The Lightning Tree: A Spiritual Journey

By Dwight Barnes

The Lightning Tree is a deeply moving and inspirational story of the Nolan Moss clan, a close-knit black family of fifteen souls bound together by love, living on the edge of existence, struggling to eke out a living, plowing the hard red clay on a small plot of ground in the isolated backwaters of Tallassee, Alabama. The head of the family is Charlie Nolan Moss, the patriarch, a devout man of strong character, proud, fiercely independent, and deeply spiritual. He is bound and determined by the grace of God to provide for and protect his family despite the ever present threats and challenges that are a part of everyday life in the racist and repressive atmosphere of the Jim Crow South. Yet in spite of all his efforts, vigilance, and prayers, bad things still happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662474989

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The Lightning Tree

A Spiritual Journey

Dwight Barnes

Copyright © 2022 Dwight Barnes

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-7497-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7498-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Detroit, Michigan, 2014

About the Author

I am the light of the world. He that loveth

Me shall not walk in darkness, but,

shall have the light of life.

—St. John 8:12

To my parents, Juanita and Gordon, who started me on this journey of learning and discovery. And to Eloma, my wife and soulmate, for sharing in the adventure.

Introduction

I first made the acquaintance of Miss Maggie B. as I would come to know her, back in 2014, through my Aunt Sophie, my father's only remaining sister. It was shortly after I had moved back to Detroit from Atlanta, where I had been working for the past three years, as a freelance writer for the Atlanta Journal Chronicle.

It was during one of our weekly phone conversations that I had off-handedly mentioned to Aunt Sophie that since I wasn't doing anything in particular at the time, and I finally had some time on my hands; I thought I would kinda scout around for something interesting to write about—something fresh—different—something that would make for really good reading. I was thinking I might like to try my hand at writing a book, an ideal I had been toying around with for a while.

Well one morning, a few days later, actually it was a little after noon, as I was about to sit down to a late breakfast, I got a call from Aunt Sophie. She called to inform me that I should drop whatever I was doing and come right over, because the answer to my problem was sitting right in her living room, having coffee. And, before I could even ask what problem? She hung up. That was so Aunt Sophie! Now, if her little terse, cryptic phone call had been intended to arouse my curiosity, it had definitely worked. Thirty minutes later, I was driving down the Chrysler freeway, headed to the west side.

At the time, Aunt Sophie and Miss Maggie B. had been living just across the hall from each other for a number of years, in a seniors building over on Dexter Boulevard. Over that time, a close almost mother/daughter relationship had grown between them; despite the fact Aunt Sophie was only twelve years younger than Miss Maggie B. As it would happen, over the course of my frequent visits over the next year or so, I would come to have a profound understanding and appreciation for the strong bond that existed between them and how it had come to be. They were both educated, confident, fiercely independent, elderly black women that had much in common. They were both from large, close-knit families. Both had been raised dirt poor, in the deep-south and knew first-hand what it really meant to struggle against the odds. They had made their journey north, under circumstances far less than ideal. They had faced the disappointments and challenges life had thrown at them along the way and through faith and determination come out the winners. That was the unspoken bond that was shared between them, a mutual acknowledgement and respect for the triumph of faith and will over circumstances.

I still really had no idea what she meant by the cryptic statement she had made over the phone or what to expect when I arrived at Aunt Sophie's apartment that afternoon. So, you might just imagine the look of utter puzzlement that surely must have shown on my face, at being ushered into the living room and introduced to Miss Maggie B., her ninety-four year old neighbor. I remember thinking that this couldn't possibly be the reason why she'd have me skip breakfast and rush over to the west side. Now, I'm not quite sure just who or what I expected to be waiting for me when I walked into the room, but, it sure wasn't somebody's kindly old great-grandmother. Aunt Sophie simply looked at me and smiled one of those smiles, the kind that says I know something you don't know and said you need to hear her story…you really do.

