We hoofed it on back up there, and when we got close I could see it sittin up on the big wraparound porch, shinin just like a dream: a brand-new Schwinn, red and white with a rubber squeeze-horn on it.
I turned and looked at the Man. He was smilin just a little.
“Is that
mine
?” I asked him. I couldn’t believe it.
“It’s all yours, L’il Buddy,” he said. “You get up there and take it on home.”
“Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir!” I ran off whoopin like a wild boy, jumped on that fine machine, and burned off down the road to show my uncle and auntie. That Schwinn was the first new thing I ever had. I was eleven years old.
On
November 22, 1963, I pulled on a store-bought madras shirt, khaki pants—and yes,
Weejuns
. Scoot and I, along with two other fellows, piled into my baby-blue, four-door 1961 Chevy Biscayne and headed out for our second adventure with sorority girls. The occasion was TCU’s homecoming, and Elvis blared on the radio the whole way into town.
Those were the days before interstates, and our route heading in from Commerce, Texas, took us through downtown Dallas. As I guided the Biscayne onto Elm Street, the traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl. We pulled up next to the School Book Depository at the intersection of Elm and Houston, right behind a white sedan—the last car in our way before I could have gunned my car into the clear, with a straight shot to Stemmons Freeway.
The white sedan moved ahead, but just as we were ready to pull through the intersection, a police officer stepped into our path, whistle shrieking, one arm out like a fullback.
“Dang it!” Scoot said, checking his watch. “Now we’re gonna be late!”
It seemed like it was going to be a long wait, so I cut off the engine and we all got out and sat on the hood. First we heard sirens and motorcycles coming from our left, and we all turned to see what was coming. A cheer swelled toward us, rolling through the crowd like an ocean wave. Then we saw it: a convertible Lincoln limousine with eagle-eyed G-men riding the running boards and bumper.
Although it was over in less than ten seconds, it seems like slow motion now: Texas Governor John Connelly in the front seat. President John F. Kennedy in the back, waving, on the side nearest us. And Jackie, dazzling, sitting next to him in her powder-pink pillbox hat.
Then, fast-forward: The crowd suddenly, inexplicably, exploded like a school of spooked fish. We didn’t know why. All we saw was our chance to shoot through the intersection and get back on the road to TCU. The four of us jumped off the hood and clambered into the Biscayne.
We roared through the intersection toward the on-ramp right behind the presidential limo. For moments, we had no idea we were living history. Then the radio announcer broke in: “The police are reporting gunshots near the presidential motorcade in Dallas.”
Then, moments later, another announcement: “The president’s been shot.”
“My God!” I yelled. “He’s right in front of us!” I floored it, and we chased the limo down the freeway past Market Hall where a crowd of thousands was waiting to hear JFK speak, all the way to Parkland Hospital, where I whipped the Biscayne into the parking lot right up beside the empty limousine.
I cut the ignition. We sat there, stunned. The radio announcer called the play-by-play: The shots seemed to come from the School Book Depository . . . a massive manhunt in downtown Dallas . . . waiting to hear the president’s condition. We’d been there maybe twenty minutes when a Secret Service agent, trim and intimidating, strode toward us from the emergency room exit.
He poked his crew cut into my window, and I could see my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses. “What’re you boys doing out here?” he said, dead serious.
He listened to our explanation then said, “Well, unless you want me to take your mug shots and fingerprints, you’d better move along.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Reluctantly, I started the car and we pulled slowly out of the Parkland lot. We hadn’t been on the freeway for more than ten minutes when the radio announcer made his grim report: “The president is dead.”
It didn’t take us long to realize we were some of the last civilians to see him alive.
Ever
Sunday, a field hand drivin a mule wagon wound down the dirt plantation roads gatherin up folks to haul em off to praise the Lord. There was about twenty families that worked on the Man’s place. They’d climb into the mule wagon, the men handin up the ladies, then handin up the babies, then climbin on last, and the field hand would drive em all to the New Glory of Zion Baptist Church. To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember ’xactly what the name of it was, but all them churches was “New” this and “Glory” that, and for sure just about all of em was Baptist.
Ever plantation had a colored church, and that was where most a’ the socializin went on. Our little clapboard church sat in a wide field and had a cross over the door that never saw no coat of paint. Seemed like God used the tin roof for a pincushion, ’cause it was fulla holes that the sun-light fell through, and made the wooden benches look kinda pokey-dotted. Sometimes it’d come a rain and the preacher’d have to sweep the mess out the front door.
The preacher, Brother Eustis Brown, was just another field hand. But he was the onlyest man I knowed besides Uncle James that could read the Bible. I learned a lot of Scripture from listenin to Brother Brown. That’s ’cause he’d preach the same sermon ever week for
months
.
Let’s say he was preachin on the evils of lust. Brother Brown’d say, “Now listen, church: The book of First John say we know the lust a’ the flesh, the lust a’ the eyes, and the boastful pride of life—all that is not from
God
, it’s from this
world
! But this world is passin
away
! And its lusts are passin
away
! But if you do the will a’ God, you gon’ live
forever
!”
