Another Time, Another Place

By Gordon E. Jenkins

Two young people, one white and one deemed black, products of their environment, separated by the rigid, inhumane caste system of the Jim Crow South, meet by chance, bond, and begin a forbidden relationship which nurtures and grows, even when they attempt to terminate it, knowing the potential consequences if they are discovered. As they secretly flaunt the laws and traditions of the day, they aggressively pursue their individual ambitions to escape the equally binding economic shackles. As their commitment to each other becomes stronger, they become bolder, and challenge the status quo in ways that cannot be ignored by the power structure. Their actions coupled with fate trigger unforeseen events with tragic consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 7, 2003
• ISBN: 9781465330291

Gordon E. Jenkins

Gordon E. Jenkins was born and raised in North Carolina. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Studies from the University of Oklahoma and attended Graduate School at Syracuse University. He served twenty-eight years in the U. S. Government, sixteen with the United States Air Force and twelve with the Federal Aviation Administration. Today, he is retired and resides in Westminster, MD with his wife.

Book preview

Another Time,

Another Place

Gordon E. Jenkins

Copyright © 2003 by Gordon E.Jenkins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

PROLOGUE

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PROLOGUE

My eyes have dimmed, my stride has lessened; my thought processes have slowed;

But still I remember, so well, Another Time, Another Place, decades ago;

Where life was different, where changes reigned, but things remained the same;

Where disaster loomed, but somehow was restrained;

I long for that time and place to come back to me, with all its pained memory;

Yet, i know this can never be; i can only reflect its history.

1     

Times were bad, but they had always been bad. Even when they were good, they weren’t really good for most of the people in this little known, unique and remote, hard scrabble corner of Southeastern North Carolina which was, and still is, unlike any other part of this vast country, and from my perspective, stuck in a Nineteenth Century time warp.

I was born into this environment in the second decade of the Twentieth Century. It is still home, even today, although I’m miles away. It is inescapable. It is inside me.

Even though the South had overturned the political changes wrought by reconstruction and segregation was as stringently enforced as it had ever been, the negative impact of the Civil War continued to loom heavily over the social structure and the economics of the area. The Haves were few and the Have Nots were many, and the few ruled the many, who were increasing mightily in number as America entered into the deep and devastating Great Depression.

Daddy worked as a handyman for a wealthy planter and store owner named Sampson, in a little burg called Beulaville in a County called Duplin, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere on Route 24, about thirty miles from the Atlantic Ocean. He was extremely fortunate to have ajob.

The landscape of this area is a mosaic of acre upon acre of flat, poor, sandy, marginally productive, tillable land interspersed with mile upon mile of lonely roads, and literally thousands of acres of woodland and swamps. Periodically, a traveler will spot an unpainted single story, tin roof house alongside the road, perched precariously on round, wooden blocks. As you ride by at night in your mule drawn cart, with a lantern dangling off the back of the cart to ward off the lone car that might need to pass, you can look inside through the open, curtain-less windows and possibly see some poor sad character reading by the dim red glow of a kerosene lamp or sitting at his kitchen table with his dragged down wife and sniveling passel of kids having their supper of fried fatback and collards, knowing that their fate is also yours, awaiting and beckoning at the end of your slowjourney.

Ever so often, as if by magic, a little village, just like Beulaville, containing a few business establishments, and some houses that portend that the inhabitant may possess a wee bit more affluencejuts out at an intersection to tease the traveler into thinking that something of value might lay therein.

We shared such a house with Mrs. Ada Williams, Mr. Sampson’s widowed sister. We consisted of my father, mother and two much younger siblings whom I didn’t recognize as existing, except on those occasions when my parents threatened bodily harm to me. Unfortunately, we had lived in a plethora of houses, none close to being comparable to Mrs. Williams’ house, moving almost yearly from one barely inhabitable shack to another as we sought to survive.

Her house sat at the intersection of Route 24, which was Beulaville’s Main Street, and Chinquapin Road, which led to another little burg, Mill Creek, where I was born in a shack on my grandfather’s farm, and where most of my relatives lived. Route 24 was the only paved street in the town. Three corners of the intersection contained gas stations and Mrs.Williams’ house sat at the other corner.

The house had a long front porch with two entrances, one for us and one for her. She lived in three connecting rooms while we had two rooms connected by an open back porch. It was her house and we lived there for nominal rent. It was our first house with electricity.

I had started to school in Mill Creek where we had lived with my mother’s parents off and on as our fortunes ebbed and flowed, and my daddy was a sharecropper with either my grandfather or some other landowner, until he got the job with Mr. Sampson. I was in the Third Grade when we had to move in the middle of the school semester. Noticing that I was shy and scared, Mrs. Williams volunteered to accompany me on my first day at the new school to get me registered and situated.

Mama had always been rather sickly, having extremely high blood pressure, necessitating a trip to the doctor almost weekly, and the purchase of a lot of medicine; none of which seemed to make any noticeable improvement in her condition. If Daddy’s low salary wasn’t enough of a drag, the cost of those visits and the medicine was overwhelming. He was barely eking out a living and we were hardly surviving. However, our situation was a tiny bit better than before, for we could now buy some groceries weekly and others daily, inasmuch as we had no refrigeration to preserve anything perishable. Most importantly, we could buy on credit. Although the bills piled up, Mr. Sampson always knew that there was next week’s paycheck where he could get his money, plus he got to sell more goods from his store. He was in a win/win position and Daddy was thankful that he was there for him to lean on.

