The Darkest Child

by Delores Phillips

  It was about an hour later when I saw my brothers, all three of them, carrying our milk crates, kitchen chairs, and their bed rolls out to the back porch. I could no longer pretend that I did not know something was going on.

  Laura and Edna were asleep, and Tarabelle was stretched out in Mama’s room. Martha Jean was finally taking a rest in the armchair beside me, and I was clutching my history book and staring toward the kitchen.Wallace came inside, took the kerosene lamp from the kitchen, and was on his way back out when I sprang from my chair and intercepted him.

  “Wallace, what in the world are y’all doing?” I whispered.

  “This is man stuff, Tan.We got some people coming out here tonight, some important things to talk about.”

  “Who’s coming out here?”

  Wallace was moving toward the back door as he answered. “I don’t know, but I gotta go. Sam wants me to stand out front and show them to the back when they get here.”

  The kitchen was now bare, except for the table and the icebox, and I couldn’t even see them since Wallace had walked out with the lamp. I stood in the dark room for a few seconds, then began to pace. I nearly bumped into Wallace when he returned, anxious, rushed, and talking fast.

  “Tan, Sam says to keep the lamp burning in the front room.”

  “How are we suppose to sleep with the lamp on?” I asked. “And, anyway, that’s wasting kerosene.”

  “Just leave it on, ”Wallace said impatiently, and then he was gone again.

  I went to the front door, cracked it open, and stared out into the night. After a few minutes, I heard Wallace call out, “Back here! Back here!”Then I saw the first two men climb up the bank and into our yard. I counted seventeen heads before I saw the one that was Junior’s. I knew it was him because he was carrying a satchel.

  As a girl, I was excluded from the gathering, but there was nothing to prevent me from eavesdropping. I decided to sit on the kitchen floor with an ear pressed against the door. I would listen to every word they had to say.There was the possibility that someone might open the door and bang it against my head, but I didn’t think they would. Everything they needed and then some was already outside.

  I eased into the front room and saw that Martha Jean was asleep on her pallet. Leaving the lamp burning, I pulled my coat from a nail, tipped into the kitchen, and took my position on the floor. I blocked the cold draft that was seeping in from beneath the door with my coat, sat perfectly still and listened.

  At first everybody spoke at once.They kept their voices low, but I could hear them clearly. After a few minutes of chatter, Sam’s voice rose above the others.

  “Awright,” he said, “let’s get started. It’s cold out here, and I know everybody wants to get home. Junior, you the one wanted this meeting. Say what you wanna say, man.”

  “Everybody knows why we’re here,” Junior said, and his voice rose up to me.“Since you’re here, I’m going to assume that there’s something you want to change.This is not about me, so when you leave here tonight, I don’t want you mumbling about how Junior thinks he can change the world. It’s true that I have a long list of grievances against this town, but I’m not the only one. I think every man here should have his say, and we can move on from there.We’ll change what we can, and get help with the rest.”

  As I listened to Junior I wished I could see his face. I thought about moving to the kitchen window, but I did not want to risk being seen.

  “I’ll start with the one injustice that has caused me the most sorrow,” Junior continued. “I think you all remember my uncle, Nathan Fess, my daddy’s only brother.You all know that he was murdered. But why?” He paused, giving the others time to think about it.“He was murdered because he and my daddy decided to start a taxi service.Your mothers, neighbors, and maybe some of you, used their taxi cabs.They were pulling business away from the white taxi company, and they were warned to cease what was called illegal activity. That was four years ago, and I haven’t been able to talk about it until now. I couldn’t speak about the way they intimidated my daddy, threatened our family, and used a shotgun to demolish a car we had worked years to buy. Daddy’s decision was to give in, keep his family safe. Uncle Nathan, however, was an optimistic and determined man who felt he had just as much right as the next to earn a living. He paid for his beliefs with his life.”

  “I remember when that happened, Junior,” someone said.“They never found out who killed him, did they?”

  “They never even tried. Which brings me to another point,” Junior said bitterly.“Chad Lowe was the spokesman for the white cab company.How he got involved, I’ll never know, but he was the one who threatened my daddy.”

