His mother did not say hello to them. “Harry, here you go again bringing that child in here at ten o’clock. Harry?” She was waving her arms. She was still dressed, her hair still up, long and black as…like Papa says, the inside of a blueberry pie…that black.
“Honest, Marge, couldn’t help it this time.” His father spoke timidly. “We—”
“That’s what you always say. Honestly, all your drunken cronies call him mister but leastways you should know he ain’t but eight.” She was a Sunday-school teacher. “Did you go see poor old Miss Rickett?” She had put her hands on her hips and turned away from his father, was speaking to Mister Leland now.
“Yes, Mama. We went and sat and she give Papa some cigars.” He lied, he knew it, and turned to look at his father, and saw the fleeting smile of relief and gratitude cross the man’s lips, then realized it was not like a lie at all, not really, more like the soldiers in Korea, where Papa fought, looking out for each other because they was all soldiers and had to keep each other alive else the enemy would-a done them harm. And the enemy, Papa says, could be a Red or a captain or even a sergeant though Papa was a sergeant hisself, but was also under sergeants who was just as much enemies as the men they shot at and who shot at them.
She turned on his father again. “Did you feed him?”
“Not much. You see…” He and his father stood together just inside the door, his mother confronting them across the room behind the kitchen table.
“Harold, sit down and eat.” She turned abruptly to the stove, took a plate from the top of a pot of boiling water, where she had left it to keep it warm, brought it to the table and although he thought she might bang it down, set it down quite gently. Mister Leland sat behind it. There were drops of warm water on the underside. He was really too sleepy to be hungry, but knew if he did not eat heartily his father would be answering for more.
His father took one step into the room. “Marge?”
She ignored him. “Eat, Harold.” She did not have to say this; he was already doing so.
When he finished (his father having come forward like a boy late for school and snuck into a seat across from him, following his mother with his whole head as she bustled around the kitchen), she took him off to bed, where his brother, Walter, already slept as silent, as immovable as the General’s statue, waited while he undressed, helped him with his prayers, and went out, her kiss still warm and sweet on his forehead. He tried to listen for his parents in the kitchen, but could hear nothing.
He woke up later and it was night. He never considered the darkness at the end of each day truly night, only darkness. Night was when he woke up and the room, the house, and all outside were silent and he had to go to the bathroom. He got up and went down the hall past his parents’ open door and they were hugging one another in the bed into which, he was told, he had been born, into which he knew his brother to have been born. And if he had been troubled (he had not been), he no longer was and did his business and went back to sleep….
“Harold-boy, get up.” It was his father and it was Friday morning. “Come on, boy. We got to hurry.”
In an instant he was fully awake. “What happened?”
“Nothing yet. Something might. Don’t want to miss it, do you?” His father was already dressed, even to his hat.
“No, sir.” He was already climbing from bed, was standing, making certain he had left his brother covered.
“I’ll go see what I can do for breakfast.” His father strode from the room, and soon he could hear him in the kitchen clanking pans. He put on his overalls and a clean shirt—it was the same kind as the day before; he had seven and his mother had printed the day of the week inside the collar—and went to the bathroom, spying, through the open door, his mother alone and tiny in bed, as fast asleep as ever Walter had been, her black braid looping around her throat like a friendly snake. He brushed his teeth, wet his hair, combed it straight back, and arrived in the kitchen just as his father was sitting down with a mug of coffee. Already at his own place was a glass of orange juice and a bowl of oatmeal. He sat down and began to drink the juice; it was cold and tasted bitter because of the toothpaste. “Why we going so early?”
“Want to be there when it starts.” His father was blowing at his coffee.
“What’s starting, Papa?”
“Don’t know.” His father’s eyes were glassy, a bit red. “Whatever’s started already. You remember what Mister Harper said? I don’t think it’s over yet, and you want to be there to see it, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right then.” His father’s face woke up momentarily with a smile. “Hurry up.”
