The Road to Memphis (3 page)

“Well, you been going up there the last two years. Figure you’d be used to it by now. Y’all stay with kin up there, don’t ya?”

“Yeah, but I still get homesick. It’s not home.”

“’Ey, Cousin!” Jeremy turned. Statler, Leon, and Troy had just stepped out to the porch. “Thought you said you had to go!” called Statler. “See you got time to talk and pass a spell with that gal Cassie there.” He grinned over at me, ignoring the fact that all the boys were standing there too. “Course, I don’t much blame you for that, now.”

Little Man’s jaw tightened, and I cut him a hard look, warning him to keep his silence. He balled his fists, jammed them into his pockets, and looked away.

Jeremy’s face reddened, and he stepped back. “I’m . . . I’m headin’ home now.”

“Want us to run you up there?”

“No. I’ll walk.”

“All right, then. See ya t’night?”

“Yeah, see ya.” Jeremy nodded us a silent good-bye, turned, and walked away to the south. Statler, Leon, and Troy remained on the porch awhile talking to the two traveling men, then they got into their truck and headed west, back toward Soldiers Bridge.

Harris, too, prepared to leave. “Was hoping to holler at Stacey and them, but ’spect I best get on home,” he said, “’fore Ma gets t’ missin’ me.”

“Wait,” said Christopher-John gazing back up the eastern road. The rest of us including Harris looked that way too and waited for we figured Christopher-John had heard something, and he had. Soon a bus was speeding toward us. It passed the wagon, pulled in front of the store, and stopped, and Christopher-John, Little Man, and I hurried over. Harris stayed by the wagon. Impatiently, we waited as the bus door opened and the bus driver and several people got off; Stacey, Willie, and Moe weren’t among them. We kept on waiting, checking the windows all the while to see if maybe they were just slow in gathering up their things. But then when the two men who had been waiting on the store porch picked up their bags and got on, and so did the driver, who shut the door, turned the bus around, and continued on west toward the bridge and Smellings Creek, we realized that Stacey, Moe, and Willie weren’t coming home.

“Now, just where the devil are they?” I exclaimed as the bus sped away.

Christopher-John shook his head. “Maybe they’re still in Jackson.” Disappointment was all across his face.

We returned to the wagon. “They ain’t come?” said Harris.

“You see them standing here?” I snapped.

“I don’t understand it,” said Little Man, his voice flat. “Stacey said he was coming, and it’s not like Stacey to go change his mind, not after he said he was coming.”

Christopher-John nodded agreement with that, then frowned and stared again up the road. “Y’all . . . y’all don’t s’pect maybe something done happened to them?”

I sighed and climbed back onto the wagon seat. “Boy, don’t go to worrying, now. They probably still sitting up in Jackson, doing just fine. In any case, they won’t be coming now. Let’s go.”

Little Man took one more look up the road, and then got on in back. “Come on, Harris,” he ordered. “We give you a ride far’s your road.”

Harris nodded his thanks and heaved his tremendous body up and sat on the edge of the wagon bed with his legs hanging over. Christopher-John turned to climb on as well, but then stopped and glanced again at the road. “Boy, stop wasting time,” I said, not in the best of moods and certainly not wanting to spend any more time here.

“Something else coming.”

“Well, that’s got nothing to do with us.” We all knew that there would be no more buses from Jackson, and I wasn’t interested in anything else. “Boy, get on this wagon and let’s go!” I ordered.

Christopher-John obeyed. As he settled down beside me and took up the reins, a car came into view. Christopher-John waited
for it to pass before heading the mules out. The car, wine-colored and with chrome shimmering in the October sun, came full speed up the road. As the car drew near, it slowed, then pulled right in front of the mules and stopped. In silence, we stared at the car, wondering what it was doing stopping in front of us. Then the driver’s door opened and a handsome young man, tall and slender, wearing a short-sleeve shirt, dress pants, and a fedora stepped out.

It was Stacey.

“Well, aren’t you all going to speak?” he said.

I spoke, all right. “Boy, what are you doing driving that car?”

Stacey just grinned as Moe Turner, tall, thin, and cocoa skinned, got out on the other side, and Little Willie, a runt of a young man, got out the back. They were grinning too.

Little Man jumped over the side of the wagon and ran to Stacéy. “Where’d you get the car?” he asked eagerly as Harris and Christopher-John got down too. “What you doing with it?”

“You like it, Clayton?”

