Gathering of Waters (15 page)

Later, as the small group convened on Moe Wright’s porch, Tass repeated her mother’s threats for her friends.

“Aww, Tass, don’t take it no kinda way,” Padagonia said without moving her eyes from the checkerboard. “She just don’t want you to go and get yourself in trouble like Verna did.” She then made a big show of triplejumping Emmett’s cousin Hank. “King me, nigger!” she cried triumphantly.

Hank shook his head in wonder. “How do you keep doing that?”

Emmett scratched his chin. “Verna? Who’s that?”

“You don’t know her. She used to live over near the Sheridan place, but her mama sent her to Philadelphia when she got in trouble.”

“Trouble?”

Padagonia placed her hand just below her breast and carved an invisible arch through the air. “
Trouble.
”

“Oh,” Emmett groaned, and then looked at Tass. “Your mama think … that me and you …”

Tass sucked her teeth. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

“King me!” Padagonia shouted again.

Hank jumped up and kicked the board off the milk crate, sending the black and white chips soaring into the air.

“Sore loser,” Padagonia huffed as she scrambled to gather the chips.

Hank stomped down the steps. “I’m going to the store.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s time,” Emmett said, and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers.

“See ya tomorrow then,” Padagonia responded, and then looked at Tass. “You ready?”

Hank blinked. “Y’all ain’t coming?”

“Ain’t got no money,” Tass said.

“Come on, I’ll treat,” Emmett offered.

At Bryant’s grocery store, Emmett bought them all ice pops with frozen gobstoppers in the center. Hank suggested that they have a contest.

“First one to get to the gobstopper wins.”

That was obvious, but the rules needed to be made supremely clear.

Licking. Only licking.

Biting was an automatic disqualification.

The first one to get to the gobstoppper would be declared the winner. The prize? The title of fastest licker in town.

They were just a few strides away from the store and already licking furiously on their ice pops when Carolyn Bryant stepped out onto the porch, pulled her chestnut hair off of her shoulders, and wrapped it into a loose knot.

Their easy laughter floated over to her and raised a smile to her lips. Maybe that’s why she called out to him, because he was young and carefree and she missed that part of her life. She was still young herself, just twenty-one—but married to a man who was rarely home, and when he was home, all he wanted to do was drink beer and fuck. They never went anywhere, not even to the movies or on a picnic.

Perhaps the sight of the group of young people immersed in play and not work or marriage made her nostalgic for her own days of freedom.

In her mind she screamed,
I want to come along and play
the licking game!

But that was impossible in the world she came from and the world she lived in.

So after tying her hair into a knot, Carolyn skipped out into the road, cupped her hands around her mouth, and hollered, “Hey! Do that whistle for me again, would you?”

And he did and the sound made Carolyn happy, it made her feel included in something free and forbidden.

Unfortunately, at that very moment a green Buick was rolling up the street. It slowed as it approached the group of teenagers. When it was upon them, the driver revved the engine and spun the wheels, creating a thick cloud of dust.

The teenagers covered their ice pops with their hands and backed away from the road. A moment later, the car screeched off and disappeared down the street.

The contest continued.
Lick, lick, lick …

When they reached the bend, Emmett was the clear winner. He raised the purple gobstopper victoriously into the air. “I am the king!”

Hank laughed, and gave him a shove. “The title is fastest licker in town.”

“I think I should get a prize,” Emmett beamed.

“Ain’t nobody got nothing to give you, fool!”

“I think Tass got a prize for you, Bobo,” Padagonia teased.

Tass’s mouth fell open. “What?”

“Aww, man,” Hank cried, and threw his hands up into the air. “Y’all been giving each other googly eyes for days now. Just go on ahead and get it over with already!”

Emmett feigned ignorance. “Get
what
over with?”

“Just kiss her! You know you want to!” Padagonia shrieked with impatience.

“W-what?” Tass uttered again.

Emmett turned to her. “You want to?”

Did she want to? Was water wet?

Tass shrugged her shoulders. “Well, if you want to,” she mumbled.

“Yeah, I guess,” Emmett mumbled.

“Aww, we ain’t got all night!” Hank bellowed.

“Shut up, man!” Emmett said, and then grabbed Tass by the hand, gently pulled her to him, and brought his lips toward hers.