Even though I was still more than a little puzzled about the whole thing; there was something in Aunt Sophie's eyes and tone that hinted there was something very special about this great-grandmother. So I decided to stick around for a while. Well, as it turned out I would spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in Aunt Sophie's living room totally immersed as that truly remarkable woman of God recounted highlights of her fascinating and inspirational life story. There was no way possible for me to hear it all in such a short space of time, but, I knew God willing, I would. In the weeks and months that followed we would spend many hours together, Miss Maggie B. and me, sitting in Aunt Sophie's living room as she selflessly shared the wisdom and insights of a very long, fruitful and eventful life. Sadly, she would not live to see the fruition of our collaboration. Ms. Maggie B. Nolan Moss passed away quietly in her sleep the following year. The world is a darker place for it. As it sometimes happens, probate issues arose among her survivors preventing the manuscripts' publication that have only recently been resolved.

I consider myself fortunate, in that I have had many rewarding and memorable experiences in my life, some might even qualify as extraordinary. But, I can say with certainty the time I spent with Ms. Maggie B. was without doubt some of the most memorable. Aunt Sophie was right, it is a story that needs to be heard. As a writer, I am extremely grateful for the privilege I have been given to play some part in presenting the truly inspirational story of The Lightning Tree.

Dwight R. Barnes

Detroit, Michigan, 2014

The things that I am about to write, have been collecting themselves inside my head for a long time now—in fact, my whole life. For the past five years or so, I really have been meaning to write it all down before it starts to slip away from me. It seems like I had the hardest time, though, just to sit myself down and get started. So anyway, I hope I've got it all together and right by now.

Seems like I got so much to write about, so much to say. So much has taken place over the years that I don't quite know just where to begin. So let me see now, where should I start? Where should I start?

I guess a good place to begin would be by telling you who I am. My name is Maggie Beatrice Nolan-Moss; though most folks just call me Maggie B. I am ninety-four years old. I was born February 3, 1920, in the town of Kowaliga in Elmore County, Alabama. I guess maybe this is why I have decided to write down some things about myself and my family because it ain't like I've got all the time in the world anymore, like I had when I was young. And I don't reckon that the next time I die, the good Lord is going to bring me back a second time, not till He comes back for me in the rapture anyway. You see, I fell in the creek and drowned on my papa's farm when I was three years old. I was just a tiny thing, and I guess I was just playing too close to the edge of the water. But for some reason that I'm still not quite clear on, the good Lord saw fit to bring me back.

Now I know this might sound a little strange for me to say, but I remember everything that happened even though I was supposed to be dead. I could hear the folks crying and praying and going on all around me. And even though they said that I was dead for quite a spell, while Papa was doing all that he knew to try to revive me, I don't have the slightest recollection of being afraid. I guess that's why it always stuck in my mind that dying ain't all as bad as some folks try to make it seem, at least it wasn't that way to me. Then, too, how is it that so many folks have such a morbid opinion of something that they never even experienced yet?

My father's name was Charlie Nolan Moss. He was the only child of a full-blooded Cherokee woman with long jet-black hair named Mary Many Horses. His father, Amos Nolan, died when Papa was just a small boy. So my grandma, Mary, soon met and married a widower by the name of Jim Moss. Now Jim Moss had three children from his first marriage. And since Papa was still just a small boy, my grandma Mary gave my papa Jim Moss's last name. That's how Papa came to be called Charlie Nolan Moss. So the family has been stuck with the name ever since. We still go by that name Moss; but we all know that the real family name is Nolan. I remember that my papa was a fine, honest, hard-working, deeply religious man, tall, slender built with a rich reddish-brown complexion. He was still handsome despite the fact that a lifetime of hard, back-breaking work had taken its toll. He looked tired and worn even when I first remember him, though he was only thirty-seven years old when I was born. Farming was hard, grueling work for a very little reward back in those days. Young, strong men like my papa just seemed to grow old overnight.

To me, in all the whole wide world, there was nobody else like Papa. I loved my papa very much; we all did. He had a real gentle, easy way about him that just kind of made you feel like you wanted to be around him all the time. Maybe it was because we all knew that he loved us too more than anything else in the world even though there was thirteen of us children with me being the youngest. No matter how long he had worked in the fields, even when he was dog tired, he always seemed to save enough energy to sit and play some game or another with us kids at the table after dinner. And somehow he managed to make each one of us feel special. There was something else about him; he smiled all the time.