“Why, sure I do, but—”

“Then, that’s good!” Stacey slid his hands into his pants pockets and leaned toward Little Man as if to share a secret. “Because I bought it. It’s mine.”

Little Man let go a whoop of a yell and got inside. Christopher-John walked slowly around the car in awe. Harris, too, eased closer. Now I got down from the wagon and took a better look. The car was a Ford, I knew that, and it looked like new. Despite the road dust that had settled on it, there was a shine to all the chrome and a soft sheen to its wine coloring. It had whitewall tires and there wasn’t a dent or a scratch anywhere on the body. Inside, the felt gray upholstery
was spotless and unworn and the dashboard was all wood and chrome and gleam. Even the rug mats hardly looked stepped on. It was a fine-looking car.

I turned to Stacey. “Where’d you get the money to buy a new car?”

“Car’s not new,” he replied. “It’s a ’38.”

I looked again at the Ford and frowned. “Well, it sure looks like new. Where’d you get the money for it?”

“Saved it. Told you I was going to get a car.”

“Yeah, but I thought you were talking about next year sometime.”

Stacey wiped the dust from the right sideview mirror with his fist. “Was. But that was when I was thinking to pay cash.”

“When’d you change your mind about that?”

Little Willie laughed. “’Bout ten o’clock this morning, wasn’t it, hoss?” Then he took over answering my questions, and that was just as well since Stacey could be awfully tight-lipped sometimes. “That was ’bout the time when Stacey got tired of riding that bus!” Little Willie was some eight inches shorter than Stacey and Moe, both of whom measured a little over six feet. I was even taller than Willie, but height didn’t bother Willie. He talked as if he were eight feet tall. Like Stacey and Moe, he was twenty, near to twenty-one, an assured young man with all the world before him. “Ya see, lotta colored folks was on the bus traveling today, and the back seats got all filled up, so some folks had to stand. Course, now, there was some empty seats up front, where the white folks sit, but you know we couldn’t hardly sit up there, so folks had to stand and that done included the three of us. By the time we got to Strawberry, ole Stacey, he was mad as a dog! Wasn’t you, hoss?”

“You telling the story,” Stacey said quietly.

“Yeah, you was mad all right! We got into Strawberry, and Stacey said he wasn’t going one more foot on that bus, and my boy got off!”

Stacey laughed. “See you got off too.”

“Yeah, course we did! Had to keep an eye on you, man! Thought you’d gone mad, talking ’bout buying yourself a car! Moe and me, we followed the boy, not knowing how we was gonna get ourselves home. Followed him straight to Mr. Wade Jamison’s office and listened to him bargain himself a deal for this car right here! Used to be Miz Jamison’s!”

I studied the car anew. No wonder the car looked so good. Mr. Wade Jamison was a lawyer in Strawberry whose wife had died two years ago. I turned to Stacey, “Well, what kind of deal you make?”

Stacey smiled modestly. “Well, I told Mr. Jamison I knew he most likely wouldn’t want to part with the car, seeing it belonged to Mrs. Jamison, but if he was willing to part with it, I’d like to talk about buying it. He said he’d sell it to me on time, so I put every penny I had in my pocket on it, and Mr. Jamison said he’d give me a year to pay off the rest. I figure to pay it off ’fore the year’s out, though.”

Little Man sat behind the steering wheel. “Well, it sure is something, all right.”

“Yeah . . . ” murmured Christopher-John in admiration. “Yeah . . .”

“It’s got a few little problems,” said Stacey. “Heater doesn’t work very well, and the engine seems to be missing.”

“Well, I can take a look at that for ya, Stacey,” Harris volunteered eagerly. “Maybe the carburetor just needs adjusting a bit.”

“Well, I’d be obliged, Harris,” Stacey said, and put up the hood.

Harris was good at mechanical things. Though there weren’t those many colored folks with cars in the community, a few had trucks and farming equipment that needed fixing from time to time, and for the last couple of years Harris had managed to keep mostly everything running. He studied under the hood, then asked Stacey if he had a screwdriver. Stacey got him one from a toolbox in the trunk and Harris adjusted the carburetor with it. “Give that a try,” Harris said, grinning. “Oughta help.”

Stacey told Little Man to start the car. It sounded good. Stacey smiled his appreciation. “Why, thank you, Harris.”

