by H. M. Mann
“How’d you know I had them?” I pull out four sandwiches, thankful that none of them is pimento cheese. I hand him a ham and cheese and a chicken salad.
“Ain’t usual for a man to have draws made up of squares.”
“Oh.”
Though he looks hungry, he takes his time eating his ham and cheese. “Good sandwich,” he says after a couple bites. “You make it?”
“Yes sir.”
“Nothin’ better than a Noah’s boy with a little AC.”
“Huh?” Noah’s boy? Air-conditioning? I don’t feel any breezes in this car. All I feel is the dull throb of urine crying to escape my body.
“Noah’s boy, Ham, and AC, American cheese.” He takes another bite.
“Noah’s boy?”
“You don’t know your Bible?”
I shake my head.
“Me neither. I jes’ know that Noah had a boy named Ham.”
“Oh.”
He leans back and sighs. “What I wouldn’t do for a cup of mud.”
“That’s … coffee, right?” And don’t be talking about something to drink.
He nods.
“Um, Red?”
He gets up and slides the door open a few inches. “Try to shoot it away from the train, okay? Stinks bad enough in here as it is.”
I stand at that little crack for at least three minutes, but Red doesn’t laugh at me or make any comments. I’ll bet he’s done his share of peeing out of trains. I try to imagine the looks on the faces of anyone who might see me, and I cut myself short. I slide the door closed and sit opposite Red. “I needed that.”
He doesn’t speak.
“Uh, where can we get us a cup of mud?” I ask.
“At the nearest diner.”
“Where’s that?”
“Where we’re goin’. All the diners down this way back in the old days used to have this lingo, this language that was only spoken in diners. Oh, I loved it so. You’d walk in and order a CB with, on the hoof, down the garden, and then you’d finish it off with an Eve with the lid on.”
This man is making no sense.
“Um, a CB with … is a cheeseburger, right?”
“With fries. ‘On the hoof’ makes it rare, ‘down the garden’ means you get lettuce and tomato, and an ‘Eve with the lid on’ is a big slice of apple pie. Might even have a dish of van to go with it. That’s a dish of vanilla ice cream.”
Over the next half hour, I learn that butter was “axle grease,” beef stew was “Bossy in a bowl,” baked beans were “bullets,” water was “dog soup,” and Jell-O was “nervous pudding.” I also learn that cooks used to yell “vanilla” whenever a pretty girl was at the counter.
“Did they ever yell ‘chocolate’?” I ask.
“This is the South, boy. No chocolate girls was even allowed in them diners back then. They had to get served around the back.”
“Oh. Yeah.” But then … “So how do you know so much about them, Red?”
“Look at me, boy. I look black to you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I do to you cuz you black. But back then, I could pass for a sunburned redneck with the best of ‘em. Even sweet-talked my way into one diner in Troy, Alabama, by sayin’ I was an Injun.” He touches his nose. “Got a straight nose, right? And as long as I keep my hat on, no one can see my curlies.”
He only eats one sandwich then starts to doze, and though I’m feeling pretty sleepy myself, I can’t go to sleep. Red isn’t exactly a harmless old man, and I’ve got ninety dollars to my name in my pocket, and he did kill a man once. I slide a little further away.
Red laughs, but his eyes stay closed. “That’s right, Cinders Emmanuel. Trust no one.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t trust me either.” He opens his eyes. “But Cinders Emmanuel is too long a nickname. What’s your last name?”
“Mann.”
“Cinders Mann. Got a nice ring to it.” He closes his eyes. “Gonna take a nap now cuz I trust you, Cinders Mann. You ought to do the same. We’ll be gettin’ off outside Tupelo in a couple hours.”
“Why?”
“Cuz all this talk about diners been makin’ me hungry, and there’s a diner there.” A moment later, Red is snoring.
