Alligator Bayou

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Francesco crosses his arms on the table and leans onto them. “We have to talk this over. Make sure we do the right thing.”

  “We do nothing,” says Rosario. “They’re just kids.”

  I’m with Rosario; this has to end here. If Giuseppe makes a fuss with those boys, they’ll torment Cirone and me every time they catch one of us alone.

  “Kids.” Giuseppe shakes his head. “Kids don’t talk about business. This is coming from their fathers. We all know the price of cotton keeps dropping. They’re hurting, and they need their company stores to make a profit. But everyone’s buying from us instead. This is a warning. And if we let it go, if we don’t stop them cold, it’ll be New Orleans all over again.”

  Everyone hushes.

  My skin tightens. “What are you talking about?”

  Carlo holds me by the ear. “Don’t move your jaw while I’m cleaning your chin.”

  I put up my hand to block Carlo’s wash cloth. “Tell me,” I say to Giuseppe. “What happened in New Orleans?”

  Rosario looks sideways at Cirone. “It’s not worth talking about.”

  “Is it about lynching?”

  The men gape at me. Cirone’s face changes. He looks as if he might vomit.

  “So you know about it?” asks Francesco.

  “No. Tell us. Tell Cirone and me.”

  “They need to know,” says Giuseppe to Rosario. His voice sounds sadder than I’ve ever heard it. “It’s starting all over again. They need to know.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” says Rosario. “In New Orleans it started because of a gun. We don’t carry guns.”

  I look at Francesco. He carried a shotgun that day he was mad at Willy Rogers. But he doesn’t speak up, and neither does Carlo. The others saw that gun in the corner before Francesco put it away—but they don’t know the story behind it. It’s our secret. That’s so odd. Probably everyone else in Tallulah knows why Francesco had a shotgun that day, but Rosario and Giuseppe and Cirone don’t—and no one’s going to tell them.

  “They should know,” says Francesco at last. “They’re Sicilian.”

  “No,” says Rosario. “Cirone was only five when it happened. He had nightmares. He didn’t stop till we moved up here. It’s behind us now. He’s forgotten.”

  “Right,” says Carlo. He comes over, put both hands on the table, and slowly lowers himself to the bench as though he’s become ancient in a second. “We got away from all that. It doesn’t help anyone to bring it up again.”

  I look at Cirone sitting on the bench near Rosario. “Do you want to know about New Orleans, Cirone?”

  His eyes lock on mine. “Yes.”

  “Tell us,” I say to Francesco.

  “They lynched eleven men,” says Francesco.

  “Hold it,” says Giuseppe. “Let me tell it. From the beginning. Rosario and I were there. You and Carlo weren’t.”

  “I thought you all came over together,” I say.

  “Carlo and I followed,” says Francesco. “We were supposed to come a couple of months later—but then there was all that trouble and we waited to see what would happen. We waited so long, it was the next summer before we got on a ship.”

  Giuseppe points to the spot on the bench beside Cirone. “Sit down, Calogero.”

  This is going to be awful. Numbness creeps up the sides of my head, making my ears ring. I sit on the edge of the bench.

  “These are the facts,” says Giuseppe. “First, just the facts. Six days after Rosario and Cirone and I got off the boat, on the night of the fifteenth of October, 1890, David Hennessy, the big chief—”

  “The police commissioner,” says Francesco.

  “The police commissioner of New Orleans, he got shot,” says Giuseppe. “He died the next morning. But before he died, he said, ‘Dagoes did it.’”

  “Dagoes.” Carlo shakes his head. “You’d think he was some ignorant, backward man to say such a word—as ignorant as those rotten boys. But he was the police commissioner.”

  “Who are you kidding?” says Francesco. “Some of the richest men in America call us dagoes. Not to mention that piece of garbage, Willy Rogers. I should have taught him a lesson last month. Only I held back out of respect for Dr. Hodge’s wishes.”

  I think of Dr. Hodge Saturday night, calling out as he chased the goats, asking if I was one of those damned dagoes. I hug myself to keep the shaking inside from showing.

