Red River

by Lalita Tademy

  “Plenty of that on a farm,” says GrandJack.

  “But I don’t see farming the rest of my life,” says Ted. “Maybe go away somewhere else, find a different kind of work.”

  “You got to eat, L’il Man. You got to settle down with a good woman and take care of your children. You got to stake your claim. What you thinking about after college? You partial to where you teach?”

  “There’s no money in teaching, GrandJack.”

  “The goal isn’t money. No education, no progress.”

  “I’m not sure I want to go to college, GrandJack. All that time in school, and all I do is come back to teach kids here. They just going to be farmers anyhow.”

  “You say that like it poison the inside of your mouth. Farming not good enough. Teaching not good enough. Tademys known for teaching, for bringing the word to the next generation.”

  “There’s got to be something else besides teaching,” Ted says. “Or farming.”

  Ted sees the disappointment in his grandfather’s face and goes quiet. He has admitted to his grandfather, of all people, how much he dreads the rhythm of the lives he sees played out every day in Colfax.

  “If I go anywhere, I guess Grambling be the school,” Ted says. It is clear he is throwing out a bone, lacking sincerity, in order to avoid the familiar argument, avoid scraping the scab covering an old sore.

  “What you learning today in the books, L’il Man?”

  “Look GrandJack.” Deep wrinkles crease the wide expanse of Ted’s forehead, and his eyes flash with the challenge of the young. “They lied.”

  “We don’t allow that kind of talk in this house,” Jackson warns.

  “Sorry, GrandJack.” Ted points to the book he holds and offers up the offending volume. “This can’t be right.”

  Jackson understands immediately. NAZAR-NEGUS. He balances the heavy weight of the open book in his hands.

  There are several pages, long passages under the heading of NEGRO in large capital letters. Jackson can no longer read the small print in these books, but he remembers the first time he came across the description years ago. The sketch off to the side of the text is the head of a man, full-face forward, who looks like an exaggerated version of his neighbors, of his friends, of his family, but the lips are too puffy, the hair too coarse, the eyes too round, the skin too shiny-dark.

  “It says we smell different than normal, that we’re lazy, intellectually inferior, and . . . more.”

  “Read it out to me, L’il Man,” says Jackson.

  Ted hesitates, reluctant.

  “Reading out loud sometimes bring in the light,” Jackson says. “Read out in a strong voice.”

  Ted reluctantly obeys. “‘Negro children were sharp, intelligent and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence.’” Ted doesn’t stumble on the words, but he is clearly uncomfortable. “‘We must necessarily suppose that the development of the Negro and white proceeds on different lines. While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brainpan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone.’”

  Ted pauses, embarrassment taking the volume of his voice down to little more than a mumbled whisper. “‘Deterioration in mental development is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the Negro’s life and thoughts.’”

  “Go on,” says Jackson. “When you read, read loud and clear.”

  Ted shifts uneasily but continues. “‘Though the mental inferiority of the Negro to the white or yellow races is a fact, it has often been exaggerated; the Negro is largely the creature of his environment. It is not fair to judge of his mental capacity by tests taken directly from the environment of the white man, as for instance tests in mental arithmetic; skill in reckoning is necessary to the white race, and it has cultivated this faculty; but it is not necessary to the Negro. The mental constitution of the Negro is very similar to that of a child, normally good-natured and cheerful, but subject to sudden fits of emotion and passion during which he is capable of performing acts of singular atrocity, impressionable, vain, but often exhibiting in the capacity of servant a dog-like fidelity which has stood the supreme test.’”

  Ted balks, refusing to recite more. Jackson remembers how he felt when he first read those same passages. It was the matter-of-factness, the irrefutability of the statements, the absolute respectability given to this view of himself and the people he knows, that disturbed him most.

  “Better you understand what people take in their heads to teach,” says Jackson.

  “Is that encyclopedia true?” Ted asks.

  “Does it describe people you know? Me, your grandmothers, your father, Uncle Andrew, yourself?”

