Same Kind of Different As Me

by Ron Hall

  Then Scoot and I headed over to the TCU freshman girls’ dorm.

  “A movie star,” is what I thought when Karen McDaniel stepped out onto the dorm’s front porch: She had teased-up dark hair and big blue eyes that batted like strobe lights. I had never seen anybody who looked like that in Haltom City. As it turned out, Karen had never seen anybody who looked like me. Ever.

  I had finished off the shorts set Mama made me with knee-high black socks and a pair of brogan-style, lace-up shoes. As I headed up the crowded dorm steps to introduce myself, another adorable brunette walked out of the dorm onto the porch. But when she saw my clothes, she screeched to a halt so fast it looked like she’d dropped a two-ton anchor. “Well, lookee here!” she blared, causing every head within fifty yards to turn my way. “It’s Bobby Brooks, dyed to match!”

  She turned out to be Jill, Scoot’s date, a pixyish Tri Delt with eyes like Bambi. Having pronounced judgment on my mama’s handiwork, she then looked down at my shoes and wrinkled her perfectly upturned nose as though examining roadkill. “What kind of shoes are those?”

  I shrugged, sweat beading up on my reddening face. “I don’t know . . . just shoes, I guess.”

  “Well, the boys at TCU wear Weejuns,” Jill said.

  Scoot thought that sounded mighty exotic. “What are ‘Weejuns’?” he asked me, leaning in close.

  “I don’t know,” I said skeptically. “I think they’re those pointy-toed things the queers wear.”

  “They are not!” the girls protested in unison, scandalized. “They’re penny loafers!”

  We walked the two blocks to the stadium, and while most couples were holding hands, Karen maintained a mortified distance. Inside the stadium, the whole student body seemed to ogle me as if I were the victim of a fraternity prank. I don’t remember who won or lost that football game, or even the name of the opposing team. I only remember feeling as if Bozo the Clown had died and I’d inherited his clothes.

  7

  I got my first cotton sack when I was about seven or eight. It was a big white flour sack. You prob’ly don’t know much about pickin cotton so I’m gon’ tell you how it was: hot. Lord-a-mighty, it was hot. Hot enough for the devil and his angels. Then there was the bugs and skeeters. Zoomin in off the bayou, seemed like they was big as gooses and twice as mean.

  Ever day, we’d light out just about the time the sky at the edges of the fields turned a little pink with mornin, but you could still see some stars. I’d pick all the day long, pluckin me four or five pieces of cotton outta every boll I could find. When the bolls busted open, they was hard and kinda crackly. After a while, they turned my hands raw. The cotton was soft like a feather, but it got heavy mighty fast. Ever day, the Man say I had about twenty pounds in my sack. Seemed like no matter how long I picked or if my sack felt extra heavy that day, the Man say it was twenty pounds.

  Sometimes he’d give us a token to spend at his store. I’d go in there and buy me a piece a’ candy or a hunk a’ cheese.

  That’s how I met Bobby. The Man’s store was kinda on the front half of the plantation, and I had to walk by his house on my way back to Uncle James’s. It was a big white one with a black roof and a great big ole shade porch all the way around it. One day, I was walkin down the red dirt road that ran by it, when this white boy about my age wearin overalls like me come out and started walkin with me.

  “Hey,” he says to me, traipsin along.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Where you goin?”

  “Home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Over yonder,” I said, jerkin my chin in the gen’l direction.

  “Wanna go ride bikes?”

  Well, that stopped me in my tracks. I turned and eyeballed this fella. He was kinda regular lookin, about my same size with some freckles on his nose and a curly mess of brown hair with some red in it like somebody’d dusted his head with cinnamon. While I was lookin at him, I was sizin him up, tryin to figure out what did he want, and why was he tryin to take up with somebody like me.

  Finally, I gave him an answer: “I ain’t got no bike,” I said and started walkin again.

  “You wanna go shoot BB guns then? You can use mine.”

  Now, that was an invite. I didn’t have no BB gun, but I wanted one real bad so I could get out in the woods and bring me down some blackbirds or maybe a possum.

