The Lesser People

by Lee Thompson

  I glanced from the corner of my eye at my father. He didn’t have any crutches and as far as I could tell my mother didn’t either. Daddy cleared his throat. He squeezed the mug between his hands so hard I thought it might shatter and cut him and that reminded me of my dream where we all sat on the river bank, Daddy with his bloody hands, Preacher tearing pages from the Good Word and the substance of his faith clogging the river that had cradled Isaiah.

  Daddy said, “I have a feeling things are going to just get uglier around here, Eli. I want you to stay home as much as possible and if it comes to it and we can’t find your brother I’m going to send you away to my sister’s for a while.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to go away.”

  A horrible panic seized me, rooted me to the chair even though my instinct was to burst from the soft and familiar cushion, to spring out the door and disappear as my brother had disappeared and I thought that it all made sense now, Ben’s running away, because being older they’d probably told him about shipping us away before they had told me. My chest clogged, not able to find my voice again, my father’s hand feeling barbed and cold on my shoulder, I heard him say, “It’s only to protect you, son.” But I didn’t believe him. To separate us from their care seemed a crime, calculated and unforgivable.

  Momma said from the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, her voice like the birds singing outside, all sing-song, all innocent, “We don’t want you getting hurt, Elijah.” And I was about to ask them who in the world would hurt a kid like me, who could hurt any kid at all, and out of the corner of my eye, through the black, milky haze of understanding, I saw Isaiah’s face flicker near the flowers, his dark fingers playing with the stems, his blind eyes above his blunt nose, poised over the petals that would surely die in a week or two.

  I said, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  And I thought, I don’t want to die either. I don’t want nobody to die.

  Daddy said, “We’re not saying that you have to, just that you might.”

  I shivered because his answer and my thoughts got all tangled together.

  Preacher took his flask from his pocket and stared at his reflection in the polished metal.

  Momma said, “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

  I couldn’t remember for a second if I had or had not. I shook my head. “No,” I said.

  Daddy released the coffee mug he’d been strangling and pushed himself up from the table and said he was going to look for Ben. He touched my shoulder softly and kissed the top of my head. Momma, standing in the doorway with her hands hung loosely by her hips, looked as if she might cry and she sighed and smiled one of her real smiles, a grateful smile, and I could tell that she was proud of him. Preacher said that he would help any way he could and I wanted to go with them and said as much but my mother asked me to help her with the canning, and to feed the chickens, and told me I needed to tend my studies. Disgruntled and complaining under my breath I watched the men exit our house and heard the car’s engine catch in the driveway. I wondered where they’d look to find my brother, thinking that they needed me to help them because I knew who Ben’s friends were better than them since I’d seen him hang out with them in regular school before Daddy grew tired of dealing with the principal and our teachers and what they taught us about our superior race.

  After Daddy and Preacher were gone for a few minutes Momma made us lemonade and she seemed distracted, hurt even, and I assumed it was because Ben had left without telling her where he was going. And maybe it reminded her in a way of her own brothers and her own father, and maybe my father too, because she said that men will always do what they want regardless of how it made the women in their lives worry.

  We canned peaches in the basement. They were sticky, and the sugary scent clung to my fingers, and the monotony of the mindless motion gave my brain a chance to jump from event to event and from imagination to assumption.

  I believed that adults shaped their own destinies, at least the white ones, and that we grew into it possibly without realizing it, for what marking point could there be to distinguish between what we had been taught to believe and what we chose to believe? I didn’t know. Momma wouldn’t talk about things like that and I was afraid to ask my father because I had tried before and he’d said that I was much too young to worry over such things. He said I should just let life teach me what it would and take each person lightly because we all had problems, and he said that I would have my fair share of trouble since life’s fabric constituted discord and renewal, faith and disbelief. I had no idea what he was talking about and never asked him again. It was hard enough not getting what I wanted at ten years old, I didn’t want to imagine how it would make me feel to be an adult and still feel powerless, at the mercy of other men’s authority or other people’s whims.

  After we finished our canning, Momma labeled them and asked me to set the jars on a shelf. I hurried and tried to push her. The basement stank of old, dead smells, and the single light bulb struggled against the darkness, casting shadows across my mother’s face that seemed unnatural, shadows that didn’t exist outside or in any other room of our home.

  In my head I listened to the blues, the rough and tumble ache of experience and sadness and the will to overcome it all instead of submitting to my fears.

  I thought, Shadows can’t hurt me. They ain’t flesh and blood and they ain’t alien.

  Once the cleanup was finished we fed the chickens, which wasn’t so bad and Momma chased them from the coop and had me retrieve the eggs that were warm and hard in my palms until I placed them in the basket softly, smelling their earthy smell, thinking it funny that the warmth came from nothing more than a chicken’s hind end. Walking back to the house with Momma beside me, she took the basket and inspected the eggs. I asked her, “Do you think they found Benny yet?”

  “Lord knows,” Momma said. “Go wash your hands and get your books opened.”

