Dark Don't Catch Me

by Packer, Vin

  Not even if yo pickin!

  Not even if yo pickin!

  Not even if she friggin yo while yo pickin!

  “Leave, learn and return … Where’d it ever get you, Doc?” Major had asked him.

  “I got two pretty daughters I raised right. Right and well. Now you know that. And I got my work over at the clinic, and I got — ”

  Plenty of nothin; nothin’s plenty for me, Major had finished it in his thoughts.

  Two pretty daughters. “One as near white as pidgeon droppings,” Tink Twiddy said once about Betty’s big sister, Barbara. “Now how you spose that happen? Musta been one nigger wasn’t in the ole woodpile, by goose eyes!”

  And Major had told Tink hotly, “She was Doc’s by his first wife that died.”

  “Oh yeah! By goose eyes I nebber nebber knowed ole Doc James had him white tail before black.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of a light-skinned Negro; haven’t you ever heard of anything but white tail, black tail! Don’t you ever stop thinking of — ”

  And then Major Post had turned away from Tink Twiddy, disgusted with himself for bothering to justify anything about Doc James before the likes of Tink Twiddy — and the Tinks, all of them, in Paradise, Georgia, with their perpetual palaver hinting at interracial sexual doings. Major hated the way just everything seemed to get turned into talk like that; everything from a simple conversation about the Jameses to an epithet chalked on an outhouse wall, to a joke told on a street corner.

  Major’s own family carried on that way; all of them; all except his grandmother, Hussie; and sometimes Major wondered why in hell it was; because as a kid, before he’d grown to hate that talk, he’d gone right along with the rest of them; singing things like:

  Here come the white boss wife Hot to change her luck Knows there’s nothin better Than a nigger for a —

  Before he’d grown to hate that talk; before he’d even known the significance of the talk; when he was no higher than a field weed and still sat in the tin tub with his older sister to bathe, not even sure what the difference was if there was any, he’d learned to sing rhymes like that, tell jokes like that and giggle at them, side by side with learning not to look white folks in the eye; to call them mister and expect to be called “boy” by them your whole life long because in their minds Negroes never became men, no matter years.

  Why in hell was it, he wondered; where in hell did that talk belong; why? Once he asked Betty’s father.

  Who said, “Well, Major, well, I know. Now how can I explain?”

  “What I don’t see, Doc, is why Negroes say it. Who wants white women?”

  “Well, Major, well — look at it this way. Since the Negro got to this country, Southern men have been worrying about protecting Southern white womanhood, see. You know how they say, ‘Well, if we let the rule get broken; next thing we know one of them Nigras is marrying our sister.’ “

  “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it! Why do Negroes have to joke about it, as though the white man was right about that being the only thing a Negro wants; about that being so when it’s not so! Who wants a pale old white woman, Doc? Why do Negroes talk that way the whole time?”

  “Well, Major, look at it this way. The white man’s so sure that’s what the Negro wants he’s made to so the Negro’s got to laugh at that whim; better than let it subdue his mind and soul. Major, the Negro learned a long time ago the reason for all the customs and laws; the segregation — all that, Major, was set up and kept going here just so the Negro doesn’t marry the white man’s sister, whom he probably wouldn’t want to marry in the first place, whom she probably wouldn’t want to marry either. White menfolks, Major, don’t have a whole lot of self-confidence, or else they got a closet full of neurotic sisters. Anyway — ”

  “What’s that got to do with how the Negroes talk, Doc?”

  “Now, I’m getting to that, Major … You see the white man succeeds in keeping us in cotton fields, in movie balconies, and on Jim Crow cars — for the most part, he succeeds there. But in the realm of sex, Major, sometimes he doesn’t succeed — or sometimes we like to imagine he doesn’t — and that’s the most sacred realm of all to the white man. So when Negroes say their jokes about Rastus getting caught with the white boss’s wife, that’s sort of their way of saying to themselves: We’re just as good as the whites; this proves it. We’re better because we’re better between the sheets.”

  “I hate that talk!”

  “Well, Major, I know, but there’s little enough to laugh at down here. Little enough. And our people are poor and ignorant. Lord help them; and the whites will keep them that way if they can.”

