The Dark-Thirty

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When I was growing up in the South, we kids called the half hour just before nightfall the dark-thirty. We had exactly half an hour to get home before the monsters came out.

During the hot, muggy summer, when days last longer, we gathered on the front porch to pass away the evening hours. Grandmama’s hands were always busy, but while shelling peas or picking greens, she told a spine-chilling ghost tale about Laughing Lizzy, a specter who’d gone mad after losing her entire family in a fire. Her hysterical laughter was said to drive listeners insane.

Then on cold winter nights, when the dark-thirty came early, our family sat in the living room and talked. The talk generally led to one of Grandmama’s hair-raising tales. As the last glimmers of light faded from the window overlooking the woods, she told about Gray Jim, the runaway slave who’d been killed while trying to escape. Gray Jim’s ghost haunted the woods on moonless nights. “Sorry for those who hear Gray Jim’s dying screams,” she whispered, “’cause they’re not long for this world.” At this point my grandmother would pause and say, “Pat, go in the kitchen and get me a glass of water.”

Many years later I learned that Laughing Lizzy and Gray Jim had been real people in our small African American community. The strange—and often sad—circumstances of their deaths had inspired the ghost stories that lived after them. They inspired me, too.

The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural
is a collection of original stories rooted in African American history and the oral storytelling tradition. They should be shared at that special time when it is neither day nor night and when shapes and shadows play tricks on the mind. When you feel fear tingling in your toes and zinging up your spine like a closing zipper, you have experienced the delicious horror of a tale of the dark-thirty.

Patricia C. McKissack
    1992

T
he plantation bell summoned everybody to the big house. About fifty slaves, including the inside help, gathered in front of the white mansion. Among them were Henri and his wife Charlemae.

Harper McAvoy, looking pale and weak, stood beside one of the big Doric columns that supported the second-story porch. After nervously clearing his throat, he announced in a not-so-steady voice, “I’ve sold Henri.”

One of the slaves screamed, Charlemae perhaps, Harper didn’t know for sure. As he
hurried back inside the house voices called after him:

“No, not Henri.”

“Massa! What about Charlemae and the baby?”

“Who will see after things round here?”

“What will become of us all …?”

Harper raced to his study, where he barricaded himself against the onslaught of questions. “I sold Henri!” he said, giggling foolishly. “I did it! Now I’ll be rid of him.”

Suddenly the door to his study burst open. “Do you hate me that much?” Henri asked without hesitation. “Enough to destroy Pin Oak?”

Harper scurried behind his desk to put a barrier between them. “I owe you no explanation. You’re my slave!”

Harper’s resentment of Henri began in childhood. Actually their story started with Amos McAvoy, the former master of Pin Oak. Amos had inherited the estate from his father, Thomas McAvoy, who had built it the same year Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States. Only Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage equaled Pin Oak’s graceful architectural styling and elegant setting.

Amos McAvoy had been a tall, red-headed man with a square-cut chin and deep-set green eyes. He’d courted the lovely Alva Dean from Spring Manor and won her over with his dashing style and devil-may-care charm. Their spring wedding united two old Tennessee families—the Deans and the McAvoys—two fortunes and two hearts. But the marriage lasted only a year.

The night they told Amos that Alva had died in childbirth, he locked himself in her room and wept bitterly. When Amos finally emerged the next morning, he named his son Harper, then abandoned Pin Oak, leaving it to be run by overseers.

For ten years Harper saw Amos only a few weeks during harvest season. The rest of the time his father stayed in New Orleans. The boy was left in the charge of his grandmother Dean, who showered him with everything her money could buy. But material possessions and her love were no substitute for the thing he most desired—his father’s acceptance.

“He would rather I had died,” Harper told his grandmother. And no matter how much Amanda Dean tried to deny it, they both knew it was true. To ease his pain, Harper taught himself not to care.

Then one day Amos unexpectedly arrived at the Deans’ Spring Manor. Harper slipped down the steps and stood outside the parlor, where he listened to the conversation.

“I’m returning to Pin Oak,’ Amos said. “And I want my son to come live with me.”

“There’s nothing I can do to stop you,” Amanda answered coldly. “But why now after all these years? You’ve never taken the slightest interest in the boy before.”

“I know. And it was wrong,” he admitted, “but I plan to make it up. I’ve left my affairs in the care of others far too long.”

Amanda sighed deeply. “Harper is a complicated child—I don’t think he knows how to be happy. I’ve spoiled him, I know. Perhaps it will be good for him to be with you.”

“Yes, from now on things will be better.”

Harper had lived at Pin Oak for about a month when his father announced that he was going to New Orleans. He returned several weeks later with Henri, a mulatto child about two years younger than Harper.

The boy had a mop of dark red hair, a square chin, and unusual pale green eyes. Gossip spread quickly from the big house to the quarters.

“Say the boy’s mama was one of them free blacks down in New Orleans,” Harper overheard the cook tell the driver.

“Got his mama’s skin and his daddy’s green eyes—an odd combination.”

“That’s for sure. Anybody with eyes can clearly see that Henri is Massa Amos’s own flesh and blood.”

Harper saw what everybody else saw. The McAvoys were big, strong, athletic men with ruddy complexions. Henri, though younger, was taller and more solidly built than Harper. A frail child with the same pastel features as his mother, Harper hated the way he looked and despised Henri for looking so much like
their father
.

What was worse, Amos never denied a word of the gossip. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have stopped the tongues from wagging.

“So it’s all true,” Amanda Dean gasped when she came to Pin Oak, admittedly to see Henri. She fell into a chair and fanned herself, then turned to Amos. “You and that boy are the talk of two counties. Now I see why!”

Amos sent Henri on an errand so that he could speak freely to Amanda. “The child’s mother is dead, and I didn’t want him with somebody who might mistreat him.”

“How dare you shame my grandson with this … this abomination? I’ve come to take Harper back to Spring Manor.”

“No, the boy stays here,” he answered. “Henri will be a good companion for Harper. I brought him home for that purpose.”

“Are you so blind?” Amanda said, pointing an accusing finger. “This can only lead to disaster.”

Amos ignored his mother-in-law’s counsel and installed Henri as a house servant.

In time, however, Henri was put in charge of Amos’s stables. Pin Oak’s horses were some of the finest in the state, and Amos was a gifted horseman. Henri enjoyed taking care of Hercules, Amos’s prize stallion. Harper, on the other hand, stayed as far from the stables as possible—horses made him sneeze, and riding them made him sore.

“I’m hot,” Harper complained when Amos took both boys out to view the fields. “And besides, I’m not interested in how cotton grows.”

“Stop whining, Harper,” Amos scolded. “You’ll be master of Pin Oak one day. And Henri, you’ll run the place. That’s the way I want it.”

The seasons passed swiftly, until at last Henri reached manhood, tall, confident, and strong.
Harper’s jealousy of Henri grew each year until it dominated his life, and he was immersed in an ever-widening pool of anger and hatred.

Just as Amos planned it, Henri was put in charge of Pin Oak operations. Soon after, Amos approved his marriage to Charlemae, a beautiful African woman. Together they built a cabin with a stone fireplace, wood floors, and shuttered windows. It wasn’t until then that Amos told Henri he was free.