by Daniel Black
Eva Mae had several ideas, but decided not to share them. “I don’t know, but we could do somethin’.”
“What?”
“I don’t know! But somebody’s gotta make ’em pay. Don’t you think so? Somebody.”
“Just drop it, Eva Mae. I mean, I ’preciate you wantin’ to get back at them on my behalf and all, really I do, but I done had enough trouble for a while. I don’t think I could handle anything else. I’ll be all right.”
“Okay.” Eva Mae shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll be just fine.” She smiled as her retaliation plan crystallized.
“Let’s talk about somethin’ else.”
Eva Mae’s expression brightened. “Sure! I been wantin’ to ask you something else anyway.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . who you like?”
Paul kicked a stone. “I don’t know. I ain’t never really thought about it.”
“Oh stop it. I don’t believe that. You don’t think nobody’s cute?”
Paul shrugged. He thought Johnny Ray was cute, but didn’t everyone? He wanted to ask Johnny Ray if maybe they could go fishin’ sometimes or just throw a baseball back and forth, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. What if Johnny Ray called him one of those ugly names? And what if he cried and Johnny Ray mocked him? How would he ever recover? He didn’t care what other boys said. They were stupid and ugly anyway. But Johnny Ray’s opinion mattered, and he couldn’t bear to know what it was. So he took refuge in indifference and groomed a dream that would never come true. Johnny Ray resembled Sol, Paul thought, with his witty comments and his scholastic aptitude. All the kids vied for his attention and any time Miss Erma left the room, she left him in charge. Who wouldn’t have wanted Johnny Ray Youngblood?
Paul didn’t admit this. He had tried for years to ignore his feelings, hoping that, with time, they would disappear, but they didn’t. Johnny Ray gave him that tingling sensation Emma Jean said would accompany true love. He wished he had known the feeling wasn’t always mutual. He would’ve guarded his heart a little better. Then again, maybe he didn’t like Johnny Ray that way. Maybe he simply envied the attention Johnny Ray received. Like he used to get back when he was Perfect. But if he did like Johnny Ray that way, he could never tell it. He knew that much. Emma Jean would die from embarrassment and Gus would jump into the Jordan. Emma Jean had told him that a man keeps his sexual thoughts to himself, and now he knew why. He’d definitely have to leave Swamp Creek if others found him out and, with nowhere to go, that was out of the question. He’d talk to Sol when he came home—if he ever came home.
He could’ve named Christina, Mamie’s granddaughter, as someone he liked, and it wouldn’t have been a lie. Not completely. He recalled how pretty she looked at his eighth birthday party, and marveled that she was even prettier now. No doubt her children would be beautiful and that was definitely a plus for a young man longing for a family. She was the only girl, other than Eva Mae, he’d ever thought about kissing. If he’d had a girlfriend, she’d definitely have been the one—if she liked him, which she probably didn’t. Like her grandmother, she could be nosy—Emma Jean called them “uppity”—and the last thing Paul needed was someone trying to figure him out. But if she did like him, he’d be proud to be with her. The only thing was that, in her presence, the tingling sensation never came. Maybe he didn’t need it, he told himself. He never saw any indication that Gus tingled at the sight of Emma Jean, and the sensation was obviously a waste of emotional energy with Johnny Ray. But whether he tingled or not, he wanted somebody, especially after what those boys did to him. At fifteen, he’d practically take anybody—if they wanted him.
He and Eva Mae hugged as a sign that his forgiveness was complete. Paul thanked her for always being there for him, even when she was too much.
“Better too much than too little, don’t you think?”
Paul laughed. “Usually I would say yes, but with you—”
“Just be thankful you got me,” Eva Mae teased seriously. “You just might need me again.”
She waved over her shoulder, switching hips more full and rounded than Paul remembered. At five foot seven, she was taller than most women in Swamp Creek, and, had it been a different time, she would’ve made the perfect model. Lean but not skinny, she had perky breasts that bounced excitedly whenever she moved, and her twenty-five-inch waistline made other women smirk with envy. Dresses hung on her slender form as though tailor-made, and Eva Mae enjoyed nothing more than sashaying before others when she knew she looked good. With her long, shapely legs, her walk was more like a strut. Men agreed she had the best pair of legs this side of the Jordan. When women saw her approaching, they frowned, saying, “That black heffa thinks she’s cute.” Eva Mae had learned to ignore them, to pity them, in fact, for their imperfections, and her “Hey y’all!” greeting only made them roll their eyes. She’d cackle, sling her head back, and walk on. Men usually laughed along.
