Let the Circle Be Unbroken

by Mildred D. Taylor

As May wore toward June and the fieldwork continued, news that work was soon to begin at the hospital building site spread through the community. When the work announcement became official, men, both black and white, gathered at the old Huntington farm where the hospital was to be built, sleeping long nights on the hard ground to be ready as soon as the call to work came.

  “You ever think ’bout seeing ’bout working up there yourself?” Stacey asked Little Willie when he learned that Mr. Wiggins had gotten on at the site.

  We were sitting on the Wigginses’ back porch eating roasted peanuts. Little Willie popped a peanut into his mouth before answering and shook his head. “Naw. Why would I? All them men up there, what chance I got?” He looked questioningly at Stacey. “What? You thinkin’ to get on?”

  “He might be thinkin’ it,” I said, reaching into the pan, “but that don’t mean nothin’ long as Mama ain’t.”

  Stacey glared at me as if I were the burden of his life, but I paid no attention as I went on eating. “I figure it wouldn’t hurt to try,” he said.

  “S’pose not,” agreed Little Willie. He popped another peanut into his mouth. “Ya wanna go over there?”

  Stacey stared out at the gloom of the drizzling day and decided that he would, then along with Little Willie tried to persuade the rest of us to stay behind. But since we were having none of that, they finally gave in, and after telling Mrs. Wiggins we were going for a walk, we crossed the north field to the forest beyond. Coming to Soldiers Road, we walked the half mile down to the Huntington place. As we approached it, a newly painted sign with large black lettering, oddly out of place among the ferns and weeds already coiling around its legs, loomed on the left side of the road. On the sign was printed:

  PROPOSED SITE OF THE

  SPOKANE COUNTY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL.

  I looked around. Only the forest was visible. “Well where is it?”

  Stacey nodded past the sign. “Must be that road there.”

  What Stacey had politely called a road was no more than a wagon trail. We went up it, our bare feet caking with the red mud, and soon saw what had once been the Huntingtons’ house, a gray clapboard dwelling with a tin roof, now being used as an office for the site. Standing in front of the building in an orderly single file were over a hundred men, all of them white. Little Willie pointed to the side of the house. “Papa say they got the hiring place for colored ’round there.”

  Following Little Willie’s lead, we passed the men and went around to the right side. The line here was just as long with men standing patiently, unable to sit because of the muddy ground. To our surprise, Dubé Cross was in the line.

  “Hey, this where you been keeping yourself?” Little Willie asked. “Ain’t hardly seen you ’round no place these last few weeks.”

  Dubé shook his head. “J-jus’ come up here yesterday. B-b-been spending t-time with Mr. Wh-Wheeler and Mr. Moses w-with the union.”

  Stacey’s brow furrowed.

  Dubé noticed it. “Th-that’s right. I ffff-figures that’s the only way folks like me g-g-gonna get anywheres.”

  Stacey chose not to get into a conversation about the union, and instead looked back down the line at all the men gathered. “You figurin’ you gonna be able to get on here?”

  “G-g-gonna try.”

  “They hirin’ less’n sixteen?”

  “D-don’t know. You mos’ likely g-g-gotta ask Mr. Crawford ’b-bout that.”

  “Mos’ likely you get hired,” said Little Willie. “You got the muscles.” He looked out at the fields, where groups of black men were working under the direction of white leaders. “You seen my papa anywheres?”

  “G-g-got work early on th-this mornin’ pullin’ stumps.”

  “Where ’bout we find this Mr. Crawford?” Stacey asked.

  Dubé looked around, then pointed to the edge of the yard. “Th-there he go y-y-yonder with Mr. Harrison.”

  We wished Dubé luck and headed toward the two men, but before we reached the end of the line, Jake Willis stopped us. Smiling broadly, the two gold teeth clearly visible, he said, “Well, looka here! Y’all Logan younguns, ain’t ya? I reckon y’all don’t ’member me, now do ya? But I ’members y’all all right. ’Members the whole family.”

  “We remember you,” Stacey said without enthusiasm.

  Jake Willis laughed. “Well, ain’t that something! Yeah . . . What y’all doing out here? Job hunting?”