No matter how bad it got for us and sometimes like during the depression, I remember things got pretty bad, not just for us though but also for everybody, the whole country…a lot of white folks too. But I think it was mostly the poor folks like us that suffered most. Seems like no matter what goes wrong, poor folk always get hit the hardest. But even then, as bad as things were, I never saw anything get the best of him. It was kind of like he knew some big, wonderful secret that nobody else was in on that he carried around on the inside close to his heart that gave him comfort in times of troubles and need. And seeing him peaceful like that, no matter what came, somehow helped to make us peaceful too. Somehow he could always make us believe that he knew some way out of it no matter what the problem was, and you know, the funny thing was, seems like to me most of the time…he did.

I been around awhile now nigh onto a whole century and seen a lot of them come and go in my time…some good, some not so good. At one time or another I've had them both, and I can tell you, not one of 'em, not one of 'em born was a patch on my papa's trouser pants.

My mother's name was Maggie Cammon before she married my papa in 1903. She was a tall, pretty, fair-skinned woman with warm, loving ways and a kind heart to match. I always just kind of figured that I was her favorite on account of us both being Maggies, except I was Maggie Beatrice and she was just Maggie, and besides that, I was the baby child as well. Anyway, even if I wasn't her favorite, she always kind of made me feel like I was, always fussing and doting on me, like she did. I don't know, maybe it was 'cause of me drowning that one time. I remember she used to call me her li'l Lazarus child on account of me coming back from the dead and all.

My mama was a wonderful cook. She could cook just about anything there was. She said that she learned from her mama, who had cooked for her white slave masters' family during slavery time. When I was too little to work in the fields or do outside chores, Mama would let me sit on a stool in the kitchen and watch her cook the meals for supper and dinnertime. I used to love being in the kitchen with her, just me and her alone in the house; it was like it was our own special time together…the two Maggies. She would sneak me little treats, like lemon candy or a hot buttered biscuit with maple syrup poured over it. Sometimes she would talk about when she was a little girl growing up with her four sisters and five brothers on Grandpa John's farm. It was fun just listening to her. She had a way of telling a story so as to make it seem like I'd been right there with her. She could be funny sometimes too. She would sometimes be there in the kitchen for hours, just talking, laughing, and cooking. And I, the whole while, as little as I was sitting on my little stool near the stove, was paying close attention to everything that Mama did, and I learned it too. Why, I was making homemade biscuits and rolls by the time I was five or six years old; and I been cooking ever since. Maybe that's why they always said that after Mama I was the best cook in the family 'cause I learned it straight from her.

Her father, John Cammon, like my paternal grandma, Mary, was also part Indian so that on both sides, at least one of my grandparents was Indian, Cherokee on my papa's side, and I think that Grandpa John on my mother's side was from the Choctaw people, but I ain't exactly sure. Grandpa John was an enigma. Nothing much factual is really even known about the man or his history. He never talked about himself to anybody. Seems he was a man that kept his own counsel other than they believed for whatever reason that he was originally from Mississippi, which might or might not have been correct; everything about the man was covered in mystery. They weren't even sure that John Cammon was his actual name. So that's how that is, far as he's concerned.

As for her mother, whose name was Caroline Benson, I don't know a whole lot about her either. Maybe it's because she died from tuberculosis the same year that I was born. And for some reason, I don't know. Mama just never talked much about her. I do know that she was a runaway slave and that my grandpa John had hid her away in a hayloft from the slave catchers and Klux Klux Klan when they came searching to fetch her back to slavery. After that, she just stayed on with him where they were. They got married after slavery was over, and she bore my grandpa ten children. Of the five girls, Mama was the third oldest, behind Johnnie May and Florence.

I heard my oldest brother, John Early, who had met my grandma Caroline, once said it was awful hard to see what Grandpa John saw in her. He said that she was about the homeliest woman he had ever seen in his life. Dark-skinned she was, with real nappy hair. They always said that that's where we got our color from 'cause me and most of my brothers and sisters are dark-brown-skinned people, except for my two oldest brothers, John Early and Charlie Jr., whom we call CJ. They both just look like Indians, like my papa did with that coarse, wavy black hair. If there is anything else to be said about my mama's folks, I can't seem to remember now. But if something else comes to me, I'll get back to it later on. All the people that I have written about so far, including my grandparents on both sides, were born in the town of Kowaliga in Elmore County, Alabama, except for my mama's papa, who like I said was born someplace else, Mississippi maybe.

