“No sir.” I tried not to sigh, guessing another dried-up kernel of wisdom was about to drop off the cob.
The old man held up his hands. “Your color. That’ll be the only piece left. You can go ahead and forget your name and your fancy ed-u-cation and everything else you learned up there in the lily-white North, ’cause only one thing will matter once you get off this train … and that’s what color skin you got.” He gestured toward the window. “There’s only two shades outside our train now. White and Colored. Every sign you see and every doorway you go through in the South is put there to remind you which color you are. And you better be sure you choose the right one every time. No tellin’ what kinda trouble you get into if you go and forget who you are. No sir, no tellin’ what big kinda trouble you’d get into …”
Picking up his guitar, the old man started plucking out his strange tune again.
Wish I was a little rock …
I had no idea whether to believe what the old man was telling me or not. I remembered Uncle Otis worrying how I wouldn’t know the rules in the South. Had he meant the kinds of things the old man was warning me about? Or something else?
I kept my eyes open, but I didn’t spot much in any of the ho-hum towns we passed through as the morning wore on, so maybe it was all made-up nonsense. The South sure had some odd names. One place was called Carmel Church, which Aunt Odella probably woulda called an outright insult to religion. I almost expected the next town to be called Milky Way Bar. Farther down the tracks was one called Skippers. Good God. It made me feel glad to be born in Chicago.
By the time the train finally arrived in Fayetteville, North Carolina, it was midafternoon and the heat shimmered in waves above the tracks. Only thing I wanted by then was a drink of water and a soft seat. Watching the train slow down, the old man fanned his face with a square of newspaper and said I was real lucky to be getting off. He was going all the way to Georgia. Who knows how much farther it was to Georgia, but seeing how tired the old man looked right then, I worried about him making it there alive. The front of his shirt was soaked with sweat, and his thin shoulders rose and fell with each gasp of air.
As our train pulled up to a low brick building with FAYETTEVILLE on the side, the old man reminded me again, “Only thing you gotta remember when you get off this train is your name is Colored down here. Don’t you forget that, son. Always keep your eyes open and look for that word first, you hear?”
He picked up his guitar and started strumming again. “Gonna write me a song about meeting you … ‘One day I met a little rock a-settin’ on a Chicago hill …’ ”
His catfish eyes crinkled into a wistful smile. “You take care now.”
* * *
I told the old man goodbye and left him the rest of Margie’s cake to eat along the way. We’d already finished most of it anyhow, along with all the butter cookies Aunt Odella had tucked in the bottom of my paper sack. Never did find out what the man’s real name was, and I don’t think he ever asked mine either. Always thought of him as Jim Crow. Later on, there were times when I wondered if he’d been real or if I’d dreamed up the old man singing his songs and coughing up the color black.
Mostly I wished I’d listened to more of what he’d tried to tell me. Wished I’d asked more questions. As I stepped off the train that day, I had less sense about what I was doing than I coulda ever imagined. Because it turned out my next lesson about the South wouldn’t come from an old colored man trying to keep me outta trouble—it would come from the end of a gun.
11. Signs
Stepping onto the steamy Fayetteville platform one slow foot at a time, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to hoping maybe—by some chance—my father would already be there waiting on me. Pictured myself coming off the train and spotting him standing by himself in his sharp army uniform and cap, looking around with a worried expression on his face. Then I’d stroll over to him, real nonchalantly, before he even noticed me, and say, “How ya doing, Daddy? It’s your son, Levi, here.” When he turned and saw who it was, he’d wrap me up in one of those strong, man-type hugs and tell me how long it had been since we’d seen each other and how much he’d missed me. Had the whole scene planned out like the end of a satisfying movie picture.
Nobody was waiting, of course.
Guess Aunt Odella was smart enough to figure out if she told my daddy I was coming, he woulda found a good reason why I shouldn’t. Still, part of me had held out hope he might’ve had some sixth sense about me showing up on his doorstep.
