Same Kind of Different As Me (3 page)
You plowed and planted and tended till pickin time. Then at the end of the year, when you bring in the cotton, you go to the Man and settle up. Supposably, you gon’ split that cotton right down the middle, or maybe sixty-forty. But by the time the crop comes in, you owe the Man so much on credit, your share of the crop gets eat up. And even if you don’t think you owe that much, or even if the crop was ’specially good that year, the Man weighs the cotton and writes down the figgers, and he the only one that can read the scale or the books.
So you done worked all year and the Man ain’t done nothin, but you still owe the Man. And wadn’t nothin you could do but work his land for another year to pay off that debt. What it come down to was: The Man didn’t just own the land. He owned
you
. Got so there was a sayin that went like this: “An ought’s an ought, a figger’s a figger, all for the white man, none for the nigger.”
When I was just a little fella, folks said there was a man named Roosevelt who lived in a white house and that he was tryin to make things better for colored folks. But there was a whole lotta white folks, ’specially sheriffs, that liked things just the way they was. Lotta times this was mighty discouragin to the colored men, and they would just up and leave, abandonin their women and children. Some was bad men. But some was just ashamed they couldn’t do no better. That ain’t no excuse, but it’s the God’s honest truth.
I didn’t know hardly nobody that had a mama and daddy both. So me and my big brother, Thurman, lived with Big Mama and PawPaw, and we didn’t think nothin of it. We had a sister, too, Hershalee, but she was already grown and lived down the road a ways.
Big Mama was my daddy’s mama, ’cept I didn’t call him Daddy. I called him BB. He’d come around the house ever now and then. We lived with Big Mama and PawPaw in a three-room shack with cracks in the floor big enough to see the ground through. Wadn’t no windows, just wooden shutters. We didn’t mind the holes in the floor when it was hot out, but in the wintertime, the cold would stick its ugly head up between the cracks and bite us. We tried to knock it back with some loose boards or the tops of tin cans.
Now, Big Mama and PawPaw made quite a pair. Big Mama was a
big
woman . . . and I don’t mean just big-boned. She was big sideways, north to south, all the way around. She used to make up her own dresses outta flour sacks. In those days, flour sacks was kinda purty. They might come printed up with flowers on em, or birds. It took seven or eight right big ones to make Big Mama a dress.
On the other hand, PawPaw was kinda smallish. Standin next to Big Mama, he looked downright puny. She coulda beat him down, I guess. But she was a quiet woman, and kind. I never heard a’ her whuppin nobody, or even raisin’ her voice. Wadn’t no mistakin, though, she did run the place. PawPaw didn’t run nothin but his mouth. But he took care of Big Mama. She didn’t have to go out in the fields and work. She was busy raisin’ her grandbabies.
She wadn’t just my grandma, though. Big Mama was my best friend. I loved her and used to take care of her, too. She was kinda sick when I was a little boy, and she had a lotta pain. I used to give her her medicine. I don’t know ’xactly what kinda pills they was, but she used to call em Red Devils.
“Li’l Buddy, go on and get Big Mama two a’ them Red Devils,” she’d say. “I needs to get easy.”
I did a lotta special things for Big Mama, like takin out the slop jar or catchin a chicken in the yard and wringin its neck off so she could fry it up for supper. Now, ever year PawPaw raised us a turkey for Thanksgivin. Fed him special to get him nice and fat. The first year she thought I was big enough, Big Mama said, “Li’l Buddy, get on outside and wring that turkey’s neck off. I’m fixin to cook him up.”
I’m tellin you what, that turned out to be a tough row to hoe. When I took out after that Tom, he lit out like he was runnin from the devil hisself. He zigged and zagged, kickin up dirt and squawkin like I was killin him already. I chased that bird till I thought my legs would give out, and till that day, I didn’t know a turkey could fly! He took off just like a aeroplane and set hisself down way up high in a cypress tree.
That bird wadn’t no fool, neither. He didn’t come back till three or four days after Thanksgivin. Made us have to eat chicken that year.