I was very young when we lived in Kowaliga, so I don't remember very much about it. I know that folks used to call it the backwater 'cause every year during the spring thaw, Martin Dam would get backed up and spill over onto the little farm my papa was renting from old man Jordan and flood everything—the fields, the house…everything. So I think only after a few years on that place, my papa got fed up and moved us to another little small town called Eclectic, Alabama.

The town of Eclectic wasn't much more than a tiny clearing in the Alabama landscape, where there were a handful of wooden storefronts, a grain and feed store, a delivery barn, and blacksmith shop, where you got your horses shod and cared for; it tried to pass itself off as a town. But I reckon that back in 1925, there were hundreds of such towns scattered out all over Alabama, like bird seeds. Back then, there weren't any freeways or interstate highways crisscrossing all over everywhere, connecting the whole country together, bringing outside money and businesses into those little places like now. Some of those little towns got car factories and…and other big corporations that just used to be up north in them now. There was a time when folks were leaving those little towns in the South going up north to find jobs. Now it seems like it's the other way around. Folks from up north were moving to towns in the South looking for work. Well, they say time brings about a change. Things happen in cycles, I guess. Anyway, in most of those little towns back then, least that I knew anything about was nothing more than an isolated little pen prick in the red Alabama clay, and Eclectic wasn't any different.

It was in the spring of 1925 just before the flooding season started up that we moved from Kowaliga to Eclectic, Alabama. We lived on a little place back in the woods owned by a man my papa called old man Adams. But you really couldn't judge nothing by that 'cause Papa called mostly all white folks old man or old lady something or another but not to their faces, of course. Because in the South, behind everything that went on, there was still and forever in place that unwritten code of conduct for us black folk to live…or die by. In those days, one of the first lessons you learned as a child from watching the grown-ups when they were around white folks was that you didn't have the same freedom of speaking when you were talking to one of them that you did when talking to one of your own. The rules didn't just slightly change; they changed altogether. Not only did you have to mind what you said, you had to be just as careful of how you said it. One misspoken word back then was the cause of many a good man going to an early grave. Yes, sir, just one wrong word, sometimes less than that…a look!

Truth be told, Papa didn't care much for white folks and didn't trust them either, though he never really said anything about it, knowing how black folks were treated back then, black men in particular. Well, I expect he had his reasons for feeling like he did. In my mind, I don't think that he disliked them just 'cause they were white. I really don't believe Papa had a prejudice bone in him for that matter. He was a fair, impartial man, if he was anything. A man was just a man in his eyes. Truth is, they could have been purple or polka-dotted; he still would have felt the same way. It wasn't their color; it was what they represented that he disliked and distrusted. It was their absolute power and total control over the day-to-day existence and quality of life for black folk in the South. It was the oppression, the racism, the inequality, the injustice of it all that he disliked and distrusted.

There were a lot of things that I admired about Papa, all of which he was deserving of; but one of the things I most admired about him was that he somehow found a way to live within the restricted and narrow confinements of the Jim Crow South, and yet he never sold out. By that I mean he was nobody's yes-man or Uncle Tom. He kept his integrity, and he kept his pride. He was nobody's coward, that's for sure. He was a peaceful man, a quiet man, a gentle man; he wouldn't cause unnecessary trouble for a living soul. Yet I believe with all my heart that if anybody, no matter what color they were, black or white, had posed a threat to any one of us children or Mama, I have no doubt in my mind that Papa would not have hesitated for an instant to lay down his life in our defense. That's just the kind of man my papa was. I think about those folks that came before me, then about my papa and what they had to endure, and I can't help but have the greatest respect and admiration for them.

