Outside Mary Lou Wellever, Alma Scott, and Gracey Pearson were waiting to taunt me. They laughed as I came down the steps.
“You get whipped again, Cassie?” asked Mary Lou.
I made no comment, just kept on walking. But that didn’t satisfy Mary Lou, who seemed to think the fact that she was the principal’s daughter gave her some sort of mysterious immunity from my fists.
“My daddy said the next time Cassie get in trouble, he gonna back the teacher’s whippin’ with one of his own,” she announced to Alma and Gracey.
I stopped and looked from Mary Lou to Mr. Wellever, who was standing near his office talking with another teacher. He was a short, bespectacled man and didn’t really look like much of a threat. Besides that, I had it from Stacey that compared to Papa’s swing Mr. Wellever’s was absolutely nothing to fear, and if Mary Lou kept it up, I would gladly risk one of his whippings to flatten her. I looked again at Mary Lou and matched her smile with a slow, menacing one of my own. Hers quickly faded and she backed away.
“Come on, y’all,” she said, and with Alma and Gracey hurried off.
I stared after them a moment, then scanned the yard trying to decide where to eat my tin-can lunch of eggs and oil sausages. I spied Henry Johnson and Maynard sitting on a stump by the road eating and watching a group of older boys playing catch on the lawn. I went over and joined them. Standing nearby were Stacey, Little Willie, and Moe. As I sat down beside Maynard, Little Willie nodded toward a black Hudson coming east along the road. “Look there,” he said.
Joe Billy Montier was in the car, but it was his friend Stuart Walker who was driving. Stuart’s family owned a plantation on the other side of Strawberry and was co-owner along with Mr. Granger of the local cotton mill. Another young man, Pierceson Wells, who worked for the Walkers, sat in the back. The car slowed and the three young men started talking to Alice Charles and Jacey Peters, two tenth-grade girls standing near the road.
“Jus’ look at ’em,” hissed Little Willie, his eyes hard on the car. “I wish them scounds would come messin’ with one of my sisters. I’d beat ’em to a pulp.”
Pierceson hollered something we could not hear and the girls giggled. Then Stuart leaned out the window and with a wide grin said, “Hey, come on down here a minute.” Stuart was good-looking and he knew it.
Again the girls giggled.
“Come on—you, the pretty one in the plaid—I got something to tell ya.”
Jacey, an attractive, perky girl known for her daring, left Alice and started toward the car. But before she reached it, Miss Daisy Crocker came hurrying across the lawn with those giant strides of hers. “You young gentlemen want something?” she called, stopping Jacey.
Stuart kept grinning but shook his head. Then, laughing, he accelerated and the car sped away, leaving a trail of dust in its wake. Miss Crocker, loudly upbraiding the two girls, led them back to the class buildings. Stacey, Moe, and Little Willie scowled after the car, then moodily moved out onto the lawn to play. I listened to the last echoes of Miss Crocker’s mouth, glad that for once it wasn’t me she was chewing out, and turned to my lunch; but before I could get the can open, Son-Boy came running up from the road.
“Hey, Cassie!” he hollered. “My Aunt Lee Annie wants you.”
“Me? What for?”
Son-Boy shrugged, ready to be off again. “I think she wants you to write something for her. You better go on, ’cause she said she want you to do it ’fore school start up again.” Then before I could ask him anything else, he was gone, heading over to a group playing a game of marbles. Since I couldn’t join in the game anyway, I hurried on to the road with my lunch can in hand.
At Mrs. Lee Annie’s I ran up the plank steps and knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately, and Mrs. Lee Annie grinned down at me. “Hello, Miz Lee Annie,” I said. “Son-Boy, he said you want me to write something for ya.”
“Sho’ do,” she said, hugging me to her before walking over to a table near the stove where some paper and a book were lying. I followed her. “This here letter come from Jackson,” she said, picking up a sheet of sky-blue paper, “and I gots to answer it.”
“Miz Lee Annie, can’t you write?”
“Oh, I does all right for an old woman, but I ain’t had me much school learning, Cassie. ’Sides, this here letter is from an educated white woman.” She laughed. “Now what I know ’bout writing some educated white woman?”