Aunt Odella was big on signs and sixth senses. She used to tell me how she woke up with a real bad feeling on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed and put an extra spoonful of salt in her Coca-Cola that morning because she thought for sure the sick feeling was a bad headache coming on. Then the news about Pearl Harbor being attacked came over the radio. “See, I shoulda known that sick feeling was a sign,” she’d say.
Lately she’d been going on and on about a cactus. She must’ve told the story to everybody we knew, a dozen times at least—how, at the beginning of April, a tiny bud had suddenly appeared on a half-dead cactus she’d had sitting on the windowsill for ages. Then, a week or two later, a big orange bloom the size of a half-dollar burst outta that bud like Lazarus himself coming back to life. My aunt was absolutely convinced it was a plant miracle. “Will you look at this, Levi?” She must’ve showed it to me fifty times. “Had this cactus my whole live-long life and never saw it bloom until now. It’s a sign from above. No doubt about it. I’m telling you, Levi, it’s a sign of change coming to this world. That’s what it means. The war is gonna end real soon.”
Now that I had the chance to think back and put two and two together, it wasn’t impossible to see how the blooming cactus coulda been one of the main reasons my aunt sent me packing. It had convinced her the war was ending and our lives needed changing too. A new day, she’d said. Wasn’t my life a crazy mess? I’d been left first on the front seat of a Ford by my mother—and now by an aunt and a cactus. Heck, it was a wonder I’d turned out okay so far.
As the last cinders from the disappearing train drifted around me like burnt snowflakes, I found myself thinking all these sorry thoughts and wishing Jim Crow had gotten off with me. At least he woulda been one person I knew. He coulda walked with me for a while carrying his guitar and singing one of his made-up tunes, and I swear I wouldn’t have minded. Instead, I was standing on a train platform feeling almost more alone than I could stand. Even the air smelled different than Chicago. A humid soup of flowers, frying fish, coal smoke, horse manure, sweat—
All right, I’ll admit the sweat mighta been mine.
Pushing up my damp sleeves, I picked up the suitcase and decided it was time to move on and find the bus to Camp Mackall, my father’s army post, before I melted into a sorry pool of uselessness. But a small sign on the side of the train station caught my eye as I turned—a black hand pointed toward the back of the building. No other words. Just a pointing black finger.
Seeing that strange sign gave me a jolt, let me tell you. Right away, my mind jumped back to Jim Crow’s warning. Every sign you see and every doorway you go through in the South is put there to remind you which color you are. And you better be sure you choose the right one every time. But I didn’t know what the heck I was supposed to do. I didn’t know what the sign meant. Were you supposed to follow it or not?
Feeling real jittery, I started around the side of the train station, not sure what kind of trouble would be waiting there. But there wasn’t much to see behind the station. Only a few empty benches with another sign above them: COLORED. A water spigot nearby had the word scrawled on the bricks above it too: COLORED.
I let out a slow breath. So the old man hadn’t been razzing me after all.
Wondering what else he’d said that might’ve been true, I stood there staring at the spigot for a few minutes, trying to make up my mind about using it. How dumb was it to have a faucet with your color written above it? Made me feel like I was a ki
d back in grammar school.
Still, I was so thirsty after the hot train ride and all, I finally decided it didn’t matter to me what color was on the darn water. I leaned over to get a drink. Turned the squeaky spigot with my hands. Nothing happened. Put a little muscle behind it and yanked again. A trickle of rusty water splattered onto a slab of stone below my shoes and that was all.
I stood up feeling thirstier and angrier.
What kinda water did white people get outta their spigot? I wondered. What would they think if I just strolled inside their train station and tried it out?
Well, I’d almost made up my mind that’s what I was gonna do—water was water if you were desperate—when I spotted a Coca-Cola sign in the distance. It was hanging in the window of a grocer’s store farther down the main street, maybe two blocks from where I was standing. It was like seeing Christmas, noticing that beautiful red and white sign waiting there for me.
