A Thousand Never Evers (19 page)

Next Mr. Hickock calls Mr. Tate to the stand. After Mr. Tate swears on the Bible, Mr. Hickock asks him how many butter beans it would take to cover Mr. Adams’s field.

“To cover it thickly, you would need fifty-eight pounds of seed per acre, so six acres would require…exactly three hundred forty-eight pounds of seed,” Mr. Tate says.

And I can’t believe someone so stupid can do butter bean math in his head.

“Now, how big is Mr. Adams’s garden?” Mr. Hickock asks.

“Well, ’bout the size of five football fields,” Mr. Tate says.

“Speaking of football, Mr. Tate, the record shows that back in high school you brought the Kuckachoo Kickers to the state championships four consecutive years. I’ve always wanted to ask, how’d you do it?”

“Irrelevant!” Miss Gold shouts, but the judge overrules her.

Then Mr. Tate spends forever boasting about how he used to be the best football player in the history of the pigskin. And I don’t need to look at Mama to know she thinks Mr. Tate would do better humbling himself before the Almighty than bragging before the court.

At long last it’s Miss Gold’s turn to cross-examine the witness. Standing beside the muscley Mr. Tate, Miss Gold looks scrawny, but she makes up for it by scaring him a bit. She points a finger at Mr. Tate and waves it in front of his face. Then she pauses beside the witness-box, one hand on her hip. “You and some of the other gentlemen in Kuckachoo told your wives you were weeding and watering when all along you were down at Roxy’s?” Miss Gold asks.

Mr. Tate looks down at the floor. “Correct,” he says.

“Please tell the court why you abandoned your responsibilities at the garden.”

“It’s simple, really. The first time we showed up at the garden to do our job, we ran into Sam Mudge at the gate. Sam tells us tending is Negro work. Says we shouldn’t let our wives talk us into doing it. Says he’d rather pay his own money to hire Bump Dawson and a few field hands to do the job, instead of watch us humiliate ourselves. Then, since our wives wasn’t expecting us home anyway, Sam suggests we go hear Thelma Peacock sing the blues at Roxy’s,” he says. “The first night Sam bought our meal. We had a mighty fine time, so the next evening when our wives thought we was working down the garden, we went to Roxy’s again. That night, if I recall, Mad Johnny was blowing his saxophone like a crazy fool! Soon it just became…well, habit.”

“I see,” says Miss Gold. “So all those evenings you were supposed to be tending the garden, you were listening to the blues down at Roxy’s?”

“And munching fried catfish!”

Miss Gold doesn’t look amused. “Tell me this. Are you the biggest seed salesman in Thunder Creek County?” she asks.

Mr. Tate stands in the witness-box, holds both hands on his potbelly. “Am now!” he says. Then he laughs along with his audience in the white rows and sits back down.

Miss Gold plants her face up close to Mr. Tate’s till his smile gets erased.

“Seriously,” he says, “I’m the most successful seed salesman in Thunder Creek County.”

“Then please tell the court whether you sold any large quantities of butter beans this year,” Miss Gold says.

“Well, there are nine hundred twenty-three butter bean seeds per pound, so let me think. I sold…three hundred twenty-one thousand, two hundred four seeds.”

I hate the way Mr. Tate talks all polite like it comes natural, when at home he’s nothing but a tobacco-spitting lout.

“And how fast do your butter bean vines grow?” she asks.

“The particular variety I sell grows at an alarming rate. Ten inches a week!”

Miss Gold struts back to her seat, opens her suitcase, and removes a green jump rope. She orders Mr. Tate to hold one end of the jump rope while she stretches it across the front of the courtroom. Then she asks the bailiff to measure it with a measuring tape. The bailiff says the jump rope is exactly six feet long.

“For the record,” Miss Gold says, “this butter bean vine was clipped from Mr. Adams’s field just yesterday.”

And that’s when I find out it isn’t a jump rope at all.

“Now then, Mr. Tate, do we agree that if a vine grows ten inches per week, then at six feet, or seventy-two inches, this vine has been growing seven weeks?” Miss Gold asks.

“Irrelevant!” yells Mr. Hickock. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Sustained!” says the judge.

“Well, then,” Miss Gold says, “let me ask you this, Mr. Tate. To whom did you sell the three hundred twenty-one thousand, two hundred four butter bean seeds?”

Even from back here, I can see sweat bubble up on Mr. Tate’s forehead. “Well, I, uh, sold them to Mr. Adams before he died. And Bump Dawson stole them.”

“Speculation!” Miss Gold says.

“Overruled!” says the judge.

“And how do you keep track of your sales?” Miss Gold asks.

“Records,” Mr. Tate says. He folds his arms across his chest.

“And with your records,” Miss Gold says, “I imagine it would be quite simple for you to prove to the court you sold the butter bean seeds to Mr. Adams, the very seeds you allege were then stolen by Bump Dawson to plant over the garden.”