  “Let me finish,” says Giuseppe. “Police came through our neighborhood with guns. We stayed inside, but, even so, they arrested over two hundred and fifty. Young, old, boys smaller than you two. They beat them. Then a committee indicted nineteen.” He looks at the ceiling. “Nineteen for one murder.” Giuseppe falls silent.

  No one talks.

  The silence goes on so long, my throat grows scratchy and I cough.

  Giuseppe talks again: “They decided to have two trials, the first for nine men—the second for the rest.

  “The first started the last day of February 1891. The press said Italians were murderers; all of us, Mafia. Suddenly people threw that word at us anywhere we went. In their eyes we were all criminal.

  “Still, the jury listened fairly. Six men were found not guilty. For the other three the jury was undecided. There was no translator, and those men spoke so little English, they couldn’t answer questions. It was a mistrial. This was announced March thirteenth. They put all nine men in the prison overnight.” Giuseppe stops and clears his throat.

  “The next day the newspaper called for a mass meeting at Canal and Royal streets. Thousands came. More joined as they marched through town. By the time they reached Congo Square, they say there were twenty thousand. Twenty thousand stormed the prison.” Giuseppe’s voice becomes monotonous. He talks as though he’s said these words in his head a thousand times before.

  “The warden, he was honest, like the jurors. He wouldn’t turn the prisoners over. So the mob went around back and beat down the gate.

  “The warden locked all the prisoners in their cells except the Sicilians. He told the Sicilians to scatter—hide in the women’s section—do anything to save themselves.

  “The mob shot nine inside the prison. So many bullets…their bodies were destroyed. Another one, Emmanuele, they found him muttering in his cell. Everyone knew he was crazy. They hanged him from a streetlamp, and when he tried to climb the rope, they shot him. Twenty-eight years old and…demented, and…they still shot him.” Giuseppe pauses and I see his chest shudder. “The last one they found…he was pretending to be dead. They hanged him from a tree. Shot him, too.

  “Eleven men. Murdered.

  “Society ladies came out to see. Dipped handkerchiefs in the blood. Souvenirs.” Giuseppe stops. He’s crying.

  Rosario puts his hand on Cirone’s shoulder. Cirone keeps staring at Giuseppe.

  I lay my hands on the table. “Didn’t anybody do anything to the lynchers?”

  “Italy threatened war,” says Giuseppe. “Louisiana argued that the men were Americans. But only two had become American citizens. The rest were Italians. Italy was enraged. And that is why I will never give up my Italian citizenship. Never.”

  “But there was no war, right?” I say. I was only six back in 1891, but I would have heard if there was a war.

  “Italy settled,” says Rosario, bitter.

  “A grand jury looked into the lynchings,” says Giuseppe. “Two months later they said the mob was responsible citizens protecting the public from danger.” He puts his hands on his forehead in a gesture of agony. “We should have been the responsible citizens. Not them.”

  “What? What do you mean?” It’s so hard to see Giuseppe like this.

  “We Sicilians. We should have armed ourselves and defended the prison. Instead, we hid. I hid.” Giuseppe buries his face in his hands. “For days.”

  “I did, too,” says Rosario. “We had to.”

  “You had Cirone to look after. I hid like a rat.”

  “No one could do anything,” says Ros
ario. “They would have killed us. You know that. You sat beside me and listened as people read us the newspapers. You heard how that animal Theodore Roosevelt called the lynchings ‘a rather good thing.’ And that congressman from Massachusetts, that Henry Cabot Lodge, he said we were filth. All of America was against us.” Revulsion spreads across Rosario’s face. “Still, Italy settled.”

  “What could Italy do?” says Carlo. “President Harrison said he deplored the lynchings. He gave money to the dead men’s families. Italy had to agree. Besides, war is no answer.”

  Everyone’s out of words. Giuseppe’s hands still cover his face.

  “Now the rest,” I say. “Giuseppe?”

  “What?” Giuseppe opens his hands and looks at me with a tired face.

  “You said the facts first. What’s the rest? Who killed the police commissioner?”

  Giuseppe gives a sad little laugh. “I don’t know. It never really mattered. No one talked about him anymore. Once the lynching had been declared reasonable, people started complaining about the Italians. Posters went up. People said Italians monopolized the produce business. And fishing. They said we had taken all the jobs for peddlers and tinkers and cobblers.”