When that turkey flew the coop, I thought I was gon’ get my first whuppin for sure. But Big Mama just laughed till I thought she would bust. I guess that’s ’cause she knowed I did the best I could. She trusted me like that. Matter a’ fact, she trusted me more than she trusted my daddy and my uncles—her own sons. Like that money belt she kept tied around her waist—I was the onlyest one she let go up under her dress to get the money out.
“Li’l Buddy, get up under there and get me out two dimes and a quarter,” she’d say. And I’d get that money and give it to whoever she wanted to have it.
Big Mama always had somethin for me. Some peppermint candy or maybe some bottle caps so I could make me a truck. If I wanted a truck, I’d get a block a’ wood and nail on four bottle caps, two on the front and two on the back, and I had me a truck I could roll around in the dirt. But them times was few and far between. I never was a playin child. Never asked for no toys at Christmas. Didn’t have that in my personality.
I guess that’s why I acted like I did when the first tragedy come into my life.
One night when I was about five or six, Big Mama’s legs was givin her fits and she had asked me for two a’ them Red Devils and went on to bed. Wadn’t long after that, me and Thurman went on to bed, too, even though our cousin, Chook, said he was gon’ sit up for a while beside the fire. He’d been stayin with us.
Me and Thurman had a room in the back of the house. I didn’t have no proper bed, just a mattress set up on wood boards and cement blocks. I kinda liked it, though, ’cause I had a window right over my head. In the summertime, I could leave the shutters open and smell the warm earth and look up at the stars winkin at me.
Seemed like there was more stars in those days than there is now. Wadn’t no ’lectric lights blottin out the sky. ’Cept for the moon cuttin a hole in the dark, the nights was just as black as molasses, and the stars glittered like broken glass in the sun.
Now, I had me a little cat that I had found when he was just a little fur-ball of a kitten. I don’t even remember what I called him now, but he used to sleep on my chest ever night. His fur tickled my chin, and his purrin was just like a tonic to me; had a rhythm soothed me right to sleep. That night, though, seemed like I’d been sleepin quite a while when that cat jumped off my chest and scratched me. I woke up with a holler, and the cat hopped up in the window and started meowing real hard and wouldn’t quit. So I got up to see what was wrong with the cat, and in the moonlight, I could see smoke in the house.
First I thought I was ’lucinatin and rubbed my eyes. But when I opened em up again, that smoke was still there, turnin round and round. First thing I did was shoo my cat out the window. Then I ran into Big Mama’s room, but I didn’t see no fire. I knew the house was burnin, though, ’cause that smoke started pilin up real thick. Even though I couldn’t see no flames, it felt like there was fire burnin my throat and my eyes. I started coughin real bad and ran to the front door, but PawPaw had already gone to work and locked it. I knowed the back door had a wooden latch on it that I could barely reach.
I ran back to my room and tried to wake up my brother. “Thurman! Thurman! The house on fire! Thurman, wake up!”
I kept shakin and shakin him, but he was hard sleepin. Finally, I jerked the covers off him and rared back a fist and hit him upside the head just as hard as I could. He jumped up then, mad as a wet cat, and tackled me. We rolled on the floor just a-scrappin, and I kept tryin to yell at him that the house was on fire. He caught on after a minute, and me and him jumped out the window into the johnsongrass outside. Even though he was bigger than me, Thurman plopped down on the ground and started cryin.
I tried to think real fast what could I do. Big Mama was still in the house, and so was Chook. I decided to go back in and try to get em out. I jumped up, grabbed the edge of the window, and shimmied up the side a’ the house, climbin the boards with my bare toes. When I got inside, I ran out into the front room, stayin down low under the smoke, and there was Chook, sittin by the fireplace with a poker in his hand, just starin with his eyes all glazed up.
“Chook! The house on fire! Help me get Big Mama; we got to get out!” But Chook just kept pokin in the fireplace like he was in a trance.
I looked up and seen sparks shootin down outta the chimney and spinnin off into the smoke like whirligigs. That’s when I knowed the chimney was on fire and probl’y the roof. I was coughin and coughin by then, but I had to try to save my grandma. I scrunched down low and found my way back to her room. I could see her face, sleepin hard like Thurman had been, and I shook her and shook her, but she wouldn’t wake up.
“Big Mama! Big Mama!” I screamed right in her ear, but she acted more like she was dead than sleepin. I could hear the fire in the chimney now, roarin low like a train. I pulled and pulled on Big Mama, tryin to drag her out the bed, but she was too heavy.