  “Little Willie’s father here. He’s working up yonder in the field,” Stacey said, slyly skirting the truth.

  “Ya don’t say?” Jake Willis glanced out at the field. “Well, seem everybody get lucky but me and I don’t never get lucky. Been out here since six o’clock and ain’t got nothing.” He turned back to us with a laugh. “Ain’t gonna get no Packards that way, now am I?”

  Stacey put a hand on my shoulder to urge me on. “We gotta go.”

  “Well, anyways, it was good to see y’all. I’m just glad y’all ain’t out here job hunting too. For a moment there, I was thinkin’ I was gonna have to fight for my job ’gainst a Logan. Thought maybe things had gotten so bad for y’all, maybe y’all had been sent out for hire.” He laughed then, a raucous, distasteful laugh, and Stacey pushed us on.

  “That man, I don’t like him much,” Christopher-John admitted as we walked away.

  “You ain’t the only one,” I said.

  “Look here, Stacey,” Little Willie said as we neared Mr. Harrison and Mr. Crawford, “ya wanna do the talking?”

  “Don’t matter to me.”

  “Okay, then you go ’head.”

  When we reached the two men, Mr. Harrison, a white-haired man in his seventies whose plantation bordered our land to the west, took the time to speak to us. Mr. Crawford, however, tall, weathered-looking, and occupied with both rolling a cigarette and hollering orders across the field, didn’t even see us. Mr. Harrison asked what we were doing there and Stacey told him.

  “Well, I must say, that’s right ambitious,” he decided, and when Mr. Crawford turned his full attention back to his cigarette, he said, “Sam, these here young fellas come to see you ’bout a job.”

  Mr. Crawford glanced over, licked the cigarette paper, and gently sealed it to the roll, locking in the tobacco. “How old you be?”

  “Fourteen. Both of us,” answered Stacey, indicating Little Willie and himself. “We strong and we can do our share.”

  Mr. Crawford stuck the finished cigarette between his lips and lit it, his eyes on the flame. “What kinda job you want?”

  “Anything you got. We’re willing to do whatever needs doing.”

  “This boy Stacey here’s a good worker, too, Sam,” praised Mr. Harrison with a gentle slap to Stacey’s shoulder. “Known him and his daddy both since they was born. Known his granddaddy too. All of ’em good, dependable men and fine workers.”

  Mr. Crawford looked across the field to the line of men and nodded at them. “You see them men out there?”

  We all looked at the line.

  “Yes, sir,” said Stacey.

  “Your daddy in that line?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He been in it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Work on the railroad.”

  Mr. Crawford nodded. “Then y’all got something. Most of them men there got nothing at all. Mr. Harrison says you a good worker so I believe that to be so, but I can’t go hiring no boy of fourteen when there’s men out there been waiting months, maybe years to make some money. Now can I?”

  Stacey looked directly at Mr. Crawford. I thought he was going to agree with him, but instead he said: “We all trying to keep from losing what we got. Me no less than them others.”

  Mr. Crawford seemed somewhat surprised by the statement. Glancing at Mr. Harrison, he looked back at Stacey with appreciation. He waved his cigarette hand at him. “I tell you what. This here project’s s’pose to keep going the next five years. You come back when you get to be sixt
een, and if I’m still here and the money’s still comin’ in, I’ll hire you. That’s the best I can do— Farley, didn’t I tell you them men was s’pose to be working on the other side?” He turned back to Mr. Harrison. “Look here, Henry, I’d better see to this myself. Don’t nobody ’round here seem to know what they doing.”

  Mr. Harrison watched him hurry off, then turned to Stacey, a look of piercing scrutiny in his eyes. “You serious ’bout working, boy?”

  “Why . . . yes, sir.”

  “Then I got a job, you want it. Whitewashing. ’bout a week’s work, I figure. Pay you five dollars.”

  Stacey was silenced by the offer.

  “Well, you want it?”

  “I’ll—I’ll have to ask Mama.”

  “All right. I’m on my way home now. I’ll drop y’all there and you can ask her.”

