Let the Circle Be Unbroken (14 page)

I waited, my eyes on the curtain which divided the room. Mrs. Lee Annie finished filling the plate, then brought it over to the table. “Ow, Wordell!” she called again. When he did not appear, she went over to the curtain and pulled it back, exposing a narrow bed. Wordell sat on the far side of the bed, his head turned toward the window. “Boy, didn’t you hear me callin’ you?” she fussed. “I just been a-callin—”

Wordell swung himself across the bed and stood up.

“Hey, Wordell,” I said.

Wordell glanced at me without recognition and grabbed his jacket from a wall peg.

“Now where you goin’? Ain’t you heard me tell you dinner was—”

Ignoring his grandmother, Wordell opened the back door and went outside.

Mrs. Lee Annie watched him go, then turned back to me. “Go on, child, and eat ’fore it get cold.”

I picked at the crowder peas. “Miz Lee Annie, how come Wordell don’t talk much?”

“Oh, he talk when he wanna,” she said, sitting across from me.

“He ain’t never said nothin’ much to me.”

“Well, he right spare with his words all right, but I tells ya one thing ’bout that child. When he open his mouth, he usually got somethin’ worth sayin’. And what he care ’bout,
he sho’ take care of it. Person or thing, he don’t let nobody hurt it, he can help it. Sho’ don’t.” She nodded toward the bureau. “See that there?”

“That harmonica?”

“That’s right. Well, Russell, he brung him that when he was here, and he can play that thing like he talkin’. Play it right good too. Ya know his mama was right musical-minded.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“Well ya wouldn’t. She died soon after Wordell was born. When she died, then that give me another grandbaby to raise. Already had Russell. My daughter Truce had done left him with me when she married her second husband.”

I wanted to ask more questions about Wordell, but Mrs. Lee Annie gave me no opportunity as she picked up the blue letter again and changed the subject. “How’s your penmanship, Cassie?”

“My what?”

“Yo’ writing, child? You write nice like your mama?”

I shrugged. “I do all right.”

“Well, you gonna have to do better’n all right, ’cause what I wants you to do is write down my letter, then take it on home and have your mama take a look at it. I wants to mail it tomorrow. You think you can do that for me?”

“Yes’m.”

We finished eating and Mrs. Lee Annie gave me the letter to read. It was from the daughter of a man she used to work for telling Mrs. Lee Annie that the man had died. “Hazel, she sent me this here book,” Mrs. Lee Annie explained, pushing the book toward me. I peeped over at it. Entitled
Mississippi Constitution—1890
, it was a thick, wide book. I opened it. The print was small, almost too small to read. I read a few lines aloud, then looked up, annoyed. “Miz Lee
Annie, this don’t make no sense. How come she to send it?”

Mrs. Lee Annie let out a mighty laugh. “Well, ma’am, it belonged to Hazel’s daddy, the judge, and I used to sneak into his office when he was gone and try’n read it. Well, the judge he caught me one time and says to me: ‘Lee Annie, how come you tryin’ to read what don’t concern you?’ And I says, ‘But you said this here book had somethin’ to say ’bout everybody in Mississippi and I was jus’ trying to find out what it had to say ’bout me.’ Then he come lookin’ right sheepish. Said that book was white folks’ things and I best leave it alone. Said I wanna know something, then ask him and he’d ’splain it to me.”

She laughed again. “Well, I wanna know now and I figures I find out for myself. Not be askin’ some ole white man who be tellin’ me jus’ what he wants me to know.” She was thoughtful, her rough hands fingering the page. “I had any gumption, maybe I’d even go try and vote.”

“Vote?”

“Body gotta take a test to vote, though. Test be’s on what’s in this book here. This here constitution.”

I looked at her with new interest. “Miz Lee Annie, you thinkin’ ’bout votin’?”

It took her a moment, but then she laughed and shook her head. “Not these old bones. Course now, my papa voted. Back in the times of the Reconstruction when the black men got the vote—women didn’t have no vote. Walked right up to that votin’ place and made his X. Didn’t hafta take no test back then.”

Mrs. Lee Annie’s face lost its cheerfulness. “Then them night men took to the road. Tarring black folks goin’ to vote, beatin’ ’em up, lynchin’ ’em. Beat my papa somethin’ terrible . . . seen it myself. They dragged him on the road. . . . Lord . . .” She shook her head again, as if to shake
the memory of it. “Well, wasn’t no more votin’ after that, from hardly nobody. They put a stop to it good, them night men. Sho’ did . . .”