  “So everyone fired us,” says Rosario. “Overnight, we were all out of work.”

  “The only place that would hire us was the plantations,” says Giuseppe. “That was the point of the lynchings in the first place.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell this part,” says Francesco. “I know this part as well as anyone.” He studies his hands. “After the Civil War so many Negroes went North, the plantation owners didn’t have enough people to do the labor the slaves used to do. So they brought in Chinese. But the Chinese wouldn’t put up with the bad conditions and the lousy pay. So the plantation owners brought in Sicilians.”

  “They put up posters in Palermo,” says Rosario. “They said everything would be terrific. We fell for it. Who could help it? We were desperate in Italy. Dirt poor.”

  “We came,” says Francesco, “so many Sicilian men, and we worked their plantations. They made fun of how we eat and talk. And all we did in return was work. Sugarcane work is backbreaking. You swing heavy machetes in the scorching heat while the mosquitoes eat you alive. In autumn you work overtime at night in the sugar mills, grinding, boiling, refining. We got skinny as rails. Worked hard as dogs. Dogs! Because to us thirty or forty dollars for a harvest season of sugarcane was a fortune.”

  “So why do they hate us?” I ask.

  “Simple,” says Giuseppe. “We’re not dogs.” The look of raw pain on his face scares me. “We’re smart. We made gardens on slopes no one wanted and sold vegetables. We caught fish and oysters in the Gulf. We fed ourselves easy. We made friends of the South Americans, and traded with their fruit boats. We were good at Spanish. We had our own businesses fast. We didn’t have to work on their stinking plantations anymore.”

  “That’s why they lynched those men,” says Francesco. “Hennessy’s murder was just an excuse to put Sicilians back on the plantations. That’s why they keep bringing over more of us. They’re so convinced we’re dumb animals, they can’t believe we’re good at business—they see it, and they still don’t believe. The lynchings were supposed to teach us a lesson, put us in our place.”

  “But we showed them,” says Rosario. “Today Sicilians run the dock-import business again. Like before.”

  “New Orleans is a good place to live now,” says Francesco. “But we didn’t know it would turn around. So as soon as we had enough to buy land, we came up here.”

  “To someplace without Sicilians,” says Rosario. “Someplace where no one already hated us.”

  “Beppe came over with Salvatore months later,” says Carlo. “But they went to Milliken’s Bend so that it wouldn’t seem like too many of us in one place. The plantation owners get afraid when there’s too many.”

  “A fresh start,” says Francesco.

  “Ha!” says Giuseppe. “We didn’t understand.” He’s silent. Then, “We’re hated everywhere.”

  I remember Cirone saying everyone hates us, the night we met the boys picking up manure on Depot Street. I shake my head. “That can’t be.”

  “Carlo?” Giuseppe jerks his chin at Carlo. “Get the newspapers.”

  Carlo goes to a chest. He digs down to the bottom, and comes out with an armload of newspapers wrapped in blue paper. He sets them on the table.

  “Read, Calogero,” says Giuseppe. “You know how. Read to Cirone. Our friends in New Orleans pack newspapers in the fruit crates. Every time someone writes something bad about Italians, they send it. We can’t read them, but we know what they say because it’s always the same. Why should Tallulah be different?”

  “Tallulah is different!” The blood pounds my head. “My friends don’t hate us.”

  “Sit down, Calogero,” says Francesco.

  I hadn’t even realized I’d stood up. I sit again.

  “You’re right,” says Francesco. “They’re good people.”

  “It’s never been the Negroes who hate us,” says Rosario.

  “Never?” Cirone leans forward. It’s the first word he’s said so far.

  Rosario nods. “We got on fine with them in New Orleans.”

  “But that made the whites hate us more,” says Giuseppe. “They were afraid the Negroes would get fed up with the terrible conditions on the plantations and strike or quit, because that’s what Sicilians do. They passed laws against commingling—that’s what they called it. They frightened the Negroes from being our friends.”

  “But it’s different here,” says Francesco.

