The Road to Memphis (5 page)

Stacey drove to the barn at the end of the drive, stopped in front of it, honked the horn, and we all got out. Immediately the side door was thrust open, and Christopher-John came bursting out, excited that we had finally made it home. The kitchen door slammed shut, and Big Ma ran down the back porch. Mama came up from the vegetable garden beyond the backyard. Big Ma fussed at Stacey for taking so long to get home, then hugged him tight. Mama looked at the car, looked
at Stacey, and worried about his spending so much money. Christopher-John took his turn at the wheel. Then, despite Mama’s protests and Big Ma’s fussing, Stacey cajoled them into the car and we all went for a fast, dust-spreading ride up the road.

Papa wasn’t home yet.

It was near to suppertime when Jeremy Simms came walking up the road. The boys and I were in the side yard washing the dust off the Ford. Stacey wanted the car looking its best on Sunday morning. Although I was supposed to be in the house helping prepare supper, I much preferred scrubbing on the car to standing in the hot kitchen stirring up food on the wood-burning stove. Besides, I was as fascinated by the car as the boys were. As Jeremy came up the drive Stacey stopped to greet him. Christopher-John, Little Man, and I said our hellos and kept on working. Jeremy folded his arms across his chest and nodded undeniable approval of the Ford. “It’s a mighty fine-looking car, all right,” he said. “Always did admire it.”

“So did I,” admitted Stacey.

“That wine coloring, it’s right rare.”

“Mr. Jamison said he special ordered it for Mrs. Jamison. Said it was her favorite color.”

“Well, Miz Jamison, she took mighty fine care of this car. Course, I don’t ’spect she drove it that much, seeing she died a year after she got it.” He paused for some moments, gazing at the car, and the silence with him was not unusual. “Heard Mr. Jamison got it for her ’cause he was doin’ so much work in Vicksburg and Jackson these here last few years and he wanted her to have a way to get ’round when he wasn’t home there in Strawberry.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said.” Still holding the chammy, Stacey leaned against the fence that separated the drive from the side yard and the house and openly admired his new acquisition. “Course, it’s got no radio, and the heater needs fixing, but I figure I can do without a radio, and if I can’t fix the heater, I can stand a little cold. Main thing is the engine’s good and it runs fine. It was missing a bit, but Harris, look like he fixed that.” He took a pause. “Got to admit, too, I do like how it shines.”

“Yeah . . . it do shine pretty,” Jeremy agreed. “Ain’t got a scratch on it.” Then he also leaned against the fencing. “How she ride?” he asked.

“Fine. Just fine,” Stacey answered.

Again Jeremy was silent. He started to speak, then hesitated. Finally he cleared his throat and got on. “You know, I—I want to thank y’all for helping us out today. On the road, I mean . . . with the truck.” We all looked at him. Jeremy’s eyes were dead set on the car as he spoke. “Couldn’t’ve got outa that ditch without y’all, ’less’n we’d’ve got hold of some mules.”

Stacey, too, kept his eyes on the car. “Well, anybody would’ve done the same.”

“I know my pa, he ain’t a easy man. He don’t give much to saying thanks, but I just wanted y’all to know we obliged just the same.”

Stacey stepped from the fence. “Don’t matter about your pa. Like I said, anybody would’ve done the same.”

Jeremy looked at him and nodded. “Yeah . . . yeah.”

I glanced over at the two of them and once again studied on Jeremy Simms. That boy had been a puzzlement to me since I had first known him. He had always been friendly; he was like no other white boy I knew. In fact, he was the only white
person of manhood age whom we addressed face-to-face directly by his first name without setting a
Mr
. in front of it, but we only addressed him at those times when there were no other white folks around, for addressing him so familiarly could get us all, including Jeremy, into trouble. When other white folks were around, we usually did not address him at all, and though we never spoke of it to him, we knew Jeremy understood why.

From childhood Jeremy had seemed to understand.

From childhood and days of fishing on the Rosa Lee, days of chasing deer and squirrels through the forest pines, days of just lazing back on soft grass watching puffs of brilliant white clouds and dreaming of nothing more than fried chicken and sweet potato pie, we had had a friendship with Jeremy Simms. It was a cautious friendship. We all treated Jeremy as a distant friend, and Jeremy treated us pretty much the same way too; yet, there was a closeness between him and us that ran deep and was never spoken.

Stacey said nothing else as he left the fence and came back over to the car and dipped his chammy into one of the water pails. Jeremy came over too. “What she look like under the hood?”

