Wingo Fly

By Kim Hines

Wingo Fly brings us into the world of Christy Wingo, a 10 year old Black girl on the cusp of womanhood in a tightly-knit African American community in 1965 on the South-side of Minneapolis. Christy tells us her story as she struggles to understand the current events in the world and in her small community-- just as she

• Language: English
• Publisher: Studio Egg LLC
• Release date: Feb 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951669010

Kim Hines

KIM HINES, all-around Theater Artist-actor, director and playwright, She was the first (& only one for a good many years) African-American female playwright to receive a core-membership at the Playwrights' Center, in Minneapolis. Kim has been produced locally & across the nation including 4 productions and 2 national tours at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Professional, amateur and educational theaters will be familiar with one of her most popular plays for YA audiences, "Home on the Mornin' Train." Over time, Kim has been awarded 30 commissions; 6 grants; proclaimed Artist of the Year in Minneapolis and received 5 other awards given by non-profit organizations for using her art and work to address various social issues. Among her grants, she is the recipient of the Bush Fellowship for playwrighting, McKnight Career Advancement Grant, Film the Cities Fellowship and the MN States Arts Board Grant for Playwrighting. Kim is a coach for artists & arts organizations. This is her first novel.

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Wingo Fly

Kim Hines

© 2020 Wingo Fly by Kim Hines. All rights reserved. Reproduction or utilization of this work in any form, by any means now known or hereinafter invented, including, but not limited to, xerography, photocopying and recording, and in any known storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without permission from the author. Exception is allowed in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

PRINT ISBN 978-1-951669-00-3

EPUB ISBN 978-1-951669-01-0

Cover Design and Layout by Kim Hines

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named persons living or deceased is unintentional.

Published in 2020 by Studio Egg LLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

www.studioeggllc.com

Inquiries may be directed to:

Kim Hines c/o Studio Egg LLC,

612-520-1167; [e-mail]

Dedicated To:

My mom, Dorothy J. Hines, who made sure that I read a variety of things growing up. She inspired me with her many stories.

My dad, Dennis T. Hines, Sr., who taught me how to tell a story. I learned that everyone has stories to tell.

My Life Partner, Patricia Nelson, who is the most perfect partner that I could ever want or need. She definitely played a huge role in my finishing this book. I love you always!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A Special Thank You to:

Jenna Zark, Heidi Arneson, and Pat Dennis for great advice;

Melinda Kordich, Sioux Saloka, Janet Stewart,

Pamela Hill Nettleton, Terry Bellamy,

Leila Stewart, Jan Rainey and April Stoltz

for reading and critiquing and giving me lots of love, support and encouragement.

Patricia Nelson and Ellen Glatstein for proofing, suggestions and even more encouragement.

Darcy Knight for having faith in me and this story from the get-go, way back when.

Kimberly Elise for letting me know that this was a story that was very special.

And finally, the late John Santoianni, my first literary agent.

A man of great integrity, he gave me a lot of encouragement and always had my back. He loved this story and warned me against ever selling it short.

John, I miss you and your wisdom xo.

Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Minneapolis 1965

2 Christy Wingo

3 The Voice

4 Sister Ray

5 Bedtime Visions

6 Church and Friends to the End

7 Frank, the Shoe and the Handkerchief

8 The Park

9 The Talk

10 The House of Sister Ray

11 Witchy-Root Woman

12 The Shoe

13 Reasons, Maybe

14 Push and Pull

15 Challenges

16 Risks All Around

17 The Search Begins

18 Running Water

19 The Change

20 Endings Make New Beginnings

21 Epilogue

About the Author

Chapter 1

Minneapolis, 1965

It is the summer of 1965 and it’s all happening on 4th Avenue and 38th Street in the Negro section of South Minneapolis.

A riot.

Colored folks are angry that a young Colored man has disappeared and everybody thinks he’s been killed, but his body hasn’t been found. Someone starts a fire early in the evening. Maybe it was a couple of somebodies, but when the fire is started, it is as if it is a cue for other people to start breaking windows of businesses and start looting merchandise….food….clothing…office stuff, like typewriters…anything that is wanted, anything valuable. Some people don’t steal anything. They just break into places and tear things up and then set fires. Other people start fighting other folks; some people they already know and some people they’ve never known. Why do they do that? Who knows what people fight about during riots; there is always so much going on.

