“I was talking about lawn furniture,” Veronica said icily.
“I don't care 'bout no damn furniture,” Chip said. “What I wanna know is what he mean questioning me?”
“He didn't say nobody in particular, Mr. Lowe,” Leon quailed. “He just said black people.”
“And what the hell you think I am?” Lowe said.
“That's why I asked you, brother,” Socrates said. “I asked you 'cause you the one know. If you don't know then who does? I mean you read the paper an' you got white people writin' about it. You got white people on the TV talkin', on the radio, they vote on it too. You got white people askin' black people but then they wanna argue wit' what those black people say. Everybody act like what we feel got to go to a white vote or TV or newspaper. I say fuck that. Fuck it. All that matters is what you'n me think. That's all. I don't care what Mr. Newscaster wanna report. All I wanna know is what we think right here in this room. Right here. Us. Just talkin'. It ain't goin' on the midnight report or the early edition or no shit like that.”
Silence followed Socrates' declaration. A police helicopter passed overhead but it could not have suspected the conversation unfolding below. And even if the policemen knew what was about to be said they wouldn't have wondered or worried about mere words.
“Wh-wh-what do you mean, Mr. Fortlow?” Nelson asked after the loud rush of the helicopter passed on. “I mean we all know what's been done to us that's wrong. We all know what we got to do to make our lives better.”
“We do?” Socrates stared hard at the middle-class mortician. “We don't all look the same. We don't all talk alike. We ain't related. The only things we got in common is what's on the TV an' in the papers. And ain't nuthin' like that made from black hands or minds.”
“But we know,” young Mr. Spellman said.
“What is it you know?” Cynthia Lott asked the boy.
“I know I'm a black man in a white world that had me as a slave; that keeps me from my history and my birthright.” Leon spoke proudly and loud.
Tiny Cynthia waggled her dangling feet angrily. “First off you ain't a man you're a boy. You wasn't never a slave. And as far as any birthright you live wit' your momma and play at like you tryin' to go to school. As far as I see it you ain't got nuthin' to complain about at all. I mean if you cain't make somethin' outta yourself with all that you got then all they could blame is you.”
Cynthia sucked a tooth and looked away from the young man.
Leon was trying to think of something to say but he was trembling, too furious to put words together.
“But I didn't ask if he could blame somebody, Cyn,” Socrates said. “I asked if we got the right to be mad. All of us is mad. Almost every black man, woman or child you meet is mad. Damn mad. Every day we talk about what some white man did or what some black man actin' like a white man did. Even if you blame Leon for his problems you still sayin' that there's somethin' wrong. Ain't you?”
“Only thing wrong is that these here men you got today ain't worth shit.” Cynthia curled her lip, revealing a sharp white tooth. “Black men puffin' up an' blamin' anybody they can. He say, ‘I cain't get a job 'cause'a the white man,’ or ‘I cain't stay home 'cause Mr. Charlie on my butt.’ But the woman is home. The woman got a job and a child and a pain in her heart that don't ever stop. I don't know why I wanna be mad at no white man when I got a black man willin' to burn me down to the ground and then stomp on my ashes.”
Cynthia's high-pitched voice always made Socrates wince. He swallowed once and then prepared to speak.
But before he could start Leon opened up again. “I don't know why you wanna be like that, Miss Lott. Some man musta hurt you. But I'm doin' what I can. I am. I got a job….”
“What kinda job you got?” Cynthia demanded.
“I work at the drugstore on Kinkaid on the weekends.”
“That's a child's job,” the tiny woman shrilled. “Come talk to me when you doin' man's work.”
“Come on now, Cyn,” Veronica Ashanti chided. “You know Leon's a good boy and he tryin'. And you know ain't no man start out perfect. No woman neither. I know a lotta black women out here mess up just as quick as a man. Quicker sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Chip Lowe said. “Leave Leon alone. I got a job and a family. I live at home with my wife and my daughters. I work hard. Harder'n any white man do the same job. That's why I got the right to be mad. I come in early an' leave late and they still pass me over for some lazy motherfucker don't know how to tie his shoelaces.”
