Maybe he was. But at that moment, Billy Dean’s future seemed to be laid out before him as sure and straight as one of these Delta plantation roads.
The Senator and him had shook on it. The next day Billy Dean went to Delphi and bought himself a Stetson and a pair of hand-tooled cowboy boots, the kind he had dreamed about since he was a barefooted boy of ten.
Pointing on down the road, Uncle Furman shouted over the rattle of the truck, “There it is. Slow down, you hear?”
The general store sat on a bare island of packed dirt surrounded by cotton plants that lapped right up to the back door. According to the thermometer nailed to the front of the store, the temperature had already hit ninety-three in the shade, and it was still early morning.
As the dust settled around the truck, Billy Dean opened his door and turned himself sideways in the seat, giving his legs an extra-long stretch. The place was dead quiet. Looking around, he began to recollect where he was. He had bought shine here one time. After dark. It had been a couple of years. He was starting to remember.
Off in the distance a silent cloud of dust was rising above the green horizon, heading their way. As it neared, Billy Dean could make out the deep-throated hum of a car with a substantial engine. Finally a dark green Buick, old but well tended to, came into sight, drawing the cloud behind it. The car turned off into the yard and rolled to a careful stop.
The colored man who got out was taller even than Billy Dean and all dressed up in an old-fashioned baggy suit with a gold watch chained across his stomach. He leaned down to the open window and said a word to the three children who remained in the car, a boy in the back and a young girl clutching a baby in the front. Then the man headed toward the store.
Coming up on Billy Dean and his uncle, the colored man removed his felt hat, nodded respectfully, and said, “How do, sirs?”
After he had gone into the store, Uncle Furman got out of the truck and shambled over to the Buick. “Boy, that chaps my ass!” he said. “How many white folks you know got a car this good?” He aimed a stream of tobacco juice at a shiny hubcap with expert precision.
The boy who sat in the backseat glared at Furman with all the ferocity a child could muster. He wore a red straw cowboy hat with a yellow star painted on the crown, the drawstring pulled tight under his chin.
Billy Dean clenched his cigarette in one side of his mouth and spoke out the other. “Them nigger preachers sure know how to spend the Lord’s money.”
“Sho!” Furman said. “That’s what he was, awright. Wearing a painted tie as wide as your Aunt Beulah’s butt. And did you see that watch chain on his belly? Looked a hunnurd percent karat gold.”
The girl in the front seat didn’t look old enough to be a mother, just a little older than the boy in the back. She was studying Billy Dean’s face hard, and when she saw him looking back, she swung her head toward the store again, whipping her plaits over her shoulder. Even though it was boiling hot, she pulled the baby closer.
Furman noticed the girl, too. With his hands behind his back, he crouched down and peered through the front window at her. She was dressed in white from head to toe—a white ruffled dress, white shiny shoes and cotton socks, white satin ribbons tied to the end of her plaits. “Hey, Billy Dean, looks like we got the Cotton Queen in here!”
The girl didn’t flinch. Instead she kept looking straight ahead, into the smug face painted on the shiny new screen door. Little Miss Sally Sunbeam, with her cornsilk hair and baby-doll blue eyes, seemed to be smiling back at her, all the time holding a slice of light bread up to her mouth. Miss Sally didn’t appear to be worried about a thing.
Gripping the back of the front seat, the boy in the straw hat pulled himself forward. He gave Furman a steely look that defied the old man to touch his sister. “Lookie here, Billy Dean.” Furman pointed to the star on the boy’s hat. “This’n wants to be sheriff, too. Think you can beat a nigger boy come the primary?”
Billy Dean grinned. “Might be close.”
Furman’s gaze shifted to the baby in the front seat holding tight to the girl’s plait. “Gal, who’s that baby belong to? Ain’t yours, is it?”
“Yessuh,” the girl answered, squinting hard at the screen door as if willing her father’s return.
Furman studied the baby for a moment. “That don’t look like no colored boy to me. Pass for Eye-talian. I reckon some white boy been sneaking around her woodpile late at night.” Turning back to his nephew, Furman asked, “Who you think he takes after?”
