He stepped into the room, a luxury of raven hair falling loose over the collar of his denim shirt. He was attired in khaki trousers and a wool jacket cut out at the sleeves to become a vest. I saw a hunting knife sheathed inside a belt, I think it was of alligator hide. Not his usual attire, certainly.
And then I saw a tangle of hemlock in his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he winked. “We’re not going to poison anyone.”
“No, sir.”
“Actually, I’m just here to let you know that if there’s anything I can do to help over the next few months, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
I just sat there, with my book.
He kind of nodded, as if he understood it was not my place to reply.
“You have a talent and an ambition that are God-sent, Priscilla. And there are people around you, more than you know, white as well as black, who think it’s very important we do everything we can to help you succeed.” He nodded to the book in my hand. “That Dante?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He knows a lot about Hell, doesn’t he?”
“Seems to.”
“But I wonder if he knew anything, really, of Heaven?”
Then he left. He just regarded the lethal bouquet in his hand a moment, and then stepped out, the heels of his departing brogans almost silent on the timbered floor of the hallway, and I wondered if I had just been delivered a sermon.
The New Year came with firecrackers and Roman candles. By that time Jack Ruby had shot Oswald and the Governor of Mississippi had exonerated his state of any culpability for that business with Mr. Edgars. The Cold War and Cuba kept the banjo strung pretty tight, though, and already MacNamara was playing dominoes with Lyndon Baines Johnson, but it did not affect me. I had insulated myself from outside influences, had found my fortress, my hideout and my life’s work far from the paths of freedom riders, astronauts or vulgar politicians.
I had come to believe I might rise above county bigotries and quotidian concerns to reach the School of Music at Florida State. Even at eighteen years of age I had some half-formed notion of a career, a vocation. And I was about there, too. I had just about established an equilibrium in the balance of my responsibilities and was well on the road to seizing my prize when one Sunday I heard Mr. Raymond tell Preacher Dipps that the grand jury in Tallahassee had “failed to return.”
Chapter sixteen
“Negroes’ Testimony Discounted”
— The Clarion
T he grand jury impaneled in Tallahassee declined to indict Cody Hewitt or his older brother for any crime and you couldn’t find a deaf-mute in our county who did not have some reaction to that news. Some held the opinion that if Cody or his brother had been sent to trial, regardless of the verdict, Collard would have stood to regain some status among voters. Anybody who stood up to Garner Hewitt and got in a lick was someone to be respected, if not feared. But with the failure to indict, Garner Hewitt clearly emerged as the big dog in the fight.
“Siding with that nigger put the nail in Collard’s coffin,” Garner crowed to those gathered at Monk’s Auto Shop.
As for Joe Billy, I guess he expected to be treated like a hero after surviving a beating, jail time and the hospitality of the FBI , but it did not happen. He got no thanks from the Bureau or the State Attorney for his grand jury testimony. He got no autograph from Bobby Kennedy or accolade from civil rights organizers. Hollywood did not call with plans for a Movie Of The Week. In fact, in 1964 there was no such thing as a movie-of-the-week.
It wasn’t that Joseph William had shirked his duty; not only had he, JayBee, testified, he was believed. Jurors counseled to keep silent regarding their deliberations told reporters that the identification of Cody’s truck at the scene was not contested; that it was the State’s witnesses identifying its driver and passenger who were without credibility.
Mr. Raymond said asking a white jury to take the word of two nigger boys and a crazy woman just about guaranteed that the Hewitt brothers would never stand trial. That the State’s failure could not be blamed on Joseph William’s testimony did not, however, make him welcome in Colored Town. The adults on our side of town now agreed with Mr. Lester.
“That boy bring trouble on two legs.”
This was the indictment Mr. Raymond relayed to Fanny King. “You tell Joe Billy he needs to stay with you awhile. We out of room down here.”
Where Joe Billy couldn’t get spit to polish a dime in Colored Town, Cody Hewitt couldn’t open his wallet for a stick of gum. Couldn’t open a damn door for himself. To say he was sympathetically received would be to betray understatement for prevarication. Cody Hewitt returned to the long hall of our school like Caesar fresh from Gaul. He was back on top and everybody knew it.
We black students certainly knew it; the slights and indignities that for months had lain dormant now returned with a vengeance. Pudding’s textbooks went missing. We found them behind the gym, in a trash dumpster. Shirley Lee refused to dress out for gym, Bonnie Hart being the immediate cause, instigating in the locker room a daily barrage of taunts, ridicule, and provocation.
Faculty looked the other way as Kerbo students were shoved off benches, banished from whole regions of what was without irony called the playground. I avoided walking by myself. I didn’t look anybody in the eye. It was only much later that I would read Ralph Ellison’s magnificent work, but I must say in that day and in that place, I’d have given much to be truly invisible.
“Joe Billy was here, this wouldn’ be happen,” Chicken Swamp complained as we Kerbo kids clustered in the cafeteria at our single table. “Joe Billy was here we wouldn’t put up with this shit.”
