Three Days Before the Shooting ... (151 page)

“‘Not just a
man’s
life,’ I said. ‘There was a girl in it too, remember? Because he sure didn’t have that baby by himself.’

“‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ and for the first time he looked uncomfortable.

“So I told him, ‘Mr. Delano,’ I said, ‘In a way I understand your position, even though I can’t figure what the child’s so-called father’s may be; not after what he did and walked away from it. So now he’s sent you to clean up after him, and since you’re a lawyer I guess it’s legal. So all right, like I said, what has to be has to be. Therefore I’ll do whatever I can to get the boy prepared, but may the Lord have mercy on us all—and that includes you, Mr. Delano,’ I said.

“And do you know what he did, A.Z.? He sat there and
smiled!
Yes, sir, he smiled and shook his head. Then he said, ‘I agree with that, Miz Glover, and I trust and believe that you’ll find a way. And I’m also sure that you’ll make it as easy for the boy as you possibly can. That’s because over the years you’ve proved yourself a loving and responsible foster parent. I must leave you now, but before I do I assure you again that we’re all concerned with the boy’s welfare and agree with you that he’s the whole point of this rearrangement.’

“So he got up then, and I showed him to the door. He had a taxi waiting and after watching him climb in and leave, I locked the door and pulled the shades
and then sat down and started to cry. Oh, how I cried! I cried over the prospect of the child’s being taken from me, and then I cried over my being unable to do a thing
except
cry. And then it came to me that it would have been easier on everybody concerned if both me and the boy had been in slavery and standing on the auction block. Because if we had, the child would have at least grown up knowing that he could be taken away. But like I say, he didn’t even know that he
had
a father, much less one who had deserted him and his mother without even once looking into his little face. Therefore what was the child going to do when I told him out of the blue that this man who he’d never even heard tell of had decided to snatch him away from the only family he’d ever known? And not even do it himself. Not like a man making amends for a wrong he had done, but having some lawyer do it for him. A.Z., I tell you, I felt sick to my very soul! So sick that I just wanted to take the child and leave town—which was out of the question because I had all the others to look after. So I was trapped, A.Z. I was trapped by time and by the little good I tried to do….”

So
, Hickman thought as Janey’s voice trailed off,
Cliofus was right, this fellow had become strange to Janey but he was more than a stranger, and now this whole thing is drawing close to me…
.

“Janey,” he said, “I know that it’s pointless to ask, but why didn’t you get on the phone and call me? I could have at least tried to put some pressure on that lawyer, and even better, I might have caught up with that runaway of mine….”

“But I was so upset that I didn’t think about you, A.Z. What’s more, I had been doing for myself for so long that I just naturally kept my troubles to myself. And since I never had a man to turn to I didn’t think in those terms….”

“No,” Hickman said, “and you didn’t want me to know about the child’s father. I guess if you keep saying ‘yes’ to ‘no’ that ‘no’ turns into the very ‘yes’ that you were trying to avoid. So then what happened? What did you do—no, stop and rest a while, you must be tired….”

“No,” Janey said, “now that I’ve started I have to get it all out … if you’re willing to listen….”

“That’s what I’m here for, so go ahead.”

“Well, that afternoon when the boys—he and Buster and Cliofus—got home from school I was puttering around in the kitchen still brooding over how to prepare the child for what was coming. I had made them some sandwiches and was pouring them their glasses of milk to take out to the backyard where I could hear them playing and arguing. At first my heart was so full and my mind so occupied that I wasn’t paying them much attention, just listening to the sound of their voices. But then I realized that they were teasing one another about the kinds of
blood
they had, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

“The child was insisting to Buster and Cliofus that he was part Indian—which was true, even though he didn’t look it. But like I said, his mother was a Native, and not only did she
look
like she had Indian blood—which a heap of us
have—she was a pretty little thing who had both an Indian name and what they call tribal rights. I know because back there when the government handed out all that money to the various tribes her folks got their share. Few of them knew what to do with it, but with all that money Indians and Natives were riding around in everything from Cadillacs to brand-new fire trucks and hearses. But I never told the child any of this, so right away I thought, Who’s this child been talking with? And right away it came to me that it must have been that old rascal Love …”

“… ‘Love’? Is that somebody’s name?”