I was also better off for I got to live in a more cosmopolitan environment and could associate with some of the wealthier boys and girls of the community, which gave me an insight into class differences within Southern society. I recognized very early, from these experiences, that there was a great gulf between them and me, which would never be bridged regardless of my ability. Family and birth meant much more than athletic or academic achievement.

I didn’t know the reason, but we left Mrs. Williams’ house in 1942 and moved to a little house on the edge of town that was owned by Mr. Sampson. I suspect that he threw it in as part of my daddy’s compensation in order to keep him happy. Daddy had become very important to the operation of the store, having learned to be a butcher and a good one, moving up from handyman.

The house, consisting of four tiny rooms lined up in a row, was located on the outer edge of the town on a lot that had formerly housed a sawmill. It was a miserable spot to live for sawdust got into everything, and the heat was sweltering when the sun reflected off the sawdust, creating a smell and a feeling in the air of burning wood. There wasn’t a blade of grass or a tree or bush in the whole yard.

It was fun for all the kids in the area, climbing up to the top of the compacted sawdust pile, which was at least twenty feet tall, and leaping off into a pile of loose sawdust, casting up a constant cloud of sawdust to blow into our house. Mama hated the place and griped incessantly, causing Daddy constant pain and worry, for he couldn’t do anything about the problem. He had no place to go.

The families that lived in this little enclave were, like us, very poor, headed by a breadwinner who worked for somebody else at whatever menial task he could get, and the area reflected that fact. Mama was getting sicker all the time and didn’t move around much and I was now a teenager, feeling my oats and wanting to expand my horizons, becoming somewhat of a discipline problem for my parents.

Our house was about a half mile from the Negro section of town, which we called by its most derisive term Nigger Town, without even thinking of the degradation imparted by use of the term. The blacks had to walk down our road to get to the main part of town to do any major shopping and to go to work for the wealthy whites.

The kids in our neighborhood weren’t supervised very well for the breadwinners were at work and the teenagers ignored their mothers in most instances. I was no exception. We ran in a pack, playing games and causing mischief, nothing too malicious, just devilish. But there was little parental control and everyone stayed out until a parent rounded us up or we got tired and went home voluntarily. This was particularly true during the hot summer months.

I became a ringleader in this group. Wherever mischief was, I could be counted to be involved, and the blacks presented targets of opportunity to vent our misguided energy.

One of our favorite tricks was to take an empty shoe box, put two blocks of wood inside, wrap it nicely with brown paper, tie a string from a ball of twine into one end of the box, place the box in the middle of the dirt road, cover the string with sand, and holding onto one end, move to the side of the road, hide in the bushes, and wait for the first black person to come along. There were no streetlights; and some nights would be pitch-black and it would be impossible for our victim to see us. The traveler would go directly to the box, hoping that it contained something of value, possibly a pair of shoes his size, and reach down to pick it up.Just as he bent over, waiting until the very last second, we would yank the string and then take off running, guffawing all the time, or we would wait until the box was opened, if they were so inclined, and then run off laughing.

If we were real quiet, they might pick up the box, start to open it, discover the string, and try and look around to see if anyone was watching their foolish act. When we started snickering, some would roar furiously with emotional anger, fling down the box, and sometimes chase us for several blocks; doing exactly what we wanted them to do. We always had a head start, knew which house to run into, dart into that house, and stare out the window at them, daring them to try and get in. They knew better. Regardless of the number of times we pulled the trick, there was always some sucker willing to fall prey. Desperation plays funny tricks on the psyche.

Sometimes we moved out of our little six-block area and onto Main Street where the elite lived in their white mansions with porticos and tall columned circular porches, with their cultivated Southern drawls and phony exaggerated manners and customs, and their vaguely suppressed air of superiority over the rest of the local humanity. Here we would play another favorite trick which involved visiting the home of a recently widowed lady, or maybe some woman whose husband was away, one with a wide front wrap-around porch with several large rocking chairs sitting in a row. Again, we would take our trusty ball of twine, tie one end to a lower rung of the chair, hide in the shrubbery, and start slowly rocking the chair, which always made an eerie thumping sound on the porch’s wooden floor. If the thump of the rocking chair didn’t get the lady’s attention, one of us would sneak up onto the porch, knock loudly on the door and run back to our hiding place. The old lady or her colored maid would normally turn on the overhead porch light and peer out the door, at which time we would rock the chair furiously, hoping to scare the hell out of them. We assumed the women were as scared of ghosts as we were, and we knew that the maids were scared of hants, as they called them.

We didn’t let anyone, black or white, man or woman, young or old, rich or poor, off the hook. On several hot summer Saturday nights, we’d saunter down to the edge of the colored area under the cover of total black darkness where a black beauty parlor occupied a second floor room. The trick was for two or three of us to fill paper lunch bags with sand before we left, walk the few blocks to the building and heave the bags through the open window into the room occupied by a bunch of black women getting their hair straightened with hot curling irons, and then run like hell. The only problem was that they got wise real fast and on our third sortie, several black guys were hiding on the stairs and came rushing down as soon as they heard the first bag errantly hit the window sill. We heard their footsteps on the stairs and took off running, darting around the building, unfortunately forgetting that an open sewage drainage ditch was there. Two of us, who were in the lead, managed to jump over it, but the third poor bastard landed right in the middle of the crap. We dashed off and left him, hearing the black guys laughing uncontrollably as they stared down into the muck at him. He told us later that he crawled out as they stood on the bankjeering, went home and washed up, completely humiliated and furious at us for leaving him. We apologized! This trick was abandoned as too risky.