At the exact same time, my fingers touched Uncle Otis’s roll of dollars in my pocket—the ones he’d slipped into my hand when he’d dropped me off at Union Station the day before. Had it only been yesterday morning I’d last seen him?
It felt like a week.
Well, I decided the folks at the train station could keep their colored water and I’d have myself a nice cold Coca-Cola instead, courtesy of Uncle Otis’s generosity. So, I drifted down the shimmering hot street toward the sign. Fayetteville was a nice-looking place, I gotta admit. Everything was neat and tidy as a movie set. There was a bench out front of the grocer’s store with G. W. KEETON’S & SONS painted on it and a bunch of faded war bond posters covering the windows. Pulling open the glass door, I stepped inside. The store was cool and dark after all the heat. A smell of flour and sawdust drifted up my nose. I stood there, blinking in the shadows, trying to see where the counter help was hiding, when a voice called out, “What d’you want, boy?”
You woulda thought the shadows were speaking.
“You got any Coca-Cola here?” I called out uncertainly. My words seemed to echo in the darkness, bouncing off the rows of metal shelves and disappearing into the depths. Something moved in the far corner and a man emerged outta the gloom. He had on a sloppy white shirt—collar hanging open, top button missing—and then the rest of him became clear. Aunt Odella woulda called him a big eater. His chin sloped into his chest, no neck to speak of. I couldn’t tell if the man was G. W. Keeton or not, but I figured he worked there, by the look of the smudged-up canvas apron he was wearing. A can of apricots was in his left hand.
“Why you asking?”
The fleshy white face wasn’t smiling in a friendly way at me. Maybe I’d interrupted his canned-fruit count, who knows.
I pointed at the windows behind me where thin stripes of sunlight were showing around the war bond posters and advertising signs. Tried making my best guess at where the Coca-Cola advertisement had been hanging. “Saw a sign up there in the corner.”
“Did you now?” The man crossed his thick arms, staring at me with unblinking eyes.
Like an icebox opening, a chill swept over me even though it wasn’t cold. I eased myself backward a little, leaning in the direction of the door, and glanced toward the windows again. “Yes sir. I believe so,” I mumbled.
“You got any money to pay for your soda?”
I shoulda taken off then, feeling the icy dread that was getting stronger by the minute, as if the whole Antarctic continent was slowly freezing around me. But I was stuck. I’d asked for a soda pop and now I was caught by asking.
Trying not to seem any more jumpy than I already was, I dug around in my pocket for one of Uncle Otis’s dollars and held it toward the man. Sodas were only a nickel, but I figured he’d give me back the change and all.
“Put it on the counter.”
The counter wasn’t far away. Now that my eyes had gotten used to the shadows, I could see the brass cash register nearby with some jars of gumdrops and licorice lined up next to it, just like Hixson’s back in Chicago. There was a pyramid of dry-looking donuts stacked under a glass dome. And ads for Lucky Strike cigarettes. And Ivory soap. I stepped forward and slid my dollar onto the top of the counter, making sure the man could see I had plenty of money and wasn’t trying to cause him any trouble.
He didn’t take his eyes off me. Just walked over and snatched my dollar bill off the counter. “I’ll get your soda from the back,” he spat out, and I listened to his heavy footsteps thumping down the aisle as if he was the King Kong of the grocery business. Seemed like a long time before he returned holding a dusty bottle of grape soda.
“There’s your Coca-Cola.”
The bottle slammed down on the counter so hard, I swear you woulda thought it was a grenade exploding. How the glass didn’t shatter to pieces I have no idea, but the noise shocked me so bad, everything from my feet to my head suddenly began prickling as if I was being stuck by a thousand ice-cold needles. Even my back teeth started rattling together on their own. Standing there in that dark, deserted store, I suddenly realized the trap I was in.