  Ted shakes his head. “I get mad sometimes.”

  “Any white folks you know ever get mad?”

  Ted laughs, a small, nervous chuckle, but it softens the mood. “Yes, sir.”

  “That encyclopedia over twenty-five years old, got some old-time ideas in it, but wasn’t no excuse even then for coming up with that foolishness.” Jackson takes the book from Ted, closes it, and replaces it on the shelf. He pulls out another thick volume from the uppermost shelf, its somber green binding embossed with gold lettering, and hands it to Ted. “How about this one?”

  Ted handles the hardback carefully, reading from the spine. “An Era of Progress and Promise.”

  “That’s right. Sometimes you got to dip your bucket in more than one well to get it full. This book old as the other, but they come at things a different way. Turn to page five-sixty-three. Read to me from under the title ‘Inventors and Inventions.’”

  “‘A list of three hundred and seventy inventions by Negroes was furnished for the Paris Exposition of 1900. Granville T. Woods of Cincinnati, whom someone called the black Edison, has twenty-two patents listed, in electricity and telegraphy. Elijah McCoy, of Detroit, has twenty-eight inventions relating to lubricating appliances for locomotives. Miss Miriam B. Benjamin, of Massachusetts—’”

  “That’s enough. Go back and read the rest later. You ever hear of Granville T. Woods before? Or Elijah McCoy? Or Miriam Benjamin?”

  “No.”

  “They sound to you like inferior people whose brain squeezed together the older they got until they ended up stupid?”

  Ted laughs again. “No, GrandJack.”

  “Read under ‘Farmers and Farms.’”

  “‘Forty years after emancipation, about one fourth of the Negro farmers had become landowners.’”

  “You know your way around a farm. Anything you ever come across about planting or harvest or livestock so easy to do you can afford to be lazy and still hold on to the land?”

  “No, GrandJack.”

  “Think for yourself, L’il Man. Some people make up reasons we can’t be on the same level as them, even drag history into it. So we got to remind ourselves how good we is. That’s education. Keep reading, L’il Man, and don’t you get bothered because you see somebody’s ‘fact’ on a piece of paper, not if it sounds contrary to your God-given good sense. Those books written by men. More ways to color how a man think and how he choose to explain his ‘environment’ as there are flavors of honey. Why you think I collect all these books? The purpose of the written word is to help you flesh out those things you know and those you don’t. Understand what I’m saying, L’il Man?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good,” Jackson says. “Everybody different, that part is true, but not divided out by race. We got some lazy ones, some slow in thinking, some turn their backs on God, some willing to act the fool. So do white. But we got those who make inventions, who come up lightning fast with numbers, like you, plenty working hard and making things better for their families and their community. God the
only one with absolute truth. Use the brain He give you to do more than figure out arithmetic problems. Figure out right and wrong.”

  Ted sits up straighter, folds the book closed, prepares to return it to its place on the shelf.

  “We not ready to let that book go yet, L’il Man,” says Jackson. “One thing more. In the back, they list Negro colleges. Our race go to one of those and come out trained. A man that want to better himself got to be addle-headed to ignore those pages. And I don’t have no addle-headed grandsons.”

  “I don’t want to be a teacher, GrandJack,” Ted says.

  “When you grown, you choose what you want. We not talking about teaching yet. But you gonna be made ready for the test of life first. Tademys is special. You special. We try hard to collect the many, but I won’t lose the one,” says Jackson. “We put a lot in you, L’il Man. College one of the prices you gonna pay for it.”

  Ted breathes hard but holds his tongue.

  “You give me your word, that’s all it take,” says Jackson. “We don’t need to talk about it again.”

  Ted stands, puts the book back into its assigned space on the shelf, turns to face Jackson squarely. They are the same height, grandson and grandfather, both small men by society’s conventions, one growing, one shrinking.

  “You not up to defying me on this, L’il Man.”

