The Darkest Child (22 page)

“When?” I asked, surprised that my mother had allowed it.

“Today.We’re celebrating.”

The merry-go-round stopped, and Velman ushered Martha Jean toward the throng of youngsters rushing for horses. “Congratulations,” I shouted, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about the marriage.

I saw Mattie standing at a hot dog stand.When she spotted me, she quickly turned her head, but I approached her anyway and purposely brushed my arm against hers.“Hey, Mattie,” I said.

“I ain’t talking to you,” she said.

“Why?”

“’Cause I ain’t got to, that’s why.”

“I don’t want you to talk to me,” I said. “I want you to talk to Tarabelle.”

“Where she at?” Mattie asked, now turning to face me, and trying to appear angry when we both knew there was nothing to be angry about.

“Out by the fence where the cars are parked. Something’s troubling her. I don’t know what it is.”

“Probably you,” Mattie mumbled as she stepped around me, holding a hot dog that was barely visible beneath layers of yellow mustard. She walked off toward the main gate.

For a moment, I stood by the hot dog stand trying to decide which way to go. Finally, I walked the entire length of the grounds, staring up at the colorful, triangular flags flapping in the wind above tents and food stands. Night fell gently over the grounds, and I found myself in a chatoyant glow of swirling, twirling lights. Despite Tarabelle’s gloom, Sam’s incarceration, and Martha Jean’s marriage, I felt strangely carefree. I inched a dime from my sock, and rode the Ferris wheel.

At the top of the ride, I looked down and saw a large crowd gathering at a game booth beside the root beer barrel.When the ride ended, I rushed toward the gathering. Jeff was in the crowd, staring intently ahead, and I walked over to him.

“Hey,” I said.“What’s going on?”

“Hey,” he said in surprise. “I thought you weren’t coming. Hambone’s preaching again about the evils of the white man. He’s making sense, though.”

Hambone’s background was a corkboard filled with balloons. It was one of those games where you tossed darts in an attempt to bust a balloon, and Hambone was holding three darts in a hand that was raised above his head.

“Look around you,” he said. “They’ve stored away everything that’s worth having, from the lemonade to the game prizes. It’s all junk, things they wouldn’t dare give to their own kind.Things they intentionally hold until Negro night.Three days they give to the white people before they open the gates for coloreds. I’m willing to bet if you scrape the coating off of some of them candy apples, you’re gonna find worms and rot. Hot dogs on stale bread, maggots in the onions.Throw it down! Don’t let your children eat it. Don’t give these crackers another dime.”

“What’s wrong wit’ you, Hambone?” Harvey asked. He was standing about three feet away from me, and he had the girls with him. “People wait all year for the fair to come. It’s the one thing the children have to look forward to.Why you wanna mess it up for everybody?”

“Yeah,” Maureen Milner agreed.“I done ate two of them apples and ain’t seen no worms. If you so worried ’bout bad stuff, don’t eat nothing.”

Some people nodded and agreed with Maureen until Hambone brought his hand down, turned toward the corkboard, and threw a dart. It hit a target, and the balloon gave a moderate pop.The man working the booth threw his arms over his head and gasped, causing the crowd to roar with laughter.

“What’s funny here?” Hambone asked, spreading his arms and still gripping two of the darts.“Don’t you know your ignorance is what’s holding you down? As long as you remain ignorant, they’ll treat you any way they want. I know most of you have been right here in Pakersfield all of your lives.You don’t even realize you’re being mistreated. I call that ignorance. Most of you can’t even read the newspaper and you won’t bother to get someone else to read it to you.You don’t know what’s going on.You don’t even know that the rest of the world ain’t like this little backwards cracker town.”

“Some of us do know what’s going on,” Jack Crothers said. “It don’t mean we gotta get our heads bashed in ’cause they doing it someplace else. It’s easy for you to stand there and talk.You ain’t got no children to care about.You get things stirred up ’round here, then you’ll go back to Chicago. Leave us alone! If you don’t like it here, you oughta leave before you get some trouble started.”

“Trouble?” Hambone questioned, then gave a short laugh. “Nigger, you
in
trouble.You just don’t know it.You say you care about your children? Is that what you said? Then you need to take a good, long look at that school they building for your children. They’re throwing it together with the worst material they could find. Did you know that? When it falls, it won’t be on a white child’s head.You think about that for a minute.”

