It was about a hundred and sixty miles to Atlanta and I had no idea how many stops the bus had to make before we got there. I had managed to save a little over fifty dollars and my Aunt Mary Kate had given me another twenty-five as a combination Christmas and going away present. Ben’s mama insisted he take a hundred dollars of the money Mr. Winston had given him. He had a little money of his own from selling hides. The way we figured it, we could get by pretty well for awhile if it took us some time to get hired onto one of the construction crews.
*****
Me and Ben found out quick that hotels were too expensive and most didn’t allow any cooking. None of that would have mattered anyway, because they didn’t allow negroes, either. If we had to pay the weekly rent of a hotel room and then have to pay the cost of two or three meals a day at a café, our money would be gone in no time. It was late when we arrived near downtown, so we didn’t have a choice our first night but to rent a hotel room. Actually, I rented a room and had to sneak Ben in since he wasn’t allowed accommodations in the white man’s world. We left early the next morning, before anybody could see me sneaking Ben out, seeking more affordable accommodations and had our first stroke of good luck. We had seen a milkman making deliveries and asked him if he knew of any boarding houses that might have a vacancy. He looked at us warily, probably thinking we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. The fact that Ben was black I’m sure was on his mind. The man told us there was a widow named Abby Walker who had a large Victorian house just off Peachtree Street near Buckhead. That wasn’t far from the construction site on Hemphill Avenue where we hoped to be working.
The depression had taken its toll on the Walker family when the stock market crashed in 1929. Mrs. Walker had necessarily become frugal as a result. Her husband had committed suicide when they lost almost everything they had in the crash, and it had humbled Mrs. Walker considerably. Despite criticism and admonishment from her blue-blood neighbors and so-called friends, she had started taking in borders and as a result had managed to live a fairly comfortable life, not to mention the fact she got to keep her house. The bank was only a few days away from foreclosure when she devised her plan. She had six bedrooms, not counting her own, and four baths. If we could only get past the fact that Ben’s skin was as black as a chunk of coal, we would be fine.
I rung the bell on the door, praying for a miracle. It took a minute for Mrs. Walker to answer. When the door opened, I was sure the woman standing there was one of the boarders.
“Good morning, ma’am,” I said sheepishly, “we would like to speak to Mrs. Walker if she’s available.”
The woman looked both of us up and down as if she were appraising a horse. “Well, look no further young man,” she said, drying her hands on her apron. I could detect the pungent aroma of sausage and coffee coming from the open door and my mouth began watering.
“Y…you’re Mrs. Walker?” I asked, immediately feeling like a fool for the way the words came out. I was expecting an elderly lady with gray hair, probably wearing spectacles. This woman looked to be no older than thirty-five or so. She had raven black hair that fell just below her shoulders, and big brown eyes that looked lively and alert. She smiled at us warmly, displaying a prominent set of dimples in her cheeks that were somewhat flushed. She was tall and slender, but looked like she could pull her weight in a cotton field if she had to. I had been so taken aback by her appearance, that I stood there speechless for an awkward moment. Mrs. Walker was a very pretty lady.
“Was there something you wanted?” she asked, snapping me out of my trance.
“Y…yes, ma’am. There is. I understand you rent rooms.”
“You heard right. Are you looking for a room?”
She had a northern accent, though at the time I couldn’t distinguish one Yankee from another. I hadn’t heard more than half a dozen in my entire life.
“Yes, ma’am, we are. My name is Tom Martin and this is Ben Evans. We are hopin’ to get a job at the construction site where the new government houses are bein’ built.”
“So you are unemployed, then?”
“Ah….yes ma’am, but not for long. You see, me and Ben here just got into town. We’re from Alabama. But don’t worry, we got money.”
“Well, you two look like fine young men and I’m a pretty good judge of character. You look awfully young to be out on your own, however.”
“Yes, ma’am, I guess we are kinda young, but we both grew up in the cotton fields and we know what a days work is. I…I guess I don’t have to tell you that Ben is a negro. But me and him have been friends all our lives and…..”
“What possible difference could that make?” she asked, to my surprise.
“Well, ma’am, it makes a lot of difference to most people and….”
“Well, it doesn’t to me,” she interrupted, as if she were scolding me.
“What about your other boarders? They might feel different.”
“My house, my rules. If they want to leave because of someone’s skin color, then they are free to do so. But as hard as rooms are to come by, especially rooms as nice as mine, I doubt they will be going anywhere. How long do you plan on staying?”
“For a while, I hope. This building should be going on for some time and my friend here has plans to attend Morehouse College.”
Mrs. Walker stared at Ben in disbelief. “He can’t be over fifteen years old,” she said.
Ben still hadn’t spoken a word, but finally chimed in. “I’m fourteen, ma’am.”
“I don’t want to sound discouraging, young man, but it requires a high school diploma to get into college. And Morehouse isn’t just any college. They have very stringent guidelines and one has to have a certain grade average.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ben answered. “But I’ll get in if they’ll let me take the entrance exam and I can earn enough to pay the tuition.”