Mr. Tate nods.

“Then, Judge, I would like to request that the witness please retrieve his records, so that we can admit them as evidence,” Miss Gold says.

But then Mr. Tate changes his mind. He tells Miss Gold he doesn’t have time to keep track of each little sale, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to get his records, because they’re in the bedroom where his wife’s sleeping. “She was up all night with the baby. You’re a lady,” Mr. Tate says to Miss Gold. “I shouldn’t have to tell you how hard it is to have a baby and your help up and gone to a trial.”

Mama and me, we chew up our tongues. And I know if we could, we’d spit them into his beastly face.

Now Mr. Tate’s forehead drips like he’s hiding something, and I start to wonder what it is. And I reckon Miss Gold wonders too, because when she turns to the judge, she looks like my cat does just before he pounces on a field mouse.

“Your Honor,” she says, “I request we stop this trial until the records have been subpoenaed and both parties have had the opportunity to review them. I would like them taken from the witness’s bedroom. Immediately!”

“Go on now. Fetch the records,” the judge tells Mr. Tate. “No hurry,” he adds, and winks.

Then Miss Gold looks at the judge the same way I look at Flapjack after he’s dragged a dead mouse in the kitchen.

CHAPTER 28

October 21, 1963, Late Morning

Once the case for the defense begins, Miss Gold tells the jury she’s got a witness who can prove Uncle Bump would never wreck Old Man Adams’s land. “My witness, Mr. Pinnington, will demonstrate that Bump Dawson is not a man who seeks revenge but a man who seeks justice,” she says.

A small white man with a white beard totters to the stand. What with his fancy suit and suitcase, I reckon he’s very important. While he wobbles up the side aisle, he checks his pocket watch, and I can’t believe it takes me all the way till this little man is sworn on the Bible and locked inside the witness-box to remember who he is: Old Man Adams’s lawyer, the man who gave me the television.

Mr. Pinnington is his name!

“Did Mr. Adams ever mention anything about his head servant, Mr. Dawson?” Miss Gold asks him.

“Well,” Mr. Pinnington says, “Mr. Adams did tell me it was because he was impressed by the hard work of his Negro hands, and the kindness shown to him by Bump Dawson in particular, that he wrote his will as he did.”

“And by the way, just what did Mr. Adams write in his will?”

“It’s common knowledge,” Mr. Pinnington says. “I reviewed this months ago.”

“Remind me,” Miss Gold says.

While Mr. Pinnington checks his pocket watch a second time, I start to heat up because I reckon this little man thinks he’s got somewhere more important to be.

Then he unlocks his suitcase, pulls out a heap of paper, and reads, “‘I bequeath my gold pocket watch to my head servant, Bump Dawson. To Elmira Grady, my cook, I leave my Dutch oven. To Miss Addie Ann Pickett, my cook’s assistant, I leave my television set. I hereby bequeath my furniture, my books, and the remaining contents of my home to my alma mater, Ole Miss. The house itself will be used as a gathering spot for the people of Kuckachoo. I expect the annual Christmas party to carry on without me. Most importantly, I leave my land to all the people of my community. Together whites and Negroes shall plant a garden.’”

When Mr. Pinnington finishes reading the will, a man in the first row roars, “That will. It’s a fake!” A lady yells, “Everyone knows Mr. Adams was sicker than a tick stuck in sap.” And there’s only a handful of folks in this courtroom with their jaws still hinged together.

Of course, the judge calls for order, but he’s got to bang his hammer six times before everyone settles enough for the trial to go on.

And one thing’s clear: if I don’t get a chance to tell them what the night said, folks with common sense and ordinary logic will pin this crime on Uncle Bump. And if Uncle Bump spends years behind bars without our family, without his harmonica, I wonder if he’ll still have the will to live. It’s a question I hate to ask, an answer I dread to hear.

Mr. Hickock folds his arms across his chest. He struts up to the little lawyer, Mr. Pinnington, and says, “Now correct me if I’m wrong, sir, but it doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination to believe that when Mr. Adams passed away, Charles ‘Bump’ Dawson felt he deserved the man’s land. As Mr. Adams’s head servant, Bump had grown rather uppity over the years. Some who observed Bump say he even acted as if he’d forgotten his color, since he took care of the old man like he was his very own son.”

Mr. Hickock rocks back on his heels. “Now, if in fact what you say is true, and Mr. Adams did indeed leave his land to all the people of Kuckachoo, then it stands to reason that when the Negroes were excluded from the sunrise picking, they could have been mad. But Charles ‘Bump’ Dawson would have been angriest of all. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Mr. Pinnington covers his face with his hands and shakes his head like he can’t stand to stay in Kuckachoo one more second. Then he sighs and says, “I suppose given the circumstances, yes, it’s possible Bump Dawson could’ve grown angry. But he’s just a convenient scapegoat for the injustice that has occurred here.”

