Queen (126 page)

    hardly contain his joy, and tears of gratitude sparkled in his eyes.

"I'll work hard, I promise, Pa," he swore.

    Alec sent him out to tell his mother, and turned away. When he spoke to

    the empty room, his voice was gruff.

"Most fool thing I ever did."

Queen was puffing on her pipe, rocking in her chair, when Simon came out

to her, a grin as big as Texas on his face.

"Oh, thank you, Ma!" he said.

    "Nothing to do with me," she said. "I don't approve. You're too young to

    be so far away from home."

Simon was puzzled. He had thought she would be pleased.

770 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "Why should I be pleased?" Queen demanded, trying to blink away the tears.

    "My little boy going off alone in the world, and only the good Lord knows

    what evils are lurking out there to snare you."

But she lost the battle, and the tears ran.

    "Of course I'm pleased; you think I'm touched in the head?" She held out

    her arms to him, and he moved into her embrace. She clung to him for a

    moment, then sent him on his way to tell his friends.

    "And don't be late home," she warned, wiping her eyes with her hankie. "I

    ain't got long with you."

    "No, maam," he laughed, and ran off into the night. Just before he

    disappeared into the shadows, he leaped high in the air, and let out a

    great whoop of joy. Then he was gone, and there was silence.

    Alec came out and sat in his rocker, beside his wife. They puffed on their

    pipes and looked at the stars.

And there was silence.

Alec drove them in the buggy to the little train depot at Sarsparilla, seven

miles down the road. Simon was bursting with excitement and nervousness. He

was very smart in his freshly pressed suit, but Queen thought he looked far

too young to be setting off on such an adventure. There were several people

waiting for the train, and as it chugged toward the depot, the white flagman

waved it down. Simon had never seen a train before, and it thrilled him, and

gave him the sense that now, truly and at last, he was on his way.

    He offered to shake Alec's hand, but to his surprise, his father embraced

    and hugged him hard, and wished him well. Then Simon turned to his mother.

    She straightened his collar and tidied his hair, and said little private

    things of love to him, and then it was time to go. He pulled away, as

    choked up as she.

    He climbed into the packed Jim Crow car with the other blacks, and a

    red-capped porter helped him aboard. He felt so grown-up, and proud, and he

    felt a brief rush of anger that he could not sit in the other cars, with

    the whites. But his transcending emotion was joy at his bright adventure,

    and the great days of his future that lay ahead.

    A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 771

    Queen couldn't bear to see him sitting there with all those grown-ups,

    and she almost changed her mind.

    "He cain't, he's too young," she cried out, but the train whistle drowned

    her voice, and only Alec heard her, and he put his arm around her.

    The train began steaming away. Simon leaned out of the window to wave

    farewell to his parents, and waved so much and leaned out so far that he

    nearly fell out. His traveling companions pulled him back in, and laughed

    at his happiness, for it was infectious.

    The train chugged away, and Queen watched it go until it was lost to the

    horizon, and only a column of smoke suggested where it had been.

    They rode home in the buggy against a lowering sky, for rain was in the

    air. They both felt a sense of loss, for this, the last of their

    children, had left home, and now all they had was each other.

"You'll miss him," Alec said, knowing he would too.

    "Uh-huh." Queen nodded. She reached out to her husband and took his hand,

    in a simple gesture that might, she hoped, let him know how very much she

    loved him, and appreciated him.

"Just have to make do with you, won't l?" she said.

    90

He couldn't fail. It wasn't possible for him to fail. It wasn't fair of

God to let him fail.

    Queen's hands were shaking. She was in the kitchen trying to prepare a

    meal, using the simple domesticity to calm herself down, to come to terms

    with the news about her boy.

    For Simon was failing. He had scraped through Lane Institute by the skin

    of his teeth. To a large extent, this was because of his financial

    situation. In order to pay his way, he had taken a multitude of part-time

    jobs. He waited tables in the student

772 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

dining room and helped at a home for wayward boys. He worked in a

greenhouse. In the winter he persuaded four white homeowners to pay him a

dollar a week each to come into their homes at dawn and build fires for

them, so that they might wake up to a warm house. He was almost permanently

tired and often fell asleep as he was eating his meals. He became the butt

of student jokes, although there was one girl, a pretty dark teenager,

Bertha Palmer, who was kind to him. Their friendship ripened and developed,

and was a blessing to Simon, for Bertha was a ray of sunlight on his

otherwise clouded horizon.

    He had almost no time to study. His grades in English and agriculture were

    good, but low in every other subject. At the end of twelfth grade, his

    average was just good enough for him to transfer to A & T College in

    Greensboro, North Carolina. There he had to reconstruct his exhausting work

    schedule, and his studies suffered. He survived his freshman year, but in

    his last sophomore semester the professor of a course for which he couldn't

    afford the books told him he was going to fail him. It was almost a relief

    to Simon, for he didn't have the energy left to fight. He had applied for

    a summer job with the Pullman company as a porter, and when he received a

    letter informing him that he had been accepted, he made his decision. He

    would work on the train for the summer, save enough money to buy a mule and

    plow, and go home to Savannah, his tail between his legs, to work the land.

    Much as Queen longed to have her son home with, her, her heart bled for his

    distress and his thwarted dreams, and for the sense of failure that, in his

    letter to her explaining his decision, was almost palpable.

