The Waking (19 page)

“
How much money are they offering him?”

“
I don’t know. I doubt even Mama knows. Daddy keeps everything hush-hush when it comes to money, and he has to have enough or he would have sold out by now, right? Anyway, I know that every barbecue joint all along the Gulf Coast serves my daddy’s pigs, yes sir.”

Must be nice to have
something
to leave to your sons. “What else do you do on the farm?”

“
Shoot, that’s the easy part of the day. We got us a couple acres of cucumbers, you know, for pickles and such. Got cantaloupe and watermelon, too. Back-breaking work either picking ‘em and loadin’ ‘em or weedin’ or diggin’ …” His voice trails off. “But I miss it sometimes. You can walk my daddy’s farm all day and not see all of it.” He yawns. “Funny, but about the time I’m gettin’ ready for bed is the time my daddy and my brothers are just gettin’ started, like we all workin’ twenty-four hours a day, like they’re clockin’ in when I’m clockin’ out.”

I leave Rufus, promising to bring him some breakfast, and walk the darkened corridors and passageways to the galley. Penny sees me, smiles, and runs over to give me a hug before I can stop her.

“
Girl, stop,” I whisper. “Folks are gonna talk.”

“
Let ‘em.” She winks. “They gonna talk anyway, right? Might as well give ‘em something interesting to say.”

Penny’s hug is the best and most interesting part of my morning. I draw bacon and sausage duty and only get popped by grease a few times. Rose makes a plate of sausages and biscuits for Rufus and delivers it to him herself, so I’m stuck in front of the grill for five and a half hours of mind-numbing labor until I finally get a break since Mrs. Walker didn’t come for breakfast this morning.

“
Go get some fresh air,” Rose tells me. “Come back in thirty minutes to help me with the sandwiches.”

“
Another white history tour?”

“
Yeah. Madison, Indiana. Bunch of old houses, and I hope they’re all filled with ghosts.”

I go to the very top of the
American Queen
today, back to the Calliope Bar, which hasn’t opened yet. I’m sixty feet off the water, and with the paddlewheel below churning a vicious wake and the smokestacks cranking out the black smoke, it’s like I’m riding a dragon flying over patches of unruffled water. I see live trees holding dead tree trunks high up in their branches along steep and rugged banks. The water must have been really high for that to happen. And colors. I see lots of colors Walt Disney would be proud of. The dark green of thick forests, the rainbow colors of wild flowers, the yellow water as thick as tomato soup, abandoned gray and white stone quarries, black railroad bridges like cobwebs in the sky—

“
Blackberries ought to do good this year,” I hear Rose say.

I turn my head, and there she is, and she’s not in her kitchen.

She waves a hand over to the Kentucky side. “Just acres and acres of them.”

“
You okay, Rose?”

“
Yeah. Why?”

“
That’s twice in one day you been out of your kitchen.”

She smiles. “Just tryin’ to add a little variety to my day.” She looks out over the water. “Towns are few and far between, huh?”

“
Yeah.”

“
But I like the names. Rising Sun. Rabbit Hash. Beaverlick.” She sighs. “It’s still all so new on this stretch, like we’re the first people to ever see it.”

We watch jagged rocks covered with moss sliding by. A few passengers begin flying kites off the back, and in a few minutes, they’re fighting to keep them from getting tangled.

“
Further down the river and at night, when the passengers are safely stowed away in their cabins and the Calliope is closed for the evening, you can hear fiddles playing on the wind right where we’re standing. Someone on the Indiana side starts it, and someone on the Kentucky side adds to it, and after a while you have a little duet going, the notes flying right over this boat.” She squeezes my arm. “It’s what us old ladies do when we don’t have good company.”

“
I’d like to hear that sometime.”

“
See me after Louisville. I don’t think Rufus and Penny would enjoy it. They’re too young, while we’re old-school, right?”

“
Yes ma’am.”

“
You sleep okay?”

No. The Voice won’t leave me alone. “Yeah.”

“
Any day you need a day off to sleep in, you let me know.”

“
I will.”

Rose and I again make the sandwiches, and when we land at Madison, the passengers stream off the boat. I ask Rose why they’re riding the boat in the first place if they keep getting off so much.

“
Same reason we got off in Covington, I suspect. Cabin fever. You can’t stay on a boat forever, right?”

Mrs. Walker creeps into the dining room a little after noon, and I serve her again up on the Porch. “Sorry I missed you at breakfast,” she tells me, dangling another twenty. “I just couldn’t get my knees to work this morning.”

I take the twenty without comment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“
Bad knees run in my family, you know.”

That almost made sense. “They do?”

“
They do. My husband had bad hips, and I have bad knees. We creaked along fine together for fifty-four years, though.” She sighs. “He was a fine man, my husband.”

Since I don’t have much to do until dinner, I take a seat near her. “What was he like?”

“
You’ve never heard of Roger Walker?”

“
No ma’am.”

“
You’ve never heard of Walker Paper?”

“
I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

She blinks at me. “Walker Paper is still one of the biggest paper mills in the South, if not the world.”

So Mrs. Walker gets her paper
from
paper. “Oh.”

