Catfish Alley (25 page)

This surprised me. "I thought you didn't want the
Queen City on the tour."

Mattie snorted. "To tell you the truth, I don't
give a plug nickel whether the hotel is on that so-called African-American tour
or not. What I care about is Billy, and as far as I can tell, she couldn't find
a better man than Brother Daniel. If I was a little bit younger, I'd have a
crack at him myself. Why, he's so fine, he reminds me of the time ..."

Mattie had me laughing like she always does and I told
her to be sure and let me know how it goes with Billy and Brother Daniel. I
can't see Billy leaving Chicago to move back to Mississippi for a man. And it
would be a sad day if we lost Brother Daniel. But these things tend to work
themselves out. The Lord moves in mysterious ways.

I think over the places I've shown Roxanne Reeves: the
old Union School, Dr. Jackson's house, the Queen City Hotel, Catfish Alley, the
church. Kind of a pitiful collection of places, I guess. But I can't imagine my
life without any of them. And it's been interesting to watch Roxanne over these
last few weeks. At first, she was so jumpy and nervous all the time, I thought
I'd have to tell her to find somebody else to help her. But the more we spend
time together, the more relaxed she gets. I think she's right comfortable with
me now. And I could tell she was especially struck with Clarence Jones and
Brother Daniel. White women sometimes get ideas in their heads about all black
men being dangerous. If she had only known all the good men I've known in my
life.

It would make a big difference if Brother Daniel could
talk Billy into putting the Queen City on the tour, but there's so much work to
be done there. And there's not much chance of getting the Union School — not
with Del Tanner owning the property.

I'm not sure that my old heart could stand any more
dealings with Del Tanner anyway. I've spent the better part of my life trying
to stay away from that family. I push myself out of the chair to go in and
check on the pie. No matter how old I get, I remember Zero every time I make a
pecan pie. It's Grandma's recipe, and whenever she'd make it Zero would hang
around the kitchen begging for the first piece. She'd fuss at him about cutting
it too soon, before it was set up good.

Lord knows, I wish Zero had stayed away from those
Tanners. No one could ever prove anything, not in Mississippi. But I've always
known in my heart that Ray Tanner had something to do with what happened to
Zero. I take the pie out of the oven and set it on the table to cool. Maybe
I'll get Walter to take me by to see Adelle today. We could go to the Harvest
Festival together. I always find it soothing to be with Adelle. She loved Zero
as much as I did. I know she wouldn't want me to have anything to do with Del
Tanner. She had to nurse his daddy, Ray, when he was dying with emphysema. That
was enough. I still don't know how she did it. She was even there when he died,
and he was a mean old cuss every second until he took his last breath.

I come back out on the porch, and Walter is headed for
the house holding a basket full of mums. He's been in an ornery mood today.
Doesn't like Halloween much.

"You got my mums there for me?" I ask, taking
a look in the basket he hands me.

"Yes'm," he says, as he starts to walk away.

"Why, Walter, these are all cut so short. I can't
put these in a vase." Walter just hangs his big old head and looks at the
ground.

He knows better. How many times have I had him cut
flowers for me for church?

"Now, you just get back out there and cut some
more. And leave the stems long enough for that tall green vase of mine."
He takes the basket and turns. "And this time go out there behind the barn
and cut some of those nice sunflowers back there to go with them."

"Yes'm," he says without looking at me.

I try to be understanding because I know Walter hates
this season. I've told him at least three or four times that this Harvest
Festival is nothing like the Halloweens he remembers, but he won't hear it.

Children can be pretty hard on other children like
Walter. He's always been what folks called different. As I watch him working on
a second bunch of mums, I remember him as a third-grader, all full of smiles
and just as helpful as a boy could be. But that's about as far as Walter was
able to get in school. He kept going until the tenth grade and the teachers
kept passing him on through. There wasn't anything called special education in
those days. He tried so hard to fit in and make friends with the other boys,
but they treated him badly, and I think Halloween must have been the worst.
Those boys were always playing mean tricks on him.

After the Calhouns died, back in the seventies, I
finally moved up here to this big old house to rattle around in it all by
myself. Thankfully, they left an account open at the bank for me to pay the
taxes. I hired Walter full-time and let him live in the little house where I
grew up. His mama and daddy passed away not long after the Calhouns, so it all
worked out just fine. Walter's been a big help to me. He doesn't have much book
smarts, but he can do anything with his hands. I've been able to keep this
place running, and with the Lord blessing me with such good health, I don't
need any hired help besides Walter just yet. I feel a stab of worry thinking
about what's going to happen to Walter after I'm gone and remind myself that I
need to look into some arrangements for him.

I finish my coffee and take my cup inside. Time to get
ready for the Harvest Festival. I wonder if Brother Daniel invited Billy. I
chuckle to myself. That would just tickle Mattie Webster pink!

Del Tanner

I am bone tired. But I've got to sort out that damn
trunk and see if I can find any of those legal papers. I'm still pissed off at
having to go through all of this rigmarole. That banker, Jack Baldwin, is just
trying to make my life miserable because he can. Daddy wouldn't have had to go
through all of this. His word was all he needed.

I dig in the deep drawer on the side of my desk and
finally find the ring of keys I threw in there after Daddy's funeral. I find
the heavy silver skeleton key that I think belongs to the trunk. I try it, and
sure enough, the lock gives way easily. Finally, something goes right.

Opening the trunk, I feel like Daddy is in the room
with me. I'm breaking a sweat and my hands are shaking. Memories of being a boy
are grabbing hold of me and I have to stop for a minute.

