A Cry of Angels (47 page)

The boys came edging out of the trees, hesitantly, keeping an eye on the woman. She looked about, her blue eyes flashing this way and that. "I'll not stand for it," she said angrily, "you wait, you wait and see!"

Jayell walked behind an unfinished wall and there was a businesslike clatter of boards. Taking the signal, the other boys hurried to their work. Hammering and sawing filled the air. Miss Lilly turned and marched back into the woods.

Jackie James stood up from behind a lumber pile. "Shoot," he said with pride, "Jayell'll show her what
crazy
is!"

"Get up, boy! Sump'n's happened!" It was Em, standing silhouetted against the predawn blue of the window. When he saw I was awake he stepped through the window onto the roof of the shed. I jumped out of bed and followed him, and we stood looking down into the early shadows of the Ape Yard. I couldn't make out anything unusual; there were a few people moving about, the headlights of cars on their way to the first shift at the mill, kitchen lights burning, the usual early morning stirrings in the hollow.

"I don't see anything. What is it?"

"Ain't right down there," he said, alarm growing in his eyes. "Come on!"

I dressed quickly and we ran down the ridges and along the woods to the road that curved by Teague's store. Then Em put an arm in front of me and pointed.

Then I saw them, white men in old battered cars and trucks, scattered out around the neighborhood. They had parked unobtrusively at different points along the streets, in front of stores, even in people's driveways. They sat quietly in their cars, their lights off.

Em nudged me and we walked along the street toward the store. I could feel their eyes on us as we moved along the darkened street. As we approached a black Chevrolet, the doors opened and two men stepped out.

"Where you goin', big 'un?" one of them asked.

Em stopped. "That some business of yours?"

"I don't believe I'd go around that store if I's you."

"Why?"

"I'd just stay away from there," the man said.

Em lowered his shoulders until he looked the man directly in the eye. "I'm gonna take that as friendly advice, friend. 'Cause, you see, ain't nobody tells me where I can and cannot go, and if I took it as a threat, I'd have to bust ever' bone in your face. I can take it as advice, now, can't I?''

The man looked over at his partner. He swallowed.

"Can't I—please?"

The man nodded.

"Oh, good," said Em. "You got such a pretty face." And he straightened and we continued on our way.

Mr. Teague was alone in the store. He was standing behind the leaning counter in the old part of the store.

"What's happened, Mr. Teague, where's Tio?"

He responded with a grim nod toward the stairs. We raced up the steps to the apartment.

Carlos sat at the kitchen table, perspiration standing on his contorted face. His head was bandaged with a dirty handkerchief. Tio was standing behind him, tight-lipped, peeling Carlos' shirt away from his back. The back of his head and neck were nicked and bleeding, but his back had borne the brunt of the beating. The ragged shirt was matted with pulpy flesh, and as the blood-soaked flannel was pulled away, little lint patches were left standing in the open wounds. Welts stood out like mole burrows across his back. "Doc Bobo," said Tio, "he made the rounds last night. All the shop boys."

"He's next, I told him," said Carlos, shivering as Tio peeled away a swatch of cloth, "I told him he got to git gone!"

"Okay," said Em, "that does it. We're gettin' out of here."

Tio didn't answer. He went to the medicine chest and got down a can of yellow salve. Em yanked it out of his hand. "You hear me? We got to get gone!"

Tio snatched his arm away. "Don't tell me what I got to do. I ain't goin' nowhere!"

"The hell you ain't!" Em turned him and shoved him toward the door. "Walk or I'll tote you, but you goin', and now!" He straightened Tio up and dragged him toward the stairs. "Earl, go up and get the bike!"

"It's too late," I said. From the top of the stairs I could see the green hood of the Continental nosing to the curb. We flattened ourselves on the landing as the screen door squeaked open and Doc Bobo's resonant voice came booming into the store.

"Good morning, Mr. Teague!"

Mr. Teague glanced up briefly and went on weighing up cheese. After Doc Bobo came a dozen white men, Paulie Mangum, Otis Barton, and several others I recognized from the Klan gathering at Barton's farm, most of whom had only in recent years moved out of the Ape Yard themselves. They lined up behind Bobo against the opposite wall. There was a shadow movement across the window and Clyde Fay eased himself on his heels by the door. Doc Bobo, his nose heavily bandaged, stepped up to the counter and waited, but Mr. Teague went on with his work, chin up, sighting through his bifocals as he pressed the thin-ground knife through the cheese.