Things were bad enough when I came along; I can only imagine what it must have been like for them, good men, proud men, strong men having to live their whole entire life under the boot heel of unjust and merciless men, like they did. Knowing my papa as I did, he knew that things would never be any better for him and Mama. It was already too late for them; but I believe that he endured what he went through not for his own sake but for us, my brothers, sisters, and me so that we might have freedoms, opportunities, and the chances that he never had or never would have. I believe that's what gave him the strength and the courage that was necessary for a proud man like him to humble hisself before lesser men, who rightly should have been humbling themselves before him. I see folks today reaping the benefits, but it was them folks like my mama and papa that paid the price. Them going through what they did made it possible for folks to enjoy the freedoms that they have today. And whether we realize it or not, we owe them a huge debt of gratitude and respect.

The Adams' place was nice enough, about fifty acres or so, as I remember it, with a well right off from the front porch and a small pond out back where we used to fish for crappies and bluegills. Seems like there was a stand of pine trees too in the front yard that gave good shade in the summer. It was just the kind of little place that you could get used to calling home. But as things would turn out, I guess it wasn't meant for us to be there very long either. Now old man Adams really was an old man. He was a kindly old gentleman though, with thinning gray hair that always needed combing and a big pot belly that seemed almost too heavy for him to carry because he kind of leaned back when he walked like he was struggling under the weight of it.

I remember he was always nice and courteous to my folks whenever he came by to collect rent or just to check on things or see how Papa was coming along with the plowing and such. He always took out time to speak to us children too whenever we were around. And sometimes he would bring me and the younger ones hard candy from the general store in town. He would pat us on our heads like we were little puppies or something whenever he gave us a treat. He would bring Mama fruit and vegetables for canning at canning time too and sometimes bags of seed so Papa would be able to make crops at planting time. He knew that Papa was a good, honest man, struggling, doing as best as he could to provide for his family with very limited means. And I believe Mr. Adams, being the good man that he was, just wanted to help out. Mr. Adams was a well-to-do businessman who owned a sawmill and quite a lot of land around Eclectic. He had a lot of folks working for him, black and white and probably just as many folks renting property from him.

Back then, in that part of the South anyway, everybody farmed. I'm sure we weren't the only family that he knew of that was catching it hard. Like I said, in those days about everybody was struggling, to tell the truth. There were white folks just as poor and struggling just as hard as we were. Some of them even rented from Mr. Adams, same as we did. The old man could have shone kindness to anybody that he had a mind to, but for some reason only God knows for sure, he just took a liking to my papa. And though it didn't happen right off, it took a little while. Papa came around to have an almost father-type fondness for the old man as well. Sometimes he and Papa would sit in the shade of the pines, drinking fresh-made buttermilk, talking about the weather, crops—you know, farming and such—for most of a Sunday afternoon. It was plain to see that something real meaningful had passed between them, something that both defied and denied the accepted mores and taboos of white Southern society and traditions along racial lines. Old man Adams was uniquely different in that way from most all other Southern whites of his time. Just how different we were soon to find out.

It's awfully hard to keep secrets in a small town, and Eclectic, Alabama, was a small, small town. It's even harder when it concerned one of its most prominent and well-known citizens. It didn't take long at all for tongues to start wagging about the friendship that struck up between my papa and old man Adams. Before long it was all the talk in the whole of Elmore County and beyond, I suspect. You see, what happened betwixt old man Adams and my papa was a no-no of the very first magnitude, an unacceptable transgression in the eyes of both deep-fried white racists and, believe it or not, brainwashed Uncle Tom Negroes used to and totally accepting of the long-standing status quo of the Deep South.

See, unbeknownst to him at the time or maybe, maybe he did know and just didn't care what other folks thought, whichever way it was, old man Adams, by befriending my papa the way he did, in the eyes of those of his kind, was guilty of a cardinal sin. You see, he had dared in his rashness to treat my papa just like what he was, not a black man but a man that just happened to be black. And the long-standing social order, the delicate balance of power in the South of the 1920s, was definitely not ready for that. So for a time, whenever Papa went into town for whatever reason, the white folks would all give him the cold stare. Some of the more mean-spirited and bigoted ones even tried to intimidate him by hateful leers and threatening body gestures, walking past him all tight-lipped real slow-like, with their fists balled up tight and their white knuckles showing, rolling their eyes at him. You know how folks do when they're trying to scare you? It's a good thing that they could just roll 'em and not shoot 'em 'cause if they could have, my poor papa would have been dead as a doorknob. You know, I sometimes wondered which one of my papas they hated more, the black man or the Indian? Yeah, for a time there, they tried their level best to scare him off. But let me tell you, little did them white folks know, it would take a lot more than rolling their eyes and making ugly faces and strange body gyrations to scare Charlie Nolan Moss, yes, sir!