“No need to curse, Chip,” Topper said. “But you are right. We all have difficulties that are incurred by our skins. We all know that we have to work harder and longer hours to be recognized. We have to be extra careful and honest not to be fired or even arrested. And if one black man commits a crime then we are all seen as criminals. All of us share that legacy.”
“But do you have the right to be mad?” Cynthia Lott asked. It was rare that Cynthia would dare to question Topper and she seemed to take pleasure in the grilling.
“Certainly,” Saint-Paul said. “We are held back not because of worth but because of prejudice and racism. That is reason enough.”
Socrates looked at his friends with harsh satisfaction. He had been thinking about the question for months. It had been on his mind for years. Every time he saw a white man he'd get mad. Sometimes he had to leave the room so as not to yell or even attack some man who was just standing there. His ire was as natural as the sunrise. It was more like an instinct than like the higher faculty of reason that supposedly separates people from other creatures.
Socrates had long wanted to ask the question but he couldn't get out the words in the Saint-Paul Mortuary. He was afraid of the big room and the many doors all around. Somebody might be listening; he knew that it wasn't true and even if it was that it didn't matter. But Socrates' throat was clamped shut. So he had decided to invite the group to his new home in King Malone's backyard, next to the sweet-smelling lemon bush. If anyone came around, the two-legged dog Killer would bark.
In the nearly empty rooms of Socrates' home he felt his heart beating and the air coming into his lungs. There he could believe that he was the master.
He had made lemonade and ham sandwiches, bought two fifths of Barbancourt Haitian rum. He had put the small bounty on his folding table and set up chairs for his friends as they arrived at the door. But even with all of that he could barely get the words out. When he started to put his question into words his face had flushed with fever and the room seemed to shake.
“But I know what you mean, Miss Lott,” Leon said in a voice that was devoid of feeling. “ 'cause when it come to tearin' down a black man it's a black woman the first one on line. Like when I come here to talk. You always be ridin' me even though I ain't never done nuthin' to you. Even though I give you a ride home every week an' you never say thank you or offer me somethin' like a drink of water or maybe a dollar for all that gas. There's a white woman work at the pharmacy speaks nice to me every day. She treat me better than half the black women I ever meet.”
“Well if you so hurt then why you come here?” Cynthia Lott said. Her voice was less angry than it was strained. “Why you give me a ride? I don't ever ask you. I don't ever ask you for nuthin'. I don't ever ask no man for nuthin'.”
There were tears in Leon's eyes but he didn't seem to notice. The muscle and bone at the hinges of his jaw bulged out. “I come here 'cause I wanna be around black people who talk about stuff other than just complainin' or lyin'. I want to be somebody other just some nigger or gangbanger.”
Cynthia almost said something but then she held back. Socrates thought that this silence was an answer to the boy's hurt feelings but that he would never know it.
“My aunt Bellandra,” Socrates began, “used to tell me a story.”
Everybody in the room seemed to understand immediately that this was the real beginning of the Wednesday night talk, that everything up until then was just like an introduction.
“… that blew out of the Gulf of Mexico.” Bellandra's words came back to him. He was a scrawny child again rapt in the frightening tales of his severe auntie. “And it tore down the ramshackle slave quarters and tore out the timbers that their chains was bound to. Many of the slaves died from the crash but some of them lived. They cut away the corpses from the long chain that bound them all together and then moved like a serpent toward the overseer's hut.
“This overseer was a man named Drummond and he was evil down to the bone. He heard the slave quarters crash but he didn't do nuthin' to help because the wind scared him and so he stayed in his hut. He didn't know that the chain gang was movin' toward him. He just laid up with Rose, a slave girl that he took to his bed sometimes. Outside the wind was howlin' and the trees were scratchin' at his roof. It was like hell outside his do' an' he wasn't goin' nowhere.” Bellandra, Socrates remembered, paused then and glared down at the boy. He felt as if he had done something wrong but didn't know what it was.
