The Ancestors

by Brandon Massey

  “By the way,” the librarian said, “my name is Mrs. Mabel Trawley. I’m from the Trawleys who live here in Graceville, out near Trawley Hill. My great-grandfather was born on a tobacco plantation not far from the Stephenses. Are you their grandson?”

  Davie nodded, but what did that have to do with anything? Just because he’d asked about the land didn’t mean he wanted to hear the history of the world. Or tell her his life story.

  “Well, you just tell your grandmamma that Mabel Trawley said hello. That’s how people like to do here in Graceville. We want to know how people’s families turned out. See, it didn’t start out so well for most of us. Our ancestors were slaves here. Did you know that?”

  “Yeah. I know about slavery.”

  Davie was glad his father had shown him Roots, or he wouldn’t have known what “slaves” really meant. Sure, he’d learned about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War in school—and it had something to do with slaves—but only Roots had shown him how Kunta Kinte lost his foot trying to run for freedom. And how people’s babies got sold away. The librarian pulled out a book called Black Seminoles. “There were lots of runaways who lived in the swamps. Met up with the Indians, all of them hiding out together.”

  “What about dogs?”

  The librarian pursed her lips and flipped a book open to a drawing of a black man, woman and young boy dressed in tatters, running through a swamp—chased by barking dogs. The dogs looked like ferocious monsters, with coats of fur so thick at their necks that they seemed to have manes. “Most times, tracking was the only way a slave master could bring his runaways back. Pieces of them, anyway.”

  Davie’s neck felt ice-cold when he remembered the splashing water in the living room. The photo of the tracking dogs cast a very different light on the past two nights. Tracking. As in looking for him. Would he and Neema end up in pieces if they kept hunting for the ghost dog?

  “Can I check out those books?” Davie said.

  “What’s got you so interested?”

  What the heck? “Ghosts,” Davie said.

  “Oh, so you’re seeing spirits,” she said. Her voice made it sound everyday, like Oh, so you had chicken for dinner last night?

  “That’s right,” she went on. “Summer.”

  “What about summer?”

  She pursed her lips. “Come on, now. You wouldn’t be seeing them otherwise.”

  Aside from Mom, who talked about ghosts singing in trees, Davie had never met another adult who would hold still and listen when he talked about ghosts. Even so, this woman’s eyes were only half engaged; from time to time, she glanced down at a stain on her white blouse.

  “What do you know about the ghosts?” he said.

  “You tell me,” she said. “I haven’t seen any since I was your age.”

  Davie’s heart fluttered. “It’s true you don’t see them when you’re older?”

  “Not in Graceville. Nope.” She brushed at the stain.

  That afternoon, while Davie’s father worked on his computer to forget his problems, Mabel Trawley shelved books and told Davie the history of Graceville, Florida. Founded in 1845 by James Grace, who would later fight as a Confederate officer in the Civil War. The town started out prosperous because of tobacco farming, since people who smoked rarely quit the habit, and there were plenty of new people to take it up—and slaves to bring in the harvests. (“No tobacco, no Graceville. No slaves, no tobacco. Plain facts,” she said.) The huge tobacco barns, where the leaves were hung out to dry, still stood up and down the roads. (“There’s a tobacco barn out back there somewhere behind your grandmama’s house, for a fact.”)

  There was one Really Bad Thing that happened right after the turn of the century, she said. The year was 1909.

  “In summer?” Davie said.

  “’Course it was summer.”

  Mabel Trawley told the story:

  Most black folks in Graceville didn’t have two dimes to rub together since slavery, but there were a handful of Negroes here and there who did all right. Men farmed and hired themselves out to the growers, or sharecropped, women took in wash, and babies made up of all their parents’ hopes and dreams.

  One such family was the Timmons family. Isaiah Timmons and his wife, Essie, had three sons. He’d planned to stay in Graceville only another year or so, just long enough to pay his debts and save enough money for train tickets to New York, where his brother could help them settle in a boarding house. He had it all planned out. Isaiah Timmons left behind his journal and notes. Otherwise, we might never have known about him at all.

