"That ain't got nothin' to do with me. That was way yonder in New York or Chicago."
"It's everywhere, Pa. The law's gonna be everywhere."
"What law, Boy? Ain't no Temp'rance lady law got nothin' to do with me." Zeb pulled away and was headed back to his bar when Jonas grabbed his arm.
"You got to listen, Pa. The law is for everybody. It starts next year in January, and it says you can't sell whiskey no more. Nobody can, in New York or Chicago or Georgia."
Zeb looked at his son like he'd turned purple, grown a tail, and was breathing fire. "What you mean I can't sell whiskey no more? What kinda law is that? Who made it?"
"The President and the Congress."
Zeb snorted, then spat. "Damn gov'ment. I got nothin' to do with them and they got less than nothin' to do with me. When they give me back my son, then they can talk to me 'bout what I do. Otherwise, I don't want to hear nothin' from 'em or 'bout 'em."
***
Every physical act from sun up until way after dark, in the days and weeks following the flood, involved clearing and cleaning the land in an effort to salvage some crop that might be edible. And every thought that was not related to how they would feed themselves in the immediate wake of the destruction of the crops, was of Beaudry and Eubie and when they would return. The war had been over for three months.They knew that the journey was a long one—an ocean voyage that took several weeks. But since they hadn't been to Belle City since the flood, they had no idea how long the wait would or should be. And, because they'd made no visit to the college and had no talks with the professors, they hadn't heard any of the stories about the returning soldiers and how some families secretly were thinking that the husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers who returned to them broken in body, mind and spirit, might have been better off had they perished in a muddy, bloody field somewhere in France or Germany or Belgium or Russia. Big Si and Nellie Thatcher certainly never would have thought they'd be better off without their Beau, even the spiritually wasted Beaudry Thatcher whom First Freeman returned home to his family late on an early March night.
Freeman had promised that he would come with Beau and Eubie as soon as they arrived home and there'd been a light burning in the front room since the announcement of the war's end. Big Si, who'd taken to sleeping in his clothes, was up and at the door at the sound of the first knock. "What?' he said, his face pressed against the door.
"It's me," First Freeman said, and everybody except Uncle Will was standing behind Big Si when he opened the door. Nobody paid heed to the gust of frigid air that blew in before either of the people entered. "Come on, Son, it's aw'right," the old man said as gently as if speaking to a young child, and he pushed a gaunt, hollow-eyed young man into the room.
Like all mothers everywhere, it was Nellie who first recognized her son in the stranger. She inhaled deeply, then breathed his name and reached for him, pulling him into a one-armed embrace, her other arm outstretched to enfold the other son, and she held it there until the truth dawned: There was only one son. Then she screamed and Beau blinked, realized where he was and with whom, and grabbed his mother and held on. Then everybody else grabbed Beau and held on. First Freeman closed and locked the door, then stirred the fire to life and added several logs and lit the lanterns.
Nellie was weeping so hard she couldn't speak a full sentence; she just kept repeating her sons' names over and over: "Beau, Eubie, Beau, Eubie."
Finally Beau spoke, a harsh croak of a voice, and everybody stilled to hear him. "Eubie ain't dead, Ma, Pa. He ain't dead, you hear?"
"Then where is he, Beau?"
Beau looked at his questioner as if at a stranger. Then he smiled, and the smile turned into a huge grin, and he became their Beau. "Ruthie. Is that you? Is that growed up lady my baby sister?" And he grabbed her and hugged her and swung her all around. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, unaware that she was crying. And when he finally put her down he grabbed his father and both men wept, the younger one sounding more like a little boy than a grown man. Then the big brother freed himself, wiped his eyes dry with the backs of his hands, and turned his attention to his little brothers—both now as tall as himself. He extended his arms and they rushed into his embrace. They didn't know what to say to each other so they just stood there, holding each other up, supporting each other. They stood like that until they heard Nellie say, "Eubie?" And it was not a name she spoke but a question.
Beaudry turned to his mother. "Eubie ain't dead, Ma, I swear. And he ain't hurt, neither."
"Then where is he, Beau?"
"He stayed there. In France."
"How, if the war is over?" Big Si demanded to know.
