The main street, George Street, is curiously devoid of trees and grass. Like an approach to any city subsection, the places of business join one another endlessly: grocery store to tailor shop to children’s wear to cleaner’s to drugstore to dress shop; no inch of space is wasted. And this solemn gray front seems to lack the conviviality common to small Southern towns, but it is a wrong impression. The tradesmen within smile often.
The Caxton Theatre, once a popular and thriving motion picture auditorium, sits empty and silent in the middle of the town, like an abandoned circus. If there ever was gaiety inside, or laughter, or tears, you could not guess it from the façade. Rotted boards cover it. Black sockets stare blindly from the foyer. And dirt has caked into its open veins.
But this is not all of Caxton. At the bottom of George Street, if you turn right, you will see the green of growing things again, and the bright new bricks of the library and post office. Both are handsome buildings, clean and fresh, blending with the summer smell of oaks and shrubs. Dappled shade gives them a picture-book appearance. Beyond, if you keep walking, you will find the elementary school, an old, dark structure, and the high school.
The high school is centered in the middle of a lawn, and though there is no cement walkway to the front doors, the lawn has the smooth, soft quality of an expensive rug. The school, like the post office and library, is a study in red and white. New bricks flank the main office. Over to the right stands a gymnasium, not yet completed, also in red brick, trimmed with white.
These grounds possess a tranquillity, a quiescence, which is oddly missing in the downtown area. Tradition is here, for all the bright newness. And age. It is all like the campus of a small New England college.
But there is still more of Caxton.
Make a right turn at Shepherd Avenue, and you are confronted by a residential district. The houses are large and gray, all in their separate tree-shaded squares. They do not suggest prosperity, but neither do they bear any hint of poverty. Everything is neat and clean and orderly. Three- or four-year-old automobiles sit parked in the driveways, and these are mostly black; seldom do you encounter a gaudy new model.
It is very quiet, at any time of day or night, here. You will hear the hum of a television set perhaps, or the sound of a vacuum cleaner, but it is never so noisy that you cannot hear distinctly the crickets in the grass.
You continue past these houses, and suddenly the houses stop, and you face a steep hill. It seems to mark the end of civilization. The paving ceases to be; it is replaced by a rutted, chuckholed path of gravel and dirt. The forest and the fields close in. But you go on anyway, up the hill.
An incredible change occurs. You begin to see homes, but they are hardly worth the name. You look over your shoulder and see the green new cup of the town, then you look at the dark shacks that begin to surround you: the ancient, rusted haymows, useless for decades; the piled cordwood; the numerous automobile shells, turned over on their sides or simply sitting, like mechanical cadavers, waiting for the final rot; the square, toothless cages and the serene chickens, searching; and the shacks, the shacks, built of cast-off boards and cast-off nails, all appearing to teeter on the brink of collapse, of certain self-demolition.
You expect to see bowed Negro women in faded dresses, naked Negro children running in happy ignorance, brain-fogged Negro grandfathers sitting statue-still on the decaying porches.
But there are no Negroes here.
The people are white. They are the Poor Whites, the landless, jobless people, who live because they do not die.
Over the hill and down another lane and up another rise is Simon’s Hill, marked by the big, square Baptist church which occupies the promontory above the country ground. This is Reverend Finley Mead’s church, built by himself and his congregation early in 1932, maintained with solemn purpose ever since. Like the courthouse, this church has a bell; but it is a quieter bell. It disturbs no one.
Simon’s Hill is a small section; a group of houses and apartments dotting the rocky landscape, hanging from the steep hillocks. It is almost, but not quite, a community. There is a restaurant—The Huddle—and a tailor shop and several groceries, a barbershop, and a sort of department and general store.
The apartments are new, made of plaster and chicken wire, all owned by Verne Shipman and F. G. Bennett of Caxton, and Carter Royal and other parties in Farragut. They are poorly built units, but the rent is low, and no one of the tenants would think of being late with a payment.