“An' then the knockin' started on his do'. It was a loud thump and then the drag of chain and then another loud thump. Rose called out in fear and her master cringed. But the knocking got louder and the chain sounded everywhere all around the house. Then there was the angry cry of men. If it wasn't for the storm that cry would have reached the plantation owner's ears. He would have called out his men and his dogs but the wind ate up the slaves' voices. Only Drummond could hear them men and he wasn't even sure that it was men. He was afraid that ghosts from some shipwreck had blown in on the winds of that storm. He was tryin' to remember a prayer to send them ghosts away when the do' shattered and so did the shutters on his windows. And then four men came into his shack one after another, manacled hand and foot and chained in a line. There were two empty shackles that were bloody from where the dead men had been cut away.
“ ‘Carden, is that you?’ the overseer cried. ‘'Cause if it is, you had better get ret ta die. Ain't no slave gonna come in on me in my home!’ The overseer stood up to thrash Carden the slave but another slave, Alfred, raised his chain and laid the overseer low. Drummond lay on the ground bleedin' while Rose cried from his bed. ‘Give us the keys, man,’ Alfred said. He held the chain above the overseer's head and that broke him down. He took the key to the fetters from a string on his neck. And when he freed them they set on him with the loose chains and while they beat him, do you know what he said?”
“Uh-uh,” little boy Socrates said to his auntie.
“He said, ‘Why you killin’ me? I freed your bonds.' But the slave Alfred said, ‘You just dead, white man.’ And he was dead even before he could hear those last words.
“And they took Rose and freed whatever slaves there was left alive in the wreck. And then they set fire to the master's home and ran out into the sugarcane fields and hid. There was twenty-two escaped slaves. Man, woman, and child. They went up into the swamplands and laid low. And after a day or two they got strong on fish and birds they slew. Small groups of white men came looking for the escaped slaves but they died and their weapons went into the hands of Alfred Africa, the leader of the runaways.
“Everywhere in the parish white folks was scared of them slaves. Bounties was put on their heads, but after the first search parties disappeared most folks were too scared to go after Alfred and his gang. But the runaways was scared too. Scared that if they ever left the swamplands and the cane they would be hunted down and killed for their sins. Because they knew that killin' was wrong. They knew that they had murdered old Drummond and Langley Whitehall, the plantation owner, and his family and men. So they stayed in the wild and went kinda crazy. They attacked white people that traveled alone and burnt down houses and fields of cane. Nobody was safe and they started to call Alfred and his gang the rascals in the cane. And it wasn't only white people that was scared. Because if Alfred's crew came up on a slave and he was too scared to go with'em then they would say that that slave was their enemy and they would kill him too.
“They called the state militia finally but they never found Alfred's crew. After a while that whole section of farmlands was abandoned because nobody felt safe. Nobody would brave the rascals in that cane. Every once in a while one of 'em would get caught though. If one of 'em got tired of the mosquitoes and gators and he wanted to leave. And if one of Alfred Africa's men was caught they'd torture him for days to find the secret of where the runaways hid. But they never found out. After a long time the attacks stopped and the plantation owners came back. But they still went with armed guards. And they set out sentries at night who had to stay at their posts even in the worst storms. Because everybody said that the soul of Alfred Africa lived in the eye of the storm and that one day he would return and burn down all the plantations everywhere in the south.”
Socrates looked up and saw the faces of Cynthia, Veronica and Chip Lowe. He was surprised because he half hoped to see his long-dead auntie Bellandra. He wondered if he had really told the story that he'd only just remembered after more than fifty years.
“It sounds like a true story, Mr. Fortlow,” Nelson Saint-Paul said.
“Yeah,” Socrates said, still partly in the trance of his memory. “Rose, the woman that the overseer raped, was my aunt's great-grandmother. She was the only one of the escaped slaves to survive. She caught a fever and wandered away. Indians took her in and she wound up in Texas. She had a child and became an Indian but the army massacred the tribe she traveled with and she and her baby were sold as slaves. After the war she came to Indiana with her son. That's where my family is from.”
