Let the Circle Be Unbroken (41 page)

“But . . . Mr. Granger . . . I ain’t never registered no nigra!”

“Giving her the test and registering her are two different things,” Mr. Granger concluded. “She got her poll taxes paid?”

“Why . . . I don’t know—”

“They is,” said Mrs. Lee Annie.

“I’d have to check,” Mr. Boudein finished, speaking still to Mr. Granger.

“Then you do that. Everything in order, you let her take that test, she got her mind set on it so bad.” He put his hand on the door knob.

“But Mr. Granger . . . a nigra!”

Mr. Granger’s gaze went cold. “You the registrar, ain’t you?”

“Well, yes sir, but—”

“Then do your job.” His eyes swept once more around the room, and he went out.

Mr. Boudein stared at the closed door; Doreen’s typewriter clattered noisily. “All right,” said Mr. Boudein tightly, “what’s your full name here?”

As he checked the poll tax records, Mrs. Ellis, her voice
a raspy whisper, urged Mrs. Lee Annie to give it up. “Aunt Lee Annie, ya can’t go doin’ this now. Not after what Mr. Granger said.”

“Yes’m, I can.”

“Please, Aunt Lee Annie!”

“Leora, thought I done explained this to you. Now either you stay or you go, but hush, ’cause I’m gonna do this thing.”

Defeat swept over Mrs. Ellis’s face and she said no more.

Mr. Boudeip’s brow went up quizzically after several long minutes, then he slammed the poll ledger shut, took out a book, a sheet of paper, and a pencil, and handed them to Mrs. Lee Annie. “Section two forty-three. Explain the meaning of it on this here paper.”

Mrs. Lee Annie looked pleased. “Section two forty-three, ya say?” He only looked at her and she took it as his affirmation. “Yes, suh.”

“This here’s plumb foolishness,” he admonished as she went over to the table. “Can’t no darky understand the complexities of the constitution. Ain’t got the sense for it.”

Mrs. Lee Annie turned. “Mr. Boudein, suh,” she said. He kept his eyes on her, but didn’t acknowledge her address. “Mr. Boudein,” she repeated, her voice low and dignified. “I done studied. Done studied near a year now and I knows the constitution. Can’t nobody tell me I don’t. Knows sections one through two hundred eighty-five. Knows articles one through fifteen. Knows ’bout the judiciary and the legislature. Knows ’bout the executive too. I knows all that stuff and I wants you to know I knows it. And even if I don’t pass this here test, I knows it and can’t nobody take way nothin’ I know. Nobody.”

Then, her shoulders back, she sat down to the stares of both Mr. Boudein and Doreen. “I swear to God,” Mr. Samuel
Boudein said, shaking his head and going back into his office, “the older they get, the more childlike they become. . . .”

*   *   *

Mrs. Lee Annie had been taking the test only a few minutes when the registrar’s door opened and Russell motioned for Mama. Doreen looked up irritably at yet another intrusion into her sanctum, but did not say anything as Mama, Mrs. Ellis, and I quietly slipped into the hall.

“Russell, what’ve you heard?” Mama immediately asked.

“Mr. Jamison raised the sheriff over at Buford. Got him on the phone now.”

“Do they know about Stacey yet?”

Russell shook his head. “Sorry, but he ain’t said. All I know is Mr. David said come get y’all.”

“All right.” Mama looked at the door. “What about Mrs. Lee Annie?”

“I’ll go in and wait for her,” said Russell.

Mama hesitated. “No, I don’t think you should. A young man in there . . . well, it’ll just make for trouble.” She turned to Mrs. Ellis. “Leora, do you think you can wait for her alone?”

Mrs. Ellis looked frightened and uncertain.

“I’ll be right outside the building, you need me,” Russell assured her.

Mrs. Ellis nervously bit her lip and finally said she would stay.

Mama watched her a moment longer, as if uncertain whether Mrs. Ellis should be left alone. “Just don’t say anything more than necessary,” she instructed, “and things should be all right. But keep a close watch. Mr. Granger gave in too easily about that test and I don’t like it.”

Mrs. Ellis nodded weakly and watched us as we hurried out the door. Leaving Russell at the steps, Mama and I practically raced across the lawn and were almost at the street when someone called to us. Jake Willis came running up. His eyes were bloodshot; he was unshaven, and his clothes were wrinkled, as if he had slept in them.

“Lord, Miz Logan, am I glad to see y’all!” he laughed. “Come in town New Year’s Eve and got stuck here. My ride went off and just left me. Like to go back with y’all.”