“What’s a scapegoat?” I whisper to Mama.

“I reckon it’s someone folks can blame for their troubles,” she says.

Now Mr. Pinnington pops up, unlocks the witness-box himself, and hurries out the courthouse door. And I’ve got another question for Mama.

“Why won’t he stay and fight?” I whisper.

“Clean folks don’t want to get dirty,” she whispers back.

And even though I don’t have the foggiest what Mama means, I’m not about to get in a long discussion here in the courthouse, not when Miss Gold’s calling my very own uncle to the stand.

Uncle Bump trudges to the witness-box. His shackles clang. He doesn’t bother to lift his feet. They just slide along the floor. He doesn’t try to stand up straight and proud. His shoulders sag. But when I see his fists clenched at his sides, I get some hope, because hands ready to punch tell me he’ll fight for his cause.

You know how you can half close your eyes and everything looks fuzzy? Well, if you half closed your ears, everything would sound blurry and you’d swear you were sitting in church listening to the reverend and Mrs. Montgomery. That’s because at church, every time the reverend says something, Mrs. Montgomery always shouts back, “Amen!” Even when the reverend says, “Good morning!” Mrs. Montgomery yells, “Amen!”

And now that’s how it sounds with Miss Gold and Uncle Bump.

“Did you ever visit the garden after the planting?” Miss Gold asks.

“No, ma’am!” Uncle Bump shouts.

“After the planting, did Mr. Mudge hire you to weed and water the garden?” Miss Gold asks.

“No, ma’am!”

“Do you hate all white people?” Miss Gold asks.

“No, ma’am!”

“Do you blame all white people for what happened to your nephew, Elias Pickett?”

“No, ma’am!”

“Did you ever break into the garden cabin?”

“No, ma’am!”

“Mr. Dawson, did you or did you not plant butter beans over the community garden?”

“No, ma’am!”

“No further questions,” says Miss Gold.

The service is over, and back here in the colored viewing gallery, our good spirits are flying all over the place.

But that’s all wrecked the second Mr. Hickock swaggers to the witness-box. “We’ve already established that Mr. Tate sold the butter bean seeds to Mr. Adams,” he says. He straightens his bow tie and turns to Uncle Bump. “After your brother-in-law went and got himself killed, you were saddled with the burden of his offspring, meaning your hands were surely fuller than you wanted them to be.”

Mama squeezes my hand so hard I stop worrying about throwing up on the courthouse floor and start worrying my fingers will break off at the knuckles.

“Objection!” Miss Gold shouts. “Leading the witness.”

“Sustained!” says the judge. “Redirect questioning, Mr. Hickock.”

“Yes, sir,” says Mr. Hickock. “Then, to make matters worse, you learned Mr. Adams’s garden was supposed to be shared, yet you were not invited to the first Garden Club meeting. Now with all that going on, you will admit that you were an angry fellow, were you not?”

Uncle Bump stares straight ahead at the viewing gallery, but he doesn’t say a word, so Mr. Hickock leans over the railing round Uncle Bump and shouts all rough and mean, “Answer me, boy!”

A blue vein bulges down the center of Uncle Bump’s forehead.

Now Mr. Hickock yells even louder, “Answer me, boy!”

And Uncle Bump explodes. “I’m a man!” His three words rumble through the courthouse like sentences, paragraphs, books.

“Aha!” Mr. Hickock says. He raises his right index finger. “Indeed you are a man. A very angry man!”

“Objection! Leading!” Miss Gold cries.

“Overruled!” The judge bangs his hammer.

“It’s logical to assume an angry man like you would break into the garden cabin and plant over the entire field with butter beans to get revenge. Correct?” Mr. Hickock says.

Uncle Bump clenches his teeth.

“Speak up, boy. I can’t hear you,” Mr. Hickock says.

A tear hotter than Mama’s iron burns down my cheek. I’m mad enough to slaughter a hog with my bare hands. I see how our case, it’s coming apart—how the law, it’s not on our side. My throat burns raw as buckwheat. I know what I need to do, but I don’t know quite how to do it. How can I, Addie Ann Pickett, get up there in front of all these people? How can I, Addie Ann Pickett, tell them what the night told me?

But now the crickety-crack of a door rings out from the back of the courtroom, and a fuss splashes through the viewing gallery.

“What have we here?” the judge asks. He lifts up his glasses and squints at the back of the room.

I turn in my seat. And what do you know? There’s Mrs. Tate with Miss Springer. “If it pleases the court,” Miss Springer calls out, “my friend, Penelope Tate, has some rather intriguing evidence to present.”

The judge lowers his glasses back down on his nose. “Oh, I see!” he says. “The lovely Mrs. Tate! Come on up!”

Miss Springer gives her friend a gentle push forward. Then Mrs. Tate swivels down the center aisle in her pink dress and white hat. She looks just like a movie star—just like Audrey Hepburn.