The Impressionist (7 page)

Laying on the street, Jim Ed had closed his eyes waiting for the dizziness to stop; and when he opened them, Christina was looking straight down on him with eyes filled with kindness and concern— eyes that were a shade of gold that seemed to blaze against the richness of her smooth, brown skin—the color of coffee with a bit of cream. She was tall and slender, wearing a yellow cotton sundress. Others had gathered around as well, Bo, Willie, and a couple of bystanders, but all Jim Ed could focus on was Christina. And for the first time in his life, he was real glad to be a black man.

“You poor thing, that was terrible,” said Christina. “You’re bleeding.”

“Ah, it’s nothing,” said Jim Ed, brushing dirt off his shirt and pants as Bo and Willie helped him up. She fished a handkerchief from her purse and handed it to him. “I’ve had closer calls than that in the army” he said dabbing his elbow. “I’m just a little shaken up is all.”

“What was you thinking shooting off across the street like that?” teased Willie. “Now I know you is crazy. Done made it home from Korea only to be run over by a truck!”

“I was running across the street to meet her,” Jim Ed said cracking a silly grin while holding out his hand toward Christina. “Hi, I’m James Edward Porter, friends call me Jim Ed.”

At first she was reserved, didn’t quite know how to take him, but then lifted her hand in return. “Hello, I’m Christina
Kenyon, nice to meet you, Jim Ed. You know you are blessed to be alive?”

“I reckon so,” he said. When their eyes met something magical happened. It made Jim Ed queasy in his stomach and no other girl had ever done that to him before. “I know you don’t know me,” he said, “but would you minds if I walked you home?”

Her lips forming into a tender curve, she planted her hands on her hips and sassed back. “Now how could I possibly say no to someone who almost died to meet me? And the word is ‘mind’ not ‘minds’.”

“Yes ma’am!” said Jim Ed, trying his best to stay calm on the outside when his heart was doing flips on the inside.

“We have to go to Woolworth’s first to pick up a few things for my Papa and Mama. Okay?”

“Whatever you say,” said Jim Ed looking over at Bo and Willie and giving them a wink. “Sees, I mean, ‘see’ you guys later.”

“I hears ya,” said Willie, slapping him on the back. “I hears ya.”

From the first moment Christina and Jim Ed began walking down that road, they both knew something was up. There was an ease between them, like they were meant to be. And they kept on walking together day after day, until a year and a half later, shortly after Jim Ed was honorably discharged from the Army, they were married.

Jim Ed stopped painting for a moment and looked up at me. “Well, that’s how we met.” He became silent and an air of sadness fell upon him. The ends of his mouth turned down. “Would have been together sixty years come December,” he said, hoarseness creeping into his throat.

I frowned back knowing what he was going to say next, feeling crappy that I’d pushed him to talk about her.

“Christina passed on last year.”

“I’m real sorry to hear that,” I said, my heart sinking. “Real sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. That cancer eventually got the best of her. Fought hard till the very end.” His eyes became watery and he coughed to clear his throat.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” I said.

“Now how about you tell me about your Paige. How did ya’ll meet?”

I paused, considering whether or not to respond, then closed my eyes and reached twenty-something years in my past. “The first time I really saw Paige was late in my junior year of high school,” I said, “it only took one look and I was smitten. I’d seen her before, but this time I really
saw
her, if you know what I mean. It was like a veil lifted from my face and I could see clearly.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you mean,” said Jim Ed.

“Paige was a year and a half younger than me and literally blossomed over the summer. Before then, I had never paid much attention to her. On that day, however, when she came sashaying down the north hall of our school and our eyes met for the first time that year, like I said, I really saw her. After that there was no one else, period. She was
the
one.” I tilted my head back and laughed.

“You’re gonna love this, Jim Ed. At the time, I was a big jock on campus, and she was on the dance team that performed with the band at halftimes of the football games. In the huddle on the field during a game while the quarterback was trying to call the plays, I’d be gazing up in the stands watching her. Paige always had that kind of effect on me.”

“Sounds like a special gal,” said Jim Ed smiling.

