Mississippi Bridge

P
RAISE FOR

MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE

“Taylor, a powerful storyteller, again combines authen-tic incidents to create a taut plot . . . Her cry for justice always rings true.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Well written and thought provoking, this book will haunt readers and generate much discussion.”

—
School Library Journal

“A powerful story about the segregated South of the 1930s.”

—
Publishers Weekly

W
INNER OF THE
C
HRISTOPHER
A
WARD

Version_1

M. D. T.

Praise for Mississippi Bridge

Logan Family Tree

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Mississippi Bridge

Excerpt from
Mildred D. Taylor’s Newbery Award–Winning Novel—

1

I
t was raining and had been all the day. Fact, it had been raining for some weeks, a steady, big drop kind of rain that had roads all slopped up outside and ceilings all swollen up and leaking inside. Our ole Mississippi winter it was almost finished, but not quite. In those there last few days before spring, folks had to go looking for things to do. Mostly, the womenfolks, they found something; womenfolks could always find work. Ma and my sister, Lillian Jean, they stayed inside and cooked and sewed and ironed and quilted and
cleaned. But there was nothing much for menfolks to do but wait out the rain, wait for the dry-out and wait to plow and wait to plant. Pa and my brothers, R.W. and Melvin, and me, we had done chopped up all the wood needed chopping, mended all the fences and tools needed mending, and bought our seed, so we just waited.

Pa passed a goodly amount of his time up at the Wallace store. R.W. and Melvin, who were near to man-size theyselves, spent considerable hours up there too. Pa and R.W. and Melvin and the other men who gathered there would sit around that old potbellied stove. They’d play checkers some, but mostly they just talked about the hard times. They laughed and told stories and done some joking and Ma said that all helped them to pass the time, helped to ease the worry about cotton prices. Cotton had been down lower than ever for a long spell—more than two years—ever since the Depression come in ’29 and everything hit bottom. It ain’t looked like prices were ever going to rise up again and Pa said if they didn’t get to rising soon, we would all be living worse than Negroes.

There were a many days I gone up to the Wallace store
myself. I ain’t had much age on me then. I was only ten so I ain’t sat much with the men inside. ’Stead, I’d sit myself right there on the floor boards of the porch, lean against a post, and watch the crossroads. Course now, watching the roads ain’t meant there was that much to see, just the forest all around and the slop of red mud. Every now and again a truck would come along or a wagon or somebody’d come walking up the road heading for the store. About once the week the bus come down this way from Jackson, made a stop in front of the store to pick up folks, then gone on west over the bridge that crossed the creek called the Rosa Lee. The next day, it come back up again, heading north. Most days, though, I just sat on that porch, looking out at the rain and the gloom and ain’t nothing much happened to break the expectedness of it all.

Fact to business I was sitting there the day Rudine Johnson and her mama come up the road carrying a couple of string-tied suitcases and looking like they were about to travel. There was a low fog and I seen them step out of it on a sudden, almost like haints in the night. Rudine was of good age, near to the same as R.W. and Melvin, and I ain’t know’d
neither her nor her mama too well, so all I done was give a nod and they done give a nod back, then they stepped past me and gone in the store.

I ain’t paid them no more attention after that, leastways not till I heard Mr. John Wallace laugh. Then I turned round and looked inside. Rudine, she was standing front of the counter and her mama was right side of her. Rudine, she was kind of fingering a wide brim, summer-sky-blue hat with the tiniest little sprig of spring-like flowers tucked off to one side of it. The hat was sitting on a counter stand and Rudine, she was asking of Mr. John Wallace, who owned that store, if maybe she couldn’t try it on. That was how come Mr. John Wallace was laughing.

“Now, Rudine, you know I can’t let you try on that hat,” said Mr. John. “You can buy it now, but once you do, you gotta keep it. Can’t be bringing it back for no exchange, not after you done put it on your head.”

“Yes, suh . . . I knows . . .” She looked kind of longing like at that hat, then she done sighed deep and shook her head. “Well, I don’t ’spect it matter none. Can’t buy it noways.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Mr. John Wallace, then he turned back to Pa and R.W. and Melvin and the other men sitting around the stove. “Niggers,” he snorted, then he done laughed again.

Just ’bout when he done that, Miz Hattie McElroy and her granddaughter, Grace-Anne, come riding up. Miz Hattie was a widow lady. She used to be my teacher and she lived right up the road from the Jefferson Davis School. Uncle Moses Thompson, an old colored man, who done a lot of odd-job work for Miz Hattie, was driving. He stopped the car ’right side of the gas pump, got out, and opened the door for Miz Hattie and Grace-Anne. Grace-Anne was a pretty girl, not more than maybe four years old. She had sunshine curls and eyes green as new pine tree needles. I liked her and I liked Miz Hattie too. They was quality folks.

“’Ey, Jeremy!” squeaked Grace-Anne in that tinkle of a little voice.

“’Ey,” I done returned.

“Jeremy, child!” spoke Miz Hattie. “What you doing here all alone? Your daddy inside?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Him and R.W. and Melvin.”

Miz Hattie seemed a mite displeased ’cause she give a frown. “Well, they most times are, aren’t they?” she said, and I wasn’t sure how to take that. I wasn’t sure if that was a slur against my daddy. Then she turned back to Uncle Moses Thompson. She spoke to him a few minutes, words out of my hearing, and then Uncle Moses took out the bags, set them on the porch, and drove away. When he was gone, I said, “Miz Hattie, y’all travelin’ today?”

“We going to see my mama!” answered Grace-Anne, right happy about the thing.

Miz Hattie nodded. “That’s a fact.” Then she frowned and looked up the road. “I do hope that bus is on time.”

“Why y’all takin’ the bus, Miz Hattie?” I asked. “Y’all got a car and y’all could drive on down.”

“Well, child, when Mr. McElroy was alive, we used to drive down all the time, but since he passed I just rather take the bus. I can’t drive that car myself—my nerves are too bad—and Uncle Moses can’t half see.” She laughed. “As far as I would trust him to drive is from the house to this store and back. Believe me, it’s a lot safer for us to take the bus.”
Then, leaving me with a sunshine smile, she took hold of Grace-Anne’s hand and gone into the store.

Soon as they entered, Mr. John Wallace stopped his leaning against the counter and straightened up real gentlemanlike to greet her. She greeted him back, then they exchanged a few words about Miz Hattie traveling and about how both their families were doing. Then Mr. John Wallace said, “Anything in particular I can help you with today, Miz Hattie?”

“Well, I stopped in to get some candy for Grace-Anne here so she can have something while we’re traveling.”

“Yes, ma’am, we take care of that right now,” said Mr. John Wallace. “Pretty little girl like Miss Grace-Anne deserve some sweets.” He took a large glass jar of candy off the counter and bent down and held it in front of Grace-Anne so she could take whatever she pleased from the jar. Miz Hattie’s eyes wandered to the counter and that summer-sky-blue hat Rudine had been admiring. Mr. John Wallace took note. “Anything else I can do for ya, Miz Hattie?”

“Well . . . I was just admiring this hat here . . .” She touched it real gentle-like. “It’s so springtime . . .”

“Hat like that sure ’nough would put a little sunshine in this gloom,” said Mr. Wallace. “Why don’t you go ’head try it on, Miz Hattie? It sure would set well on your fine head of hair.”

Miz Hattie turned plumb red. “Go on with you now, John Wallace! Can’t much afford it anyway, not in these hard times.”