  Well, the Timmons family had to be mindful of all manner of trouble. All black folks back then lived under terrible rules with unthinkable consequences, so you best believe Isaiah Timmons was the most polite, gentle-mannered and kind-hearted Negro these white folks had ever seen. It was said he might have helped foil a riot or two in Graceville; depending on the point of view, he was peacemaker or race traitor, or maybe both.

  Well, despite all of Isaiah Timmons’ unending politeness, he gained powerful enemies in Graceville for the simple reason that he was doing all right. If white folks saw that Isaiah Timmons had a hog, why, their first thought was, “Well, how come that nigger’s got a better hog than me?” (“Sorry to use that word, but that’s how folks talked back then. Calling black folks nigger was the same as calling them by name.”) Instead of shaking their heads to marvel that a black man could put a roof over his family’s heads, they begrudged him every tiny victory.

  If there was one man he hated most, and who was happy to return the sentiment, it was Virgil McCormack. He was a grower whose father had been a genuine slave-holder, and Old Virgil McCormack had never gotten used to the idea that the Negroes who worked for him weren’t slaves. And that anyone with dark skin might have any rights to speak of.

  Isaiah Timmons worked for Virgil McCormack from time to time—a task he hated more than any other—and they also had the misfortune of sharing a border, right out where Tobacco Road is right now. Come to think of it, your grandparents’ house used to be McCormack land, of course, so you’re living right by the very spot where Isaiah Timmons and Virgil McCormack argued over whose land was whose.

  Well, the whole argument came to a head one summer when, in plain daylight, someone set fire to Isaiah Timmons’ barn. The barn wasn’t fifty yards from the house, and it burned straight to the ground. Well, that put the writing clear on the wall—Isaiah Timmons decided he and his family would head up north to New York whether they had train tickets or not. He packed up everything he could in a wagon, working the whole night through, and was ready to leave by dawn. Isaiah wasn’t a coward, but he also wasn’t a fool. Disputes with neighbors never ended well for black folks. Isaiah Timmons figured the sheriff would come next with an accusation of rape or some other charge to get rid of him—if he didn’t string him up in a tree outright—and he wasn’t going to wait around to see how creative his death would be.

  The three boys, it was said, had been helping their father pack that wagon . . . but when it was time to go, Isaiah and Essie Timmons called up and down the road, but they couldn’t find a sign of those boys anywhere. The way Essie Timmons would tell the story later, it was as if they vanished into the air itself! Friends and neighbors helped them search—even the white man who ran the general store, whose great-great-grandson is the mayor of Graceville today—and they searched through and through. But those boys never turned up.

  Well, Isaiah Timmons was sick at heart and mad as hell, no doubt out of his mind with grief. It was one thing to try to hurt him, but what kind of people would hurt children? He took his shotgun and walked across the road to McCormack’s land. Virgil McCormack lived in the same antebellum house where his family lives in today. Isaiah Timmons found McCormack washing his automobile—the McCormacks were among the first in Graceville to have a car—and Timmons aimed that shotgun right at McCormack’s head, demanding to know what happened to his boys.

  I can tell you no white man in
Graceville had ever been spoken to by a Negro that way; not one who lived, anyway. They say Isaiah Timmons fired a warning shot into the air and just about made McCormack jump out of his skin. Got him to crying and begging. McCormack swore to God’s Heaven he didn’t know where those boys were, and Isaiah Timmons let him live only because he was too heavy-hearted to pull the trigger.

  You remember this: He could’ve killed him, but he didn’t. And it wasn’t about trying to save his own skin, ’cause confronting a white man with a shotgun was gonna look like a murder to white folks whether the white man lived or died. Isaiah Timmons’ fate had been decided from the moment he walked up behind McCormack with a gun and too much manhood in his voice. But he lay that shotgun on his shoulder and walked away. That’s the part everyone forgets.

  Well, that night the fireworks went off in Graceville.

  All those folks who’d been held off from rioting, and all those scared whites who were sure the blacks were planning to slit their throats, built a bonfire of hate and fear that night. “Did you hear what happened to the Timmons boys?” on one side, and “Did you hear a nigger tried to shoot McCormack?” on the other, and everybody all worked up in a frenzy.

