She bent over, placed the lamp on the floor and said, “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”
She was back in a moment with a quilt which she folded double, then furled it out so that it reached from the door to my feet. “Now, walk across the quilt on in here.”
When I reached her she hugged me and asked, “What in the world are you doing up rambling around this time of night?”
I was over the shock and had had time to think. “Uh, I don’t know. I just woke up in the kitchen.”
My father was awake by now. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Lord have mercy,” she said. “This child has been walking in his sleep. Come on, you’re sleeping with us the rest of the night. I’ll sweep that mess up in the morning.”
I woke up after daylight not knowing where I was, then I realized I was in my parents’ bed, alone. The first sound I heard was my mother stirring about in the kitchen while she sung a hymn. The first thing I saw was the flour on my hand.
I leapt out of bed, quickly slipped my jeans on and went to the front porch to wash up. When I got to the kitchen I asked, “Where’s daddy?”
“He left before daylight. S. T. Brooks came and picked him up. They gone to Mobile to look for work. Your brothers are still asleep. Did you wash up?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then sit down. Biscuits will be out of the oven in a minute.”
When I was seated at the table she asked, “Son, do you believe in miracles?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You sure?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, if the Lord granted you a miracle, would you tell other folks about it or would you just keep it between you and the Lord?”
“I believe I would just keep it between me and the Lord and go on about my business.”
“That’s what I think too, and that’s what I’ll do. Here’s you a hot biscuit and some of your brother Ned’s honey to go on it.”
My brother robbed honey trees. Me, I robbed money trees.
22
A Yellow Watermelon
Poudlum and I were flat on our backs looking up at a clear blue sky from a bed of fluffy white cotton, on the way to the gin. His mother and father were in the cab with Uncle Curvin.
“You bring some money wid you?” Poudlum asked.
“Yeah, I got a dollar and sixty cents. You?”
“Uh huh, I gots me two dollars. We be going into Grove Hill after we leaves de gin. My momma and daddy gon’ go to de court house to pay de taxes. While dey doing dat, maybe we can find us some stuff to buy.”
“Fred told me they got a drug store there where you can buy funny books and ice cream. We’ll go there first.”
“Sound good to me. What yo’ momma say about de money?”
“She didn’t say nothing. Yours?”
“Naw, she never mentioned it, but she shore wuz happy when she wuz making biscuits yesterday morning.”
“What did she say about your cow being back?”
“At first she was worried about what Old Man Cliff Creel would do; dat is until I told her what happened to him, den she got her pail and starting milking.”
There were only two trucks in front of us at the gin, since cotton picking time was winding down. We got off the truck and marveled at the big tube as it sucked every fiber of cotton off the back of the truck. I was glad. I didn’t want to see any more cotton for a while. After the Robinsons collected their money Poudlum and I got back on the truck. The ride into town was short. Our first stop was at the post office. We all waited while Uncle Curvin went inside to buy a money order for our school clothes. My mother had given him the order, the money, and the instructions early this morning. I remembered her telling my uncle, “Now, don’t you forget, Curvin. We barely got enough time to get ’em here before these young ’uns got to start back to school.”
After my uncle completed his task we drove down the street to a stop sign, turned left and there was the county courthouse sitting right in the middle of the street. It was the biggest structure I had ever seen with big gray pillars across the front, all of them as big as any log I had ever seen at the sawmill. It looked ominous to me and I didn’t want to go near it, but I was curious about the monument we parked next to. As soon as we got out of the truck I asked Uncle Curvin about it. “It was put there to honor the dead soldiers of the Confederate army. You see that cement bench next to it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s where I want you sitting when I get back.”
“Dat goes for you too, Poudlum,” Mrs. Robinson said just before she and Mr. Robinson turned and began walking toward the courthouse.
“Where you going?” I asked my uncle.
“I’m going to Horton’s grocery store to fill this list your mother gave me. It’s about halfway up the street on the left.” He pointed in the direction of the store and asked, “You see it over yonder?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s where I’ll be.”
“We wanna go to the drug store.”
“I reckon that’ll be all right. It’s up there on the right side of the street just before you get to the corner. Y’all got some money?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, y’all behave yourselves and I’ll see y’all right here, on this bench.”
“Yes, sir. Come on, Poudlum.”
We crossed the street and got on the sidewalk where we passed another grocery store called the Piggly Wiggly. It had a sign over the door of a fat cartoon-looking pink pig.
“Dis place a lot bigger dan Coffeeville,” Poudlum said.
“Yeah.”
Next we passed a furniture store, a hardware store, then there it was, Chapman’s Drug Store. We stared through the big glass windows for a while. We could see a rack full of comic books, a round tower with sacks of candy hanging on it and a long white marble counter with black stools supported by shining medal pedestals in front of it. We watched while two teenage girls went in, sat on two of the stools and started talking to a man behind the counter. He turned and set pewter dishes in front of them filled with ice cream covered with syrup and fruit. I had had ice cream before, but never like that. The girls began to eat with tiny round spoons.
I looked at Poudlum and his eyes were as big as mine. “Come on,” I said, “We’re going in there. Let’s look at the funny books first.”
Fred had a stack of comic books, but none were new and shiny like these. While we were trying to decide on a selection I noticed three ladies who walked up to the counter and asked the man behind it for ice cream cones.
“What flavor, ladies? We got vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate.”
When they got their cones they turned and walked out with them instead of sitting down.
Poudlum was poking me with one hand while he held two comic books in the other. “Let’s get dese two Captain Marvels. Dey different. When we finishes dem we can trade.”
