Crow

by Barbara Wright

  I tried to pull myself together. I couldn’t be weak at a time like this. Mama needed me. I was the man of the house now.

  Boo Nanny, Mama, and I slept in the same bed that night, but no one got much sleep. Early the next morning, we all went to the county jail on Princess Street. Outside it was chilly and damp, but the sun shone brightly and the sky was fresh and clean, the way it is after a rain.

  On the way, we passed a tree where someone had hung two sepia photographs in gold frames, the glass cracked across the faces. The male portrait was tagged R. H. BUNTING—WHITE. Under the woman’s portrait were the words MRS. R. H. BUNTING—COLORED. Mama turned my head away, grabbed my elbow, and hurried me past.

  We joined the people milling outside the jailhouse. From overheard snippets of conversation, I learned that a number of Wilmington’s Negro citizens had spent the night in jail and would be escorted to the train station in time for the 9:10.

  “Miss Ellen ain’t gone like this one bit, but I’m gone be late for work,” Mama said.

  “You gone get youself fired, pure and simple,” Boo Nanny said.

  “I’ll find more work. White folk thinks we so dangerous, yet they lets us take care of their babies. What sense do that make?”

  I flipped open Grandpa Tip’s gold watch. I had put it in my pocket for good luck. It was 8:22 train time. I closed the lid, with the teeth marks. More than anything about the watch, I loved those dents.

  At quarter to nine, half a dozen Negroes emerged from the jail, each escorted by two soldiers carrying rifles with bayonets. I recognized most of the men. They were prominent members of the black community. Despite the proclamations of wanting to rid the Port City of ignorant Negroes, it was the educated, successful blacks who were chosen for exile.

  Armed members of the Wilmington Light Infantry had spaced themselves along the route to the railroad station. White people lined the streets as if for a parade.

  I had an ugly feeling in my stomach as I watched Lewis’s proud father being kicked and prodded along the corridor by two armed men. Hoodlums jeered and shouted from the roadside.

  Daddy was last in line. His posture was so slumped, I almost didn’t recognize him. He must have slept in his suit, for he looked rumpled and unkempt. Even his shoes had lost their shine. He walked between the two soldiers in small, shuffling steps. His eyes were blank, focused on the ground in front of him.

  I ran behind the spectators, jumping up at intervals and shouting “Daddy! Daddy!” to catch his attention. He couldn’t hear me over the chorus of “Dixie” that had broken out from the sidelines.

  I ran faster to get in front of him. People glared at me, but I didn’t care. Closer to the train station, I edged my way to the front row, squatted down, and waited for the sad procession of Negroes to reach me.

  When I saw Daddy, I sprang up and called to him. Finally I was able to make myself heard above the commotion. When he saw me, the spark returned to his eyes and he smiled. Then he straightened his back, raised his head high, and marched forward, his dignity restored.

  The train was waiting at the station. I looked around in the crowd for Mama and Boo Nanny. Seagulls squawked overhead, and the air smelled of fish. The tip of a schooner’s mast on the Cape Fear was visible over the roof of the station.

  The soldiers led the Negroes to the back of the train. Farther up the platform, porters were carrying luggage. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the gold watch ticking against my palm. I prayed that Grandpa Tip was not working as a porter that day so he would be spared this sight.

  The Negroes entered the train one by one. There were no porters to bring the box to make it easier to reach the bottom rung of the train steps. The men struggled to climb up. Daddy helped push the elderly preacher up the steps, then pulled himself up, the last in line. At the top, he paused and turned to address the crowd.

  “The white supremacists among you decry black crime and black laziness, but it is, in truth, black competence and independence that you fear most. Witness here the men you have chosen to banish.”

  From the crowd came shouts of “Who gave him the right to speak?” “Cocky!” “Uppity!” “Impudent!”

  The soldier beside him tried to push him inside, but he resisted.

  I closed my eyes tight against the brightness of the sun and repeated silently, Get inside. Get into the car right now.

  The whistle sounded, and the porter came by ringing a bell. The train was ready to pull out of the station.