I could tell by the silence that no one had given much thought to the new school. I hadn’t, either. I just assumed it would go up and stand forever like everything else. I saw Harvey glance down at Laura and Edna. He placed a hand on Edna’s head before glancing over at Carol Sue.

“Oh, yeah,” Hambone said.“You hadn’t thought about that, had you? There’s something wrong when a man puts all of his trust in another man, especially when that other man don’t care if you live or die. The white man don’t give a damn about none of us, no more than what we can do for them.And we’re doing everything for them.”

“What do you expect people to do?” Jeff asked, his voice startling me. I had thought him too reserved to speak out in a crowd.

“I expect you to come together as a race,” Hambone answered. “I expect you to stop staring at the ground every time you speak to a white man that ain’t a drop better than you. I expect you to be the men you were born to be, and to demand your God-given right to be human.”

“We’ve got wives and children to feed,” one man yelled.“Who gon’ pay our wages when we go making all these demands?”

“What wages?” Hambone yelled back. “There’s not a dozen of you here who can feed your children without your wives going to work. And what is she doing? She’s getting calluses on her hands from scrubbing the white man’s house, tending his children, washing his clothes, and cooking his meals. I see your wives cutting through town every morning, going to East Grove, Meadow Hill, and some as far as North Ridge.They wash clothes and cook supper for the white man, then you wanna knock them around when they’re too tired to have your supper on the table on time.”

“I wish some man would come hitting on me when I’m tired,” Maureen said. “It’d be the last somebody he’d hit.”

A few of the women laughed and agreed with her, but Hambone kept his composure.“That’s right, Miss Maureen,” he said.“You go on and kill off your man, or let him kill you off. It doesn’t matter to the white man. He doesn’t care a thing about you.Tomorrow he’ll have somebody else plowing his fields and washing his clothes. And while you’re at it, go on over there and buy yourself a few more of them apples because I’m telling you, they’ll poison you just as soon as lynch you. Have y’all forgot about Junior Fess? They’re holding Sam Quinn for his murder, and we all know Junior was killed by white hands. Now, y’all think about that.”

A somber mood descended upon us, and even the small children were quiet.The crowd was growing, and Hambone seemed to have everyone’s attention now.

“Why don’t we see any white faces moving among us today?” he asked.“What’s gonna happen if one of us bump against their lily white skin? Not a damn thing, that’s what.They think we’re animals who’re suppose to work for them all day.They let you women touch their babies when you’re cleaning smelly diapers, but then you can’t sit next to them at the picture show or the soda fountain. Think about that for a minute.”

There was no Reverend Nelson to oppose or silence Hambone and, without restraint, he managed to provoke the crowd into anger and action.

“Let’s tear it down!” someone shouted.

Hambone raised his arm, then turned and threw the last two darts at the corkboard. It seemed he deliberately missed his target. He shrugged his shoulder and faced the crowd once more. “There’re mostly children out here tonight,” he said, “so that’s not the way we’re gonna do it.We need to come together and plan. Now, who’s with me on this?”

Hands began to go up as lights began to shut down.Whole sections of the fairgrounds fell into darkness. I saw Wallace and Maxwell move up to stand beside Hambone just as the far section of the grounds, where the Ferris wheel stood, went dark.All music stopped.The funhouse and the fortune teller’s tent disappeared into the night.

“Hambone, look!”Wallace shouted.

We all looked. Out of the darkness emerged a nightmare— about three dozen angry white men armed with bats and chains, shotguns and pistols. A tall, thin white man in a plaid shirt and overalls aimed his shotgun at the crowd.

“Awright, you niggers clear on outta here!” he ordered. “And don’t drag yo’ feet about it.”

We outnumbered them eight to one—mostly children. Despite that, we began to disperse and rush for the main gate. I moved along with Jeff, trying to keep Laura and Edna in sight as they hurried out between Harvey and Carol Sue. I could hear Ham-bone behind us, telling us not to run, not to be cowards. No one listened.We had nothing with which to protect ourselves from bullets and chains.

“This land belongs to the county,” Hambone shouted.“We have just as much right to . . .”

A shotgun blast silenced him. The stillness was so abrupt that I thought he had been shot. I glanced back and saw that Hambone was not injured. He was backing slowly toward the gate, flanked by Wallace and Maxwell.There was nothing to prevent the men from killing us.We meant nothing to them.They did not shoot us, but they marched forward with intimidating force.

Cars and trucks began to pull out of the parking lot just as Jeff and I stepped from sawdust to gravel.The men followed us to the gate and stood watching as we scattered for safety.Another gunshot rang out, and I stumbled across the gravel, trembling and feeling weak in my knees. Jeff held me steady and led me between moving vehicles until we reached his car.