“All right. Let’s get two sacks of candy and take some home to everybody else.”
We took the comic books and two sacks of jawbreakers over and laid them on the marble counter next to the man’s cash register.
He looked at us over the tope of his glasses, didn’t smile or say hello. “That’ll be thirty cents.”
I started climbing on one of the stools and said, “We want some ice cream too, sir. In those dishes with the little spoons.” I patted the stool next to me and said, “Climb up here next to me, Poudlum.”
That man came out from behind the counter like the place was on fire. He grabbed my arm and said, “You take your little friend and get on out of here.”
I was shocked, but not speechless. “What for? We ain’t done nothing.”
He froze for a moment, then he leaned down and with his face two inches from mine he said, “Don’t yo
u know, young man, that we don’t serve colored folks in here. Now, y’all get gone from here.”
He opened the big glass door, pushed Poudlum and I out onto the sidewalk, then closed it behind him. We just stood there for a moment until I realized we didn’t even have our comic books and candy. “Wait here, Poudlum.”
I walked back inside, went up to the counter, placed forty cents on it next to our purchases and said, “This is for the funny books and the candy. I want two ice cream cones, too.”
“What flavor?” he asked with an icy voice.
“Chocolate, please.”
When I got back outside and presented Poudlum with his ice cream cone he looked at it and said, “Don’t know why dey don’t serve colored folks. Dey serves colored ice cream.” Then he licked it and said, “Good, too.”
We were sitting on the concrete bench under the shadow cast by the statue of the Confederate soldier eating our ice cream cones watching cars and trucks go by. After a while I noticed that the people in every single one stared at me and Poudlum as they went by.
“I don’t know why everybody keeps looking at us when they go by,” I said between licks.
“I knows why,” Poudlum said.
“You do?”
“Uh huh.”
“Why?”
“’Cause dey ain’t use to seeing a white boy and a colored boy being together, specially sitting here underneath dis monument.”
“Well, they can just get use to it, ’cause ain’t nothing wrong with it. And someday you gonna be able to walk in that drug store, sit down and have yourself some ice cream. You know what else, one day we’ll be able to go to school together, too.”
“Huh? How you know all dat?”
“’Cause I know what’s right, I can feel it.”
“Oh yeah? It may be right, but who gon’ make all dis happen?”
“If it’s necessary, you and me. We ain’t gonna be young ’uns forever.”
“How in de world is we gon’ change de way people thinks, when we gets big?”
“We’ll teach ’em, but sometimes we may have to do what my daddy told me.”
“What’s dat?”
“Carry us a big stick.”
It was Saturday, a week and four days since I had seen Poudlum, and only one more week before school started. All the school clothes had come. The mail rider had left all the packages at Miss Lena’s store yesterday. Uncle Curvin had picked them up and brought them to our house. My brothers and I tried them all on and our mother cried while telling us how handsome we looked. My father hadn’t come back from Mobile yet. He sent some money and word that he was working.
It was about two hours before dark when Mrs. Robinson and Poudlum showed up at our house. She brought a big bunch of turnip greens with huge purple and white roots on them. Poudlum had a big striped watermelon on his shoulder.
While our Mothers sat on the front porch talking about the best ways to cook your greens, Poudlum tugged at my sleeve and said, “Come on out in de yard.”
Once we were out of hearing from our mothers Poudlum asked, “Where yo’ brothers?”
“Ned’s gone to see his girlfriend, Betty Lynn Findley, and Fred left with Uncle Curvin, going somewhere.”
“So ain’t nobody around but us?”
“That right. Why?”
“’Cause we got a letter from Jake and dere’s a note in it fo’ you.”
“Where is it?”
“I gots it here in de bib of my overalls.”
Poudlum pulled the piece of paper out and I snatched it from his fingers and began to read:
Mister Ted,
Thanks to you, I made it all the way to California. I got some work too. Out here they likes my music and pays me to play and sing. You knows what else, out here I is a Negro man and not a nigger. Remember, go to school and learn, cause knowledge be power.
Jake
“Can I keep this, Poudlum?”
“Course you can. It be to you from Jake. Come on, let’s go back up to de porch. Looks like our mommas getting ready to cut dat melon. It be a special melon, too.”
“How’s it special?”
“You waits and see.”
My mother was standing in the yard at the edge of the porch with her big butcher knife facing the ripe melon in front of her. When she cut into it, it made a popping sound like it just couldn’t wait to burst open.
When the two halves fell apart, I was stunned to see that instead of being red inside, it was yellow. “Why, that melon is yellow,” I exclaimed.
“Dat melon is like people—it may be a different color, but it still be a watermelon,” Poudlum announced, as if to the world.
I accepted a slice, felt the juicy, sweet crunch of it in my mouth when I bit into it, and with the juice dripping from my chin I said, “It’s sweet as sugar, too, just like a red one.”
About the Author
Ted M. Dunagan was born in 1943 in rural southwestern Alabama. He attended Georgia State University, and served for three years in the Army as a member of the 101st Airborne Division and Special Forces Training Group. Dunagan is now retired after a career in the cosmetics and fragrance industry. He writes features and columns for The Monticello News in Monticello, Georgia, where he lives with his wife. Dunagan was named Georgia Author of the Year 2009 in the Young Adult category for his debut novel A Yellow Watermelon, which was named one of the 25 Books Every Young Georgian Should Read by the Georgia Center for the Book.
To learn more about Ted Dunagan and A Yellow Watermelon, visit www.newsouthbooks.com/watermelon.
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