“Well, how come you don’t get Son-Boy to write for you?”
“Ah, that youngun can’t sit still long ’nough to write no letter. ’Sides, he can’t hardly spell good as me.” She put the letter back on the table and turned to the stove. “Now put that bucket of yours right on down and have some dinner with me. Got cracklin’ bread and crowder peas.”
I grinned. Mrs. Lee Annie knew I loved cracklin’ bread. “Miz Lee Annie,” I said as she scooped up three plates of food, “Wordell here?”
“Yeah, he back there. Ow-you, Wordell!” she called. “Come on and get your dinner, boy.”
I waited, my eyes on the curtain which divided the room. Mrs. Lee Annie finished filling the plate, then brought it over to the table. “Ow, Wordell!” she called again. When he did not appear, she went over to the curtain and pulled it back, exposing a narrow bed. Wordell sat on the far side of the bed, his head turned toward the window. “Boy, didn’t you hear me callin’ you?” she fussed. “I just been a-callin—”
Wordell swung himself across the bed and stood up.
“Hey, Wordell,” I said.
Wordell glanced at me without recognition and grabbed his jacket from a wall peg.
“Now where you goin’? Ain’t you heard me tell you dinner was—”
Ignoring his grandmother, Wordell opened the back door and went outside.
Mrs. Lee Annie watched him go, then turned back to me. “Go on, child, and eat ’fore it get cold.”
I picked at the crowder peas. “Miz Lee Annie, how come Wordell don’t talk much?”
“Oh, he talk when he wanna,” she said, sitting across from me.
“He ain’t never said nothin’ much to me.”
“Well, he right spare with his words all right, but I tells ya one thing ’bout that child. When he open his mouth, he usually got somethin’ worth sayin’. And what he care ’bout, he sho’ take care of it. Person or thing, he don’t let nobody hurt it, he can help it. Sho’ don’t.” She nodded toward the bureau. “See that there?”
“That harmonica?”
“That’s right. Well, Russell, he brung him that when he was here, and he can play that thing like he talkin’. Play it right good too. Ya know his mama was right musical-minded.”
“I don’t remember her.”
“Well ya wouldn’t. She died soon after Wordell was born. When she died, then that give me another grandbaby to raise. Already had Russell. My daughter Truce had done left him with me when she married her second husband.”
I wanted to ask more questions about Wordell, but Mrs. Lee Annie gave me no opportunity as she picked up the blue letter again and changed the subject. “How’s your penmanship, Cassie?”
“My what?”
“Yo’ writing, child? You write nice like your mama?”
I shrugged. “I do all right.”
“Well, you gonna have to do better’n all right, ’cause what I wants you to do is write down my letter, then take it on home and have your mama take a look at it. I wants to mail it tomorrow. You think you can do that for me?”
“Yes’m.”
We finished eating and Mrs. Lee Annie gave me the letter to read. It was from the daughter of a man she used to work for telling Mrs. Lee Annie that the man had died. “Hazel, she sent me this here book,” Mrs. Lee Annie explained, pushing the book toward me. I peeped over at it. Entitled Mississippi Constitution—1890, it was a thick, wide book. I opened it. The print was small, almost too small to read. I read a few lines aloud, then looked up, annoyed. “Miz Lee Annie, this don’t make no sen
se. How come she to send it?”
Mrs. Lee Annie let out a mighty laugh. “Well, ma’am, it belonged to Hazel’s daddy, the judge, and I used to sneak into his office when he was gone and try’n read it. Well, the judge he caught me one time and says to me: ‘Lee Annie, how come you tryin’ to read what don’t concern you?’ And I says, ‘But you said this here book had somethin’ to say ’bout everybody in Mississippi and I was jus’ trying to find out what it had to say ’bout me.’ Then he come lookin’ right sheepish. Said that book was white folks’ things and I best leave it alone. Said I wanna know something, then ask him and he’d ’splain it to me.”
She laughed again. “Well, I wanna know now and I figures I find out for myself. Not be askin’ some ole white man who be tellin’ me jus’ what he wants me to know.” She was thoughtful, her rough hands fingering the page. “I had any gumption, maybe I’d even go try and vote.”
