by Bryn Roar
What’s his name again, Tubby Tollhouse?
Unlike other boys Rusty’s age, he had yet to grow any hair down below. His balls were as bald as Lex Luthor, his penis not much bigger than a baby gherkin pickle.
His upper lip curled in disgust. Shiiitt! And I thought all Brothers were supposed to be packing the sausage! Damn, but that’s one stereotype I wish was true!
Rusty was his actual birth name; a nickname usually reserved for white boys with red hair and freckles. “Ginger Kids,” as that hysterical eight-year-old racist from South Park called them. Didn’t bother Rusty. In fact, he was right proud to have the moniker. His dad had named him after his late friend, Joseph Rusty O’Hara. A real, Honest-to-God hero! A fearless man who’d saved Ham Huggins’s life on two separate occasions! Rusty Huggins single greatest desire was to someday be worthy of his own first name.
After getting ready for school, Rusty hurried into the kitchen for some breakfast. He was starving. He was always starving, though the endless calories he poured down his throat did little to further his growth.
Rusty settled into a ladderback chair and glanced over at his father, reading the morning newspaper across from him. Pop didn’t like it when he overslept.
Ham eyeballed his son over the top of his paper. It annoyed him to see his boy dragging his feet to the breakfast table. Like he was heading out to a hard day’s slog, instead of sitting in an air-conditioned room, reading about Shakespeare and old Abe Lincoln.
“Son, how you gonna be a shrimper, if’n you can’t roust yourself before seven thirty?” He had just come in himself after being out on the Betty Anne since four a.m., and was about to go back out again after his morning chow.
“I don’t know, Daddy,” Rusty answered with a deep sigh. Every morning it was the same speech. He had long ago quit trying to tell his father that he didn’t want to be a shrimper. He knew if he ever did convince his father of that fact, it would break the old man’s heart. And Rusty could never do that. His pop was the greatest man on earth.
His mother bent over and kissed his nose, setting a heaping plate of bacon and eggs before him. “Morning, sunshine,” she said, giving him a knowing wink. He knew what that wink meant. Just humor him, baby. In time he’ll come around. Rusty could hear the unspoken words just as clear as day. She’d surely said them often enough.
He smiled up into his mom’s beaming face, even as his fork went to work on the eggs. Everyone said that Rusty took after his mother and that when he hit his growth spurt he wouldn’t be able to beat the girls away with a doo-doo stick. Even though Betty Anne Huggins was his mother, he recognized that she was also a beautiful woman. By far the prettiest lady on Moon. Skin the color of cocoa butter, and nearly just as soft. Her eyes were her best feature, though; the palest shade of brown and oval shaped. It was hard looking away from such smoky eyes. One second as gentle as a fawn’s, the next, as harsh as a summer thunderhead. She had straight black hair, the hue and slickness of a polished ebony stone. As was Betty Anne’s habit, she’d pulled it into a simple ponytail.
It swished girlishly from side to side as she toted the now empty frying pan to the sink. The hot skittle disappeared under the suds with a sizzling hiss.
His daddy was a stark contrast to Betty Anne Huggins. He was a powerfully built man, with fists the size of ham hocks—the obvious comparison the reason for the nickname (Samuel was his given name, but no one had called him that since his parents had passed). Ham could lift up the back end of his Ford Pickup with those big, salt-roughened paws of his; while in the next instance those same sausage fingers could tenderly pluck an eyelash from Rusty’s eye. Ham was dark, while his wife and son had more of a café au lait skin tone. The laugh lines around his eyes, which Betty Anne called his “Map of Mirth,” grew a little bit deeper with each passing year. A jovial man by nature, a smile was Ham’s constant companion. His booming laughter was a frequent sound heard on Moon.
That’s not to say that Ham had never known heartbreak before. No, he was well acquainted with that kind of grief. But he was the kind of man who understood that there are two kinds of grief in life. The kind that every one of us has to suffer through—the inevitable loss of a parent, the passing of a dear friend or cherished pet. Then there was the kind of grief that punched you in the balls. Grief so raw and seemingly so unnecessary that it made you doubt the existence of a caring God.
Bud Brown, Rusty’s friend and sometime protector, was on a first name basis with that vicious emotion. And like most folks on Moon, Ham Huggins was a little bit in awe of that big brooding boy.
Much as he admired his daddy, Rusty often found the old man to be tiresome. He was constantly preaching the virtues of a hard day’s work and the advantages of a good education. This, despite the fact his dad had dropped out of school (or maybe because of it).
That’s not to say Rusty was ashamed of his dad’s folksy vocabulary and ways. On the contrary. Rusty was well aware of his family’s history on Moon, and was justifiably proud. Even so, there isn’t an adolescent on earth who thinks his parents are fit to be seen in public.
