The Sharecropper Prodigy (2 page)

             
Another thing that made Ben very doubtful of the assumed superiority of white men, was the fact that he had seen an awful lot of ignorant white folks. There were almost as many white sharecroppers as there were black ones where he lived.
They
weren’t any smarter than the black folks. In fact, Ben thought many of the whites were even
more
ignorant. The black folks had been slaves three or four generations ago, and many of them, the Evan’s family included, still lived and worked on the same places where their ancestors had been slaves. In Ben’s mind that was still not a good enough excuse to continue to live in squalor, but it was a better excuse than the white sharecroppers had. If all white men were so superior, why were there so many poor, ignorant ones in close proximity to him? He was pretty sure that ignorant white folks weren’t exclusive to Jones County, Alabama. Ben figured the world was probably full of them.

CHAPTER TWO

              I climbed down out of the barn loft and slipped around to the back stall  where Uncle Lee sometimes kept Dan, his old work horse. I had my fishing gear hidden under some old loose hay in the corner, next to the manger. I slipped out the back of the barn and into the woods, trotting in the direction of the creek and my rendezvous spot with Ben.

             
When I arrived at the ancient sycamore tree, I saw that Ben hadn’t made it yet. There was a giant vine, big as a man’s arm, that stretched from the old sycamore to another tree close by that sagged just right in the middle to make a perfect swing. I sat down on it and started pushing myself with my feet, swinging slowly back and forth and waiting.

             
If my Uncle Lee or Aunt Mary Kate knew that I was playing hooky from school to go fishing, one or both of them would have worn me out. If Uncle Lee knew that I was fishing with Ben, it would have been worse. Uncle Lee wanted me to hang out with boys my own color. Aunt Mary Kate liked Ben. She was always saying what a smart boy he was. “And he’s so well behaved and well mannered,” she told my Uncle Lee. “I’d much rather Tom hang around with him than those white-trash boys who don’t bathe more than once a month. And every other word that comes out of their mouths is a cuss word, just like their daddy’s.”

             
I think secretly Uncle Lee agreed with my aunt, but would never admit it. He was one of those narrow minded southerners who had been raised to believe black folks were just a notch above primates. But Ben’s sagacity on almost any subject did amaze Uncle Lee and made him rethink his assessment sometimes. Of course he would just pass it off as Ben being one of those rare freaks of nature.

             
As much as Ben liked going fishing with me, he had begged me not to skip school. “If I had a chance to go to a good school like Collinwood, I wouldn’t miss a day. Papa’s old mule couldn’t drag me away,” Ben had said. But it was almost time to start picking cotton and I knew me and him both would be too busy once it started. I told him he didn’t need to worry about school and that he already knew more than any of the teachers at Collinwood, anyway.

             
Ben gave me an inferiority complex sometimes, though he never realized he was doing it. Ben was the type that would go out of his way to keep from hurting anybody’s feelings. But he was so smart, he just assumed I always knew what he was talking about. Especially since I had the advantage of getting to attend school regularly.

             
I pulled the pocket watch my Grandpa Martin had given me from the bib of my overalls and checked the time. Ben said he would meet me at nine-o’clock and he was now almost thirty minutes late. That wasn’t like him at all. When Ben Evans told you he would be somewhere at a certain time, he was there. He owned an old watch that didn’t keep very good time, but somehow he always knew what time it was, anyway.

             
I saw movement down in the little thicket where the creek made a slight bend. I recognized the old straw hat Ben sometimes wore and saw that he was walking slower than what was his usual springy, brisk pace. I trotted down to meet him and saw on closer inspection that his left eye was swollen shut.

             
“Did that old bastard beat you again?” I asked, feeling my blood starting to boil.

             
“I tried to stop him,” was Ben’s reply. “And I succeeded, too.”

             
“Tried to stop him from what? Hittin’ your mama?”

             
“No. I just had to stop him from doin’ something, and I did it. That’s all that matters and I don’t wanna talk about it.”

             
“Well, I do! That old shit-ass ain’t got no business beatin’ on y’all the way he does. He works you like dogs and then wants to beat the daylights out of you. Somebody needs to give his ass a good beatin’. We ought to gang up on him and just whup the tar out of him. I know both of us could take him. You and Sam could both take him. Why don’t y’all?”