  • • •

  Remembering that conversation as Major turns down Brockton road, Major recalls Mrs. Ficklin watching him all morning, sitting out on her side porch fanning herself and watching him; then near noontime when he was hauling the ashcans back up from the burner her asking him:

  “You ever been up North, Major?” She was leaning against the porch post, smiling, the sunlight showing through her sheer summer dress, to the slip, to the panties. “Have you, Major?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Never have, huh? Act like you have sometimes.” “I’ve finished all my work, ma’am. May I go, please?”

  “Would you like a cool drink first?”

  “No, ma’am, thank you, I don’t need a cool drink.”

  He recalls, cursing his own guts as he does, what he thought while she was saying it:

  Thought: What do you want from me? What, huh?

  Thought: Here comes the white boss wife —

  Then, rushing down the long gravel driveway, thought: God damn it, Major Post, you’re like all the rest. Think there’s no such thing as a white woman offering a colored boy a cool drink of water without spreading her legs for you after! Think like a goddam crow-bellied know-nothing instead of knowing. Instead of knowing that all that Mrs. Ficklin wanted was to be nice; and you start with your sullen tone; your cheap and tacky “ain’t no Klu gonna get me for giving you some jog-jog, so git away from me” tone; just because she tried to be nice. Mrs. Ficklin is a Northerner, now you know that, Negro. Up North they do that. Down here she tries and you’re not ready to be emancipated yet; you got to think you’re dirty, filthy crow-belly thoughts that make you imagine your pants house a gold nugget, and your head houses fat-back!

  • • •

  “What’re you scowling at, Mr. Post?”

  Major didn’t even see Betty sitting on the front porch as he came up the dirt path to the James house.

  “Scowling at scowls, I guess. Hi!”

  “Hi! Want to go for a walk?”

  “Huh, sure, if that’s what you want.”

  He grins at her; grabs her hand; a short thin girl, pretty, with a shape ripening to a young woman’s; a springy kind of gay walk and laughing sixteen-year-old sweet eyes; with a smile cotton-white and wide.

  “How long you got off?”

  “I’m due at Hooper’s in an hour.”

  “I got the day.”

  “Ummm-hum, I know. I got to do the barbecue. Dad’s taking the pickup to Manteo; meeting my cousin-from-up-North’s train.”

  They cut through the sandhills out into the fields, off toward the black pine, where beyond them in the distance trucks and wagons, piled high with newly picked cotton, head out on Route 109 to line up at the gin over in Galverton.

  “You mean he’s still coming? With Hus back up and well?”

  “We tried to stop him,” Major starts; embarrassed to tell again what Betty already knows, that Major’s dad can’t keep a nickel out of a bootlegger’s palm, “but somewhere between the Western Union Office and our place, my dad lost the money, then forgot he even had a reason for having it.” Major laughs, not meaning it, always embarrassed before Betty, unable not to compare their two families.

  She wears a red and white flower-splotched dress; matches the color the sun makes the hills — scarlet; they both wave at Jack R
owan’s kid brother, Will, heading off for picking at the Sell farm. It’s “in season” now; colored schools close at one to let the kids out for the fields; colored cabinets stock up on liniment for the black backaches the fields promise.

  “Won’t he be mad when he gets here?” she says.

  Major shrugs. “What can you do?”

  “I bet he’ll be furious, Major!”

  “I’m just glad Hus didn’t pass. That’s all.”

  “Oh, gee, sure. Me too.”

  “Got your father to thank. Like always.”

  “You got that tone in your voice today, Major?”

  “Yeah? What tone’s that?” Major knows; Grouch County again; God, when would he get out of that county and back to living! The thing at Ficklins still bothered him; all she wanted to do was be nice; and he had to “crow” himself; damn his black skin!

  “Please somebody be in a pleasant mood today,” Betty says. “Please, somebody.”

  “Why, honey? Is somebody else moaning the blues like me?”

  She stops in the field they walk in; turns and looks up at him; her dark eyes serious now, no laughter there nor any hint of it. “Major?”

  “What’s the matter, Betty?”