Not long into the looting, sirens and lights are everywhere. Cops are running up and down the street hitting people with clubs. Gunshots, bullets whistle through the air from every which way, but the sounds are mostly screaming, shouting and arguing.

On the telephone poles, there are weathered posters from months ago, and real old advertisements for R&B, blues and gospel concerts on faded blue, green or orange paper. But tacked on top of everything, are a few fairly new posters with a photo of a 20 year old Colored man smiling, dressed in a suit. The type beneath his photo reads: Missing: Raymond Love…anyone with any information, please call…. followed by a phone number.

A cop in his squad car stops and another cop approaches his window. The one leaning into the window says, You better call for some back up. This is really getting way out of hand! Get a wagon down here! The cop in the car grabs his 2 way radio and starts barking orders to someone. When he’s done, the other cop turns around, points and yells at some Colored man and woman stepping out of a store hugging bags of food. He yells at them to stop and drop the bags. They don’t listen to him; they just start running up 38th Street towards Nicollet. The cop turns to his buddy in the car and says, Going to have to get a curfew going. I don’t want to be fighting this sh*t every night.

How long do you think this is going to go on? asks the cop in the car.

I have no idea. They haven’t found that Colored kid yet, so who knows?!

Smoke fills the air and darkens the area, but the sky glows from the bright orange and yellow fires.

I wake up with a jolt. I just saw it all. I heard it all. And I’m not even there. I’m in my bedroom, sitting up in bed. But I saw everything that happened. I saw it all in my mind's eye. This isn't the first time I’ve seen things…but it certainly is the most exciting.

Chapter 2

Christy Wingo

1965.

A lot of strange things have been happening this year.

At the beginning of this month, Raymond Love disappeared.

All the Colored papers talked about his disappearance, but the white papers didn’t say a word about it until Raymond’s white employer made a statement about Raymond being gone and what a good Colored worker he was. Raymond had gotten up one morning and went to work at Skip’s gas station over on 33rd Street.

Raymond never got there. And nobody’s heard from him since.

Yeah—-a lot of strange things have been happening, and they’ve all been happening in threes.

Raymond’s disappearance was first, and then the Jones family’s house got robbed. We never had a robbery on our block before. A lot of stuff got stolen— The Jones’ house is a green and white, what my dad calls, typical 1920’s 3-bedroom house. Which is different from the house my family lives in. We have the newest house on the block. My folks built our house 9 years ago in 1956, when I was only one year old. I heard my mom describe our house as a 3-bedroom rambler with a Georgia stone façade added to the front of the house. It looks brand spanking new compared to all of the other houses in the whole neighborhood. Most of them are around a half a century old, which is what my teacher Mrs. Johnson would say…my dad would just plain say they’re more than 50 years old. Isn’t it interesting how you can sometimes say one thing a whole bunch of different ways—and it all sounds really different, but it‘s really all the same?

Anyway, we live on Clinton Avenue…and the Joneses live three houses down from us.

After the house was robbed, there was a lot of commotion. The cops were called and they came with their sirens blasting and lights flashing. I jumped up from my bed when I heard my dad get up and move to the front door; I followed him outside. He made me sit on the top of the second set of stairs leading from our house down to the sidewalk. Everybody was looking out their windows or coming out of their houses to see what was going on. Neighbors were gathering around the Jones house in their robes and pajamas. People were pointing to the broken window and the slit screen on the side of the house; talking about what they might’ve heard and what they knew.

Dad didn’t join everybody else. He just watched everybody from a distance and shook his head. I was straining real hard to see what was going on in their front yard, what with all of the cops standing around. Mr. Jones, a medium brown Colored man, was talking to a couple of the cops and they were taking notes. And Mrs. Jones, who is so light that people think that she’s white, (but she’s not…she’s Colored like the rest of us), was sitting on her front stairs crying. Some neighbor was trying to comfort her and kept telling her in a loud voice, that everything was going to be okay. Mrs. Jones’ mom stood on the porch in her robe and just plain watched from there. I don’t think many people saw her, but I did. She came from the South and I think everything that was happening, was reminding her of when she lived down there.

