The Search for Belle Prater (4 page)

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Authors: Ruth White

BOOK: The Search for Belle Prater
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Our
next stop was Deep Vale, which had a real depot with a diner. Woodrow and I started to follow Cassie inside, but before we got to the door, Woodrow caught sight of a rest room sign on the outside of the terminal.
“There,” he said, and sprinted for that door. “I’ll meet y’all inside.”
“Oh, shucks!” Cassie said, and took off after him.
He had his hand on the door knob when she reached him and gave his arm a jerk.
“Woodrow, wait!”
Woodrow turned around, and I could see the annoyance on his face, because he was bustin’ to go.
“What is it?” he said irritably.
“You don’t want to go in there, Woodrow.”
“Course I do!” he hollered.
“Just take a look at the sign there,” Cassie said as she jerked her thumb toward the door.
“It says MEN,” he said, exasperated.
“What does it say above that?”
Cassie yelled.
He looked again.
“It says COLORED,” he yelled back at her.
That stopped him short because Woodrow had never seen such a sign before.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
“It means white folks have their rest rooms inside the terminal. These here are for colored folks.”
“Why?” Woodrow said.
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know, but that’s the way it is. White folks have their rest rooms, and colored folks have theirs.”
Disgruntled, Woodrow followed Cassie into the terminal and without another word went to the WHITE ONLY men’s room, while Cassie and I went to the WHITE ONLY women’s room. Then we met in the diner, perched on stools in front of the counter, and ordered hot cocoa.
“That’ll be fifteen cents,” the waitress said.
We hauled out our nickels and paid.
“Will we see any colored folks today?” Woodrow asked Cassie.
“I imagine so,” she said.
“I never saw one in person before,” Woodrow said, “but I’d like to.”
“You never saw colored people?” Cassie said. “How about you, Gypsy?”
“Yeah, we always see them in Bristol when Mama takes me shopping there,” I said.
“I’ve seen some in pictures in the paper,” Woodrow said, “and in the movies and on television.”
“Yonder’s a colored boy now,” Cassie said and pointed to a tall, gangly teenage boy outside the window. He was wearing a brilliant jacket of red, green, and black Scotch plaid.
“A real colored person,” Woodrow said with wonder all over his face. “And look at that snappy jacket, will ya? Ain’t that the best-looking thing you ever laid eyes on?”
When we got on our bus to continue the trip, we caught a glimpse of that bright plaid at the rear of the bus, and there was the colored boy at one end of the last seat, which ran the width of the bus.
“Maybe we can get him to come up here and sit with us,” Woodrow said in an excited whisper.
“I don’t think so,” Cassie said as she took the seat behind Pap again.
“Why not?” Woodrow asked.
“It’s the law,” Cassie said in a low voice. “Coloreds have to sit in the back of the bus.”
Pap climbed into the driver’s seat and stuck up one thumb to Cassie, which was his signal to her that we were ready to move on. Then he started the engine.
“Next stop is Bluefield!” Cassie announced.
Woodrow couldn’t keep his mind or his eyes off the colored boy.
“Maybe we should go and talk to him,” he said after a while. “He’s all by his lonesome.”
“Woodrow,” I said. “You go talk to him if you wanna. There’s no law against
that
.”
“Why don’t y’all come with me?” Woodrow said.
“If we all three go together, it’ll scare ’im,” Cassie said. “He’ll think we’re gonna hurt him.”
“Why would he think that?” Woodrow asked.
“Well, some people are just plain mean,” Cassie said, “and when they catch a colored person alone, they gang up on him.”
“It’s in the paper all the time, Woodrow,” I said. “Don’t you ever read what’s going on in other places?”
“Yeah,” Woodrow said, “but I don’t pay much attention, because things like that don’t seem real to me. They happen somewhere else. They don’t happen in my world. It’s like reading about the cowboys and Indians in the frontier days.”
The boy had taken off the plaid jacket, and was sitting there in a long-sleeved green flannel shirt that was open at the neck. He was staring out the window, deep in thought.
“I’m going to talk to him,” Woodrow said, suddenly determined. “Come on, girls, go with me. He won’t be
scared of us. It’s broad daylight and there’s other people around.”
Cassie and I looked at each other and reluctantly agreed. Nearly everybody stared at us as we stood up and approached the colored boy. He watched us suspiciously.
“Hey there, what’cha doin’?” Woodrow greeted him as friendly as could be.
“Doin’ nothin’,” he replied, looking us over. “Whadda you want?”
“Nothin’,” Woodrow said as he perched on the center of the long seat, and Cassie and I took the other end. “I never saw a colored boy in person before, and I thought I’d just say hey.”
“Say what?” the boy snapped, with a combination of anger and disbelief. “You never saw
what
?”
“A colored boy,” Woodrow replied innocently. “Nor any colored person. Never saw one before. Never did, and that’s the truth.”
“Huh!” the boy grunted. “Colored? You still ain’t seen one!”
“Meaning what?” Woodrow said.
“I mean colored is red and green and yellow and blue. This skin here …” He held out a hand to demonstrate. “This skin is black! It ain’t colored! It’s black!”
“Well, it looks more brown to me,” Woodrow said,
and it was the truth. “To me it looks about the color of a pecan.”
Now, people in our neck of the woods were in the habit of pronouncing that word
PEE-can
because that’s how we had always heard it said.
But apparently we were wrong, because the boy said knowingly, “I think what you want to say is
pe-CAN.
You say
CAN
harder than pee. A
pe-CAN
is a nut. They grow ’em in Georgia. A
