Let the Circle Be Unbroken (21 page)

“A white man think he can just have his way with colored women, can have them for the taking. I’ve known ’em to go to a black man’s house while that man was in the field working trying to take care of his family, and that colored woman didn’t have no more respect for herself than to take up with him. I’ve known too of colored women telling their husbands or their daddies or their brothers ’bout white men trying to mess with them, and I’ve seen their menfolks killed for trying to protect their women. And it’s the same up North. They come riding through our neighborhoods in broad daylight trying to pick up our womenfolk and don’t care nothin’ ’bout how they use them. White men like that ain’t nothing but dogs far as I’m concerned, and I’d rather see Cassie dead than take up with one of ’em.”

The blood rushed to my head, and the silence which filled the room pounded against my eardrums. I felt sick and wanted to run from the room. But Uncle Hammer wasn’t finished.

“You just look ’round you and see how they treat our women, then you take a look at how they treat their own women. They think every man in the world wants one of their women, and if a colored man even look sideways at one of ’em, they start talking ’bout lynching. A colored man caught carrying ’round a picture of a white girl like Cassie got of this white boy wouldn’t be long for this world. Fact to business, when I was ’bout fourteen, there was a boy your papa and me knew who lived over by Smellings Creek that was messin’ with a white girl, and a bunch of men come out to his place one night and cut off his privates—that’s just how bad it is.”

He looked at each of us. “Now I know it’s hard, but there
ain’t no easy or pretty way to say it, and the sooner you learn how these things are down here, the easier it’s gonna be on you. Cassie, you gotta always respect yourself and your family and your menfolks, and you boys, you gotta always respect your own women and take care of your sister. Y’all understand what I’m saying to ya?”

We were too stunned to answer.

“What’d you say?”

“Yes, sir,” Stacey responded, and the rest of us immediately did likewise, though Christopher-John and Little Man looked to have understood very little but his anger.

Uncle Hammer nodded and started across the room. As he did, Mama came in from the kitchen with Cousin Bud behind her. “Hammer, I thought I heard you in here,” she said. “You know I’ve been meaning to ask you—” She stopped as her glance fell on the boys and me. “What is it?”

Uncle Hammer waved a hand at Cousin Bud. “And, Lord, whatever y’all do, don’t be no fool and go crying after some white woman—”

“Hammer!”

“It’s—it’s all right, Mary,” said Cousin Bud. “I . . .” He faltered. “Lord, he’s right. Don’t you think I know he’s right?” Then, like a man beaten, he met Uncle Hammer’s unrelenting gaze and went back into the kitchen.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Hammer,” Mama said, her voice flat, angry. “Bud’s family.”

Uncle Hammer glanced toward the dining room door. “He may be family, Mary, but that don’t keep him from being a fool.” Then, turning from her, he crossed to the fireplace and without hesitation threw Jeremy’s picture into it.

The boys and I watched it burn.

“Looks like the rain’s letting up.”

I turned as Papa climbed the porch steps and came over to the swing. He sat down beside me making the chains supporting the swing creak wearily. “Yes, sir.”

For a while he said nothing as he stared out at the field, then he looked around at me. “I hear you and your Uncle Hammer had words.”

“No, sir, we ain’t had no words . . . he done all the talking.”

Papa was quiet as he gazed out at the greening lawn. “You understand what he was talking ’bout?”

I didn’t answer right away. “Well, I think so . . . most
of it. But, Papa, Uncle Hammer, he didn’t have to go burn Jeremy’s picture thataway. He didn’t have to. He didn’t understand ’bout Jeremy.”

“He understood all right. Jeremy’s a white boy. You got no business with his picture.”

Papa’s voice was harsh. I stared at him, surprised. Usually he understood the things that Uncle Hammer didn’t.

“You think I’m being hard ’bout Jeremy?”

I lowered my eyes, not daring to answer.

“Well, I ain’t. Jeremy seems to be a right fine boy and maybe he’ll grow up to be a right fine man, but you can’t never forget that he’s white and you’re black. You forget it and you likely to find yourself hurt.”

He paused.

“You ’member me telling y’all ’bout Grandpa and how he come to leave Georgia and come to Mississippi?”

I remembered very well. Grandpa Logan had been born a slave, on a Georgia plantation. He was two years old when freedom came. “Yes, sir. His mama died and he didn’t want to stay there no more.”

“I ever tell you ’bout his daddy?”

I frowned, trying to remember. “He was the plantation owner.”

“Now, what that tell you?”

“Sir?”

“What that tell you ’bout your grandpa’s daddy?”