“Why you think you have to put up with it now?” I retorted.
“’Cause of Miss Chandler,” Chicken replied.
“’Cause of you,” Shirley Lee amended.
“Me?” I said. “What’s this got to do with me?”
Not one of my classmates would meet my eye.
“Pudding, how do I get blamed for these crackers? I ain’t the bigot here. They are.”
“But we cain’t do nuthin’ back ,” Pudding snapped. “We cain’t talk back, we cain’t fight back. Miss Chandler say just wait out the semester. Wait! And why she say that, Cilla? Whatchu think?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“Is all for you,” Shirley Lee grated. “Miss Chandler say we cain’t do nuthin’ might spoil Cilla’s chances. Cilla’s our trophy, she say. Our example. We all got to support Cilla. Well, I’m tired of it!” Shirley Lee slammed her plate into the cafeteria table. It sounded like the shot of a rifle, sudden, abrupt. All around us spoons and forks stopped in mid-air. “Next white girl crosses me,” Pudding’s sister announced broadly, “I’m gonna make her pay. You think all us niggers is Uncle Tom? You try me. Just try!”
She turned then and marched for the door.
“Miss Reed, take your plate and silver,” Myron Putnal ordered to her back.
“Take it youself,” she replied, and to the hoots and jeers of white students, she stalked out of the cafeteria.
I scanned my table. No one would look at me. No one spoke.
February bled into March. A hard frost gave way by degrees to the warming influence of the Gulf of Mexico. Joe Billy returned to Colored Town with the blossoming of the dogwood trees.
I was washing my mother’s unruly hair on the planks of our porch when my old beau pulled up in his two-toned automobile.
“Well, look what the cat drug in.”
“Cat!” Corrie Jean clapped her hands. “Cat, cat, cat!”
“What you doin’ in Colored Town, Joe Billy?” I challenged as he piled out of his Fairlane.
“Got some business.”
“Business, bull. You marked worse than Hester, JayBee.”
“I gotta clean out my ’partment.” Joe Billy did not inquire after Hester. “Doc West tire of my rent money, I guess. Got some clothes I need to get. Couple of guitars. I only be down a coupla days.”
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“Need any help?” I asked, as he reached the porch.
“Naw,” he stepped up the porch. “Hello, Corrie Jean.”
Mama reached out her hands like a child. He took them unembarrassed.
“You sure lookin’ nice, today.”
“Fug me,” she crooned. “Fug me.”
“Mama!”
“It’s all right, Cilla.”
I poured a final ladle of water through Corrie Jean’s hair, wrapped it in a towel.
“You got a place to stay?”
“Car,” he shrugged. “And a shade tree. Maybe you let me wash up here, I need to?”
“That’d be fine,” I poured Mama’s soiled water out to the yard. “Or I can make you a place on the porch.”
He followed me inside. I settled Mama and put some water to boil. Found some coffee. Instant.
“How’s things at school, Cilla?”
I shrugged. “Be better if you was there.”
“I just be gettin’ in trouble,” he shook his head. “Get everybody else in trouble, too.”
“And how life treatin’ you, JayBee?”
“I’m paintin’ guitars,” he smiled broadly. “Sold three since the new year.”
“Three guitars? Sold?”
“Cash in hand,” he affirmed proudly. “Made myself over five hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred dollars?! For real?”
“Money ain’t hard, Cilla. I can always get money.” He paused. “Wanta take a drive?”
Your life can turn on the most trivial of decisions.
To remain or to stay.
To drive or not to drive.
“Can we go by Betty’s?” I asked. “I’m hungry.”
Betty allowed black people to order food from the back porch of her café. The porch gave a nice view of Town Park and the water tower and the great oak trees. Everybody from the quarters knew to approach the café from the park-side, that is, from the rear of the café. Once there you could eat just like the white people. There was fried chicken and pilau and coleslaw and country ham. Also hamburgers and onion rings and Cokes. Sweet-tea, of course. Pies made of whatever berry or fruit was in season.
Spring was nascent that day. A bright sun warmed the air just enough for folks to be comfortable in a long-sleeved shirt. The sky was bright, bright blue which signified a dry atmosphere, a rara avis in North Florida during any season. The redbuds were in early bloom, those discreet scarlet blossoms scattered at random in the yard behind the café. There were crepe myrtles, too, showing plumb and lavender all around, and oak trees, their moss hanging from rough-barked limbs like the beards of druids.
No dogwoods. Not at Betty’s.
“Sure is good.”
Joe Billy was not complimenting the ambiance but a hamburger improved with cheese and bacon and green onions. He paused from that powerpack of cholesterol to slurp a six-ounce Coke topped with boiled peanuts. Followed with the onions.
“Hope you aren’t planning to kiss me with that mouth,” I warned him.
“Kissin’ all you got in mind?”
“I am way past that.”
We were in good spirits, easy with each other, like two old lovers got on in life.