Simon’s Hill is Caxton’s Niggertown, and it is a world within itself. You never see a Negro in Caxton’s center, and you never see a white in Simon’s Hill.
That is the way it has been for forty years.
8
He lay on the patched green velvet couch, his hands behind his head, his body perfectly still, still as it had been for almost an hour. Albert was in a corner, reading a comic book. Billy was asleep. He wanted to sleep, too, but he had never felt so awake.
“Joey,” his mother said, “Joey, you want some coffee?”
“No, Ma,” he said.
“How about some warm milk? It’ll do you good, it’ll relax you.”
“No.”
He thought of the short night and of the long day ahead, of all the forces that had put him here, where he was, and he wanted to yell. But he couldn’t do this. He could only lie still and wait.
Charlotte Green looked at her son, almost furtively.
“Joey,” she said, “it’s eight thirty. You been working hard. Why don’t you slip off your shoes?”
“Ma, please. Can’t I just lay here for a while?”
“Of course you can.”
Joey leaped from the couch and strode to the main window. Uncle Rowan was sitting there, staring. “Ma, now, I said I’d do it. I’m going to do what you want!”
“All right, Joey.”
He forced back the rage that had bubbled up hot in his throat, and smiled. “I’m just bushed,” he said. “Getting everything cleaned up at the garage and all, you know.” He stood there, a tall, powerful figure in the dim light. “I’m okay.”
Uncle Rowan frowned. He sat in the chair and frowned, an ancient, time-wrinkled elf of a man. No one knew exactly how old he was, not even his niece, but he was past eighty—that much was certain. He seldom spoke. And he never smiled.
Joey walked back across the room and put a hand on his mother’s shoulder. He knew that she was wrong, and that the whole thing would end badly—he knew it—but he knew, also, that he could never say this.
He remembered the long years of work that she had put in—for him; for Albert and Billy—and the knot in his chest tightened.
She actually believes it’s going to be all right, he thought. She thinks the problem is over. Just open up the schools, and that’s that.
Billy cried out in his sleep, turned over again. Albert put down his comic book. “I want some bread,” he said.
“In the kitchen,” said Charlotte Green.
Albert scratched his side. He was going to look a lot like Joey. He had the same wiry set of muscles, the same lean build. And his face was already growing handsome. “Hey,” he said, “is he really going to the white school tomorrow?”
Charlotte nodded.
“I sure hate to miss that.” Albert laughed. He was thirteen years old; he said what he felt like saying. “That ought to be a real lot of fun.”
Joey said, “Yeah.”
Albert looked first at his mother, then at his elder brother, shrugged and went toward the kitchen. “You think there going to be any fights?” he asked.
“No,” Charlotte said, “there won’t be any fights, Albert. You get your pajamas on. It’s time for bed.”
“Eight thirty?”
“Get them on.”
“I want some bread first.”
“All right, all right,” Joey heard himself shouting, “you go get that goddamn bread, will you, and shut up!” He felt the blood pounding in his throat.
“We
ll,” Albert said, “I guess there going to be some fights, okay,” and he disappeared into the kitchen.
Uncle Rowan frowned.
There was a silence. Charlotte said softly, “Joey, I think maybe we ought to talk. Do you want to?”
Joey didn’t want to talk; he was afraid of what he would say. But he nodded. “Sure, Ma.”
“We’ve been through it before, but you’re troubled, I see that, and it won’t do any harm to speak.” She paused, groping for words. She was slender, more youthful in appearance than her forty-nine years would suggest; but she moved slowly, and spoke slowly. “Your daddy ought to be here, but he won’t be home until eleven, and I’m just afraid you aren’t going to last that long,” she said.
“I told you, I’m all right,” Joey said.
“No,” his mother said, “you’re not. You’re worried.”
“Worried?” Joey tried with all his strength to keep calm, but the air had gone from the room, and there was only the still heat, filling him. He had tried in every way to keep his opinions away from his parents, to make them think he believed as they did, but now, tonight, it was more than he could do.