“Vote?”
“Body gotta take a test to vote, though. Test be’s on what’s in this book here. This here constitution.”
I looked at her with new interest. “Miz Lee Annie, you thinkin’ ’bout votin’?”
It took her a moment, but then she laughed and shook her head. “Not these old bones. Course now, my papa voted. Back in the times of the Reconstruction when the black men got the vote—women didn’t have no vote. Walked right up to that votin’ place and made his X. Didn’t hafta take no test back then.”
Mrs. Lee Annie’s face lost its cheerfulness. “Then them night men took to the road. Tarring black folks goin’ to vote, beatin’ ’em up, lynchin’ ’em. Beat my papa somethin’ terrible . . . seen it myself. They dragged him on the road. . . . Lord . . .” She shook her head again, as if to shake the memory of it. “Well, wasn’t no more votin’ after that, from hardly nobody. They put a stop to it good, them night men. Sho’ did . . .”
She sighed and was silent for several moments. Then she fixed her eyes on me. “Cassie, child, how’d you like to help me read this here? I ain’t much count at reading and you read right nice.”
“Ah, Miz Lee Annie, I can’t read that mess.”
“Seemed like you was doin’ all right a minute ago. Tell you what, you ask your mama if you can.”
I frowned, not really sure if I wanted to ask Mama anything about spending my time reading boring tidbits of Mississippi law. But Mrs. Lee Annie paid no attention to my hesitation as she handed me a pencil and paper and began dictating her letter to me. She finished just as the school bell began to ring. “I gotta go, Miz Lee Annie,” I said, folding the letter to take with me.
“Well, I sho’ do thank you, Cassie.” Mrs. Lee Annie got up from the table and walked with me to the door. “Now you be sure and have your mama take a look at that ’fore you go copyin’ it in ink. I don’t want no mistakes in no letter goin’ up to Miz Hazel.”
“Yes’m,” I promised, running down the steps.
“And you be sure and ask your mama ’bout comin’ to read with me, ya hear?” she hollered after me. “I gots a powerful yearning to know all that’s in this here book. . . .”
That night when I asked Mama and Papa about reading with Mrs. Lee Annie, Papa drew on his pipe, as he often did when he wanted time to think, and stared into the fire longer than I thought necessary for such a simple decision. When he did speak, he surprised me by first nodding toward the boys. “You can go, but Christopher-John and Little Man’ll have to go with you.”
Christopher-John and Little Man looked up at their inclusion in the conversation.
“But Papa,” I said, “Miz Lee Annie don’t live more’n five minutes from school and I don’t need nobody to go with me—”
“I don’t want you walking them roads by yourself.”
“But Papa, I walked farther than that by myself before and—”
“I got my reasons, Cassie girl. You go over there, Little Man and Christopher-John’ll go with you.”
He put his pipe back into his mouth and I knew that the discussion was ended. I didn’t understand why he wanted Christopher-John and Little Man to go along, but it didn’t bother me that he did. Perhaps he, like some others, thought Wordell was crazy, and that if all three of us were together, we could protect each other if Wordell went completely mad.
“Papa, you think Wordell kinda touched in the head?”
Papa looked at me, his eyes thoughtful. “Why you ask that?”
“Well, I seen him today over at Miz Lee Annie’s and he acted funny—like he always do—and some folks say he is. What you think?”
“I tell you, sugar . . . I got a feeling that Wordell’s mind is as good as anybody’s.”
“Even after him having Doris Anne up in that belfry?”
Papa’s nod was slow in coming. “Even after that,” he said finally.
I considered that. Papa was an excellent judge of people. “Well, then,” I decided, “he sure got some mighty peculiar ways.”
Papa suppressed a smile. “All of us got some peculiar ways, Cassie, and ain’t nothing wrong with that long as they don’t hurt nobody.”
“Yessir . . . I guess not,” I said, though I couldn’t help thinking that anybody with that many peculiar ways ought to try and do something about them.
* * *
Some folks said he was crazy. Some folks said he was just plain ordinary stupid. But whatever folks said about Wordell Lees, most agreed on one thing: He was not like anybody else.