“That’s right, Love New. He’s been around here so long that I thought you might have known him. Anyway, he’s one of the biggest liars that ever walked the earth,
and
a hard-shelled heathen on top of all that. I’ve been knowing him for years and have tried to keep the boys away from him because he has no respect for our religion or much of anything else. But for all my trying it did little good because those little boys just
loved
to hear his lies.

“So when I went out to take them their after-school snack what the child had said was working in my mind. They were under the tree and Severen was bent over a tablet drawing Cliofus a train—you might remember that as a child Cliofus was train-crazy and still is. So I just stood there looking at him draw, wondering what would happen to Cliofus when the child was no longer here to help Buster take care of him. And when I gave them their snack and got back in the house I started to thinking about how much like slavery times our lives continue to be, and about all the terrible things that happen through black folks and white folks and Indians being thrown together.

“I mean with the whites always managing to get the best of everything and the Indians and us Negroes getting the leavings—and not always even that. Ole Love claims that being black among the Indians made him something special. Claims that with them black is more spiritual than white because they believe that black is closer to the spirits. Can you feature that, A.Z.?”

“I’m not so sure about the spirits,” Hickman said with a chuckle, “but sometimes I have a feeling that white folks have a sneaking feeling that we’re closer to the
spiritual
. Did he really say that?”

“Yes! And so I said, ‘Maybe so, but why is it that ghosts are supposed to be white?’

“So he says, ‘They are, but a black shaman can see them better and truer.’

“So I says, ‘ “Sheman,” what on earth is a “sheman”?’

“And he gets all puffed up and says, ‘I didn’t say nothing about any “sheman,” I said a “
shaman”
!’

“He sounded all riled up—which was exactly what I wanted him to be, so then I said, ‘All right, so you said
shaman
, but what is it?’

“And he says, ‘It’s an Indian medicine man.’

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I don’t know anything about your medicine man or your so-called shaman man, but now that you’ve told me about him I can tell you a well-kept secret….’

“‘What’s that?’ he says, looking huffy as a bantam rooster.

“‘It’s that you, Mister Love New, are one out-and-out sham! That’s right! And you’re probably making up a great big lie when you claim that those Indians of yours think that black is spiritual!’

“Well, he just laughed at me then and said something in his old high-pitched voice in what he claims is Creek talk—oh we have some hot arguments…. But when he left I thought to myself that if he was telling the truth, then the Africans and Indians must be the only folks on God’s green earth who didn’t see being black as a sin. But Love says that even when he was a kid they understood his being so black as giving him special insight into things. And he claims that when he was a young boy they had one of their medicine men teach him how to see the spirits and to go into trances and do other spiritual things like healing the sick. He sure does know how to cure sick horses, that I know. Because back in ‘22 he cured my Princess. He also claims that being a medicine man makes it impossible for him to ever be a Christian, and makes all kinds of fun at the story of Ham and Noah. And Moses? He says that Moses was nothing but a jackleg medicine man! The old heathen!”

Suddenly Janey threw up her hands and stared into his face, saying, “Now how did I let
Love
get into this? Anyway, while this problem with that lawyer is running through my mind I hear the boys going at one another again, with Severen sounding like a little jaybird. Now he’s telling Buster and Cliofus that his father was a big rich white man who lived up in Chicago. That’s right! Said he was over six feet tall with red hair, and that he was an engineer who built tall buildings and railroads and that he always wore army britches and shiny boots, just like General Black Jack Pershing, and that he always smoked big black cigars….