She sighed and was silent for several moments. Then she fixed her eyes on me. “Cassie, child, how’d you like to help me read this here? I ain’t much count at reading and you read right nice.”

“Ah, Miz Lee Annie, I can’t read that mess.”

“Seemed like you was doin’ all right a minute ago. Tell you what, you ask your mama if you can.”

I frowned, not really sure if I wanted to ask Mama anything about spending my time reading boring tidbits of Mississippi law. But Mrs. Lee Annie paid no attention to my hesitation as she handed me a pencil and paper and began dictating her letter to me. She finished just as the school bell began to ring. “I gotta go, Miz Lee Annie,” I said, folding the letter to take with me.

“Well, I sho’ do thank you, Cassie.” Mrs. Lee Annie got up from the table and walked with me to the door. “Now you be sure and have your mama take a look at that ’fore you go copyin’ it in ink. I don’t want no mistakes in no letter goin’ up to Miz Hazel.”

“Yes’m,” I promised, running down the steps.

“And you be sure and ask your mama ’bout comin’ to read with me, ya hear?” she hollered after me. “I gots a powerful yearning to know all that’s in this here book. . . .”

That night when I asked Mama and Papa about reading with Mrs. Lee Annie, Papa drew on his pipe, as he often did when he wanted time to think, and stared into the fire longer than I thought necessary for such a simple decision. When he did speak, he surprised me by first nodding toward the boys. “You can go, but Christopher-John and Little Man’ll have to go with you.”

Christopher-John and Little Man looked up at their inclusion in the conversation.

“But Papa,” I said, “Miz Lee Annie don’t live more’n five minutes from school and I don’t need nobody to go with me—”

“I don’t want you walking them roads by yourself.”

“But Papa, I walked farther than that by myself before and—”

“I got my reasons, Cassie girl. You go over there, Little Man and Christopher-John’ll go with you.”

He put his pipe back into his mouth and I knew that the discussion was ended. I didn’t understand why he wanted Christopher-John and Little Man to go along, but it didn’t bother me that he did. Perhaps he, like some others, thought Wordell was crazy, and that if all three of us were together, we could protect each other if Wordell went completely mad.

“Papa, you think Wordell kinda touched in the head?”

Papa looked at me, his eyes thoughtful. “Why you ask that?”

“Well, I seen him today over at Miz Lee Annie’s and he acted funny—like he always do—and some folks say he is. What you think?”

“I tell you, sugar . . . I got a feeling that Wordell’s mind is as good as anybody’s.”

“Even after him having Doris Anne up in that belfry?”

Papa’s nod was slow in coming. “Even after that,” he said finally.

I considered that. Papa was an excellent judge of people. “Well, then,” I decided, “he sure got some mighty peculiar ways.”

Papa suppressed a smile. “All of us got some peculiar ways, Cassie, and ain’t nothing wrong with that long as they don’t hurt nobody.”

“Yessir . . . I guess not,” I said, though I couldn’t help thinking that anybody with that many peculiar ways ought to try and do something about them.

*   *   *

Some folks said he was crazy. Some folks said he was just plain ordinary stupid. But whatever folks said about Wordell Lees, most agreed on one thing: He was not like anybody else.

Folks who contended Wordell was mad swore up and down that they had once seen (or had heard about from the most reliable of sources that they had seen) Wordell roll over on the ground like a dog, with a wild look about the eyes. Others said not only that, but that he had been observed standing perfectly still in the woods, down behind Great Faith church in a trance, not moving for more than an hour. And he had been holding a bird in his hands. Nothing else. Just standing there and holding that bird!

Supporters of the opposite point of view shrugged off such tales, mainly because Wordell was often with Joe McCalister, whom everybody conceded was mentally retarded but harmless. It was a matter of being branded by association. In addition to all that, Wordell seldom spoke, which added to the stories about him. He was, in short, a confusing mystery, and the more I learned about him, the more I wondered about him. Once I had put the matter to Stacey: Was Wordell stupid or was he crazy?

“Why don’tcha ask him?” Stacey had mocked.

“Boy, you crazy! You know I can’t go askin’ him that!”

Stacey looked at me with extreme annoyance. “I didn’t mean just ask him outright, Cassie. You so nosy ’bout finding out, what you need to do is just talk friendly like to him.”

“’Bout what?” I questioned.

“’Bout . . . ’bout things.”

