“Simon and Jacob never healed from the scare they had the night them men and dogs ran ‘em up the tree. When they was teenagers, they, along with my daddy worked in Mr. Van’s field for $20 a month each. They saved their money, so they could leave the South some day and head North,” Catfish said. “My granddaddy tole the story bout that time, just like he tole us those other stories.”
‘Up North black men are treated like they’s white,’ Simon told my daddy when they were teenagers.
‘Yep,’ Jacob said. ‘They got jobs pay $100 a month and black men wear suits of clothes like the white men and can even go to a real school.’
‘You should come with us, Sammy,’ Simon said.
‘I’m not going up North.’ my daddy said. ‘And I wish you would stay here with us.’
‘No, we going,’ Simon said. ‘You just staying here cause you sweet on that little girl works up at the house taking care of Mr. Henry.’
“Maybe,’ Daddy said. Miss Maureen was the head housekeeper up at Shadowland and she had a pretty daughter named Mary, who daddy ended up marrying and she was my Mama and that was one reason he didn’t go with Simon and Jacob.
‘There’s other reasons,’ Sammy said. ‘I don’t want to leave Mama and Daddy. And I think there’s opportunity for us here, down the road. Mr. Van’s a good man.’
‘You do what you want, Sammy,’ Jacob said, ‘But we going as soon as I turn sixteen and Simon is seventeen. They say you need to be legal age or with someone legal age to travel on the train through the south, that’s seventeen.’
“My daddy told that story with tears in his eyes,” Catfish said.
About 1895, when Simon came of age, a group of young men, including Big Bugger and Wes and Lila’s eighteen-year-old son, Norman, was going north and Simon and Jacob joined them. Lila was a lady went to church with my granny and grandaddy and them. Well Miss Lila would sit on the porch with my Granny in the evenings and they would weep together. Granny had taught her boys to read and write and hoped they would send letters, but Lila’s children ain’t been interested in lessons, so Norman wouldn’t be able to write to his mama.
‘Thank God, I still have Sammy,’ Granny would say.
“My daddy, he was always the responsible one. He took care of his brothers and helped his mama and daddy. He worked in the field and did anything Mr. Van axed him to do. In return, Mr. Van paid him $20 a month and took special interest in him. My granddaddy groomed the livestock, built out-buildings, repaired the house when needed, replaced windows and kept it white washed year-around.
“Mr. Van taught him how to ride a horse when he was ten and when the mare had a foal in the spring of 1892, Mr. Van gave it to my daddy. He cared for that pony and it grew to be big, fast and reliable. He named the horse, ‘Jonesie.’ No reason, he just liked the name and thought the young thoroughbred looked like a, ‘Jonesie.’
“Daddy lived with my granddaddy and granny in their two-room cabin until his brothers left, then he axed Mr. Van could he rent the one-room shack in the Quarters where Big Bugger used to live. It was falling down, in disrepair, had no glass in the windows and the tin roof was half-missing, but daddy fixed it up good as new. He also axed Mr. Van could he have a small piece of land to share crop. This was a new practice my daddy heard about at church. The plantation owner would let the former slave farm a certain amount of acres. The freed man of color would plant and harvest and the owner would split the sale of the crop fifty-fifty.
‘I can still keep up with my work on your plantation and farm a piece of land, say about 50-acres, if you let me use your plow,” my daddy tole Mr. Van. “Jonesie can pull and I can do the rest after six in the evening,’ Sammy said.
‘We can try that for a season, Son,’ Mr. Van said. ‘Make sure you keep up your work on my place.’
‘I’ll do more than ever, Sir,’ Daddy tole him. ‘I appreciate the opportunity, Sir.’
Daddy done pretty well with the sharecropping while Granddaddy stayed on working for Mr. Van for regular pay.
“Grandaddy would help Daddy in the fields in the evenings and, with no children at home to care for, Granny joined them when they needed her. Granddaddy did repairs when the heat was too much for him to work in the fields and Granny kept the house, cooked meals, picked cotton in the fall and took in ironing for Mrs. Van. They was doing okay, for ex-slaves—freed men of color, was what they called ‘em after the war.