He ate as fast as he could—once, at the start, he scalded his tongue because he scooped a big spoonful from the center of the bowl, but now ate small rapid spoonfuls from around the edges—and his father sat across from him, drinking his mug of coffee. When his mother drank coffee, she used a cup, but his father’s mug was twice as big. The coffee steamed up into the thin, dark, kind face, making sweat at the end of his nose.
When they were through, after silently putting the dishes in the sink and running water over them, they went out the back door and got Deac. His father lifted him up, climbed up himself, and they began the ride into town. It was still early enough for the fields, the bushes, and tall grass to be angel-haired with mist: going up just like Papa’s coffee steam.
They arrived at Mister Thomason’s and discovered they were not the only ones who had decided to come to the porch early. There were Bobby-Joe, Mister Loomis, and of course Mister Thomason, inside now dusting cans. It was still too early for Mister Harper to have arrived or Mister Stewart: Papa says Mister Stewart starts asking Missus Stewart if he can come into town soon as he wakes up, and worries her so bad, she finally lets him, but not until four or five when she’s made him do all the chores.
They took Deac around back, tied him to the same bush, and returned to their places on the porch, Mister Leland sitting on the steps beside Bobby-Joe, and just in front of his father who leaned against his post. No one greeted them—they all knew each other too well for that—they simply began to talk, not about Tucker Caliban, but about the weather, trying to decide if it would be a nice day. They talked about such things until Wallace Bedlow came, not riding his orange horse as on the day before—I hope he ain’t shot it—rather lumbering toward them from the north of town on foot, wearing his white coat and a good pair of pants of thin material that rustled in the breeze of his stride. He carried an old cardboard suitcase, and upon arriving at the porch, only nodded, saying nothing, and set down the suitcase beside the bus stop sign, at the end of the porch away from the men.
The men eyed him furtively, Bobby-Joe with a touch of contempt, but Mister Leland’s father was the first to speak, assuming, in Mister Harper’s absence, with the tacit consent of the others, the position of spokesman. “How do, Wallace.”
Wallace Bedlow turned and smiled, as though his presence had just been discovered, as though he had not known they were watching him. “How do, Mister Harry.”
The boy’s father took a step away from the post toward the Negro. “Where you going? Into New Marsails?”
“Yes, sir.” The smile had fled his face suddenly with a deathlike completeness. Mister Leland was thinking that Wallace Bedlow had used sir: Like Papa is older than him, which ain’t so because when Wallace Bedlow takes off his hat, you can see crinkly gray hairs. Still he calls Papa sir the same’s I’d call him or my papa sir.
“Staying long, Wallace?” His father spoke as if these questions were not important, as if no one besides himself listened, examined every word.
“Yes, sir.”
“How long?” There was an amount of accusation in the question.
“Don’t reckon I’ll be back, sir.” Wallace Bedlow answered with more defiance than seemed necessary.
“What?”
“I don’t reckon I’ll be back, sir.” He eyed all the men. “I’m waiting for the bus and going into New Marsails and I don’t reckon I’ll be back…at all.”
“You moving into the Northside?” The Northside was where New Marsails’ Negroes lived. Mister Leland had seen that when they took the bus to go to the movies. The bus had to go through the Northside to get downtown.
“No, sir.” Wallace Bedlow’s face seemed to die still more.
“Where you going?” His father almost whispered. Mister Leland heard someone sigh.
“I reckon I’m going North to stay with my younger brother Carlyle in New York.” Wallace Bedlow stared back at them, as his father said, “Oh.” He looked like he was daring them to stop him. The men did nothing, casually turned away to their small conversations; Wallace Bedlow too turned away, standing very quietly waiting for the bus to come. When it came, he got on it. By that time, seven Negroes had joined him; they too carried suitcases, wore their best clothes, some even with neckties. Waiting, they said nothing to each other, rather stood patiently, self-engrossed, as if the white men did not exist, and when the bus came careening, its wheels hissing, down from the Ridge and stopped at the porch, they boarded silently, dropped their money in the plastic box (all seemed to have exact fare), moved to the back, and the bus took them away.