"Ah—if we might have a moment, Mr. Teague."

The old man waited until the scales stopped rolling and wrapped the wedge in brown paper. He peered over his glasses at the crowd. "Well, the word must have got out about my special on turnips!" The men shifted uncomfortably as he met their gaze and nodded in greeting. "Otis, Vern, Alf—ain't seen much of you boys since you moved out of the Yard—where you been keeping yourselves?"

"Mr. Teague," said Doc Bobo, "I'm afraid we're here on a bit of unpleasant business. Is your delivery boy about?"

"Tio? He's around somewhere, why?"

"We'd like a word with him, if you don't mind."

"Any business you got with him," said Mr. Teague, "you can take up with me."

Doc Bobo looked solemn. "Well, the fact is, Mr. Teague, the boy was involved in a little incident yesterday that's got some folks upset, and they figured it's time one of his own people straightened the boy about a few things. You understand."

"No, ah . . ." Mr. Teague wiped his hands on his apron. "Straighten him out about what?"

"Well, it seems he and some other boys from the Yard was messin' around up at Miss Lilly Waugh's place yesterday, and when she tried to run 'em off they wouldn't leave. She's awful upset about it." Doc Bobo acknowledged the men along the wall. "Naturally, the other folks up that way got a little disturbed too."

"They wasn't messin' around and they wasn't on her property," said Mr. Teague. "They was working for Jayell Crooms, on land she traded to him."

"Mr. Teague, you and I both know that don't make no difference. These are nervous times, times when the least little thing can cause a lot of trouble. She said the Grant boy bucked up real mean, said he threatened her."

"Hell, you all know Lilly Waugh! The woman's liable to say anything. I can't be responsible—"

"Mr. Teague, nobody's blaming you." Doc Bobo leaned in confidentially and spread his manicured hands on the counter. "It's a fine thing you done, taking the boy in and keeping the burden off some poor colored family, and don't think it's not appreciated. If it's anybody's fault it's mine. I should have seen it coming. The fact is, Mr. Teague, the boy's been living white so long he's just forgot his place. Now, I've been around to see the others, and I can assure you we'll have no more trouble out of them, but it's especially important that we don't overlook the Grant boy. He's coming of age now and it's time to remind him who he is. Time to get that boy off tenderloin and back on pigs' feet and blackeyed peas."

The white men chuckled appreciatively and shifted and spaded their hands in their pockets. Doc Bobo smiled at his joke too, but kept his eyes on Mr. Teague. It saved him his fingers.

With a startled grunt he jerked them away just in time to avoid the cheese knife as it slashed a groove in the counter where they had rested a moment before.

"Take your hat off, nigger."

It was so quiet in the store you could hear the paddle fan rocking softly on its base.

Doc Bobo stood frozen in shock.

Mr. Teague's voice dropped to a raw whisper. "What's the matter with you, boy? What do you mean, layin' your filthy hands on my counter? And standin' here in my store, in front of all these white gentlemen, with your hat still on your
black greasy head
!" The long knife whipped out and Doc Bobo's crisp homburg fluttered to the floor.

"Fay!"

Doc Bobo spoke just in time. Clyde Fay stopped at the end of the counter, only a few feet from Mr. Teague.

I shivered involuntarily. Tio and I looked at each other. It seemed impossible for a man so big to move like that. Like the pictures on movie flip cards, it was as though he was at the door one minute and, in the next instant, at the counter, giving only the illusion of motion.

Mr. Teague cocked his head, birdlike, and studied him a moment, then walked toward him, trailing the knife along the counter. He strained his hooked shoulders to look up into the face that hung above his head. "You going somewhere, boy?" Fay flicked a glance at Bobo. Mr. Teague piped up again, his bald head palsying slightly with rising anger. "You hear me, nigger? What's the matter, thick lips, can't you talk?" Fay towered above him, motionless as black marble, his slitted eyes fixed straight ahead. Mr. Teague's lips twisted into a sneer. His voice dropped lower, mimicking, tantalizing. "You black kinky-headed son of a bitch. Lift your hand against me, you outsized jungle monkey.
Come on burr-head
!"