His granddaddy, Jessie Huggins, brought his pregnant wife to the island, back in 1958. In one fell swoop, he’d landed a job as lighthouse keeper and had put a roof over his family’s head. Such as it was. Back then Moon Island was just an overgrown, lizard infested, hummock out to sea. Too far from the mainland to be of much use, its beaches, for the most part, too narrow and steep to attract tourists. Its only purpose at the time was the lighthouse on the east end of the island, warning boaters of the extremely shallow waters on that coastline. Despite the decent wages offered by the state, most people considered the caretaker job too isolated from the real world. For a black man living in the South at that time, however, it was a dream job. Except for a rare visit or two from an officious inspector, they left Jessie pretty much alone.
Six months after Jessie and his young wife Reva set foot on Moon, Samuel J. Huggins was born, making him the first natural born native of Moon Island. At least to anyone’s recollection. Tending to the lighthouse took very little time out of Jessie’s day. In fact it wasn’t long before Reva, bored out of her mind, took to those chores herself. This freed up her husband to build a better home for their family. The windowless lighthouse had quarters at its base for the keeper, but they were much too spare and dark for a family of three. Eventually, Jessie built a spacious, airy cabin right beside the tower. Using the lighthouse quarters thereafter as a storm pantry. The sprawling log home had three bedrooms, a large sitting room, a fair-sized kitchen, and a bathroom, complete with working john and claw foot bathtub. All topped off with a good tin roof. Practically the Taj Mahal for a man who’d never lived in anything bigger than a shotgun shack before!
A wide lowcountry porch encircled the pine cabin, from which Jess and Reva could sit in the shade, while watching their son play in the sandy yard, or just to take in their impressive view of the All Mighty Atlantic.
Despite how well things had turned out, Jessie couldn’t help looking over his shoulder. A black man living in the Deep South at that time wasn’t supposed to be content with his lot. He kept waiting for the ax to fall on his head. Meanwhile, he spent some of his hard earned money—he had little expenses; the state paid for their supplies—on a fishing vessel. He’d bought the small shrimp boat from a kindly white man who brought over their supplies once a month from Beaufort. It was a good thing, too, because one year later the ax he’d been waiting on finally dropped. The state came in and put in an automatic light. They kept Jessie on to do nominal maintenance, for an even more nominal salary.
Didn’t matter. By that time Jessie was making a better living as a fisherman, anyway. He sold his catch every morning but Sunday in the sleepy coastal town of Beaufort, across the water. The restaurants and Inns in town all clamored for his fresh, inexpensive catch. And even though it meant dealing with the white world again, Jess could at least stop waiting on that old ax to fall. Besides, he was still his own man!
He loved the solitude of the sea and the gratifying feeling he got from harvesting its rich bounty. It wasn’t all that different from the farming tradition his father and grandfather had weaned him on, in the sun baked fields of South Carolina. Cultivating corn, cotton, and tobacco.
A year after he’d begun his new career, Jessie upgraded to a bigger shrimpboat, The Moon Maiden, and the money began rolling in. That’s when he started to look towards the future of Moon.
The Huggins’s isolation was soon a thing of the past. The white Captain who sold Jess his first boat asked him if he could move to the island. This floored Jessie. Never in his life had a white man asked his permission for anything! Captain McAndles wasn’t the last, either.
From that moment on, there was a slow but steady stream of people moving to the island, most of them families. And every last one of them—be they white or black—had to rent or buy the land from Jessie Huggins.
This fortuitous development had come to pass because Jessie had maintained a permanent residence on Moon for over five consecutive years. The state of South Carolina considered the property abandoned by this time, and was obliged to deed the land over to Jessie Huggins (except for the lighthouse, that is, and a large tract of land in the swamp, out by Lizard Lake, which the Army still owned). Truth was, they were glad to be shut of her.
Jessie Huggins, on the other hand, wouldn’t have traded Moon for all the Hawaiian Isles put together. Using the money he’d saved, as well as most of the income coming in from his fishing, Jessie had farmed out the construction of several small homes and cottages, mostly on the East End. It was good for a start, but the best was yet to come. He considered the west end of Moon to be the best property on the island, what with its highest elevation and all, but was in no hurry to develop it. Better to wait until he could put some real money into the construction over there.
It was like money in the bank.
In the years to follow, as more and more people came to Moon to settle, Main Street began to take shape; with businesses popping up on either side of the then unpaved road, in a slow, steady progression. The natural harbor, which at one time had only the one spindly dock, preceded this municipal growth by leaps and bounds, and was the town’s first gathering spot—fisherman being the heart and soul of the island. Moon Island, while still dependent on the mainland for its power supply and phone lines, was self-sufficient when it came to fresh water; thanks to the spring-fed lake, which sat in the middle of the pine forest. Aptly, if not originally, referred to as the Pines. The Army turned over their water treatment plant, located on the western edge of the forest, to the town of Moon, and it employed some of the non-fishermen on the island. An impressive start for any small town, much less one that never held any such aspirations. But Moon’s high-water day, as far as Jessie and Reva were concerned, came when the First Community Church of Moon, built overlooking the harbor, opened its arched doors for the first time. For them, that marked the day their island became a real town.
