Those are the last words said from Jones Property all the way to the courthouse in Jackson.
We just riding around and riding around because it ain’t no place to park near the courthouse. There must be something else going on in downtown Jackson today. It looks like Harlem, it’s so many cars parked on the streets.
Walking up the courthouse steps, I can see people I know real good already going inside. Miss Nora, Mr. Bay, Miss Blanche, Miss Novella; even Ole Man Taylor is here. I can’t believe my eyes when we get inside. This courthouse is full to the top. No wonder it ain’t nowhere to park. No black folks are picking cotton today because they are all right here. And white folks ain’t doing whatever white folks do all day either because they are all here too.
The black folks side of the courthouse is full already. Mr. William Spencer Creecy the schoolhouse principal, just spotted us and he motioning with his big hands for us to come down front.
“Good morning to you all,” he says in his big, strong voice as he points to an empty row.
“I saved seats for you, Miss Babe. For you and your family.”
I smile at Mr. Creecy because I don’t know anybody on this earth like him. He is the only man I know other than Uncle Buddy that I can speak his name in the same breath with my grandpa. Well, maybe Mr. Wright. But Mr. Creecy got something that even my grandpa didn’t have. He got schooling. A lot of schooling. He went to Shaw University a few years and graduated from Elizabeth City College. He is the reason I want to go to Shaw. I want to talk like he talks. I want to stand straight and proud like him. Mr. Creecy can make white folks do anything.
Word around town is Mr. Creecy gave Mayor Smith a tongue-lashing for helping bail them seven men out of jail who tried to hang Uncle Buddy. Yep, it’s safe to say that white folks scared of Mr. Creecy. He got something hanging in his office that they are never going to have in their nice white houses. A college degree!
“Mercy to the highest,” I say when I look behind us.
“What is it, child?” Ma asks as I turn around and look in the back of the courthouse again.
“Look, Ma, the black folks done started sitting on the white folks’ side. It ain’t enough room for them over here.”
Up until ten minutes before the trial starts, that’s what they do. They come in and sit right beside the white folks. Fed up is what black folks are. They are fed up! They going to sit where they want to sit this day.
“All rise,” Sheriff Franklin, who is the sheriff over here in Jackson, says as the judge coming in. That’s the same judge who moved Uncle Buddy’s court date from June to November, giving them white boys time to break Uncle Buddy out of jail and try to hang him. I know this ain’t nice, but I just want to run up there and slap the taste out of that judge’s mouth. He is mad as all get-up. Ma says he mad because of all the reporters that are going to write about this God forsaken place when this trial is over. He mad because he can’t hide what is really going on around here no more!
The judge takes his seat, and then we all set down. The lawyer who says he represents them white men stands up and starts talking the craziest mess I have heard since they arrested my uncle. I can’t believe what I am hearing. Now, I ain’t but twelve going on thirteen, but I do know that this ain’t the way no trial is suppose to be. The lawyer is making speeches about what the South is suppose to be like, talking about Southern tradition, and the heritage of white folks, and how pure the white woman is. Now he talking about the horror of Reconstruction. Well, thank God Mr. Wright told me what Reconstruction means and how it’s a good thing. Well, good for black folks and bad for white folks.
According to Mr. Wright, after slavery ended white folks was killing colored folks just because they were not slaves anymore. But then things kind of settled down for a minute and before you knew it, whites was living in their world and colored were living in theirs. Somehow white folks just thought black folks were getting too big for our britches and they started all this lynching, just like they did right after President Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863.
Mr. Wright said one way the white men justified killing colored men was they claimed that the black men were raping white women. Maybe a few black men were doing bad stuff, but Mr. Wright said it was no different than all the bad stuff the white man had done to black folks for three hundred years. Three hundred years. Lord, that is a long time for people to be treated like dogs. Mr. Wright told me the reason my skin is as light as it is, is because of white men raping black women. I believe him too, because he showed me some pictures of some real Africans and they were black-black and blue-black. Mr. Wright and me both agree that is the color we all should be.
So I sit here and listen to the white attorney for the seven white men who tried to kill my uncle talk all that crazy mess. But I know better.
