The Emancipation of Evan Walls

by Jeffrey Blount

  “Nothing,” I replied. “How about you?”

  “Well, I had to work early this morning. Had to get a truck of meat loaded and out. Fellas all talking about what the churches be teaching the kids in Bible school about what they oughta be looking for when they goes to school in the fall with the white kids. Telling them to walk in groups to and from they classes and to not talk to nobody white unless they spoken to. Telling all the boys ’specially not to talk with no white girls. But I don’t know why I’m telling you. I reckon you know all about that.”

  “No, I don’t know.” I said.

  “Ain’t you going to Bible school this summer?” he asked, looking concerned.

  “I tried.”

  “What you mean, tried?”

  “I rode there the first day on my bike, and when I was getting off it, I got hit by a rock. And then another rock and then another rock. I looked up, and it was Beno, Muskrat, and Taliferro Pitts. They kept on throwing ’em, and the other kids just stood around and laughed.”

  “Ain’t no grownups out there?”

  “Yes. There were some.”

  “And?”

  “They laughed, too,” I said, thinking painfully about how I had stared at a group of ladies who had known me since I was born. One lady, Mrs. Wharton, bandaged me and took me home when I fell off my bike one day in town. Now, she and the rest of the ladies returned my stare with one of their own, which said, “I know you ain’t even looking at me for no help.”

  “What you do then?” Bojack asked.

  “Got back on the bike and came home.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he replied. “You gone go back come Monday?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, I had to put up with being turned away by my friends at school because I had to go to school. But I don’t want to spend my summer going back for more.”

  “Your boys done completely turned on you, then?”

  I nodded. “I don’t ever go to T. Wall’s tree house no more. I miss them a lot. I miss playing with them the way I did before I was the teacher’s pet. I guess I get lonely.”

  “You got me and Mama Jennie,” Bojack said, opening his arms wide.

  I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, although my silence probably did anyway. I couldn’t tell him that while I had them both, they were adults. I wanted someone to run with like before. Someone to fight wars with in the backyard, someone whose marbles I could win in a heated playground match, someone to sulk with when our parents punished us. But that was not to be. I often saw T. Wall from a distance, either at church or passing on the road. Our eyes would meet, but only for a second before he turned away.

  “I reckon I understand,” Bojack said, looking down and twirling the football.

  “So when I’m not at the library or shooting rats in the barn with my .22, I just come out here. I study my textbooks for the fall. I had to beg Mama to get them early, and I only got them after Mark decided to ask for his, too. I do that, and I write in my diary.”

  “What you say in there?” He pointed to my tablet.

  “Mostly about my wish that I could leave Canaan.”

  “Well, you can’t leave yet. We got to finish learning your football. We got to practice more. I got to get you on the weights. Here,” he said, handing me the ball. “I know I’m a month or so late, but this here is for you. Happy eleven-years-old, young brother. Brand new. Bought it at Sears this past Thursday night.”

  “Thanks, Bojack.”

  “Oh, it ain’t nothing,” he said. “’Specially next to this other surprise I done cooked up for you.”

  My face lit up, and he returned that with an even bigger smile and a laugh.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I thank I said it was a surprise. Which means I get to deliver when I feel good and ready.”

  “Well, I hope you get good and ready real soon.”

  We both laughed, and he reached out and brushed a hand across my head.

  •••

  As it happens, I didn’t have to wait very long. Three days later, I was riding shotgun in Bojack’s truck, smiling grandly with anticipation. I had been worried that Mama and Daddy wouldn’t let me go off to some undisclosed destination, especially with Bojack. But Daddy’s unexpected eruption of temper made it easy.

  During the week, something bad had happened to him at the meatpacking plant. To this day I’m not sure what it was because neither he nor Mama would say. But on the night it happened, he was in such a rage that she made Mark and me stay in our bedroom with the door closed. The three of us ate dinner on the floor between our beds while he ate alone at the kitchen table. She stayed with us as we did our homework and waited until he’d gone to bed before she ventured into the kitchen to clean up. Before she went into their bedroom, she made us promise to be scarce for the next couple of days.

  “Y’all got to give your daddy some time and space now,” she said.

  So when Bojack came to ask permission to take me for a ride, she happily consented. I was conflicted about feeling bad for her and feeling so excited to see what Bojack had in store for me. After a while, I just decided to go with the moment and worry about home when I returned.

  Silence took over the cab of the pickup because Bojack got tired of me asking where we were going. He instituted a gag order, which remained in place until we ended up on the outskirts of the other side of town. When his truck finally came to a stop, it did so in front of a little clapboard house in the woods. Swaddled in flowers and shrubbery, it was a well-cared-for home that made me feel good just looking at it. Mama Jennie would have loved it.

  “Are you ready, little brother?” Bojack asked as we made our way to the front door.

  “I sure am,” I responded. “But can you tell me who lives here?”

  “Well, why don’t you knock and find out for yourself?”

  So, I did and was subsequently frozen in place when Eliza Blizzard opened her front door.

  “Well, hello, young Evan,” she said.

