Catfish Alley (27 page)

I realize I've been dismissed. I start to tell him that
J. R. Purvis's name is on the postcard and so is the date, but this
son-of-a-bitch is so cocksure, I don't have the balls to argue with him. I walk
out of the studio and head down the stairs. I stop for a second, listening to
Purvis pull the door closed behind him and turn a key. I look up and see him
start down the stairs, laboring over each step. "Good-bye, Mr.
Tanner," he says.

"Um, yessir. Good-bye," I say, feeling again
like a schoolkid, slapped on the hand by the teacher. As I'm walking back to my
truck I'm wondering what exactly just happened and why the conversation with
Purvis seems so strange. It's like he's hiding something, but why? I walk a
block, then turn to look back at the studio. A big old Mercedes pulls up. The
driver hops out and takes Purvis's hat while he gets in the backseat. The
driver closes Purvis's door and drives off.

Three hours later, I'm back at my office trying to get
some work done, but I'm still stewing over my meeting with Purvis. Why was he
so short with me and why was he so stubborn about that postcard not being done
by his daddy? Maybe Purvis really didn't take the picture. But why would his
name be on it then? I don't understand why you'd make a postcard of something
like that anyway. Looks to me like you'd be setting yourself up to get caught.
But then, maybe those boys weren't worried about getting caught back then. I
think again about the way my daddy talked about being a young man in
Mississippi. My whole life Daddy complained about every step that blacks took
toward being more equal with us.

I remember when he was in the last months of his life,
living with us, before he went into the hospital. He'd sit on the porch in a
rocking chair, playing checkers and yak-king with his old buddies when they
came by to visit. I was trying to keep the business going and I couldn't stand
being around the old man for very long at a time. Alice was a saint to take
care of Daddy those last few months. I wonder what all Alice heard Daddy talk
about. The old man got plumb out of his head toward the end. Seemed like he
talked more about his younger days than anything else.

Maybe it's time I talked to Alice. Lord knows, I don't
need to be worrying about this now. My business is on the line, I'm trying to
get the bank to give me a loan, and all I can think about is who the boy was
that Daddy strung up from a tree more than seventy years ago. Disgusted with
myself, I lock up the office and head home.

Roxanne

"Grace, I've been wanting to ask you something for
a long time," I say. We're sitting on the screened-in porch of Pecan
Cottage, enjoying the late-afternoon breeze as we go over the details of the
tour. I've drafted a preliminary program and brought it by for her to look at.

"What's that, sugar?" Grace asks, continuing
to study the program through her thick glasses.

"How is it you came to own Pecan Cottage? I mean,
I know you'll understand when I say that I don't know of any black women in
this area who own antebellum homes ... well, not like this
one ...
or not because
they inherited them from family, um ... white
family ... I mean ..." I am
just
not sure how to ask this and I'm getting frustrated. Fortunately, Grace
interrupts.

"You want to know how an old black schoolteacher
comes to own a house that was in a white family for six generations?"
Grace asks.

"Yes, I do."

Grace sits back in her rocking chair and lies down on
her lap the program she's been studying. She takes off her glasses
and
absently begins to
clean the lenses with the bottom edge of her sweater. "Do you remember me
telling you that I grew up in a little house down on the back of this property?"

"Yes, ma'am. You said your mama worked for the
Calhouns."

"Yes, she did. And my grandma before her. My
great-grandma was a slave of the Calhouns and she and her husband stayed on
after the War and started sharecropping. Her daughter, my grandma, worked for
the Calhouns as a cook. My mama grew up here, too. Grandma insisted that Mama
finish high school — she was always fierce about education, even though there
wasn't much available to a black woman in those days. You could graduate when
you were sixteen if you went straight through. Mama did what Grandma wanted and
finished high school, but then she ran off with her sweetheart, Monroe Clark,
came back here a married woman.

"Mama had my brother, Zero. Then two years later
she had me. Then, as I told you before, Mama died when I was twelve. All my
life I thought Zero and I had the same daddy."

"You mean you didn't?" I'm surprised by this.
"But you didn't mention your mother getting a
divorce. ..."
I stop myself,
realizing I've made another assumption.

"They didn't divorce. The man I always thought was
my daddy died when I was just a baby. But Mama and Grandma had always told me
stories about him. So Zero and I grew up out here living near the Calhoun
house, helping out at parties, playing in the woods near this house. I helped
Mama clean and Grandma cook. Zero helped out around the yard and the barn. He
took care of the horses and parked the cars later on when people started
driving cars."

I can hear the sadness in Grace's voice. "Miss
Grace, I'm so sorry. If this is too painful to talk about ..."

Grace shakes her head. "No, no. It's all right.
I'm
old
and
only the good Lord
knows how much longer I'll be around to tell these stories. It's a good thing
for me to tell them now. But before I do," she says, getting slowly up out
of her chair, "I need to get something that I want to show you."
Grace leaves the porch and goes into the house. She's gone for several minutes.

I'm beginning to wonder if I should follow her in and
offer to help, when she reappears holding what looks like a yellowed envelope
and sits down again in her chair. She continues without missing a beat.

"So my grandma raised us after Mama died, you see.
I came home every day after school to help out around the house and to help her
with her work. The Calhouns paid me two dollars a week. I was so proud when my
savings started to mount up. Zero started working as soon as he could pick up a
broom, for old Mr. Green down at Green's Grocery on Catfish Alley. He wouldn't
get home until after dark most nights. We kept his supper on the stove. But he
was just as determined as I was to save for college. Grandma had always told us
how important education was, so she couldn't complain a whole lot about him not
being at home much.