Crossing his arms over his chest, the fellow gave me a slow grin, as if daring me to reach for the bottle he’d thrown on the counter. He was looking to pick a fight, you could tell. Heck, I wasn’t that stupid. I was tall, but it woulda taken two of me to equal his size. Archie woulda taken him on probably and popped him in the gut a few times, but not me. I wasn’t a fool. My brain told me to leave the soda where it was and run. Forget the rest of Uncle Otis’s dollar and bust outta that store in whatever way I could.
I tried turning.
But the man moved faster than I did. His hand snaked behind the counter and came up holding something small and metallic. “Don’t you even think about moving, boy.” My mouth went chalk dry.
Clenched in his hand was a gun.
Time seemed to stop.
Sounds seemed to stop.
The world outside the store shriveled up and disappeared.
The man shoved the bottle toward me with a lopsided grin. “Drink it.”
There was no way I could drink anything in that bottle. I couldn’t even swallow my own spit right then. My arms felt as heavy as hundred-pound rocks. I couldn’t lift them.
The man stepped closer and rammed the glass bottle at my chest. Grape soda splattered all over my good shirt and pants. “I said, drink it.”
My hands shook so bad, the glass clattered against my teeth and soda spilled outta the corners of my mouth and ran down my neck, until there were rivers of purple spreading across the front of my shirt. It was all I could do not to gag as the bottle emptied with sickening slowness. I don’t know how old that soda was. The liquid at the bottom was thick and bitter-tasting.
After every last drop was gone, the man told me to put the bottle on the counter. Slowly. And then step away from it.
My right hand trembled as I set the bottle down and moved backward, willing it not to fall over.
The man stepped closer. “You come walking through the front door of my store and ask me for anything again—next time, I’ll put a bullet in your head. You understand me?”
I whispered that I did.
“Didn’t hear you.”
“Yes sir.”
“You got three seconds to get your tail out that door, boy.” The gun waved sharply toward a propped-open back door. As I stumbled down the dark aisle, the man let loose a volley of words behind me. Words you use for dogs and inhuman things and anything worthless in the world—
Even years later, I could still remember every single word he said as clearly as if they’d been burned into who I was that day. Long after the storekeeper was probably dead and gone, those terrible words never left me, and that’s the honest truth.
When I finally reached the back door, I slammed it open and half fell into the desperate heat and sunshine. Beyond the store stretched an empty lot full of weeds and bricks, and I crossed it at a flat-out run. Somewhere behind me, the empty bottle cut through the air and shattered against a pile of bric
ks nearby, sending up a sharp rain of glass shards. I kept going, my feet pounding through sand and dust and glass, as I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life. Faster than Jesse Owens in the Olympics. Faster than the wind in Chicago. Faster than the train that had brought me south.
I ran until the town disappeared, until the roads disappeared, until the people disappeared, and then I leaned over in somebody’s overgrown field, holding my aching stomach, and got sick all over the ground.
12. Captain Midnight and His Secret Squadron
What I didn’t understand was what I’d done wrong. Like I said, I’m not one who gets bothered over much of anything. Sock me in the stomach and I don’t crack even a little. I was a good kid, most people said. Never tried to cause Aunt Odella or Granny or my daddy any trouble, although there were a few times I did. Stole a pickle from Hixson’s Grocery once—but it was on a dare from Archie and he ate it, not me. Busted the school fence during a game of pie tag. But nothing big.
The storekeeper woulda killed me, given half the chance.
As I crouched in the field on my hands and knees, sick as a dog, ants crawling up my legs, flies buzzing around my face, hot sun beating down, that’s the thought that kept pounding inside my head. He woulda killed me for nothing. That’s the honest truth. Just for coming into his store and being the color I was.
There was death in the newspaper all the time, but I’d never thought about one of those deaths being mine. I wasn’t a German or a Jap. All I’d asked for was a soda pop. Never imagined I could lose my life as quick and heartless as one of our soldiers in battle. But the look in that man’s eyes had been pure straight evil. Don’t think Hitler himself coulda looked any worse.
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