When that lament ended, the banjo man put down his instrument and brought out a battered guitar.
Once again I was swept up in the mournful repetition, the slangy bent notes from the singer echoed by the guitar, the way it all fell together into a slow, rhythmic chant of pure feeling. This music was made from leftover parts of old field songs and hymns and slave music, but to me it sounded like something entirely new, and something quite wonderful.
Chapter 38
MY BELLY WAS STUFFED full of gumbo and rice. My tongue still burned from the red pepper. I remarked to Abraham on the staying power of the cayenne.
“Here, take a chaw on this,” said Abraham. From his satchel he brought forth a length of brown sugarcane. I smiled. That’s what our cook Aurelia used to prescribe for a sore throat or any other minor childhood complaint: a suck on a piece of sweet cane.
“You got enough for family?” said Moody.
“I got plenty, but it don’t look right for a gal to chew cane,” Abraham said.
She put on such a pout that Abraham laughed and brought out a piece for her and another for Hiram.
“My granddaughter is incorrigible,” said Abraham. “I hope you can forgive her.”
“I don’t need him forgiving me,” she said.
Her grandfather’s face darkened. “Moody? Watch your mouth.”
She dropped her eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“See now, Mr. Corbett, she got so comfortable settin’ here next to you that she’s done for
got how she s’posed to act. If you was any other kind of white man, she could be in big trouble right now, sassing you that way. Same thing goes for Hiram. Even more so.” I had the feeling he said this more for Moody’s and Hiram’s benefit than for mine. Moody kept her eyes riveted fiercely on the floor beside our table.
“See, when you’re colored, you always about this close—” he held up his fingers, indicating a tiny space—“to sayin’ the wrong word. Or lookin’ the wrong way. And that means you this far from gettin’ beat up, or kicked, or punched, or cursed. Or gettin’ strung up and killed by the KKK.”
I took a long sip from my beer.
“Everything a colored man does can be a crime these days,” he said.
“I don’t quite understand,” I said.
Moody’s eyes came up. “Let me tell him, Papaw.”
He hesitated, but then he said, “All right.”
“They’s a young fellow called Whitney,” she said, gazing intently at me. “He spent a day hoeing out the flowerbeds around ol’ Miz Howard’s house, then when she was done he told her how much it was. She didn’t want to pay. Said he hadn’t worked that many hours. Then she calls up the sheriff and says Whitney done said something dirty to her. Well, she got him arrested, but that wasn’t enough for ’em. They come drug him out of the jail and hung him up. Killed him. All because he asked for his pay.” Her eyes blazed.
“That’s the truth,” said Hiram.
“Sammy Dawkins brung his empty Co-Cola bottle back to Sanders’ store to get his penny back. Ol’ Mr. Sanders tells him niggers don’t get the penny back, just white folks. Sammy argues with him and next thing you know he’s in jail. For wanting his penny!”
“Keep your voice down,” Abraham said.
“There was a couple boys sitting on the sidewalk downtown. They was talkin’ to each other quiet like, telling about this strike of colored men up in Illinois. Well, sir, somebody overheard what they said, and next thing you know a bunch of men jump on these boys. One of ’em, they knocked out all his teeth.”
“We get punished for ‘boasting,’ and for ‘strutting,’ and for talking too loud, and for casting the evil eye. We get arrested for ‘walking too fast,’ or ‘walking too slow,’ or taking too long to say yassuh.”
Moody was furious now. Her voice carried to tables nearby. Some of the people stopped their own conversations to listen.
“Colored man looks at a white woman, they kill him just for thinkin’ the thoughts he ain’t even thought,” she said. “If he even looks at a white woman, it must mean he wants to rape her or kill her. When they’re the ones doing most of the raping and killing around here!”
“Now, calm down,” Abraham said.
“Don’t tell me to calm down! I know what it’s like. It happens to me too, Papaw.”