  Mama found me in the crowd and came up beside me. “Make him hush up, Mama,” I whispered.

  But Daddy would not be silenced. He continued: “These men are not minstrels, buffoons, or faithful retainers. Those types pose no threat. No, these men are educated, ambitious achievers—preachers, lawyers, men who own businesses and homes. That is what scares you.”

  “Jack!” Mama cried out, and raised her hand so Daddy could see her. I felt my heart lift. She would make him stop talking. She was the only one who could.

  She pushed through the spectators. When she got to the front row, a Red Shirt said, “Get back there, you little high yaller hussy,” and shoved her hard with the butt of his rifle.

  She cried out in pain and crumpled onto the platform thirty feet from the train.

  Daddy saw it happen. “Sadie!” he cried, and leaped off the steps to help her.

  “He’s escaping!” came a shout from the crowd.

  A shot rang out. Daddy slumped over on the platform. My heart went cold.

  Mama got to her feet, and we raced to his side. Mama cradled his head in her lap, and I held his hand.

  “Somebody get help!” she cried frantically. Daddy had a large opening in his neck.

  Boo Nanny reached us. She took off her shawl and mopped up the blood.

  The doors to the railway car closed. I felt a hot blast of steam from under the train as it chugged out of the station. A shrill rebel yell broke through the air. The Red Shirts backed the spectators away to leave space around us.

  Mama rubbed Daddy’s temples. “Baby, we here. We always here.” Her lap was wet and red.

  My mind was racing. I should know what to do. I had practice in this sort of thing. I had saved the little girl. Surely I could save my own daddy. But blood was running out so fast. If I tied the shawl around his neck to stop the flow, he’d choke.

  “Daddy, tell me what to do. I’ll do anything.”

  “Never …” His voice was a whisper. The clank of the wheels made it hard to hear.

  I put my ear closer to his chapped lips. “What, Daddy?”

  “Never give up. Always …”

  “Always what?” I was desperate. The crowd broke out in cheers and yells as the train left the station.

  I felt him grip my hand harder as he tried to lift his head off Mama’s lap. “Always …,” he whispered, straining toward me. Then his head slumped to the side and his handshake went limp.

  A small group followed the pine casket through the scrub oak and wire grass, over paths covered with fingertip-sized acorns that, when squashed, revealed a pumpkin-colored interior.

  All around the cemetery, people had cordoned off small squares with stakes and string. There were so many fresh mounds of dirt, the land looked like a building site.

  We buried Daddy beneath a buzzard-free sky. As we sang “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” Mama looked nervously around her. Three days after the riots, it was still not safe for groups of Negroes to gather together. After a brief service, we left.

  I wanted to remember the good things about Daddy, but every time I thought of him, I saw that hole in his neck, his cracked lips, the red stain on Mama’s skirt, so wide and dark that rather than turn the skirt over to Boo Nanny for washing, she burned it in the backyard pit.

  During the days that followed, many people came up to me and told me that my daddy was a hero. But I didn’t want a hero. I wanted a father. I loved Boo Nanny and Mama with all my heart, but who would teach me how to be a man?

  Se
veral weeks later, when I visited Daddy’s grave, I found it covered with objects. Friends and neighbors who were too scared to attend the funeral had crept back when no one was looking to leave something on his grave. Almost every object was damaged in some way, broken, rusted, melted, burned. Some things could only have come from the men at the Record: lead printing-press letters fused together in a clump, a mangled typewriter, its innards melted. Other objects must have meant something to the giver: a toy horse with a yarn mane, an ax handle without the head, a pine box that once held Borax, a rusted snuff tin, a hearing horn, a mouth organ, a biscuit cutter—simple, everyday objects placed there as a kind of tribute.

  I sat at the foot of my father’s grave and wept.

  I thought of the time I left little presents in the crook of the tree by the swimming hole for Tommy. It had felt good. That was why I did it. I enjoyed getting the gifts he left for me, but even more, I liked thinking up things to give him.

  I tried to picture Daddy’s face, but I couldn’t. At least not now. But that didn’t mean he was gone. Far from it.