  The small farmhouse room seems airless and muggy. A fine sheen of perspiration coats Jackson’s face, even though the cool of fall is already in the air. He keeps his gaze steady.

  Ted blinks first. “Yes, GrandJack,” he says. “If you want me to go, I’ll go.”

  “That be settled,” Jackson says, satisfied.

  Chapter

  37

  1935

  The day after Christmas, Ted rises early. The household in The Bottom is up and about, but subdued, as if yesterday’s overeating, visiting, and activity have drained everyone’s reserves. Excess still hangs in the air. His mother, her cotton robe pulled tight against the cold, has already milked Bessie out back and stands waiting by the stove for a pan of water to come to boil. His sisters, in a rare show of idleness, sit around the kitchen table in quiet conversation, without so much as a mending cloth in hand. His father pokes distractedly at the glowing embers in the fireplace. His youngest brother snatches up what passes for a homemade football, a mass of tightly wrapped material scraps, and Ted and his other brothers follow him outside, and they throw easy passes to one another despite the puffs of clouded cold they exhale until their mother calls them inside.

  After breakfast, Ted announces, “I got to go out for a while.”

  “You got chores,” Lenora says.

  “I need to return something to Willie Dee Billes. From school. I do my chores soon’s I get back.”

  “You hear your mother,” says Nathan-Green. “You need to stay put.”

  “A walk do the boy good,” says Lenora, coming to Ted’s rescue. “Long as you not gone too long.” She gives Ted a small, conspiring smile.

  Ted walks in the direction of Colfax, flags down the Greyhound bus on Highway 71, and heads north to Aloha.

  School is out of session until after the New Year, and Ted’s mind is made up. It is time to make a move, something beyond the furtive letters slipped into Willie Dee’s waiting hand. The campaign for her heart has been slow, uncertain, and sometimes painful. She is fourteen today, the age of choice, when friendship has the potential of becoming more, but of all the boys who buzz around her, Ted knows he isn’t highest on her list. She spends time with him when other, better offers haven’t yet come her way. She is nice enough to him, but Ted isn’t fun like Willie James, or popular and sociable like Owen Brew. His biggest rival appears to be Robert Hadnot, from one of the colored Hadnot families in The Bottom, a handsome older boy she’s been spending too much time with lately. Ted has his playful side, but he can never hope to win her on that score. His strategy so far—keeping up an amiable friendship while waiting for her to come of age—requires updating. Now that she is fourteen, he needs to seize the opportunity to formally court her.

  He has five cents saved for the inbound bus trip, an extravagance, although his intention is to walk back and save the return fare. He wants to arrive at the end of the nine-mile journey without carrying the stink of the road with him. Willie Dee’s house is two miles or so from the main road, going east; he isn’t sure exactly where it is in the woods. He’s never been there before.

  The bus is on holiday schedule and long in coming, but when it finally clatters down the highway, Ted flags it down. There are only two others on board, and he takes his seat in the back, nearest the rear exit. When he sees the sign for Aloha, he pulls the cord and the driver lets him out. From there Ted heads north away from the main road, away from Red River. He knows at least that much. He approaches a young white boy, maybe seven or eight, who sits alone outside a dilapidated house in the woods.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Ted says, taking off his cap. “Where’s the Billes house?”

  The young boy motions. “Down yonder, can’t miss it. Look for the path for their car.”

  Ted thanks him and moves through the light brush until he comes to a tamped-down trail, wide enough for an automobile, and follows the rutted road for another half mile. He spots the mailbox first, with BILLES printed boldly in white paint on the curved metal, next to a lean-to shed off to the side of the main house. There is a cutting stump with a double-sided ax, and a tall stack of chopped firewood, pine and oak mixed, in between the shed and the house.

  Willie Dee’s oldest brother, Theo, is outside, tinkering with an old car parked beneath the corrugated tin roof of the shed. Despite the cold, he wears only a thin, grease-stained undershirt.