Billy Dean examined his boots, but sneaked a look at the baby when his uncle turned back to the car.
“How old are you, girl?” asked Furman.
“Fo’teen, suh.”
“You hear that, Billy Dean? Her baby can’t be but a year. Maybe two. Jesus! They born to breed, ain’t they?”
Billy Dean did the math. “Shit,” he muttered. He fixed his eyes on the baby. “Get me that ball-peen hammer out of the back of the truck,” he told Furman.
The girl’s eyes grew big again. She put her hand on the window crank, thought better of it, and tightened her grip on her baby instead.
While Furman rattled around in the truck bed, Billy Dean pushed back his Stetson and leaned into the girl’s window. “You—”
“I ain’t said nothing about what happened.”
“Shut up!” Billy Dean spat, low and harsh. He studied the child next to her. She wouldn’t have to tell nobody. The baby’s face would tell the deed.
Billy Dean took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it into the car. The girl sat stock-still, clutching the boy, while the smell of scorched cloth filled the car. In the backseat, her brother made a move for the cigarette. Without turning around the girl said in a panicked voice, “Willie! Leave it be. Don’t do nothing.”
He slowly eased back in the seat, his eyes not breaking from Billy Dean’s.
When Furman returned with the hammer, Billy Dean took it and slapped the head into the palm of his hand. The baby started to whimper, yet his mother resisted looking down at him.
Just then the screen creaked open and the girl’s father stepped onto the gallery carrying his sack of groceries. Seeing the two white men over by his daughter, he moved hurriedly toward the car. “Yes, Lord! Going to be a hot one, ain’t it?”
The colored man opened the rear door and put the groceries in the backseat. “Too hot to be out of the shade for long,” he went on. “Nosuh. Maybe the good Lord send a little shower thisa way. Look like it’s coming up a cloud down off yonder.” He nodded toward the distant north, but didn’t take his eyes off the ball-peen hammer.
“Yessuh. Be nice to get a little rain to cool things down. Settle the dust some.” He opened the door on the driver’s side and casually brushed the smoldering cigarette onto the ground. Then he removed his handkerchief from his coat pocket and laid it out over the burn.
“Well, I best be getting on to home. You sirs have a fine day, now.” Tipping his hat to the men, the preacher pulled out into the road, departing faster than he had come.
Furman spit. “Crazy preacher.” He grabbed a handful of flyers from off the truck seat and joined his nephew up on the gallery. He held one of the flyers flat against the gray weathered wood, right between a faded war bonds poster and the Garrett Snuff sign. Billy Dean hammered a nail into each of the four corners.
Furman took a step back and said, “Looks just like you.”
Billy Dean spun around. “Who looks like me?”
His uncle nodded at the flyer. “Yore picture there. Good likeness, don’t you think?”
He studied Furman for a moment and then turned back toward the flyer. “Yeah,” he said. “Reckon they caught me.”
“Odds say you gone win that primary easy, Billy Dean.”
“Better,” Billy Dean said darkly. “The Senator done had all my competition paid off or scared off.”
“Aw, hit’s OK,” Furman reassured him. “The Senator only doing what’s best for his little girl. She gone be t
he wife of the next high sheriff if it costs him half his plantation.” Furman spit over the railing. “Boy, howdy, are you a lucky shit.”
“Yeah, well,” Billy Dean said. “Everything’s got its price.”
Furman put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. She ain’t that ugly. Anyway, you and Hertha’s young’uns probably take after our side of the family. Brister blood always wins out when it comes to looks.”
“Seems to,” Billy Dean said under his breath, staring down the road.
Chapter Four
THE WAY OF THE MULE
That morning up in Delphi, Hazel eased a plate down in front of Floyd. She took a step back.
Her husband stared silent and unblinking at his fried eggs, goopy with the uncooked whites shimmering in the morning light, the bacon in ashes, and the toast soggy with butter in the center and burnt black around the edges.