PEE-can
is something you put under your bed at night.”
“Well, shut my mouth,” Woodrow said.
And that’s just what he did. What can you say after a speech like that? So we rode along in silence for a minute, then Woodrow thought of a retort.
“Well, my skin’s not white either!” he said. “Just look at it!” Woodrow spread one hand out flat against his thigh. “I’d say that skin there is more the color of … Now, what would you call it?”
“An English walnut!” the boy said as quick as that. “Your skin is the color of an English walnut.”
“Hmmm,” Woodrow muttered, studying his own hand. “An English walnut, huh? Well, I guess that makes us just a couple of nuts, don’t it?”
Cassie and I giggled, but the boy didn’t crack a smile. He was ignoring us and sizing Woodrow up.
“We want to be called black,” he said then, real serious.
“Okay, black it is,” Woodrow said.
He touched the material of the plaid jacket, which was folded neatly on the seat between him and the boy.
“I sure do like this,” Woodrow said.
At once the boy snatched the coat up and stuffed it between himself and the window.
Woodrow was not discouraged. “That’s what I said to my cousin Gypsy and our friend Cassie here, when we first saw you,” he went on. “I said you looked snappy as all get-out.”
Woodrow gestured to us as he said our names, and the boy glanced our way.
“Hey,” we said, and he nodded at us.
“Did your mama buy you that coat?” Woodrow asked.
“My mama’s dead.”
“Oh. What about your daddy?”
“He’s dead, too.”
“Then who do you live with?” Woodrow probed, but the boy didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and stared out the window.
“What’s your name?” Woodrow plowed on.
“Joseph.” He answered that one. “Joseph Lincoln. What’s yours?”
“I’m Woodrow Prater. Where you from, Joseph?”
“Asheville, North Carolina,” Joseph replied, “and I’m on my way to Bluefield, West Virginia.”
“We’re going to Bluefield, too. How old are you, Joseph?”
“Me? I’m … well, I’m fifteen, almost sixteen.”
Joseph pulled his frame up as big as it would go and looked down his nose at us. “How old are
y’all
?” he said.
“I’m thirteen, and so’s Gypsy,” Woodrow said. Then he laid a hand on Cassie’s arm and added, “And Cassie here is a wee lass, but she’s older than the hills.”
Cassie laughed good-naturedly, but Joseph remained stone-faced.
“What are you going to Bluefield for?” Woodrow asked.
Joseph ignored Woodrow’s question again but asked one of his own. “How come you never saw black people before? Did’ja grow up in a cave?” “Just about,” Woodrow replied. “I spent my whole life in a real backward place—Crooked Ridge, Virginia. Never been anywhere else but Coal Station, and it’s just a wide place in the road. I live there now with Grandpa and Granny. But my grandpa is gonna take me to Baltimore, Maryland, in about a month.”
Joseph said nothing.
“You wanna know why we’re going to Baltimore?” Woodrow said.
“why?”
“He’s taking me to a famous hospital. It’s called Johns Hopkins. A doctor there is gonna look at my eyes and see if he can make ’em straight.”
Woodrow pushed up his glasses, and didn’t even blink
as Joseph squinted into his face, and examined his crossed eyes.
“Have you ever been to Baltimore?” Woodrow asked.
Joseph shook his head.
“I guess you’re in the ninth grade now, Joseph?”
“No, I’m in the seventh …” Joseph said. He paused. Then the hardness of his face melted. “Okay, Woodrow, you caught me. I lied about my age ’cause people say I look older’n I am. I’m just thirteen, too.”
“Well, you sure had us fooled,” Woodrow said. “Didn’t he, girls?”
Woodrow turned to me and Cassie. We nodded.
“Are you going to an orphanage?” was Woodrow’s next question to Joseph.
“No, I am not!” Joseph said emphatically.
“Well, I know you can’t live by yourself,” Woodrow said. “There’s a law against it—or something.”
“I was living with that stinkin’ Roosevelt Hale!” Joseph said.
“Was?”
from Woodrow.
“See, I have a brother named Ethan,” Joseph started explaining, “and after Mama died two months ago, Ethan had to make a living for us ’cause he’s sixteen and he could get a job where I couldn’t. We had no more kin nearby to do for us, but I thought we were doing just fine by ourselves.
“Then Ethan got a chance to go to California with his
buddies, so he dropped me off at Roosevelt Hale’s, who was no more to us than a neighbor we’d hardly ever spoke to before. And Ethan left me there with nothing but a few clothes and a ten-dollar bill. He told me he would send for me someday.”
Joseph paused and swallowed hard.
“Someday?”
Joseph’s voice broke on the word. “What does that mean? A whole month went by and he didn’t even write. Next thing I knew, Roosevelt had my coat hanging with his own things. Said he would keep it ‘safe’ for me. Safe, huh! He aimed to have it for his own self. I knew that!
“He made me do all the work at his place … to earn my room and board, he said. And if I didn’t do it, he’d whoop me.”
I entered the conversation. “Gee, that sounds like the Joseph in the Bible, who was sold into slavery by his brothers.”
“You’re right!” Woodrow exclaimed. “And he had a coat of many colors, too!”
“Can you interpret dreams?” Cassie asked him. “Like the Joseph in the Bible?”
Joseph shook his head.
“Well, I can,” Cassie announced proudly. “So if you have a dream you want interpretated, you just let me know.”
For the first time Joseph showed some interest in somebody besides Woodrow.
“Where did you learn how to do that?” he asked Cassie.
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always known.”
“Did you run away from that stinkin’ feller?” Woodrow went on with his interrogation.
“Yeah, I did,” Joseph said. “Yesterday, while he was at work, I pulled my ten-dollar bill out of its hiding place, took my coat from Roosevelt’s closet, and headed to the bus station.”

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