About that time Pudding Reed rolled up in his daddy’s seldom-running truck. “Well, look what the cat done drug in.”
“Twice I heard that, awready,” Joe Billy stood like a celebrity to pound fists in the ritual becoming fashionable in Negro fraternity.
Word raced back to Colored Town that its prodigal son was returned and within a half-hour the café’s porch was packed like melons in a trailer. All of the Kerbo seniors were gathered, and scads of the younger kids. Even a few adults. There must have been fifty black people on that veranda, all come to see Joe Billy.
“Lordy, lordy,” Betty exclaimed as she took orders for burgers and rings. “Is there some kind of feast goin’ on back here?”
It was impossible to have any kind of private conversation. Everyone wanted to talk to JayBee, everyone was fascinated to hear him describe his experiences in Tallahassee, with the grand jury, the FBI . And of course he’d spent time in jail, an accomplishment always respected. But unlike some young men who loved talking about themselves, Joe Billy was also genuinely interested in listening. Wasn’t too long before he turned the conversation.
“So Pudding, whass happenin’?”
Pudding and Chicken Swamp and Johnny Boy talked all over each other trying to get their soul brother’s attention, plying JayBee with stories of high school—life in the classroom, life in the hall, life at the gym.
Life After Joe Billy, basically.
Lonnie Hines sat shyly, as usual, though even he was coaxed to contribute. “We helped build the Senior Float,” he offered, and Joe Billy smiled.
“Then I bet it was the best damn float out there.”
It was good to see JayBee among his friends, however briefly. Things just looked brighter when Joe Billy was around. He exuded a kind of optimism, a joy in life. Also that quick fuse. Ready to take a chance.
“You got to come back,” Pudding urged.
“I am back, boy!”
“To school, Joe Billy. We need you, man.”
“Last damn thing in the world you need is me and Cody Hewitt in the same place,” JayBee demurred. “That wouldn’ help anybody.”
They must have gone on another twenty minutes like that. Swapping boasts and lies. Eventually Joe Billy noticed me nursing my sweet tea.
“Tell you what, boys,” he ended the soiree abruptly. “Cilla and me got some catching up to do. We’re gone take us a drive.”
Joe Billy helped me into the car. “Feel like I din’ pay you enough attention,” he apologized.
“It’s all right, Joe Billy,” I said, and meant it. “They’re glad to see you. We all are.”
As we pulled away, he reached over to the car’s radio.
“Put in some new speakers,” he announced proudly and pretty soon we had Ray Charles to accompany our journey.
…Georgia…Georgia…The whooooole day through…
“He went to school in St. Augustine, Ray Charles. You know that?”
“No. Really?”
“Oh, yeah,” Joe Billy draped a hand over the steering wheel, pleased with the breadth of his sophistication. I suppose if we had not been so satisfied with ourselves we’d have noticed the pickup following behind. Joe Billy turned left at the town’s single light, putting us on the farm-to-market road that led past the Suwannee to Live Oak.
“What say we stop at the river?” Joe Billy stretched his legs. “Maybe work our way down to Fort McKoon?”
I hesitated. Fort McKoon was not a site often visited by black people. I never knew exactly why. All you could see were the hidden traces of buildings and shops and yards long overrun by poison oak and palmetto. It used to be the site of a lumber mill, I’d heard, a thriving concern. I heard, too, that Spence MacGrue used to own the place, but, again, there were lots of rumors about that old man. What did remain was a rot of lumber and vine situated along the flank of the Suwannee on a kind of anomaly, a shelf of flint that in low water reached ankle deep almost all the way across that untamed river.
“We can look for arrowheads.”
For eons, Creeks and Seminoles had fashioned their spears and arrows from Fort McKoon’s flinted bounty.
“I’m too full to be scouting for arrowheads, Joe Billy.”
“S’aw right,” he obliged easily. “I’ll do the scoutin’. You can just sit back and watch.”
It was warm enough to roll down the windows of the car, which we did. I’ve mentioned the smells of my native region. The mingled aromas of a fecund spring rushed past. Even cowshit has an interesting smell at fifty miles an hour. I saw the cabled span of the Hal W. Adams Bridge far ahead.
We left the hard road just short of the bridge. Dionne Warwick was walkin’ on by as we negotiated the sandy ruts that would, with many toils and snares, get us to Fort McKoon.
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��Mama Fanny brought me down here one time,” Joe Billy remarked. “To Fort McKoon.”
“Don’t get us lost.”
“Just keep the river on your left hand,” he shrugged. “Sooner or later you got to run into it.”
We weren’t on that dirt road long when I happened to catch a glimpse of a truck in our rear view mirror. There was nothing particularly alarming about seeing a vehicle along the river. People came to fish, to picnic. Wealthier people had houses and boats. And it wasn’t like the truck stayed in sight. A half mile down that twisting road you couldn’t see more than ten or twenty yards in any direction. There were walls of hardwood trees and undergrowth all around. Scrub oak and blackberry.
The King of Colored Town Page 24