  “He got involved because they all stick together like that,” Sam said.“That’s what we’ve gotta start doing.”

  They were quiet for a few seconds, and I assumed they were nodding in agreement.

  “In my heart, I believe Chad Lowe murdered my uncle,” Junior finally said.“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have a problem with that evil man riding around this town with a gun on his hip. I’ve complained about it. I knew I couldn’t go to the sheriff, but I wrote a letter to the mayor, and I went to the other policemen in that clubhouse they call a jail.They laughed at me. One of them told me that the United States Constitution gave Chad Lowe the right to bear arms.” Junior paused.“I asked him if it gave me the same right. He stopped laughing then, told me to try it and see.”

  “Man, they’d shoot you down real quick,” Greg Henry said, “and you right about that damn Chadlow. That mothafucka is in everybody’s business, but ain’t nothing we can do about that, Junior. I’m here tonight ’cause I wanna know if anybody got any ideas about some jobs.”

  “You one of the few of us got a job, Greg,” Sam said.

  “I know, Sam. I know,” Greg responded. “I know y’all probably think I’m lucky ’cause I get to clean slop out them toilets at the bus depot. But it’s a thousand times a day I wanna walk off that job. I would, too, if I didn’t have Darlene and our baby to think about. You say they laughed at you when you went to the police, Junior? You ain’t heard no laughing. Them fools that run the bus depot, they some laughing hyenas, man. Ain’t but two of ’em, and they gotta be the worst two clowns ever wore britches. One day they took the lock off the colored toilet and jammed the door just for fun.The one, Mr. Lester, say he heard niggers shit like monkeys.The other one, Mr. Samuels, say he had to see that for himself.Then Mr. Lester say, ‘Be careful! Monkeys throw their shit, you know.’Boy, did they laugh about that. It took a whole week before they let me fix that door. But they still do all kinds of lowdown dirty stuff.”

  “Well,” Sam said, “seems like I can’t even get a everyday job like a man s’pose to have. People think I don’t wanna work, but that ain’t it.”

  “Nah, what it is, Sam, you be asking them white folks too many questions,” Harvey said. “They ain’t gon’ have no colored man questioning them.”

  “See, Harvey, you just climb on them trucks and go wherever they take you. I can’t do that no mo’,” Sam said.“I know I make it hard for myself, but, hell, Max can tell y’all some of the things we been through.We went out wit’ Mr. Butterfield one time. I asked him before I got on his truck, and he told me he needed cotton pickers at three-and-a-half cents a pound. I sweat my way through a hundred and fifty pounds of cotton. It was dark when we finished, and he gave us seventy-five cents apiece. Said we had done put rocks in our sacks.”

  “I remember that,” Max said. “Sam, man, you cried like a baby all the way back into town.The whole truckload of us was scared to touch you or say anything to you.”

  Sam laughed.“I didn’t cry, Max, but I know I was mad enough to kill that bastard. I wanted to kill ’im, but I always heard that nig-ger time in a jail is worst than death.”

  “I believe it is,” Andy Porter said, “and that’s what everybody’s scared of. Don’t nobody wanna go to jail, but if you added up all the law in Triacy County, it woul
d total nine white men— ten, if you wanna count Chadlow. I think there’s enough of us to beat ’em down.”

  “And what would that accomplish, Andy?” Junior asked.“Don’t you know they have politicians in this town who would appoint somebody else before you could blink your eye?”

  “They can appoint me,” Andy asserted. “What’s wrong with a Negro being sheriff around here. Shit. I can crack a nigger’s skull as well as the next man.”

  There was laughter, and then the conversation turned serious again, with each man telling his story, justifying his reason for taking his place in their gathering on a cold winter night. Some of the voices I recognized, others I did not.

  “It’s the schools,” Harvey said.“I thought a law had done passed that said all the children can go to school together.Archie Preston say the Plymouth School is falling apart, and he oughta know, being the janitor. He say one of them children gon’ get hurt up in there.”