A couple of incidents which resulted in a friendly visit from the sheriff to my house convinced my father that he was confronted with a major disciplinary problem which he had to address quickly. I was staying out later and later at night, sometimes getting home after he had gotten in from the store, and lying about where I had been. I was late most times because, along with several other boys, I would sneak into the tent show movies that came to town quite often and located on a vacant lot in the middle of town for a few weeks at a time, and forget about time as I became engrossed in the show. My lies were rather transparent and Daddy exacted his version of corporal punishment almost nightly, which involved a whipping with his leather belt. Sometimes these beatings got vicious and I ended up with raised red welts on my legs and buttocks which turned blue after several days, but I accepted the beatings without a whimper, promising myself that they would not last forever and I would eventually escape this environment. This was the price I had to pay to do what I wanted to do. I sullenly and subtly let him know that he had not broken my spirit, even though I never challenged him directly.

Daddy concluded that my problem was too much energy and not enough direction, for several things happened which were not of my making, and altered my course significantly. First, I was approached by a man named Willie James who was the son-in-law of Mr. Sampson and the manager of the store, who went out of his way to engage me in conversation and asked questions about my schooling, my grades, and my interest in sports. It was obvious to me that he already knew the answers and was acting at the behest of my father. I recounted to him that I was a better than average student, which was true, even though I studied very little, and that I was a much better athlete; being especially good at baseball. I knew that he was responsible for Daddy’s promotion to butcher and had tried but failed to get Mr. Sampson to give him a raise.

Mr. James suggested that I organize a baseball team for the summer and get my friends involved, and he would finance the purchase of the equipment, shoes and uniforms, do the scheduling, and transport us to any games that were out of town. My job was to organize and manage the team and do the purchasing. I thought that was the greatest thing anyone could do for us and I launched into it with gusto, ordering the equipment from Sears and Roebuck. I would meet Mr. James periodically at the Sampson’s house to get money for our program.

Mr. Sampson had an elderly black couple, Tom and Ida Robinson, working at the house. I felt that I knew them fairly well from my observations when visiting with Mr.James. Tom did the yard work now that Daddy was in the store and Ida was the cook and maid. Everyone called them Uncle Tom and Aunt Ida, since we were taught that you addressed elderly black folk as Aunt and Uncle as a sign of respect.

Uncle Tom had a thatch of white cotton hair and always carried himself with grace and dignity. Both he and Aunt Ida were extremely light skinned and my parents said that they were High Yaller. I asked what that meant and was told that they had a lot of white blood, which meant that they were mulatto, but the law was that if they had one bit of black blood, then they were Nigras. I didn’t think it was necessary to ask how they got this white blood.

My mother told me that the Robinson family had a daughter who married the guy that ran the only store in Nigger Town. She had died years earlier giving birth to a little girl named Edith, who was a year older than me. I recognized Edith and her daddy whenever I saw them pass our house; for both of them were much whiter than any other colored person that I had ever seen. I didn’t know her daddy’s surname, but his store was a little ramshackle hut sitting beside the road with one gas pump, where he pumped the gas by hand, and sold snacks, candy, soft drinks, and a few groceries to colored people that didn’t have time or inclination to walk downtown to Sampson’s store. Lately, I’d seen her with the Robinsons working at Mr. Sampson’s home when I was visiting with Mr. James.

As usual, my candor, steeped in my stereotypical background, started me off on the wrong foot with Mr.James. When I went over to Mr. Sampson’s to meet Mr. James and get the money to order the baseball equipment, I nonchalantly asked him to help me complete the Sears and Roebuck catalog order form since I’d never ordered anything by mail. He was in a hurry to get to work and told me to get Aunt Ida to help me.

We were sitting at the kitchen table, and without turning around or even thinking about the consequences, I blurted out that I didn’t need any nigger to tell me how to fill out a form. Aunt Ida was standing behind me at the kitchen sink and she grunted her disapproval and burst out of the room in a huff. Mr. James recognized the gravity of the matter and let me have a piece of his mind, yelling that she was a fantastic cook that was irreplaceable; then he dashed out after her, bent on repairing the damage, whatever the cost. I learned later that she had threatened to quit, but he had smoothed it over, promising her that I would be disciplined.

The Robinsons walked past our little abode almost every day on their way to and from Mr. Sampson’s and many times Edith was with them. I was at that stage of development where I recognized with great enthusiasm the beauty of the female anatomy, and I dwelt constantly on Edith’s overwhelming beauty, whetting my rising appetite. She had the most golden skin and a beautifully shaped face, with greenish brown, smoky eyes, framed byjet-black curly, not kinky, hair, and a fully developed body that you could only find on the silver screen.

I made it a point to be in my yard when they walked by, timing my activities to fit their schedule. They would nod very politely to me and I would return the nod over an impenetrable gulf, not really interested in them, but the party that trudged along behind, scuffling her feet in the hot sand, and casting glances toward me, with a slight upward turn of the mouth, and an unmistakable teasing, come-hither, look. All the while, I had this uneasy feeling that Tom and Ida knew exactly what I was thinking and hadn’t forgiven me for my previous transgressions.

2     

Recognizing that I needed some immediate direction, and unbeknownst to me, Daddy concluded that I must have a steadyjob during the school summer break and asked Mr. Sampson if I could work for him in his fields suckering tobacco. Sampson agreed and I found myself working ajob paying seventy-five cents per day six days per week all summer long. There were two other white boys doing the same thing; the Evans twins, Billy and Jimmy, who were a year younger than I. Their father also worked for Mr. Sampson. (When the tobacco plant matures a large blossom appears at the top of the stalk. This flower must be broken off. The energy destined thereto creates suckers or shoots directly above each leaf on the stalk and these must be removed for the leaves to grow heavier and produce quality tobacco.)