“
And Roger built that company up from nothing down in south Georgia to what it is today.”

On the backs of your people
, a deep voice says in my head.

I haven’t heard this particular voice in my head before, but it sounds familiar, and it doesn’t scare me like The Voice. Is it one of my teachers?

“
Oh, I don’t live down that way anymore. I prefer the sea breezes of Savannah.”

“
Um, tell me more about your husband.”

She smiles. “I like talking about him. He was my sweetie from the time I was sixteen. Yes, he was a grand man, a great provider. Oh, he had some tough times during the Depression like anybody else, but he survived.”

By paying blacks as little as possible.

No. None of my teachers would say “blacks.” Maybe one of the old-timers from County?

“
Um, Mrs. Walker, who worked for your husband?” I ask.

“
What do you mean?”

“
I mean, a mill has to be run by a bunch of folks, right? Your husband, as great as he sounds, couldn’t have run it all by himself.”

“
Oh, of course. Negroes, mostly, with a few sturdy white managers to keep them in line, and they needed keeping in line. Always up to something, they were, and lazy! My goodness, they were lazy.”

Slavery didn’t end with the Civil War.

Yeah, someone from County who called himself Mustapha or Mubar or something. A Black Muslim. Was that my first visit or my second to jail?

“
Oh, but they don’t call themselves Negroes anymore. Where are my manners? What do they call themselves now? African-Americans. It’s
so
much easier to say ‘Negro’ than that mouthful, don’t you think? What would it be like if I went around saying I was a Dutch-American all the time? People would think I was crazy.”

I make two fists then relax them. “So, Mrs. Walker, when you’re not traveling on the
American Queen,
how do you spend your time?”

“
Oh, I’m not as busy as I used to be, but I still find time for charitable causes.”

Like you, Emmanuel.

Wait. It was my first time in County. He had sat me down and asked me why I was locked up, and then he had given me a kind of sermon. “You have never been anything but a charity case to white people your entire life,” he had told me.

“
What kinds of causes?” I ask Mrs. Walker.

“
Oh, the usual ones like the Heart Fund and the American Cancer Society. Roger had a bad heart, and he eventually died of cancer. Let’s see … the World Wildlife Fund and the Audubon Society, and, oh, about a half dozen more local Savannah charities.” She squints, and then her eyes pop. “Oh, how could I forget? When Roger died, I set up the Roger Walker Trust Fund. It’s a scholarship program for needy students.”

Her guilt is deep.

“
Like who?”

“
Why, the Negroes, of course.” She smiles up at me. “But as fast as your people keep populating the land, I’m sure there will be plenty of Puerto Ricans applying from now on.”

Anyone dark is her inferior. As guilty as she feels, she must remain superior at all times, or her entire psyche will crack into a million pieces.

I stand. “I’m not a Puerto Rican, Mrs. Walker. I’m black.”

“
Go on!” she laughs. “With a name like Emmanuel?”

I don’t speak.

“
But your skin is so light, and your English is excellent.”

When I want it to be. “I’ve got to get back to the galley, Mrs. Walker.”

“
Will I see you at dinner, Emmanuel?”

Right now, I don’t want to serve this woman ever again. “Of course, Mrs. Walker. Enjoy your lunch.”

You wear a mask handed to you by your oppressors. When are you going to take yours off and be a man?

I want to tell Rose about Mrs. Walker, but I don’t have a chance during the dinner rush, and when one of the servers, Mittie, throws me a dirty look and tells me “Your twenty is here,” I hustle to take Mrs. Walker’s order.

“
It’s good to see you again, Emmanuel,” she says.

I don’t return the compliment. “What can I get you, Mrs. Walker?”

I take her order, stir a few pots until her order is ready, and then take it out to her.

“
Thank you, Emmanuel.” She waves another twenty. “For your trouble.”

I can’t hold it in any longer. I lean closer to her. “Keep your money, Mrs. Walker.”

“
What?”

“
I said, keep your money.”

“
But Emmanuel, I don’t understand.”

And she never will. Even if you explained to her for the rest of her life, she’d never understand.

“
You tip me much more than I deserve, and it’s the same each time whether the service is slow or fast or the food is good or not.” I could probably dump the whole thing in her lap, and she’d still give me twenty.

“
But I’ve always tipped this way.”

Don’t try to explain it. Just walk away with your pride. Keep your dignity.

“
Keep your tip, Mrs. Walker. And I won’t be serving you anymore.” I don’t give her any chance to reply, turning and walking back into the galley.

I go to Mittie. “You can have your twenty back.”

“
Why?”

I bull my neck. “Because I’m no charity case.”

Mittie smiles. “You’re as crazy as they say.”

Yeah, but crazy works sometimes.

I avoid Rose as much as I can for the rest of dinner and clock out at seven. I stop by the Emporium to buy a notepad this time and go to my room. Then I sit on my bed and try to write it all out of my system.
I don’t know how to write poetry or be quotable like Mark Twain, so I just let it flow like the river flowing under my feet:

Mrs. Walker doesn’t know any better, I know, and I’m not the one to be schooling her now. But what kind of country is it when the aged and supposedly wise don’t know a thing about the real world?