I thought of the large picture of Grandpa which hung over the fireplace. In it the straightness of his hair, the pale coloring of his skin, distinctly showed his mulatto heritage.

“He—he was a white man,” I answered.

Papa nodded. “A white man that kept slaves . . . owned them like you own cows or a pig, and the slave women had to do what he said . . . and that’s how your grandpa came
to be born. Your great-grandmama didn’t have no say ’bout it. No say at all. White men been using colored women for centuries—they still doing it—and believe me, it’s a mighty hurting thing . . . mighty hurting, and I feel just like your Uncle Hammer do ’bout it. Any time I see a colored woman with a white man, a colored woman who wants to be with that white man, it makes me want to cry, ’cause that woman don’t care nothin’ ’bout herself or how that white man look down on her and her folks. You understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Papa breathed in deeply, looked again at the lawn, then back at me. The hardness was gone from his eyes. “Cassie, soon—too soon for your old Papa—boys gonna start wantin’ to court you—”

“Ah, Papa,” I sighed. I had heard that before from Big Ma, and the thought of it depressed me. Not that I didn’t like boys; I liked them just fine. In fact, as friends they had always proven closer friends than any girls I had known. But for that fine relationship, which had taken years to build up, to suddenly be ruined because of a foolish change in the way of things was something to which I was not looking forward.

Papa smiled. “I know what you thinking, sugar, but it’s gonna happen, and when it does you’ll be happy enough about it.” His smile faded. “Trouble is, there’s gonna be white boys looking at you too—for no good, but they’ll be looking. I don’t want you looking back.”

I glanced up at Papa, then out to the field again. I wanted to ask him about Cousin Bud and how he had come to marry a white woman, but was unsure whether I should.

Papa was watching me. “You wanna ask me something?”

“Well . . . what ’bout Cousin Bud? I mean, he went and married that white woman.”

Papa sighed and rubbed his mustache. “Well, I tell ya . . . it
ain’t something I would’ve ever done, but who knows? Maybe that’s the way things’ll be naturally one day. I ain’t saying I wanna see it, not with how they treat us, but sometimes I get to thinking ’bout your mama’s folks and the folks on my side of the family. Your mama’s grandmama was full-blooded Indian and here my granddaddy was a white man. I ain’t had no say ’bout my white granddaddy and your mama ain’t had no say ’bout her Indian grandmother. Ain’t none of us got no say-so ’bout our past. They just part of us now, no matter if we like it or not, and that’s that.

“I s’pose all folks mixed up some kind of way. White folks and black folks and red folks, and when we dead and gone it don’t make a speck of difference to the folks that’s dead, only to thems that’s left behind. Maybe in fifty or a hundred years, folks won’t have to even think ’bout it . . . whether you’re black or white. Way it seem now, it ain’t likely, but maybe. . . . Right now, though, it does. It makes a whole lot of difference and we can’t turn our backs on it. There’s colored folks and there’s white folks. They don’t want nothing to do with us ’ceptin’ what we can do for them, and Lord knows I don’t want nothin’ to do with them. They leave us alone, we leave them alone. And it wouldn’t worry me one bit if a whole year’d go by and I wouldn’t have to see a one of ’em.”

“But, Papa, what ’bout Mr. Jamison?”

Papa considered. “Well . . . Mr. Jamison, he’s a rare man and I got a lotta respect for him. Far as I can see, there ain’t no better man, black or white, I know ’bout.”

“Yes, sir. Papa?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“You think things’ll change one day—I mean ’bout how we get treated by the white folks?”

“I sure hope so, Cassie, but white folks ain’t just gonna
change out of the goodness of their hearts, I’ll tell you that. It’s gonna take a whole lot of doing on somebody’s part.”

I frowned, thinking.

Papa looked at me. “What’s the matter?”

“I wonder if they ever think what it’d be like if they was the ones getting treated like us.”

“They ever do,” Papa said with a sly smile, “I imagine they don’t think on it too long.”

“You think they’ll be changing anyway soon?”

“Don’t know ’bout soon, Cassie girl, but I tell you one thing. I’m sure hoping that if I don’t live to see the day, you will. I’m praying right hard on that.”

*   *   *

Cousin Bud left that evening. It was clear that Mama blamed Uncle Hammer for his going, and she moved moodily around the house not saying much to anyone. Nothing was said about Cousin Bud that night, but the next morning Uncle Hammer talked to Papa about him. The morning had dawned warmer than the day before, and though there was still a chill in the air, it was not too chilly for us to attend to part of our morning toiletries on the back porch, as we did every morning when the weather was warm. While Christopher-John and I brushed our teeth, Papa and Uncle Hammer peered into their small oval mirrors hanging from post nails and shaved.