Mr. Sampson owned many farms in the area and everybody said he was filthy rich, but he worked like a beaver or so it seemed to me, and didn’t fit my image of a rich man. I thought rich people didn’t have to work; they just sat on the veranda drinking mint juleps and being fanned by their house servants. He was quite different. He would show up at my house at seven in the morning and I had to be ready to go. I would hop into his car and we would swing by the Evans’ house, pick up the twins and head off to whichever field needed the work. He would pick us up around five in the afternoon and transport us home. We were always ready and waiting for the five o’clock pickup.

Mr. Sampson never tried to engage us in any conversation, except as it related to the work at hand, and then he did all the talking and we listened. He didn’t say good morning or good-by. No pleasantries were ever exchanged.

I tried to study him intently without being too obvious for he intrigued me; particularly his garb. He always wore a black suit, with a starched white shirt, buttoned collar and string tie, and a white straw hat perched atop his head, even on the hottest days. I concluded that this was his way of differentiating between himself and us, his worker bees. I wondered if he ever had any fun for he was always scowling or frowning. Sometimes I would see him around the store or the house and he never showed the slightest bit of emotion or overt interest in anyone or anything except his business. He could sit for hours at his desk hunched over his books, oblivious to the world around him.

His wife was a quiet housewife, sort of nondescript, with white hair pulled back in a bun. She was short and heavy. He had several daughters and one son. The son seemed to be a bit rowdy and spoiled with too much time and money on his hands.

Sampson had other field crews, all black, working for him and he constantly made the rounds, checking on all of us, and then he went to the store at night to check on the receipts. He never had us in the car with the black men, but his car smelled strongly of their body odor, causing me to cringe at the thought of having to share the car with them.

The old man kept us hopping, for when we finished suckering the tobacco on one farm, he would move us to another and another until all the farms were done, repeating the process throughout the tobacco harvesting season. The tobacco was almost as tall as we were and there was no way that any breeze could touch us to cool us off. We wore cutoff blue jeans; nothing else, no hat or shirt, and we went barefoot. The work was monotonous and boring; so we kept up a constant chatter on every subject under the sun, in an attempt to expedite the passage of time.

Thunderstorms were extremely frequent and violent. They came almost every afternoon, usually disrupting our work for a minimum of an hour. We would seek shelter under the sheds that were attached to the tobacco curing barns and used during harvesting days to give colored women who worked there some protection from the elements.

If tobacco was not curing in the barns and the lightning got too fierce, striking very close, we would go inside and try to escape the potential danger.

Anticipating that we might use these opportunities to screw off, Mr. Sampson cautioned us not to stop work when we heard the first clap of thunder, but wait until we saw the first sharp bolt of lightning; then we knew that the storm was at hand and should seek shelter. Many times he would show upjust before a thunderstorm hit to check up on us, or so it seemed, and would be very agitated if we were not working. Trying to make the old man happy, I kept insisting to the other two that we listen to Mr. Sampson and hang in there a little longer, but one time I miscalculated and we waited too late to make our move and a bolt of lightning struck with a tremendous bang in our immediate vicinity, even before the rains came, addling us for a moment. When we regained our senses, we sprinted across the field likejackrabbits scared to death, and threw ourselves inside the nearest darkened barn. The next day, after surveying the damage where a narrow strip of dead and blackened tobacco plants stood wilting in the hot sun, we knew just how lucky we had been. Thereafter, we watched the heavens carefully for the first sign of heavy black clouds forming and didn’t take any chances in being late getting out of harms way. The old man’s anger was the least of the two evils.

I was proud of the first money that I received. We were paid in cash on Saturday afternoon and I gave mine to Mama to save for my school clothes. She suggested that I take a dime of it each day and buy a soft drink and a candy bar or a pack of nabs, whatever I could buy with a dime if I was ever near a store.

My opportunity came the following Monday morning when we were working at a farm very close to my house and directly behind Nigger Town. It was a huge farm and I figured it would take us all week to complete the work. The tobacco rows began at the backyards of the shacks that dotted the roadside and extended back from the area almost to a small creek that meandered through crop and pasture land. They stopped about two hundred yards from the stream and heavy grassy pastureland extended down to the creek bank. Weeping willow trees along with scrubby bushes dotted the bank, and the drooping limbs of the willows, which reached down and brushed the water, hid the creek from view until you were almost at the edge of the water. The water was not visible at some places without moving the limbs aside.

It didn’t take us long to discover the creek. We were constantly taking short breaks from the oppressive heat and humidity and would wander down through the ticklish grass and put our feet into the murky stream just to cool them off, for the hot, sandy soil burned them unmercifully whenever we stepped from the shadow of the tobacco leaves. We never saw another soul anywhere near the creek. I had never visited it before, even though I lived no more than a mile away.

I remembered that there was a black owned store and gas station combination in Nigger Town and could see it from the tobacco patch, and now that I had my dime, I decided to spend it there, even though white people never went to that store to my knowledge and I’d probably get another whipping if Daddy knew that I did. Nevertheless, the opportunity to put a cold drink into my hot belly was too much to pass up and I announced to the boys one afternoon that we should take a short break for I had a dime and was going to the store for a Pepsi and a Baby Ruth, or some other candy bar. They didn’t have any money, but said they could get some the next day if I would wait. I didn’t want to wait, and told them I was going.