I remember Daddy standing over me, tall as a tree, the
sun behind him so I couldn't clearly see his face. I was just coming up from
the riverbank near the sawmill. I must have been about eight years old. That
would have made Daddy about thirty-nine years old. I had started helping out at
the sawmill, picking up scrap lumber and doing odd jobs. But that day I sneaked
off early to go fishing with a new friend I made. His name was Joe and he was
the son of one of the mill workers. The problem was Joe was colored.

Daddy spied me and Joe coming back from the river,
holding a stringer of crappie between us. We were planning to split the catch
and surprise both of our mamas with supper.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Daddy boomed.

I remember getting this sick feeling of dread in my
stomach. I looked at Joe and he looked at me and he quick dropped his side of
the stringer and ran off. I can still see those fish, lying there in the
sawdust, their dead eyes staring up at me from the ground.

"We was just fishing, Daddy. We got done with our
chores, so we went down to the river for a little while. Caught some good crappie.
Look." I pointed to the fish on the ground, hoping to distract him from
whatever reason he was so angry. When Daddy got mad, I was never sure what set
him off.

He grabbed my arm and shook me so hard I dropped my
fishing pole. "Boy, what do you mean going off and fishing with niggers?
Ain't you got no pride? Don't you ever let me see you messing around with them
again, you hear me?"

"Yessir," I said, bracing myself for him to
hit me. It didn't come yet. He wasn't finished yelling.

"You see that boy there? Look at him."

Daddy shoved my shoulder and I turned around to look at
Joe, who'd done run over to stand by his own daddy. Joe looked scared, too.
Only his daddy stood with his arm around him. I remember thinking he looked
like he was protecting him. I nodded my head to let Daddy know I was listening.

"If you start making friends with niggers, pretty
soon they're going to think they're as good as you. And then the next thing you
know, they're going to take your job, and then they'll take over the whole
town." Daddy jerked me around again to face him. "So you keep with
your own kind, you hear me?"

"Yessir," I said, real quiet, and I was
wondering what job I was going to have that a nigger couldn't do.

After that, I didn't have no more colored friends. I
made sure to find the boys whose fathers thought like mine did. It was easier
that way. Together, we reminded each other that we were better than blacks —
smarter, richer — and that it was our God-given responsibility to be in
control. That made our daddies proud. That's just the way things are around
here. And ever since I took over Tanner Lumber, that's how I've run my
business. I make sure the blacks stay in their places. And now I'm having to
follow instructions from one just because I need money.

I take off the lock, open the trunk, and start going
through the top tray. There's stacks of old receipts, bills, lumber brochures,
and almanacs. Daddy always was a stickler for reading the almanac. I find a
brown envelope marked
Tanner Lumber.
Good! Maybe these are the papers I
need for the loan. Then I notice another envelope, thick and yellowed, stuck in
the fabric lining on the side of the tray. I might not have seen it, but the
fabric has started to disintegrate with age.

I decide to start with this one and I notice it's
addressed to Mr. Ray Tanner and has the address of the lumberyard on it. The
postmark is 1932. There's no return address.

I open the envelope and pull out what looks to be a
postcard. The back of the card is faceup when I slide it out of the envelope.
The writing scrawled across the yellowed message area is hard to read, but I
can make out the date, December 1931. I can read the first word of the message.
It's Daddy's first name, Ray. The rest of the writing is smeared and blurry.

I turn the postcard over and find myself looking at a
photograph of a young black man strung up from a huge tree. His body is
suspended in the air from a tree limb that reaches out over the water of a
river below. That tree looks like the old live oak behind that big house
downtown that overlooks the Tombigbee. Riverview, I think. I always pass that
tree when I'm fishing down there. Underneath the tree, with big grins on their
faces, is a group of five men, hands on their hips or in their pockets, looking
at the camera with pride, like a man looks when he poses with the first deer
he's ever shot.

The man in the front of the group, the one who looks to
be the leader and is actually holding the black man's feet to keep him still
for the camera, is smiling the broadest. I pull the postcard closer and adjust
my glasses. I recognize the face and my stomach turns in on itself. Smiling at
me from a photograph of a lynching in 1931 is my own father, Ray Tanner.

I can't get that picture postcard out of my mind. In
every black man I look at — at work or around town — I see that boy's face, all
puffed up and hanging from that tree, nose bloody, eyes swollen shut. It turns
my stomach. I can't concentrate on nothing. I don't even associate myself much
with blacks, except for hiring them for the lumberyard. I make it a point not
to. Daddy raised me to be suspicious of them and make sure they always stayed
in their places. Daddy was a son-of-a-bitch, but I never thought of him as a
murderer. Until now.

I've always been comfortable with what Daddy taught me.
He always said we didn't have to go around talking about it, but that it's
clear in the Bible that God created colored folks as a lesser race. They're
meant for service. That's just how God made things. They just ain't as smart as
white people. Daddy always said, "Just because slavery ain't legal no more
don't mean niggers are equal." All through the years, even through all
that business about civil rights in the sixties, I never questioned Daddy's
word.

I think about that loan officer, Jack Baldwin, who's
still waiting on me to produce a deed for the property. He seems smart enough.
I find myself wondering if anybody ever threatened his life. I have to stop
this! This is craziness. This is just the way it is and who knows? Maybe that
hanging all those years ago was justified. It probably was, I tell myself.
Daddy wouldn't string up some black man for no reason.