Once getting on toward evening, five or six white men on horseback with flour-sack hoods on their heads came riding up to the fence gate in front of the house and just sat there staring at us from the road. They never said nothing, just sat there, looking. It upset poor Mama, something terrible, you know, 'cause us children were all in the house. And to tell you the truth, we were about scared to death 'cause none of us knew what it meant or what was liable to happen next. Then Papa, who could see them plain as day through the window from his chair in front of the fireplace, told us all in his calm, soothing way to hush up and be still. He told us not to fret, that everything would be all right. He said that no matter what things looked like to remember, God rules over the affairs of men. Then he turned to Mama and said, Maggie, pray! I'm going outside to see these fellows. I'll be back in a while. Keep the children still now.

Then just as cool as if it was Sunday morning, he got up out of his chair, like they were old friends out there coming to greet him instead of the Klux Klux Klan. He took down that old double-barreled shotgun from where it hung over the fireplace, loaded it, put some extra shells in his pocket, and went out and sat down in the rocking chair that sat beneath the window on the front porch. He laid that old shotgun across his lap real easy-like so they could see it real good in the fading light and just sat there rocking and staring back, looking at 'em straight in the eyes. We could all hear him reciting the Twenty-Third Psalm real soft-like over and over again the whole time from the open window. And so he sat until they tired or until they figured out that their scare tactics weren't working on him and finally turned and rode off into the darkness. I have never been more afraid of anything in my life than I was for my papa that day sitting there alone on the porch. I don't mind telling you that that was the longest evening of my life.

From that day on, I never saw my papa the same way again. He was forever transformed in my eyes…immortalized. He was no longer just my papa the gentle farmer or papa the kind and loving father that came in from the fields and played children games with us and told wonderful stories in the evenings after dinner around the fireplace, which sparked our imaginations and fueled our dreams. Yes! Absolutely, he was all those things, and yet he was much, much more than that, much bigger than that. Who he was…everything that he was…the very essence of the man was defined and crystalized in that one heroic act of selfless bravery and willing self-sacrifice. And in that moment, he was the finest, bravest man that ever lived. He was the living embodiment of everything that was good and right and pure and decent in the world. And until the day he died, for me, there was no safer place in all the world than to sit by my papa's side.

After that, things pretty much settled down for us for the most part. Oh, we still got the looks and strange folks riding past the house at odd hours pointing their fingers and whispering among themselves, just not so much as before; realizing they weren't no real threat, I do believe that we all just started to ignore them after a time. I believe that things would have gone a lot worse for Papa, except that everybody around knew that old man Adams was real fond of my papa; and nobody in Eclectic was brave enough or foolish enough, no matter how racist they were, to have old Mr. Adams for an enemy, including the local chapter of the KKK. It was common knowledge that just about everybody for miles around was beholden to, if not outright dependent, on his benevolence in one way or another for their very existence. Therefore, nobody would dare to bring him in to question concerning who he decided to take up society with even if it was Papa. So for the time being at least, it seemed we were safe. And except for the morning that my brother Howard woke up to find thirteen dead crows laid out in the shape of a cross in our front yard, the day-to-day business of farming went on around our little place with its usual routine. Except for those few little things that I already mentioned, life around the old place was more or less peaceful. Little did we know that that peace was about to be shattered to pieces.

I remember that I was playing a game of mumbley-peg out in the front yard with my brother James Arthur, older than me by two years, when the terrible news came to our house. I never will forget. It was a Saturday morning, and I remember that 'cause Papa didn't work the fields much on Saturdays. He had promised to teach me and James Arthur how to whittle whistles from sticks of wood as soon as he was done with the morning chores.

