Africaville

by Jeffrey Colvin

  At both ends of the bluff, large signs were put up reading LAST VILLAGE IN NORTH AMERICA.

  Luela was sitting on her porch the day a constable handed her a notice to vacate. “Take me to jail,” Luela told him. “This is not right.”

  And off to jail Luela went, along with Marcelina and a dozen others. There she sat for five days. It felt odd to return to the bluff to find the Penncampbells’ old house gone. With a constable at every turn, Luela had no choice but to consider packing. Now, if a bulldozer crew showed up and found a resident on the front porch, they simply went around back or to the side and started their destruction there. One neighbor managed to carry out only half the family possessions before his house went crashing to the ground.

  Luela had never wanted to pack up the house she was born in, the property where her father had been born. She did not want to leave the land that had been home to every Sebolt man who had ever set foot in Canada. Before leaving with the last of her belongings in the truck, she went out back looking for the footprint of the shed. Surely there was some sign here of Ephram or Ivy or the elder George. Or even of her father. But there were only weeds.

  The memory of that long-ago carnage—a ragged swath of busted house siding and roof material, upended refrigerators and stoves, splintered window sashes, and overturned cars—weighs on Luela’s mind this evening when she finally climbs into bed beside Chamberlain.

  Shirley and George are gone. Kath is gone. The Sebolt house is gone. All that is left is the family story. Her nephew, Etienne, made it plain he did not want to hear it. Warner says he does. But does he?

  How Marcelina raised the money to hire an expensive lawyer is anybody’s guess. It had been worth it, since the two Higgins houses withstood years of legal threats by the city. Nobody is home at the larger house, so Luela peeks through the window into the dining room. Each year the renters who inhabit the houses seem less responsible. In what had once been one of the most impressive dining rooms in the Hindquarter, there is now grime in every corner.

  The sight of the unkempt dining room stays with Luela as Warner drives them down Dempsey Road. The cemetery is still here, but rumor has it that the city has commissioned a study to see if it makes sense to move it. Shirley and George, Mordechai, Pallis, Coreletta, Testafera, Kipbo—the cemetery holds a gathering of the Sebolt family. Luela has heard no plan from Marcelina about saving the cemetery. But Marcelina is getting up there in age, with little of her youthful organizing energy. If the cemetery is destroyed, what proof of Africaville will be left?

  “Jocelyn is letting me select words for Etienne’s grave marker,” Warner tells Luela when they arrive at the weathered headstone marking Omar Platt’s remains.

  “What did you choose?”

  “Rest Ye O Man of Measure,” Warner says. “I’m thinking maybe I should put Pop’s full name on the headstone. Now that I know it, I mean. Etienne Omar George Peletier.” Warner turns from the grave. “I’m embarrassed to say I’m sorta mad at him.”

  “What about?”

  “He told me he didn’t know his mother’s family. Don’t you think that’s bad?”

  “I used to.”

  “Well, now I have to deal with it.”

  “I don’t exactly know what you mean by ‘deal with it.’ If you mean deal with being colored, that’s not something you deal with. Being colored is something you are.”

  “I know,” Warner says. He is quiet for a while, looking around at the other graves. “I asked my mother why Pop was estranged from this side of the family. Her answer was that a man is allowed to live his life like he wants.”

  Luela frowns. “What about a man’s children? They ought to know where they’re from.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Warner says. “That’s why I’ll be visiting Zera at the prison in Mississippi.”

  Luela shows Warner a few more graves, keeping her voice pleasant. Aunt and great-nephew are quiet later walking to the car. Warner drives slowly down Dempsey Road, as if fearful that a bluff child might cross in front of the car any minute and be struck dead in midstride.