I wish I could fall asleep that quickly, but the click clack and the shaking of the car and the screech of the metal underneath makes it next to impossible for me. Besides, I’m sitting across from a murderer who’s just told me to trust no one. I yawn. There’s no way I can fall asleep on this train, absolutely no way …
“Wake up, Cinders Mann.”
Check your pockets, Manny.
I open my eyes and check my pocket.
“Your ninety dollars and seventeen cents is still there,” Red says, swaying a little above me.
I jump to my feet. “You—”
“Sure I did,” he interrupts. “I have to know who I’m travelin’ with, don’t I?”
And I didn’t feel a thing. I check my back pockets for the notepads and pens.
“You a writer?” he asks.
How’d he do that without turning me over? I must have been dead to the world.
You can say that again. I couldn’t wake you for nothing while that old man frisked you.
“No, I’m not a writer. I, uh, I just like to write.”
“Couldn’t much read your writing, boy. You should write in all capital letters or something cuz your writin’ is horrible.”
He removed them, tried to read them, and then put them back? I feel so … violated.
How you think I feel? I had to watch!
Red slides open the door and looks out. Then he removes the padlock and puts it in his pocket. “Might come in handy sometime. Now jumpin’ off isn’t as hard as gettin’ on if you know what you’re doin’. The object is to jump about four feet away from the train and turn in the direction that the train’s goin’ and work your legs in the air so that when you hit the ground, you’ll hit the ground runnin’. If you turn in the wrong direction, you could pop a knee, and you don’t want to do that.”
“No.”
“So try to turn in the same direction, okay?”
“I’ll try.” That doesn’t sound so hard, but … “What if I just … jump and try to land on my feet?”
“If you just run off straight, you’re goin’ to hit and roll, and you’re liable to crack somethin’ hard or turn an ankle, which will make it harder to get on the next train. Just do what I do, and you’ll be fine. Ready?”
I ain’t.
Neither am I.
“I guess.”
He smiles. “I’ll understand it if you don’t follow me, Cinders Mann, and if you don’t, it’s been nice knowin’ you.”
I weigh my options. This man knows how to survive on the rails, and though he invaded my space, he didn’t harm anything but my privacy. “I’m ready.”
He presses his hat tighter onto his head. “Follow me.”
With a single step and a leap, I watch Red fly off the train, turn in mid-air, and start his legs running, his arms pumping, and when he hits the ground with a poof of dust, he starts a trot and stops, a big smile on his face.
I can do this. I get to the edge of the floor, take a deep breath, push off as hard as I can, and fly off the train, only when I’m in mid-air I can’t turn in the direction the train is going, I forget to pump my legs, and I end up facedown in a tangled mass of weeds and briers. How did he do that?
Well, you see, you started off okay, just like he said to, and then you miscalculated—
Shut up!
I roll away from the tracks and am picking stickers from my clothes when Red strolls up, laughing and holding his sides. “As first jumps go, that wasn’t so bad.”
I pick some grass out of my hair. “How’d you do that?”
“Practice.” He squints at the sun. “We got to go. Chow line will be closing in about an hour. We ain’t got far to walk.”
About a quarter mile from where we jump
ed, we see JD’s Diner nestled among several other businesses including a tire place. “Used to go to DJ’s Diner on Main Street,” Red says, “but I might be recognized, so we’ll just stay off the beaten track.”
JD’s Diner and DJ’s Diner in the same city?
JD’s Diner isn’t much of diner, at least not the diner I had in mind when Red was telling me about the old days. I expected a long counter with spinning circular stools and a wisecracking waitress named Fiona. I expected to be saying, “I’ll have a coffee and a cowboy, and why don’t you wreck a pair, darlin’.” Instead, I get a modern breakfast bar. The food’s decent, the coffee plentiful, the place sparse, and the conversation nearly nonexistent since Red eats so quickly, keeping his eye on the door. I use the restroom where I wipe dirt from my face and neck. Then I pay for the both of us and even get two large coffees to-go.
“That was a diner?” I ask Red as we’re walking back to the tracks.