  “Yeah, I’ll go shoot BB guns with you. You sure your mama won’t mind?”

  “Nah, she don’t care long as I’m home ’fore dark. You stay here; I’ll run get my gun.”

  From that day on, me and Bobby was partners in crime. Turned out he was the Man’s nephew come to visit. He didn’t know he wadn’t s’posed to be my friend.

  When I wadn’t workin, I’d slide over to the back porch of the Man’s house and whistle. Bobby’d ease out the back door and we’d meet up. We was purty tight. If he had somethin to eat, I did, too. Sometimes at dinner, he’d eat some a’ his food and slip the rest in his pocket and sneak out the house. Then we’d walk down the road where the Man couldn’t see, and I’d eat me a chicken leg or a sandwich or somethin that he brung me.

  Purty soon his people figured out we was friends, but they didn’t really try to keep us from associatin, ’specially since I was the only boy on the place right around his age and he needed somebody to play with and keep outta trouble. They detected he was givin me food, so they put a little wood table outside the back door for me to eat on. After a while, once Bobby’d get his food, he’d come right on out and me and him’d sit at that little table and eat together.

  When I wadn’t workin, me and Bobby was in business, workin on bikes, swimmin, or makin slingshots outta tree twigs and inner tubes. Sometimes Thurman’d go with us, but mostly it was just me and Bobby.

  We’d go huntin and kill us some birds with his Daisy Rider BB gun. I was a purty good shot and could drop em right out of the sky. I had a rope belt that I wore round my overalls, and ever time I killed me a blackbird, I’d tuck his feet up under the rope and let him hang there upside down. Once we’d shot a bunch, I’d take em home to Aunt Etha and she’d make a pie.

  Now the next year that Bobby come to the plantation, I got up the courage to ask the Man if I could pick scrap cotton and earn me a bicycle. Up to then, I’d just been ridin old heaps me and Bobby built outta junk parts. Didn’t even have no tires on em, just rode em on the rims. I needed a real bicycle so me and Bobby could do some serious ridin.

  Now scrap cotton is the little pieces danglin off the cotton bushes and also inside the dirty bolls that’s layin on the ground after the fields done been picked. Since Uncle James and Aunt Etha wadn’t makin no money, I had to scrap cotton if I was gon’ get me a bike.

  I was ready to pick that scrap just as long it took, but Bobby had a plan. He’d come out and pick with me, scrapin the last wisps off the picked-over flowers, actin like he was gon’ keep some a’ that scrap for hisself. But all the cotton he picked, he put it in my sack. And when the Man wadn’t lookin, he’d go in the cotton shed and fill up his sack with the picked cotton, the good cotton, then come out and empty it into mine. We’d hide it under the scrap.

  Ever summer, me and Bobby had a new project, but that scrappin went on for a long time. Ever year, we scrapped them fields and the Man weighed what we picked—and what Bobby stole!—and ever year, the Man put me off, tellin me I ain’t scrapped enough to get no bike. Went on like that for three years, till finally, right around Christmas, the Man come down to Uncle James’s and said for me to come up to his house, only he never did say why.

  “Just come on up and you’ll see,” he said.

  We hoofed it on back up there, and when we got close I could see it sittin up on the big wraparound porch, shinin just like a dream: a brand-new Schwinn, red and white with a rubber squeeze-horn on it.

  I turned and looked at the Man. He was smilin just a little.

  “Is that mine?” I asked him. I couldn’t believe it.

  “It’
s all yours, L’il Buddy,” he said. “You get up there and take it on home.”

  “Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir!” I ran off whoopin like a wild boy, jumped on that fine machine, and burned off down the road to show my uncle and auntie. That Schwinn was the first new thing I ever had. I was eleven years old.

  8

  On November 22, 1963, I pulled on a store-bought madras shirt, khaki pants—and yes, Weejuns. Scoot and I, along with two other fellows, piled into my baby-blue, four-door 1961 Chevy Biscayne and headed out for our second adventure with sorority girls. The occasion was TCU’s homecoming, and Elvis blared on the radio the whole way into town.