Harris carefully lowered the hood. “It’s a fine car you got here, Stacey,” he said, wiping a spot with his handkerchief that his fingers had smudged. “One of these days I’m hoping I can get me a car and fix it up. Got that ole wreck of a truck runnin’ my grandpap used to have. Only thing is, can’t ’ford no gas for it.” He looked longingly at the Ford. “Sure would like t’ see how this one runs.”

“You on your way home?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m going to take Little Willie up to his place. Seeing yours on the way, be glad to take you too.”

Harris was elated at the offer. He grinned widely, then hurried into the back.

“I best take the mules on home,” said dutiful Christopher-John, although he looked at the car with some regret that he wouldn’t be getting to ride in it, not now, anyway. “I’ll let Mama and Big Ma know y’all here.”

“How’s everybody?” asked Stacey.

“Fine. Papa’s not home, though. He went down south of Smellings Creek early yesterday morning to do some work. S’pose to be back late today sometime.”

Stacey looked at me. “Speaking of how folks doing, how you feeling, Cassie?”

“Good enough to be going back to Jackson tomorrow,” I said.

He smiled. “Good. Now I can take you in my new car.”

Christopher-John climbed onto the wagon. “S’pose I’ll see y’all in a bit.”

“All right,” Stacey said, giving him a wave, then he opened the car door to get in. Little Man slid over, and I got in on the other side, leaving Little Man to sit in the middle.

I turned around and looked at Moe as he got in the back to sit beside Little Willie, and said, “Got something to tell you, Moe.”

“What’s that?” asked Willie, as if I had been talking to him.

“Your name Moe?” I questioned.

Moe flashed his sweet, dimpled smile at me and my upbraid of Willie. Little Willie just shrugged. “What is this? Something I can’t hear?”

“I want you to hear it, I’ll tell you,” I said.

“Well, be that way,” shot back Willie, as if I had hurt his feelings; but I wasn’t worried that I had. Willie and I were always speaking our minds to each other, and neither one of us took offense to what the other one had to say. Being with him and Moe was the same as being with my brothers. We were all too close and knew each other too well to go taking offense.

“What is it, Cassie?” asked Moe quietly, still smiling. “What you got to tell me?”

I cut my eyes at Willie. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Yeah, she tell you later,” said Willie, “’cause she ain’t
decided yet if she want me to hear it. But don’t you go feeling bad now, Moe, ’bout you and her keeping secrets from me. I’ll find out sooner or later what she feel so important I can’t hear.” He grinned. “I got my ways.”

“Uh-huh,” I said as Moe shook his head and Little Man and Stacey laughed at my usual duel of words with Willie. Then Stacey started the car, honked the horn in good-bye to Christopher-John, and sped south down the road, past Jefferson Davis School, where the white students attended, then turned east. Soon we passed the grounds of Great Faith, where mostly everybody in the Negro community attended church and where children of the community attended school. Not too far from Great Faith was where Harris lived. As we neared the trail leading to Harris’s place, we saw Clarence Hopkins standing on the road talking to Harris’s sister, Sissy. Sissy was Harris’s twin, though you’d never know it to look at the two of them. They didn’t look a thing alike. Stacey honked the horn, and Little Willie poked his head out the window and called, “’Ey, you two! What y’all know good?”

Sissy turned, stared at the car, then hollered at Harris as if she hadn’t even noticed the rest of us or the new car we were riding in. “Harris! You come on! We got work!”

Obediently Harris got out of the Ford. As big as he was, Harris was afraid of his sister and most always did her bidding. “Well, I thank ya, Stacey, for the ride,” he said, running his fingers softly over the side chrome. “It sure is nice . . . .”

“Harris! Ma’s waitin’!” Sissy shrieked, then without a wave or hello, she turned and switched up the trail.

“I best go on,” said Harris regretfully. He turned toward the trail, then looked back. “’Ey, almost forgot, Stacey, what with the new car and all, but Clarence and me, we goin’ coon
huntin’ t’night. Y’all gonna come ’long with us?”

“Coon hunt?” said Willie. “Yeah, I’ll be on there. Feel like some good coon eatin’.”

“Harris!”

“More than likely, we’ll join you too,” said Stacey as Harris backed off. “We’ll talk to you later.”

We said good-bye, and Harris followed Sissy up the trail. Clarence glanced after them.

“’Ey, man!” called Willie, his head still out the window. “You and Sissy fighting again?” Although it wasn’t any of Willie’s business if they were, the fact of the matter was that Sissy and Clarence had been seeing each other steady for the last two years and they always seemed to be fighting.