  I look at Cirone. Fraternizing with the Negroes. That’s what the boys said; that’s why they came after us. Cirone’s face is blank as he looks back at me.

  “Calo’s chin,” says Giuseppe. “What are we going to do about that?”

  “This will cool down,” says Carlo. “We don’t want trouble. That just plays into their hands. That just convinces them they’re right about us.”

  “I agree,” says Rosario.

  Francesco sighs. “I don’t know.”

  Giuseppe doesn’t speak.

  “We’re in the middle of a good season,” says Carlo, his voice very soft. “Independence Day is in just two days. Business, Francesco.”

  Francesco nods. “And then there’s the big ball next week.”

  “Right,” says Carlo. “Right. The town needs us. We can make a lot of money. We’re just six little people—six. They can’t really see us as a threat. This will pass. If we let it. We’re strong inside.” He’s almost whispering now. “We can let this pass.”

  Francesco’s eyes wander.

  “Like you said.” Rosario turns to Francesco, speaking as quietly as Carlo did. “We’ve got friends now. Imagine the good times ahead.”

  Francesco slaps a hand on the table. I flinch at the sudden loudness. “We’re businessmen. There’s money to be made. We can’t overreact.” He points at me. “And you, Calogero, keep your eyes open. Don’t let those boys catch you again.” He looks at Giuseppe. “You hear me? This is how we’ll do it. Don’t make trouble.”

  “I won’t,” says Giuseppe. “But if it comes, I won’t hide. Never again. I can’t.”

  Francesco nods. “Fair enough.”

  We eat. Then I spend the evening reading to Cirone by the waning summer light. The newspapers say we’re uncivilized, we’re like animals. We carry stiletto knives and use them on anyone. I want to rip these pages to shreds. Why does Carlo save them?

  Then I read about Dago Joe. Two years ago he was on his way to Shelby Depot to stand trial for the murder of a railroad agent in Memphis when a crowd hanged him. There was no evidence against him other than his low birth—that’s what the newspaper said: “low.” His father was Sicilian. Like me. His mother was Negro. Like Patricia.

  I fold the newspapers back into the blue paper and set them on top of Carlo’s trunk. Cirone and I wash our feet and get into bed. �
�Cirone,” I whisper. “You going to start having nightmares again?”

  “I never stopped,” he whispers back.

  seventeen

  Granni and Docili are harnessed side by side to the front of the wagon. Giuseppe’s on the driver’s bench.

  “Get in.” Francesco jerks his chin toward the wagon bed. “Today is the best selling day for watermelons all season. Go up and down every town road.”

  “I’ve got to go to the post office.” I picked up the owl painting from Frank Raymond this morning. He packaged it for me. “I have to mail a present to Rocco. For his birthday.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to go to the post office after you sell all the melons.”

  “All?” The wagon is big. “What if people don’t want watermelons?”

  “Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. They want watermelons.”

  Cirone and I climb into the back of the wagon.

  “And, Calogero, when you pass men, remind them I’ll have homemade limoncello in pint jars at the grocery today.”

  “Homemade limoncello. I’ll remind them.”

  “And don’t say anything about alcohol directly to the ladies, but you two can talk between you in front of ladies about the limoncello. To remind them, too.”

  We drive out to the field where Joe Evans is working. Patricia’s uncles, Bill and Paul, are there, too. Francesco said he’s going to use them regular on the fields now. I smile at them, hesitant at first. But they smile back big.

  The three of them have already picked the melons and stacked them into a giant pile. It takes us more than half an hour to load the wagon, there are so many. I count as we go, but I lose track. Over two hundred. We’ll make a fortune.

  Cirone and I climb onto the driver’s bench on either side of Giuseppe. We start at the northeast corner of town, stopping on every block and selling to every household. Francesco is right: the whole town wants melons. The trouble is, there aren’t two hundred families in Tallulah. So how are we going to sell them all? I shout at the top of my lungs: “Watermelons! Big, ripe, juicy melons!”

  The sun beats. I’m sweating so hard, when I carry a melon to a doorstep, I have to hug it to my chest or it’ll slip through my wet hands. We reach the western edge of town, go south a block, then head back across town on East Askew.