It was her facial features that kept most men from pouncing upon her. Just like when she was a child playing in Emma Jean’s front yard—or beneath her house—her hair was always a mess, at least by others’ standards. It was just too hard to comb, so Mrs. Free stopped trying. When Eva Mae grew old enough to groom it herself, she decided she liked it like it was. Ribbons and barrettes looked like they hurt, she’d told Perfect as a little girl, and, as tender-headed as she was, she’d rather have people talk about her than walk around with a headache all day. Had she been cute, she would’ve had to endure the pain like all the other little girls in Swamp Creek, but since she wasn’t, her mother didn’t even bother. Her eyes were a bit too far apart, and her lips were so full they appeared swollen. Her daddy’s nose sat flat in the middle of her face, and, like him, her nostrils expanded and contracted with each breath she took. He’d told her that they were African people, and that she would’ve been beautiful—over there. So Eva Mae walked around, imagining herself as an African queen, and nothing anyone else said could dampen her pride. Whenever folks called her hair a “wild bush,” Eva Mae shook it harder. “Girl, if you pressed that nappy stuff, it’d be so long! And pretty, too!” But Eva Mae refused, having found self-esteem in the self alone.
Lost in his thoughts about Eva Mae, Paul turned and bumped into Sugar Baby as though he’d appeared out of nowhere.
“Oh!”
Swaying like a fragile blade of grass in the wind, Sugar Baby nodded his salutation. Paul didn’t know whether to run or to lend the drunkard a hand.
“Thanks for helping me out the other night. Ain’t no tellin’ what might’ve happened if you hadn’t come along.”
Sugar Baby stumbled backward, but didn’t fall. He nodded again.
“Did you see who it was?”
Paul didn’t see the harm in asking, especially since Sugar Baby had been there and had maybe seen with his own eyes. He didn’t want to hear it from Eva Mae, even if she knew. She was a girl, and girls weren’t supposed to talk about such things.
“Un-uh,” Sugar Baby slurred, shaking his head.
Paul stepped toward the house, then turned abruptly. “What did you mean by I ain’t gotta die?”
Sugar Baby stared. “I been watchin’ you. From the beginning.”
“What?”
The right corner of his mouth turned upward. “You was sent.”
The two stared at each other. Sugar Baby didn’t answer. “Sent by who? For what?”
“Yeah, okay. You crazy, Mr. Sugar Baby.” Paul ascended the steps.
“Sent folk don’t die—’til they get through doin’ what they was sent to do.”
Paul shrugged and entered the house. Sugar Baby staggered away, thinking, He’ll know soon enough.
Chapter 28
The first Saturday in July 1956, people swarmed the church lawn for the annual picnic. It was the largest crowd ever, Miss Mamie said. She hoped that, maybe this year, instead of simply eating like wild boars, a few unsaved niggas might get saved. Reverend Lindsey opposed her idea of opening the doors of the church as p
eople ate, but he agreed that, at a church picnic, folks should act like they have the Holy Ghost.
Each family was responsible for two dishes of their choice—Mamie was the self-appointed coordinator—and the deacons provided the drinks. Even people who hated church came to the picnic that summer, primarily to hear the latest buzz about the local voter registration drive, which Mister Peace was organizing.
“Them boys better be careful,” W. C. told Gus. “White folks ain’t gon’ like them stirrin’ up trouble ’round here.”
Mister and Johnny Ray Youngblood were among those who had formed a Swamp Creek branch of the NAACP. Newspaper accounts of the Montgomery Bus Boycott had inspired them to investigate the rights of Swamp Creek Negroes to choose their own government and fight for equal pay for equal work. Mister believed that if they could register locals to vote, then Swamp Creek would become, for all practical purposes, a Negro owned and operated community since Negroes outnumbered whites three to one. He and Johnny Ray had gone from door to door since April, taking names and birth dates of those who they hoped would be persuaded to vote in the fall primary. With over five hundred names already, their hope escalated that Swamp Creek might even get its own township charter. If they could simply get Negroes to the polls, Mister thought, they could change the course of history.