“It was about to be the turn of the century,” Catfish said.
*
Marianne came out of the back door of her house next door and stood on her porch. She had a bird in her hand with gauze wrapped around its leg. That was how she was, always taking care of injured animals and insects.
“What are you doing here, stranger?” she called.
“Oh, just came to see my best friends. What happened to the bird?”
“I think he got grabbed by the cat, or fell out of his nest. He’ll be fine in a few days,” she said. She started down the steps of her little house and I stood next to Catfish.
“You girls go on now and leave an old man to his peace,” Catfish said as he slouched in his rocker, stretched his legs in front of him and tilted his straw hat forward over his eyes.
“But you didn’t tell the whole story, Catfish,” I said. “You were just getting started.”
“Then you’ll have to come back, Missy, if you want to hear the rest.” He chuckled, pulled his straw hat down lower and pretended to sleep. I kissed him on the cheek, squeezed his shoulder and stared at him. In my heart I willed him to be my granddaddy.
I met Marianne at the bottom of the steps and we walked, slowly, towards the barn, both caught up in our own thoughts, not knowing how to turn them into words. She stroked the bird’s wing with her thumb and cooed in its ear.
The old wooden structure that had lived through one too many storms was hidden behind a line of pecan trees, about a hundred yards from the back porches of the cabins. It had a red façade that was peeling and had faded to a pale pink. The wide doors that once slid on wheels across a long piece of iron mounted above the opening were no longer there. As we approached the building from the side I could see one of the old doors leaning against the outer wall, the other had been taken apart to make a fence around Catfish’s garden to keep the rabbits and coons out. The two square openings for windows on the side of the structure never had seen glass or screens—they were there to create a cross draft through identical window openings on the opposite wall. Above where the doors once hung was another window, and one on the back side in the same position for air circulation in the hay loft.
We tried to make small talk, until we reached the barn and slid down its side to sit, thighs touching, in the thick St Augustine grass under the familiar canopy of the huge pecan tree that seemed to have grown another ten feet. I reached for Marianne’s hand, but she pulled it away.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“No. I’m not mad. I don’t want to touch you then remember what it felt like when you’re gone.”
“It’s September. I’m not leaving until June. Lighten up.” She didn’t respond. We sat in our thoughts while flies buzzed around and a blue bird landed in the live oak a few feet away. I knew she was thinking that she would be stuck in Jean Ville, in the Quarters, while Rodney and I would both be off at school.
I broke the silence.
“Have you seen Rodney lately?”
“He was here Monday.”
“Oh, yeah? How is he?”
“He’s okay—at least, for now.”
“I’m worried. Did he tell you we ran into each other at the Cow Palace Saturday night?”
“He told me.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“I’m not sure. The day he came here it was still too early to know. His dad had a talk with him, but he didn’t get a beating or punished, if that’s what you want to know.”
I didn’t respond. I nursed my memorie
s, my secrets. I watched a bumble bee buzz from one azalea bloom to the next and could hear a far-off tractor engine growl through the fields. The heat and humidity made my T-shirt stick to me and I lifted the bottom of it and bent my neck to wipe the sweat off my forehead. Then I used it as a fan, pulling it away from my chest, then in, trying to trap some of the air inside. Marianne was twirling a long, brown tendril near her forehead, lost in thought.
“I think Rodney is in love with you,” Marianne finally said.
“Did he tell you that?”
“Not in so many words. But he’s taking chances. I’m not sure you understand how serious this is.”
“But Mari, we haven’t been together except that one time, more than two years ago. I don’t understand.”
Marianne didn’t say that Rodney was willing to take stupid chances just to see me. That he was so love-sick he wasn’t thinking straight and could get himself lynched. But she insinuated as much.
“It’s just that, I’m not sure Rodney sees it like you see it,” Marianne said.
“What do you mean?”
