A Thousand Never Evers (8 page)

CHAPTER 11

August 3, 1963

Mama, me, and Uncle Bump meet up with Bessie in Kuckachoo Lane. What with Elias still missing and us going to plant this garden that should be ours, no one’s got to say a word for all of us to understand things couldn’t be worse.

Last week, the week after the Garden Club meeting, Bessie carried us a message from Mr. Mudge. She sat at our kitchen table and took out a receipt from the Corner Store. Then she turned it over to show us what he wrote on the back:

Keep the faith. You’re all invited to help plant Saturday.

Good wages. Tell Bessie if you’ll work.

“Mr. Mudge is reaching into his own pocket to pay us, ’cause he wants to hire help he knows is good,” Bessie told us. “Plus, he knows y’all could use the cash. And he said I could come too.”

Mama’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Mr. Mudge’s actions sure speak louder than his words,” she said. “No matter what he says about Negroes, you can’t deny that man’s looking out for our family.”

That’s when Bessie spread out her long, light fingers and rested them gentle on Mama’s arm. Then Mama wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron and smiled at Bessie like she was real grateful for her kindness. And I wondered why I didn’t think of that. Why didn’t I rest my fingers real gentle on Mama’s arm? I reckon it’s because folks who are fetching, like Bessie, know when to do things like that, the same way folks who are plain, like me, know just when to hiccup or sneeze.

Sometimes Mama and me work Saturday mornings for Mrs. Tate, so Mama had to talk over Mr. Mudge’s offer with her first. But Mrs. Tate said, “Why, of course y’all should plant the garden! Mr. Mudge wouldn’t be hiring beyond his own field hands if he didn’t think we needed the help.” And Mama was glad to hear her say that, because by planting the garden we’re guaranteed a whole day of Saturday work, not just half.

Now I
tweet, click, click,
and Flapjack scampers down the trunk of the giant oak. Then Mama, Uncle Bump, Bessie, and me set off for Old Man Adams’s place.

“I reckon Mr. Mudge went and changed his mind about the garden,” I say as we cross the tracks.

“And from what I can tell, Mr. Mudge doesn’t know a thing about what Mr. Adams wrote in his will,” Bessie says.

“Well, aren’t we gonna tell him the garden’s ours too?” I ask.

Mama glares at me. “With Elias gone, don’t you think we’ve got enough to worry ’bout!” she says. Then she tugs Uncle Bump’s arm and the two of them hurry on ahead of Bessie and me.

When we turn down Magnolia Row, Bessie picks up a stick and runs it across the tall fence that lines Old Man Adams’s garden. “You ready for seventh grade?” she asks.

“Ready or not, here I come,” I say.

“At first, Mrs. Jacks seems scary.” Bessie’s stick clicks along the fence. “But she’s not that bad once you learn how to survive.”

“Oh.” I gulp.

“There’s not much to it, really,” she says. “Just bake her a pan of corn bread each morning.”

Corn bread each morning,
I say to myself, fixing the words in my mind.

“Always do double the math problems she assigns.”

Double.

“And stay after school at least once a week to rub her feet.”

Rub feet.

My lip quivers. I knew I should’ve flunked sixth grade!

Then Bessie busts out laughing. “Just jokin’,” she says.

So I laugh out loud too, and while we cross through the yard of the big house, I add a couple snorts just to make sure Bessie doesn’t think I was taking her serious.

Soon Bessie, me, Mama, and Uncle Bump meet up with the other twelve hands at the garden gate. Besides little Lydia Cook, who’s here with her mama, all these folks are Mr. Mudge’s regular help.

As the lot of us look through the iron bars into the garden, one thing’s clear: someone got a head start on this planting. Why, there’s already a couple rows of something growing up right against the gate. “Looks like corn,” Uncle Bump says. “But them stalks is too close together.”

After being head servant here so many years, my uncle sure knows his vegetables.

When I spot Mr. Mudge riding toward us, all I can say is I’m sure glad that man’s on his tractor, because that means he can lay most of the seed himself. Why, with the help of his new machine, he could plant over the garden with something simple like crowder peas in just a couple hours. Of course, from what I heard Mrs. Tate say, this planting’s going to be a lot more complicated. We’ve got a whole variety of seed to lay. But still, that tractor will help.