I said, Wait here for me. I’ll be right back. Now don’t start back down the rows without me, or you’ll have to help me catch up my row.

Okay, they said in unison; not having to be told twice to stop work. They looked to me for leadership.

I was scared, real scared; feeling very uncomfortable, assuming that there were many big brown eyes, with lots of white showing, watching me from darkened rooms as I trudged between the shacks toward the little store fronting on the highway. It also ran through my mind that the proprietor knew me and was waiting to pounce on me in retribution for the shoe box stunt that I had pulled on him and, more importantly, for having insulted Aunt Ida at Mr. Sampson’s house. But I was hot, tired and very thirsty and needed that drink and candy more than anything. Besides, he knew better than to mess with a white person and would think real hard before confronting me.

As I rounded the corner of the store, I noticed that there was an old kerosene drum at the doorway, and beside it, two wooden blocks: one just a little taller than the other, served as doorsteps. The door hung open and there was no screen door and neither of the two small windows in front had screens. The building was not painted, but that was a given. I hopped up on the blocks and jumped into the store, which seemed eerily quiet, and stood motionless for what seemed like several minutes, hearing the flies humming around the hanging flypaper, and feeling my heart pulsating in my chest and neck. Hearing or seeing nothing else, I leaped gingerly over to the drink cooler, slid the lid back and started to pull out a Pepsi when a female voice from behind a curtain in the corner asked, Whatcha doin? Why yohjumpin roun lak a rabbit?

Startled, I shoved the lid back and jumped around, facing the voice. Oh, I said, you scared me. I was looking for a drink and I didn’t see nobody and was gonna git it and leave the money. Gotta git back to work.

From behind the curtain, she continued, Yoh the fust person I evah skead. But I can hep yuh. It’s my daddy sto. I’se heppen him out. He’s workin in backer fer somebody. I’ll git yoh drink. Whatcha want, a Pepsi? Yoh know RC has mo drink.

Well, come git it then, I replied. She didn’t need to tell me that stuff. I knew all of that. Who’d this girl think she was asking me these questions? I didn’t need a sales pitch from some colored girl. I really liked Coca Cola, but it only had six ounces, and Pepsi had twelve. RC Cola had sixteen, but it tasted bad. Pepsi wasn’t as good as Coke, but it was good enough for the savings. My granddaddy used to buy me a Coca Cola when I was a preschooler, and tried to show me how to drink it without putting the whole bottleneck into my mouth, but without much success. He kept saying, Don’t stick the whole damn bottleneck in your mouth, just put your lips on the tip end, and let the liquid flow in. As hard as I tried, I failed to get the knack of it for the longest time, much to his frustration, but I was hooked on the taste, even if I almost choked as the cold fluid flowed down my throat and I couldn’t stop it with my teeth clenched around the bottle. When

I followed his instructions, the fluid dribbled down my neck and made a mess all over my clothes.

I want a Pepsi and a Baby Ruth. I can’t stand that RC crap. I’m workingjust behind your store in Mr. Sampson’s tobacco patch and there’s two other boys back waitin for me. I gotta git back.

I could have told her that I knew who she was even though she hadn’t come out and I’d seen her at Mr. Sampson’s, helping her grandmother, dusting furniture, working in the kitchen, or playing with his grandchildren. I always looked for her there,just as I watched for her to pass my house on her way to Sampson’s for she was about as pretty as girls get, and had a figure that would make any mature woman proud, and cause ugly thoughts to any man or boy. Her dresses grabbed her hips when she moved,just the way I had imagined doing. It seemed impossible that she could look so grownup for I knew her age. She wasjust a year older than I. My imagination ran wild and I had a lot of uncomfortable thoughts about her when I let myself go off in that direction, particularly when alone and so lonely, which was a lot of the time. These thoughts were crisscrossing my brain as I waited, half expecting someone to walk in and read my mind.

She came out from behind the curtain, interrupting my daydreaming, saying, Why I knows yuh. Yoh daddy works fo Mistah Sampson and Grandma also know yuh. I seen you when I wuz there. I reckon I seen you couple othah times watchin black boys play baseball. Yuh seemed to know somuvum. Am I right?

‘You’re right. I love baseball. Them boys are good, but we can’t play them, but I like their style. Your name’s Edith, right?"

That’s my name. And yoh name’s D. H. Sloan?

That’s what everybody calls me. My real name’s David Hugh Sloan.

No kiddin. That’s a lotta name.

She gave me a sidewise, cocked head, knowing look that seemed very interesting, and I thought, What’s this nigger girl up to? She seems a little too brazen to me. What does she want me to do now?

She was right about one thing. I had sneaked down to the colored ball field and watched them play. I’d even rooted for them, yelling encouragement to the boys I knew. My friends and I wanted to play them a game to see who was the best, but it was not to be. A lot of white and black boys played ball together in the summertime, particularly farmers, where the pick up games were at noon, while the grownups rested. Basketball was the game of choice, for all we needed for a game was an old peach basket or barrel hoop hanging on a barn wall, a ball, and some willing participants. But these games were isolated in time and location and of no consequence and when the games were over, everyone went back to work and their place in society.

It dawned on me that I’d been in that store a long time and the law of averages told me that someone else was closer to coming into the store than they had been just minutes before. Even though they had little trade, they must have some. I was feeling real anxious. I knew that the Evans’ twins were waiting for me and must be getting concerned and might even come looking for me. Even worse, old man Sampson might be making his rounds about now. You couldn’t predict his schedule. So I gave her the ten cents and started to leave.