"You remember how I told you about Dr. Jackson
helping to get Zero out of town after that business with Andy Benton?"

I nod. "Yes, ma'am."

Grace's voice cracks a little then and she takes a deep
breath. "We rushed around that night and got Zero ready to leave for
Alcorn State, and I think that's when Grandma started getting pains in her
chest. I remember noticing her holding her hand over her heart, but she never
complained. We didn't have the modern medical treatment and the medicines then
that we have now, you know. Plus, Grandma kept ignoring it, saying she had just
eaten too many bitter greens or too much onion.

"I found her one morning, just two days after Zero
left, slumped over the table in the Calhouns' kitchen. I had come into the
house to ask her a question and noticed the smell of burning biscuits. She had
put a batch of biscuits in the oven for the Calhouns' breakfast and sat down at
the kitchen table to drink a cup of coffee. The doctor said he didn't think she
suffered much. The Lord took her mercifully fast. Within a week, Zero had left
for college and I had to bury our grandmother. I tell you what, Roxanne, I had
never been so lonely in my life! Everybody I loved was leaving me — Zero was
off to college, Grandma died, Junior had already gone on the road to play his
music, and Adelle was going to Tuskegee for nursing school."

I feel the old familiar pain in my own chest. My mother
died when I was just a young woman. There have been so many times when I miss
her. Wished I could talk to her, ask her advice, or cry on her shoulder.

"What did you do then?" I ask.

"After Grandma died, Zero tried to convince me
that he should stay and not go back to college, but I told him absolutely not!
He had worked too long and too hard to quit now before he even got started
good. I had a little money that Grandma left to me in her will and I offered to
take over Grandma's job for the Calhouns until I could save enough money for
school. I had my heart set on going to Tougaloo College, you see, and becoming
a teacher.

"Then one afternoon in late September, about a
month after Zero left and Grandma died, Mr. Calhoun knocked on the door of my
little house. He had what looked like an old letter in his hand and he said,
'Grace, I wonder if you would come up to the house. Mrs. Calhoun and I need to
talk to you about something real important.' Well, I'm here to tell you that
just about scared the living daylights out of me! I thought for sure they were
going to tell me I had to get off the property."

"I thought you told me that your mother got the
deed to that house in old Mr. Calhoun's will?" I ask.

"She did. And it passed on to me. But you have to
remember, I was a young girl then, only eighteen years old. And it was 1931. I
didn't know but what he could make me move off of his property, him being the
landowner and all."

"Yes, you're right. I can see how you'd be
scared."

"I came up here to the big house. As a matter of
fact, we sat right where you and I are sitting today. I remember because there
was a cool breeze that evening. Very unusual for September. We talked about how
it smelled like rain and we laughed about how Grandma could always tell when it
was going to rain by the way her knees ached.

"I was a might shaky when I sat down, but Mr. and
Mrs. Calhoun were smiling and friendly, so they put me at ease a little. And
then Mr. Calhoun pulled out that letter he had in his hand earlier and started
to tell me about it."

September 1931

"Grace, Ruth and I have some
news for you," Mr. Calhoun says, and he looks at me over his small round
spectacles. He's holding a yellowed-looking piece of paper in one hand and an
old envelope in the other. From where

I sit, I can't make out any of the
writing, but the stamp on the envelope must be foreign. It isn't like any
postage stamp I've ever seen around here. I cross my ankles and try to keep my
hands still. What could this be about? Are they unhappy having a colored woman
living alone on their property? Are they thinking about hiring someone else?
Are they unhappy with my work? I try to keep the panic down.

All the way up here when I was
walking from the little house, I've been thinking of other jobs I could do and
who might be hiring in town. There's always the garment plant. That's what I'd
planned in the first place. Maybe I could take the little bit of money that Grandma
left me and go to nursing school with Adelle. The problem with that is I don't
want to be a nurse. I don't have the stomach for it. I want to be a teacher.
I've always wanted to be a teacher.

Mr. Calhoun looks at Ruth, who
smiles at me reassuringly, and then back at me. "As you know, your
grandmother kept her will in my father's safe."

"Yessir, I did know that. She
always said it would take a lot longer for Pecan Cottage to burn up than it
would our house."

"That's right. I remember her
saying that. Anyway, after Daddy died and my older brother died and I realized
that I was going to inherit the place, I spoke to your grandmother about her
will and she said that she would like to just keep it right where it was. So we
left it there for safekeeping."

"So is this something about her
will?" I ask. "I mean, I thought all of that was settled?"

"No, no," he says.
"Everything is fine with the will. But when we were looking in the safe
for your grandmother's will, we found a letter tucked inside your grandmother's
document. I had never seen the letter before and it has to do with you and your
family."

I'm racking my brain for what might
be contained in this mysterious letter. I sit silently waiting for Mr. Calhoun
to continue.

"As you probably know, I had an
older brother, Gerald, who was a pilot for the French air force during the
Great War."

I nod. "Yessir, I remember
seeing the photograph of him in his uniform, standing in front of an airplane.
I always liked it when I got to dust the parlor because I could look at all of
the photographs. ..." I stop talking, realizing I'm bordering on nervous
chatter.