After Mr. Mudge steps down from it, he unlocks the garden gate with the keys that used to belong to Uncle Bump. And I reckon it hurts my uncle just to look at those keys, which is how come he’s staring at his work boots.

“Y’all meet me at the garden cabin,” Mr. Mudge tells us. Then he hoists himself back on the tractor and chug-a-lugs off.

While us field hands march across the farm, we can see Mr. Mudge already smoothed over the land with his chopper, heaped up the dirt so it’s ready for planting, and numbered all the rows with orange flags.

When we all get to the garden cabin, Mr. Mudge says, “As you know, I’m donating the cost of your labor. There’s a pitcher of water round the other side of the porch. Feel free. And Bump, I’ll need you to set the attachments on my tractor.”

Uncle Bump nods.

Mr. Mudge points to the trays of baby cabbage, kale, and collards napping in the shade on the cabin porch, and he assigns the rows. Then we get started.

It’s hot as blue blazes out here! When I crouch down to hole the land, I squeeze the warm earth in my fists—the warm earth that’s supposed to belong to me. By the time I’ve got only two rows left to hole, the sun’s been up a few hours and my shirt’s soaked through. I head over to the cabin porch, where rickety Mr. Washington huddles by the pitcher, drinking water.

Mr. Washington runs Mr. Mudge’s stable of cows and pigs. He wipes his sweat with a handkerchief. “It’s hot enough to melt cheese,” he tells me.

“Sure is!” I say.

“You’re lucky you’re young,” he says.

“Reckon so,” I say, and help myself to two cups of water.

As soon as I finish drinking, I fill up two more cups for Mama. But on my way across the rows, I pass Lydia Cook. Lydia’s in the first grade, and just from the look of her, one thing’s clear: when it comes to sweat, young or old don’t matter. Little Lydia’s covered with even more sweat than Mr. Washington. Looking at her, I remember how hard it was to work in this garden as a little girl, before I moved into the big house. I can still remember how my stomach growled with hunger, how the minutes went on for hours and the hours for days.

“You’re real good at this, Lydia!” I tell her.

She looks up from under her straw hat and gives me a weary grin, so I give her one of the cups of water in my hand.

When I get to Mama, she sucks down the other cup of water. She hasn’t worked the land since she was a little girl. Lucky for her, Old Man Adams liked his privacy, so he built a tall fence around his farm so no one could see inside it. Now Mama rests in the thick stripe of shade at the edge of the garden.

While I walk back to my rows, I glance across the field and see Mr. Mudge unlocking the garden gate for Mrs. Tate and her friends. Truth be told, I’ve had quite enough of Mrs. Tate. All week at work, Mama and me listened to her talk about the details of the planting. She was so excited you would’ve thought she was seventeen years old planning her wedding again.

Just the other day I was washing out the pots in the sink. Mrs. Tate was sitting at the kitchen table with her husband, who was wearing a cowboy hat and spitting watermelon seeds into a bowl. “Oh, it’s going to be fabulous!” she said.

I made like I didn’t hear a thing while Mr. Tate hid under that big old cowboy hat of his and slurped up the juice left in his watermelon rind.

“Ralph, didn’t you hear me?” Mrs. Tate asked. “We won’t have to pay through the roof for food. No one will. This is gonna help a lot of folks, Ralph.”

“The only reason I said I’d work the garden is because I need to get in shape if I’m gonna coach the Kickers football team next year,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I’m sick of hearing ’bout the stupid garden!”

Mrs. Tate set down her fork. “Oh,” she said.

I could hear by the way she said that one little “Oh,” something inside her broke. I could also hear Mr. Tate didn’t understand his wife at all. And I was afraid he was going to get even meaner, so I grabbed a rag and ran upstairs to dust the sitting room. And all I could think is it’s too bad sweet Ralphie has to share a name with his mean old daddy.

After that, Mrs. Tate didn’t stop talking about the garden—she just stopped talking about it with her husband. When she couldn’t find Miss Springer or Mrs. Worth, she talked about it with Mama and me.