  Those were the days before interstates, and our route heading in from Commerce, Texas, took us through downtown Dallas. As I guided the Biscayne onto Elm Street, the traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl. We pulled up next to the School Book Depository at the intersection of Elm and Houston, right behind a white sedan—the last car in our way before I could have gunned my car into the clear, with a straight shot to Stemmons Freeway.

  The white sedan moved ahead, but just as we were ready to pull through the intersection, a police officer stepped into our path, whistle shrieking, one arm out like a fullback.

  “Dang it!” Scoot said, checking his watch. “Now we’re gonna be late!”

  It seemed like it was going to be a long wait, so I cut off the engine and we all got out and sat on the hood. First we heard sirens and motorcycles coming from our left, and we all turned to see what was coming. A cheer swelled toward us, rolling through the crowd like an ocean wave. Then we saw it: a convertible Lincoln limousine with eagle-eyed G-men riding the running boards and bumper.

  Although it was over in less than ten seconds, it seems like slow motion now: Texas Governor John Connelly in the front seat. President John F. Kennedy in the back, waving, on the side nearest us. And Jackie, dazzling, sitting next to him in her powder-pink pillbox hat.

  Then, fast-forward: The crowd suddenly, inexplicably, exploded like a school of spooked fish. We didn’t know why. All we saw was our chance to shoot through the intersection and get back on the road to TCU. The four of us jumped off the hood and clambered into the Biscayne.

  We roared through the intersection toward the on-ramp right behind the presidential limo. For moments, we had no idea we were living history. Then the radio announcer broke in: “The police are reporting gunshots near the presidential motorcade in Dallas.”

  Then, moments later, another announcement: “The president’s been shot.”

  “My God!” I yelled. “He’s right in front of us!” I floored it, and we chased the limo down the freeway past Market Hall where a crowd of thousands was waiting to hear JFK speak, all the way to Parkland Hospital, where I whipped the Biscayne into the parking lot right up beside the empty limousine.

  I cut the ignition. We sat there, stunned. The radio announcer called the play-by-play: The shots seemed to come from the School Book Depository . . . a massive manhunt in downtown Dallas . . . waiting to hear the president’s condition. We’d been there maybe twenty minutes when a Secret Service agent, trim and intimidating, strode toward us from the emergency room exit.

  He poked his crew cut into my window, and I could see my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses. “What’re you boys doing out here?” he said, dead serious.

  He listened to our explanation then said, “Well, unless you want me to take your mug shots and fingerprints, you’d better move along.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Reluctantly, I started the car and we pulled slowly out of the Parkland lot. We hadn’t been on the freeway for more than ten minutes when the radio announcer made his grim report: “The president is dead.”

  It didn’t take us long to realize we were some of the last civilians to see him alive.

  9

  Ever Sunday, a field hand drivin a mule wagon wound down the dirt plantation roads gatherin up folks to haul em off to praise the Lord. There was about twenty families that worked on the Man’s place. They’d climb into the mule wagon, the men handin up the ladies, then handin up the babies, then climbin on last, and the field hand would drive em all to the New Glory of Zion Baptist Church. To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember ’xactly what the name of it was, but all them churches was “New” this and “Glory” that, and for sure just about all of em was Baptist.

  Ever plantation had a colored church, and that was where most a’ the socializin went on. Our little clapboard church sat in a wide field and had a cross over the door that never saw no coat of paint. Seemed like God used the tin roof for a pincushion, ’cause it was fulla holes that the sun-light fell through, and made the wooden benches look kinda pokey-dotted. Sometimes it’d come a rain and the preacher’d have to sweep the mess out the front door.

  The preacher, Brother Eustis Brown, was just another field hand. But he was the onlyest man I knowed besides Uncle James that could read the Bible. I learned a lot of Scripture from listenin to Brother Brown. That’s ’cause he’d preach the same sermon ever week for months.

  Let’s say he was preachin on the evils of lust. Brother Brown’d say, “Now listen, church: The book of First John say we know the lust a’ the flesh, the lust a’ the eyes, and the boastful pride of life—all that is not from God, it’s from this world! But this world is passin away! And its lusts are passin away! But if you do the will a’ God, you gon’ live forever!”