Stacey squeezed the water out of the chammy and glanced back at him. He seemed to understand Jeremy’s curiosity about the car. It was a male thing, I supposed, this passion for cars, and in that there was no distinction between black and white. “You want to take a look?”

Jeremy looked at him with a wide grin. Stacey put up the hood, and the two were soon immersed in talk of carburetors and engines and horsepower. I wondered at them. Stacey, usually almost monosyllabic in his talks with Jeremy, was in his pride, being most expansive as they discussed the car’s mechanisms. Jeremy, most times stumbling in his speech in search
of words that did not offend, talked almost without pause. Then, amidst it all, Jeremy, his blue eyes bright and his face lit in eager excitement, turned to Stacey and asked: “You . . . you think maybe I could get a ride in it?”

Stacey’s smile faded. White folks most times didn’t ride with colored folks unless the colored folks were in the white folks’ employ and were driving the white folks’ car as a chauffeur. Under those circumstances white folks sat in the back seat. There were those times, of course, when white folks gave black folks a lift, but on those occasions black folks sat on the bed of the truck or on the back seat of a car or on the rumble seat, if a car had one. That was just the way it was, and since most colored folks didn’t have cars or trucks to be giving rides, there was never that much question of colored folks giving white folks a lift. Now Jeremy was asking for a ride in Stacey’s new car, and it was an awkward thing.

“Just ’cross the pasture there, back of the barn,” said Jeremy, knowing what he was asking. No one could see them riding in the pasture.

Stacey hesitated, glanced at Christopher-John, Little Man, and me; then he nodded. “All right,” he said, and opened the driver’s door and got in. Jeremy, grinning, ran around to the other side and slid in beside him. Then the two of them took off through the pasture gate onto the meadow grass. Stacey raced the Ford up the pasture and down the pasture and around in circles, and as he did Jeremy’s laughter was so loud and hard at the speedy ride that we could hear him from where we stood by the gate. I had never seen Jeremy more joyful. Then they came back through the pasture gate, hollering something we couldn’t understand, and continued on down the drive and across the road and up the forest trail on the other side.

“What they say?” asked Little Man.

“I don’t know,” I replied, staring after them.

Christopher-John and Little Man stared out at the forest as well, then tossed the water from the buckets and took them into the barn. I started to return to the house and my kitchen chores before Big Ma came out calling for me, but then I looked back to the forest again, and without hesitation I, too, went down the drive, crossed the road, and started up the forest trail. I was curious where Stacey and Jeremy were headed.

I wound my way through the forest. Years ago unwanted lumbermen had come onto our land and cut the trail, but they had cut more than the trail. They had cut down trees that had stood virgin strong for centuries untold. I followed the trail of rotting logs to within several feet of the Caroline, the pond Grandpa Paul-Edward Logan had named for Big Ma. There I stopped, for parked on the bank facing the pond was the Ford. Jeremy and Stacey were inside, and to my surprise Jeremy was now sitting behind the wheel. The front doors to the car were wide open. I stepped behind a pine and didn’t show myself. Neither Stacey nor Jeremy saw me.

Jeremy motioned toward the pond and spoke softly. I strained to hear. “’member how we used to come down here, lay on the bank for a while, and then go wadin’ in that water? ’member how we used to fish?”

Stacey turned so I saw the profile of his smile. “I remember, all right.”

“And ’member that ole tree house I used to have, just up the ways a bit?”

Stacey grinned. “Remember you wanted to build us one.”

“Yeah, but ole Cassie, she wouldn’t hear of it. She always figured I was kinda crazy sleeping up in that tree—”

“Well . . . you know Cassie—”

“But she was right! I was crazy! I was sleeping up there when it was thunderin’ and lightnin’ and carryin’ on—”

“Yeah, and you kept on sleepin’ up there—”

“Till that lightnin’ strike hit that ole tree, I sure ’nough did.” The two of them laughed, remembering childhood. Then Jeremy sobered. “Them was good days, wasn’t they, Stacey?”

“Yeah . . . they was,” Stacey conceded.

“Sometimes . . . sometimes I wish they could come back. I mean . . . so’s we could still do them things . . . could still do ’em and folks wouldn’t mind.” He looked again at the pond. “I don’t know how come things can’t be like this all the time.”

Stacey was silent for a moment, then said: “What you mean?”