  Mr. Harrison took Little Willie and Maynard as far as the north end of their farm, then continued to our place, where we hurried into the house while he waited in the car. We found Mama in the kitchen battering okra. She looked up smiling as we came in, but as soon as Stacey blurted out Mr. Harrison’s job offer, her face grew solemn, and dropping a handful of the okra in the hot oil, she said simply, “No.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I said no.”

  “But Mama—”

  “Stacey, your papa’s not leaving us nine months out of the year, breaking his back on that railroad, so that you can go work on some white man’s place. You’ve got land—four hundred acres out there—of your own to work, and if you want to work somewhere, then you work it.”

  “But, Mama, we need that money!”

  Mr. Harrison’s horn blasted outside and Mama looked around.

  “That’s Mr. Harrison,” I explained. “He brung us home.”

  Mama frowned, then took off her apron and went outside with us following.

  At the car, Mr. Harrison said: “That boy of yours there tell you what I proposed to him?”

  Mama nodded. “He did and we appreciate your offer, Mr. Harrison. But with David away, I really need Stacey here.”

  There was a look in Mr. Harrison’s eyes that said he recognized in Mama something he understood. “Well, I was afraid of that. May get another boy from my place to do the work needs doing. Or maybe the Wiggins boy. Ain’t gonna worry ’bout it though for the next few days, so you find you can spare Stacey at all, you send him on down.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Harrison, but I don’t think I’ll be changing my mind.”

  “Well, you tell your mama I said hello now.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Mr. Harrison backed the car into the road and headed west toward his plantation. Without thinking, I took it upon myself to say, “Well, there go that five dollars.”

  Mama turned to look at me. “What’s that?”

  I met Mama’s eyes and figured it was better not to repeat it. “Nothin’.”

  Her eyes burned with displeasure. “And what were you doing riding home with Mr. Harrison? Haven’t I told you about riding with white folks? I’d better not catch you doing it again. You hear me?”

  Christopher-John, Little Man, and I murmured a distinct “Yes, ma’am,” but Stacey turned from her without a word and started across the backyard.

  “Stacey,” she said, “did you hear me?”

  Stacey turned and glared at her. “I heard. I heard everything and I figure you’re wrong ’bout that five dollars. We need that money, Mama. Much hard times we been having with the cotton and everything, and then you not teaching and Papa’s leg gettin’ broke, we can’t hardly be talking ’bout not working for the white folks. They the ones got the money, then they the ones we gonna hafta get it from.”

  I thought Mama was going to walk up the drive and knock Stacey down for his insolence. She didn’t. Instead she patiently folded her arms and met his accusing gaze. “That may be, but it’ll be quite a few years yet before I have you going out into that white man’s world bowing and scraping.”

  “Papa don’t bow and scrape!”

  “No. But he has to bend. We all do, and the longer I can keep you from having to, the better I’ll feel. The land, Stacey, that’s more important than Mr. Harrison’s or any other white man’s five dollars.”

  “Well, what you think I want the money for? That five dollars of Mr. Harrison’s could’ve gone toward the land tax. Plenty boys my age work outside their place—”

  “Well, plenty of boys don’t have land of their own . . . you do.”

  Stacey shook his head, as if Mama could not possibly understand how it was with him. “I ain’t no baby no more, Mama, and you gotta stop treating me like one. We need the money and I figures to get me a job—”

  “Oh, no,” Mama said as Big Ma crossed the backyard from the garden. “Not as long as I have anything to say about it.”

  “Then maybe you won’t.”

  Shocked, Christopher-John, Little Man, and I stared in disbelief at Stacey. None of us had ever talked to Mama that way. Looking as though he were as shocked as the rest of us, Stacey glanced our way, then dashed across the yard toward the garden. Mama called after him, but he didn’t stop.

  “Boy, don’t you hear your mama callin’ you?” Big Ma demanded as he went past her. But he did not heed her either. “I hear my ears right? That boy sass you?” Big Ma demanded of Mama. “Well, he done got too big for his britches ’round here. Needs a good whippin’, that’s what he needs.”

  Mama stared after Stacey in silence. Christopher-John, Little Man, and I kept our eyes on her, wondering what she would do next. “No,” she finally said and slowly walked up the stepping stones to the side door. “It’s not a whipping he needs. . . .” She took one last glance at Stacey’s retreating figure. “It’s David,” she said, and went into the house.