Fay didn't move, but the fury was smoldering in him, pulsing in the muscles of his face. The others sensed it too. It hung in the air like the heavy, rotten odor of death. Only Mr. Teague, perched on the lip of destruction, seemed unconcerned. "Got your hat on too, ain't you? I swear, things is comin' to a state." The knife point drifted slowly upward and tipped Fay's cap from his head. I looked at Tio. His eyes were squeezed shut. "Maybe that fancy coat's too tight. That why you can't answer me, boy?" Mr. Teague sawed a button off Fay's jacket. There was an agonizing moment of silence, and another one rattled to the floor.

Suddenly Doc Bobo was beside them. "Get out of here, Fay." He put a hand on the giant's arm. "Fay! You hear me? Go on, wait outside."

There was a movement of broad shoulders under his jacket; a spring, taut to the breaking point, easing its tension. He retrieved his cap and Doc Bobo's hat and tapped softly across the sloping floor. At the door he turned briefly and glanced at Mr. Teague, then slipped into the sunlight.

"You have made a mistake, Mr. Teague."

Mr. Teague nodded. "A mistake," he said bitterly, "that sums it up. I spent my whole life in a business I never liked, because it was my father's business, and he was proud. That was a mistake."

"And I stayed with it, even when I seen others move away, because I thought people needed me. I thought they were my friends, and a man had an obligation to his friends. I thought they would remember the sick baskets, the bills I let go by when they was out of work, the rationed goods I let 'em have when they'd gambled away their stamp books. In the Depression, grown men stood at this counter and cried like babies, beggin' enough food to stop their kids from eatin' clay, and I gave it to 'em."

"But it was all a mistake. Some of the kids from those families are standin' behind you this minute—lookin' to see blood spilled in my store."

"Finally, when I was old and by myself, there comes a colored woman. She liked to laugh. She made me laugh. She ironed my shirts and put a shine on my floors and made me fried pies and coffee with honey in it. And we'd sit in the afternoon and talk. She was a good woman. It was a good time."

"And when she died I took in her child. I thought I could at least raise him the best I knew how, give him an education—and since I hadn't any family, I figured to leave him the store. Maybe give him an advantage these other poor black kids'd never have."

"But now that all my friends have left me, there won't be nothing to leave him."

"So I see that, too, was a mistake."

"So you go on sucking blood out of misery in the Ape Yard, Doc, but you leave that boy alone. He's all I got left in the world. And don't come draggin' a bunch of white trash in here expectin' to throw a scare into me. I'm too old. I've made too many mistakes, and my life ain't amounted to nothing."

"Get out of my store."

When they had filed out, Mr. Teague crawled weakly onto his stool and wiped his face with his apron.

He looked ready to faint.

As soon as the men left, young boys who had been idling at the door went running. In a matter of minutes people were stopping each other in the street, calling up to porches, shouting across the creek.

"Lemme through there, get out of my way!" Em bellowed at those already crowding to the door.

"Where you going, Em?" I said, catching up to him. "Down the river. Leave me alone."

"When will you be back?" I asked anxiously.

"When I'm drunk enough to stand gettin' killed," he said, and hove down into the road.

The news of Mr. Teague's humiliation of Doc Bobo and his singlehandedly standing off the Flat Creek crowd swept through the Ape Yard with electrifying force, greeted everywhere with shock, disbelief. The story leaped from ridge to ridge, growing in the telling, and the store experienced a sudden upsurge in business. Mr. Teague was in no mood for them, and when they tried to pump him he shrugged them off and went upstairs. When pressed, I related what had happened as accurately as possible, sticking strictly to the facts, not trying to make Mr. Teague out a hero or anything, as I knew he would have wanted.

Tio did the same, I suppose, to the best of his ability. He let it be known that this was a place of business, and he didn't have time to waste with idle rumor-mongers, but as long as bona-fide customers were buying or making token payments on long overdue bills, Tio had a story to tell.

That afternoon people began pouring up the hills to Wolf Mountain. New faces appeared at the jobsite until the crowd numbered in the hundreds.

It was rebellion now, blowing openly through the hollow.

Jayell moved among them, confused, anxious, as happy people babbled at him. "Come to get my house started," shouted Speck Turner, "me and Loomis and Simon . . ."