Same Kind of Different As Me (5 page)
“You come on down to Fanny’s tonight, and we’ll fix you up,” John promised.
So on a steaming night in August, I eased Granddaddy’s ’53 Chevy down the hill from the farmhouse, engine quiet, then popped the clutch and drove the ten miles to Corsicana. My chopping buddies were waiting for me just across the tracks.
I had never been to Nigger Town without Granddaddy, so I was plenty nervous as the three of us walked down dirt roads lined with shotgun shacks and not a single lightbulb. Mostly, folks just sat out on their porches, eyes watching in a black night broken only by a coal-oil lantern, a struck match, or the orange glow of a cigarette. It seemed we’d walked halfway across Texas before the sound of guitar music floated toward us and, like a dream, a low building took shape in the dark.
Inside, Fanny’s was smoky, red, and dim. At the head of a dirt dance floor, a buxom woman crooned the blues, steaming up the place like a tropical rain on hot sand. John and Amos introduced me to their friends, who greeted me like a local celebrity and handed me a Pabst Blue Ribbon, warm as advertised, then slipped away.
For most of the next hour, I sat alone at a corner table, fixated on silhouettes of shirtless men drenched in sweat and women in dresses that clung to their bodies, locked together in a slow, sexual kind of dancing I’d never seen before. I’d heard the music before, though, real, live blues sung by people with names like Lightning Hopkins and Big Fat Sarah over scratchy air-waves beamed live from Laredo at midnight by Wolfman Jack.
I pretended to swig on the PBR. But when I was sure nobody was looking, I let it slosh on the dirt floor as I discovered that the smell of beer nauseated me, kicking up memories of me looking for my daddy at the Tailless Monkey Lounge.
It didn
’
t
take long for Big Mama’s house to burn down to a heapin pile of smokin red coals. When the flames had died down, I sat there next to it just a-cryin, not understandin why God would take away the person I loved the most.
After a little while, somebody come and took me and Thurman to live in Grand Bayou with BB, my daddy. I didn’t know him very well, and I still don’t know what he did for a livin, just that he worked in the city—Shreveport, I think, down past where my aunt Pearlie May lived. Maybe he was workin on the railroad stackin hisself some paper money ’cause he was rich enough to buy him a car, a big ole two-door like a Pontiac.
BB was a big man, heavyset. He wadn’t six feet tall, but he looked it, and even though I was just a little fella, I could tell he was popular with the ladies. BB liked the ladies, too, and used to keep three or four of em on a string at the same time. That’s why on Sunday mornings, he wouldn’t set foot in the New Mary Magdalene Baptist Church. One or two of his women was already married, and they and their husbands was part of the congregation.
That didn’t mean BB didn’t love Jesus—he just had to find a different way to visit Him on Sundays. So me and him and Thurman would go to church kinda like we was goin to a drive-in picture show. Now, the church house wadn’t too far off the road. It was painted white and had a real nice pecan tree spreadin some shade over some raggedy grass out front. Instead of parkin and goin in through the big double doors like the rest a’ the folks, BB’d pull his Pontiac right up beside the church house. They musta knowed we was comin ’cause when BB drove up, the preacher’d come over and slide up a window right next to the car so we could sit in that Pontiac and listen to the Word of God.
I couldn’t see nothin inside the church, but I’d hear the choir and the congregation singin some spirituals. I had some favorites, and I would sing along.
He’s got the rivers and the mountains in His hands,
He’s got the oceans and the seas in His hands,
He’s got you and He’s got me in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands.
I hoped He had Big Mama and Chook in His hands. I was purty sure He did.
After the singin was done, the preacher’d commence to preachin. He had a style about him, liked to start out soft and low like he was singin a lullaby. But ’fore long he’d work hisself up into a righteous sweat. I remember the way he said “God”—kinda long and drawed out, sounded like “Gaw-ud.”
And he just
loved
to talk about sin.