I’m holding on to a new pocketbook that I bought in Harlem. Ain’t much money in it. But I got Mr. Wright’s book and Grandpa’s obituary in here. I gave one obituary to Uncle Buddy and got me another one out of the chest when I got back to Rehobeth Road. This is for me, for life. I wanted to bring something that would make these white folks straighten up and act right. Maybe they will feel Grandpa here like I do today They should feel his presence because they killed him and this obituary is proof.
My grandpa was a good man. He would have liked Mr. Wright and all the stuff he told me about the North and the South. Grandpa liked hearing the truth.
Yeah, I’m glad that I got my hair permed for the first time in my life. I like the clothes BarJean made for me and the blouses Coy bought for me and most of all just to have the sight of Harlem in my head is real nice. But I learned about black folks and our heritage in Harlem. I like knowing the truth about freedom. I know that we were not always slaves and sharecroppers. I know that there were men before my grandpa that owned their own land. We ain’t animals like I hear Ole Man Taylor call Miss Blanche’s boy Felix, one day. We are from Africa. Our grandfolks were kings and queens. That’s what Mr. Wright said, and I believe him. Now this white man standing up here trying to tell me who we are.
Finally the lawyer is finished lying and now he is talking about why we are really here. He still making me sick talking about Uncle Buddy tried to rape that white woman and his clients being here because they are falsely accused of breaking into the county jail with the intent to hang Uncle Buddy. He just talking away until the judge ask for a recess.
“What is he talking about recess, Ma? Uncle Buddy lawyer ain’t talked yet.”
“Don’t know, child. Let’s just get something to eat and come back.”
“I ain’t hungry, Ma. Can I just sit outside and wait for you?”
“You can, as long as you stay in one spot.”
I follow Ma and Grandma outside. I set outside long enough for Ma to get across the street with Grandma to the black section of Jackie’s Cafeteria. I can’t wait to get back in that courthouse to see why we have to take a recess at eleven o’clock in the morning. Maybe Ma didn’t notice, but I noticed that most of the white folks didn’t move from their seats.
Ain’t nobody paying me no attention while I’m walking back up these big cement stairs. Nobody paying me one bit of attention peeking inside the courtroom either. They don’t have time for me. They are having some kind of celebration. But for what?
Oh, Lord! This is worse than trying to hang Uncle Buddy. They got a big picture of that man, Matt Ransom, and they getting ready to hang it over the judge’s bench. Now, Matt Ransom ain’t never done nothing bad to me, but he ain’t no hero to black folks. Grandpa use to tell me about that man all the time. He said that when the Yankees came to Northampton County to free slaves, Matt Ransom and his soldiers met them at the county line and turned hundreds of Yankees away. A few got through and did some damage to the plantations and tried to help slaves, but for the most part Matt Ransom led the charge that kept black folks in their place in this county long after slavery was over.
Now, here on the same day of my uncle Buddy’s t
rial, they are hanging Matt Ransom’s picture in the courthouse. This is the damndest thing I have ever seen. That’s right, I cursed. And I will do it again. On top of that, the seven men who tried to hang Uncle Buddy are walking around at this reception like they something special. The other white folks are patting them on their back like they believe they did the right thing. This mess is too much for me. I am going back outside and I ain’t telling no black folks what I just saw. Just as I turn to go out, I open my pocketbook to get a penny for a piece of bubble gum and Grandpa’s obituary gets caught up in the wind from the door and blows right out of my hand. Up into the air, over them white men’s heads and right on the face of Matt Ransom. It sits there for a minute. Then it falls between the wall and the judge’s chair.
Grandpa is really here! He’s here! Grandpa is trying to tell us everything is going to be all right.
I run over to Kennedy’s Dime Store for my bubble gum.
After the so-called recess, all the black folks come back inside and now everyone is whispering about the picture hanging behind the judge that was not there before. Most of them don’t know who Matt Ransom is. But I know and if Grandpa was here, he would know. They also don’t know that Grandpa’s obituary flew right against that picture ten minutes ago. Something strange is about to happen. You just watch.