  “Major, promise me you won’t tell something.”

  “No. No, I won’t.”

  “You know why I said we should take a walk instead of sitting on the porch.” “Why?”

  “Daddy’s having it out with Barbara. He came home from the clinic for an hour just to catch her when she came from teaching.”

  “Yeah? About what?”

  “Major, promise!” Her eyes plead, her wide lips quiver some, and the clean soft honey-look of her skin with the red of her dress and the red of the hills in the sun. “Please!”

  “I do. I do.”

  “Well — ” she pulls a weed from the field, looking down and away from Major’s eyes — ”well, last night Barbara said she was going for a walk with Neal Bond. It was late when she left and Daddy said how come so late, and she said Neal just got off from the filling station, so Daddy said have a good time and didn’t think anything more about it. Then he got a call out to Myerson’s. Mrs. Myerson had triplets, Major.”

  “No kidding! That little thing!”

  “Yeah. And anyway he was there till late because Mrs. Myerson had a long labor, and Daddy came home near midnight down the track-crossing road near Awful Dark Woods, and he was driving along and then he saw her. He saw her walking there.”

  “Who — Barbara?”

  “Yes … Barbara … He stopped the-car and picked her up, and he was mad because it was so late, and with her having to go through the cracker section to get home from the woods, he was mad and wanted to know what Neal Bond had on his mind making her walk by herself. She said Neal and she had a terrible fight, and she wanted the air, and wasn’t even aware which way she was going, and she guessed she’d gone too far. Daddy said gol-durn right she had.”

  “She’s been sort of funny-acting ever since her boy friend got killed in Korea, huh? What was his name, anyhow.”

  “Who — Howie? I don’t know she has. How you mean?”

  Major doesn’t know. Just seems odd Barbara James never got herself married, was all. Maybe too sick studying grief. Prettiest Negro girl around marrying age: almost bright; almost light; almost white, yah-ha!

  Major says, “How old’s Barbara?”

  “Twenty-six. Ten years on me.”

  “Just seems odd she never got herself married, is all.”

  “Says she’s not in love. I don’t know.”

  “Must be she never got over him. Howie.”

  “I can’t remember him hardly at all. I was only around twelve when he was courting her and all. I just know one day she got the letter he was dead and had hysterics. He went North to college too, I remember that. Studying to be a teacher.”

  “Must be she never got over Howie.”

  Betty shrugs, bites her lips, worries a slow second, then continues, “Well I do know I never saw Daddy so mad as he was last night; and then today, pained, he was. Full of pain at it.”

  “Guess I don’t blame him. Still she’s a grown lady it seems.”

  “Still, Major — wait. I got to finish. When they got home there was Neal sitting out front waiting and wanting to know why he hadn’t seen Barbara in weeks.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah! And Barbara she just walked right on in and went to bed. Crying.”

  Major sucks in his breath, whistles it out. “What’d it all mean.”

  “You know what Daddy thinks, Major?” “Hmm?”

  “Well, you know whose place is up near Dark Woods.”

  “Huh! Naw, that doesn’t mean that Barbara was — ”

  “And listen more, Major. I heard Daddy tell Mom after I was in bed, that minutes before he happened on Barbara there in the woods, he’d seen Hollis Jordan out strolling; because he remembered he’d thought at the time that Hollis Jordan sure was a peculiar duck out exercising his bones past midnight.”

  “Aw, naw!”

  “Yes, and back there just now I heard Daddy say: ‘You hear me well, Barb, I got my suspicions and you got your excuses. I don’t know who you were with or what you were with; but hear this, Barb, I’d sooner on my eyes rather have you messing with the lowest white lint-dodger than have you messing with Hollis Jordan!”

  “Lord, he said that. Lord, he sure hates Hollis Jordan. I didn’t know!” Major says; thinking even the Jameses have to look out for it; even Barbara James with all her college is susceptible, is going to disappoint the doctor yet, and get white hands on her; let them too; want them even, maybe. God that would kill the doctor if it’s sure. But why Hollis Jordan he hates? Why not any white? Why better have a cracker than Hollis Jordan; that was funny, sure enough.