  “Hello,” Ted calls. A well-fed yellow dog barks, but without conviction, and comes to Ted, nuzzling his snout under his hand, begging to be stroked. Ted is afraid of dogs and doesn’t move.

  “Hello, yourself. Come back, Jasper.”

  “We met in town once before,” Ted says. They met when Ted walked Willie Dee to her uncle’s house after school. “I’m Ted. Ted Tademy.” He makes a move to shake, but Theo raises his hands apologetically, showing the oily grease on his hands and arms.

  “Next time,” he says.

  Ted is relieved. He can’t get his palms to stop sweating.

  “Ted Tademy.” Another of Willie Dee’s brothers steps out from the shadows of the shed. Ted knows him from the basketball team. I. V. Billes is popular, self-assured, outgoing, cordial, everybody’s best friend, president of his class, the favorite of all the girls. “What brings you all the way out here?”

  “Come to wish your family a happy holiday,” Ted says.

  “The whole family?” The two brothers exchange a look, a devilish smile hanging between them.

  Ted lets the moment ride.

  “Have a seat on the porch,” Theo says. He leaves the car hood and wipes his hands with an oil-soaked cloth. “Maybe you came to see the whole family, but I suspect you might want that to include my kid sister. I’ll go get Willie Dee.” Another smirking glance passes between the brothers before he disappears into the house.

  Ted talks basketball and cars with I.V. while they wait. It is easy conversation, and interesting. There aren’t many who own an automobile in Colfax, and Willie Dee’s brother recounts the benefits of a Chevrolet over a Ford.

  It isn’t long before Willie Dee pushes open the screen door to join them outside on the front porch. Just the sight of her makes Ted’s heart do a two-step inside his chest. She has on a blue dress that ties in the back and falls to just below her knees, with a scruffy pair of black house slippers on her feet. There is a very large hole at the waist of the dress, where the seam has given way. Her long hair is partially sectioned off, looped in separate curls, and held by a number of shiny metal clips on one side, falling free on the other. Ted has never seen her look so untended, so ungroomed.

  “What you need me out here for?” she calls to her brother through t
he door, her voice dripping impatience. She freezes when she sees Ted sitting in the rocking chair, staring. She is caught, unsure whether to flee back into the house or to act nonchalant and proceed out onto the porch.

  Another amused glance passes between the brothers. “Looks like you have a visitor, my gal.” Theo doesn’t bother to hide his great satisfaction at orchestrating such embarrassment for his little sister.

  Willie Dee turns tail and stumbles back into the house. Ted hears snatches of frantic whispering inside, two distinct voices, one distressed and petulant, one authoritative and calm.

  “Tademy.”

  “Bring your guest inside.”

  “I didn’t invite him.”

  “Now.”

  “Not like this.”

  “No time to change. Just the hair.”

  Ted and the brothers pretend not to hear. When the silence outside and the whispering inside become too awkward, I.V. speaks up.

  “What time you start out this morning?” he asks.

  “Just after breakfast,” Ted replies.

  The conversation lapses again.

  “The bus wasn’t running a regular schedule,” Ted says.

  A very long five minutes later, Willie Dee comes back outside. Her thick sandy-colored hair has been combed out quick and loose around her face and down her back, and she has slipped into a pair of Mary Janes. She wears the same dress but holds her hands in front of the torn seam.

  Ted stands. “Happy birthday,” he says to Willie Dee, as upbeat as he can muster. Everyone stares at him, and he is unsure what to do next.

  Willie Dee cuts her eyes at her brothers, her face pinched in a warning of the future injury she plans for them.

  “We got the car to work on,” I.V. says, chuckling, not intimidated by her in the least, and the two brothers go off to the shed together.

  “What are you doing here?” Willie Dee whispers to Ted.

  Ted is flustered. Willie Dee is angry, not even attempting a cordial greeting. “It’s your birthday,” he says simply, as if that explains everything.

  “I know what day it is,” she says. “That doesn’t mean you can just show up here unannounced.”