  And she knew who I was, which immediately had my head spinning. This was the one and the only Eliza Blizzard standing in the doorway, and I could not find my voice. Positively or negatively and for as long as I could remember, her name and her presence had evoked the image of a larger-than-life figure. Unreachable. Untouchable. Unbeatable. As far as I was concerned, she might as well have been the quarterback for the Cowboys, and as I stepped inside her home, I wondered why she’d want to have anything to do with a lowly boy like me. I thought about asking for her autograph.

  But then I got a hold of myself, and I noticed something unexpected. Every time I’d seen her before, she’d been dressed for the carrying out of some serious business. But on this particular day, she was wearing faded jeans and a man’s shirt, untucked, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. She wore Keds just like many of us kids. After all of this worship or fear from afar, could it be that she was just regular folks?

  Bojack closed the door as she leaned over and put her face right in front of mine. And she spoke forcefully with that amazingly big voice.

  “Can you spell education?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said in my shaky voice.

  “Can you spell freedom?”

  “Yes, ma’am”—my voice a little stronger.

  “Well, alright then. You are welcome into my war room.”

  She draped her arm around my shoulders and walked me toward two pocket doors closed against each other. I’d never heard the phrase “war room” before and it made me nervous. I looked at Bojack, who was still smiling, so I tried to relax. Eliza slid the doors apart, and we followed her into her dining room. There were a dozen people present, some working at the table and others huddled off to the side in twos or threes. When we walked in, they all began to smile. One man stood and lifted a champagne bottle from a bowl of ice on the table. He popped the cork, poured the champagne into canning glasses, and then passed them around to the others. Eliza dipped another glass into the bowl of i
ce and filled it with Pepsi. She handed it to me as the adults raised their glasses. I followed suit, and they laughed.

  “You just hold yours regular,” Bojack said, and I complied, lowering my arm.

  Eliza Blizzard began to speak. “We are gathered here today to toast the liberator of knowledge.”

  I looked around to see which adult she was referring to, and I was stunned when I saw her turn to me.

  “Here’s to the brave black boy who freed the Canaan library all by himself.”

  “Hear, hear! Amen to that!” they shouted, and they drank a hearty toast to me.

  To me. Evan Walls.

  Bojack told me later that I zoned out. That I seemed to be in a trance. I don’t know what I looked like from the outside, but inside I was thinking how different this experience was from that life-altering night on my back porch. This was the complete opposite. When Eliza Blizzard’s friends shook me back into reality, I wished I could replace that night and those people with this day and these people. When I came to my senses, I spilled some of my Pepsi, but no one seemed to mind. I couldn’t remember ever receiving that kind of praise, and it touched me deeply.

  Eliza Blizzard sat me down at the table and put my drink in front of me.

  “Evan,” she asked, “do you know that you have done more to fight institutional racism than almost everybody in this town? You should be so proud of yourself. I am proud of you. We are proud of you. You are like us now. You’re an activist. I hope you will always find a way to help your people.”

  The ladies came around to give me hugs and kisses. The men shook my hand and looked strongly into my eyes.

  “Bless you, baby,” one lady said.

  “You’re the Lord’s treasure,” another said.

  “A brave, brave young man,” one of the men said.

  I guess Bojack could see that I was overwhelmed. He suggested that I take another drink.

  They left me alone for a little while to get myself together. Then, Eliza Blizzard laid white poster boards on the table in front of me. She placed some markers on top of them.

  “So, I need a sign, Mr. Liberator,” she said. “It should say, ‘Equal Education is Freedom for All.’ Can you do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I can.”

  “Well, carry on then, soldier of the cause.”

  I was never more careful with a project than I was that day. I carefully made the outlines for big letters in black. Then, I colored them in with red. While I worked, I listened as the adults, who had gotten back to business, planned for other events. They discussed school integration and the things that needed to be in place before the first day of school.

  “Bound to be a day from hell,” one of the men said.

  They spoke about some long-range plans, including grocery stores and a blow-your-mind plan to take down one of the town’s biggest racists. Something that would set the tone for a new age in Canaan.

  When the day was done, Bojack didn’t have to order quiet in the truck as he drove me home. I was at peace absorbing the fact that somebody had actually shown me respect. And that somebody had been Eliza Blizzard. At that moment, I felt like I could do anything, and I carried that feeling throughout the summer.

  SEVEN

  The night before that much-dreaded first day of school, I was stuffed from the Labor Day picnic at Mama Jennie’s house. I lay on my stomach close to the edge of the bed, my right arm hanging over the side to the floor. I was playing with the weave of the scatter rug, not the least bit sleepy.

  It was a warm September night and the windows were open. Through them came sounds of crickets, the comfortably haunting hoots of an owl, and, every once in a while, Bullet’s bark from somewhere in the fields.

  I was thinking that although it was a larger and better-planned Labor Day celebration than usual, it was pretty much unsuccessful. It was larger because Mama and Daddy and my many aunts and uncles wanted to give us children something extra special to enjoy before we went off to school—integrated school—which in the minds of some was like sending a child to war.

