The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had (14 page)

I started to laugh. Even Emma had to fight back a giggle.

“What are you doing here?” Della asked. Her hair had fallen down off her head and there was hay in her braids. Her work apron was bunched up on the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked. Della turned bright red, and that made me laugh even harder.

Mr. Fulton’s boy jumped up and ran out of the barn so fast, he didn’t even notice he had a big glob of cow poop stuck to the back of his head.

Della picked up her work apron and put it back on. She started to pick the hay out of her hair.

I grinned. “Wait till Mama finds out.”

“You can’t tell, Dit,” Della pleaded. “Please, you can’t.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” said Emma.

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “This is too darn funny to keep quiet!”

“We won’t tell,” continued Emma, “but you have to get us some clean clothes and wash and press the ones we have on.”

Emma always was a step or two ahead of me.

For the first time, Della noticed that we were wet from head to toe.

“Sure,” Della answered. “Give me half an hour. Only one question.”

“What?” asked Emma.

“What were you two up to?”

The kittens peeked out from behind Emma’s leg and gave a little meow.

27

 

 

 

TWO WEEKS BEFORE THANKSGIVING, DR. Griffith got a new Model T Ford sedan. It was a beautiful black car with shiny leather seats and a permanent top so you wouldn’t ever get caught in the rain. I stopped to admire it on the way home from school. It didn’t look nothing like my pa’s old Ford.

Dr. Griffith came out of his house while I was standing there. “Hi, Dr. Griffith,” I said. “Need any help starting your car?”

He shook his head. “You gotta be careful starting a car, Dit. You don’t do it right, the crank can reverse and break your arm.”

I knew this. Ulman had showed me at home. “I’ve been practicing.”

“On my car? You been cranking it to hear the engine run and then cutting it off?”

“No.”

“Your father’s?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

Dr. Griffith sighed. “Go ahead. Let’s see what you can do.”

He climbed into the front seat. I bent over and cranked the engine. Did it pretty well if I do say so myself. The engine soon began to purr. I grinned.

The doctor looked me over. “Get in, Dit,” he said finally.

“Why?”

“I drive into Selma once a month to pick up supplies. Takes about four hours each way. I could use someone to help with the driving. You interested in the job?”

I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

Only took a couple of days for Dr. Griffith to teach me to drive. I catch on fast to things like that. Pretty soon I could start the car, drive it a ways and make it come to a jerky stop. But that wasn’t enough for Dr. Griffith. He lectured me on safety too, and when a man was killed three miles north of Moundville on the Tuscaloosa road, he made me go look at the body.

“It was raining and he was going too fast for the muddy road,” Dr. Griffith told me. “I want you to see what happens when a car turns over.”

The body was covered with a sheet. Dr. Griffith pulled the sheet back and I saw the man’s face. He lay perfectly still with his eyes wide open.

It wasn’t the first time I had seen the face of a dead man. Once, before I even had my nickname, Pa had taken me to a funeral and lifted me up so I could see inside the casket. The teenage boy inside was all dressed up in a clean suit. I thought he looked real nice. “That’s Eli,” said Pa. “He’s dead.” I later learned Eli Howell had been cleaning his gun when it accidentally went off. Least that’s what some people said. Others whispered he had killed himself but his mama convinced the doctor to say it was an accident so he could still be buried in the churchyard. So even though it wasn’t the first time I had seen a dead man, it was the first time I understood what I was seeing. And it gave me the creeps.

Dr. Griffith wasn’t satisfied till I could change the oil, mend a flat and change gears as smooth as ice skating. But finally, he leaned back in his seat and smiled. “I think you’re ready. You’re a smart boy, Dit.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Why hasn’t your father taught you how to drive?”

I shrugged. “We only got one car. Pa, Ulman, Elman and Raymond can all drive. We don’t need no more drivers.”

Dr. Griffith nodded.

But as I was walking home that afternoon, I didn’t feel as excited as I expected. Dr. Griffith was awfully nice, but he wasn’t my pa.

28

 

 

I HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT MRS. SEAY WAS A good teacher. I ain’t never worked so dang hard. While the old schoolteacher, Mr. Summons, just droned on and on, reading from notes that had yellowed with age, Mrs. Seay found ways to make me forget I was learning.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Mrs. Seay invited Uncle Wiggens to come tell us about his experiences during the War Between the States. He stood at the front of the classroom, balancing on his one good leg and gesturing wildly as he spoke. “And then Sherman marched his army through Georgia and burned everything in his way. Churches, schools, even hospitals, just burned them up like they was kindling.”

Everyone leaned forward, eyes wide.

“Then the Union forces burned the University of Alabama.” Uncle Wiggens opened and closed his fists, wriggling his fingers. I think they were supposed to be the flames, licking at the buildings. “The Yankees didn’t want you to have no education. If it hadn’t been for General Lee, that’s Robert E. Lee, mind you, none of you would be here today!”