“Well, I tell you, A.Z., when I heard that about army britches and boots I pricked up my ears and wondered how he’d come up with such truck as that. Because I was sure that even an old troublemaker like Love wouldn’t tell him anything like that. The others were telling him that he was telling a whopper, but the more they teased the more he insisted. Said that not only was his daddy a millionaire, but that he was also an auto racer who could drive faster than Barney Oldfield. At that I decided that he was making it up out of things he’d seen in the newsreels at the movies. And I guess it was his making up a father who was like somebody he’d seen in the movies that gave me the idea of how to go about doing what I had to do….”

Suddenly Janey paused, her lips pressed tight as she shook her head and closed her eyes.

And now it’s coming
, he thought,
out of child’s play to become grown-up trouble…
.

“Which was?” he said.

“So with that I realized that whatever I came up with would have to be done the hard way, and even harder on me than it would be on him. Then I remembered
a white girl telling me that when she woke up one morning and showed her mother the fresh evidence of her coming into her womanhood, her mother had slapped her across the face with it and then broke down and cried. She said that she didn’t understand at the time, but that as she grew older she realized that her mother was just preparing her for all the trouble that went with becoming what she’d always wanted to be. She got what she wanted, but it turned out to be other than she expected. I realized that the two cases were different, but I decided that whatever I did with the boy would have to have the same effect. That it would have to be done the hard way, as though he’d got his wish and would have to pay for it in ways he didn’t expect. Which meant that it would have to be done in the most drastic way that I could think of….”

“… I understand,” Hickman said, “I understand, so what did you do?”

“I told myself that whether I liked doing it or not it would have to be done in a way that was so final that the child wouldn’t spend the rest of his life looking back at what he had been before it happened. Because I knew full well that he was going to suffer, there was no way in the world to prevent that. But I didn’t want him to suffer more than once, and therefore when the break in his life came it would have to be sudden, and sharp and clean. And as painful as when a doctor puts a red-hot iron to a person’s flesh to cauterize a snakebite. I warned you that this would be terrible, A.Z.; I
warned you
. Because I took what started out as daydreaming and turned it into a nightmare.

“I had no way of knowing whether he had hit upon a true idea of what kind of man his father was or not, but whoever and whatever he was leaving us for I didn’t want him to go and then be looking back and grieving over what was past and done. Neither did I want him to be always looking back like Love and talking about what used to be. Therefore, since he
had
to go, I wanted him to go and be done with us. And when he took on his father’s race I wanted him to do it without pain and be peaceful in his mind. So although the pain had begun to bear down on me I hardened my heart for what I had to do. And as you know, A.Z., when there’s need for it in protecting me or my boys I can be truly hard.”

“I remember,” Hickman said. “I’ll always remember….”

“But I mean hard on myself as well as on the child,” Janey said. “Because I wanted him to never have to even
think
that he might have been better off here with us than he would be where he was going. Or that I might have loved him more than anyone he was leaving us to make his life with ever could. So with that in my mind I steeled myself, A.Z. I dried my eyes on my apron, and while they were still yelling and teasing one another I go rushing out there to do what had to be done before I went soft and changed my mind.

“Those children didn’t even see me coming, so I was almost on top of them before they looked up—and when they did, may the Lord have mercy on my soul!

“A.Z., those children weren’t even mad at one another, that I could plainly
see. They were just having another one of those tiz-and-taint arguments that kids will have. Severen was saying that although he was a red man he was just as black as Buster, and when I heard that I leaped on that single word, ‘black,’ and used it against him like Judgment Day. Oh, but yes I did!

“I yelled at the child as loud as I could, ‘Boy, what’s that you’re saying?, and he almost jumped out of his skin.

“‘Nothing, Miss Janey,’ he says. ‘We were just playing….’

“‘Yes,’ I yells, ‘but you were playing those dirty dozens, I just heard you!’

“‘Oh, no, ma’am,’ he says, ‘I wasn’t doing anything like that, no ma’am! Buster and Cliofus were teasing, calling me ‘white folks’ and I said that I was just as black as them, but none of us meant any harm….’