Sure enough, five minutes after the recess the judge makes his decision. All seven men are acquitted. Mr. Wright told me what the word acquit means after I told him we were coming back down South for the trial. He said that acquittal means the white men were not going to stand trial and the case was over. Uncle Buddy said the word acquit means “white folks don’t get punished for trying to hang a nigger.” I think it means a little of both.
White folks just jumping up and down like they won some money. Colored folks ain’t saying a word. Grandma just hanging her head.
The judge finally asks everyone to sit down and it look like they are going to start Uncle Buddy’s trial now. At least we thought they were. Within a minute the judge tells the court that Uncle Buddy is acquitted too. They all crazy! The only reason they letting Uncle Buddy go is they do not want to tell the truth. They do not want to bring that white woman out here and let her tell the truth that Uncle Buddy ain’t never tried to touch her lily-white skin.
Black folks cheering now. As happy as I am for Uncle Buddy, I ain’t cheering. I ain’t cheering because this is what Mr. Wright said they were going to do. He said they were going to let them white folks go free and Uncle Buddy, too, so that the news reporters will leave town. Some of the reporters were already gone. Chick-A-Boo told me that there was a white reporter here last month all the way from the London Times. That’s right, from London, England. He left because some of the local whites told him that he was going to find himself in the Roanoke River if he stayed. The Roanoke River is one scary river. It’s back there in Occoneechee Neck. Let me tell you something. That white reporter don’t want to end up in there. Scared the man so bad that he left and said he was never coming back. He said Rich Square was evil, and I agree with that. All of the reporters did not leave. Uncle Buddy mostly talks with the black reporters when we get outside. One white reporter asks, “Well, Goodwin, what are you going to do now?”
“I’m leaving as soon as I go by the old home place to get my suitcase.”
When the white reporter walks away, Uncle Buddy tells the black newspaper people that he is going to stay on Jones Property tonight and leave for Harlem in a few days. He know better than to tell them white folks the truth. If they thought Uncle Buddy was going to stay with us tonight, they would try to hang all of us right there on Jones Property. Probably under the old oak tree that the tornado didn’t blow down.
12
The Storm
The telephone is ringing before we can even get out of the bed at Grandma’s this morning. I can tell from the way Ma is talking and saying big words that it is Lawyer Jenkins, Uncle Buddy’s lawyer. I grab my mason jar so I can hear better.
She is off the telephone now and going into the kitchen to tell Grandma and Uncle Buddy what the lawyer said. There must be some good white folks in the world after all. According to Ma, Governor Cherry of North Carolina is asking for a new trial. Not just a new trial, but he taking this mess over to Warren County to the big courthouse. They have what Ma says is the Superior Court there, where people go when they do not get the right verdict over in Jackson. Ma says that the governor said for Uncle Buddy to come back to Jones Property if he has left. Of course the governor’s white too, so he don’t know that Uncle Buddy sitting right here at the kitchen table. He don’t need to know that.
White folks mad as all get-up with the governor. I been reading in the paper that he receives ugly letters from white folks every day. According to Miss Mannie, who cleans up for Sheriff Franklin, the sheriff’s wife wrote the governor and told him a piece of her mind. So did most of the white women in Rich Square. White folks do not want any part of this mess. They just want it to go away like water that disappears on a hot summer day
Even Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, was involved for two minutes. That’s how this mess became big, big news. Governor Cherry contacted the FBI and asked them to investigate when Uncle Buddy first left. Mr. Hoover didn’t care about us. He sent the FBI down here only to close his investigation in a day and he told the newspapers, “No federal law has been broken.” But the law is the law and he should be shame of himself. Lord knows he ought to be shame of himself. And our so-called mayor should be ashamed too. He told the white newspapermen, “We like our coloreds as long as they stay in their place.”