  I never told anyone this—they might have hauled me off to the Asylum for the Colored Insane in Goldsboro if I did—but Daddy was not dead. Rather, he had taken on a different form. Not like Boo Nanny’s haints, who roamed the earth causing mischief. He stayed closer to home. Over the years, I would grow bigger, but he would stay the same: something small and light and precious that I carried inside me. I would keep him safe, always.

  FOURTEEN

  Christmas passed in a blur. The New Year was no better. Mama lost her job with the Gilchrists. At first she didn’t seem to mind. “It’ll do that baby child good to be with his real mama for a change,” she said, referring to the Gilchrists’ three-year-old son, Edward. But when she couldn’t find a place anywhere else, she started to wear down.

  When I announced that I was quitting school to find a job, she said, “I don’t care if we gots to live on acorns and seaweed. You ain’t quittin’ school, no way, so don’t even think about it. You is gone finish high school, then you is gone go to college, and after that, I don’t know what you is gone do, but it’s gone be something good, ’cause you is your daddy’s boy.”

  A white family bought Lewis’s fine house when he and his family moved up North. His father was forced to sell off the bank and his other properties at fire-sale prices. Before leaving, Lewis gave me his marble collection for safekeeping, though I think we both knew he would never come back. I kept the marbles in a Mason jar on my windowsill, but they were no replacement for a friend.

  One day at the end of February, I found Boo Nanny on the back steps, rocking and moaning.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I got de miseries in my back,” she said, picking at her skirt. Her clawed hands were dark with lye burns.

  I was alarmed. She was overworked. Mama helped with the laundry when she wasn’t out looking for work or doing odd jobs here and there, and I helped after school. But the burden fell mostly on Boo Nanny.

  “What can I do?” I hated to see her in pain like that.

  “Ain’t you something, Cocoa Baby, worrying ’bout these old bones. Give me a moment and I’ll be pert like usual.”

  “What’s to become of us?” I asked.

  “Sounds to me like you got youself a powerful case of the sorries. That’ll wear you down quicker’n anything,” she said. “I seed worse days than this, and I’s here to tell you, we might be in for a right smart spell, but we gone bear what we got to and we gone get by just fine long as we be thankful for what we got, and not sniffling over what we ain’t got.”

  The call of the bull alligator announced the beginning of spring. Grass appeared in the low grounds along the river, and chestnuts disappeared from the city markets, along with sweet-en-taters, possum, and sides of venison. Soon spring was full upon us, with waves of sweet smells and bright mornings.

  Mama still had not found a job, and Boo Nanny’s work was spotty. If Lewis’s father had still owned the bank, he would have allowed us to delay house payments for several months, but the new owners wouldn’t work with us, and we were close to losing the house. We had already auctioned off most of the parlor furniture, but Mama had put off selling the organ. Now there was no choice. Money from the sale would allow us to limp along for a few more months until we got on our feet.

  I volunteered to go back to the clock repairman who sold us the organ to see if he would buy it back. The small shop on Front Street was crammed with clocks of all shapes and sizes. All were set to the same time, except for the ones by his worktable in need of repair. A grandfather clock stood by the front door. A glass case held trays of pocket watches, some waiting for pickup, others for sale.

  The man was stooped over a worktable by the window with tweezers in his hand and a loupe in his right eye. Watch parts were spread out on the table—screws, springs, and disks of various sizes, some with toothed edges and others with rims and spokes, all tiny.

  When the man looked up from his work, I described the organ we had purchased from him and asked if he would be interested in buying it back.

  “Oh, yes, I remember.” He removed the loupe from his eye and set it on his forehead. “I’ll give you thirty,” he said.

  “Thirty dollars?” I said, unsure I had understood him.

  “Correct.”

  “We paid a hundred less than a year ago.”

  “I doubt it.”

  I would know. For a solid year I had stashed away two one-dollar bills a week in the pages of the dictionary. I would never forget Mama’s face when she clapped her eyes on the organ for the first time. I might never see that much joy in her face again, which made me sad. But those were different times. Now we needed the money more than the organ. “No, I remember clearly. We paid a hundred,” I said.