"Why?" his three younger siblings demanded in unison, the three of them looking and sounding so much alike that Beau felt as if he'd been away for twenty years instead of two.
"'Cause they treat Colored better over there than here. 'Cause he says he can be a man over there and he can't be here. They had parties for us, those French people did, and they treated us just like they treated the white soldiers, like we wasn't no different from them."
"Then why didn't you stay, Beau?" Tobias asked, and the look his pa gave him made him back up a step.
Beau looked at them, from one to the other. "'Cause of y'all...and 'cause all white people is the same to me, I don't care what language they talk. Fact is, it was a whole lot worse to me, not understandin' what they was sayin' while they was smilin' at me, than if they was cussin' and yellin' and callin me nigger."
"They don't do that, Beau? Cuss at us and call us niggers?" Little Si's eyes had widened at the thought though he couldn't really comprehend it. Then he thought about Jonas, who was his best friend and who wasn't anything like his pa. He wanted to talk more, to hear more about white people who didn't hate Colored people, but then Beau gave his head a forceful shake, as if trying to rid his brain of all the thoughts or memories residing there.
"Don't matter whether they do or not," he said, and suddenly he no longer looked like Beaudry Thatcher but again like the too-thin, bald, wild-eyed stranger Mr. First had brought into their home on a dark and cold March night.
Suddenly everybody was speaking at once: "Y'all need to eat," Big Si said, at the same time that Nellie said, "Beau, you hungry?" Tobias said, "Beau, we got a mule." Little Si said, "I can shoot the bow and arrow as good as any Injun." Ruthie said, "Guess what, Beau? I'm goin' to college." But it was First Freeman's growly baritone that overrode it all: "Where Will'am?" he said, and there was an almost accusatory tone to his voice.
Big Si looked toward the closed door that led up to the attic. "He sleeps like a dead man, Mr. First. Been that way ever since what happened on Juneteenth."
Beaudry was back to himself. "What's wrong with Uncle Will? What happened to him on Juneteenth?" He headed for the door. "I'm gon' go get him."
"Beau!" That much hadn't changed: His mother's quiet but powerful voice stopped him in his tracks and he turned to face her, a grown man who'd lived through a war, true, but first, his mother's son. "Sometimes when he first wakes up, he's...confused. You wake him up quick, this time of night—" She raised her hands, then brought them to her face and pressed, hard, as if she could contain or constrain the too many emotions inside her.
"Lord have mercy," Freeman said. "Y'all shoulda told me Will'am was took so bad."
"It ain't all the time," Big Si said defensively. "In fact, most times he's his usual self."
"What happened on Juneteenth?" Beaudry said again, and they told him. "You say he's dead? Good. That means I don't have to go kill him."
They could have been carved statues so still and silent were they, standing close together, almost in a circle, around the beloved son and brother who now was equally brooding—and quite possibly dangerous—and a stranger. He might have been able to kill white men in Germany or France, but he certainly could not kill a white man in Georgia.
"That kinda talk—that'll get you kilt," First Freeman said.
"I
don't care," Beaudry said.
"It'll get your Ma, your Pa, your brothers and your sister and Will'am kilt, too."
Beaudry was silent and still for a moment. "It ain't right."
"No, it ain't right. Ain't never been right, won't never be right, Son, but ain't nothin' we can do 'bout any of it," Big Si said, his big hand wrapped almost all the way around the too thin arm of his son, holding him, holding on to him.
"They kilt a boy over in Sylvester not too long ago. Like you, he just come back from over yonder in the War, still had on his uniform. He said he wasn't payin' no more mind to no Jim Crow. They 'rested him and give him thirty days but a mob of white folks dragged him outta the jail and strung him up."
"That's why Eubie stayed in France," Beau said.
"But what will he do, Beau? What can he do in France?" Nellie asked.
"Farm, just like here. He already good as got him a farm—and a wife to go with it."
"No!" Nellie's one word cut like a hunting knife. "No. No. No. I ain't havin' that. No boy of mine is gon' marry with no white woman, 'specially no foreign white woman."
They all looked at her, no one of them willing—or able—to speak. Then all eyes shifted from Nellie to Big Si with the unspoken message: Say something. Do something.
Big Si cleared his throat. "Ain't nothin' we can do 'bout it, Nellie."