Mister’s political motivation was born the previous fall when he witnessed white merchants cheat Gus out of a third of his harvest. The boys accompanied their father to town with wagonloads of peas, corn, tomatoes, squash, green beans, and cured pork sides. Sold by the bushel, the peas alone should have yielded a hefty return, and everyone in Conway County knew that Gus’s pork was the best around. Only he was willing to rub salt into his meat for hours each day until every drop of blood had been extracted, and only Gus went to the trouble of finding young hickory saps with which to smoke his meat to perfection. People always paid a little more for his goods, and sometimes his bacon sold for twice the price of others’. That’s what angered white merchants in town, Mister concluded, so they felt compelled to remind him that, in their eyes, he was still a nigga.
“Whatcha got there, boy?” Andrew Sullivan asked Gus as he and his sons unloaded the wagon at the outdoor farmer’s market in Morrilton.
“Just bringin’ in my harvest, sir. That’s all.”
“Did pretty good this year, did ya?”
“Did fine, sir. Just fine.”
“Well, it looks like it.”
When Woody and Mister unloaded the meat, Sullivan’s admiration disintegrated into jealousy.
“You know we ain’t gettin’ but ten cents a pound for pork these days, right?”
“What!” Gus hollered. “It was twenty-two cents just last week!”
“I know, I know,” Sullivan patronized, “but that’s just the way it is, boy. Prices change all the time, you know.”
It was the hopelessness in Gus’s eyes that enraged Mister. He wanted to beat the white son of a bitch for lying, and had Authorly been there to protect him, he would have. Gus argued lightly, but in the end he took what he could get, coming home with twenty-five dollars instead of the expected forty-five.
That evening, Mister told Johnny Ray what had happened and, together, they solicited a few other bold young souls for the creation of the Swamp Creek NAACP. Most said it was a good idea, but they didn’t want any part of it. Including Gus and Emma Jean. Things weren’t equal, everyone admitted, but they were equal enough to keep food on the table and clothes on children’s backs.
“But you have a right to everything you earn!” Mister preached at the church picnic. “We can’t keep lettin’ white folks steal our crops and our land. We gotta stand up for ourselves!”
People listened to Mister simply out of courtesy. Even the few who genuinely supported him were distracted by the smell of fried chicken and sweet potato pie.
“What cha’ll think ’bout them folks down in Montgomery?” W. C. asked a gathering of deacons lounging in fold-up chairs beneath the huge churchyard tree.
“I think it’s good,” one said. “It’s ’bout time colored folks do somethin’ ’bout the way we treated.”
“Well, I don’t know ’bout that,” another one said. “ ’Cause, now, they walkin’ to work instead o’ ridin’. That mean they gotta get up earlier and they get home later, and by the time they get to work, they tired already. I mean, I understand fightin’ for what’s right and all, but seem like to me, the way they fightin’ make life harder for theyselves.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” W. C. said. “It’s gotta be a better way than that.”
“Then what is it?” Mister asked. The deacons hadn’t noticed him listening. They fell silent. “If somebody got a better idea than what they doin’, I’d sho love to hear it.”
“All we sayin’,” W. C. defended, “is that if you gon’ fight, make sho you winnin’ on every level.”
“But we cain’t win on every level at first. We gotta start somewhere, Mr. W. C.”
“That’s true, son, that’s true.”
No one else said anything. They simply waited for Mister to leave. When he did, W. C. said, “Young folks think they know everything. That’s why that NAAST or whatever the hell it is ain’t gon’ ‘mount to much, ’cause he and that Youngblood boy think they know everything.”
The other deacons agreed.