Every so often, in between talking about what she would wear to the planting and what food she would bring, she’d say how sorry she was about Elias. Just the other day she said, “I’ll bet he’s only run off with some girl. Soon as it sours, he’ll be back.”

And even though Mrs. Tate meant it to be kind, there was glass over Mama’s eyes the second she said it.

Now I watch Mrs. Tate, Miss Springer, and Mrs. Worth climb onto the porch of Old Man Adams’s garden cabin. Once they settle into their chairs, they unpack their feast from a picnic basket, while Mrs. Tate carries on about how wonderful Mr. Mudge is. “See, I told you he’d come around,” she says, and pours herself a drink from a thermos. “A couple days after our garden meeting, he was already out here on his tractor planting us a border of Indian corn. He says the cornstalks will protect our baby crops from high winds, so they’ll grow up big and strong.”

But I pretend I don’t see these ladies, and I make like I don’t hear them, while I finish holing the land. Then I slog on over to the porch to pick up a tray of cabbage seedlings. When I get there, I see Mrs. Tate pouring Mama’s fresh peach juice and sharing Mama’s homemade blueberry muffins with her friends like this is a regular celebration, while here I am sweating so much a rash erupted over my thighs.

I carry a tray of seedlings to the far end of my row. By the time I work myself back near the cabin porch, Mrs. Tate and her friends have been out there for hours, and I reckon they’ve forgotten I’m here.

“Well, at least that colored boy got what he deserved,” Mrs. Worth says.

My fingers turn to sticks in the ground.

“I have to admit, much as I like my own help, the Negro problem’s getting out of hand,” Mrs. Tate says. “They just make everything so…complicated.”

“That dead boy broke Jimmy’s leg!” Mrs. Worth says. “What’s so complicated ’bout that?”

Dead boy.
I turn the words over in my mind.

But Mrs. Worth goes on. “Now we don’t have a prayer of winning the state championship. And Jimmy might lose out on a scholarship to college!”

I’m so mad I see raspberries! Right about now, I hate Mrs. Worth more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my whole entire life, Buck Fowler included. And I can’t believe Mrs. Tate would let Mrs. Worth call Elias a “dead boy,” when just the other day she told Mama and me not to worry, that of course he’s fine, of course he’ll be back.

“Where are your priorities?” Miss Springer asks.

“Oh, come on!” Mrs. Worth shouts. “Don’t tell me you feel bad for an uppity colored who messed with my son!”

Mrs. Tate sniffles and I’m glad. But all too soon the roar of Mr. Mudge’s tractor drowns out the sound of her tears, so I transplant the last of the cabbage and go to help Mama. Of course, I’m not about to tell her what I heard, because I know she couldn’t bear it.

Mama smiles when she sees me come her way. Her cheeks are rosy. Together we broadcast button squash seed across the fresh-turned soil. And I’ll tell you one thing: I wish I could get myself a life supply, because if you ask me, there’s nothing better than hot button squash with cool cane syrup running down the sides.

By the time we finish planting, Mrs. Tate and her friends are long gone. I
tweet, click, click,
and Flapjack comes running. But when I lean over to pet him, every muscle in me aches, the knuckles in my fingers throb, and my body hurts so bad that for a minute or two, I forget what’s going on in my life—till I traipse over to the cabin where Mr. Mudge brings it back up.

“And let us pray,” he says.

All of us field hands sink down our heads in the dusky light.

“Let us pray Elias Pickett comes home safe and sound,” he says.

We all say, “Amen.”

Then Mr. Mudge says there’s a sale on for bacon. “Whole pack for a dime. Can’t beat that!” He tells us we’ve done outstanding work and pays Uncle Bump twelve dollars and fifty cents: five for him, five for Mama, and since I’m not a grown-up yet, two dollars and fifty cents for me.

When Uncle Bump takes those bills and sticks them in his pocket, I feel good for the first time since Elias disappeared. But as I follow Lydia Cook and her mama across the rows toward the garden gate, I see a thousand mounds of dirt that will burst with collards, cabbage, and button squash come fall. And I see those bills in my uncle’s pocket, they don’t amount to a bucket of spit.