"Yes, I can."
"How? With him way over there and us over here?"
"I'm goin' to Belle City to talk to...what's that professor's name, Mr. First? The one who can read and talk that language?"
"You ain't goin' to no Belle City," Big Si said.
"I'm goin' to France if I have to. I want my boy back and I mean to have him back and nobody livin' can stop me."
***
Little Si, Ruthie and Jonas were so happy to see each other that they hugged and danced and whooped and hollered and laughed, all of them talking at once. They didn't have long to spend together this Friday night: Jonas knew he should be at the market helping Cory with the end-of-the-week shoppers and the money they spent, and Ruthie and Little Si were supposed to be hunting and fishing—finding something to put into the stew pot that would make the few onions and turnips they had stretch into a real meal. They weren't thinking about duty, though; they were, for the first time in a long time, just being children—doing what they wanted to do for a change instead of heeding parental dictates. Ruthie and Little Si also were getting a quickie of a spelling lesson.
"How does it feel to go to school every day, Jonas? I wish I could go to school every day. I'd be so happy." Ruthie grabbed the book that Jonas offered, staring so hard at the words and the images, imprinting them on her mind and memory.
"What part do you like the best?" Little Si asked. "I'd like reading the stories the best."
"I like writing the stories the best," Jonas said. "We get to write our own stories, anything we want to write about."
"You write about it raining and the creek flooding and killing all the crops?"
Jonas shook his head. "Nuh uh. My own stories, the ones I make up."
"Like what, then?" Little Si demanded to know.
Jonas was quiet for a moment. "Like me—not real me, make believe me, living in Belle City in a big house and having a motorcar and a radio and diff'rent shoes for every day."
What began as a giggle turned into a loud guffaw as Ruthie tried to imagine Jonas as a Belle City dandy. "And a hat, Jonas, you got to have hat," she said through her laughter, remembering photographs she'd seen in newspapers and magazines of fancy white men—and the real thing she'd seen in Belle City on the drive through town to get to the Black colleges.
"Yeah," Jonas said thoughtfully, "a hat, maybe a couple of hats."
"How you spell hat?" Little Si asked, grabbing the spelling book from Ruthie.
Jonas spelled 'hat' and both his friends repeated it several times. "Show us how to write it," Ruthie said, and Jonas did. Then they sat on the ground that had finally dried out from the flood, though being mid-April it wasn't as warm as it could be. The forest floor still was covered with muck and debris and though no longer soaked and soggy, it was messy and would probably take another five or six months to begin to degrade and blend into the naturally accumulated tree and plant matter. It was on that forest floor that they sat in a circle, the three of them, legs extended straight out to make a table. Ruthie and Little Si took turns writing the words that Jonas spoke: Hat, man, woman, cow, horse, chicken.
"Belle City," Ruthie called out. "Tell us how to write Belle City."
"B...e..." Jonas began, and was stopped by a loud, crashing noise that sounded like a boar coming toward them through the woods, and it was almost as dangerous: By the time the three of them leapt to their feet, Beau was upon them and he had grabbed Jonas before Ruthie and Little Si could stop him. He lifted Jonas and shook him like a rag doll. Jonas's eyes were huge and fear-filled, the fear rendering him speechless.
"Beau! Stop it!" It was Little Si who found his voice first.
"You keep away from my family." Beau had Jonas up in the air, level with his own face, and the two were nose to nose, eye to eye. "You keep away from my family," he said again.
"He's our friend, Beau," Ruthie said.
"He ain't your friend."
"Yes, he is, Beau," Little Si said, risking his own health and grabbing his brother's arm.
"He is our friend, Beau, honest," Ruthie said. "Please put him down, Beau, and don't hurt him. Please." Ruthie grabbed Beau's other arm, and the bigger boy released the smaller one, who fell to the ground and, on all fours, scuttled backwards.
"Uncle Will said cain' nobody be friends with Zeb Thatcher's kin."
"Jonas ain't like his Pa," Little Si said.
Beau looked hard at Jonas. "That right? You ain't like your Pa?" Jonas nodded his head. "How come you ain't? You don't care 'bout him?"