Mister and Johnny Ray searched the crowd for eligible, unregistered voters. Assuaging their people’s fear of white retaliation was far more difficult than either young man had the patience for, and, in a few instances, Mister told folks, “Just forget about it!” and moved on. Johnny Ray was more diplomatic and, therefore, a bit more successful in convincing others to visit the polls during the next election. Whites might try to intimidate, he admitted, but collectively Negroes had the upper hand. People liked his delivery. Yet, in a leader, they preferred Mister’s fortitude.
Paul begged Emma Jean to let him join the NAACP, but Emma Jean wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s too dangerous,” she said the night before the picnic. “Ain’t no tellin’ what might happen to them folks, goin’ ’round tryin’ to get colored people to fight. I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t right; I’m jes’ sayin’ you ain’t gon’ do it.”
“Come on, Momma. I ain’t a kid no more. I’m sixteen! And what about Mister? He leadin’ it! You ain’t worried ’bout him?”
“He’s grown, boy!”
“But so what! If it’s dangerous, it’s dangerous for him, too!”
“Well, when you get grown, you can do what you want to. ’Til then, you gon’ do what I say, and I say you ain’t joinin’ that group. Not yet you ain’t. You gon’ finish school and make somethin’ outta yo’self.”
At the picnic, Paul told Eva Mae and Caroline that Emma Jean wouldn’t let him join the NAACP as they had planned. Caroline couldn’t join, either. Eva Mae didn’t respond.
“What’s wrong, Eva Mae?” Paul asked.
“My momma said I cain’t go to school no more.”
“Why not? You only got one more year!”
“My brother left home so she said I gotta work now. We need the money. She said don’t make no sense wastin’ education on somebody don’t nobody want anyway, so I might as well go to work.”
“I want you,” Paul said. The words hadn’t sounded strange in his head, but when he spoke them, they sounded sensual. Caroline frowned. Paul opened his mouth to explain, but Eva Mae saved him the trouble.
“Thanks, Paul,” she said. Walking away, she whispered intensely, “You still my Perfect Peace!”
Caroline felt invisible. In that moment, Eva Mae and Paul alone populated the world as Caroline looked on, trying to find a category into which she could place this bizarre relationship. Paul didn’t know that, as children, once he and Eva Mae began their intimate exchange beneath the house, Eva Mae had told Caroline that Paul—Perfect back then—was her best friend, implying, Caroline understood, something exclusive between them that she was not invited to share
. She had watched them several times, from a distance, look about nervously and disappear beneath the house, then exit in an aura of pleasure. Afraid to question their interim activity, Caroline often paced the front yard in their younger years, wallowing in jealousy and feelings of abandonment. Fear of Eva Mae kept her from peeking under the house although her curiosity never subsided. The day she asked Paul, “So what you and Eva Mae be doin’ down there?” she implored him not to tell Eva Mae she had asked, and Paul promised he wouldn’t. In fact, he forgot all about it.
After Eva Mae left, Caroline mumbled from the side of her mouth, “Why Christina keep lookin’ over here?”
Paul looked back and smiled. “I don’t know.”
“She likes you, huh?”
“Who? Me?”
“Yes, you!”
“I doubt it. She’s real sweet though. I thought about askin’ her to the dance.”
“Really? You like Christina?”
“Yup. Well, a little bit.”
“How you gon’ ask her?”
“I don’t know. I ain’t neva asked a girl out before. But I know her folks, so it oughta be okay.”
“What Miss Emma Jean gon’ say? You know she can’t stand Miss Mamie.”
“I know, but I wanna go to the dance, and I need a date. Everybody’s gon’ be there.”
Caroline nodded.
“What about you? Who you goin’ with?”
“I don’t know. Nobody’s asked me yet. I don’t think anybody’s going to.”
“Wouldn’t it be great if you could go with Johnny Ray?” Paul said dreamily.
“Yeah, but he’s goin’ with Violet. If he go at all. You know how he is, quiet and all.”
“Yeah, I know, but he’s real handsome, huh?”
“Oh my God. He’s the cutest boy I’ve ever seen.”
He sho is! Paul wanted to say. “You never know. Somebody cute might ask you to the dance.”
“Maybe.”
“Is there somebody else cute you’d like to go with? You know . . . somebody you like?”
Caroline snickered and covered her mouth. “Yeah, but I can’t tell you ’cause you gon’ laugh.”