  Ever week, he’d say them same verses, hammerin em home over and over, like he was nailin a shoe on a stubborn horse. But ever once in a while, people started complainin.

  “Brother Brown, we done heard that message about a hun’erd times,” one of the older women would say, somebody with gumption like my aun-tie, Big Mama’s sister. “When you gon’ change the sermon?”

  Brother Brown would just gaze up at the holey roof and shake his head, kinda sad. “I work out there in the cotton with y’all, and ever week, the Lord shows me what’s goin on in the congregation so I’ll know what to preach on Sunday. When I start seein some changes out there,” he’d say, pointin toward the plantation, “I’ll be changin what I preach in here.”

  That’s how I learned the Bible without knowin how to read.

  When I was about twelve, my aunt Etha dressed me all in white and took me down to the river to get dunked. There was four or five folks gettin baptized that day, and all the plantation families brought pails and baskets of food to spread out on blankets and have us what we called “dinner on the ground.” White folks call it a picnic.

  My auntie wrung the neck off a chicken and fried it up special, and brought her famous blackberry cobbler, and a jug a’ cool tea she made with mint leaves she got from my great-aunt. (Least I think they was mint leaves. With my auntie, you never knowed what kinda powders and potions you was gon’ get.)

  We didn’t eat, though, till after Brother Brown preached a sermon ’bout John the Baptist dunkin Jesus hisself, and God callin down from heaven that He was mighty pleased with what kinda fella His Son had turned out to be. When Brother Brown was done preachin, he waded out into the cool green river till he got waist-deep in his white robe that he kept special for baptizin. I followed him down in my bare feet, over pebbles, smooth and shinin wet, down through the warm soft mud, into the water.

  Now me and Bobby did lots of swimmin in the waterin hole, but we was mostly buck naked. So it felt kinda strange goin in the water in a full suit of clothes, and them swirlin around me all white and soft like a cloud. But I waded on out to where Brother Brown was waitin for me. The river mud squished up between my toes while I kept one eye out for gators.

  I stood sideways in front of Brother Brown, and he put his left hand behind my back. I could hear some birds a-peepin, and the water sloshin, and away off down the river, I seen some white folks on a boat, fishin. “Li’l Buddy,” the preacher said, “do you believe Jesus died on the cross for your sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day?”

  “Yessir, I do,” I said
and felt somethin graze my leg. I was hopin it was a catfish.

  “I now baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!” Brother Brown said, and quick as lightnin, like maybe I was gon’ change my mind, he pinched my nose shut with his right hand, and slammed me down backward in the water.

  Problem was, Brother Brown kinda lost his grip and I sunk right to the bottom. I didn’t know I was supposed to come right back up, so I just floated on down the river a ways, blowin bubbles and lookin up through the milky water at the clouds goin by. Aunt Etha told me afterward that the congregation panicked and charged into the river. They was still splashin around and callin my name when I popped up downriver like a bobber on a fishin line, a few shades paler and fulla the Holy Ghost!

  My auntie was so glad to see me, I got two servins of blackberry cobbler that day.

  10

  Things was a-changin. Uncle James took sick and died, and Aunt Etha moved away. Last time I seen her, she was cryin. I couldn’t figure out why God kept takin all the folks I loved the most. Me and Thurman got split up, and I went to live on a different plantation with my sister, Hershalee. Seemed like Thurman went to stay with some a’ BB’s people, but I ain’t sure. I guess I was about thirteen, fourteen years old. Them years kinda run together in my memory. We never kept no calendar. We didn’t even keep a clock. Didn’t need one: When all you doin is bringin in the Man’s cotton, ain’t nowhere you got to be at ’cept where you’re at.

  I missed Bobby and wished I had another friend like him. The new Man had a couple of little daughters round about my age, but for sure I wadn’t friends with no white girls. Besides, the white children, when they was big enough, went off to school during the day. Some colored kids did, too, but not me. And a lotta times, the Man would pull the colored kids out to go work in the fields.