  Trains to Glace Bay

  Part Four

  Sons and Daughters

  Sons of Canada

  Montgomery, Alabama, November 1984

  If the Canada-bound trains that came through southern Alabama in 1889, in 1908, and in 1933 had come through again in the 1960s, very few men would have been waiting at the station in Montgomery, hungry for a mining job in Cape Breton. By 1960, the Cumberland Mining Corporation already did brisk business in Dallas and Perry Counties and was opening in several other areas near Montgomery. Not only was Cumberland Mining hiring more men, it was also using company profits to support educational institutions all over southern Alabama.

  The corporation’s Cumberland Mining Trust funded the move Montgomery A&M made from its cramped offices downtown out to the former military base. Nearly a decade after Warner’s mother and father accepted jobs at the college, the trust made a $20 million grant to the school. In exchange for the donation, Montgomery A&M was renamed Cumberland College.

  In the years since the donation, construction on the campus has been proceeding at a brisk pace. This afternoon, on the grounds of the former pistol range, a tall fence surrounds the work site of the seventy-thousand-square-foot Elizabeth Tutwiler Cumberland Science and Technology Hall. Warner looks through the open gate to where Deedra Cummings, in an inexpensive-looking business suit and a bright-yellow hard hat, directs a photographer who is taking pictures of the four-story, beige brick building. She heads toward him showing the same dour face she wore last June, when the vice-provost told Warner and Jocelyn that Deedra would be organizing the college’s ceremony to honor Etienne’s years of service.

  “You’re not authorized to come in here without a hard hat,” Deedra says, approaching Warner. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”

  “She’s not wearing one,” Warner says, pointing at the photographer. “Why should I?”

  Before she can reply, Warner presents a large manila envelope with pictures of Etienne and other items Deedra said she might use to prepare a press packet.

  “I can’t look at these here,” Deedra says, not accepting the envelope. “Wait over in the parking lot, please.”

  Deedra’s light-blue Nissan is parked beside the work-site trailer. On the back window of the car is her burnt-orange-and-white Cumberland alumni sticker. Hanging on the wall in the office Deedra inhabits as Director of Minority Affairs is the Cumberland diploma that Etienne used to say she did little to earn. Last summer she had assured Jocelyn that she would call early in the fall term with a list of documents she would need for the press packet. Why is Deedra so testy with him? Warner wonders. Jocelyn is the one who complained to the vice-provost that Deedra had not returned any phone calls.

  Across the road is the last open field on the campus. The former pistol range is now the future site of a new athletic complex. Only one more semester of classes and Warner can claim his diploma. Yet, despite the advances made to the campus, he’s not yet ready to sit in a classroom—too many memories of running into his father in the student union or the bursar’s office. He did not even enjoy his visit earlier today to the administration building, which took him down the carpeted hallway past his father’s former office. The trip reminded him too much of the hallway in the hospital ICU room where Etienne lay still as a sleeping cat. The strange buzzing he heard when he entered the room made him fear that a nurse had gone out and left a piece of equipment running. One of Etienne’s hands lay outside the bedsheet, in a slight curl. When he grabbed the hand, it felt warm. But somehow he knew there was no life left.

  Deedra dumps the contents of the manila envelope onto the dusty trunk of her car. “Facilities will mount a plaque on the bulkhead outside one of the lecture halls in the new science building,” she says, sifting through the items. “The plaque will read ‘The Etienne Peletier Lecture Hall.’”

  “I was hoping to get Pop’s name on some
thing bigger,” Warner says. “Maybe a wing of a new building.”

  Deedra’s lips, covered in lipstick that matches her rust-colored blouse, give not the slightest hint of a smile. They are pursed as she scans an article published in the college newspaper the year Etienne took the job as head of student accounts. “I guess we could use this picture,” she says, holding a photograph of Etienne in a suit and tie. “I like the plain background.”

  The photographer approaches and hands Deedra a form. Using the photographer’s back as a surface, she signs her name on it. “Wasn’t Etienne from Canada?” she says, noticing another clipping as she shoves items back into the envelope. “Maybe we can interview one of the relatives.”

  “Dad wasn’t close to that side of the family.”

