I remembered him trying to learn how to pimp. He never quite got it down. I used to turn away when he came by trying to walk like that; it was too tragic a sight. He also had a huge afro and a pick that was stuck in it. Not that there was anything wrong with an afro—I had one myself—but I knew that Mark didn’t want one. He wanted to please the cool guys he was trying to hang out with—the ones who could shoot hoops and get any girl but needed their coaches to coerce their teachers into giving them a passing grade. But Mark was not an athlete. He was not cool. He had no coaches to back him up, and the girls found him awkward. But he kept trying to hang in this group rather than be seen in the same light as his little brother. I watched him struggle and lose himself. I watched one of the smartest people I ever knew graduate number 100 out of a graduating class of 110. I watched him grow more and more somber. I watched him go to work at the meatpacking plant and come home in tears.
Mark didn’t want to hear anything from anybody. He didn’t want to hear “I told you so” from me, and he didn’t want to hear “You doing alright” from those who shared the same boat. Those people didn’t want to see him moping around making them think that their lives weren’t sufficient. So Mark shut down. He worked, watched television, and slept. If he was watching TV and anyone came in to watch with him, he would leave.
When people spoke to him on the street, he ignored them. Once, I left a clipping about my first touchdown on my bed. I found it balled up under my pillow with a note that said, “Don’t leave this shit out again.”
•••
One day, completely out of the blue, I came home to find Daddy sitting on his tractor, staring across the field. He hadn’t had the tractor out of the shed since being forced to lease the farm. I saw him there from a distance. But over that distance, I felt his pain. I could see it in the way he sat, the set of his shoulders as he leaned forward, his arms draped across the steering wheel of his old Massey Ferguson. I didn’t know what had hurt him, but instinctively I knew that something wasn’t right. And though we were barely on speaking terms, he was still my father. I felt for him and all that we had once meant to each other. Yet, at the same time, I was afraid for what this scene might mean for me. I wondered if I’d done something wrong, or if someone had perceived that I’d done something wrong.
So I decided to leave him be. I didn’t need to know about it until I could no longer avoid it.
I decided to go into the house, drop off my stuff, and go out to the woods until everyone was asleep. But when I walked into the kitchen, Mama was standing over the sink quietly crying and looking through the window at her husband. She barely noticed me as I walked in. She didn’t bother to do that thing with her face that she usually did. She only blinked as the door closed behind me. On the kitchen table there was a note from Mark.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME!
DON’T THINK ABOUT ME! FORGET ME!
I’M GONE!!!
I went to what had been our bedroom and stared at the encyclopedias over his bed. The first step in our family’s disintegration had taken place, and though I felt it for a second, I refused to accept the guilt. Mark had known what he needed to do, but he let them fool him into thinking that they had something to offer him. I dropped my head. My brother was gone. His despair would linger over us and sadden us, but at the same time, it stoked my desire to escape the dreadful destiny of Canaan.
I kept fighting the only way I knew how to. I continued to study and learn. I dreamed that someday I would send off applications to colleges. When they saw how hard I worked, they would all accept me, and I would leave Canaan for good. If I didn’t keep up the work, I would become a clone of Mark, tossing boxes under Daddy’s watchful eye. He would laugh at me, knowing that I was as beholden to him as an adult as I was as a child, and also knowing that I had stolen none of his thunder.
•••
Aside from my schoolwork and football, you could say that I had no other life. I guess a lot of it was my fault. I probably had an opportunity to try to break back into black society in Canaan, but I never took advantage of the relaxed atmosphere that surrounded me. The community guilt, that is. I used the cease-fire in the war against Evan Walls to retreat, to withdraw into my own world. I circled the wagons and pulled out my Winchester. I was my sole protector, and that scared me because I was wounded. To be alone, wounded, and under the stress of anticipated aggression wasn’t easy.
I walked through my life as if I were a spy walking through a crowd, knowing all along that the police had my picture and were on the hunt. I constantly looked over my shoulder. I realized that the people of Canaan had a tremendous hold on my psyche. As much as I hated to admit it, they had me under their control. They could disrupt my life at any moment. All it would take was a word. Snowball. Tom. Oreo. At any moment someone could be planning a mission against me. If I caught two people whispering nearby, I thought they were talking about me. I thought the conspiracy of the moment was underway and that I would soon be raked over the coals in full view. Mama would be embarrassed and Daddy would inflict pain. I was paralyzed and alone, with no outlet for my anxiety except my journal where I wrote horrible poetry about my life and times. I missed the encouragement and soothing words of Mama Jennie, Bojack, and Eliza Blizzard. I had lost Bojack the year before, on the night of Canaan High School’s last football game of the season.
•••
For three years after my stay in the hospital, Bojack and I spent a lot of time together. He dusted off his old weights that he’d found in a junkyard and taught me how to pump iron, helping me sculpt my body for football. We spent every Sunday studying and refining the game. Lessons that I began put to good use during my one year of junior varsity football at Canaan High School. Lessons that proved valuable, bringing my talents to the fore and into the good graces of my coaches and local sports media. I felt the heat from my old buddies, T. Wall and Flak, who were also on the team. They felt I was shucking and jiving, trying to be the coach’s pet. So we stayed away from each other outside of practice and game play.