I stopped beside the car and yelled for Wallace, knowing he could not hear me over the din of engines and the cries of terror. Tarabelle and Mattie rushed toward us, and Mattie practically dived onto the back seat of the car.

“Let’s go, Tangy!” Jeff urged, but I could not move. Up by the main gate, Wallace and a group of young men had armed themselves with gravel and were slinging it at the grounds crew.

“Jeff, look!” I screamed. “They’re going to kill Wallace.They’re going to kill my brother.”

“Shit!”Tarabelle said, as she raced back across the lot toward the gate. It seemed she would be struck by one of the vehicles racing from the grounds, but she made it across intact. Another shot sounded, and the gravel throwing ceased momentarily.Then someone bellowed with rage, a high-pitched battle cry, and the gravel slinging resumed.

Jeff shoved me into the car, then rushed around to the other side and climbed in.Tarabelle had reached Wallace, and I waited for her to grab him and drag him away from the mob. Instead, she stooped and came up with a fistful of gravel.The workers fired again, two shots this time, then raising bats and chains, they began to advance.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” I sobbed.“They’re going to kill somebody.”

Jeff stared out at the confusion, then touched my arm. “If they were aiming to kill, somebody would be dead by now,” he said. “They just wanna scare us.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when one of the men fired his pistol into the crowd, and a body slumped to the ground. Jeff fumbled with the key as he tried to start the car, and I braced myself against the dashboard and tried to suck in enough air to keep from fainting.

Tarabelle and Wallace sprinted toward the car. Jeff had to pry my hands from the dash to let them in. He managed to get the car in gear, and we moved haltingly along, braking for people who were still darting across the lot.

“Anybody get hit?” Jeff asked as he guided the car onto the road.

“Bubba Nash, ”Wallace answered breathlessly. “Hambone’s got him. He ain’t dead.”

We turned left on Atler Avenue, joining the convoy that was slowly moving west. No one in the car made a sound, other than that necessary to breathe. It was almost too quiet. I stared out the window waiting for the explosion that would kill us all. Jeff dropped Mattie off first, then he drove us to Penyon Road, all the way to our house.As we cleared the bend, I could see Mr. Dobson’s car. On the front seat were Harvey and Carol Sue, and on the back were Edith, Laura, and Edna. If Martha Jean and Velman had made it out, then we were all safe. I allowed myself a sigh, and lingered with Jeff while the others went inside.

“Some kind of night, wasn’t it?” Jeff asked.

“Yeah. I don’t know how it happened. One minute everybody was having fun, and then—”

“—all hell broke loose,” Jeff said.

“I want to blame Hambone,” I said, “but I know it’s not his fault.”

“No, it isn’t,” Jeff agreed. “People are going to say that, but it’s not his fault at all. All he did was tell the truth. Maybe he didn’t choose the right time and place, but he was telling the truth.”

“I know,” I said.“Why does it have to be like this?”

“It’s always been like this, Tangy.We’ve just been conditioned to accept it. Now here comes Hambone, wanting to change things and not really knowing how. He’s too young, and the older people in this county are not going to back him. His timing is wrong.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.“I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to get away from here. I’d never come back. Are you coming back, Jeff?”

“I’ll be back,” he said. “In December. I’ll come back and find that nothing has changed. Nothing at all.”

thirty - five

S
he was barefoot in a sundress, and her hair hung limp across her shoulders. A cigarette burned between her lips, and her eyes were closed as she swayed to music coming from the radio.

She reminded me of my mother.

“Good morning, Miss Veatrice,” I said, stepping into the front room.

She opened one eye, and continued to sway.“Hey,” she said pleasantly. “I didn’t know if you were coming today. That’s the Everly Brothers on the radio.” She sang along for a second or two, then said, “There’s a lot to do today. Bakker’s got them boys coming to paint the house. I always wanted to live in a pretty white house.They’re gonna patch it up, and Bakker says it’s gonna look good as new.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, although I doubted much could be done with the house.“What time are they coming?”

“Should be here soon. I was gonna be a bad girl once, just like Susie in that song. Did you know that? Bakker said it was unbecoming and that he’d disinherit me.” She laughed.“He didn’t have nothing to disinherit me from, but I didn’t want to upset him. I could’ve been bad if I wanted to.”