Tass would always remember the scent of the grape ice pop on his breath and the way he closed his eyes just before their lips met.

Hank yelped and clapped and Padagonia tugged Tass away, exclaiming, “Save some for another time, girl!”

Tass’s head was spinning and she thought,
This is
what being drunk must feel like.

“Come on, Dorothy Dandridge.”

Padagonia hooked her arm around Tass’s waist. “We’ll see y’all tomorrow,” she yelled to the boys.

“By-eeee,” Tass sang.

Emmett rolled his shoulders and waltzed toward home with the air of a young man who had a long and full life ahead of him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I
t wasn’t nothing.”

“Nothing? A nigger whistling at you is nothing?” In the small apartment above the store, J.W. Milam, Carolyn’s brother-in-law, paced the floor and puffed savagely on his Winston cigarette.

“Niggers are well aware that they ain’t suppose to whistle at white women. They know that!”

On the couch, nursing a glass of whiskey, was Carolyn’s husband, J.W.’s younger half-brother, Roy Bryant.

J.W. glared at him. “Roy!”

Roy’s head popped up. “Yeah?”

“Don’t you care about what the boy done to your wife?”

Roy swirled the whiskey around the glass. “Yeah, I guess so.”

J.W. exploded: “You guess so? This is your wife’s honor we talking about, boy!”

J.W. leapt across the room, caught Roy by the collar, hauled him off the couch, and then shoved him back down again. Roy didn’t even try to defend himself. J.W. outweighed him by twenty pounds, five years, two tours in World War II, and a half a bottle of whiskey.

“Ain’t you got no balls?”

Roy looked down at his hands.

J.W. snatched the whiskey bottle from the table and turned it up to his mouth.

“J.W., let’s just forget about this. That boy ain’t meant no harm,” Carolyn insisted.

J.W. burped and slapped his chest. “I can’t do it.” He thumped his temple with his fingers. “I wish I could forget it, darling, but it’s seared into my brain.”

Carolyn wrung her hands and shot Roy a nervous look.

“Get up, boy!”

Roy shook his head. “I’m tired, J.W. Just go home and sleep it off.”

J.W. eyed him for a long, intense moment, before he reached around and pulled a gun from the waistband of his trousers. He licked his fingers, smeared the saliva over the nozzle, and aimed it at Roy’s heart.

Carolyn screamed and lunged at J.W. He knocked her back with one hefty swing of his arm.

“Either we gonna handle this tonight, or I’ma blow you away,” J.W. sneered drunkenly.

Roy nervously licked his lips. “Okay, J.W. Whatever you say.”

They barreled down the road in silence. Roy looked up at the dark sky and wondered where in the world the moon had gone off to. J.W. drained the bottle of whiskey and tossed it out the open window and then stepped down harder on the accelerator.

As they approached Moe Wright’s house, the dogs in the yard barked and tugged on their chains. Inside a light came on, and soon after that Moe Wright was standing in the doorway dressed in a ragged T-shirt and striped pajama pants. He raised his hands over his eyes, squinting against the bright headlights that J.W. aimed on the house like a cannon.

“Who that?”

J.W. climbed out of the car and started toward the house. Roy followed.

“Moe, you know me, dontcha?”

Moe lowered his hand. “Yes sir, Mr. Milam, I sure do.”

“Good. Look here, I come for the Chicago boy.”

Moe frowned. “May I ask why, Mr. Milam?”

J.W. turned around and looked at his half-brother. “Tell ’em why, Roy.”

Roy smirked, cleared his throat, and whispered, “He, uhm—uhm, whistled at my wife.”

Moe Wright’s wife Mary appeared in the background dressed in a tattered pink robe. She tugged at the scarf on her head as she peered over her husband’s shoulder.

“My boy? You sure ’bout that, suh?”

“Sure ’bout what?” Mary Wright whispered.

“Your nephew whistled at my brother’s wife,” J.W. spat. “And we come to school him on how white women are to be treated in Mississippi!”

“Mr. Milam, Mr. Bryant, you know my grandnephew ain’t from ’round here, he don’t know the ways of the South—”

“Well, that’s why we here, Moe. We gonna teach him and we gonna teach him for free,” J.W. cackled, and pushed past Moe.

Moe caught him by the shoulder. “Now wait a minute, Mr. Milam, I will whip the boy myself. I’ll whip him and put him on the next train back to Chicago.”