“Big Mama! Please! Big Mama! Wake up! The house on fire!”
I thought maybe the smoke had done got her, and my heart broke in half right there where I was standin. I could feel tears runnin down my face, part from grief and part from the smoke. It was gettin real hot, and I knowed I had to come on up outta there or I’d be done in, too.
I ran out to the front room, hollerin and screamin and coughin at Chook, “You got to get out, Chook! The smoke done got Big Mama! Come on up outta here!”
Chook just turned and looked at me with eyes that looked like he was already dead. “No, I’m gon’ stay here with Big Mama.” I can’t explain why, but he wadn’t even coughin or nothin. Then he went back to pokin in the fireplace.
That’s when I heard a crackin noise that made me freeze and look up: The roof was fixin to cave in. The smoke started to get so thick I couldn’t see Chook no more. I got down on my hands and knees and felt my way till I felt the feet of the potbelly stove, then I knowed I was close to the back door. I crawled a little farther till I could see a little crack of daylight slidin up under the door. I stood up and stretched just as high as I could to where I could just barely reach that wooden latch with the tips of my fingers. Then the door burst open and I rolled out, with the black smoke boilin out after me like a pack a’ demons.
I ran around to find Thurman on the side of the house by Big Mama’s room, just a-squallin. I was cryin, too. We could see tongues of fire lickin down from under the eaves till they grabbed hold of some boards and began to burn down the sides of the house. The heat pushed us back, but I couldn’t stop hollerin, “Big Mama! Big Mama!”
The fire swirled up into the dawn like a cyclone, roarin and poppin, sendin out the black smell of things that ain’t s’posed to be burnin. The horriblest thing was when the roof fell in, ’cause that’s when Big Mama finally woke up. Between the flames and the smoke, I could see her rollin round and callin out to the Lord.
“Help me, Jesus! Save me!” she hollered, thrashin and coughin in the smoke. Then there was a loud crack and Big Mama screamed. I saw a big piece of wood crash down and pin her on her bed. She couldn’t move no more, but she kept hollerin, “Lord Jesus, save me!”
I only heard Chook holler one time then he was quiet. I stood there and screamed and watched my grandmother burn up.
As I
mentioned, I did not start out rich. I was raised in a lower-middle-class section of Fort Worth called Haltom City, a town so ugly that it was the only one in Texas with no picture postcard of itself for sale in the local pharmacy. No mystery there: Who would want to commemorate a visit to a place where a shabby-looking house trailer or cars stripped for parts squatted in every other yard, guarded by mongrel dogs on long chains? We used to joke that the only heavy industry in Haltom City was the three-hundred-pound Avon lady.
My daddy, Earl, was raised by a single mother and two old-maid aunts who dipped Garrett snuff till it ran down their chins and dried in the wrinkles. I hated to kiss them. Daddy started out a comical, fun-loving man who retired from Coca-Cola after forty-odd years of service. But somewhere during my childhood, he crawled into a whiskey bottle and didn’t come out till I was grown.
My mama, Tommye, was a farm girl from Barry, Texas, who sewed every stitch of clothing we wore, baked cookies, and cheered me on at Little League. As a girl, she and her sister and brother all rode a horse to school—the same horse, all at once. Her brother’s name was Buddy, and her sister’s name was Elvice, which was pronounced “Elvis,” a fact that would later become something of a problem.
Tommye, Buddy, Elvice, and later, Vida May, the youngest, all picked cotton on the blackland farm owned by their daddy and my granddaddy, Mr. Jack Brooks.
Now, most people are not in the market for Texas blackland farms, as they are not at all romantic. The topography is mainly flat, so there is a scarcity of sunset-washed knolls from which to gaze upon your plantation house and declare that some Irish love of the land will soon seize your soul. In fact, the land itself is miserable, cursed with soil that may well be the original inspiration for cement. The flimsiest morning mist will cause a man in work boots to pull up a mud stump every time he takes a step. A half-inch rain will motivate even the most determined farmer to throw his tractor in low and head for the blacktop if he doesn’t want to spend the next day cussing while he digs out his John Deere.