She followed me toward the kitchen and bumped into me when I stopped abruptly at the doorway. I understood the cluttered table and overflowing sink, but there were paint chips on the floor, broken glass in a chair, and a gooey substance stuck to the top of the stove.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“Oh, honey, we’ve been doing some work. Didn’t I tell you?

We’re gonna have this old house looking like new.”

“What kind of work did you do?”

“Well, let’s see,” she said, stepping around me. “First off, we scraped these chairs down.We’re gonna paint them blue.”

“You know, Miss Veatrice, this house would look a lot better if you and your brother picked up behind yourselves.”

Her hazel eyes widened with astonishment, and she touched her cheek as if I had slapped her. “That’s what we hired you for,” she said.“Why are we paying a nigger if we’re suppose to clean it ourselves? That don’t make sense, honey.”

I turned the water on at the sink as her word echoed in my head. I was angry.“Miss Veatrice, do you know there’s a difference between calling a person a nigger and a Negro?” I asked.

“Sure, I do,” she answered, and explained with such simplicity that my anger dissolved and was replaced by pity. “Bakker says all the Negroes moved north. He says the niggers stayed in the south ’cause they don’t have no sense of direction. Oh, look!” She went to the window.“They’ve come to start on the house.”

I peered out the window and saw, of all people, Hambone, wearing overalls and brogans.With him were Maxwell, Russell Tucker, and Mister Leddy.Miss Veatrice started for the back door, and I followed her, my hands dripping water across the floor.

“Miss Veatrice,” I said, “don’t you go out there calling those men niggers.”

“And why not? That’s what they are.”

“No, ma’am. I know those men and they’re Negroes. Try to remember that.”

She tilted her head to one side, closed one eye, and stared at me from the other. “I’ll call them whatever I want,” she whispered, then opened the door and stepped outside. I followed.

“Which one of you is Tucker?” she asked.

Russell Tucker was squatting beside a row of paint cans. He stood when Miss Veatrice entered the yard.“I am,” he said.Tucker was in his early forties, and was the type of man who could go from crib to grave unnoticed if he chose.He was of medium height and build with a medium-brown complexion and a soft-spoken voice.

“Bakker says I’m to do business with you,” Miss Veatrice said. “Nobody but you. Everything is here for you to work with, and Bakker says you’re not to come in the house for any reason. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am, ”Tucker answered.“I figure we’ll start ’round there in the front, on the roof, if that awright wit’ you, ma’am.”

“Oh, I don’t care where you start, ”Miss Veatrice said, spreading her arms and waggling her fingers. “Just make me a pretty white house. That’s all I want. Of course, I work on my flowers in the front, but I guess if I stay out of your way, you’ll stay out of mine.” She giggled.

Hambone and I exchanged glances. I think he had figured out that Miss Veatrice was a touch simpleminded, but I didn’t know how he would respond if she called him a nigger.Maxwell had figured it out, too. He watched her from the top of his eyes, his chin resting against his chest.

“Awright, let’s get some of the stuff ’round to the front, ”Tucker instructed. “Let’s get busy.”

Back in the kitchen, I listened to the noise of hammering and was comforted by the sound. At noon, when the men took a rest, I went out to the yard and sat on the grass next to Hambone. He had separated himself from the others, as if he’d known I would come. He was stretched out, resting on his elbows, and staring at the house.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” he said. “I wonder how this house ever got over here in North Ridge.”

“Hambone, I wanna warn you about Miss Veatrice,” I said.“She’s a little mixed up about some things.”

“I already gathered that.”

“Yeah, but she might slip up and call you a nigger, and I don’t want you to lose your temper and do something stupid.”

Hambone sat up and propped his elbows on his knees. He stared at me, shook his head, then grunted. “Let me get this straight,” he said.“We’ve got a twelve-year-old boy shot in the leg, Becky James limping from being struck with a bat, and another boy with a busted arm, and you’re worried about whether somebody is gonna hurt some old crazy-ass white woman?”

“It’s not like that, Hambone. I’m not worried about her. I’m worried about you.”

“Why are you spending your time worrying about me?”

“It’s the way you hate,” I answered.“It’s not right. I believe you’d hurt Miss Veatrice, and they’d come after you. They’d find you, Hambone, and lynch you.You know they would.”

“You’re too young to be so serious,” he said, leaning back on the grass.“You know why I’m out here with Tucker today? It’s because I’m getting ready to do everybody a favor. I’m leaving Pakersfield. I’m not washing anymore windows or dishes. I’m not hoeing any more fields or sawing down any more trees. I’m moving on.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. I figure if old man Leddy can stay sober, we’ll finish this job in about three or four days. I’m gonna take my money and split.”