  All sorts of games had been set up. Badminton, Twister, a softball and bats, card games, checkers, Monopoly, and a football that was thrown around a bit. The football tempted me, but I knew my cousins wouldn’t be thrilled if I tried to join in. Dirty looks and some not-too-subtle body language made clear that nobody wanted to play with me. But in the presence of Mama Jennie, nobody attacked me overtly, so at least I could eat in peace.

  The games, just like the food, were taken seriously only briefly. No one played anything for long, and I couldn’t remember when there were so many steamed crabs left uneaten at one of our family picnics. Mama’s side of the family was famous for the number of bushels it could put away in an outing. As my aunt Missy used to say, “Child, when them folks from the seafood store see us coming, they starts to smiling for days.”

  Fear of the next day left most of the adults without much of an appetite. Instead of eating, drinking beer, and telling stories on one another, they sat around solemn and frustrated, talking about what they expected to happen to their kids. Some discussed holding their children out of school but decided against it because Mama Jennie told them it would only end up hurting their own.

  “The white kids still be getting they education, and you can be damn sure they ain’t gone care that you sitting yours at home protesting. At home getting nothing in them brains is exactly where they be wanting our chillen.”

  After that, some fantasized about having enough money to start a Canaan Academy for blacks, but those kinds of dreams always flew by empty and quick. The kids just sat around, dabbling at the games and eating a lot, mostly out of anxiety. By the time we got home, I was depressed.

  Across the bedroom, I heard Mark rustling the covers and guessed he was also suffering through a sleepless night. Finally, I heard the covers being tossed off, and my brother practically jumped off the bed. Since we were barely speaking to each other, I know he was surprised that I called out to him.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, sitting up.

  He turned toward me but said nothing. Maybe he wanted to but in the end decided that I wasn’t trustworthy enough. After a moment, he left the room, and then I heard him knocking on Mama and Daddy’s bedroom door.

  “What is it?” Daddy said quickly in a sleepless voice.

  “Mama, it’s me,” Mark said, his voice quaking. I knew he was struggling with his emotions because he called to Mama even though Daddy had answered. We always went to Daddy for cuts and scrapes, and to Mama for wounds of the soul.

  “Come in, baby,” she said.

  He opened their door, and I heard him burst into tears. All of a sudden I was terrified. This boy, fifteen years old, who had always seemed a rock, had broken down in the middle of the night.

  “I keep thinking about the terrible things white people have done to us,” he said through the darkness. “I’m scared.”

  I heard Mama get out of bed quickly and run to him.

  “My baby,” I heard her say in the dark, and I knew she was hugging him. Knowing Mama, she was holding him tight against her chest, rocking him gently, and caressing the back of his neck and head.

  “I know, baby. Mama knows.”

  And then I heard her begin to cry. My own tears made their way down my face, dropping onto my bed. Mama began to hum her favorite spiritual in Mark’s ear. I added the words in my mind.

  There is more peace somewhere

  There is more peace somewhere

  I’m gonna keep on til I find it

  There is more peace somewhere

  I imagined Daddy on their bed. He hadn’t uttered a sound. I figured that maybe a tear of anger had swollen. Anger at the things Mark was crying about, and surely anger at the fact that he could do nothing to protect his son from the white man and white kids. I remembered the shame of our Boy Scouts leaders the day the white scouts flaunted their Confederate flags.

  How does it feel to be him? I wondered. I imagi
ned there was no frustration greater than that of a black father helpless to fight for his children. No wonder so many black men became like Arthur Pitts and beat their wives, left their families, blinded themselves to life through alcohol, wilting beneath the pressure of constantly trying to preserve their manhood. In there lay my daddy, the proud and embattled Augustus Walls. He, too, was a victim of this continuous struggle, yet he battled on without drink and with his family intact. Never since that night have I respected him more. And as upset as I was with Mark, I felt for him too because I shared his fears of integration.

  •••

  I tried to suppress my fears that summer, but as school neared, storm clouds of anxiety settled over me. Just a couple of days before the Labor Day picnic, I visited Mama Jennie to vent the fear in my heart. She was preparing a tipsy cake while I watched from the kitchen table. A homemade sponge cake rested on a sheet of waxed paper next to her stirring bowl filled with a custard made of milk and egg. She was adding to it sherry wine, whipped cream, and almonds.

  “Everybody is real nervous about school,” I said. “Folks at the session don’t seem to talk about anything else. Mama and Daddy act like they’re sending us to Vietnam or something.”

  “Different kind of war. I catch the meaning,” she said, nodding as she poured the custard into a larger pan.

  I thought about that as she lowered the sponge cake into the custard and put a cloth over the whole thing. Then she sat down beside me and wiped a napkin across her sweaty forehead.

  “I reckon folks got reason to be afraid,” she said.

  “Are you afraid? Of white people, I mean?”

  Her face sagged; her eyes became sad and unfocused. It was like watching the brightest sun you could imagine dimmed by sinister clouds. She began to perspire again.

  “Hand me another napkin, baby,” she said.

  As she gently patted it over her face, I felt bad. I had put her in an awkward position. No black person liked to admit that they were afraid of white people, but I had to know if she was. I felt her answer would help me understand the proper level of concern needed to deal with the upcoming school situation.