  “Are you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I don’t understand why my office was assigned this commemoration,” Deedra says.

  “Probably because you knew Etienne the longest.”

  “But it isn’t like Etienne’s relatives are minorities.”

  “A few of our relatives are colored.”

  “I mean close relatives.”

  “So do I.”

  “I mean blood relatives.”

  “So do I.”

  Deedra looks puzzled for a moment. Then she lets out a loud laugh.

  “Did I say something funny?” Warner asks.

  “You did if you want me to believe you’re a minority.”

  “I never said I’m a minority. You asked about Etienne’s relatives. I’m telling you the truth about them. Never mind that. Etienne deserves to be honored. He should be appreciated.”

  Deedra opens her car door and tosses the envelope onto the passenger seat. “Etienne was appreciated,” she says, closing the door. “Appreciated more than I’ve been. Matter of fact, Etienne’s bosses did nothing but appreciate him ever since he first came down here.”

  As compensation for the extra work the other clerks at the Kwik Mart had to do while he visited Vermont and Halifax, Warner has been given the job of the daily cleaning, including swabbing, of the bathroom. He also has to hang all the holiday decorations. He was not surprised to get the extra jobs on his return. But he was surprised to hear the rumor that the owner of the Kwik Mart might be selling the store and fifty acres of surrounding forest—and soon.

  Customers come to the Kwik Mart in Woodhaven to buy what they can’t find at stores in the Plaza or in Montgomery: Prince Albert tobacco in a portable tin, Vienna sausages in tomato sauce, a can opener that lasts longer than a year. When customers complain that bars of Octagon soap cost twice as much here as they do at the Plaza, Warner likes to think he’s patient, even tries his best with the one or two colored customers who still come in. He likes working here.

  Still, the only reason he turned down the job at McKenny Shoes several months back was because Udall Nicholson, the owner of the Kwik Mart, had promised to make him assistant manager. Last week, when Jocelyn began to nag him about returning to finish his last semester of college, he reminded her that Udall had promised to teach him inventory and ordering, how to manage the suppliers, the store, even the arrangements he’d worked out with the banks and contractors. Losing this job would put him in a bind, Warner thinks, as he carries a stepladder up the store aisle. Have any of the other employees pumped Udall about the rumor, he wonders, setting the ladder down near the head of the aisle.

  “It’s a little late to hang those,” Warner says to Gerrick Gilroy, the storeroom helper, who sets a box of Halloween decorations on the floor beside the stepladder. “Where are the ones for Turkey-Day?”

  Gerrick brushes dust off the front of his oversized T-shirt, which reads AUBURN PHYS. ED. His Afro is much shorter than the one he wore the year he and a dozen other black kids integrated Woodhaven Junior High. “I haven’t found them yet,” he says. “But Udall says you got to hang these, too.”

  Warner wants to check that with Udall, but this may be the only chance he gets to talk to Gerrick. “You need a ride home?” he asks.

  “You plan to stick around till I get off work?” Gerrick asks. “Why is that?”

  “Everybody knows that Monte Carlo of yours still ain’t working,” Warner says, pulling a cardboard cornucopia on a string out of the box. “I’ll betcha Udall will let you off a little early today knowing you need a ride home.”

  “You can read Udall’s mind now?”

  “I plan to swing by the hiring office at Platinum Paper on the way home. We could both snatch up a job application.”

  “Didn’t I hear you tell Udall you wouldn’t work for the paper plant?”

  “I only said that because Udall seemed so pissed about the plant buying up land. Can’t a man change his mind?”

  Gerrick gets a Nehi soda from the chest cooler. “Udall ain’t told me nothing about the store being sold,” he says, heading to the back, “if that’s why you’re being friendly.”

  Up on the stepladder, Warner tacks one end of the string on a cardboard pumpkin to the ceiling. Not for a minute does he believe Gerrick. The other clerks have already spilled the news about Gerrick driving Udall’s Buick to the post office to overnight correspondence from Udall to the paper company’s lawyers. The boy knows something.