“It might be a while yet.”

“Don’t matter.” Once again, he laughed that laugh of his. “Got caught up in a card game that took every penny I had, so’s I can’t hardly go being choosy ’bout waiting . . . now can I?”

“We’re parked over there,” Mama said, starting off again with me at her side. Jake Willis caught her arm. Mama turned, her gaze a chilling one. He let her go.

“’Scuse me, Miz Logan, but ain’t that Russell standing there yonder in front of the courthouse? He with y’all?”

“He is and we’re in quite a hurry, Mr. Willis.”

“Ya don’t say? Well, ’scuse me again. Guess I’ll jus’ go on and wait with Russell then.”

“Suit yourself,” Mama said, and we walked on.

When we reached the wagon, Mama told me to stay with Mr. Morrison.

“But, Mama—”

“Mind me now!” she ordered, without giving me a chance to protest, and rushed inside. I watched the door close behind her, then, feeling scared and alone, sat on the car’s running board, my eyes fixed on the office door. After a few moments Mr. Morrison quietly said, “Jus’ a while longer now, Cassie. Jus’ a while longer.”

“Yes, sir.” I sighed and looked around. “Mr. Morrison, where Wordell?”

Mr. Morrison, too, looked around. His brow furrowed. “Ain’t he over on the other side of the car there?”

“Was a minute ago,” put in Mr. Tom Bee. “Said somethin’ ’bout Lee Annie likin’ flowers and jus’ went off.”

Mr. Morrison stepped back from the wagon. “I ’spect then I best go look for—”

“Lord-a-mercy! What’s this here?”

I stood up to see what Mr. Tom Bee was shouting about. Coming from the north, down the main street of Strawberry, was a wagon drawn by two plodding mules and loaded some six feet high with shabby furniture and household goods while poor-looking people sat atop it all staring out blankly at the street ahead. Behind it came another wagon looking very much like the first, followed by another, then another. It was a procession. Cars and trucks were a part of it, loaded down like the wagons and coming just as slowly. Most of the people who sat atop the wagons and in the cars and the trucks were white, but there were some black faces too. All were the same, grim and humorless, reflecting the despair of the dispossessed.

As the procession grew, rolling forward as if it were one continuous body, townspeople came from offices and shops to stare silently. The people in the procession were just as silent, and for a while the only sound which could be heard was the crunching of wheels against the pavement and the whir of poorly kept motors in poorly kept vehicles. Then the lead wagon swung onto the courthouse lawn. Those following did the same and a townsman cried: “What the devil!” And another: “Somebody, get the sheriff!”

We stood, as curious as the townspeople, not knowing any
more than they, though I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the awful thing Stuart had been talking about.

“Cassie, what ya doin’ here?”

I looked across the street and saw Jeremy Simms running our way.

“Y’all see what’s happening?” he asked.

“See a whole lotta folks,” I said.

“Some of ’ems from the Walker plantation,” Jeremy explained. “They’s the ones Mr. Walker put off. Bunch of them others are day laborers and folks got put off their places a while back and been livin’ down ’long the river north of here.”

“Oh.”

“Friend of ours come up late last night and said they was gonna do this. Ain’t it somethin’?”

“Yeah . . . it’s somethin’ all right.”

“What bring y’all into town? Y’all know ’bout this?”

“We come ’bout Stacey,” I said, deciding it was better not to mention anything about Mrs. Lee Annie’s attempting to register.

Jeremy’s eyes brightened. “Y’all done got some news?”

“Mr. Jamison says he might be ’round Baton Rouge. He checking now.”

Jeremy started to ask another question, but seeing his father across the street, he said hastily, “I’m gonna hafta go, Cassie, but I’ll be a-hopin’ it’s him. I jus’ betcha it is! I’ll talk to ya later, hear?”

“Okay,” I said. As Jeremy left to join his father, I heard Mr. Jamison’s door open and ran to meet Papa, Mama, and Uncle Hammer. “Is it him?” I cried. “Is it?”

Papa put his hand on my shoulder to calm me down. “We still don’t know,” he said. He looked out at the wagons and
cars continuing to come, then back at me as Uncle Hammer walked over to Mr. Morrison to find out what was going on. “What we know is this: The sheriff there said he’d heard ’bout five boys running away from a plantation some ways south of Baton Rouge during the week of December eighth—”

“But that was over three weeks ago!”

“I know, sugar. But seems that what happened was some money was stolen and the law went looking for the boys done it. They caught up with two of the boys in a place called Shokesville. They caught two others quite a ways from there headed west.”