J.W. glared down at the man’s black hand. “Take your hand offa me, nigga!” he sneered, and Moe’s hand dropped heavy as lead down to his side.

“I don’t want no trouble, Mr. Milam.”

“Too late for that. Now where is he?”

Mary clutched her robe. “Moe, don’t let them take him,” she sobbed.

What was Moe to do? He was an old man, an old black man who only had his words, and he had used them and they had failed him.

Moe pointed down a narrow hallway.

J.W. kicked in the first door he came upon and two dark bodies sprang up from the bed. J.W. stepped in and peered at them. He couldn’t make out their faces in the dark, but he knew that neither boy was the one he was looking for because they were too thin.

“Where’s the nigger from Chicago?”

One lanky boy pointed at the wall.

The sound of the first door being kicked in startled Emmett and Hank, who shared a bed in the second room. They were sitting up, rubbing sleep from their eyes, when J.W. burst in.

“You!” he yelled, pulling the gun from his waistband and waving it at Emmett. “Get up and get dressed, you’re coming with me.”

After Emmett threw on some clothes, J.W. and Roy each grabbed one of his arms and dragged him into the front room where Moe and his wife were standing shoulder to shoulder, cradling a battered coffee can.

“P-please,” Mary said as she pried the lid off the can and pulled out a roll of money. “This is all we have—one hundred and seven dollars. You can have it, just leave the boy.”

J.W. and Roy stared at the roll of money, and for a moment a flicker of hope whipped in that room. But just as quickly as it came, it was gone.

“Don’t want your money.”

Emmett struggled to escape from their grip. His face was slick with tears. He looked at his aunt and uncle and said, “Please don’t let them take me. Please!”

Mary echoed her grandnephew’s request with her own shrill: “PLEASE!”

J.W. just laughed and he and Roy dragged that boy out of the house, tossed him into the backseat of the Buick, and tore off into the night.

The empty beer and Coke bottles on the car floor rolled and clashed noisily with every wild turn J.W. forced the car into.

“You gonna get yours, nigger, just wait and see. You gonna get yours real good!”

J.W. ranted and raged and pounded angrily on the dashboard, while Roy sat perfectly still with his hands folded neatly in his lap as though he might be praying.

Two miles away from the Wright home, J.W. eased his foot off the gas and the speedometer’s needle dropped from 70 to 40. He turned on the radio and casually tossed his arm out of the window, his fingers drummed the car door in time with the music. They sailed along as if they were going to a baseball game or down to the river for a swim.

Roy chanced a glance at his brother’s face and saw that he was smiling.

In the backseat, Emmett was shaking so bad, he thought he would shake himself right out of his skin. Try as he might, he couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening to him. He kept closing his eyes and counting back from three, hoping that when he opened them again he would be not at his uncle’s house but far and away from here—back home in Chicago, in his own bed, his mother in the room next door.

He wasn’t even clear as to what he had done. The words the crazy white man had shouted in his face didn’t make any sense at all. A white woman? He didn’t know any white women. Did he? Emmett wracked his mind but the only thing that continued to float to the surface was that he might not ever see his mother again.

J.W. pulled the car up alongside a barn and turned off the engine. “Stop your blubbering,” he yelled as he reached in and yanked Emmett from the backseat. “Get the flashlight out the trunk,” he ordered Roy.

The barn was empty save for a few tools hanging on the wall. J.W. brought in the stench of whiskey, and Emmett, of course, the fear.

Roy handed J.W. the flashlight and went back to keep watch at the door.

“Take off your clothes, nigger!”

J.W. trained the beam of light on Emmett as he quickly peeled himself out of his T-shirt and jeans.

“Your draws too!”

Roy gave his head a pitiful shake and wished that someone would come along and stop this thing.

When Emmett was naked, J.W. ridiculed his penis.

“Roy, you see this? They say niggers got big dicks.

Well, his ain’t but the size of my pinky finger.” He laughed. “Come here, come look at it!”

Roy shook his head. “Nah, that’s okay, J.W.”

Emmett brought his hands over his genitals and screamed through his sobs. “Shut up already and go on ahead and get it over with!”

Roy was thinking about running. In high school, he had been Roy Bryant, Junior Varsity Track Star. He peered down at his feet and wondered if he still had the speed to outrun a bullet.