All the kids gasped. Course we had all heard Uncle Wiggens’s stories a million times before, but Mrs. Seay was new in town and didn’t know that. We were smart enough to figure we’d best put on a good show for her or she’d send Uncle Wiggens home and make us go back to arithmetic.

“And when they won the war, the Yankees freed all the Negras. Talk about stamping on Southern honor! Why, those gosh darn son of a—”

“Now, Uncle Wiggens,” said Mrs. Seay, standing up quickly. “This is a school.”

Pearl and a couple of the other girls giggled nervously.

“But ma’am, it could happen again. Those Yankees could—”

“No one is going to burn down our school,” Mrs. Seay said firmly. “Especially since we have a good lawman like Big Foot protecting our town.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Uncle Wiggens said sheepishly, rubbing at the place where his wooden leg attached to his stump. “It just makes me so angry, I sometimes get carried away.”

Mrs. Seay brought over a chair and helped him sit down. “It is upsetting to think about the time we lost the best of a whole generation.”

I was still imagining dying soldiers that evening after supper when I went over to Emma’s. We usually did our homework together while Mrs. Walker washed the dishes. Emma made me repeat just about every little thing that happened at school so she could learn it too. I said I didn’t ask her to tell me everything she learned at her school, but Emma just rolled her eyes and told me to get on with it.

So I started telling Emma about General Sherman and him burning schools. Even wiggled my hands like Uncle Wiggens. But when I got to the part about us losing the best of a whole generation, Mrs. Walker jumped in. “What did you say, Dit?”

“I was just telling Emma what Mrs. Seay said,” I explained. “About how sad it was that the South lost the war.”

“Sad for whom?” Suds dripped off Mrs. Walker’s hands and onto the floor, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Why, for everyone.”

“Maybe to men like Uncle Wiggens it was a sad day,” Mrs. Walker hollered, “but not for us Negroes! Dit, do you have any idea where we’d be if the South hadn’t lost the war?”

My hands were sweating. I’d never even heard Mrs. Walker raise her voice before. “Back in Boston?”

“Picking cotton on a plantation in South Carolina!” She threw down her dishrag and began to pace the room.

“Your great-grandmother used to get up before sunrise and work in the fields all day without a rest,” Mrs. Walker said to Emma. “If she didn’t work fast enough, she was whipped until the blood ran down her back. That could have been your fate.”

“I know, Mama,” Emma said quietly.

I tried to picture it, but it was hard. I could see Buster in the fields or even myself, but Emma?

“After that war was over, my grandmother and her children and their children could hold their heads up high and be treated like people instead of animals!”

I shook my head. “But Mrs. Seay said—”

“I don’t care what she said! The day the Confederate army surrendered was a good day.” She picked up the wet rag from the floor. “You’d better go home now, Dit.”

Emma walked me to the door. “What’d I say?” I whispered. I liked Mrs. Walker and felt bad that I upset her. Also, she made the best biscuits in town.

Emma shrugged. “You just repeated what Mrs. Seay said.”

“Then why’s she so angry?”

Emma bit her lower lip. “Maybe Mrs. Seay’s wrong.”

I shook my head. “She’s a good teacher, Emma. You said so yourself. Ain’t that why you make me repeat everything she says?”

“Even the smartest people make mistakes,” Emma insisted.

I thought maybe I just didn’t explain it right, so we decided to meet up the next day after school and talk to Mrs. Seay. Surely the teacher could explain things so that Emma would understand.

But that night in bed, I did some more thinking. Big Foot had been wrong to steal that hair tonic from Doc Haley. And Mrs. Pooley shouldn’t have told me to drown those kittens. It was just possible, I decided, that Mrs. Seay was wrong about the war.

29

 

 

THE WILSON SCHOOL WAS TWO MILES away, so when Mrs. Seay let us out the next day, I sat down under a tree to wait for Emma. I was planning on taking a little nap when Chip walked up to me. “Hey, Dit,” he said.

“Hi,” I said. Chip had hardly spoken to me since he’d switched desks.

“Haven’t seen you around much,” said Chip.

“No.”

“Baseball’s not as fun without our best pitcher.” Chip grinned, showing off his straight, white teeth.

I looked at him suspiciously. “You trying to be nice?”

“And what if I am?” said Chip. “We been friends a long time.”

That was true enough.

“Come on,” said Chip. “I want to show you something.”

“What?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Nah.” I had to wait for Emma.

“Why not?” asked Chip.

“I’m meeting someone.”

“That Negra girl?” Chip asked.

“No.” But I think he knew I was lying.

“Aw, come on, Dit,” said Chip. “It’ll just take a minute.”