“Now
sin
is when you misses the mark that Gaw-ud is aimin for you to
hit
,” he’d say. “Bein’ lazy is a
sin
’cause Gaw-ud is aimin for you to be
diligent
. Bein foolish is a
sin
’cause Gaw-ud is aimin for you to be
wise
. And bein lustful is a
sin
, ’cause Gaw-ud is aimin for you to be
chaste
. Can I get a witness?”
“Amen!” the church would holler. “Praise Jesus!”
I couldn’t see nobody sayin’ it ’cause I was way down below the windowsill. But I remember that the folks inside seemed mighty enthusiastic. After the sermon, the choir would sing some more. Then someone would pass the offerin plate out the window, and BB would drop in some coins and pass it back in.
Me and Thurman wadn’t with BB but for a few weeks when he left the house one night and didn’t come back. One story goes that his car broke down on Highway 1. Another says it was sabotage. Either way, he pulled off the road out there by the Grand Bayou Social Club, and a man charged outta the woods and stabbed BB to death. Folks said the man that killed him was the husband of one of the women BB was messin with. I never found out if that man was one of the ones that worshipped with us on Sundays.
The next day, my uncle James Stickman come by and picked me and Thurman up in his wagon, pulled by mules. We went to live on a farm where my uncle James and aunt Etha was doin a little sharecroppin.
A lotta folks called croppin a new kinda slavery. Lotta croppers (even white ones, what few there was in Louisiana) didn’t have just one massa—they had two. The first massa was the Man that owned the land you was workin. The second massa was whoever owned the store where you got your goods on credit. Sometimes both a’ them men was the same Man; sometimes it was a different Man.
The Man that owned the land was always wantin you to plant less and less food, and more and more crops he could sell for cash money. In Red River Parish that meant plantin cotton from the doorstep to the edge of the road. That Man wound up bein your massa ’cause seemed like no matter how many bales a’ cotton you turn, you always end up in the hole. The first year me and Thurman was with Uncle James and Aunt Etha, I think we turned two or three bales a’ cotton. The next year, we turned five bales, but we was still in the hole. Didn’t get no money, didn’t get nothin but the privilege of stayin on for the next season to pay off what we owed. I was just a little fella, but I still couldn’t understand how we could work so hard ever year, and ever year end up in the hole.
I always knowed white folks didn’t think much of black folks back then—thought we was mainly lazy and not too bright. But I found out years later they thought black
croppers
had the extra burden of bein a little bit like boll weevils—ruinous. Someone told me they read where a planter said a crop-per has nothin, wants nothin, expects nothin, don’t try to have nothin, but wastes and destroys everthing.
That planter hadn’t met my uncle James. He worked hard bringin in all that cotton for the Man, and he expected to be paid so he could provide for us. He was also the kind a’ man who would speak his mind. Nobody messed with him—not even the Man. After ’bout three years, Uncle James got tired a’ bein in the hole, and he told the Man he was tired of it and was fixin to move us all to a big plantation where he heard he could get a better deal. I reckon the Man didn’t argue much or worry ’bout what Uncle James owed, ’cause he never did come after us.
The plantation where we moved stretched wide and deep, field after field stitched off with rows a’ pecan trees. And ever one a’ them fields was dedicated to King Cotton. First year we got there, the cotton flowers was just abloomin, and I remember seein rows and rows, acres and acres, of red and white flowers marchin off to meet the blue sky in ever direction.
The Man at that plantation hired on Uncle James and Aunt Etha to pick cotton and also do a little more croppin. Big Mama’s sister, my great-aunt, lived there, too. I don’t remember what I used to call her, ’cept Auntie. Maybe that’s ’cause I was scared a’ her and some a’ that mumbo jumbo she did with powders she grinded up from leaves and roots. ’Specially after that time she made it rain.