    Queen's mind ran like glycerin. There had to be some way she could help

    him. She was sure it was not a question of his ability, only of his

    circumstances, and if those circumstances could be changed, he would

    triumph yet. They had a little money; they could give him an allowance, but

    she doubted her ability to persuade Alec, or even Simon, to see the wisdom

    of that. Both men, father and son, were stubborn, and even if Alec gave,

    would Simon accept? In any case, she had to face the reality, that his

    professor was going to fail him. There was nothing she could do about that.

    A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 773

    She felt old and tired, for the battle had been long, and instead of

    victory, she was staring at defeat. She opened the door of the stove to

    put more wood in, and the flames danced and sparked. She stared at the

    flames and they ate into her mind, burning her brain, bringing back awful

    memories she hoped she had forgotten.

    She saw the fiery brands of men chasing her through the woods, and a

    burning bam, and a woman on fire screaming as she tried to escape. She

    saw a burning cross, and the buming body of a man she had loved. She

    turned abruptly away from the fire, as if to block the flames from her

    mind, but knocked against a pan on the stove, with hot fat in it. The fat

    caught fire and she grabbed the pan, to move it to the sink, but some of

    the flaming fat spilled on her dress, and her skirt began to bum.

    Hysterically, she beat at the flames, but could not get them out.

    She had escaped from it all these years, but now the fire had caught her

    at last.

    Screaming for help, she ran from the shack and threw herself to the

    ground, rolling over and over in the dirt to try to douse the flames.

All the passengers on the ferry knew that Alec was in a bad mood, but

could not work out why. He grunted when spoken to, complained if he had

to give change for the fares, and would not tell anyone his problem. Fred,

who was on the ferry, tried to get a spark out of his old sparring

partner.

    "How's that boy of vour'n doin'?" he asked innocently, for surely Alec

    was proud of Simon. Everyone else in Savannah was. To his surprise, Alec

    gave only a minimal response.

"Fine," he muttered. "Jus' fine."

    If Fred had been more aware of Simon's true circumstances, he might have

    dropped the subject, and let Alec simmer in his own dilemma for a while,

    but Fred couldn't do that, because he didn't know.

    "We's all mighty proud of him," he continued, rushing in like an angel

    intent on healing. "Ev'ry nigger in Savannah's gwine have a party the day

    he graduate."

It was true. Simon represented a bright ray of hope for the

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future to this community of sharecropping ex-slaves, for whom life was hard.

But Alec would not be cheered.

    "All them niggers best not count their chickens," he grunted. He was

    surprised that he was so depressed by Simon's failure. Having resisted, so

    obstinately, the plans for Simon's higher education, he had become, faced

    with the fact, extraordinarily proud of his son. Now it had all come to

    nothing, as Alec had predicted it would, but he found no pleasure in being

    proved right. He was grumpy and miserable, but could not blame the boy for

    he had already achieved so much more than Alec had ever imagined possible.

    He cursed himself for not giving the boy a proper allowance, and swore that

    somehow he would make amends to his son, but he could not think of anything

    that would mend a broken dream. The knowledge that the dream was

    collective, and shared by so many more than those directly involved,

    depressed him even more.

    He guided the ferry to the southern landing stage, anq saw Minnie running

    down the hill, shouting at him.

    "Pappy!" Minnie cried. "Ma's run off, and she cain't be found! "

    Alec guessed immediately what had happened, and why, for there was a

    history of it, and he cursed himself again for not realizing that Queen

    would have taken the news about Simon so hard.

    Minnie had come to visit.Queen that afternoon, as she did two or three

    times a week, to bring preserves and spend a pleasant time chatting about

    the world, and the difficulty of raising a family, and seeking advice about

    those difficulties. She went into the shack without knocking, and knew that

    it was empty. She called out for Queen and went into the kitchen. She saw

    the pan lying on the floor, and the charred patches of wood where the

    flames had caught and died, and began to worry. She looked all through the

    shack and the shed, and searched the surrounding property, but there was no

    sign of Queen. She went to the mansion and alerted the gardeners, but they

    had not seen her, nor had Dora. Like Alec, Minnie guessed that there had

    been a crisis, and ran down to the wharf to tell her father.

Word quickly spread, and all the family gathered to join in

    A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 775

the search for Queen. The gardeners from the mansion helped, and several

of the passengers from the ferry, and other farmers and their sons, for

Queen and Alec were well known and respected. They scoured the fields, and

sought through the bushes on the riverbank. They looked in barns and

outbuildings, and asked everyone they met, but no one had seen Queen.

    At evening they lighted torches to continue the hunt, and the night air

    echoed with the sound of her name being called.

There was no sign of her.

    Alec came home at midnight. He was weary and worried, but there was no

    point in looking anymore until daylight. Julie had come to keep Minnie

    company, and they had cooked a meal for the searchers. When Alec came in,

    they looked at him hopefully, but he shook his head. They sat him down

    and fussed over him, and told him to eat, but he could not, knowing Queen

    was out there somewhere, hungry and alone.

    He fell to his knees and prayed that she be safe. He was not an overly

    devout man-he believed in God in a general way, not as an active

    participant in their lives-but he had no one else to turn to. When God

    did not answer his prayer the next day, he became bitter, and despaired

    for his wife. He sat in his rocking chair that night and would not go to

    bed. He hoped, against all common sense, that in a little while he would