Jonas struggled with the thought and the dilemma it posed. "I do care 'bout him. He's my Pa. But sometimes..."
"Sometimes what? Sometimes like the other day when he ran me outta town, what about sometimes like that? I went lookin' for work and he ran me outta town, tol' me wouldn't nobody in Carrie's Crossing hire a nigger to do nothin'. What you think about that?"
Jonas shook his head, misery taking the place of the fear that had so recently filled him, and he didn't know which was worse—the fear or the misery—but neither allowed him to find his voice. He just shook his head again.
"Jonas is teaching us to read and write, Beau, 'cause we ain't got no school," Little Si said as he bent down to pick up the book. "See?"
Beau snatched the book from his brother and tossed it at Jonas. "Keep your book and your teachin' 'cause we don't need 'em."
"Yes, we do." Ruthie grabbed his arm and hung on to him. "I want to learn to read and write, Beau, and we ain't got no school. I want to go to college in Belle City. Ma said I can go, but I got to read and write first."
The forest air was soft and quiet and the three human beings did nothing to disturb it for a long moment. The three Colored Thatchers stood together facing the white Thatcher, no more than four feet separating them, the whole world between them.
"Will you tell me about the war?" Jonas asked in small voice.
"Naw, I ain't tellin' you nothin'."
"Please, Mr. Beau. Please."
Before his anger could take him again, Beau was startled into amazement: This young white boy had called him "mister," and judging by the look on his face and the tone of his voice, he meant it. "Why you wanna know 'bout the war?"
"'Cause my brother died over yonder. In France. And we don't know nothin' 'bout it."
"Where 'bouts in France? You know that much?"
Jonas nodded. "I can't say it, but I can spell it: Y-P-R-E-S."
Beau shuddered like it was the middle of winter and closed his eyes.
"That's what was on the paper the government sent us. Pa tore it up and threw it away but I wanted to know..." Jonas stopped talking because
it seemed that Beau had stopped listening, but then he opened his eyes and it was clear to the three children that what Beau Thatcher saw was something, someplace other than the springtime woods of Carrie's Crossing, Georgia.
"Belgium," Beau said in a hoarse, dry whisper, as if once again choked by the gas that had permeated the battle fields of Europe.
The three children looked at Beau, then at each other; Jonas, finally, nudged Little Si and then Ruthie, the message being: He's your brother; you ask him.
"Say what, Beau?" Ruthie touched her brother's arm, and he came back. "Say what?"
"Ypres. It's in Belgium, not France."
"Where's Belgium? Is that a country?"
Beau nodded. "Next door to France and the people there, most of 'em, speak French. They speak some other thing too...I can't remember what it's called..." He shuddered again and his whole body convulsed.
"Was it cold over there, Beau?" Little Si asked.
"Good God yeah it was cold. And wet and muddy and...and..." He shuddered again. "And the stink. Good God the stink." He finally looked at them, at Jonas. "How old was your brother?"
"Twenty," Jonas said.
"Seemed like everybody who died was eighteen or nineteen or twenty," Beau said, again in that raspy, scratchy whisper. "Our boys or theirs, didn't matter."
"Was he a hero?" Jonas asked in a tiny voice. "You a hero, a war hero."
Beau gave him a hard look.
"Was my brother a hero like you?"
"He's lucky is what he is," Beau said.
Now Jonas was mad. "He's dead. Ain't nothin' lucky 'bout bein' dead."
Beau reached out and Jonas flinched, then relaxed as Beau put a hand on his shoulder. "One day, maybe, somebody'll write a book about what it was like over yonder and you can read it and know I'm tellin' the truth when I tell you if your brother was in Ypres, he's lucky to be dead 'cause them that ain't dead, wish they was—wish they really and truly was dead 'stead of just halfway dead."
"How can somebody be halfway dead, Beau?" Ruthie asked, grabbing his arm and forcing him to look at her, to come all the way back to them. "Dead is dead, ain't it?"
"A body can be walkin' 'round but can't sleep, can't eat, can't breathe, can't think. Like all them boys what came back from Ypres and the Somme and the Argonne Forest and the Russian front." He looked hard at Jonas again. "Y'all got newspapers. You don't have to wait for nobody to write a book. It was in the newspapers how it was."
Belle City Page 11