“But T.J., Mama,” I persisted. “What ’bout T.J.?”
Mama sighed and sat down on the steps, laying the sacks on the ground. The boys and I sat beside her.
“I’m gonna go on in and change, Mary,” Big Ma said, climbing the steps and opening our bedroom door. “Miz Fannie gonna need somebody.”
Mama nodded. “Tell her I’ll be down soon as I get the children to bed and things straightened out here.” Then she turned and looked down at Little Man, Christopher-John, and me, eager to know what had happened. She smiled slightly, but there was no happiness in it. “T.J.’s all right. The sheriff and Mr. Jamison took him into Strawberry.”
“But why, Mama?” asked Little Man. “He done something bad?”
“They think he did, baby. They think he did.”
“Then—then they didn’t hurt him no more?” I asked.
Stacey looked across at Mama to see if she intended to answer; then, his voice hollow and strained, he said, “Mr. Granger stopped them and sent them up to fight the fire.”
I sensed that there was more, but before I could ask what, Chistopher-John piped, “And—and Papa and Mr. Morrison, they didn’t have to fight them ole men? They didn’t have to use the guns?”
“Thank the Lord, no,” said Mama. “They didn’t.”
“The fire come up,” said Stacey, “and Mr. Morrison come and got me and then them men come down here to fight the fire and didn’t nobody have to fight nobody.”
“Mr. Morrison come get you alone?” I asked, puzzled. “Where was Papa?”
Stacey again looked at Mama and for a moment they both were silent. Then Stacey said, “Y’all know he couldn’t make that slope with that bad leg of his.”
I looked at him suspiciously. I had seen Papa move on that leg. He could have made the slope if he wanted to.
“All right now,” Mama said, rising. “It’s been a long, tiring night and it’s time you all were in bed.
I reached for her arm. “Mama, how bad is it really? I mean, is there enough cotton left to pay the taxes?”
Mama looked at me oddly. “Since when did you start worrying about taxes?” I shrugged, then leaned closer toward her, wanting an answer, yet afraid to hear it. “The taxes will get paid, don’t you worry,” was all the answer she gave. “Now, let’s get to bed.”
“But I wanna wait for Papa and Mr. Morrison!” protested Little Man.
“Me too!” yawned Christopher-John.
“Inside!”
All of us went in but Stacey, and Mama did not make him. But as soon as she had disappeared into the boys’ room to make sure Little Man and Christopher-John got to bed, I returned to the porch and sat beside him. “I thought you went to bed,” he said.
“I wanna know what happened over there.”
“I told you, Mr. Granger—”
“I come and got Papa and Mr. Morrison like you asked,” I reminded him. “Now I wanna know everything happened after I left.”
Stacey sighed and rubbed his left temple absently, as if his head were hurting. “Ain’t much happened ’cepting Mr. Jamison tried talking to them men some more, and after a bit they pushed him out the way and stuffed T.J. into one of their cars. But Mr. Jamison, he jumped into his car and lit out ahead of them and drove up to Mr. Granger’s and swung his car smack across the road so couldn’t nobody get past him. Then he starts laying on his horn.”
“You go over there?”
He nodded. “By the time I got ’cross the field to where I could hear what was going on, Mr. Granger was standing on his porch and Mr. Jamison was telling him that the sheriff or nobody else was ’bout to stop a hanging on that flimsy message he’d sent up to the Averys’. But Mr. Granger, he just stood there on his porch looking sleepy and bored, and finally he told the sheriff, ‘Hank, you take care of this. That’s what folks elected you for.’
“Then Kaleb Wallace, he leaps out of his car and tries to grab Mr. Jamison’s keys. But Mr. Jamison threw them keys right into Mrs. Granger’s flower bed and couldn’t nobody find them, so Melvin and R.W. come up and pushed Mr. Jamison’s car off the road. Then them cars was ’bout to take off again when Mr. Granger comes running off the porch hollering like he’s lost his mind. ‘There’s smoke coming from my forest yonder!’ he yells. ‘Dry as that timber is, a fire catch hold it won’t stop burning for a week. Give that boy to Wade like he wants and get on up there!’ And folks started running all over the place for shovels and things, then all of them cut back down the road to the Averys’ and through them woods over to our place.”
“And that’s when Mr. Morrison come got you?”
Stacey nodded. “He found me when I followed them men back up to the woods.”
I sat very still, listening to the soft sounds of the early morning, my eyes on the field. There was something which I still did not understand.
Stacey nodded toward the road. “Here come Papa and Mr. Morrison.” They were walking with slow, exhausted steps toward the drive.
The two of us ran down the lawn, but before we reached the road a car approached and stopped directly behind them. Mr. Jamison was driving. Stacey and I stood curiously on the lawn, far enough away not to be noticed, but close enough to hear.
“David, I thought you should know…” said Mr. Jamison. “I just come from Strawberry to see the Averys—”
“How bad is it?”