Shortly after the bus departed, Mister David Willson came around the corner from his house in the rich section of town, the Swells. He was a nice-looking man, with sad brown eyes, a bit shorter than Mister Leland’s father. He was not a farmer, was descended from the General, though he seemed to possess none of his greatness, and was considered rather some kind of usurper of the family name. He owned much of the land on which Mister Leland’s father’s friends share-cropped; he was not their friend. He came on foot, thinking deeply, his hands knit behind his back, and without speaking to or even looking at the men on the porch, went inside, bought a newspaper, and retraced his steps up the street past the General.
Bobby-Joe spat into the street. “God-damn uppity bastard!”
Each hour for the next four, the bus came from New Marsails. At least ten Negroes were waiting silently, patiently, each hour, as if enclosed in invisible coffins, no longer having the power of communication or even possessing anything to communicate to the world around them, or each other. They all carried suitcases or boxes or shopping bags or bundles tied with string; all wore their best clothes.
Mister Harper was there by then. He had come after the second bus. He did not speak. More white men gathered on the porch, those who happened by or had come to the realization slower than the first batch that something was happening, changing. Some of these were even so dull as to ask Mister Harper why the Negroes were leaving (which they should have known) and where they were going (which did not matter and could not be answered unless they were to ask each Negro individually), but Mister Harper did not honor their questions with so much as a nod, just sat smoking his pipe, shifting in his wheel chair from time to time, watching the buses come and depart, watching the Negroes with suitcases waiting down the porch silently, getting on with exact fare ready, sometimes whole families from grandmother to grandchild, and the buses making the turn behind the General’s back, climbing the hill to Harmon’s Draw with much shifting of gears and black smoke, and then disappearing.
When the noon bus came, the bus driver, instead of letting the Negroes on immediately, made them wait, climbed out with his money changer like a tiny xylophone, and a bag of coins, went around to the window near the wheel, reached high inside and closed the door. Then he went into Mister Thomason’s and bought a cream-filled cupcake and a container of milk and came out on the porch again.
Mister Leland had seen him twice this morning; the driver reminded him, with his hat, of a flyer he had seen once in an Air Force movie about Korea. When he finished eating, he lit a cigarette, glanced down at the Negroes, shook his head, took a deep drag and contemplated the cooling ash. Mister Leland was sitting on the edge of the porch, had abandoned carving in the cracks in favor of an inspection of the bus wheels, which were at least as big as he was, but turned up to see that the man’s face was deeply troubled.
Mister Harper wheeled up behind them. “Say, now, where do all these people seem to be going?”
“Just been wondering that myself.” The bus driver dropped his cigarette and twisted his toe on it. It became a small spot of paper, ash and tobacco, but Mister Leland could still see the printing in fine blue letters. “Today, I carried more niggers, men, women, and children, into New Marsails than I ever carried any day before, even more than on that day that ball club what had the first nigger in the major leagues played in New Marsails, but not one—that’s right, not even one—out of New Marsails. I leave them all at the depot and they all go inside. I see all kinds of niggers going in the depot, and the thing is, I ain’t seen one nigger come out. Now I ask you, where they going? And don’t make no mistake about it, it ain’t just from Sutton; it’s from all along the Highway. They come running out of the woods and wave me down and get on and move to the back. Back there looks like it’s jammed up with black sardines—with suitcases.”
“Mmmm.” Mister Harper nodded. He said nothing more, wheeled back to his place against the wall, staring into the Highway, not even attempting to control the conversations around him.
He said nothing until his daughter appeared with his lunch box and then only, “Thank you, honey.”