Folks who contended Wordell was mad swore up and down that they had once seen (or had heard about from the most reliable of sources that they had seen) Wordell roll over on the ground like a dog, with a wild look about the eyes. Others said not only that, but that he had been observed standing perfectly still in the woods, down behind Great Faith church in a trance, not moving for more than an hour. And he had been holding a bird in his hands. Nothing else. Just standing there and holding that bird!
Supporters of the opposite point of view shrugged off such tales, mainly because Wordell was often with Joe McCalister, whom everybody conceded was mentally retarded but harmless. It was a matter of being branded by association. In addition to all that, Wordell seldom spoke, which added to the stories about him. He was, in short, a confusing mystery, and the more I learned about him, the more I wondered about him. Once I had put the matter to Stacey: Was Wordell stupid or was he crazy?
“Why don’tcha ask him?” Stacey had mocked.
“Boy, you crazy! You know I can’t go askin’ him that!”
Stacey looked at me with extreme annoyance. “I didn’t mean just ask him outright, Cassie. You so nosy ’bout finding out, what you need to do is just talk friendly like to him.”
“’Bout what?” I questioned.
“’Bout . . . ’bout things.”
“That time you talked to him at the courthouse, what’d you say?”
“I just told him ’bout T.J. and that we wanted to stay till the trial was over.”
“And what’d he say?”
“Nothin’ much. Just walked over to Joe and said, ‘Let ’em stay.’”
“That all?”
“That’s all. He wanna be bothered with ya, he’ll answer.”
I pondered Stacey’s advice for several days, then gave it up as useless. If Wordell was merely retarded, I figured I’d be all right, but if he was crazy, he was likely to whop me over the head with something as soon as look at me. So I left it alone. That is, I left it alone until I started reading with Mrs. Lee Annie. Being with her and having Wordell so near stirred my curiosity again.
Once when I was reading with her, one of the older Ellis boys rushed in and told Mrs. Lee Annie that Joe had just come up from the woods babbling something about Wordell and that there had been blood on his hands. Mrs. Lee Annie immediately jumped up and, telling me to go back to school, rushed off with her nephew. I wanted to go with her, but she made it clear that she did not want me to come along. Later I learned that Wordell had hurt his head. Big Ma, who was good at medicines and was often called upon
to tend to the sick instead of Dr. Crandon from Strawberry, had been summoned to Mrs. Lee Annie’s and had ended up spending most of the night there. When she returned home, she commented wearily: “That boy, one day he gonna end up killin’ hisself doin’ the crazy things he do.”
The next time I went to Mrs. Lee Annie’s, Wordell was up and out again. As Mrs. Lee Annie and I read, we could hear the steady chopping of Wordell’s axe in the woodpile out back.
“Wordell all right now?” I asked.
“Oh, I guess he all right. Won’t stay put though. I told him he oughta stay in that bed awhile, but he don’t pay no mind half the time. . . .”
When it was time to go back to school, I ran outside looking for Little Man and Christopher-John. They had been playing in the front yard when I started reading with Mrs. Lee Annie, but they weren’t there now. Thinking that perhaps they had gone to watch Wordell’s wood chopping, I ran to the back of the house. They were not there either. At first there appeared to be no one in the backyard at all, but then I spied Wordell, his head still bandaged, sitting on the other side of the woodpile. I thought of making a hasty escape, but it was too late; his eyes were already on me.
“Hey, Wordell,” I said.
As usual, Wordell said nothing.
“I—I was looking for Christopher-John and Little Man. You seen ’em?”
When Wordell made no attempt to reply, I shrugged and turned to leave. But then it occurred to me that this was a perfect opportunity to get some of my questions about him answered. Stacey had said I should just talk to him. I glanced over at the kitchen door. Mrs. Lee Annie was right behind it. I judged the distance between where I stood and the door, then glanced over my shoulder to where Wordell was seated. Yes, I could make it, if not that far then at least over to the woodshed on the other side. With my plan of escape routed out in case Wordell went berserk, I turned to face him again. But now that I had resolved to talk to Wordell, I didn’t know what to say. Then I remembered the harmonica.
“I seen your harmonica,” I started. “Miz Lee Annie said Russell gave it to ya.”
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