  Sure, because Hollis Jordan is crazy and that’s a fact.

  Still, choosing between a cracker and a crackpot, Doc chose the cracker; now why in hell? Why not just say no goddam white hand is going to feel you; no matter where you ache and how; why not?

  “How would Barbara know Hollis Jordan anyway?” Major says; no one else does. “I didn’t even know she knew him.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Then how does she?”

  “That’s what Daddy’s aiming to find out!”

  Wind waving the field weeds feels cool; good.

  Suddenly Betty says, “Major, let’s run!”

  She starts off ahead of him. Laughing? Uh-uh. Just going fast. Hollis Jordan? Whew!

  “Hey gal, wait on me!”

  4

  Twenty minutes out of Newark Airport candy-tone gives this to Millard:

  MENU

  SHRIMP COCKTAIL SAUCE ROUGE CRISP SALTINES BONED BREAST OF CHICKEN CANDIED SWEET POTATOES GARDEN FRESH PEAS COTTAGE CHEESE SALAD WITH FRESH FRUIT SECTIONS MAYONNAISE DRESSING DINNER ROLL CREAMERY BUTTER CHERRY TART WITH WHIPPED TOPPING COFFEE TEA MILK

  “Man!”

  “Sounds good, doesn’t it,” the lady beside him says. “Boy, feed you like a king!”

  “Umm-humm. Yes, they do. Good flight. Here, put your pillow on your lap.” “Hmm?”

  “Your pillow. To put the tray on when she brings it.” “Yeah? All right. Boy!”

  “It’ll make it easier for you,” the lady says, and smiles.

  5

  GOD IS LOVE.

  The sign says it on the basement wall of the Methodist Church; while Doc Sell’s wife takes the tuba solo in “Loch Lomond.”

  … Where in deep purple hue the Highland Hills we view

  And the moon coming out —

  “What about Ada Pirkle?” sometimes those in Paradise ask.

  “All I know of it,” someone is sure to answer, “is that she was the talk of the whole county back in thirty-six or -seven, back when she was going to Athens to the university. She was different then, all right. Prettiest girl in these parts next to Vivie Hooper, who was Vivie Claridge then, you know. Course she wasn’t so sa
ucy then, neither as she is now.”

  “Was Colonel courting her then?”

  “Nope, not yet, he wasn’t. Neither was Hollis Jordan, and that’s the funny thing about it. Course she knew Hollis. Lord, she knew him, but no one would ever thought there was anything between the two. Hollis was ten years older, after all, and an atheist. Known atheist.” “Caught at it, were they?”

  “Naw, gaw, that’s the funny thing about it. They weren’t caught at it. Thad Hooper, you see, and Ada’s old man — since passed — they were out for coons that afternoon. Up in Awful Dark Woods. Ada, she was down from Athens on one of those college weekends, and along came Thad and her old man and find her there with Hollis Jordan. Up in the clearing near the Judas Trees.”

  “What doing?”

  “That’s the funny thing about it, too. The way the story got back, Ada was just standing there in a state of nature, and Hollis Jordan was fully clothed, down on his knees before her.”

  “No more to it than that?”

  “Hell, that was pretty darn near enough for anyone! Ada’s old man, he says, ‘Ada, put your things on back and come along.’ By this time, course, she’s crying, and Hollis Jordan just standing there telling her not to. Hooper took a swing at him then, Hooper being no more than a boy beside Hollis Jordan, and Hollis Jordan let him. Stood and let him; saying nothing. The way the story got back Ada didn’t put no more on than her dress — carried all her undergear. And then not saying anything more, she plum went along with her old man and Hooper.”

  “No more to it than that?”

  “Nope. That’s the funny thing about it.”

  “… and the moon coming out in the gloaming. Oh, you’ll take the high road …”

  while the whole Paradise Bigger Band comes in then. The tuba solo ends, and only Ada Pirkle makes no noise in the basement of the Methodist Church….

  • • •

  “Come on, Ada,” he said. “Look at all that scalybark on the ground. You look pretty, Ada. College did something for you.”

  “I thought a lot about you, Hollis.”