  I shrugged, wanting something to eat but did as she ordered, opening my math and English and science books on the coffee table, all the words jumbled together in front of my eyes. I wondered how hard Daddy had had to study to be a policemen and what good it did anyway when life was about living and doing your job and loving on your family not in knowing who was president or who wasn’t, or what chemical reaction made the sky rain.

  The day crawled from then on. Momma seemed disappointed with my lack of focus and cursed me. I wanted to know about Benny and I worried about Daddy and Preacher out there, driving house to house, or walking side by side in the forest while someone followed them.

  I’d seen the Klan before, their ghostly hoods, their voices raised like a tremulous wind blasting the seeds of their hate and the rightness of their actions, and how those words they used tightened men’s fists and hardened their faces, and brought a strange sort of pride they would die or kill for. I imagined that there were a dozen of them following two of the men I loved while others hid in bushes outside our home, keeping tabs on our behavior, waiting for us to make an unacceptable move that could then be disciplined. I stood and stationed myself near the living room window. The day had turned gray, the shadows beneath the trees heavy with secrets. I thought, I know you’re out there. But it won’t do you any good because Daddy and Preacher are strong men and their love and fairness are enough to set things right. It will protect them. God will protect them.

  The thoughts felt hollow, the convictions I tried to grasp, slippery. I figured that if God was going to do something he’d have done it a long time ago.

  My mother’s hand settled on my shoulder. She said, “They’ll be back soon enough.”

  Will they? I wondered. Or will they disappear into the river?

  Chapter Seven

  When a car pulled in late in the evening I thought that my father had returned but it wasn’t him. My grandpa climbed from his car. He had a cane that he had to use since he was injured in a World War or something. He got a medal for his trouble and he said the cane
was the bum part of the deal. Momma was stationed behind the screened door and I doubted she’d let him in. His face was blank but his blood pressure up, his face a beet red, his free hand dabbing sweat from his forehead as he wobbled his way to the steps. Momma told me to go to my room. I resisted her, like I sometimes did when I knew that she didn’t have time to force me to listen to her. I said, “I don’t want to.”

  “Eli,” she said, then looked back out over the lawn and the swaying tree in the yard and her husband’s father who scratched at the screen, a smile on his face now. He peeked in at me. I stepped back deeper into the room before I found my footing and held my ground, wanting to be like my father more than ever and nothing like my grandfather.

  The old man said, “Beth.”

  “Daddy,” she said.

  “You going to let me in?”

  “Hank’s not home,” Momma said.

  “I can see that. His car is gone.” He pointed behind him, at the driveway, with his cane. When he turned back he said, “What’s going on here?”

  “What do you mean?” Momma said.

  “What I mean is that my son is rocking the boat and he has been for a while. Right now we all have to be together, unified and of a single mind and a single purpose, if we’re to stand against the Federal Government telling us how we can or can’t run this beautiful state of Mississippi.”

  “You’re not going to change Hank’s mind, you know that.”

  He shook his head and slapped his cane against the screen and Momma jumped. She pressed her hand tighter to where it met the frame. He said, “Don’t come crying to me when things get out of hand, you hear?”

  “When has Hank ever coming crying to you?”

  He grunted. “That sonofabitch. He never had any sense.”

  Momma said, “Is that all?”

  “No,” he said. “Remember this… When your sons are driven from their homes because of your pride and treason, there won’t be anyone to blame but yourselves. No one. Not me. Not the Council. Not nobody. Understand? You want to—”

  Momma raised a hand to silence him and said, “I get it. And we don’t want your sympathy or anything else you have to offer.”

  “Fine,” my grandpa said. “So be it.”

  “Good day,” Momma said.

  “Maybe for me but not for you.” He slapped the cane against the door again but Momma was ready for it and she didn’t jump. She kept her back straight. I thought if Daddy was there he’d have been proud of her.

  Before turning away, my Grandpa said, “That kid of yours in there. You’re raising him wrong.”

  For a second I thought she was going to pull the door open and kick his bum leg and keep kicking as he fell and after he fell, but she didn’t, Momma didn’t say anything and I thought it probably took all the strength she had to restrain herself.

  “Fine,” my grandpa said again.

  He hobbled back to his car. He wasn’t much older than Daddy, maybe twenty years. I wondered sometimes what he was like when he was younger, imagined I probably wouldn’t have liked him much then either but he’d raised Daddy and my father was a good man so Grandpa must not have been all bad.

  Momma closed the door and her shoulders dropped. She swiped a shaking hand across her face. She said, “Eli, will you get me a drink?”

  I nodded and brought her some lemonade into the living room where she’d collapsed in Daddy’s chair, her eyes closed. She said, “I’m going to rest for a while. Go play upstairs.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said. My limbs felt heavy, the air charged, as I traversed the steps to the attic where all our old toys lay neglected. Usually my mother wouldn’t let me go up there. My mind kept playing snippets of what my grandfather had said, and I thought that some of it sounded kind of menacing and Daddy wouldn’t like hearing about it when he got home.