Mister Leland turned to watch him open it, to see what he would be eating, but his father tapped him on the shoulder and nodded for him to get up, and they went around back, sat in the sun, watched a group of birds swirling like wind-torn smoke far off above the Ridge, and ate sandwiches his father had made before waking him that morning. When they were through with the sandwiches, his father reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two apples, shined one on his chest and handed it to Mister Leland.
“Where all them ni-groes going, Papa?” He inspected the apple, trying to pick the exact spot to take the first bite.
“Don’t know, Harold.” His father bit into his, chewed, swallowed. “I reckon they all heading for some place where they think they can get on better.”
“Ain’t none of them coming back?”
“I don’t reckon so, Harold. I reckon they making what we called in the Army a STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL. That’s when you got thirty men and the other side got thirty thousand and you turn and run saying to yourself, ‘Shucks, ain’t no use in being brave and getting ourselves killed. We’ll back up a ways and maybe fight some tomorrow.’ I reckon them Negroes is backing up all the way.”
“Don’t that make them scaredy cats, Papa?”
“Don’t think so. Seems like this time it should take more guts to go, boy.”
Mister Leland had nothing more to ask, but to himself wondered about it, munching on the warm, almost bitter apple. How could you have more guts to run than to stay? Perhaps it was like the time Eden MacDonald at school had said his father could beat the tar out of Mister Leland’s and Mister Leland had answered, “No, my papa can beat the tar out of your’n because my papa ain’t scared of nothing or nobody.” And Eden had said, “I bet if he met hisself a bear and he didn’t have no gun, he’d run faster than a nigger.” And Mister Leland had said, “That ain’t so.” And Eden had said, “Well, then he’d get killed.” When Mister Leland came home and asked his father if he would run from a bear when he didn’t have a gun, his father had said, “I reckon I would, Harold. That’d be the smart thing, don’t you think?” And when Mister Leland thought about it, it seemed like his father was right, even though he did not like to think of his father running away from a bear or anything else. But at least it was better than having his father all messed up and bloody and dead. And perhaps it was the same with the Negroes. He was about to ask his father if it was really like that when the man got up, stretched, and went to the barrel against
the wall to toss away the waxed paper from the sandwiches. So he got up and followed him around to the porch, deciding to ask him about it later.
They began the afternoon in the same places, doing the same things as in the morning: waiting for more Negroes with suitcases to appear on the porch and for the bus to come down from the Ridge on sticky-sounding wheels. But the car came first.
It was black, polished like a pair of Sunday shoes, moving faster than any bus, faster even than the truck Mister Leland had seen yesterday with its wheels straddling the broken white line, its back heaped with salt. The car was traveling so fast Mister Leland could not adjust his eyes to its speed; it seemed always blurred. There was silver all over it, like a chariot in a movie, and its back looked to him like that of a rocket ship. There was a light-skinned Negro driving (his skin looked green behind the glass) and someone sat in back. He could not be seen too well until the car stopped in front of the porch and he rolled down the window and stuck his head out. Then Mister Leland saw he was a Negro, just as black as the car, and almost as shiny, with long hair almost obscuring his ears and bundled at the back of his neck like an ancient warrior, black sprinkled gray like ashes. He was dressed in black, and wore a pair of blue sunglasses with gold rims. Attached to a gold chain that looped down and into a buttonhole in his vest, was a golden cross with Jesus Christ nailed to it, so big you could see the nails in His hands. He looked at no one, spoke only to Mister Leland. “God bless and protect you, young man.”
He talks like Mister Harper, who Papa says learned to talk up North. So he must come from up North too. No wonder them nig-Negroes is going North; Negroes in the North must live like kings. He was a bit flabbergasted but managed to squeeze out: “How do…sir.” Sitting on the edge of the porch, he could see the inside roof of the car. It’s all out-a soft cloth. It’s all over everywhere.
“How do.” His father spoke from high above him, his knees just behind Mister Leland’s head. But the Negro did not avert his gaze, continued to stare at the boy.
A Different Drummer Page 6