“He thinks that, if you love him, he can figure out a way. He’s just not sure how you feel.” I grabbed Marianne’s hand and turned to look at her, full-face.
“You have to tell him, Marianne. You have to tell him to give it up. Tell him I don’t love him. Tell him there’s someone else. I don’t want to see him get hurt, or worse.”
“You need to tell him yourself. That’s not a message I can deliver for you.”
“How can I tell him? I can’t see him, EVER!”
“Are you afraid your daddy will beat you to death? Is that why you avoid him?” I had never told Marianne, or anyone, that daddy beat me. She knew things were bad at home and I wasn’t sure how much Tootsie told her, but I avoided that subject with her.
The air hung stagnant between us. It was a thick silence, like a veil no one wanted to lift.
“I’m not afraid for me. I’m afraid for him,” I said. Marianne didn’t respond. She looked at me, deeply, as if she could see into the places I hid from the world. I felt raw and vulnerable, but Marianne acted as if I was hiding something, something deep and important.
“So, you do love him?”
“I can’t love him; don’t you understand?”
“But do you love him?”
“No, Marianne. I don’t love him! And you need to tell him that. Tell them there’s someone else.”
“I’m not sure I believe you; but if you do love him and if he loves you, do you believe there can be a way?”
“Oh, you are a hopeless romantic. Things don’t happen like that in real life, at least, not in my real life.”
“How do you know? Times are changing. Who knows what the laws will be like in a few years. You shouldn’t give up hope.”
“The laws could change tomorrow but that wouldn’t change who I am and who he is and where we live. Meanwhile I have to concentrate on getting through high school so I can go to LSU and get out of my house. I just have to.” I didn’t realize I said those last four words. They hung in the air like a secret let out of the bag.
Marianne squeezed my hand, but there were no words that could erase the weight I carried.
I walked back home without hiding along the tree line. I didn’t care.
I thought about my conversation with Marianne for days, how she said things were changing and that if we loved each other ... I rewound it in my mind and felt it in my heart. I wanted to grab that vision and hold onto it. Somehow I thought that, if I could do that, things might work out with Rodney. I knew I needed to see him, to make sure he was all right.
Late Saturday afternoon I went to the grocery store for Mama and drove to the Esso station to fill the car with gas. When Rodney saw me he came to the car window. I turned towards him. He leaned his arm on the top of my window and put his forehead on it. He was so close to my face I could smell the cola on his breath and the sweat that soaked his stretched out T-shirt. Gasoline fumes rose from the pavement like steam after a mid-summer rain and the odor was mixed with oil and dirt that somehow had a calming effect on me. I inhaled deeply. I wanted to swallow the smell of him and keep it inside.
“Hi, Beautiful,” he said. He acted like nothing was wrong.
“Rodney, we need to talk.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying to you for two years.”
“No, I mean, after what happened last week at the Cow Palace.”
“Oh... that.”
“Look, I can’t stay. Can you come to the Quarters next Wednesday about four?”
“I’ll see what I can do. I have football practice and work.”
“I’m sorry, that’s the only time I can be there,” I said.
“Susie, I want to be with you more than anything, I’m just not sure I can be there Wednesday.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll try. No promises.”
Chapter Nine
The Unthinkable
1966
RODNEY SAID IT WAS dark when he heard the roar of engines and felt the earth shake under his bed. He thought he heard an eagle screech just before smoke filled his room and he realized a dozen hooded militants circled his family home above Bayou Barré on Marshall Drive.
He opened the window.
He said that flames, hot and wet and dancing in the air almost knocked him over. In that instant he noticed the moon drop behind sinking clouds, just before smoke enveloped his room with scalding heat. He reached behind him, yanked Jeffrey from his bed and jumped through the shattered window with his brother hanging around his burning neck. They rolled in the fresh cut, late-summer grass, hot from the day’s heat while flames leaped after them.
He said he hollered as they rolled down the hill.