“You don’t have to eat it,” Hazel offered. “I’ll bury it in the backyard with last night’s supper.”
“No, honey,” he stammered, “there might be something here I can—”
“Just let me fix you anothern.” What she didn’t say was this was already her second halfhearted attempt this morning. The first had made her own stomach queasy, which was happening almost every time she cooked now.
Floyd managed a weak smile and pushed the plate away. “Don’t worry about it, sugar. Slept too late. I’m in a hurry.”
Her face clouded up. “On a Saturday? I thought you was going to take me driving today.” Hazel lived all week for their drives, just the two of them. She wouldn’t say so, but it took her back to those hope-filled days of catching rides with the route men.
“Can’t. Big customer out in the Delta.” He looked at her hopefully. “Maybe you can have something fixed for me by suppertime.”
She squeezed out a smile, yet inside Hazel bridled at the suggestion. Not that she would ever say it, but she couldn’t bear another minute in front of that stove. It was like somebody trying to hitch her up to a mule on plowing day. If she got good at it, she might never break out of her harness. She knew she should be ashamed of herself for thinking such thoughts. Floyd had saved her from all that.
Her husband casually turned away from her and cast his gaze out the window, staring off into space again. Look at him, she thought. Already he was a million miles away from this kitchen and his bumbling housewife. Maybe he thought her ineptness cute, proud of being able to afford a wife who couldn’t keep a house.
“Floyd? Sure I can’t fix you something?” she asked him. “Maybe some Cheerios or. . .Floyd!”
He beamed a surprised smile and rose up from the table to give Hazel a hug. “You sure are pretty. Takes my hunger for food clean away.”
She sighed in his arms. Exactly what she thought he would say. She remembered that day back in the hills when Hazel had asked her mother about “pretty.” “Forget about pretty,” she had told her daughter flatly. “Pretty can’t keep a husband. ’Cause pretty can’t cook and pretty can’t clean and pretty can’t raise children. And, girl, the biggest thing pretty can’t do is last.”
“Floyd, what kind of wife am I to send you off to work without a decent breakfast?” she said, waiting for him to ease her guilt a bit more.
“It don’t matter,” he assured her. “I love you anyway.”
She knew he would say that, too. There had been a lot of those “anyways” lately. Like when she got up the courage to use the washing machine and then cracked most of his buttons feeding his shirts through the wringer. As he held her, she asked, “Floyd, how many ‘anyways’ reckon you got left in you?”
“As many as the stars you got left in your eyes.”
With all her heart she wanted to believe him, that he loved her no matter what and that his love would be enough to get them through a lifetime of bad cooking. But it still left her wondering, what did he want from her?
Floyd must have been reading her mind. “We living in modern times. It’s nearly 1950 and you ain’t some farm wife who works herself into an ugly, wore-out nubbin of a woman. Anyhow, you don’t see any other white women around here doing for themselves. Just study on how to keep yourself the pretty and pampered wife of Delphi’s next rich man.”
“We going to be rich?” Hazel asked, again knowing what he would say next, word for word.
“If you can see it, you can be it,” Floyd said, reciting his favorite verse from the book of success sayings he kept by his side of the bed. “The way things are going, won’t be long before I can get you some regular colored help. It’s about time we took a step up.”
She smiled sadly. “Floyd, you stepping so high now, I get a nosebleed looking up at you.”
“Well, get used to it,” he said with a grin. “You know where I’m off to this morning?”
“Where to?” she asked. “Where you going without me?”
“To talk face-to-face with one of the biggest men in the Delta. You heard me tell about him. They call him the Senator. He asked me to come by this morning personal to look over his place. To get the lay of the land, so to speak.”
“That’s real nice, Floyd.” Her voice was resigned.
“He’s a real old-time planter. Lives down in the Delta amongst his tenants and the skeeters. Got him a mansion they call the Columns. Everybody swore he would be the last to buy mechanical cotton pickers to replace his hands with. Why, the first time I called on him he told me I was wasting my breath and his time. Remember what I told you I said to turn him around?”