  There’s always blood in a frenzy like that, and the side with the most manpower and the best weapons always wins. Isaiah Timmons was easy to find: McCormack and the police found him looking for his boys, and he probably didn’t live long enough to tell his side. He died first. But lots of other black men in Graceville got held to account for Isaiah Timmons and his shotgun. Anyone who looked like they were in a bad mood got rounded up, especially if they didn’t have family in town. It’s said a bunch of black men were rounded up and taken to McCormack’s place and questioned. Somebody must not have liked their answers, because they got shot down right there in the muck. (“Are those the people the bones came from? The ones the builders are digging up?” Davie asked, and Mabel Trawley nodded slowly. “That’s what we think. The bodies from the Graceville riot. It looks like they were dumped in the same plot.”)

  There’s bad blood between the McCormacks and the Timmonses to this day—they say McCormack stole those three Timmons boys, probably killed them outright, and that’s what started it all. They had a sister, and she wrote a book about those boys and the Graceville riot. Three Brothers, I think she called it. I haven’t seen a copy of it, but people mention it from time to time. Isaiah Timmons probably ended up in that mass grave with the bones from the construction site—but I hear his widow told the story until the day she died: “McCormack took my three boys. My three precious boys.”

  “I saw them,” Davie said, his heart banging in his chest. The library felt like a church chapel, as if they were talking about something holy.

  “You saw who?”

  “The boys. The three Timmons boys. They were burying a dog. I didn’t know they were ghosts. I thought they were real, ’cuz it was still light outside. I forgot that . . .”

  “. . . sometimes you can see them at dusk,” Mabel Trawley said, with a nod and a smile. “That used to fool me too.”

  Davie hadn’t realized his father was listening from the next row until he and Mabel Trawley rounded the corner and almost ran into him. There was a thunderstorm on Dad’s face.

  “Are you the one who’s been filling his head with these ghost stories?” Dad said to the librarian. Davie was so embarrassed by his father’s anger, he wanted to melt into the floor.

  “No, sir. I’ve just met this young man today. He’s the one filling my head.”

  Dad’s face softened. He shuffled his feet, unsure. “Sorry. I thought I heard you say . . .”

  “You’re Darryl Stephens, aren’t you? Your father’s the Stephens who enlisted in the Army, went to Korea, settled in Miami. You didn’t grow up here in town at all, did you?”

  Dad looked at the librarian as if he were almost afraid of her, like she was the psychic at the county fair of his youth. “How’d you know that?”

  “Everyone knows everything in a small town. Bet you never even spent a summer here.”

  “Once. When I was about . . . fifteen.”

  “Too late,” she said.

  “Too late for what?”

  Mabel Trawley looked at Davie and winked. “You and your son should have a talk, Mr. Stephens,” she said. “He can show you what you missed. And while he’s at it, Davie might be able to answer a question that’s given a whole lot of folks in Graceville a whole lot of grief.”

  Summer, 1909

  The Timmons boys were, in order of birth, Isaac, Scott, and Little Eddie. Isaac, the eldest, was twelve, and each brother was separated by almost two years to the day, ending with Little Eddie, who had just turned eight the day before the barn burned down.

  Isaac had never been afraid of fire. He’d mastered fire when he was younger than Little Eddie, and he’d been using it ever since for cooking, heating water for bathing and washing clothes, melting lye, sharpening blades, and any number of other tasks for which fire came in handy. Fire, to Isaac, was just another tool. He had forgotten how destructive it could be.

  The fire that burned down the barn had actually started outside of the barn, where the boys were roasting themselves yams while their father was out in McCormack’s field and their mother was pounding clothes at the creek. Isaac had gotten some honey from his gal Livvy’s mother, and yams with honey were his favorite treat. He and his brothers were roasting yams in secret because they were supposed to be hanging clothes up to dry, but the Timmons boys found ways to do what they wanted when no one was watching them.

  One call from Mama waving in the distance was enough to get them on their feet and running. They didn’t notice the change in the wind, and they didn’t realize the barn wall’s wood was so dry because it hadn’t rained a drop all summer. They never actually saw the cloud of sparks from their cook fire that flew against the barn wall and came alight almost immediately. They were nowhere near the barn when it happened. What they did see an hour later, however, was roiling smoke carrying bad news. As soon as Isaac Timmons smelled smoke, he knew.