“Well, I certainly wish you luck. Did you finish high school early?”
“No ma’am. I never got a chance to attend school very much. Only about three months out of the year for about seven years. But I have a very dear friend who has kept me in books since I was about five years old. Her papa has an extensive library and she would bring me all her text books from school. She’s two years older than me and I learned a lot from them. She bought me books all the time, too.”
Mrs. Walker had a look of near pity on her face. “I don’t think that will suffice, Ben. There are probably a lot of young men who have attended school regularly for twelve years and had good marks that don’t get accepted at Morehouse. Maybe you could get into a high school here in Atlanta. With the help of a tutor you could probably get on grade level in no time.”
I could tell Ben didn’t want to argue so he simply said, “yes, ma’am,” and let it go.
“About the room, ma’am,” I said, reminding her of why we were here in the first place.
“Oh, yes. The cost is eight dollars per week per person. That includes breakfast and supper. You’ll have to fend for yourself at lunch. But since you two are going to share a room,” she paused, putting her fingers on her lips and looking up, as if she were calculating numbers, “how does twelve dollars sound for the both of you?”
I honestly thought it sounded high, but I knew prices would be higher in a city like Atlanta. And we would only have to buy one meal a day and I figured cheese and crackers would do fine. “That sounds fair,” I said. “What do you think, Ben?”
“Sounds fair to me,” Ben replied.
Mrs. Walker led us up a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor. I started looking at all the closed doors down the corridor, wondering which one was ours. We walked past all of them and she opened a narrow door at the end of the hall. We then went up another, shorter flight of stairs that led up to a third floor. This house was even bigger than it looked from the outside. There were only two rooms on the third floor and one was a bath. I wondered if me and Ben would have the bath to ourselves since we would be the only one occupying th
e top floor, but I didn’t ask. I supposed we would find out soon enough.
Mrs. Walker opened the door to our room and I thought Ben was going to faint. The room was more than half the size of his entire house back home. The bed was bigger than the one my Uncle Lee and Aunt Mary Kate slept in and looked a lot more comfortable. There were pillows laying everywhere and enough blankets to keep you warm if you were sleeping outside in the street.
“Just make yourself at home, gentlemen,” Mrs. Walker said. “There is a dresser with more than enough room for both of you, and if you have any clothes that require hanging, there is a closet behind that door. Since you are the only one’s up here, you’ll have the bath to yourselves.”
I couldn’t believe the luck we were having. I must have been doing something to please the Good Lord, because he was sure looking out for me and Ben. I was looking the room over and noticed Mrs. Walker standing by the door, looking like she wanted to say something. Then it dawned on me. She was waiting for her money.
“Oh, I…I guess I need to pay. I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright, Tom. I have to get paid in advance. I hope you understand.”
“Oh, yes ma’am. I understand.” I reached in my pocket and peeled off twelve dollars and handed it to her.
She looked at both of us. “You haven’t had breakfast this morning have you?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.
“No, we haven’t ma’am. We got busy early trying to find a place to stay.”
“Well, come downstairs with me and I’ll scramble you some eggs. There’s still some sausage and biscuits left.”
She walked out of the room and we followed. I turned to Ben and smiled. I could tell I was gonna like Mrs. Walker.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There were construction workers milling around everywhere when me and Ben got down to the jobsite. From what I gathered talking to the men in the store that day, this project had been going on for a couple of months. I expected to see houses already framed up with roofs on them. What I saw instead, was a few houses that had the walls raised that they were just beginning to put the rafters on. They looked like a few scrawny skeletons standing against the blue sky. There was a crew digging footings, and they weren’t very far ahead of the carpenters that were doing the framing. I was thinking at this rate it would take ten years to build the one-hundred fifty unit’s the man said they had planned.
It was a chilly day and several of the workers were gathered around three or four fifty gallon drums they had built fires in from the scrap lumber that was scattered around. We picked the group that looked most friendly and boldly walked over to them.
“How are you gentlemen today?” I asked. They all looked at me as if I were brandishing a gun or something. “Could one of you tell me where I could find the foreman?”
A little dried-up man that looked to be about forty-five or maybe fifty, pointed in the direction of where a footing was being dug. “He’s the one with the transit over yonder. Big feller.”
I thanked the man and we walked over to where the foreman and another man who had been holding the rod for him were standing. It appeared the foreman was not happy with his assistant, or “stickman” who had been holding the graduated rod that looked like a giant ruler with feet and inches marked on it. We waited for him to take a break from cussing the stickman, who was looking down at the ground, shaking his head.
“Sir, my name’s Tom Martin and this is my partner, Ben Evans. We’re lookin’ for work.”
The foreman was looking through the transit again. “Not hirin’,” he said, without looking up. “I got more sorry men now than I can shake a stick at. Can’t even find one that can hold a damn stick up straight. The masons are raisin’ hell ‘cause all of our footins’ are off.”
“Why don’t you give the man holdin’ the rod a level. That way he can make sure the rod is plumb,” Ben said.
