Let the Circle Be Unbroken (13 page)

“That’s a fact,” Papa said. Then he stopped laughing. “Thing is, though, while Harlan Granger and the like are getting this government money, folks that’re s’pose to be getting part of it too are having hard times. They’re planting less and getting nothing in return. A lot of them are getting put off their farms ’cause the government wants to cut back so much on the number of cotton acres planted. Harlan Granger and the rest take the government money and just
put a lotta folks off the land to cut back on the number of their acres planted. Ain’t s’pose to, but they do anyway. Then come picking time, they use day laborers.”

I looked at Papa. “And that’s how come we see so many folks with all their stuff piled on their wagons. They been put off their land.”

“It’s a crying shame, but they got no place to go.”

I heaved a heavy sigh and looked out over the land. “But that won’t happen to us.”

Papa’s eyes followed my gaze. “Not as long as I have anything to say ’bout it, Cassie girl.” I glanced around and saw Stacey nodding in silent affirmation, as if Papa’s words went for him too; still, the same worried look was on both their faces.

*   *   *

“Know what I heard?” said Christopher-John, smiling broadly as we started off to school the next morning.

“What?” asked Little Man.

Christopher-John looked from Little Man to Stacey to me and beamed. “Papa ain’t goin’ back to the railroad!”

I stopped. “Ain’t?”

“That’s what I heard. Ain’t that somethin’!”

Stacey looked at him warily. “Where’d you hear that? Papa or Mama tell ya?”

“Naw. But I heard them talkin’ this morning off the back porch. Mama, she said: ‘David, I don’t want you going back to that railroad.’ And then Papa, he said: ‘Well, sugar, I don’t wanna go back neither.’ How ’bout that?” Christopher-John then grinned with happiness as Stacey, Little Man, and I stared at him waiting for him to go on.

“Well?” I said finally.

Christopher-John looked puzzled. “Well, what?”

“Well, what else?”

“Nothin’. They seen me and they didn’t say nothin’ else.”

“Ah, shoot, boy!” I exclaimed. “Papa not wanting to go back don’t mean he ain’t gonna go back.” I walked on in irritated frustration that Christopher-John’s news meant nothing. For three years now, since the cotton market had gotten so bad, Papa had been going to Louisiana each spring. From there he traveled into Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas repairing and laying railroad track. He had been lucky to get the job, and because he was a good, dependable worker he had kept it as well. But then last spring he had been shot and his leg broken in a run-in with the Wallace brothers. He had not been able to go back to the railroad. The money he would have earned was sorely missed, yet despite knowing how much we needed the money, I was glad Papa had stayed home and I didn’t want him to go again.

“But Stacey, don’t it mean he’s thinkin’ ’bout not goin’ back?” Christopher-John asked, undaunted.

Stacey sighed. “He thinks ’bout it every year, Christopher-John—don’t you be thinking he wanna go away—but there’s the property taxes and seeding and farm tools to pay for; and the cotton, it just don’t bring in enough to pay for everything. We need that railroad money.”

For several minutes we walked in silence. Then Christopher-John, ever hopeful, said: “What ’bout if Papa got another job close to home?”

“That ain’t likely. You know he looked before and ain’t no work ’round here.”

“Well . . . I sure wish he could stay on home and not go back on that railroad no more.”

“Me too,” put in Little Man.

I said nothing else and neither did Stacey as the four of us continued solemnly toward school wondering if this would finally be the year Papa would really stay.

From the second crossroads, we could see the Jefferson Davis school some distance to the north. It was there that white children attended school. Farther down, at the next crossroads, was the Wallace store, where much of T.J.’s trouble had begun. We glanced down the road; then, hearing the Great Faith warning bell, quickened our steps. Once on the school grounds, we slowed our pace, for seven hours at Great Faith was nothing to rush toward. Midway across the yard, Christopher-John and Little Man waved good-bye and headed for their class building. Stacey and I headed for the middle-grades building. That I had “caught up” with Stacey when he continuously liked to remind the world of how old he was getting certainly didn’t please him, but lower grades or upper grades, they made no difference to me. I wasn’t particular about any of them.