I thought I should say something, so I said, Gotta go now. I’ll probably stop back tomorrow; looks like we’ll be here suckerin this tobacco all week. Maybe even Saturday.

She stared at me with her big smoky eyes, but didn’t answer. I drank the Pepsi and ate the candy bar as fast as I could on the way back, almost choking with the candy stuffed in my mouth. I gulped the last of it downjust as I reached the tobacco patch. The boys were standing and throwing dirt clods at a fence post, whiling away time.

Jimmy asked, What took you so long? We got worried that somebody might have grabbed you out there. We nearly thought we saw Mr. Sampson coming but it was somebody else.

Don’t be stupid! Who in the hell would bother me? Nobody was in the store. Some nigger girl finally showed up after I got my stuff and took my money. I got out of there as fast as I could. We better git back to work.

We started back down the tobacco rows removing the suckers that seemed to grow increasingly faster every day, doing it by rote and chatting aimlessly. My thought processes were in high gear, working overtime, as I thought about my life at the time, and what appeared to me to be the total hopelessness of it all. I was poor, church mouse poor,just like my parents, with no future that I could discern, probably destined to work for some rich man for an hourly wage. I could easily end up spending my life working in the tobacco fields.

Some of the kids my age were having boy and girl relationships and the school was having social functions such as dances for them and they were pairing up and going, but nobody seemed to notice my existence. I wanted to participate, but my hang-up about my lack of good clothes, my family’s low standing on the social scale, and my natural shyness around girls made my situation impossible. I knew that I was attractive; tall, standing over six feet at this age, and with blond wavy hair and extremely blue eyes. I could look in reflective surfaces and know beyond a doubt that I was better looking than most, but I was acutely attuned to the class structure in the South, for my mother’s family had reached the golden rung in the Nineteenth Century only to relax its grip during the recent recession and lose much of its wealth to an even wealthier old family name by being overextended. My father’s family was a more recent arrival in the South and was on the bottom of the totem pole, possibly destined to remain there forever, unless major changes came to dislodge the power elite, and I had no clue as to how that would occur. Everything seemed to be locked into place.

I had my chances to meet girls but seemed to become tongue tied, stammering and stuttering when the opportunity presented itself for me to ask for a date. I was attracted to the wealthier ones from the upper crust. I had no time for the poor girls; they reminded me too much of my plight. I concluded that the ugly boys should have them. But I was defeated as soon as I projected the next step: what would any girl’s rich parents say when she tells them who she wants to date? Would she be directed to turn me down? I knew innately that I could not handle the rejection, so I made sure that the problem never arose.

Edith presented a quite different situation; one that was intriguing; threatening in a totally different way, but safe at the same time. I didn’t want to date her in the usual sense; just get to know her. She was a very interesting person, plus she fitted the beautiful image, and if she rejected me, I could easily rationalize it. Also, I had been a daredevil and a risk taker all of my short life and liked to take chances that others might find foolhardy, but escaping from a dangerous situation had always given me an extra thrill. My greatest concern as I thought through my plans was that I would be discovered. Even talking to her could be dangerous, depending on how the conversation was conducted, and was definitely prohibitive in any social context, regardless of one’s standing. Such conduct could get me in serious trouble, even ostracize me from my peers, and make me the laughing stock of the community. It could further confirm what I was so afraid might happen, that I was white trash. Even so, I thought that I would go to the store Tuesday morning and see if she was working. I knew that Jimmy and Billy would have their money and I’d have to work around them to get to the store without them also going. I planned to tell them that it was dangerous for all of us to go to the store and leave the field and that they should stay behind in case Mr. Sampson showed up. One of them could run and call me if they saw his car approaching.

The first thing that we discussed the next morning after the old man had left was the trip to get the drinks and candy. Both boys said they wanted to wait until afternoon, but I decided to go in the morning.

I really got a shocker when I got to the store to find her father working and Edith wasn’t to be seen anywhere. I recognized him as the same tall, light skinned, gruff man that rode his bicycle past my house or walked into town almost every day. He had fallen for the shoebox trick at least once that I remembered. If he recognized me, it was his secret, and I got my Pepsi and Baby Ruth and literally sprinted back to the field. This time I drank and ate in full view of the boys.

That afternoon,just as I thought, they were afraid to go to the store alone. I wouldn’t go with them but volunteered to pick up their order if they would stay back and watch for old man Sampson. I knew that they would agree.

I prayed that she would be there for I shuddered at the thought of facing that man again. I stepped gingerly onto the step and peered into the open door, half expecting the man to grab me but, thank

God, she was there, quietly waiting on an elderly black woman who was buying some cheese and crackers. I guessed that was all the old woman would eat all day. I stood at the side of the counter and patiently waited for her to leave. She looked at me rather quizzically as she left, or so I thought.

Edith looked up and said, ‘Yoh back agin. Whatcha want this time?"

The same thing.

Cheese and crackers?

No.

What wuz it?

Pepsi and a Baby Ruth. Two of each one this time.

Why? Yoh mus be real hongry.

Nah. They’re for the other two boys that are waitin in the tobacco patch. I think I mentioned them. They’re kinda too chicken to come up here.

Mebbe yoh tole me. I don member. They’s chicken bout whut?

It don’t matter.

Just to change the subject, I started, Boy, it’s a hottun today. I’m burnin up. How do you stand it in this little room?

I’d ruthah be heah than out theah suckerin backer in thet hot sun, gittin all het up and sunburned. Yoh know theahs a creek down theah; ifen yoh so hot why don yoh go down theah andjump in evah so ofen. I goes theah all the time.