             
“He’d just take it out on mama when we wasn’t around if we did. Besides, I got a couple of good licks in on him with an old ax handle this time. He’s got a few pump knots on the back of his old nappy head,” Ben said laughing.

             
“Good. I wish you had beat him within an inch of his sorry old life. I know he’s your daddy, but he ain’t fit to be a daddy to you or nobody else. He’s gonna wind up hurtin’ one of y’all bad one of these days, and then who’s gonna help him pick his damned cotton?”

*****

              Me and Ben stayed on the creek for five or six hours, not really caring whether we caught anything or not. We were mostly just trying to catch up on all the news since we hadn’t seen each other much all summer. I would make Ben talk about things he had been reading and try to teach me how to do math in my head the way he did. I could learn a lot more spending a few hours with Ben than I could in a month at school. Sometimes I wondered if he ever grew tired of my constant barrage of questions, but he seemed to enjoy them and took pleasure in telling me what he knew. There was very little quid-pro-quo, however. Most of the knowledge was transferred from Ben to me and I wasn’t able to reciprocate the favor. The only exception, was that I could tell him some news of current events I’d heard on the radio or update him on baseball scores. Even if he could have afforded it, I doubt that old Rube would have ever owned a radio. He much preferred to spend what little money and free time he had in pursuit of moonshine whiskey and women. Rachel Winston was always bringing Ben newspapers, but he usually stayed about a week behind on current events, due to the fact that she sometimes had to wait and bring a weeks worth at a time. But once Ben had them, he would read them from cover to cover, including the obituaries.

*****

              When we had stayed on the creek bank long enough to leave without arousing any suspicion of my having played hooky from school, we decided to walk over to my uncle Joe Burt’s store and get us a bottle of Dr. Pepper and some hoop cheese and crackers. Me and Ben both ran traps up and down  Mush Creek and always had a little pocket money from the hides we sold to Mr. Jenkins, our mail carrier.

             
There were always people hanging around the store, but for some reason it was especially crowded today. Old Jim Fuller and Mack Brown were in there usual spot, facing each other in cane back chairs with a checkerboard that was sitting on top of an old pickle barrel between them. They looked like Napoleon and Wellington facing off at the battle of Waterloo, each one rubbing their chin whiskers or foreheads in preparation of their next life or death move. There was another bunch of men gathered around the pot-belly stove, arguing volubly about something. The stove had of course sat dormant since the first of April, but they were still huddled around it like it was twenty degrees outside and the stove had a roaring fire.  

             
“Old Roosevelt’s gonna have to do something for us farmers,” Bob Samples was saying, “he got that WPA thang a-goin’ to help folks that couldn’t find no job, but he ain’t done a dad-blamed thang to help us. I reckon we’re gonna have to all go to work for the WPA or else git on some kind of government relief. The TVA ain’t a-hirin’ no more from what I heard.”

             
I could tell by the look on Ben’s face that the wheels were turning inside his head and he was wanting desperately to say something. I was silently praying he didn’t. Some of these men had already lost their farms and others were one bad crop away from losing theirs. It wouldn’t even take a bad crop. Just one that was any less bountiful than last years. The last thing they wanted was to hear from an opinionated darkie. Especially one that was only thirteen years old. God had always been real good to me and had answered a lot of prayers, but apparently I was not in His favor that day, because Ben opened his mouth.

             
“I believe President Roosevelt is the problem and not the solution,” Ben said, as though he were addressing a classroom full of children. “You talk about things like the WPA and government relief, Mr. Samples. Where do you suppose the money comes from to fund those programs?”

             
Bob Samples just stood there with his mouth wide open. The other men all turned toward Ben and looked at him as if he was some alien creature from another world.

             
“Well,… hell boy. It comes from the government, where else? They print it at the uh…… at the, what’s that placed called Charlie?”

             
“The U.S. mint,” Charlie Stone answered. Charlie was the go-to man when it came to politics and the government. “What would a little toe-headed nigra know about it, anyhow?”

             
I was surreptitiously poking Ben, trying to get him to stop while he was still ahead, but I reckon the Good Lord had it in for me today. I was wondering what terrible sin I had committed that I hadn’t sought forgiveness for.