  “Well, that wasn’t very smart of you.”

  Either he had cheated us on the original price or he was trying to cheat me now. “What will you take?” I said.

  “I’ve stated my price,” he said.

  “I can’t sell it for that.” Suddenly I felt bold. The fact that he was acting shifty reinforced my resolve.

  “It ain’t worth forty. No one will give that for it. Thirty’s my offer. Better take it now while I’m in a generous mood.”

  As if to tempt me, he took out a roll of bills and started counting them. “You could use the money, couldn’t you?” he said, ruffling the end of the stack.

  I paused and thought how to respond. I remembered what my father had said about that Dry Ponder when I had mistakenly stolen the bicycle I thought belonged to Lewis: What he is has nothing to do with what you are. I would not lie.

  “That’s not the problem,” I said.

  “Well then, what is the problem?”

  “We aren’t even close on the terms.” I thought of my grandfather’s gold watch and vowed that I would starve before I sold it to this crook.

  “Think you’re fancy folk, don’t you?”

  “We are neither smart nor fancy; we are fair.”

  He straightened his back. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Only that thirty is not a fair price, and I won’t accept it.”

  “You think you can just sell it anywhere? You’re in for a big surprise.”

  I thought for a moment. If I didn’t sell the organ here, I had no idea where I would sell it. No one in Darktown could afford an organ, and white people would be too afraid to come to our house to look at it. I was throwing away the only chance I had. Thirty dollars was better than nothing. The momentary feeling of bravado left me, and I was ready to accept his offer.

  At that moment, the hour of eleven arrived, and dozens of clocks in the store struck the hour in unison. The room filled with pings, gongs, and chimes—a glorious cacophony. Yes, cacophony. A big word. A challenge word. I was the keeper of the dictionary now that Daddy was gone.

  I could feel my father’s presence in the room, could hear him say: This is how it starts. One small st
ep, and you ignore what you know to be right, and then the next time, it is easier to do, and the next time, a little easier still, and before you know it, every ounce of your self-worth is gone. No, I would not give in to this man. Not with Jack for a father.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said when the chimes had run their course. I threw back my shoulders and walked toward the door.

  “Now wait a minute, here,” he said. “Wait just a minute. I may have some leeway. Would you take sixty?”

  I turned around. “No, sir, I would not.”

  “What about seventy? That’s my last offer.”

  “I understand. But I can’t sell for that.”

  “You’re a stubborn little Sambo. Well, give me your best price.”

  I calculated in my head. I knew this was my last chance, and I didn’t want to ruin it by being greedy. I shut my eyes and said, “Eighty-five.”

  “I’ll meet your price, if you will take care of delivery.”

  “It’s a deal.” I looked him straight in the eye and gave him a handshake—a firm Jack Thomas handshake.

  The first full moon of May marked the beginning of soft-shell crab season. There was a limited time after the blue crabs shed their shells when I could catch Mama and Boo Nanny’s favorite food. I didn’t have much experience crabbing, but since life had been so hard for us recently, I was determined to provide them with this special treat. At low tide, I took a pole, a net, bait, and a bucket to the salt marsh.

  Blue periwinkle shells clung to the roots of the exposed marsh grasses, and fiddler crab holes pocked the mud. Around the edges of the sandbars, purplish clams shone through the muck. I carefully made my way forward, stepping on the roots to avoid sinking.

  I tied a chicken neck to a string and tossed it into the water. When I felt a tug, I patiently pulled the bait back, coaxing the crab along until I could scoop it up in my net. After an hour, I had caught five blues, but not a single soft-shell.

  I wasn’t worried. With the blue sky above and the breeze on my face—warm but not too hot—it was a perfect day. The red shoulders of the blackbirds dotted the marsh grass like cherries. A blue heron took flight, stretching its stilt-like legs awkwardly behind, then tucking them underneath. Above, a circling hawk dove straight down, landing with a splash and coming up with breakfast. All this would change next week, when school ended and I had to find a job. But for this one day, I took in the dizzying joy of complete freedom.