I ain’t seen you all week and I go to the creek couple times a day.

I don go durin the day. I goes at night aftah the sun go down. Not much else tuh do and it’s too hot tuh sleep. Anyways it’s too early tuh go tuh bed.

‘You go down there ever night?"

Maybe not evah night, but lots a nights. You know wheah de creek takes thet S ben and de big willer tree’s limbs drags de watah? Thet spot has de deppes pint wheah de watah dams up tryin tuh make de shahp tuhn. I sits on de bank and dangles mah feet in or sometime I jesjump in an swim round. Nobody’s down deah at thet time tuh see me. I thinks alot down theah.

‘You go down there ever night?"

A lotta nights.

Gotta go. You working tomorrow?

Nevah know. Come and see.

I took the two Pepsi’s and the candy bars and ran back to the field. I was always worrying that the boys would think that I’d been gone too long. They were quietly waiting as usual.

I really had a lot on my mind, but a plan was taking shape. I think it was the same plan that I’d had from the beginning, but now I had a way of implementing it. It was very clear; tonight after supper, as soon as dusk settled, I’d wander over to the creek and talk to her for a while. There was no harm in that, especially if no one saw us together. I wouldn’t tell anybody where I’d gone and I’d be back before Daddy got home from the store. Mama expected me to be gone most evenings and she didn’t mind as long as I got back before Daddy got home around ten o’clock. This would be my secret and I would not tell the truth unless caught red-handed, and then I might lie.

I left the housejust as the last sparkling rays of the bright red sun settled across the housetops to the West and the soft twilight of dusk announced that yet another hot Southern night was visiting, continuing that oppressive humidity that only a violent thunderstorm, with wind and rain, could bring a modicum of relief, and let us poor wretched souls get some much needed rest. Myjourney started in the direction of town, but as soon as I was out of sight of my house, I made a ninety-degree turn and cut across our neighbor, Mr. Thomas’ farm, then across Chinquapin Road, and back onto Mr. Sampson’s farm, which I had left only a couple hours before, and walked directly toward the creek. I could make out the trees and bushes on its banks, but not much else.

It wasjust getting dark when I got to the creek and walked slowly along the bank listening to the bullfrogs croaking at each other, searching and calling for someone to love, and the wild noises of every insect known to man, with their intermingling cacophony, and most annoyingly, the constant hum of the mosquitoes as they searched for my blood which did not escape them in the darkness. There wasn’t another person in sight as I wandered along, squinting into the bushes, slapping at the mosquitoes, and beginning to have doubts about this venture, assuming that it was all in vain, but hoping against hope that it wasn’t.

As I got to the S bend that Edith had mentioned, I noticed what appeared to be the figure of a person sitting under the willow limbs that hung down sweeping the bank on one side and dragging in the water on the other like the limp wet hair of a bathing woman. As I got closer, I recognized Edith’s silhouette.

My heart started racing and I could feel and hear its strong beat in my throat and I felt lightheaded like I might pass out, and my legs were becoming rubbery, a feeling that I always got when I approached a girl in the school corridor contemplating asking for a date, only to chicken out and walk away. This was a little different; this was anticipation and fright all wrapped together; excited about what might happen, afraid of the consequences if it did, afraid that it might not, and worried that I might get caught, but compelled by some stronger force that I couldn’t control to continue the pursuit.

Just as I was trying to decide whether to bolt and run or to stay, she called out, Hey, ovah heah. I thought you’d show up. Whut made me so shore of thet? And she laughed heartily at her own secretjoke. I felt foolish.

She continued sitting under the limbs and dangling her feet in the water, and I continued to stand, moving several willow branches so that I could peer under them and get a better look at her. I stared down at a very beautiful creature, wearing a light sandy looking sunsuit, or so it appeared in the nearly dark setting, set against her tan skin, making her look naked to me. Even in the dim half-light of dusk, the suit clung to her lithesome body in the most complimentary way imaginable. The sight of her took my breath away.

She kept moving her feet very lightly skimming the water and without looking up at me said, Come on. Git yoh feet wet. I wan bite. Set down. Yoh did come down heah to git wet and cool off dint yuh. And she laughed again.

I seemed at a loss for words. What was I supposed to say? She came down here; maybe to see me, but maybe not. Didn’t she say that she came here almost every night? Maybe she’sjust messing with me and is going to pull some stunt. What if she’s got some black boys in the bushes to beat me up? I better be careful. Nobody knows that I’m here. Might serve me right for what I’m doing. I should know better. I gotta be real dumb. She keeps laughing after she says something. It’s a funny laugh, like she knows a secret that I don’t know. That seems real strange to me. How do I get myself in such fixes?

All of these thoughts tumbled through my mind when she said, Hey, whuts wrong? I tole yuh I wan bite. Why yoh lookin lak thet? Don worry, yoh secret safe with me. I knows whut yoh thinkin.

You do? Oh, I wasn’t thinkin like that, just sorta surprised that you were here.

Yoh wusn’t thinkin lak whut? Sho yoh wuz, mit it. Thet don botha me none. I understan. And she giggled again.

That comment made me feel a little more at ease so I sneaked under the branches and moved about three feet from her and sat down. We sat there in the semi-darkness, since the moon hadn’t risen yet, not speaking, just moving our feet through the water in circles and kicking it ever so often, feeling the spirals spread, and occasionally flailing away with our hands to wipe the mosquitoes from our bodies.

Cat gotcha tongue? she asked.