Uncle James did his plowin with a mule named Ginny. Now, in those days used to be a big argument over which was the better animal, a horse or a mule. I grew up to be a mule man myself. Mules live longer than horses, don’t get sick as much, and don’t complain about a swelterin summer. And you can train up a mule to mind. He turn right when you say “Gee” and left when you say “Haw,” and come when you whistle. That ain’t the case with horses, which act kinda persnickety ’bout doin what they’re told. A mule don’t stomp on your cotton bushes, neither, like a horse do with his big ole clumsy feet. And you don’t need to waste time feedin a mule, neither. Ginny knowed how to get up in the woods and hustle for herself.
When Uncle James got out in the fields with Ginny, Thurman and me would follow along behind the plow. Sometimes we’d get to horsin around and bouncin dirt clods off each other’s heads. But only when Uncle James wadn’t lookin. When he
was
lookin, we acted like we was all business, drop-pin cottonseed in the spring and huntin for armyworms in the summer-time. When we was busy and quiet, I thought a lot about Big Mama, and my belly hurt.
Aunt Etha worked right out in the fields with us, too. She was a right purty red-bone woman, tall and gracious. She worked right alongside Uncle James, choppin cotton, scrapin the rows, and pickin, too. But when the sun got high, she gen’lly picked up her skirt and headed back to the house, ’cause she was in charge of the cookin.
You might think in those days that the women did all the cookin, but that wadn’t true. It was just that the women did their cookin in the house, and the men did their cookin in the woods.
Prohibition was gone, but you still couldn’t get no store-bought whiskey in Red River Parish. I’m tellin you, the woods was sproutin corn-liquor stills like toadstools.
A lotta folks think moonshiners was all hillbillies and rednecks sittin on the porch drinkin white lightnin outta Mason jars in the broad daylight. And sometimes that was the truth. Uncle James told me one time about some no-account white cropper he knew that spent mosta his days lyin out in the yard with a jug a’ liquor, wallerin with the pigs and just as happy. Uncle James didn’t think much a’ him.
But right respectable folks was shinin, too. I knowed some colored folks worked on other farms and plantations owned by white men—bankers and such. Wadn’t a one of em wadn’t cookin up some liquor somewhere on his place. The Man had him a still tucked up in the woods so he could make a little sippin whiskey. When I got older, he took me up there a time or two.
“Climb up yonder and let me know if you see anybody comin,” the Man’d say to me, and I’d climb up in a tree and watch for the sheriff.
Anyhow, Aunt Etha did all the cookin at Uncle James’s. Anything we’d kill, she could make a meal out of it—possums, coons, rabbits, it didn’t matter. Possums was a little extra trouble, though, ’cause you got to know how to deal with a possum. First you got to throw him in a fire outside and burn the hair off him. Then you got to scrape him down and put him in a pot and boil him, or maybe put him in a pan by the fire and let him roast with his head still on him. You can’t get the grease out a possum ’less you do that.
Aunt Etha raised us a garden, too, ’cause there wadn’t no such thing as goin down to the Piggly Wiggly. Only store you go to was the Man’s store and that was just for a little salt, pepper, and flour ’cause we never did figure out how to make that. So mostly, whatever we was eatin was comin out of the woods or the ground. Aunt Etha’s garden was fulla good things like field peas, butter beans, onions, sweet taters, and ash taters. I remember the sweet smell when she’d cut up a mess of wild peaches or pears and cook em down with sugar. It was a fine mornin when she rolled out the biscuits and put out the preserves, tastin sticky and sweet, like heaven in the summertime.
We growed our own greens—collards, turnip, and mustard—all simmered down with fatback and a little bit a’ salt, with a great big ole slab of corn bread on the side. We got the cornmeal by takin the corn that we growed down to the little grindin mill over by the Man’s store. The white folks at the store would grind the corn for us and give us the meal, and the Man would put the grindin on our bill. I never did know how much it was exactly.
He gave us our milk for free, though, for takin care of his cows. ’Cept we’d get blamed if one em went dry.
Now Christmas was killin time. Every year, the Man gave us two hogs to raise. We killed em at Christmas and hung em in the smokehouse. I was in charge a’ the smokehouse, and I had to build the fire and keep it goin, which was the best job ’cause I got to sneak me a little piece of meat ever so often.