“Worried? For God’s sake—”
The words came up; he felt them coming, sour and acid, and they told all that he felt; and he fought them. But why? She was going to get hurt anyway. Why not hurt her a little now?
“Ma—”
There was a knock at the door. A brisk, businesslike knock.
He let the breath out of his lungs, turned, opened the door.
“Hello, Joey.”
A tall, husky man in a black suit stood at the threshold. In an odd sort of way, he resembled pictures of the great fighter, Jack Johnson; but there was nothing rugged about his features.
“Hello, Reverend.”
Joey stepped back and motioned the man inside.
“No,” the man said. He tipped his hat in the direction of Charlotte Green. “Charlotte, I wonder if you’d mind if Joey and I took a little walk?”
“You’re welcome here.”
“I know that. But it’s a hot night, and I have something kind of private to discuss. Do you mind, Joey?”
Joey shook his head.
“Just be back in time to get some sleep,” his mother said.
He walked down the steps with the man in the black suit, out onto the dusty road. The darkness was full; The Huddle had closed for the evening.
They walked for several minutes, then the husky man said, “Joey, I think you have a lot on your mind. A lot trying to get out. Maybe I can help.”
Joey found it difficult to lie. He had known Finley Mead ever since childhood, had listened to the man’s sermons—sometimes glowing and peaceful and full of poetry; sometimes thundering—and he respected him. More than that: he felt a kinship with him. Finley Mead was one of the few colored people in Simon’s Hill with whom Joey could talk, without talking down. He was a preacher, maybe: but he was sharp.
“You know, Reverend,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“I think so,” the man said. “See if I’m right. You don’t want to go to the white school tomorrow. You don’t think this integration idea is going to work. And you’re afraid to say what you think out loud.”
Joey sighed. Just getting it unbottled a little, just that much helped.
“It’s tough on you,” the minister continued. “Especially tough. You’re twenty years old. You had to miss a lot of school to pitch in for the family. Now things are almost, you might say, wound up for you. One more year at that Farragut school and you can graduate and go on to college. In the East.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand, Joey. And it don’t seem right to you, pulling you out of a good thing and putting you right back here in a nest of trouble.”
Joey fumbled for a cigarette, dropped his hands quickly. “If I thought it would work,” he said, “that would be different. But it won’t.”
“How do you know it won’t?”
“You read as much as I do. Just look at things. Things as they are, I mean as they really are, not the way Ma wants them to be.”
“You think you’re going to make them better by running away?”
“I don’t think it’ll make any difference,” Joey said. “Not now. People are people.”
Again, silence. The night thrummed with insect noises, but there was no other sound. The streets of Simon’s Hill were empty. Its houses were quiet.
“Joey,” the minister said, “we’ve always gotten along pretty good, you and me. Isn’t that right?”
“Sure,” Joey said.
“You think of me as a friend?”
“Sure.”
The heavy man put his hands in his pockets. He was a giant dark shadow standing over Joey; old, but strong. Very strong.
“You’re not a baby any more; you’re grown, almost,” he said. “So I’m going to talk to you that way.”
Joey sat down on a ledge of dirt.
“First off, I want to tell you that I know how you feel, and why. When this first came up, I felt pretty much the same way. Scared, kind of. Worried. Everything was going smooth, nobody had troubles, I thought—why stir things up? In fact, I’ll tell you something secret: I asked your mama to quit. I did.” He smiled. “Why don’t you have a smoke? I think the Lord’ll forgive it this once.”
Joey nodded gratefully, lit a cigarette, pulled the smoke into his lungs.
“Well,” the preacher went on, “she said she wasn’t about to quit, and she told me why. I don’t think I’m ever going to forget that night: Charlotte talked for two hours, I believe. She told me her reasons. And, Joey—I couldn’t argue. I couldn’t argue with those reasons. Because they were good, they were right: your mama was talking sense. She’s a smart woman.”
“I know that, Reverend.”