“Mary still upset with me ’bout Bud?” asked Uncle Hammer, adjusting his mirror.

Papa slid the straight razor down the right side of his face, stripping away the soap lather. “She got a right to be, don’t you think?”

Uncle Hammer shrugged and began to lather. “Didn’t say nothin’ but the truth.”

“Thought you wasn’t gonna say nothin’ at all.”

“Wasn’t planning to . . . but it’s done now.” He finished lathering, but hesitated before starting to shave. “What ’bout Mary?”

Papa slid the razor down his face once more. “Now you know Mary feel real special ’bout Bud. He’s like a brother to her, and she didn’t like the way you talked to him. Yeah, she’s plenty mad at you all right. I ’spect you wanna get back on her good side, you’d best go talk to her.”

Uncle Hammer glanced over at Papa and nodded. “Yeah, guess I’d better.”

By the time the boys and I returned from school, it was obvious that Mama and Uncle Hammer had mended their differences. There was no more talk about Cousin Bud and the house settled back to normal, though thoughts of Mr. Farnsworth still bothered us. With each day we heard more talk around the community about the beating, but no one really knew how badly Mr. Farnsworth had been injured or who had done it. There were some who speculated privately about it, yet as far as we knew no one but the boys and I had actually seen the beating, and even had we recognized the men, we certainly wouldn’t have said so. As the week wore on and no one approached us about it, we assumed that no one knew about us and we all began to relax a little.

On Saturday morning we went to the fields. Through the week as the boys and I had reluctantly gone off to school, last year’s cotton stalks had been thoroughly broken, the ground tilled, then laid into rows about three feet apart. Now it was time to sow the cotton seeds. As Papa drove Jack over the length of the field pulling the planter—a plowlike implement with a small container attached that cut the earth, then dropped seeds along the opening and covered them—the rest of us came behind covering any seeds left uncovered and packing the dirt snugly over them.

We worked well throughout the morning and were nearly ready to break for dinner at noon when Sheriff Hank Dobbs drove up and stopped on the road. Stepping from his car along with another man, he parted the barbwire and both came onto the field. “How y’all doin’?” he called.

“Sheriff,” said Papa, who had by now halted Jack and was waiting for him.

Uncle Hammer, standing in the next row, was leaning on his hoe. The sheriff’s eyes shifted to him. “Hammer, didn’t know you was back.”

Uncle Hammer wisely kept quiet and only nodded.

“Be here long?”

“Ain’t decided that yet.”

Sheriff Dobbs kept his eyes on Uncle Hammer a moment longer, then gestured to the man beside him. “This here’s Mr. Peck. He’s gonna be the new county agent. Peck, this here’s David, brother Hammer. Wife, Mary, and Mama over yonder.”

Mr. Peck was a nervous-looking man with a pale cast about him which made me guess he was new to all this. He nodded cautiously. Papa and Uncle Hammer did the same.

“I s’pose by now you heard ’bout what happened to Mr. Farnsworth,” said Sheriff Dobbs. “—’bout him getting beat up and all?”

“Heard some talk,” Papa said.

“In all this talk, you heard ’bout who done it?”

Papa shook his head. “Can’t say I have.”

“Well, I tell ya, David, I know it wasn’t none of y’all. Mr. Farnsworth, he says it was white men done it to him. Seems like he felt he had to say that, though he ain’t said no more’n that. Won’t tell us who it was. But I’m tellin’ everybody that Mr. Peck here is under my protection. Mr. Farnsworth, he’s gonna be laid up a right long spell and I ain’t
having none of the kind happening to Mr. Peck. One hair on this man’s head gets mussed and I’m personally gonna thrash the living daylights outa whoever mussed it.”

This declaration did very little to improve Mr. Peck’s nervousness as he looked around uneasily and spotted Mr. Morrison in the distance.

“I figure this kinda stuff’s happening ’cause of this union business,” Hank Dobbs continued. “These here outside folks comin’ down in here stirring things up like we don’t have worries enough with the hard times and all. Understand a couple of ’em been goin’ ’round to everybody, white and colored, talkin’ ’bout this union mess. Mr. Granger don’t like it. Mr. Montier, Mr. Harrison, none of ’em. Jus’ got everybody riled up, and this beating of Mr. Farnsworth is just the beginning of it. Socialist conspiracy, that’s what it is. Socialist conspiracy!”