  *****

  It was dusk when Daddy and Preacher returned. I was tired out from studying and from Momma forcing me to sit there at the coffee table, hunched over my books, and her quizzing me on what I read until it felt like my eyes would pop out of my head and my brains would follow. But I’d had fun playing with forgotten toys in the attic while she rested in Daddy’s chair so it wasn’t all bad. Just tiring and I figured that anything that made you feel so tired probably wasn’t good for you, and was glad when the front door opened and Momma jumped up from Daddy’s chair and made tracks for the mud room. I waited, rubbing my eyes, holding my breath, hoping that I’d see Daddy enter first, then Ben behind him, and Preacher following along carrying his bible, his mouth open and flowers growing from it, a beauty that would wash away the blood that seemed ready to spill everywhere.

  But Ben wasn’t with them. Daddy dragged a shaking hand through his hair. Momma pressed herself tight to him and Preacher said to both of them, “I’m sure he’s fine. I’m sure of it.”

  I felt a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, thinking that my brother probably wasn’t fine. I thought Sheriff Bordeaux had probably seen him sneaking about, or Fred, or one of the others, and they took him to jail for something that wasn’t even true. Daddy said men would do things like that. They’d force you to admit to something evil if they pressed at you long enough, hard enough, and you’d crack and tell them whatever they wanted to hear as long as it meant they’d leave you alone and the peace you once knew was restored.

  I shook my head. I didn’t believe there was any way they could make Ben crack that fast because he was Daddy’s boy and he was Momma’s. They might have hated him at times for his stubbornness but what they hated was only a reflection of what they saw in themselves and in each other.

  Daddy said, “Art is going to sleep on the floor in your room until this all is settled.”

  I smiled at Preacher. He smiled back. He held his hands out, palms up, and said, “I promise not to be a bad influence.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try not to be one too.”

  He laughed and Daddy laughed and Momma sat in my father’s chair rubbing her temples.

  Me and Preacher went to the back of the house and for a while he disappeared into the bathroom while my parents talked quietly in the living room. I tried hard to overhear what they were saying but their voices were too quick and too quiet.

  After the old man came into my room and lay there quietly on the floor with me propped on my elbow, in the bed above him, I almost proposed that he sleep in Ben’s bed, but Daddy hadn’t, so I didn’t. My parents talked on and after a while I rolled onto my back and stared at the dark ceiling, thinking that my father’s friend was fast asleep. I expected the window to slide open, for my brother to sneak in, so I watched the window a while, waiting, and then thought against the idea of Ben sneaking back tonight because he’d probably reason out that he was better off never coming back for all the trouble he’d be in. Only he didn’t know that our parents would only spank him and ask him where he’d been and that would be the end of it since the only thing they were really mad about was him worrying them. Thinking about it made me tired. I closed my eyes, the soft hush of my parent’s voices like the gentle sound of water breaking on a beach.

  Preacher said, “We’re all made of the same mud, the same blood.”

  I opened my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I’d been asleep or not. I said, “What?”

  He said again, “We’re all made of the same mud, the same blood.” He cracked his knuckles, said, “God should have put that in the bible. It’d have saved everybody a lot of heartache.”

  I nodded, said, “I don’t like blood.”

  “No,” Preacher said, “I didn’t expect you would.”

  I said, “Do you?”

  He grew quiet again, and who knew what he was thinking about or imagining. Best I could figure he was looking back on something only he could see and if he didn’t want to share it with me that was fine since sometimes it was hard to understand adult talk.

  He let loose a long breath and the curtains seemed to dance beneath it, between them the moon hung heav
y in the sky, blemished and beautiful. I got to thinking about the moon for a minute but Preacher interrupted me by saying, “I like blood. I’ve seen buckets of it.”

  I waited for him to go on, boosted myself up on my arm, pulling my gaze from the window and trying to locate his face in the darkness to see if he was kidding me. His features were indiscernible but his eyes were shiny and wet. I said, “Where did you see buckets of blood?”

  “Where haven’t I?” Preacher said.

  I scratched my head and sighed. I thought maybe he was drunk and that made me mad a little because he said he wouldn’t drink in my bedroom and he promised my Daddy he wouldn’t be a bad influence. Seemed to me that we’d made a deal. I rolled over and faced the wall but I heard him shift on the floor and part of me was afraid that I’d look over and see him kneeling beside my bed, kind of leaning over me, so I didn’t look.

  I said, “We should go to sleep.”

  “Do you know where Benjamin is?”

  “No,” I admitted. “If I did I would have told Daddy.”

  “Are you mad that your father may send you to his sisters?”

  “A little,” I said. “Seems he shouldn’t send us away at all. If we’re leaving then he should come with us. Momma too.”

  “Do you understand defeat yet?”

  “Yeah. It’s when you lose.”

  “Your Daddy has it in his head what Winston Churchill said.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Preacher cleared his throat as he hoisted himself up and placed his back to the bed frame. He said, softly but forcefully, “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

  His voice seemed to echo about the room on that last line—we shall never surrender—and I thought whoever said that must have known Daddy pretty well. I said, “He can’t fight everybody though.”