No. I ain’t got nothin to say right now.

Why yoh heah?

I don’t know.

Sho yoh do.

Finally, she asked, Yoh ain’t gonna tawk, yoh wanna take a swim?

Tonight in that water? Ain’t you scared of snakes?

We schead em off. Whatcha think all thet kickin the watah done? Besides, the moon’ll be up soon nuf.

I don’t have a bathin suit.

Thet ain’t no problem; I brung a towel. Yuh can use it tuh dry off, and I’ll tuhn mah hed and you canjes take off yo pants and slip in the watahjes as neked as ajaybird. How can I see yuh. It’s pitch-black. And whut if I cud; it ain’t no big deal now is it? I seen little white boys behind befoh. My grandma takes care all them little Sampson grandbabies and I hep her.

I ain’t no little white boy.

‘You ain’t no little Negro boy. Or do you say nigra or is it nigger?"

If I use your towel, what will you use?

I thought we cud share it. In this heat yuh don hardly need a towel. She laughed her knowing laugh once again.

Spose somebody comes along and finds me naked?

That comment really broke her up and she laughed so loud I was sure someone would hear her. Sputtering and giggling intermittently, she cried, If somebody come long heah an see us, yoh got bigger things then being neked to worry bout.

That comment got a hearty laugh out of me and I reflexively reached over as far as I could and punched her on the shoulder. I certainly knew the truth of that statement. But I needed some excuse to get out of swimming and having to use her towel. That towel was going to be a big problem for me. My parents wouldn’t even use a glass if it had touched the lips of a colored person.

Blacks who worked for whites had to take their meals at a side table or in another room or, most often, on the back porch. They were not even allowed to approach a white occupied house from the front door, but always had to go around to the back or side door, regardless of the economic level of the white occupant if they needed to talk with someone inside or needed to enter. And this girl was offering to share a towel with me. She wanted me to rub it on my body after she’d used it. I didn’t think I could do that.

This situation brought to mind another time when I was a very young child, before any of my siblings had been born. We lived in a God awful part of the county in the deep backwoods and for something to do, my parents always visited my mother’s parents on the weekends, leaving our little shack in a mule drawn cart on Saturday afternoon and returning late on Sunday evening in time to arrive home just before dark. However, on this particular summer Sunday things didn’t go our way. We got caught in a terrible thunderstorm with strong winds and lightning and a gushing downpour that flooded the road at a very critical point where we had to cross a rather deep creek. Before the storm hit we could see the ominous dark clouds forming and if you have ever lived in this part of the country you know how fast a summer storm can move and how ferocious it can be. Daddy beat Old Kate, our mule, unmercifully to make her gallop as fast as she could to get to the creek and cross it before it flooded out, but we didn’t make it. We could hardly breathe from the hard wind and rain pelting our faces and we were soaked to our skin. Lightning was streaking across the sky and hitting the ground or other objects ever so close to us. Finally, Daddy said he was going to stop at a barn owned by some niggers.

We pulled into the barn and were sitting in the cart soaked to our bones when a black man of middle age came out of the house in the pouring rain and walked over and asked us to come inside his house. Daddy refused, saying that we’d be on our way as soon as the rain let up. The man insisted and since we were so wet and cold, Daddy reluctantly agreed that we would go into the house. The man’s wife made a roaring fire in the fireplace and gave us some towels to dry ourselves. They were the epitome of hospitality, but for some reason it hurt physically to rub the towel across my body. I felt that it was going to taint me in some unknown way. I sensed that my parents were extremely uncomfortable, and as soon as the storm subsided and the creek looked passable, we hurried on our way. We never mentioned that stop to anyone, not even to ourselves.

Edith brought me back to my senses, saying, ever so quietly, I ain’t waitin no longah fer yuh tuh make up yoh mine. I’m swimmin in my underthings. Tuhn yoh back, I’m goin in. Come on now, tuhn roun.

Just as I turned around, I heard a slight splash as she moved quietly into the water.

Come on in scaredy cat. Yoh mus be chicken. This is fun. It’ll really cool yuh off.

I don’t think so. I’ll come back tomorrow and bring an extra pair of pants. Can you come back? I hated to admit that I didn’t own a bathing suit.

I don know. Maybe; but whut bout now? Yoh heah now. Whuts wrong?

I don’t feel like it right now.

Suit yohself. I’ll com ovah and tawk to yuh.

I said, Ain’t you afraid somebody’ll come by?

That yoh problem. Fraid somebody’ll see yuh with a colored girl?

That ain’t it. I’d feel funny here with anybody. This ain’t where they think I’m at.

Thet’s a big surprise tuh me.

She moved a little closer to me, but I couldn’t see anything but her silhouette against the water. I felt that I should leave, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wanted to stay.

She started, ‘Yuh know I kinda think yoh little mixed-up. Why yuh decide to come ovah heah anyhow, cause yuh wanta be my friend? Yuh know this ain’t right, same as me. I knowed yuh’d be heah when I tole yuh I come down heah. I didn’t ask yuh tuh come. Yuh thought yuh’d git somthin, now dintcha. Yuh lookin fer somun, aincha. Do yoh think I put out fer everbody, specially white boys. I don! Guess yuh got the wrong idee. But what else should yuh think? I tawked tuh yuh. Mos peoples don know me and I’m not good splainin myself. I’m purty much alone. Mos colored people think I’m uppity and my family is too. I ain’t, but my light skin gives the feelin that I am. I don’t know whut I want. Guess I’m mixed-upjes like you. Yuh know whut I think bout