“I know you do. But being smart isn’t enough. She’s got something else; she’s got guts, Joey. And that, now, is quite a combination. See, I was comfortable then. Comfortable—just like everybody else. A long time ago, I’d said the same thing you just said—‘People are people, you can’t change people’—and I gave up. It was way too big to fight, I thought—so I shut it out. Shut it right out. And forgot about it. But just because you patch a hole and forget about it, that doesn’t mean the hole is gone. It’s there; it’s there; and your mama, she showed me the patch. And that’s all I can see now. . . . That’s the way it is with the truth. Once it’s out, there’s no undoing it. A man can think he’s white all his life—until he looks in a mirror and sees that he’s black.” Finley Mead paused. “But I’m preaching at you, Joey, and I don’t mean to do that.”
Joey knocked some ash off the cigarette. “I don’t mind,” he said. “But—well, sir, I looked into that mirror quite a while back, and I know what color I am.”
“You never have been what I said, comfortable—have you, Joey?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you’re lucky.”
“Lucky? Reverend, lucky? Listen, this ‘truth’—what’s so good about it? The people on the hill are happy, now. They’re Negroes, and they can’t go to the movie in town, and they can’t go to the restaurants in town, and they can’t get jobs in town. They’re ignorant and dumb and poor—but, Reverend, listen, they’re happy. Isn’t that something? I only wish to God I could be that way. Look at my own brothers! You think it bothers them they’ve got to live in this filthy neighborhood? You think it bothers Albert?”
“Get it out, Joey.”
“Albert’s the happiest kid I know. He has a ball all day long.” Joey flipped the cigarette away. “Well,” he said, “isn’t that what it’s all about? I mean, so, all right, so we show Albert the ‘truth.’ We tell him he’s got all the rights the white people do. He’s just as good. ’Course, he doesn’t believe it, at first—because, don’t kid yourself, he’s prejudiced—the most prejudiced people I know live all around me. They know they’re coons and they know coons are inferior. That’s the way it is. So
what? All right; so we get Albert all hipped with the truth, and then, finally, maybe he believes it. Maybe he gets to thinking he is as good as anyone else. Then he goes into town and tries to order a milk shake at the drugstore. What happens then, Reverend?”
The preacher was silent.
“Can’t you see?” Joey said, letting it all spill out now, all the things he’d felt and thought. “Albert’s going to get mad when they pull him down off of that stool and kick his behind. He’s going to get mad. I mean—oh, lookit, they’re happy. The truth isn’t going to do anything but make them miserable for the rest of their lives!”
Reverend Finley Mead removed a large handkerchief and blew his nose. He was quiet for a while, making a small sound in his throat that sounded like “Um-hmm, um-hmm.” A worried, nervous sound. “I don’t think you ever heard me say that the truth was easy,” he said, very slowly. “Maybe it’s the hardest thing in the world, I don’t know. But where do you suppose we’d be without it?”
Joey smiled, without amusement. “Well, where are we, Reverend?” he said.
“Who do you mean by ‘we’? You and me? I’m talking about the world.”
“This is the world!” Joey said, sweeping his hand toward the dirt road and the wooden shacks and the crumbling apartments.
“You don’t really believe that.”
“They do. Ask Mr. Yates over there. Ask Jimmy Budlong.”
“No. I’ll ask you. Is it?”
Joey was silent.
“I wonder, Joey—do you still believe in God?”
He looked up at the big man, startled by the question.
“I don’t mean the Baptist God, now, in particular. Just God.”
“Sure,” Joey said, after some consideration. “I do.”
“Then you believe in conscience, in right and wrong?”
“I guess so.”
“If you want to steal something at a store and stop because your conscience says no, you don’t feel happy, do you?”
“No.”
“To get right down to it, if it wasn’t for the fact that you know there’s a right and wrong, you’d probably have a lot more fun, now wouldn’t you? Things would be easier. Well—there are people like that; all over. People who don’t see the rules. If they want to steal something, they steal it, go right ahead—so what? They don’t know any of God’s restrictions . . . but they don’t know any of His blessings, either. Do you envy them?”
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