  “Well, Harvey, that’s nothing new,” Junior informed him.“That school was falling apart when you and I were in first grade together. The state of Georgia has a governor, Melvin Griffin, who has stated that there will be no mixing of the races during his administration. I don’t think there’s anything we can do to change the man’s mind, so we’ll have to make do for a while longer. Things are changing, though, and some of that change is bound to spill over into Pakersfield. I keep writing letters, that’s all I know to do. I’ve written to the NAACP and to some of the larger newspapers in this state. I’ve also talked with a reporter at the Pakersfield Herald.

  ”

  “Junior, you can’t trust no white man,” someone said.

  “They’re not all bad, Homer.You have to trust somebody.”

  Then Homer’s voice said, “Hambone and a few of us believe in an eye for an eye. I admit I get mad enough sometimes to kill ’em all, but I ain’t figured out yet how to best use my switchblade against them rifles and shotguns they got.”

  There was laughter before Sam said, “You ain’t never gon’ figure that out, Homer. Can’t be done.”

  “The best way to get them is through education,” Junior countered. “What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred and ignorance? What good is the written word to an illiterate man?”

  Complete and utter silence followed. I imagined the other men must have been staring at him with the same perplexity that I sometimes felt when Junior spoke.

  Finally Sam said, “Shit, Junior, we ain’t out here to listen to no . . .” He paused.“What the hell you talking ’bout?”

  “I guess I believe in education as a weapon in our fight. That’s why I walk those roads out through the country every week. I want to help people learn to read and write. I know knives and guns are not the answer. Once we get a fight like that started, who will have the power to stop it? How many deaths will be enough?”

  “I ain’t got no gun to shoot at nobody, and I don’t want nobody shooting at me, ”Skip Carson said.“But getting back to this thing Sam was talking ’bout. I think we just ought not go out in them fields no mo’. Just let them crops stand out there ’til they shrivel up and die. Don’t hoe, plant, or pick nothing else for ’em.That’ll teach ’em.”

  “And while the crops are dying, what will you be doing, Skip?”

  Junior asked.

  “I been thinking ’bout something,” Skip said.“We don’t have to stay here. Hambone say they got good jobs for Negroes up north, like in Chicago where he was staying. I say we move to Chicago.”

  “Nah, Skip,” Harvey said. “Man, you talking crazy.We can’t all just pack up and move nowhere.”

  “Some of us can,” Junior admitted wistfully.“But some will have to stay and fight this battle the right way.”

  Their voices grew louder as they divided over the issue of fight or flight. I allowed myself a yawn, more from sleepiness than boredom. I was not bored; I was waiting to hear what they intended to do.

  Finally, Sam, who Junior had termed a leader, spoke. “There’s one question I done asked myself more than a hundred times,” Sam said. “If the grass is greener everywhere else, how come people always move back to Pakersfield? Seems like they can’t make it nowhere else. I can’t stop nobody from leaving here, and I wouldn’t even try.All I gotta say is good luck. I wanna leave here myself. But when I leave, whether it’s on a bus or train or in a pine box, somebody gon’ know I was here. They still think I’m a boy, and they don’t ever have to know I’m a man, but one day they gon’ know that Samuel Quinn was here.”

  “What are you planning to do, Sam?”

  “I don’t know that I got no plan, Junior. It’s just these times we living in, man. The times say I gotta do something.You gotta do something, too.You all time writing them letters and talking ’bout education, but what good is that? We just a small town, and ain’t nobody coming here to help us do nothing. Education ain’t nothing but words, man.We gotta show ’em that we mean business.”

  “Yeah,” Andy agreed. “I’m all for that.”

  “I’m with you, too, Sam,” Junior said, “but you have to know what you want, what you’re trying to accomplish, before you make a move.”

  “Okay,” Sam consented. “I want what everybody else want. I want a job. I wanna drink from that fountain down at the courthouse. I want Andy to be a sheriff if that’s what he wanna be. I’m tired of being on the back end of things like I just don’t count. I wanna be able to move my mama outta this house, move her to East Grove or Meadow Hill. I wanna see Chadlow brought down, and I wanna feel like a man in this town. I want a whole lotta things, Junior.And if I can’t get ’em, I wanna take one of them pencils of yours and erase this town off the face of the earth.”