Bojack and I spent every Friday night together following our varsity team, dreaming of the day when I would be playing with the big boys.
Those boys’ nights out always ended with us in Bojack’s truck, parked out in front of his house, discussing what was good and bad about the way the teams played. We stayed in the truck because Aunt Mary had long ago declared their home off limits to me.
On this particular night, I hadn’t noticed that Bojack was unusually quiet. I was still spinning from the exciting ending of the game. We had lost, and I was talking about how the Canaan players who made the crucial mistake would carry that mistake all their lives.
“I guess that’s the risk you take when you go out there and put it all on the line, huh?” I asked Bojack as we came to a stop in front of his house.
I noticed that he hadn’t heard me.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Huh?” he replied, after snapping to.
“I asked if there was something wrong.”
He nodded as he turned off the truck and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Yeah, I reckon.”
“Is it me?”
“Yeah. It’s about you.”
I sat back and looked straight ahead as he told me how Aunt Mary had declared that night’s game as the last football game we’d see together. He said that she had forbidden him from seeing me for any reason. He said that he had put up a fight until she threatened to divorce him again.
I sat there in shock.
“I know how you feels,” Bojack said. “Hell, I was shocked, too, when she tossed it my way. I reckon she just wants to hurt you.”
“She has.”
“Yeah, well I ain’t feeling too swift, neither,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell her that you were going to do what you wanted to?”
“I told you she said she was gone divorce me. We done done that once already.”
“I can’t believe she wou
ld divorce you because of me. I just can’t see that.”
“She would. Believe me. I wouldn’t lie to you of all people. I thank what it come down to is you and them white folks you be hanging out with. And Mary will go to all kinds of extremes where white folks is concerned.”
“What does she care? They’re not after her!”
“She figures they might be. See, she feel like you be bringing ’em around into our circles, and then they be forcing their ways on us. And I ain’t got to tell you what Mary be thanking about their ways.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t.”
“She feel like your white friends might become my friends, seeing as how close you and me is.”
“So if I don’t see you, she don’t have to worry about white folks getting to her through you? I’m sorry, but that’s some bullshit!”
“Maybe so.”
For a few minutes, we both stared at his house, me hating Aunt Mary and both of us thinking of things gone by and things that were supposed to be. I couldn’t believe I was losing Bojack. He was my best friend, not to mention my only black male friend. He was also the last shoulder I had to lean on.
“So, it’s over. Just like that?” I asked.
He slowly nodded. “I reckon so, Evan. I reckon so. Worse part is that I can’t come to none of your football games next year when you be varsity.”
“I’ll remember what you taught me,” I said, trying to make him feel better.
“Thanks.”
“I reckon you better go now,” he said.
“Okay. Yeah, I guess so.”
“I’m sorry, Evan. You know I loves you. It’s just that I don’t want to be alone no more. I’m too old for that shit, and me and Mary did have something special. Maybe we can get it back again. I don’t know. But we do has some history together, and it ain’t that easy to just throw away.”
“I understand. I’m glad I’m playing varsity next year, though, because without you to buy me tickets for me, I wouldn’t see any football. I want to thank you for all the games. I mean, it really meant a lot to me.”
“Thank you,” he said, and he wiped his eyes and gave me a hopeful smile. “Let me work on her, see what I can do.”
“Okay,” I replied, smiling back. “I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah, you’ll see me.”
So I left Bojack and went to the woods, where I promptly picked up a bottle, called it “Aunt Mary,” and then smashed it against my rock.
When I was finished releasing as much of that anger as I could, I rested against a tree, catching my breath and wondering who I would turn to when things went wrong. I had just lost Bojack, which made me think back to nine months after the beating I took at school and a history class that moved me to tears but also signaled the departure of Eliza Blizzard from Canaan and my life.
•••
I hadn’t seen Eliza since she visited me in the hospital. By the time I returned to school, she’d moved to Washington, DC. She had a new job with a big title at the national office of the NAACP. But she was on her way back to take me on this mysterious trip she’d promised. I was anxious to see her and to hear about her new adventures. Bojack drove me to the airport to pick her up, and I couldn’t control my joy as we watched her deplane and cross the tarmac into our waiting arms.
It felt like she and Bojack were brother and sister. They talked and laughed across me as I sat in the middle of his pickup’s seat. I imagined for a moment that they were Mama and Daddy and we were a happy family.
Within an hour, I was surprised to find us rolling to a stop in a parking lot on the campus of Hampton Institute.
“Is this where we’re going?” I asked
“It is,” Eliza said. “Do you know much about it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know anything about it.”
She looked perturbed.
“It’s a beautiful place, Evan. It’s an institution of higher education just for black folks. It has a rich history, and it truly pains me that you know nothing about it. It’s in your state, for God’s sake. Not even an hour and a half away from your home. But you’re here now, and soon you’ll understand why I brought you. I have a friend who has a friend in the administration here. She made a call for me and helped set this up for us. First, let’s take a walk around campus to just get a feel for the place. Then we are going to meet a young lady who will take you to a history class with her, and then we’ll have lunch. Sound okay?”