“That time you talked to him at the courthouse, what’d you say?”

“I just told him ’bout T.J. and that we wanted to stay till the trial was over.”

“And what’d he say?”

“Nothin’ much. Just walked over to Joe and said, ‘Let ’em stay.’”

“That all?”

“That’s all. He wanna be bothered with ya, he’ll answer.”

I pondered Stacey’s advice for several days, then gave it up as useless. If Wordell was merely retarded, I figured I’d be all right, but if he was crazy, he was likely to whop me over the head with something as soon as look at me. So I left it alone. That is, I left it alone until I started reading with Mrs. Lee Annie. Being with her and having Wordell so near stirred my curiosity again.

Once when I was reading with her, one of the older Ellis boys rushed in and told Mrs. Lee Annie that Joe had just come up from the woods babbling something about Wordell and that there had been blood on his hands. Mrs. Lee Annie immediately jumped up and, telling me to go back to school, rushed off with her nephew. I wanted to go with her, but she made it clear that she did not want me to come along. Later I learned that Wordell had hurt his head. Big Ma, who was good at medicines and was often called upon to tend to the sick instead of Dr. Crandon from Strawberry, had been summoned to Mrs. Lee Annie’s and had ended up spending most of the night there. When she returned home, she commented wearily: “That boy, one day he gonna end up killin’ hisself doin’ the crazy things he do.”

The next time I went to Mrs. Lee Annie’s, Wordell was up and out again. As Mrs. Lee Annie and I read, we could
hear the steady chopping of Wordell’s axe in the woodpile out back.

“Wordell all right now?” I asked.

“Oh, I guess he all right. Won’t stay put though. I told him he oughta stay in that bed awhile, but he don’t pay no mind half the time. . . .”

When it was time to go back to school, I ran outside looking for Little Man and Christopher-John. They had been playing in the front yard when I started reading with Mrs. Lee Annie, but they weren’t there now. Thinking that perhaps they had gone to watch Wordell’s wood chopping, I ran to the back of the house. They were not there either. At first there appeared to be no one in the backyard at all, but then I spied Wordell, his head still bandaged, sitting on the other side of the woodpile. I thought of making a hasty escape, but it was too late; his eyes were already on me.

“Hey, Wordell,” I said.

As usual, Wordell said nothing.

“I—I was looking for Christopher-John and Little Man. You seen ’em?”

When Wordell made no attempt to reply, I shrugged and turned to leave. But then it occurred to me that this was a perfect opportunity to get some of my questions about him answered. Stacey had said I should just talk to him. I glanced over at the kitchen door. Mrs. Lee Annie was right behind it. I judged the distance between where I stood and the door, then glanced over my shoulder to where Wordell was seated. Yes, I could make it, if not that far then at least over to the woodshed on the other side. With my plan of escape routed out in case Wordell went berserk, I turned to face him again. But now that I had resolved to talk to Wordell, I didn’t know what to say. Then I remembered the harmonica.

“I seen your harmonica,” I started. “Miz Lee Annie said Russell gave it to ya.”

Wordell’s eyes were unwavering.

“She—she said you can play it pretty good too. I always kinda thought I’d like to play something, but I ain’t never had nothing to play on. . . .”

I stopped a moment to watch him. He was, of course, watching me, and when I stopped talking there was only silence.

“Now, Stacey,” I continued, “he got a windpipe. Jeremy Simms gave it to him, but he don’t play it none, and if I asked him to let me play it, he wouldn’t let me.”

Again I stopped. Again there was silence.

Seeing that my discourse on music was getting me nowhere, I decided to try another tack. “I—I was sorry to hear ’bout your head. Big Ma said it bled something awful. . . . I hope you’re feeling a whole lot better now.” I paused, knowing there would be no reply, then went on. “Miz Lee Annie said Joe was with you when you hurt yourself. Said he cried most of the night scared you was gonna die.” I thought a moment. “Joe’s your best friend, ain’t he?”

Something, though I was not sure what, changed in Wordell’s eyes. They had never been cold, but now they seemed softer somehow.

“You know, I like Joe,” I said truthfully. “Now some folks make fun of him ’cause he’s like he is, but Papa said that ain’t right. Papa said each of us got something to do in this life, and if we do a good job at that, then we can be right proud. He said Joe’s job is to keep the school and church looking nice and to ring that bell, and Joe does a good job at it too. Only one time I know of he didn’t ring
that bell like he was s’pose to, and that was that Sunday you—”