“It’s just that if you and me could spend some time—”
“What got him was when I told him, ‘Senator, do you want to spend your time studying the mysterious habits of niggers, or do you want to make money?’” Floyd shook his head at himself for saying such a thing. “Then I told him, ‘Are you a planter or a dad-blamed anthropologist?’ You should have heard him laughing at that one.”
Again Hazel smiled weakly, ashamed to ask him what an anthropologist was, even though this was the third time she had heard the story. “Floyd, it’s only that I’ve been feeling—”
“You just wait,” he said. “If he sticks with me he’ll go from messing with six hundred niggers to only a handful of drivers. After the Senator buys in, everybody will get on board.”
Hazel noticed a sudden pang of sympathy for the displaced. Was her husband becoming that important, where he could get rid of a whole world of coloreds because they had outlived their usefulness? And the little circus girl all dressed in white? Would she be gone as well, before Hazel could figure out her riddle?
“Where they all going to go to?”
“Who?” Floyd asked.
“The niggers. You know, if nobody needs ’em no more, where they all going to go to?”
Floyd shrugged. “Oh. Somewhere, I reckon.” He said, “Ain’t no stopping us, Hazel. We done put the mule behind us for good.” He playfully patted her on the rear on his way to the door.
“Nope. You right about that,” she said, taking the frying pan to the sink to scrub. “Not a mule in sight nowhere.”
Floyd pushed open the screen and turned to say good-bye, then stood there for a long moment, staring at Hazel with a curious look on his face.
“What?” she yelped, afraid she had gone ugly in his eyes.
He rushed back to Hazel and laid the flat of his hand on her stomach. “If I’m not wrong, looks like you might better go see the doctor.”
Hazel’s heart sank. “You want me to go to the doctor ’cause I’m getting fat?”
He only grinned bigger.
Hazel thought for a moment and then her face burned. “You think I’m going to have a baby! That’s what you’re saying! Ain’t it?”
He gave her a few seconds and then asked carefully, “Well, what do you think, honey? You the one it’s happening to.”
She should have known. Her sister Onareen told her the only way not to get pregnant was to do it standing up, and she sure wasn’t going to suggest
that to Floyd.
Hazel sat down, all of a sudden feeling woozy. Oh, Lord, she thought, the only thing worse than being pregnant would be Floyd knowing about it before me. “No, I can’t be preg—you got to be wrong about it.”
Floyd knelt down by Hazel and slipped his arm around her, placing his hand on her belly again. As if knowing her thoughts, he said, “Don’t worry. You gonna be a good mother. Remember that little saying I taught you, ‘If you can see it, you can be it.’”
Her smile was pained. Well, that was just it, Hazel was thinking, I can’t see it. How was a “good mother” supposed to look? Back in the hills where Hazel came from, there wasn’t talk about good ones or bad ones—only live ones and dead ones, sturdy ones and sickly ones, fertile ones and ones who had dried up early. Yet now with this good–bad difference, she was convinced she would end up being a naturally bad one. Another thing Floyd would have to love her anyway for.
She looked into his face. Floyd gazed at her with so much faith and hope, it made her heart ache. “I’m scared, Floyd. I don’t know how to care for a baby. I seen it done, but I ain’t never done it myself.”
“Oh, that ain’t no problem. We can ask some of the women from church to help. Maybe your sister Onareen can come stay.”
“Get Momma,” Hazel whimpered, for the first time in years finding a kind of comfort in that particular word. She couldn’t help saying it again. “Momma. I want my momma.” Hazel needed somebody who knew her, somebody who wouldn’t expect too much from her. Somebody who would be surprised at how far she had come.
“You sure? You know she don’t take to me since I stole you from the hills.”
“No, I want to show her how wrong she was about hoping. I want her to see how good you done. How good you been to me.”
Floyd blushed. “Well, then,” he said with a snappy nod of his head, “I’ll go fetch her when the time comes.”
She raised her eyes and looked into Floyd’s face again. He was so confident. The sense of dread returned.
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 3