  But if Gerrick does have news about a possible sale, would he tell Warner? Ever since finding out that Warner tried to get the storeroom job for his best friend, Randy, Gerrick has been cold to him. And yet Warner’s not the least bit sorry about wanting the job to go to his friend. If Randy were running Udall’s errands, by now he would have told Warner what he knew about any plans to sell the store.

  After his visit to Canada, on the drive from Halifax to Burlington, during which he had to take a detour down a long, unfamiliar country road, Warner was certain he could feel the Canadian border tugging at him, trying to pull him back up north.

  On the highway now, heading for the offices of Platinum Paper, he wonders if Gerrick Gilroy has also felt the same tug. “Since you both have distant relatives above the forty-ninth parallel,” their ninth-grade history teacher had said to Warner and Gerrick years ago, “it would be good if the two of you would cooperate on a paper about Canada.”

  Gerrick asked no questions about what Warner was gleaning from the stack of library books about Montreal. And he told Warner nothing about what he learned from the single encyclopedia volume he combed for information about Glace Bay, where one of his relatives had gone to work in the mines. On the day the report was due, Gerrick stapled his two handwritten pages to the four pages Jocelyn had typed for Warner and dropped the report on the teacher’s desk.

  The personnel office for Platinum Paper occupies a small white building with a freshly paved parking lot. “Would you look at all these questions?” Warner says to Gerrick back in the car as he unfolds the application form over the steering wheel. “Filling out this monster will require three hands.”

  He turns the application over, glancing at the form still lying in Gerrick’s lap. “Those envelopes you’ve been taking downtown for Udall,” Warner says. “I know you been reading ’em.”

  “All sealed, fella.”

  “Not the outside. They were being delivered to the paper plant’s lawyers in Birmingham, correct?”

  “That don’t mean Udall is selling the store to ’em.”

  “Then who is he selling to?”

  “Search me.”

  A noisy group of men, all in dusty work clothes, walk in front of the car, their faces beaming as they climb onto the back of a cordwood truck. “If you wanna know what’s up with the store,” Gerrick says, “why don’t you ask Udall?”

  “Udall’s not talking.” Warner puts his job application in the glove compartment and slams the small door. “If he sells the store, the new owners will probably let us go.”

  “You think we can stop ’em?” Gerrick fans his neck with his application. “Looks like you and me are stuck in the same boat, fella.”

  “Not when it comes to getting hi
red at this plant. I suspect you haven’t opened that application because you’re worried the company won’t hire you.”

  “They sure will.”

  “Not as long as your granddaddy Sibelus is sitting on land the paper company wants. Acting all big like he’s the shah of Iran or something.”

  “That’s him, not me.”

  “Platinum’s a big company. Do you think Sibelus will get to stay in his house?”

  “The lawyer with the NAACP thinks so. Colored gal. Real smart.”

  Warner starts the Camaro and shifts into reverse. It’s true. He is in the same predicament as Gerrick. But hearing Gerrick say it makes it sound worse.

  “You need to stop doing every little thing Udall tells you, Gerrick,” Warner says as he backs the car out of the parking space.

  “Soon as you start paying me cash money,” Gerrick says. “That’s when I’ll do what you say.”

  Gerrick was absent from school the day their teacher handed back the history report he and Warner had completed. From Gerrick’s pages Warner learned that in the summer of 1889, when workers from a Canadian mining company visited southern Alabama looking to hire men for the mines in Cape Breton, only a few men from the town of Pathview made the trip. But in 1933, when the third Canada-bound train departed Montgomery, twenty-three men from Pathview were on board, including Gerrick’s great-uncle Percy.

  Gerrick’s pages also said that the dirt road running through Pathview was once one of the widest in Lowndes County. Today, a single car can barely squeeze along its length. The postmaster is a saint for making biweekly trips down this horror show, Warner thinks, steering his Camaro across another shallow crater in the road.