             
“But Mr. Stone, the government doesn’t produce anything of any intrinsic value. The money they print has to be backed up by something. They….”

             
“They’ve got gold in them vaults, boy,” old Charlie’s face was beginning to turn red, “that’s where the backin comes from. Don’t try to tell me….”

             
“Roosevelt took us off the gold standard, Mr. Stone. The government has to borrow the money and then has to pay it back with interest. Just like you do when you borrow money from the bank to buy your seed and fertilizer. The only difference is, you don’t have a printing press in your barn to make money like they do. If you default on your loan, the bank will take whatever collateral you have pledged. The government don’t have that problem. They just print more worthless currency, which deflates the dollar and causes things to cost more, and then try to squeeze all the tax money they can out of those who have it. And that number is getting smaller every day.”

             
“Well, them fat-cats up North and them big bankers needs to pay more taxes, anyhow,” Charlie said. “Their the ones that caused this Depression, a-gambling in that stock market. Now it’s time fer them to pay the fiddler since their party is over. Roosevelt is the only president we ever had who cares anything about the little man, and he‘s a-tryin’ to git them rich folks to pay up so’s us farmers and the little man can have a shot fer a change.”

             
The whole crowd started shouting their agreement with what Charlie Stone had said. Ben, however, was shaking his head and waiting for them to quiet down so he could speak again. I hadn’t realized until that moment that Ben had suicidal tendencies.

             
Ben spoke loud enough to be heard over the crowd, “Mr. Stone, have you ever been given a job that paid wages from a poor man?”

             
Charlie Stone looked at Ben like he wanted to run through him. “No, but what’s that got to do with anything, boy?”

             
“Taxing those who are the job creators even more is one of the reasons this depression goes on and on. They don’t want to invest their money in any type of businesses that might create jobs, for fear of onerous taxes the government might impose on their earnings. And you talk about men gambling on the stock market. Where else is the money to fund all these corporations that employ so many people gonna come from if there ain’t speculators willing to risk their money? Without them we’d still be livin’ like we did a hundred years ago. You wouldn’t have automobiles, or good farm machinery, or radios to let you know what’s happenin’ in the world.”

             
Ben took a long swig of his Dr. Pepper. Surprisingly, the men stayed quiet, waiting to see what he would say next. If I had laid down a wager, I’d have lost it. I couldn’t believe Ben had been allowed to talk this long without serious retribution.

             
Ben put his hands behind his back and started pacing like a charismatic preacher delivering a fire and brimstone sermon, “I believe, gentlemen, it all started when President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law. It raised taxes on things we imported from other countries by more than double. Well, those countries wasn’t just gonna sit back and let us get away with it. No sir, they wasn’t. So what they did was retaliate with some tariffs of their own. Taxes on cotton and other farm exports more than doubled. Automobiles made here in this country were taxed by Spain and Italy by four times the amount they had been. Then old Hoover decided he would go even further and start tryin’ to rein in the stock market. He thought it was over priced, you see. Didn’t believe those men that had created all that wealth was as smart as him and the rest of the federal government. So what did he do? He forced the banks to tighten up on their loans to anybody who was usin’ the money to buy stocks. He raised the interest rate on speculative bank loans. Now I don’t believe speculatin’ on stocks with borrowed money is a good idea, but if the banks wanted to risk it, what business is that of the government? When President Woodrow Wilson created the Federal Reserve, the government got the power to dictate what banks do. You see, when a government interferes with free trade, well, it ain’t ever a good thing and nothing good can come from it. But once we have a government that will give some people things they ain’t earned, it’s hard to vote them out. Nobody’s gonna vote themselves out of a paycheck they get through the WPA or off whatever kind of government aid they may be getting. Hoover’s policies may have been what started the depression, but Roosevelt’s easy money policies have just made it worse. ’Til the government gets their nose out of things and allows the free market to work, I don’t see things getting any better. And once they sink their claws in something, it’s nearly impossible to pry them loose. The great men who founded this country meant for the federal government to have very limited powers. If they could see how bloated it’s gotten now, why I reckon they’d all roll over in their graves. The sow ain’t got enough tits for all the suckling pigs it’s created gentlemen.”