“Mama!” He felt like his breath dropped into a deep well of flames. While he grabbed at his singed, smelly hair, his other arm gripped Jeffrey and they tumbled, one eight limbed body, down the steep ravine and fell into the chilly waters of the bayou. The shock of the cool, muddy lagoon brought Rodney back to reality, and he looked up the punishing steep bank at the horror that devoured his family’s home.
He propped Jeffrey against a leafless black trunk and scrambled up the chewed up mine field of sparks and burning debris, galloping on all-fours, his pajamas shredded to ribbons, soaking wet, pushing with his feet, bare and bloody, to find the rest of his family.
Rodney said he heard angry machines that competed with chafed cries and vulgar chants, an unholy verse filtered through the smoke-filled air as if from the heavens, unseen but loud in his ear.
His throat was parched but he screamed for his dad, his sisters, his mother. He didn’t have to search further than the stately live oak his dad told him had been on the property since Rodney’s great grandfather escaped a Georgia plantation and settled near the Indian reservation north of Jean Ville. He saw his dad swinging like a cochon de lait, skin crackling in front of a bonfire. This time Rodney’s screams found voice among the howling timber fells, truck engine roars, and the requiem chants of the white-sheeted cowards who hoisted his dad into the arms of the beloved oak.
“Stop! Let him down! You can’t do that to my dad!” Although he could hear himself, the creatures tying a rope around his dad’s swollen neck didn’t seem to notice. He scratched and clawed and climbed on one of the ghosts, but it was as if Rodney wasn’t there, at all.
He felt himself fly backwards and crack hard against the earth. Black, red and yellow film covered his brain and when he finally peeked through the darkness of subconsciousness, he was flat on his back, head throbbing, the ground an earthquake beneath him as he lay in a pool of his own fresh, warm blood. He watched four or five pickup trucks speed away and smelled gasoline and burning hair. While Jeffrey’s guttural sobs echoed from the deep trench, he heard his mother scream and his sisters cry.
“Get up, get up, get up,” the voices said. Rodney rolled onto his stomach and rose to
his knees. He felt someone pull at what was left of his scorched hair and he raised his head to the sky filled with tongues of yellow, orange and brown flashes, that disappeared only to be replaced by more of the same.
Fourth of July fireworks in his own yard.
“Help him, Rod, help him!” They screamed. It sounded like they were in a tunnel.
Rodney said he saw his dad, hanging, like a butchered hog as if roasting for a feast. Rodney got to his swaying feet and stretched his six-foot-three frame as tall and stately as the tree, his arms like branches reaching for Spanish moss. His palms touched the bottoms of his dad’s hot bare feet. On tiptoe, he pushed with all his might against his dad’s pink soles and heard a small breath, a whisper that broke through the waning sounds of the eagle and the moon and the clouds and the tongues and the mine fields and the dead, dying house.
“Dad,” Rodney hollered. “Stand on my hands and push.” His dad stiffened his legs and pressed against Rodney’s flattened palms, held high above his head as if praising the heavens where smoke and flames and cries ascended in dream-like fashion.
He said someone held a hose on the fire under the tree and it smoldered, sending thick, wet smoke up Rodney’s nose. He coughed and gagged, but he never turned loose of his dad’s feet, pushing them higher and higher, giving his dad a platform on which to stand to relieve the tension of the rope.
“Call Bo!” Rodney screamed, but his voice was barely audible and his throat burned with the effort.
By the time his uncle Bo arrived, Rodney’s arms were jelly and his toes numb and fiery. Bo backed his pickup under the hanging tree and grabbed Ray’s legs while Bo’s brother-in-law, Sam, climbed the tree and slashed the rope. Rodney said he watched as, in slow motion, the two strong men, lay his dad in the bed of the truck, Ray’s head in Bo’s lap while Sam got behind the wheel and started out of the yard. Rodney jumped in the back of the pickup just before it took off and crawled next to his dad. He wanted to say something to his dad but his voice would not cooperate, instead, he lay his cauterized, bristled head, hair singed and smelly, on his dad’s chest and listened for a sound, any sound—or a rise and fall, any rise and fall—or a sniffle, any ... sniffle.
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