“Well . . . just us taking the time like this now . . . talking . . . like when we used to sit here and fish . . . .”

“Well . . . that was some years back . . . .”

“Yeah . . . I know, but . . .” His voice waned. “Stacey, ’bout my pa . . .”

Stacey looked away from him. “You already said your words about your pa.”

“Yeah, I know, but . . . he’s a hard man sometimes . . . and I—I just ain’t wanted y’all t’ take no offense. I mean . . . he just got his ways.”

Stacey looked at him again but didn’t speak.

“I . . . I know them ways don’t set well with some folks . . . colored folks in particular . . . but, well, Pa’s just Pa. He just set in them ways of his, and ain’t nothin’ to be done ’bout ’em. Him and me, we ain’t never much seen eye to eye, but Pa, he believe in his way. Can’t see no other. He done tried to make me see his way, too, but it just don’t make no
sense to me, the way he look at things. Way he look at folks. He got himself a one-set mind, and it don’t change.”

“What ’bout yours?”

“Mine?” Jeremy’s voice and his face were openly frank as he said, “Well, to me . . . folks is just folks.” He leaned forward, his arms against the steering wheel. “I recollect tellin’ my pa that one time when he caught me down here playin’ with y’all.” He laughed. “He liked t’ wore me out.”

Stacey smiled.

Jeremy shook his head. “Pa, he been trying to make me see his way long’s I can ’member. I was more like my cousin, Stat, he’d be a proud man. He crazy ’bout him.” His arm hugged the wheel, and there was silence between them. Stacey didn’t say a word. Jeremy glanced at him, as if embarrassed by his confession, then looked again to the pond.

“Course, now, don’t want you to be thinkin’ me and Pa buttin’ heads all the time. I mean, we ain’t much like you and your pa, but we have us our good times. Pa, he a mighty good hunter, and he done learned me good ’bout huntin’. Why, sometimes him and me, we go huntin’, be gone all the night, jus’ him and me. We bring us home a bagful ever’ time, and Pa, he be right proud ’cause I’m a good shot, and I set my sights on something and it don’t hardly get away from me.”

Stacey confirmed with a nod that he understood the feeling Jeremy was talking about. “Used to hunt a lot these last few years with Papa ’fore I moved up to Jackson. Still like to hunt with him whenever I get a chance.”

“Yeah . . . well, you and your pa, even when he was off workin’ on that railroad most the year, y’all always was close. Used to see y’all talkin’ and jus’ a-laughin’ with each other.” He clung to the wheel. “All y’all’s close. I done always been admirin’ of that . . . .”

Stacey thumped his hand on the dashboard, and his silence accentuated his awkwardness at Jeremy’s confidences.

Suddenly Jeremy released the wheel and sat back, grinning. “’member that time I give you that old wind pipe I done made? Give it to you one Christmas . . . back . . . oh . . . near to eight, ten years ago now.”

Stacey smiled. “Yeah . . . I remember. Still got it.”

“You don’t say!” Jeremy laughed with delight. “Thought it would’ve been rotted away by now!”

Stacey shrugged. “Always keep things.”

“What it sound like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Haven’t blown it in a spell.”

“But you say you still got it, huh?”

“Yeah . . . I still got it.”

“How ’bout that?” Jeremy exclaimed, sounding childlike happy. “How ’bout that?” Then he looked again at the pond, rested his arm once more on the wheel, and was silent.

In that silence I left the tree and moved away, back toward the house. Jeremy had seemed so happy about Stacey still having that wind pipe, and Stacey hadn’t told him that he had put that wind pipe away in a box under his bed that same Christmas Jeremy had given it to him and had not played it since, or at least to my knowledge he hadn’t. I certainly hadn’t seen it again.

It was some time before Jeremy and Stacey came back up the drive. When they did, Christopher-John, Little Man, and I were waiting at the barn. Stacey was again at the wheel. He parked the car, and as he and Jeremy got out Jeremy looked fondly at the Ford and noticed mud on the newly cleaned tires. Jeremy frowned, then called to Little Man. “’Ey, Clayton, hand me a rag, will ya?”

Little Man went to the backyard where the newly washed
chammies were hung, returned with a couple, and tossed one to Jeremy, who stooped by the front wheel to wipe off the mud. Stacey took the other chammy and told Christopher-John to pull up some water from the well. Then, with Jeremy’s help this time, we again wiped down the car. By the time we finished, the car was gleaming once more, and all five of us stepped back proudly to admire our work.