“If you think it’s alright.”
“It most definitely is,” she said. “In fact, Evan, I think it’s just what the doctor ordered.”
We said goodbye to Bojack, who stretched out in the truck for a nap. “Wake me up for the food,” he said as we walked away.
I walked along the waterfront with Eliza past the president’s house and deeper into the campus. She took me to the football field, and I sprinted around a bit, pretending to catch a few touchdown passes, imagining what it would be like to play college football.
As we walked to meet my student guide, I did so slowly because I got caught up in everything that was happening around me, just as Eliza knew I would. She smiled at me and kept an arm around my shoulders to keep me moving in the right direction. I kept getting distracted as I walked, glancing here and there at the students all around me, rushing to class and talking a mile a minute. Black students with books, smiling, chatty. We passed intense discussions about classwork between students in leather jackets and huge afros, tight jeans, short skirts, and platform shoes. There was an argument about something math related. But Eliza said that they weren’t arguing. It was something different—a passionate intellectual discourse. Something I was not used to. I kept waiting for someone to call someone an Uncle Tom, but it never happened.
There was a fierceness in the faces of these students. They looked anything but timid. They strode full of confidence, purpose, power, and self-respect. Stupefied by the contrast between my world and this new world, I was already getting emotional when Eliza gently stopped me from wandering.
“We’re here,” she said. “I think this young lady walking toward us might be your guide.”
“Look at that building,” I said, pointing toward a massive structure behind the student approaching.
She was smiling when she stopped in front of us. “I see you like my dorm,” she said.
“That’s where you sleep?” I asked. “It’s like a castle.”
Eliza and the young woman laughed.
“I’m Eliza Blizzard, and this is Evan Walls.”
“Good morning to you both. My name is Nomi Washington, and I’m going to take Evan to my American history class. I think you’ll like it. We’re starting Reconstruction today.”
Eliza and Nomi shook hands and planned to meet in an hour by the tree.
“What tree?” I asked.
“That’s for later,” Eliza said. “You go to class and learn something, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
“You might need to keep a hand on him so he doesn’t wander away,” she called to Nomi as we walked away. “I think all of this knowledge has disoriented him a little.”
“I’ve got him,” Nomi said, laughing, as we continued. She began to tell me about her dorm. “Virginia-Cleveland Hall. It’s the oldest women’s residence hall on campus. The guy who designed it, the architect, also designed the base of the Statue of Liberty. That’s cool, right?”
All I could do was nod.
Nomi put me in the seat beside her in the classroom. Within moments, I was in awe of the way the professor ran the class. Back at Canaan High, you were lectured to, took notes, and took tests. That morning at Hampton Institute, I watched a very thoughtful and educational discourse. Sure, there were facts and dates, but he wanted to hear about political strategies. He wanted to know about the motivation for things. He wanted the students’ interpretations of events, and he treated each opinion with great respect. It was stunning to me, and I q
uickly understood why Eliza brought me here. I imagined myself having something worthy to say, and the professor would look me in the eye, without hate, and actually hear me. And my fellow students would applaud my knowledge. It was definitely one of those pinch-yourself moments.
The class went by way too fast. I just wanted to stay in that moment. I felt my dream had found its home, and I have no words to explain what filled up my heart. I wished that I could have followed Nomi all day to soak up everything, but there was a plan. She took me to the tree to meet Eliza, who could tell that I was rattled.
“I think I understand,” Nomi said when we stood next to Eliza. “I was tipped off a little about why you’re here today.”
She gave me a long hug and then taught me a handshake that they did on campus.
“Good luck, Evan,” she said. “I hope you come to Hampton when you graduate.”
She left after a squeeze of my shoulder and a smile. Bojack joined us as we watched her disappear in the crowd.
“You okay, little brother?” he asked.
I just stared back at the two of them. “Where?” I asked, tears welling. “Where do black people like this live?”
“All over, baby,” Eliza said. “All over. And in time, you will find your way to them, but you got to be strong and hold on to what you want. Let’s go sit down.”
We sat in the shade of an oak tree. Its circumference was simply immense. It had a massive trunk with gnarled limbs that were so long and heavy that they grazed the ground. You could feel its age and the history that it had absorbed.
“This is a very, very special tree,” Eliza said.
“You ain’t gotta say it,” Bojack said. “You can feel that in the air.”
She smiled. “It’s called the Emancipation Oak. Evan, just after the Civil War, freed slaves began collecting around these parts. They were called contrabands by the Union soldiers. After a while, even though it was against the law in Virginia, they decided to start a school for—now, hear me good—all of the newly freed men and women who displayed, and I quote, ‘a great thirst for knowledge.’ So, in the shade of this tree, a sister by the name of Mary Smith Peake starting teaching. They sat right where you are sitting, hungering for knowledge. So you see, Evan, your dream isn’t a new thing. But for many black folk, it’s a thing long lost in the weeds of racism and self-hatred. Also delivered under this tree was the South’s first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. So right here they proclaimed the right to be free and to be educated. This is your legacy, Evan. You gotta fight for it.”
The Emancipation of Evan Walls Page 18