“Used to be one,” he says. “Thanks for payin’.” He stops short and looks up. “Okay, okay.”
Who’s he talking to?
I don’t know.
Red takes some money out of his pocket and hands it to me. “You really had ninety-seven fifty-nine in your pocket, boy. You should always know how much money you got.”
Unbelievable. “Red, are you gonna be ripping me off every time I take a nap?”
“Man’s got to survive, right?”
I shove the money into my pocket. “Next time, ask me.”
“Okay. I will.”
We return to where we jumped, finding shade under a small stand of pine trees. I sip my coffee and watch the trees sway while Red dozes. I don’t feel much like talking anyway. Yeah, the guy saved me back in Memphis, but he went through my pockets and stole from me. I don’t know if I can ever trust him again. He did return the money, but if I hadn’t jumped off with him, I’d be on that train missing some of my money.
“Tell me about the man you killed,” I say.
Red doesn’t open his eyes. “Long story there.”
“We’ve got time, don’t we? When’s the next train coming?”
“About an hour or so. Ever been to Birmingham, Alabama?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s where we’re goin’. South Cinders I call it cuz of all the steel.” He opens his eyes. “You sure you want to hear my story? It ain’t pretty.”
I stare him down. “Got to know the kind of man I’m traveling with.”
“Hmm.” He nods. “Sorry about that. Occupational hazard. I didn’t frisk one guy about twenty years ago cuz he looked as harmless as you, and I woke up with a knife at my throat.” He looks off into the woods. “You ain’t gonna understand my story anyway.”
“I might.”
“Nah, you ain’t. You’re too young to fully appreciate it.” He turns to me. “No one who didn’t live it can ever understand it.”
“Try me.”
“You gonna write it down?”
“I could.”
“Well, don’t. No one would believe you anyway.” He rubs his eyes and drinks some of his coffee. “Ever hear of Emmett Till?”
I know I saw something about him up at the Lorraine up in Memphis, but what? “Wasn’t he lynched in … Mississippi?”
“They teach you about it in school?”
“No sir. I went to this museum in Memphis that had something about him.” I see a grisly picture of Emmett in a casket in my mind and shudder, even though it has to be ninety degrees, even in the shade of these pine trees.
He sighs. “Well, it happened in Leflore County, Mississippi, not that I’m from there, you understand.”
I nod. If Red’s not from there, he has to be from somewhere close to there.
“Emmett wasn’t nothin’ but a little fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago. Said he has a white girlfriend back in Shytown, and he got hisself killed for whistlin’ at a white woman. They beat him to death so badly his mama could only identify him from a little ring on his finger. And the white men that did it got off and later sold their story to a magazine for four thousand dollars, and they admitted that they did it right there in that magazine.” He stares hard at me and dips his head. “You with me? You understandin’ me?”
“What does this have to do with you killing a man?”
“Everything, boy. Everything I tell you got somethin’ to do with me killin’ that man.” He looks off in the woods again. “Didn’t even have the right to vote back then. Oh sure, we had the right to, but we didn’t have the might to. There’s a difference. You couldn’t go register like you can now. We had to go to the courthouse.” He pauses.
“So you went to the courthouse.”
“Why else do folks go to the courthouse?” Red asks.
“I don’t know. To go to court.”
He nods. “Right. They made us go to the place where many of us went on trial and ended up on some chain gang somewhere. It’s like sendin’ folks who hate the dentist to the dentist, you get me?”
“I hear you.”