I don’t know where our place is. All I know is this is the biggest mess since Ole Man Taylor caught his wife in bed with Mr. Stanley, who use to be the overseer for the land on Rehobeth Road. I was a baby then, but I heard that Ole Man Taylor said he was going to kill Mr. Stanley, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to. See, another mess happen right after that. Mr. Stanley was fussing with his main field hand Johnnie Lucas about some receipts that Johnnie brought to Mr. Stanley for some cotton he had picked. Mr. Stanley gave Johnnie $8.00 and Johnnie said the first receipt was for $10.00. Ma was in the field when it happen. She said that before they could do anything about it, Johnnie had grabbed an ice pick from the back of Mr. Stanley’s black Chevy and stabbed Mr. Stanley to death. Ma said Johnnie ran and somehow made it North. There was a reward put out for Johnnie and some white folks turned him in. They brought Johnnie back here and took him up to the state prison in Raleigh and he got the electric chair. Now they want us to believe that they had Uncle Buddy there for safekeeping.
All kind of stuff happened around this place long before I was born. My grandpa said that when he was a little boy they hung a man, Jeter Mitchell, right in front of the courthouse where we were yesterday. Black folks believe Mr. Jeter did nothing wrong, just like Uncle Buddy didn’t do nothing. But white folks claim Mr. Jeter raped a white woman over in Occoneechee Neck. He was arrested, just like Uncle Buddy, and they took him out of jail in the middle of the night, just like Uncle Buddy. Sure enough, they hung him right on the tree that is still standing here. Grandpa said didn’t nobody try to help that poor soul. Even if Mr. Jeter did what the white folks said he did, they did not have to hang the man. They should have gave him a trial like they give white men who rape women. Now that I think about it, I think I ain’t never sitting under that tree again. Never!
After Ma finish telling Uncle Buddy and Grandma what the attorney said, Uncle Buddy say he will not stay here until the second trial. He say it ain’t going to do a bit of good. He is ready to go back to Harlem. Back to a place where a man can be a man.
The next morning me and Uncle Buddy get up early. We have not said a word to nobody on Jones Property, but our plan is to go to Grandpa’s grave today.
“Morning, Ma Babe,” Uncle Buddy says to Grandma while she snapping green peas on the back porch.
“Mornin’, son. What you doing up so early and why you so d
ressed up?”
“I thought I would take Pattie Mae and go pay my respects to Pa this morning. You and Mer want to ride with us?”
“Boy, you all go on. I am going to help Mer pack up her things today. They moving back down the road to their house today. You know she ain’t stayed home a good two nights since you was arrested.”
Ma comes out on the porch. “Yes, bro, it’s time for me and Pattie Mae to go home.”
I wish that woman would speak for herself. I do not want to go back to that slave house. Grandpa is dead and we should stay right here with Grandma and Uncle Buddy. But you can’t tell that woman nothing.
“I’m ready Uncle Buddy” I say rushing past Ma and Grandma with Hobo running behind me. He jumps on the back of the truck as we ride off. Hudson don’t want to come. He just looking at us. That’s a smart cat. I swear he know where we going.
All the way to the graveyard we laugh and talk just like old times. But when we turning down that long path to where Grandpa’s grave is, Uncle Buddy ain’t talking no more.
“You all right, Uncle Buddy?”
“I’m fine, child. What about you?”
“I’m fine too.”
It rained last night and it’s muddy so we parking back a ways and I guess we are going to walk the rest of the way. Uncle Buddy helps me out of the truck the way he says a gentleman is suppose to help a lady. I’m telling you, Uncle Buddy is good with the women folks.
This is my first time walking past all these graves without being out here for a funeral.
“Look, Uncle Buddy, this is June Bug’s grave.” We stop and say a prayer. When I open my eyes, I look around me and realize that me and Uncle Buddy are standing in the middle of our whole family. All the Lewises, all the Joneses, and a few folks that ain’t got none of our blood.
Uncle Buddy starting to walk slower and slower when he gets closer to Grandpa’s grave. I’m going to stop here and let him walk on by himself. Hobo got good sense too, because he stops walking when I stop. Grandpa said that some doors a man has to walk through by his self. Poor Uncle Buddy. He just standing there. I ain’t never seen him cry before. He gets all down on his knees just crying and praying over Grandpa’s grave.
The Return of Buddy Bush Page 7