He was silent; I was silent.

“But you said there was five,” I said. “What happened to the fifth one?”

Mama touched Papa’s arm.

“The fifth one . . . he got killed.”

I bit deep into my lower lip, my mind blanking out, unaware of all that was bubbling around me.

“But we don’t know who the boy was. Or even if Stacey and Moe are among the five. One other thing. Seems one of the boys they caught headed west had the stolen money. The others ain’t had nothing to do with it. . . . We know, too, Stacey and Moe, they wouldn’t’ve been going west.”

Mama came closer. “What we’re waiting for now is to speak to the sheriff in Shokesville. He’ll have the names of the boys that are there. The sheriff in Buford didn’t.”

I didn’t say anything.

“David,” said Uncle Hammer, coming back with Mr. Morrison, “I don’t much like the looks of this. It could get ugly.”

“What’s going on?”

Mr. Morrison explained it.

Papa looked out at the courthouse, the lawn and McGiver Street no longer visible as the farm families claimed space for their wagons and trucks; the procession was still coming. “Ain’t it ’bout time Miz Lee Annie was finished?”

“Should be by now,” Mama said. “The section she had to explain dealt with the poll tax. She knows it well.”

Papa’s brow furrowed. He listened to the crowd, no longer silent—not noisy either, but producing sounds that massed into an indistinguishable murmur. “Hammer, I think you and me better go get her and Leora. They ain’t gonna make it through there alone.”

Mama reminded them that Russell was waiting outside the courthouse.

“Think we still oughta go,” said Uncle Hammer.

“Why don’t I go?” suggested Mr. Morrison. “That way y’all can be here come the call.”

Papa shook his head. “You don’t mind, I’d rather you stay here and see to things if the crowd move back this way.”

Mr. Morrison nodded, understanding.

“David. Hammer,” Mama called as they started off. “Please . . . be careful.”

*   *   *

“There they are!” I cried. “There Miz Lee Annie and Miz Ellis!” I was standing with Mr. Tom Bee in the wagon to better see over the crowd; Mama and Mr. Morrison remained on the sidewalk.

Mr. Tom Bee stared out, searching. “Where, child?”

“Up there at the top of them steps, standing ’longside Mr. Granger and the sheriff.”

“What’re they doin’ there?” he questioned. “Why don’t they come on down?”

“They wouldn’t be standing there unless they had to.” Mama shook her head. “I don’t like this . . . not at all.”

Mr. Morrison frowned. “Seem peculiar all right. Russell’s there too, a few steps down, next to Jake Willis.”

“Lord,” mumbled Mr. Tom Bee, “why don’t they come on back?”

Sheriff Hank Dobbs climbed onto the courthouse ledge so that everyone could see him. “You folks know this here’s an unlawful assembly!” he cried. “Y’all’s on government property and y’all’s breaking the law! Now I want y’all to get on back in y’alls wagons or y’alls cars or y’alls trucks and get on home!”

“Home, where?” someone cried from the congestion. “You tell us where!”

Another voice rose angry and piercing. “Had a home, but Hamden Walker put us off it! Now where we s’pose to go? Huh? Where we s’pose to take our families?”

“Hamden Walker say the government tell him he can’t plant all his land,” someone else shouted. “And he say that’s why he put us off it. Well, that the case, we figure maybe it’s the government owe us! Figure to stay here till we gets heard.”

A mighty clamoring rose from the crowd. The sheriff held up his hands signaling for quiet, but several minutes passed before he could be heard again.

“Now y’all wanna speak y’all’s piece, y’all jus’ gonna hafta go through the proper channels. Y’all present y’all’s complaints in a civilized manner in the proper way and at the proper time—”

“Right now’s the proper way and the proper time!”

“Yeah! You got a roof over your head, ain’t ya, Hank?”

“Y’all shut us up before, y’all ain’t shuttin’ us up no more! Ain’t got nothin’ else left to lose!”

“Should’ve stood up for the union before! Maybe we’d have something now.”

Stuart Walker leapt to the ledge to stand beside the sheriff. “It’s that damn Communist union got y’all not listening to reason! Morris Wheeler’s behind this here—I know it! Where is he? Where is that Communist agitator? You out there, stand up and show yourself, Morris Wheeler!”

“He ain’t gotta show hisself!” a voice cried out. “He been right all along. It’s you and your damn daddy and these here other landlords doin’ all the devilment!”

“Now y’all listen to me—”

“We’ll listen! We’ll listen a-plenty, when y’all give us our farms back!”

“And us day laborers get a dollar fifty a day!”