For Sam, Moon Island was more than a town; it was his world entire. His childhood was unique for a black kid growing up in the sixties. For the first few years of his life, he was blissfully ignorant of that social disease, racism. Hatred was something you reserved for life’s irritating inconveniences: the sweltering sauna-like days of summer; or the sand burrs that nearly outnumbered the grains of sand on Moon, and which always seemed to be underfoot; or maybe for the little green lizards that sometimes crawled into bed with you at night, scaring you half to death. Never, though, for your fellow man. What sort of folly was that! This was partly due to the fact that his parents refused to own a TV. Nor, for that matter, did any of his friends. Mostly, though, it was because people on Moon got along better than they did on the mainland.
They all went to the same church and prayed together. The fisherman swilled coffee at Peg Leg’s every morning, noon, and night; and everyone gathered together for the potluck supper, held every Wednesday evening at the Town Hall banquet room. Folks on Moon just didn’t have the time or inclination to hate one another.
Sam had been a working mate on The Moon Maiden since he was eight-years-old, helping with the catch, and learning the trade from his old man, but not once had he ever set foot on any land that wasn’t rightfully theirs. That’s just the way his daddy wanted it, too.
From some of the other kids he’d learned of what went on out there. The depth, width, and magic of that vast western horizon. The lights of which twinkled in the night like fallen stars from heaven. His parents, meanwhile, refused to speak of it. Whenever Ham would bring up the subject, they’d speak of the mainland as uninteresting, and encouraged him to drop it from his mind.
It was obvious Jessie and Reva knew nothing of child psychology, for their clumsy subterfuge only fueled Ham’s desire to see the countryside that much more.
He got his wish the day he turned nine.
It was an eye-opening day for Ham Huggins, and a turning point in his life. On Moon, his daddy was the most respected man on the island, revered by its inhabitants and a friend to all. Not so across the River. On the docks of Beaufort the white men who came to buy shrimp and fish for their businesses treated Jessie more like a child than a grown man. And a bastard child at that.
They spat out curt commands and rude commentary, as if the sight of him pissed them off. “I’ll take twenty pounds of dem shrimp, boy! And don’t you be all day about it!” Some of the older whites would even smile when they uttered things like: “You’re a shrimpin’ fool, ain’t you boy?” Or “You’re a credit to your race, son! Not shiftless, like so many nigras today!”
Jessie just smiled and took their money. Ham could read the resentment in his father’s eyes, though. The lack of any real respect. “Ain’t nuttin but a mangy old dog pack,” was how Jessie described the elderly white men. “Low down curs that strut their courage only when surrounded by others of their kind. They act like they’s full o’ piss and vinegar—but truth is, son, they just be full of the shit.”
The white shrimpers, those not from Moon Island, selling their wares alongside his daddy were something else altogether, their hostility more out in the open. Their hatred personified by the Rebel flags flying from their sterns. Their youth and anger (and yes, their fear), at the changing times, made them far more dangerous than their toothless elders. More than once that day Ham heard that pasty lot call his father a “Nigger.” A word Ham was unfamiliar with, yet one which instinctively churned his guts.
One fat gomer, wearing a greasy John Deere cap, even went so far as to kick one of their baskets of iced shrimp “accidentally” off the side of the dock. Ham watched bug-eyed, his heart beating like a big ‘ol bass drum in his ears, waiting for his father to erupt and give that redneck asshole what for…
But Jessie just turned his back to the fat man and returned to his work. As if the loss of all those shrimp didn’t matter one little bit. Oh, the shame…the shame!
The mocking laughter of the rednecks followed Ham and his daddy as they meekly loaded the rest of their catch back onto the Moon Maiden, and then made for home. His father refused to look at his son, too embarrassed to explain to Ham the way of things outside their island paradise. Ham had welcomed the silence. For the first time in his life he was ashamed of his father. More than that, he was angry. Angry with white people for treating his daddy that a-way. Angry that they’d ruined the image he’d had of his father. Angry that his idea of how the world worked and his place in it was a got-damned lie!
He felt betrayed by the white folks on Moon, certain that they must have been laughing at him this whole time. Laughing at dumb ol’ Ham! Stupid little nigger!
He couldn’t wait to take that anger out on the first white person he saw—and the first one he saw that ugly afternoon was Joe Rusty O’Hara.
Joe Rusty’s family rented a small, two-bedroom, one-bath cottage from the Huggins’s, on the other side of the lighthouse. The second rental house, in fact, that Jessie Huggins had buil
t. Naturally, the boys being the same age and living so close by had become fast friends. Ham intended on rectifying that situation. Later that same day when Joe Rusty made the short trek over to his house, to bring Ham his birthday gift, Ham had sent him packing.
“Don’t come ‘round here, no more, white boy!” Ham had shouted into his best friend’s bewildered face. “I hate you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!”