, if they aren’t trying to rile everyone up,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” Mama said.
“They’re reprinting Alex Manly’s editorial in the Messenger every day, with commentary. Listen to this.…”
He sat down and read from the paper: “ ‘Every white man in the state having any regard for the purity of his mother, sisters, and daughters must take this matter into consideration,’ ” he said.
Mama stood behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. “You is all worked up. That’s what I loves about you.”
He squeezed her hand. “I’m worried, Sadie. I don’t know how things are going to end. This is the third day they’ve reprinted that wretched editorial—always under some slanderous headline like ‘Vile and Villainous’ or ‘An Insult to the White Women of North Carolina.’ ”
They stopped abruptly when I entered the room with an armful of wood. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Shoo, now. We gots adult talk going on here,” Mama said.
This caught my attention. Anything she didn’t want me to hear was guaranteed to be something really interesting.
But Mama sat down at the organ and Daddy buried himself behind the newspaper, and I didn’t hear anything more.
November’s weather was wishy-washy—neither winter nor fall, but something in between. An early frost turned the grass brown, but many days were still warm. In
the swamps, the bald cypress trees, worthy of their name, had shed their needles, and their bare branches were bearded with moss. The pin oaks held tight to their leaves, but the crape myrtle and dogwoods cast their yellow and red leaves onto the sand. By this time of year, the songbirds were mostly silent, but wild ducks filled the marshes with their noise.
One afternoon, Lewis rode his bike to my house. I had not seen much of him since school started, so I was excited when he said, “Come, quick. You’re not going to believe this!” I jumped on the crossbar and he pedaled us to the armory, a boxy marble building that was home to the Wilmington Light Infantry. We stood on the low stone wall and looked over the wrought-iron fence.
“There it is. See it?” Lewis pointed to an enormous gun with ten barrels, mounted on two wagon wheels. It was not as fat as a cannon, but just as long.
A couple of men in red shirts were hitching the gun up to a horse.
“That’s the biggest gun I’ve ever seen. I’d heard about it, but never seen one. It’s a Gatling gun,” Lewis said.
The horse and driver started pulling the gun toward Market Street, followed by two Red Shirts on horseback.
“Let’s follow,” Lewis said.
“Daddy told me to steer clear of the Red Shirts,” I said, and wished I’d kept my big fat mouth shut.
“Don’t be such a sissy,” he said.
We had been together less than half an hour, and already we were falling into old habits. I thought of Treasure Island. What would Jim Hawkins do? He would not back down from a Gatling gun. I was sure of it.
I sat on the crossbar, and we followed the Red Shirts at a distance. The shanks of the bay bobbed up and down as it trotted along, pulling the gun, with its ten barrels pointed toward us.
“Maybe they’ll fire it! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat,” Lewis said, taking both hands off the handlebars and making a shooting motion in the air. I grabbed the bars to hold the wheel straight. Sissy or no, I didn’t want to end up in the ditch.
“Can you believe the size of that thing?” Lewis said, and returned to steering.
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