  Their family’s two horses and milking cow were safely clear of the barn when the fire broke out, but everything else was lost, charred and black. The barn was still standing, but two of its walls had burned clean away, and it was nothing but a big, ugly ruin. It was as if God was laughing at his father, telling him he would never have a farm of his own. He would be working for Old Man McCormack forever.

  The older boys, in quick conference, tried to decide on the best way to tell Papa how they started the fire. Confession would mean consequences, of course. Their father had been raised on a razor strap his father had learned to wield like a long-dead overseer once wielded his cow-hide whip, so a confession would mean marks, welts, and blood for Isaac. But he was the eldest, and it was his fault anyway—he’d told Scotty to put out the fire, but he hadn’t seen him put it out with his own eyes—so a man had to take a punishment like a man.

  He planned out how he’d say it: Papa, we didn’t mean it, but we burned down the barn. He said it over and over again, marching outside to where Papa was assessing the damage.

  “Papa?” Isaac said.

  “Goddamn crackers,” Papa said.

  The idea came from Papa’s own mouth.

  To Isaac, his stroke of luck was too good to be true: Papa thought white folks had burned down the barn—probably McCormack and his sons. From the conversations Isaac had overheard when his parents thought he was sleeping, Papa already had plenty of reasons to be mad at the McCormacks. They were cheats, one thing. Never wanted to pay Papa what he was owed, like Papa was too dumb to count. And if Mama worked her hands raw to make Isaac a new shirt, one of the McCormack boys would go and tattle, and Ole Mr. McCormack would tell Papa, “Well, your boy just got a new shirt, so I reckon y’all doin’ better’n most niggers.” And then he paid Papa even less. Mama hated Ole Missus McCormack so much that she could hardly make herself smile when she passed her on the road.

 
And McCormack, who had more land than he knew what to do with, was trying to say his plot bordering Papa’s land was beyond the old oak, rather than just shy of it. He was planning on calling out surveyors and putting up a fence, since he knew Papa couldn’t afford to pay anyone to say what he wanted them to say—not that any surveyor would side with him over McCormack. That McCormack was a thief to his bones, Mama always said.

  And McCormack had the biggest, meanest dog in the county, trained to snap at black folks on sight. Papa had told him it was called a German shepherd dog, ordered special from up north, but Isaac was sure that big dog was part wolf. It had wolf eyes and wolf teeth. Sometimes Isaac had nightmares about being chased by that dog. He never went anywhere close to McCormack’s place without a big, heavy stick in his hand.

  All in all, Isaac Timmons figured the only reason Ole Mr. McCormack hadn’t burned down the barn was because he hadn’t thought of it first.

  “It was McCormack, huh Papa?” Isaac said to his father, outside the charred barn.

  Papa looked at him good and long. At first, Isaac was afraid his father had seen straight through his lie, but there was something new and terrible in his father’s eyes—it wasn’t there long, but Isaac would never forget how his father’s face chilled the blood in his veins. Papa was afraid! Isaac wanted to tell the truth as soon as he saw how scared of McCormack his father was, but he couldn’t make his mouth work.

  And so the story was born.

  After that, the truth just got harder and harder to utter. And by the time all of them had been up for hours loading the wagon, with Papa trying to cheer them up with stories about the north while Mama pretended she wasn’t crying, he had almost forgotten what the truth was.

  Little Eddie would have told on them for sure, but Little Eddie hadn’t figured out that the barn burned down because their makeshift cook fire was too close to the wall where they were hiding from sight. Scott was usually the fastest tattle in town, but this time he kept the truth to himself, too—especially given his role in not putting out the fire properly. Scott was thinking about that razor strap and how Papa had promised that the next time he and his older brother messed up, Isaac wasn’t the only one who would take the blame. So Isaac and Scott cast each other miserable looks by lamplight all night long, folding Mama’s quilts and blankets neatly into crates, carting out cooking utensils, and packing up the few farming supplies that weren’t burned beyond usefulness.