Yard War (2 page)

I had to think about my sisters. What if Farish had been the one who found that snake? She probably would have tried to pick it up.

Dee and I ran to the house. Farish was eating her pimiento cheese sandwich in the kitchen. Willie Jane was still ironing in the playroom.

“Snake!” we yelled. “Willie Jane…snake…down at the creek! You gotta help us!”

“We were throwing…the ball.” Dee took a big breath. “And Trip leaned down and…there it was!”

“Lyin' real still,” I panted. “So it can jump up and bite!”

Willie Jane set down her iron. “What kinda snake?”

“The kind that makes you sick to look at it,” I told her.

“It's light brown and dark brown with a big triangle head,” Dee said.

“And y'all didn't mess with it?”

“Unh-unh,” I said. “I did what the snake man at school told us: Take three steps back and run!”

“Where's the ball?” asked Farish, gnawing on her sandwich with her eyes buggin' out.

“Still down there,” I said, “where do you think?”

“I'm gonna go get it,” she said.

“No you're not!” I told her.

“Farish, you stay here and look after Ginny Lynn,” said Willie Jane. “Boys, y'all come on. I'll get the hoe out of the shed.”

Farish won't mind anybody unless it's something she already wants to do or you tell her five times. She dragged Ginny Lynn to the patio so she could watch. Ginny Lynn didn't want to watch. Farish held her hand and tried to sound like Mama, shushing and whispering that everything was going to be okay.

Willie Jane got the hoe and we started down the yard. She waved it around as we went, in case she had
to use it quick. That snake might have started crawling toward the house. We kept our eyes on the ground and stepped as quiet as we could.

I pointed to the spot and we walked closer. There was the ball. But no snake.

“It's gone,” I whispered.

“He's still around somewhere,” Willie Jane said. “Or his friend is.” She looked like she couldn't wait to chop up some snake salad with that hoe.

I snatched up the ball and almost fell over trying to back up quick. We walked along the bank from one end to the other, one slow step at a time, Willie Jane swishing the hoe through the tall grass. Then we looked for it over in Mr. Pinky's yard across the creek. No snake.

“It must have slithered off,” Willie Jane said. She leaned on the hoe and squinted at me and Dee. It made me so nervous, I started shifting my feet. “That is, if there
was
a snake in the first place.”

“There was!” we said together.

“Y'all better not have stopped my ironin' so you could fugaboo me about some snake.”

“We saw it, Mama!”

“We saw it, Willie Jane, I swear!”

It wasn't fair she didn't believe us.

“You better have.” She headed back to the house, using the hoe like a walking stick. “Here I am swingin'
a hoe around, my hip all stove up from vacuumin' and…”

We begged her to believe us all the way up the yard. She finally turned around before she went inside: “No mowin' by the creek, Dee, you hear me? Don't mess around down there. It's liable to come back.”

—

Everything has pretty much stayed the same my whole life. I've always lived at 5445 Oak Lane Drive, the house on the corner; my phone number has always been Emerson-68692; I went to McWinkle Elementary the whole way and I'll go to Donelson Junior High the whole way. I've added some sisters. That's about all. When nothing ever changes and everybody seems okay, you don't ask a lot of questions. But I'm starting to think the grown-ups don't have everything figured out.

I've always gone to Broadview Baptist Church, and I'm always
going
to Broadview Baptist Church. If it's Sunday morning, it's time for Sunday School; if it's Sunday night, it's time for Training Union; if it's Wednesday night, it's time for Prayer Meeting. Not to mention church softball, church basketball, Vacation Bible School, and a buttload of other “opportunities for worship and fellowship.” If the doors are open, we're halfway down, right side of the middle section.

I had spent the night at Stokes's house, and we stayed up real late, but I still had to jump up and run home and get ready for Sunday School. Stokes's mom had taken us to see
Goldfinger
at the Capri, and it was all I could think about. When I told Mama, she said, “Doris Cargyle is a wonderful woman, but she and I obviously have very different ideas about what kinds of movies a twelve-year-old boy should watch.” It bothered me in a way I can't really explain that she and Mrs. Cargyle had very different ideas. When I was little, the grown-ups agreed about everything.