I was sitting with my legs tucked beneath me and could feel numbness setting in. I stretched, and Hambone watched. His gaze traveled the length of my legs.

“What are you staring at?” I snapped, remembering my encounter with him in my mother’s kitchen.

“You need some shoes,” he said. “How long have you worked for these people and can’t buy a pair of shoes?”

Apparently Sam had not told him about our mother’s arrangements with our pay. I didn’t tell him, either. I stared down at my lap and said, “Hambone, I wanna ask you something. When you started preaching at the fair, what did you expect those white men to do? Did you think they were just going to stand around and listen with the rest of us?”

For the longest time, Hambone said nothing. He glanced over at the other men, then back at me. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I just know I’m sick and tired of it. I wanna show them that we don’t have to take it.”

“They could have killed us,” I said, “but they didn’t.”

“No, they didn’t.They hurt us, though.You’re just a little girl, Tangy.You don’t understand that people don’t have the right to treat you any old way they want.”

“What about you?” I asked, although I hadn’t intended to.“Do you have the right to treat me any way you want?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Hambone. I talking about what you tried to do to me in my mother’s kitchen.”

“Oh, that,” he said.“You shouldn’t flirt with people if you don’t wanna be bothered. If you remember, you led me to that kitchen. I didn’t realize until later that I’d scared you halfway out of your mind.”

“Were you blind and stupid?” I snapped.

“If I was, that damn Tarabelle knocked some sight and sense back in me real quick, didn’t she? And I haven’t bothered you since.”

“Because of Tarabelle?”

“Because you weren’t ready.”

Across the yard, Tucker stood and prepared to get back to work. Down on the front porch, Miss Veatrice packed dirt into a clay pot with her knuckles and never once glanced up.

“What’s that she’s doing?” Hambone asked, as he helped me to my feet.

“She says she’s planting flowers. She does that every time I come, but she never has seeds or anything. I think she’s just killing time.What do you think of her brother?”

“I’ve never met him. He hired Tucker, who asked me if I wanted work.”

As we walked toward the house, Hambone asked, “Did I tell you that Reverend Nelson was at my door the other morning before the roosters crowed? Everybody is blaming me for what happened at the fair. I guess in a way it was my fault. I know I feel responsible for Bubba, but he’s gonna be all right. I still think people need to wake up.”

I slowed my pace, lagging a few steps behind him, then I stopped. He glanced back, as I knew he would.“Were you with Sam when he beat up that Griggs boy?” I asked.

“Did anybody mention my name?”

He went back to work, and I returned to the kitchen and put supper on the stove. The house was clean now, except the little room next to Miss Veatrice’s. Dirty clothes were piled in a corner, and I left them there. I had started out by leaving the wash until Saturdays so I would not have to roam through the rooms in Bakker Whitman’s presence, but I had learned that he was not the evil man his sister had made him out to be.He was quiet, studious, patient with his sister, and polite to me.

At two-thirty I left the Whitmans’ house.Tucker and his crew were still at work, and I waved to them. Hambone climbed down from his ladder and offered to give me a ride home, which I accepted. On the ride through town he talked about nothing except Becky James.

“If she wasn’t stuck on Red Adams, I’m telling you, I’d be talking to her,” he said. “That’s the kind of woman I need. She’s got that something you don’t find in most women. She’ll stand with you.You know what I mean? She’s strong enough to stand there beside you and fight until she falls. That’s what she did the other night.”

“Well, she’s marrying Red Adams, and she’s too old for you, anyway,” I said.

“Are you kidding? What’s a couple of years? Nothing.What am I suppose to do—wait around until you grow up and decide what you wanna do?”

“What you need to do is grow up and decide what
you
wanna do,” I answered. “And you don’t know how strong Becky is. Sometimes hatred resembles strength.”

“You’re jealous.”

“Okay,” I pleasantly agreed, “but if I have to get hit with a bat and knocked down in order to be strong, I’d rather stay a weak little girl.”

He was quiet as he turned onto Penyon Road and stopped beside my mother’s car, then he laughed.“Get your smart little ass out of my car,” he teased.“You’re gonna be something else when you do grow up.”

“So are you,” I said.

I backed away from the car, thinking that Hambone was not as bad as I had thought. I watched him as he shook his head.Then he turned the car around, honked the horn twice, and drove off.