At the steps of the building, Stacey joined Clarence and Little Willie. Seeing only Mary Lou Wellever and Gracey Pearson from my own class with whom to while away the last minutes before the final bell, I went inside. As I entered the classroom, Son-Boy Ellis and Maynard Wiggins were involved in a challenge of tussle against the tarpaulin curtain which divided our class from the sixth graders next door. The two boys wrestled good-naturedly against the curtain, to the pushings of invisible fingers and audible taunts on the other side. In the back of the room, Dubé Cross and several other teen-age fifth graders glanced over, absently waiting for class to begin. I joined the students who had gathered to watch the match, but just as Son-Boy was about to force Maynard to the floor, the final bell started clanging and Mrs. Crandell walked in. The pandemonium fizzled to an end and I scooted into the third-row bench I shared with two other students. Mrs. Crandell called the roll, then opened her history book.

Another dismal school day had begun.

Although school this year was no more exciting than my previous four years, it did at least offer one thing: a classroom free of Miss Daisy Crocker. Miss Crocker had reigned over my fourth-grade class with a personality in direct contrast to my own, and a hickory stick which had more than once gotten its wear against my skin. This year, however, good fortune had smiled on me and I had Mrs. Myrtis Crandell, a rather shy but sweet lady. Despite the fact that her teaching style was no more exciting than Miss Crocker’s, at least she didn’t continuously repeat herself about the same boring nothing, and she tended to be more sympathetic to my lapses into inattention, so I was content. Today as she presented the rudiments of United States government to students whose major concerns were picking cotton and slopping hogs, the boredom of it all was suddenly broken by my recognition of a name she had just written on the blackboard.

“Pat Harrison and Theodore Bilbo,” said Mrs. Crandell, turning to the class with a smile. “Who can tell me who these two men are?”

I raised my hand. The name “Bilbo” had stuck with me. It was such a funny little name.

“Cassie?”

I stood promptly. “I don’t know who that Harrison fella is, but that other one is the governor of Mississippi.”

Mrs. Crandell smiled, pleased. “Was, Cassie, was. He’s our senator now, just elected last fall. And Pat Harrison is our other senator—you remember, every state has two. You know anything else about Senator Bilbo?”

I knew a lot about Bilbo now. Since I had first heard his name, Mama, Papa, and Big Ma had spoken of him several times. “Well, I don’t know all he done, but I betcha I know one thing. When that little rascal was governor—”

Mrs. Crandell’s face abruptly changed. No longer smiling, she reprimanded me, “Cassie, we do not refer to our senators as ‘rascals.’”

I frowned, then decided to rephrase. “Well . . . that ole devil—”

“Sit down, Cassie!”

An explosion of giggles erupted.

“It’s not funny and she’s not funny!” Mrs. Crandell declared, though wide grins and bright eyes from her students denied this. “I want it silent this minute, and Cassie Logan, I’ll see you after class.”

At noon I remained seated as the other students noisily made their escape. When we were alone, Mrs. Crandell called me to her desk.

“Cassie,” she said, “I didn’t think that was one bit funny what you did in class today.”

I stared blankly at her. I hadn’t tried to be funny.

“You’ve got a good mind, Cassie, but sometimes you say things you shouldn’t—”

“My papa said Bilbo was a devil,” I blurted out, feeling that she had wronged me badly. “Him and other folks say he ain’t nothin’ but a devil ’cause of the way he do us and—”

“That’s enough now, Cassie.” Mrs. Crandell’s pale yellow face seemed suddenly drained. “I don’t want to hear what your papa and other folks are saying about the senator. I only care what goes on in this classroom, and I won’t have any disrespect in here—you understand?” Her voice had risen sharply. “You leave your daddy’s comments to yourself when you enter this room. I won’t have you endangering my position with your mouth. I won’t lose my job like your mother lost hers—you hear me?”

I didn’t answer.

“You hear me!”

“Yes’m,” I mumbled, deciding that I did not like Mrs. Crandell so much after all. “Can I go now?”

Mrs. Crandell nodded, avoiding my eyes. But as I reached the door, she stopped me. “Cassie,” she called.

“Ma’am?”

She stared at me apologetically. I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. “Nothing,” she said finally, slumping back into her chair. “Go on.”

Outside Mary Lou Wellever, Alma Scott, and Gracey Pearson were waiting to taunt me. They laughed as I came down the steps.

“You get whipped again, Cassie?” asked Mary Lou.

I made no comment, just kept on walking. But that didn’t satisfy Mary Lou, who seemed to think the fact that she was the principal’s daughter gave her some sort of mysterious immunity from my fists.