It was hot in that Sunday School room, the kind of dry heat that stops up your nose and makes your back itch, and those rickety metal chairs were hard to sit in and people kept squeaking them. Plus, Mr. Dukes's fingernails were so dirty, it was hard to listen to today's lesson. What the heck was he doing before church, working on cars? He's all bald-headed and creased in the face, too. I felt bad for thinking about it, though. Mr. Dukes could help his fingernails but not his face. I sat up straighter and tried to pay better attention so God wouldn't make
me
bald and creased when I got old.

Mr. Dukes told us God watches everything we do and keeps track of how many times we sin. He said if we bump our heads or stump our toes, that's God saying, “Cut out that sinnin', or else.” I guess it must
be true, but I don't especially want God watching me go to the bathroom.

Today's lesson was about Noah. Mr. Dukes told us about the flood and how after forty days, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down, and when the dove never came back, they were finally able to get off that ark, which had to smell pretty terrible if you think about it. And then God promised not to drown everybody again, and that's why we have rainbows.

“Now, boys and girls, we need to talk about Noah's sons, who fathered all the peoples of the earth,” said Mr. Dukes. “And the cursing of Ham.” Cursing ham felt about right to me. Especially cold ham with fat all in it.

“Let's everybody put your Bible in your lap,” he said. “Ready? Genesis chapter nine, verse twenty-five!”

I've won the most Bible drills this fall and obviously turned to Genesis 9:25 faster than anybody else, and stood up
before
Donnie Rogers, even if he yelled “Got it!” Mr. Dukes didn't know who was really first because he was too busy shushing Ramona McLowry. Ramona does have some long, thick blond hair. I'm not saying I like her or anything.

Mr. Dukes should have been shushing Tim and Tom Bethune and their buddies in the back. They're the oldest members of the junior high Sunday School
class and think they're too cool to be in it and never shut up.

“ ‘Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers,' ” read Mr. Dukes. “ ‘He also said, Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem; and let Canaan be his slave. God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.' ”

I raised my hand. “I thought you said
Ham
got cursed. What's that about Canaan?”

“Canaan was Ham's son. It's the same thing.”

“Well, why would Noah curse him?”

“Ham walked into Noah's tent and saw Noah naked.”

“On purpose?”

“I believe it was an accident.”

“That doesn't seem like much of a reason to curse somebody, if you ask me.”

Mr. Dukes looked at the back wall and acted like he hadn't heard me. “Now, boys and girls, if y'all will look on over at chapter ten, you'll see the names of all of Ham's sons. Somebody tell me what it says there in verse six.”

“Cush, Egypt, Phut, and Canaan,” said singsongy Cathy Hathcock.

“That's right. And who can tell me where Egypt is?”

“Africa,” I said.

“That's right, son. Africa.” He looked from one side of the room to the other, like he wanted it to sink in
real good that Egypt was in Africa. “Where the nigra slaves came from.”

“I thought you said
Canaan
got cursed,” I said.

Mr. Dukes squinted at me. He doesn't like too many questions.

“We are learning what the Bible has to say about Africa.”

Then it was time for big church. Everybody scraped and squeaked their chairs and headed for the door. I was confused.

“Mr. Dukes, are you saying that since slaves came from Africa, slaves are okay with God?”

“I'm not saying anything, son. I'm letting my Bible do the talking.”

Sometimes Dr. Mercer's sermons are about the same Bible verses we read in Sunday School, so I was hoping to hear more about Noah and Ham and Africa. Maybe Dr. Mercer could clear some of that up for me. But he started on something else. When he got to the part he always gets to about how we are all unworthy sinners who need saving from everlasting damnation, I knew I wasn't going to hear any more about Africa today. I don't know why I thought I might. Dr. Mercer never talks about colored people.