  When Sam finished speaking, it was so quiet in the yard it seemed the others had left, but then Junior said, “All right, Sam. Let’s start with the water fountain.”

  eleven

  It was the first Thursday in February, and I had lit the kerosene lamp and settled in an armchair to read a novel when I should have been doing my chores. I was no more than five pages into my reading when the sound of pounding against the exterior wall of our house startled me. The sound came again—an object striking rapidly against wood.

  The boys were not home, and Tarabelle was asleep in Mama’s room. I tipped out to the kitchen. I got Martha Jean’s attention, and signed to her that someone was outside.

  Keeping Laura and Edna close to her, Martha Jean followed me to the front door. I opened it slowly and peered out.The first thing I saw was an old, banged-up, brown car parked down on the dirt road. There was a man sitting behind the steering wheel, but I could not make out who he was.

  As I turned my head to the left, I came face to face with a dark, stocky man who had a bushy beard and mustache surrounding thick, pink lips. He was about three steps away from the door, and I jumped back before I realized it was Harlell Nixon who owned the barbershop in the flats. Behind him, at the foot of the steps, was my mother. She did not look like a woman coming home from the hospital. She looked younger and healthier than she had appeared in months. In her arms, wrapped in a white blanket, was the newest addition to the Quinn family.

  “Where’s the dummy?”Mama yelled up to me.“Tell her to come out here and get this baby, and tell Tarabelle to get on out here, too.”

  Tarabelle ignored me when I tried to wake her. But when I told her Mama was home, she sprang from the bed, turning circles, and nearly tripped over her own feet. She was sleepy and confused, but alert enough to know that she was camping out in forbidden territory. She raked her fingers through her hair as she surveyed the room, then quickly straightened the bedcovers and stepped into her shoes.

  I paused long enough to slide my book beneath the chair, and extinguish the kerosene lamp, then I went down to the yard.

  Martha Jean was already holding the baby in her arms and a bottle in her hand. Harlell Nixon stood beside Mama, blatantly appraising Tarabelle, gripping a bag in his f
at fist.

  “Give that stuff to Tangy Mae,” Mama said, and Harlell extended the bag in my direction. I took it, and stood there waiting for instructions until it became apparent that my mother had no words for me.

  The man in the car rolled the window down.“Hey, Harley, y’all coming?” he asked.

  “In a minute,” Harlell called back, exposing large, tobacco-stained teeth.“You ready, Rosie?”

  Mama nodded, and when she spoke her voice sounded weary.

  “C’mon, Tarabelle. I need you to go wit’ me.”

  Tarabelle, who was still standing on the bottom step, shook her head slowly.“Mama, I can’t go,” she said.“Don’t make me go.”

  “You got to,” Mama said, in a tone that sounded apologetic.

  “But, Mama, I done worked all day. Miss Arlisa say I’m doing good. I waxed the floors today, and I . . .”Tarabelle paused.“Mama, please . . .”

  “Rosie!” Harlell barked when it seemed Mama was about to succumb to Tarabelle’s plea.“You done had me running all ’round town today picking up thangs for you and that baby. I done lost customers ’cause of you. I come out to that hospital and brought you home just like you asked. Don’t you go starting no stuff wit’ me.”

  “Nah, Harley,” Mama said, a forced smile on her lips, “we going.”

  She moved toward the car, and the man on the front seat got out and opened the door for her. Harlell stepped around the car and slid onto the front passenger seat.Tarabelle stood on the step and watched them until, without glancing back, Mama said, “Tarabelle, get in the car.”

  “Mama, please . . .”

  “Get yo’ goddamn ass in this car, now!” Mama ordered, and Tarabelle jerked from the force of the command. Her body seemed to convulse in a series of twitching motions before she stiffened her back and walked down to the car, her head high, her eyes staring straight ahead, and her face resembling chiseled stone.

  The car pulled away in the direction of the outlying farmland, and I wondered where they were going.As I watched, the car suddenly braked and reversed along the road until it reached its original starting point. Mama lowered a window and stuck her head out.