“The night of the prom was quite an event. It was pouring down rain, and I was driving my  Chevy Nova Sport to pick up Paige when I took a curve just a little too fast, sending my car sliding through a ditch and into someone’s chain-link fence, eventually spinning to a stop in the front yard. No one was home and I was off the road, so undeterred from my goal, I wrote a note, stuck it in the window and left the car in the person’s front yard, then hitchhiked in the downpour to Paige’s house. You could imagine Paige’s face when I showed up at her front door soaking wet. Her father, bless his heart, let us borrow his station wagon to go to the dance. Later that night when Paige dropped me off at home, a cop and my dad were having coffee! My car had been impounded, and I got a ticket for leaving the scene of an accident. Dad was not a happy man, but for Paige, it was well worth it.

For the next year we were inseparable until I graduated and received a football scholarship out of town. The separation was hard. Paige cried because she was sure I would meet someone else and forget her, but like I said, she was the one. As fate would have it, a year later she enrolled in the same college. We were married my junior year. When I blew out my knee, ending my career and dashing my pro-football dreams, it was Paige who kept me going. In fact, she’s kept me going many times through the years.”

“Sounds like you need to see her again, with fresh eyes,” said Jim Ed.

“Yep.”

After the first day they met, Christina and Jim Ed saw each other almost every day for the next two weeks until he was shipped back overseas. For nearly a year the romance continued via letters. And the letters got spicy at times. They wrote about more than just their enduring love for one another, however. Christina kept Jim Ed up to date on family and happenings around Pine Grove. They shared their dreams and frustrations and wrote often about their racial struggles.

Discrimination was becoming more and more pronounced at home as well as in the military. The more injustice Jim Ed saw in the army, the more bitter he became, until he was eaten alive, filled with hate for the world, for the white man, for the government, and for himself. It amazed him how he could put his life on the line for his country in the war, see so many of his brothers get shot up and blown to bits, yet he couldn’t exercise the very freedoms he’ d just fought for. To cope, he’ d spill out his anger to Christina in his letters, oftentimes ranting on God. Yet, no matter how great the injustice, Christina always responded in love, her letters written in nearly perfect calligraphy.

Christina’s letters were a welcomed break for Jim Ed, and he was crazy in love with her, even if he didn’t see eye to eye
with her philosophy about dealing with their struggles. What she wrote sounded great and nice and ideal on paper, but Jim Ed didn’t believe that kind of thinking would change anything. What was getting the enemy’s attention in the war was pure force! He simply tolerated her idealism and returned home with an increased zeal to wage his own war for equality on American soil. By the time Jim Ed was honorably discharged, he was a powder keg with a short fuse ready to explode. When he finally set foot back in Pine Grove there was a great reunion with family and friends, but as soon as life got back to normal, Jim Ed was confronted with more discrimination and his resentment intensified.

Outside of her deep faith, Christina’s big thing was education. “We have to promote learning as a means to our growth and development,” she said. During this time, Christina was honored with a scholarship in education to Jackson State University, a school about an hour and a half up the road from Pine Grove. That scholarship was her only hope for a college education because her family didn’t have the money for tuition.

Jim Ed had the G.I. Bill to help with his tuition, but he was caught in a Catch-22 situation. Because he had to go to work, he’ d only finished the eighth grade. Jim Ed’s family was so poor when he was growing up that at fourteen he had to quit school to help his Papa milk cows on one of the local dairy farms. At that time, because of the poverty of most blacks in the south and having to work, it was hard for many black children to finish school.

Christina had a couple of things going for her. Her dad was the pastor of the Mount Zion Church. that had its own school. Back then, because of the lack of state funding for the black
public schools, many of the black churches formed their own schools to educate their children. And because her dad was a pastor, Christina didn’t have to quit in order to work.

For a while, Jim Ed drove up to Jackson on Fridays to pick up Christina from school and bring her home for the weekends. One Friday afternoon when they were driving home, he made a little detour to the banks of the Tallahala River.

I looked up over Jim Ed’s head and couldn’t believe my eyes! Behind him, on the trail in the distance, was none other than Eric heading our way.
Really? You gotta be kidding me?
I thought. Hoping he wouldn’t recognize me, I turned my back and crunched down on the bench.

“What are you doing?” asked Jim Ed.

“It’s that Eric guy I was telling you about,” I said. “I don’t want him to see me. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Look out over the lake or something.”

Jim Ed just kept painting, only now holding his head up high in defiance to what I had asked. After a moment or so, I peeked around thinking maybe Eric had passed. Not a chance. He’d already spotted me and was zeroing in.

“Adam!” he called out, jogging right up to the bench between Jim Ed and I. “Twice in one morning! Must be a Divine Appointment!”

“Praise the Lord,” I mumbled under my breath.