“My daddy said the next time Cassie get in trouble, he gonna back the teacher’s whippin’ with one of his own,” she announced to Alma and Gracey.

I stopped and looked from Mary Lou to Mr. Wellever, who was standing near his office talking with another teacher. He was a short, bespectacled man and didn’t really look like much of a threat. Besides that, I had it from Stacey that compared to Papa’s swing Mr. Wellever’s was absolutely nothing to fear, and if Mary Lou kept it up, I would gladly risk one of his whippings to flatten her. I looked again at Mary Lou and matched her smile with a slow, menacing one of my own. Hers quickly faded and she backed away.

“Come on, y’all,” she said, and with Alma and Gracey hurried off.

I stared after them a moment, then scanned the yard trying to decide where to eat my tin-can lunch of eggs and oil sausages. I spied Henry Johnson and Maynard sitting on
a stump by the road eating and watching a group of older boys playing catch on the lawn. I went over and joined them. Standing nearby were Stacey, Little Willie, and Moe. As I sat down beside Maynard, Little Willie nodded toward a black Hudson coming east along the road. “Look there,” he said.

Joe Billy Montier was in the car, but it was his friend Stuart Walker who was driving. Stuart’s family owned a plantation on the other side of Strawberry and was co-owner along with Mr. Granger of the local cotton mill. Another young man, Pierceson Wells, who worked for the Walkers, sat in the back. The car slowed and the three young men started talking to Alice Charles and Jacey Peters, two tenth-grade girls standing near the road.

“Jus’ look at ’em,” hissed Little Willie, his eyes hard on the car. “I wish them scounds would come messin’ with one of my sisters. I’d beat ’em to a pulp.”

Pierceson hollered something we could not hear and the girls giggled. Then Stuart leaned out the window and with a wide grin said, “Hey, come on down here a minute.” Stuart was good-looking and he knew it.

Again the girls giggled.

“Come on—you, the pretty one in the plaid—I got something to tell ya.”

Jacey, an attractive, perky girl known for her daring, left Alice and started toward the car. But before she reached it, Miss Daisy Crocker came hurrying across the lawn with those giant strides of hers. “You young gentlemen want something?” she called, stopping Jacey.

Stuart kept grinning but shook his head. Then, laughing, he accelerated and the car sped away, leaving a trail of dust in its wake. Miss Crocker, loudly upbraiding the two girls, led them back to the class buildings. Stacey, Moe, and Little
Willie scowled after the car, then moodily moved out onto the lawn to play. I listened to the last echoes of Miss Crocker’s mouth, glad that for once it wasn’t me she was chewing out, and turned to my lunch; but before I could get the can open, Son-Boy came running up from the road.

“Hey, Cassie!” he hollered. “My Aunt Lee Annie wants you.”

“Me? What for?”

Son-Boy shrugged, ready to be off again. “I think she wants you to write something for her. You better go on, ’cause she said she want you to do it ’fore school start up again.” Then before I could ask him anything else, he was gone, heading over to a group playing a game of marbles. Since I couldn’t join in the game anyway, I hurried on to the road with my lunch can in hand.

At Mrs. Lee Annie’s I ran up the plank steps and knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately, and Mrs. Lee Annie grinned down at me. “Hello, Miz Lee Annie,” I said. “Son-Boy, he said you want me to write something for ya.”

“Sho’ do,” she said, hugging me to her before walking over to a table near the stove where some paper and a book were lying. I followed her. “This here letter come from Jackson,” she said, picking up a sheet of sky-blue paper, “and I gots to answer it.”

“Miz Lee Annie, can’t you write?”

“Oh, I does all right for an old woman, but I ain’t had me much school learning, Cassie. ’Sides, this here letter is from an educated white woman.” She laughed. “Now what I know ’bout writing some educated white woman?”

“Well, how come you don’t get Son-Boy to write for you?”

“Ah, that youngun can’t sit still long ’nough to write no letter. ’Sides, he can’t hardly spell good as me.” She put
the letter back on the table and turned to the stove. “Now put that bucket of yours right on down and have some dinner with me. Got cracklin’ bread and crowder peas.”

I grinned. Mrs. Lee Annie knew I loved cracklin’ bread. “Miz Lee Annie,” I said as she scooped up three plates of food, “Wordell here?”

“Yeah, he back there. Ow-you, Wordell!” she called. “Come on and get your dinner, boy.”