Mr. Jamison stared straight out at the road. “Jim Lee Barnett…he died at four o’clock this morning.”
Papa hit the roof of the car hard with his clenched fist and turned toward the field, his head bowed.
For a long, long minute, none of the men spoke; then Mr. Morrison said softly, “The boy, how is he?”
“Doc Crandon says he’s got a couple of broken ribs and his jaw’s broken, but he’ll be all right…for now. I’m going to his folks to tell them and take them to town. Just thought I’d tell you first.”
Papa said, “I’ll go in with them.”
Mr. Jamison pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, damp against his forehead. Then, squinting, he looked over his shoulder at the field. “Folks thinking,” he said slowly, as if he did not want to say what he was about to say, “folks thinking that lightning struck that fence of yours and started the fire….” He pulled at his ear. “It’s better, I think, that you stay clear of this whole thing now, David, and don’t give anybody cause to think about you at all, except that you got what was coming to you by losing a quarter of your cotton….”
There was a cautious silence as he gazed up at Papa and Mr. Morrison, their faces set in grim, tired lines. “…Or somebody might just get to wondering about that fire….”
“Stacey,” I whispered, “what’s he talking ’bout?”
“Hush, Cassie,” Stacey said, his eyes intent on the men.
“But I wanna know—”
Stacey looked around at me sharply, his face drawn, his eyes anxious, and without even a murmur from him I suddenly did know. I knew why Mr. Morrison had come for him alone. Why Mr. Jamison was afraid for Papa to go into town. Papa had found a way, as Mama had asked, to make Mr. Granger stop the hanging: He had started the fire.
And it came to me that this was one of those known and unknown things, something never to be spoken, not even to each other. I glanced at Stacey, and he saw in my eyes that I knew, and understood the meaning of what I knew, and he said simply, “Mr. Jamison’s going now.”
Mr. Jamison turned around in the driveway and headed back toward the Averys’. Papa and Mr. Morrison watched him leave, then Mr. Morrison walked silently up the drive to do the morning chores and Papa, noticing us for the first time, stared down at us, his eyes bloodshot and unsmiling. “I thought y’all would’ve been in bed by now,” he said.
“Papa,” Stacey whispered hoarsely, “what’s gonna happen to T.J. now?”
Papa looked out at the climbing sun, a round, red shadow behind the smoggish heat. He didn’t answer immediately, and it seemed as if he were debating wheth
er or not he should. Finally, very slowly, he looked down, first at me, then at Stacey. He said quietly, “He’s in jail right now.”
“And—and what then?” asked Stacey.
Papa studied us. “He could possibly go on the chain gang….”
“Papa, could he…could he die?” asked Stacey, hardly breathing.
“Son—”
“Papa, could he?”
Papa put a strong hand on each of us and watched us closely. “I ain’t never lied to y’all, y’all know that.”
“Yessir.”
He waited, his eyes on us. “Well, I…I wish I could lie to y’all now.”
“No! Oh, Papa, no!” I cried. “They wouldn’t do that to ole T.J.! He can talk his way outa just ’bout anything! Besides, he ain’t done nothing that bad. It was them Simmses! Tell them that!”
Stacey, shaking his head, backed away, silent, not wanting to believe, but believing still. His eyes filled with heavy tears, then he turned and fled down the lawn and across the road into the shelter of the forest.
Papa stared after him, holding me tightly to him. “Oh, P-Papa, d-does it have to be?”
Papa tilted my chin and gazed softly down at me. “All I can say, Cassie girl…is that it shouldn’t be.” Then, glancing back toward the forest, he took my hand and led me to the house.
Mama was waiting for us as we climbed the steps, her face wan and strained. Little Man and Christopher-John were already in bed, and after Mama had felt my forehead and asked if I was all right she sent me to bed too. Big Ma had already gone to the Averys’ and I climbed into bed alone. A few minutes later both Mama and Papa came to tuck me in, talking softly in fragile, gentle words that seemed about to break. Their presence softened the hurt and I did not cry. But after they had left and I saw Papa through the open window disappear into the forest after Stacey, the tears began to run fast and heavy down my cheeks.
In the afternoon when I awakened, or tomorrow or the next day, the boys and I would still be free to run the red road, to wander through the old forest and sprawl lazily on the banks of the pond. Come October, we would trudge to school as always, barefooted and grumbling, fighting the dust and the mud and the Jefferson Davis school bus. But T.J. never would again.
I had never liked T.J., but he had always been there, a part of me, a part of my life, just like the mud and the rain, and I had thought that he always would be. Yet the mud and the rain and the dust would all pass. I knew and understood that. What had happened to T.J. in the night I did not understand, but I knew that it would not pass. And I cried for those things which had happened in the night and would not pass.
I cried for T.J. For T.J. and the land.
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BOOKS BY MILDRED D. TAYLOR
The Friendship
The Gold Cadillac
The Land
Let the Circle Be Unbroken
Mississippi Bridge
The Road to Memphis
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Song of the Trees
The Well
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Page 21