“So what you tryin' to say, Socrates?” Chip Lowe asked. “What's that story supposed to mean?”
“Depends on what part you're talking about,” Veronica Ashanti said on a cloud of blue smoke.
“What you mean by that, Ronnie?” Chip asked.
“Could be the storm or the killin', could be that they thought the killin' was sin even though they killed a sinner.” Veronica counted out each point on a different finger.
“Yeah,” Leon added. “Or maybe that they stayed around and fought against the people who persecuted them.”
“They should'a run,” Cynthia said. “But no doubt that Alfred Africa wanted to fight instead'a doin' somethin' right.”
“Maybe they couldn't help it,” Leon argued. “Maybe it was like Mr. Fortlow's aunt said and they couldn't escape. That's like us. We cain't escape. We here in this land where they took our ancestors. How could you run from that?”
“I don't know,” Veronica said sadly. “But maybe Miss Lott is right when she says about men always wantin' to fight. Our men always on the edge of some kind'a war. All proud'a their muscles. I mean I like me a strong man but what good is he if he's all bleedin' an' dead.”
“Sometimes it's better to fight,” Chip Lowe put in. “That's why we got the neighborhood watch. Sometimes you got to stand up.”
“But not like no fool,” Cynthia said. “Not like them, uh, what you called 'em, Mr. Fortlow?”
“Rascals in the cane. That's what they were called.” Socrates was happy to hear his question discussed. He didn't need to say much because everybody else was alive with words.
“Yeah,” Cynthia said. “Rascals. That's just like a man. So busy fightin' that he gets killed and his woman and child go back into slavery.”
“But what is the storm?” Topper asked Socrates. “What does it mean?”
“Why's it got to mean anything?” Cynthia screeched. “It's just what happened.”
“No,” Topper disagreed. “No. Every story, everything that happens has a meaning. A purpose. That's why Mr. Fortlow asked that question and then told his auntie's story. The story is the answer. The answer to his question.”
“Is that right?” Veronica asked. “Is what Topper say true?”
Socra
tes looked at the beautiful, black, pear-shaped woman. It was the first time he ever heard her ask something without the twist of sex in her tone.
“I'm not sure,” Socrates said. “I mean I been thinkin' about bein' mad at white folks lately. I mean I'm always mad. But bein' mad don't help. Even if I say somethin' or get in a fight, I'm still mad when it's all over. One day I realized that I couldn't stop bein' mad. Bein' mad was like havin' a extra finger. I don't like it, everybody always make fun of it but I cain't get rid of it. It's mine just like my blood.
“But I didn't remember Bellandra's story until we were already talkin'. It just came to me and I said it. And now that Topper says that the answer is in the story I think he might be right. Maybe not the whole answer but there's somethin' there. Somethin'.”
“But why you wanna ask the question?” Chip Lowe asked.
“Because I'm tired'a bein' mad, man. Tired. I see all these white people walkin' 'round and I'm pissed off just that they're there. And they don't care. They ain't worried. They thinkin' 'bout what they saw on TV last night. They thinkin' about some joke they heard. An' here I am 'bout to bust a gut.”
“Maybe they should have left the cane fields,” Leon said. “Maybe they should have forgotten all about all that fear and guilt.”
“Yeah,” Cynthia added in an almost sweet voice. “And they sure shouldn't'a killed those black folks that was too scared to run with 'em. Sure shouldn't.”
“Uh-huh,” Veronica agreed. “And Alfred should have taken Rose and gone north or south or west. If he ain't had a home to go back to he should have made a new home rather than stayed in the cane fields with them mosquitoes and alligators.”
“Maybe that's what Mr. Fortlow's aunt was saying,” Nelson Saint-Paul said. “Maybe they couldn't leave the plantation. Maybe they were stuck with those white folks that put'em in chains and the blacks who stayed slaves.”
“This sure is some good rum, Socrates,” Cynthia Lott exclaimed. She had taken a small paper cup and filled it. “That's just about the best liquor I ever tasted.”
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