“So we go to the courthouse and try to pass a test that was meant to fail us. I remember one man gettin’ pistol-whipped while he was only tryin’ to register, and then they arrested him for disturbin’ the peace cuz he yelled so loud while they was beatin’ him. I also remember ol’ Sam Block gettin’ hisself arrested just for goin’ around the county tryin’ to register voters. The judge was gonna give him six months and a five-hundred-dollar fine, but if ol’ Sam left Mississippi and promised not to try to register no more people, the judge was gonna set ol’ Sam free.” He turns to me. “Ol’ Sam was a man, and he bulled his neck, and he said, ‘I ain’t gonna do none of that.’” He looks away. “And Sam went to jail. Oh, we was all so full of holy fire after that. We all waited in line to fail that test. Then they started shootin’ folks and bombin’ places. They even said we was shootin’ at ourselves and bombin’ ourselves to get publicity. And if it wasn’t for them siccin’ dogs on us, it all woulda jes’ … blown away in the wind like that Bob Dylan feller said it would. After those dogs, everybody showed up in Greenwood, Mississippi, and I mean, everybody. Bob Dylan, Medgar Evers, even Dick Gregory. Yeah, that Dick Gregory was somethin’ else.”
I didn’t read anything about Dick Gregory up in Memphis. “Um, who was Dick Gregory?”
“A big-city comedian.” Red laughs. “A Yankee. That man said things, things we only dreamed of sayin’ to white folks. He said them illiterate cops couldn’t have passed the test either, and they probably couldn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if those cops never got out of the fifth grade. And Gregory even told the mayor to his face that he must be takin’ nigger pills.” Red chuckles. “Yeah, Dick Gregory was a hero to us. We didn’t really need no hero, I mean, we outnumbered ‘em back then, probably still do in Mississippi. I guess it was his time to be a hero, I don’t know. But …” He looks back at me. “I ain’t borin’ you, am I?”
“No sir.”
“Good. Cuz you got to know where you come from before you can get to where you’re goin’. And I can tell that you don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”
I don’t have a comeback for that one because he’s right.
He shakes his head. “All you young bloods don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”
You gonna take that, Manny?
He’s telling the truth … whoever you are. Who are you, anyway?
I’m your friend, remember?
I try to shake The Voice out of my head. “What happened in Greenwood?”
“You jes’ humorin’ an old man, or do you really wanna know?”
“I really wanna know.”
He finishes his coffee. “Ain’t nothin’ happen in Greenwood. It all just slipped away as quietly as a summer storm and went east like we’re goin’. Montgomery and Birmingham and that King fella stole what coulda been our thunder.” He stands. “Train will be by momentarily.” He looks up. “And we’ll be ridin’ on top, I think. Nice day for it.”
I st
and. “Are you going to tell me about the man you killed?”
He starts walking toward the tracks. “You get on as well as you jump off, I may be tellin’ folks about the man the train killed before I got a chance to tell him about the man I killed, now come on.”
14: On the Illinois Central, Tupelo, Mississippi to Birmingham, Alabama
Getting on a train with Red is easy. We simply stand six inches away from the train roaring by until a car with two ladders arrives. Red grabs the first ladder and picks up his feet, letting the train pull him along until he can get his feet up on the ladder, and I do the same with the second ladder. We catch the train. There’s no jumping involved, and except for the initial strain on my shoulders, it’s not that painful. I crawl to the top, and we meet in the middle.
“Come down on my side!” he shouts, motioning behind him. “Hard to talk up here!”
I follow him down to where the cars are coupled, and we sit on a ledge about six inches wide, our legs stretched out over the coupling, which shifts and shakes as the train click-clacks along. I hope I tied my boots tight enough.
“So tell me the whole story,” I say, and I realize that it’s surprisingly quiet between the cars, the only sound a whoosh of wind going by.
“I ain’t even started my story yet.”
And Red isn’t kidding about that.
He first tells me about the signs. “‘No dogs, Mexicans, or Negroes,’ they used to say. Treated us like dogs, too. Animals, that’s all we were to them.” He puts his arm against mine. “You’d pass the brown bag test.”
“The what?”
“The brown bag test. Your skin is light, and it’d be lighter than a brown bag. That would get you accepted places. You got a dark girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it. And you know what that tells me?”
“No.”
“It tells me that you’re just validatin’ your blackness.”
“Huh?” Validating my blackness? What is this stuff? I’ve only ever been black.