Then 3 days later, early in the morning, my friend Karen and I found Milton Berry’s big old dog Nemo dead in Karen’s front yard. He was just lying there. Dead. And he was a really big dog, too. Robert used to say that his dog was a Black Lab (and he wasn’t even black!), but I looked Nemo up in a book and I think he was part St. Bernard—a big part of him(!) and a little bit of something else that was so little, it didn’t even show up in him!

When Karen and I saw Nemo, we just bent-over looking at him. Then Stevie, the paperboy, stopped and looked at the dog with us.

Nemo didn’t move. He was stone cold dead and no one knew why or how…

Seeing Nemo dead like that was the third thing to happen.

Yep! It was all happening in threes.

***

Every morning around 7am, or so, my dad opens the front door and picks up the newspaper from the top step. The headline on the paper is almost the same every morning. It’s always talking about the freeway. I wasn’t exactly sure what that was, but my dad says that it makes getting across the city, getting to other cities and getting around the state easier. But on this particular morning, I felt the need to go out and get the paper, before my dad and anyone else in the family. I start to grab the paper and see my friend Karen Jacox running up the street towards my house. She stops on the sidewalk and shouts at me. Christy! Christy Wingo! You have to come quick and see what’s on my front lawn!

****

I’m just so excited; I just burst through the kitchen door, Momma, Daddy! Guess what? Guess what? Karen and me found— Momma corrects me, Karen and I—"

"Karen and I found Milton Berry’s dog dead in her front yard!

Mom is sitting drinking coffee and Dad is reading the paper and sipping his coffee, real slow like he does. I grab a banana from the fruit basket on the table and peel it. Mom scrunches up her nose. Oh, my goodness! I hope they called the pound. It’s not sanitary having some dead animal laying up in your front yard. She glances at me; I barely see her look at me. Wash your hands, please. I hate it that my mom has to tell me to wash my hands. I’m not a baby, I’m ten years old, but then I always forget when I’m thinking about something else or excited about something. I move over to the kitchen sink and grab the big bar of Palmolive soap and wash my hands.

Momma—what do think was wrong with him?

Who?

Milton’s dog---you know, Nemo! I sit down at the table to eat my banana.

Humpf! says my dad. A big old dog like that? He takes a sip of coffee and swallows. Who knows? Probably died ‘cause the Berrys’ don’t take care of nothing, especially that dog...

Mom looks at Dad like she was going to say something about talking about the neighbors in front of me ‘cause I’m a kid. Carter….

Well--it’s true. Think of all them times I turned that hose on outside and gave that dog some water on them real hot days. That dog was probably thinking about keeling over and dying then. My giving it water just postponed the inevitable. Mom turns and looks me in the eye and points directly at me.

Don’t you repeat a single word your father has just said about the Berry’s, you hear me?

Yes, ma’am.

And don’t talk with your mouth full.

Dad is searching the front part of the paper. I know he’s hoping to read about the riots up on 38th and 4th.

Well, well, well… says my dad. Nothing on the front page about the riots the other night. Mom gets up and grabs eggs from a carton on the counter and starts to break them into a bowl and with a fork stirs them hard and fast.

I watch my mom for a moment and then I ask her how she’s going to fix them.

You’re having scrambled eggs unless you or your father wants an omelet: Carter?

I don’t care how you fix ‘em. They’re all going to the same place. Dad starts to read an article on the front page. Humpf! Freeway! Everything’s about the damn freeway. They’re shouting it all over the paper.

My mom only half listening, pours the egg mixture into a heated pan, adds cheese and mushrooms, and looks up from the stove. Who’s shouting what? What are you talking about, Carter?

That freeway they put in. 35W! Cutting up our neighborhood like they did, so that the white folks can get to work on time without having to get up early! In the first place, nobody told them to move all the way the hell out there in the hinterlands, anyway! He opens the paper and starts to browse through it as he speaks. In the second place—

My mom sighs and then cuts him off. She’s frustrated with my dad.