  8

  Stacey was changing. In the last year he had grown more than a foot, making him taller than Mama and nearly as tall as Papa. In addition to his new height, his voice had deepened. One morning several months ago he had awakened speaking in somebody else’s baritone. I told him to clear his throat, but he insisted that nothing was wrong with his throat and informed me that all boys’ voices changed. Although I had been aware of Clarence’s and Moe’s voices cracking up and down the vocal scale, Stacey had undergone none of that. When I asked him why he hadn’t, he answered that he was just lucky, he guessed. I suppose he guessed he was lucky as well to have what he called his “mustache,” a simple fuzz line which he cultivated with delicate daily care and about which, upon Mama’s advice, I wisely kept quiet.

  Had the change in Stacey been only physical, I think I could have handled it better, but unfortunately the change had affected other areas as well. Now fourteen, he was a very private person and much preferred to be off by himself somewhere or with Little Willie, Clarence, or Moe rather than with Christopher-John, Little Man, and me, and I frankly resented it. I had always accepted Stacey’s need to have friends his own age, just as the rest of us did, but always before Christopher-John, Little Man, and I had been accepted, no matter how grudgingly, in whatever he was doing, and he had to some extent confided in us. Now too often we were hearing that we were too young to listen to something, or that something or other did not concern us, and the confidences became fewer and farther between.

  Sometimes in an attempt to keep things as they had been, I followed Stacey when he went off alone or with one of his friends. Most times he tried to send me back; other times he simply ignored me. I hadn’t yet decided which bothered me most. Once when Moe came over and he and Stacey crossed the road to the forest, I sat for some time debating whether or not to follow. Finally deciding that I had just as much right to be in the forest as they did, I wound my way among the trees to the clearing, where I found them sitting on the bank of the pond, their backs to me. Neither noticed me as I approached, and not feeling like arguing with Stacey on this particular day I settled down some feet away without a word to them. With my hands cupping my h
ead and my eyes on the circle of sunlight sifting softly through the magic of forest green above, I lay comfortably upon a cushiony mattress of pine needles enjoying the stillness of the forest and paying little attention to Stacey’s and Moe’s conversation; after all, I had not come to eavesdrop. But then Stacey said: “You heard any more ’bout Jacey Peters? I mean ’bout her being with Stuart Walker and Joe Billy?”

  My ears perked up. Anything to do with Jacey Peters these days caught my attention.

  Moe shook his head. “Nothin’ ’cept for that time at school . . . and, oh yeah, Little Willie did say somethin’ ’bout Clarice and Jacey walking over to Aunt Callie Jackson’s and Stuart and them coming along and offering ’em a ride.”

  “But they didn’t get in the car, did they?”

  Moe laughed softly. “Little Willie said he didn’t know ’bout Jacey’s folks, but if Clarice had gotten in that car, by the time Mr. Wiggins had’ve gotten through with her she wouldn’t’ve been able to sit for a good week.”

  “But you ain’t heard nothin’ else?”

  Moe turned curiously toward Stacey and looked at him for a long moment before answering. “Naw, I ain’t heard nothin’ else.” He hesitated, glanced out toward the pond, then back at Stacey. “How come you so interested in Jacey Peters all of a sudden? What? You kinda likin’ her or somethin’?”

  Now it was Stacey who was quiet. He threw a pebble into the pond and shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I mean she’s pretty and she’s smart and she’s got a way about her. . . .”

  “But you worried ’bout maybe her messin’ ’round with Joe Billy and Stuart?”

  Stacey nodded. “She messin’ ’round with white boys, I don’t wanna waste my time with her.”

  Again Moe laughed his good-natured laugh. “Stacey, man, you’d probably be wasting your time anyway. That girl’s two years older’n you.”

  Stacey laughed too. “You probably right. But . . . I don’t know . . . sometimes I’ve seen her looking at me like . . . like maybe she wouldn’t mind me talking to her.”

  “Well, you think that, then go on then. Won’t hurt nothin’. Like you said, she is awful pretty and she’s real nice. Ain’t never heard no bad talk ’bout her, so I wouldn’t worry none ’bout Stuart or Joe Billy.”