I started doodling on the bulletin and drew a big round face with no hair and creases on it and eyebrows slanting up toward each other and a wriggly mouth that curved up just a little on both ends, like a smile
you would make if you accidentally let out a big one in the sanctuary. Farish saw what I drew and laughed till she had to pretend she was having a coughing fit. I wrote, “Hi, boys and girls, I'm Mr. Fart!” under the face, and she had to cough some more.

Daddy looked over and saw what I drew, and he started coughing, too. Mama snatched it out of my lap.

—

On the way to meet Meemaw and Papaw for lunch, I told Mama about today's Sunday School lesson and asked her if she'd ever heard Dr. Mercer talk about colored people. She said she never had. I asked her why, and she said she didn't know. Daddy took his eyes off the road and raised his eyebrows at her like she did too know.

“So you
do
know?” I asked her.

“It's complicated, pal,” Daddy said. “Let's talk about it later.”

I nodded, but I still wondered about Dr. Mercer. He was the preacher, after all. My history teacher, Miss Hooper, talks about them. Miss Hooper is the prettiest teacher at the whole school, you can ask anybody. She has big eyes, greenish-bluish, like the water at Pensacola, and long blond hair piled up, and man, she is stacked. Her whole body is kind of perfect. She's from Jackson but she has a boyfriend in law school
way up in Maryland or somewhere. That might not be true. I've never seen him.

She told us about Medgar Evers, how he tried so hard to help colored people be able to vote and got shot in his driveway for doing it. And she told us how three Freedom Riders from up North got killed in Philadelphia last June for trying to help colored people vote. I thought Philadelphia was only in Pennsylvania, but it turns out we have a Philadelphia here.

Sadie Rae Jenkins raised her hand and said it was a shame the way everybody hates Mississippi, and she didn't have any KKK in her neighborhood.

I was thinking, What do you know, Prissy-Pants Jenkins said something right for a change. I don't want to live in a place everybody hates, and I don't see why they should hate us, at least not all of us. I don't have any KKK in my neighborhood either. If somebody from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, visited my neighborhood and my school and my church, he wouldn't find a bunch of mean white people trying to hurt colored people. They might say things about colored people sometimes, but people here are nice.

But Miss Hooper told Sadie Rae it wasn't just a few Klansmen giving Mississippi a bad name. If a colored person couldn't vote without somebody getting killed,
Mississippi
was giving Mississippi a bad name. She said the hardest thing for her or anybody
to understand about our state is how people who are so warm and kind and full of “Southern hospitality,” and who would never outright hurt colored people, can be so full of prejudice against them.

“But it doesn't matter how people feel about it, it's the
law,
” Nancy Harper said. “Public places have to be shared by everybody. The South has to integrate, especially the schools.” She says it “schoo-ulls.” She moved down from Ohio last spring and acts like she owns the place. She also says “look-it” and “you guys” instead of “y'all.”

“No we do not,” Bobby Watson said, crossing his arms. A couple of guys applauded.

“
Brown versus Board of Education,
1954. Look it up,” Nancy said.

“Well, this is 19
64
,” Bobby said.

“Nancy is right, Bobby,” Miss Hooper said.

“The Civil Rights Act, July 2, 19
64,
” Nancy said.

“Oh, shut up,” Bobby said. “Not you, Miss Hooper.”

Miss Hooper said the South has no choice but to integrate schools and try to get rid of its prejudice, and to do that it will have to get rid of its ignorance and guilt.

“Guilt about what?” Bobby asked.

“That's a good question. I believe there is still a lot of guilt about slavery in this culture, and about Jim Crow, even though the laws have been in effect for almost one hundred years.”

She told us that Jim Crow laws were named after a white guy who painted his face black in the 1800s and called himself “Jim Crow.” He did musical shows mocking colored people and making them seem lazy and stupid, not even real people. So the “real” people named segregation laws after him. And segregation was just another kind of slavery.

She pointed to everybody in the class. “It's up to you to think about what kind of state you want to live in. It's up to each one of you to improve your state's image.”

I don't know what she expects us to do. We're twelve.