Papa was on the side of the house chopping firewood, and Mama, Mama was sitting on the porch snapping green beans for supper when our neighbor, a farmer named Elmore Simpson, came riding up the road on that old black mule of his, yelling his head off. He was a big man, too big for the poor mule he was riding on to carry, so it seemed to me at the time anyway. He was so excited and agitated about whatever it was that he was pretty near out of breath. Stammering and struggling like he was, it took a while before any of us could make sense of what he was trying so hard to say. Papa left his axe and went over to the fence gate and tried to calm him down enough so that he could get the straight of things. Mama had hurried down from the porch 'cause it was plain to see that something mighty terrible had happened to have put such a strong, strapping man like Mr. Simpson into such an awful state. The poor man was literally shaking from head to toe.

Finally, after taking a few minutes to collect hisself, he was able to stammer out the horrible event that had happened just a short while before. He had seen it all with his own eyes. There was a terrible accident up at the sawmill. Kindly old Mr. Adams had fallen from some scaffolding onto the conveyor that fed timber into the saw blade. The machine was in operation; there hadn't been time for nobody to respond. Within seconds, poor Mr. Adams had been cut in half. He had died without uttering a sound. As a kindness, the way he saw it, Mr. Simpson felt like it was his first duty to bring the news to Papa right away on account that, like most everybody round Eclectic, he knew of the powerful fondness that poor old Mr. Adams and Papa had between them. No point to me saying the news was devastating. Visibly shaken and overcome by the shock, Mama buried her face in her apron and ran back toward the house crying. My papa was a man of strong emotions. What he felt, he felt deeply, fervently. That would be in keeping with the strong personality and character of the man. I had never seen him so utterly moved, so profoundly affected by anything in my life before. The look on his face that day, I wouldn't see again for another thirty-eight years. Not until the day the good Lord called Mama home to glory.

Kindly old Mr. Adams, my papa's staunch ally, benefactor, and friend, was gone. And though none of us children realized it at the time, gone, too, were whatever plans and dreams my folks might have nurtured for our life on our little place back in the woods. By this time, all but my two oldest brothers, who had gone off right after breakfast that morning to work somewhere, had come running out to see what all the yelling had been about. Papa never said nothing to any of us; that just wasn't his way. He just looked at us all standing there quiet, uncertain like we were, through the saddest eyes that I had ever seen. I can imagine that what he was feeling at that moment was too deeply personal, too heartbreakingly painful to dare be put into just plain words anyhow. You had but to look into his eyes to see that his insides had been ripped out, caught in the grip of some tormenting emotion. With his head hung low to his chest, he simply turned and walked slowly—sort of unsteady in his footing, like a man struck a staggering blow—across the upturned earth of the freshly plowed fields and disappeared into the clump of pines that stood at the back of our property. They seemed to droop and sway like sad, silent witnesses to the tragic scene being acted out in front of them. The air was so heavy with grief till you could feel the suffocating weight of it all around you…everywhere. Everything was real still and quiet, like, like death.

Me, being the youngest and feeling as close to my papa like I did, I felt a strong urge inside me to run after him, wrap my little arms around him, and squeeze him with all the strength I could muster. But somehow even without Mama being there to tell us, we all knew just to leave him be. We wouldn't see him again till way after nightfall. Then when he did return, he looked, thin, haggard and careworn, empty, and spent, as if every ounce of the zest and drive of life had been siphoned from his veins and left but a dried-up shell. We were all too young, naive, and innocent of the world around us to fully understand the relevance and implications of the friendship that had existed between them. I could not possibly have understood what such a friendship must have meant to my papa, living as he did, as we all did, under the boot heel of unjust and oppressive men. Living in a cruel society steeped in racism, hatred, and harsh treatment, simply because of the color of his skin. To have been so earnestly and so completely accepted as simply another fellow human being of equal parts, same as any other man and not be looked at as just another no-count Negro. A thing to be merely tolerated scoffed at, ridiculed, and persecuted for no reason other than it suited the moods of some folks that had no true idea of what brotherhood, tolerance, or racial equality really even meant…no idea at all.

Old Mr. Adams had given him more than just unconditional friendship and acceptance. He had given him a glimpse of what was possible, a world without barriers, a world where a man was just a man, a world where people of color—whatever color—could live free from the weights and fetters of bigotry and hatred, racism, and limitations. But down on the inside, as pleasant a notion as it was, Papa surely knew, just