The man quickly took his eye off the transit and looked at Ben. Apparently he hadn’t seen us walking up and didn’t know Ben was black. He looked at him as if he wanted to make some derogatory remark about him being colored, but held his tongue. I had noticed right away that there wasn’t a black face to be seen among the gang of workers.
“Where you boys from?” the foreman asked.
“From Alabama, sir,” Ben answered cheerfully. “A little town called Collinwood, not far from the Georgia line.”
“Ever do construction work before?”
“Yes sir. We’ve helped build barns and a few houses. We spent most of our time in the cotton fields, so we ain’t afraid of work.”
“I need experienced men, not young boys who helped raise a couple of barns,” he said. “We’re so far behind schedule we’ll never catch up. Hirin’ every cotton picker in Georgia wouldn’t do me no good if they didn’t know anything about buildin’. That’s the problem I’ve got now. I’ve hired too many men that don’t know a measuring stick from a cotton bole.”
“Well, if you’d just give us a chance,” I said, my voice giving away dejection, “we’d show you what we can do. If you don’t like it you can let us go.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, son,” he said. “The governments got all kinds of dumb-assed regulations on this project. Once we hire somebody, we can’t fire ‘em for anything short of murder.” He looked at the gang huddled around one of the burning barrels. “Damn government got us into this mess,” he mumbled to himself.
“I agree with that,” Ben said. “The government needs to leave everything alone and let the free market system do what it does best. Those politicians in Washington have got everything as screwed up as a can of worms.” Ben was about to get on a roll and I couldn’t stop him. If there was ever a chance of us getting hired it was about to go up in smoke now.
“I bet they put quotas on you about hiring a certain number of men of certain ages, and you have to fill out forms in triplicate to order material you need in a hurry,” Ben said, as if he were an expert on government run projects.
“You’ve got that right,” the foreman answered. “If I could hire and fire who I wanted to and didn’t have to fill out a knee-high stack of paper every time somebody took a shit, we’d be twice as far along with this project.”
The foreman looked at Ben with a grin that only showed on half his face. “Tell you boys what I’ll do. I’ve got a concrete circle drive I’ve got to pour in a couple of days. I didn’t have a man on the job that could tell me how many cubic yards of concrete it would take to pour it. Didn’t know myself until I called a friend of mine that’s a professor in the mathematics department over at Georgia Tech, and he told me how to figure it. If you can sit down over there and figure out how many yards it will take, I’ll give both of you a shot.” He looked at his watch, “Let’s see now. It’s eight-fifteen now. I’ll give you ‘til nine o’clock to come up with an answer.”
Ben pulled a pencil and a small notepad from his coat pocket. “What are the dimensions, sir?” he asked the foreman as he flipped to clean sheet of paper.
“The diameter is a hundred and twenty feet and the drive will be twenty feet wide beyond that.”
Ben jotted the numbers down. “And how thick will the slab be?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” the foreman said scratching his head, “the slab will be six inches thick.” I didn’t know if he had forgotten to give Ben that information or if he was just testing him to see if he even knew where to start. I knew I sure didn’t. I remembered the formula for calculating the circumference of a circle, but that was as far as I could go.
The foreman said something to the man that had been holding the rod and he hurried back to his place where they were laying out the footing. The foreman then turned his attention to the transit again, motioning for his assistant to move this way or that way.
“A hundred thirty-nine and a half yards, sir,” Ben yelled out. “But you’d better order a couple of extra yards to allow for waste.”
The foreman jerked his head around so quickly
he had to grab his hat to keep it from falling off. He looked at Ben like somebody had painted him a different color. “How did you do that so fast?” he asked, his voice full of disbelief.
“Well, sir. All the dimensions you gave me were in even numbers. I didn’t have any decimals to contend with, so it was simple.”
“Come over here,” the foreman snapped, pulling a tape measure from his leather tool pouch. He pulled the tape out several feet and arbitrarily picked a spot with his index finger. “Tell me what this measurement reads.”
Ben looked to where his finger was pointing. “If you’re fingers pointing to where I think it is, it’s eight-foot seven and thirteen-sixteenths. But I could be off by as much as an eighth of an inch due to the thickness of your finger.”
The foreman took off his hat and scratched his head. “Alright. Do you think you two can lay out footings?”
“Sure can,” Ben said.
“Can you learn to read civil blueprints in a hurry if I help you get started?”
I looked at Ben and then at the foreman. “Sir, I don’t mind telling you I ain’t as smart as Ben. I don’t know anybody who is, and doubt that you do. I promise you whatever you tell him or show him you’ll only have to do it once. And what you don’t show him, he’ll figure out on his own.”
“Well, we’ll see about that. I can already tell he’s smarter than anybody I’ve hired so far. I guess both of you are hired. You can start now. I’ll start you out at sixty cents an hour. We work forty-five hours a week. That’s all the damn government will allow us to work.”
“That’s twenty-seven dollars a week,” Ben whispered to me, but loud enough that the foreman heard it.
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