Crow

by Barbara Wright

  Behind me, I heard sloshing, and then someone called my name. I turned and there was Tommy, his red hair flaming in the sun.

  “Hey,” I said, and looked down. He was the last person I wanted to meet out here. I hadn’t seen him since the day he kicked me.

  “How are you?” he said. His cheeks were red and spotted, like pinto beans.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Catch yourself any busters?” he said.

  “No luck,” I said, ashamed to admit that my bucket was filled with hard-shell crabs. They would be good eating, but a lot more work, since we’d have to crack the shell and claws and pick out the meat.

  Tommy looked inside my bucket. “You got yourself a red-liner there. She’ll drop her shell in a couple of hours,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “See the line along the edge of the back flippers? It’s turned from white to red. She’s ready to molt, sure enough.”

  Clearly he knew more than I did. I wanted in the worst way to get away from him, but there was nowhere to go.

  “I can show you how to bring along the red-liners till they drop their shells.”

  “That’s okay.” He could tell I didn’t know what I was doing, and that made me feel worse.

  “I been doing this since I was six. It ain’t hard,” he said.

  My ankles tickled as a school of minnows flitted by, wrinkling the surface of the water.

  “See that trotline over there?” he said, pointing to the east. I had noticed the bobbing white buoys before but mistook them for gulls. A trotline required more skill but worked much better. A line was stretched between two buoys and baited every two feet or so. “Want to help me run it?”

  I looked down without answering. Why wouldn’t he leave me alone?

  “I’ll let you in on a secret, but you got to promise not to tell,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Know why the crabbing’s better over there?” he said.

  He was about to give up a prize piece of information. No waterman worth his salt gave away his secret spots.

  “The ones without shells are weak and need a place to hide. That’s why they go over there. A sunken boat.”

  “No kidding.” I couldn’t hide my glee. “Like a schooner?”

  “It’s just an old skiff, but enough to give the crabs shelter.”

  Of course, the marsh was too shallow for the bigmasted ships. I felt stupid, but Tommy didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’ll go halves,” he said.

  I swallowed hard. He could get several bucketfuls, easy, with enough left over to sell at market. I could be out here for hours and not catch a single soft-shell crab. “Naw, I’m not interested,” I said.

  “Come on, I could use the help.”

  He kicked the edge of the water and sent a spray that hit me square in the face. It caught me by surprise. I scooped up some water in both hands and slung it toward him. Before long, we were horsing around, splashing each other any way we could. We were already muddy and tired and wet, but the game made us forget all that. The sun turned the sprays of water into tiny rainbows, like the big arcs in the sky, but smaller, filled with all the different colors.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Crow is a novel that combines fictional characters with real historical events. In 1898, four of the ten aldermen in Wilmington, North Carolina, were black, but Jack Thomas is an invented character. Moses, Boo Nanny, Mama, Lewis, and Tommy exist only in my imagination—and now, I hope, in yours as well.

  The black Siamese twins Millie-Christine are based on real people. They became a European sensation, performed for the Queen of England, and were so successful that they were able to buy the plantation in Columbus County, North Carolina, where they were born into slavery.

  Alex Manly was the real editor of the Wilmington Daily Record, the largest black daily in the South. There are several versions of the story of his escape. The one in the novel is fictional, though I took some details from existing accounts.

  Many of the minor characters are based on historical figures: John Dancy, appointed collector of customs for the Port of Wilmington by President William McKinley; James Sprunt, owner of the Sprunt Cotton Compress; the Red Shirts; Crazy Drake; Alfred Waddell; and many others.

  The tunnels under Wilmington’s streets exist today, though for reasons of safety, no one is allowed to go through them.

  Many events in the novel are historical, and I wrote them with as much accuracy as research allowed: the white supremacy rally in Fayetteville, the Committee of Twenty-Five’s ultimatum to the black citizens, the two-thousand-man march on the Record led by Alfred Waddell, the mob’s burning of the Record, the standoff outside the Sprunt Cotton Compress, and the violence at the corner of Harnett and Fourth Streets.

  Where possible, I quoted word for word from speeches and documents, including Alex Manly’s editorial; Alfred Waddell’s speech in front of Thalian Hall, where he threatened to “choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses”; and the White Declaration of Independence. For purposes of the story, I combined several speeches for the Fayetteville rally and Alfred Waddell’s address.

  I tried to use language of the time. To that end, I never referred to blacks as African Americans—that term didn’t exist in 1898. Instead, I used Negro and colored, which were respectable words at the time. Nigger was then, and is now, a derogatory word. I used it only in the mouths of white supremacists or characters who meant to shock and offend.

  The 1898 race riot and coup d’état had a profound impact on race relations in North Carolina and the South. Between 1892 and 1898, eastern North Carolina elected four African American representatives to the U.S. Congress, but not a single one was elected in the entire twentieth century. Wilmington’s black middle class was destroyed. In addition to the men who were marched to the train and thrown out of town, many other black leaders were banished, along with whites who were sympathetic to the black cause. Thousands of black citizens fled. Those who owned homes and businesses sold them at fire-sale prices.

  After the riot, the newly installed Board of Aldermen appointed Alfred Waddell mayor. Integrated neighborhoods in Wilmington disappeared, and the Jim Crow laws that cemented segregation blossomed. In 1899, signs announcing WHITES ONLY or FOR COLORED popped up at water fountains, bathrooms, restaurants, and theaters across North Carolina. Courtrooms even had separate Bibles to use for swearing in witnesses.

  One of the key men behind the coup d’état was responsible for passing legislation in North Carolina that stripped African Americans of the vote through the grandfather clause, which allowed illiterate men to vote only if their grandfathers had voted before 1867. This disenfranchised black citizens, who had not been guaranteed the right to vote until the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870.

  In the twentieth century, the story of what happened in 1898 was largely forgotten by the white community and barely mentioned in history books. That changed when the North Carolina General Assembly created the Wilmington Race Riot Commission to look into the incident. The commission’s 2006 report, which includes photographs, maps, and charts, can be found at www.history.ncdcr.gov/1898-wrrc.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My heartfelt thanks go out to Bill McBean, Lydia Chávez, Ursula Hegi, and Dennis Deas, who read early drafts and made valuable suggestions. Gail Hochman has been a constant support. Suzy Capozzi edited the book with clarity and insight. Thanks always to Frank, who makes me laugh.

  Though I read widely in researching this book, certain works were particularly helpful. The story of the African American Siamese twins is covered in Millie-Christine: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Joanne Martell. An early and thoroughly researched account, We Have Taken a City: The Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898 by H. Leon Prather Sr., was published in 1984 and did not receive the attention it deserved. The official report of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission was invaluable.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BARBARA WRIGHT grew u
p in North Carolina and has lived all over the world: in France, in Korea, in El Salvador. She lives in Denver with her husband, and plays tennis and jazz piano whenever she can. Visit her online at www.barbarawrightbooks.com.