Ever week, he’d say them same verses, hammerin em home over and over, like he was nailin a shoe on a stubborn horse. But ever once in a while, people started complainin.
“Brother Brown, we done heard that message about a hun’erd times,” one of the older women would say, somebody with gumption like my aun-tie, Big Mama’s sister. “When you gon’ change the sermon?”
Brother Brown would just gaze up at the holey roof and shake his head, kinda sad. “I work out there in the cotton with y’all, and ever week, the Lord shows me what’s goin on in the congregation so I’ll know what to preach on Sunday. When I start seein some changes out there,” he’d say, pointin toward the plantation, “I’ll be changin what I preach in here.”
That’s how I learned the Bible without knowin how to read.
When I was about twelve, my aunt Etha dressed me all in white and took me down to the river to get dunked. There was four or five folks gettin baptized that day, and all the plantation families brought pails and baskets of food to spread out on blankets and have us what we called “dinner on the ground.” White folks call it a picnic.
My auntie wrung the neck off a chicken and fried it up special, and brought her famous blackberry cobbler, and a jug a’ cool tea she made with mint leaves she got from my great-aunt. (Least I think they was mint leaves. With my auntie, you never knowed what kinda powders and potions you was gon’ get.)
We didn’t eat, though, till after Brother Brown preached a sermon ’bout John the Baptist dunkin Jesus hisself, and God callin down from heaven that He was mighty pleased with what kinda fella His Son had turned out to be. When Brother Brown was done preachin, he waded out into the cool green river till he got waist-deep in his white robe that he kept special for baptizin. I followed him down in my bare feet, over pebbles, smooth and shinin wet, down through the warm soft mud, into the water.
Now me and Bobby did lots of swimmin in the waterin hole, but we was mostly buck naked. So it felt kinda strange goin in the water in a full suit of clothes, and them swirlin around me all white and soft like a cloud. But I waded on out to where Brother Brown was waitin for me. The river mud squished up between my toes while I kept one eye out for gators.
I stood sideways in front of Brother Brown, and he put his left hand behind my back. I could hear some birds a-peepin, and the water sloshin, and away off down the river, I seen some white folks on a boat, fishin. “Li’l Buddy,” the preacher said, “do you believe Jesus died on the cross for your sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day?”
“Yessir, I do,” I said and felt somethin graze my leg. I was hopin it was a catfish.
“I now baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!” Brother Brown said, and quick as lightnin, like maybe I was gon’ change my mind, he pinched my nose shut with his right hand, and slammed me down backward in the water.
Problem was, Brother Brown kinda lost his grip and I sunk right to the bottom. I didn’t know I was supposed to come right back up, so I just floated on down the river a ways, blowin bubbles and lookin up through the milky water at the clouds goin by. Aunt Etha told me afterward that the congregation panicked and charged into the river. They was still splashin around and callin my name when I popped up downriver like a bobber on a fishin line, a few shades paler and fulla the Holy Ghost!
My auntie was so glad to see me, I got two servins of blackberry cobbler that day.
Things
was a-changin. Uncle James took sick and died, and Aunt Etha moved away. Last time I seen her, she was cryin. I couldn’t figure out why God kept takin all the folks I loved the most. Me and Thurman got split up, and I went to live on a different plantation with my sister, Hershalee. Seemed like Thurman went to stay with some a’ BB’s people, but I ain’t sure. I guess I was about thirteen, fourteen years old. Them years kinda run together in my memory. We never kept no calendar. We didn’t even keep a clock. Didn’t need one: When all you doin is bringin in the Man’s cotton, ain’t nowhere you got to be at ’cept where you’re at.
I missed Bobby and wished I had another friend like him. The new Man had a couple of little daughters round about my age, but for sure I wadn’t friends with no white
girls
. Besides, the white children, when they was big enough, went off to school during the day. Some colored kids did, too, but not me. And a lotta times, the Man would pull the colored kids out to go work in the fields.
It wadn’t just the grown folks that put up a wall between white folks and colored folks, neither. Years later, I heard about one time in South Carolina ’bout five or six white boys used to walk to school together. Ever day, they had to get acrossed a creek tucked down there in a little shady patch of woods. Now that creek was on the way to the colored school, too, and one day the white boys decided they didn’t think it was right for the Negroes to cross the creek on the same foot logs they did. So they laid theirselves an ambush. They picked up sticks and old pieces of wood and lined up on them foot logs to wait for the colored children to come walkin along.
“These here logs belong to the whites!” hollered one bully-boy when the colored children come up on the creek. “If you niggers want to get acrossed, you gon’ have to wade the water!”
Well, the colored children wadn’t havin that, and a shootin war commenced with sticks and rocks just a-flyin. The sorry thing was, them white boys was victorious: They pitched enough rocks to win the foot logs, and them colored kids had to wade the water to get to school.
I didn’t hear ’bout that story till I was growed, but I still felt sorry for them kids. Not so much about walkin to school in wet britches as ’cause I know what it’s like to get beat down for bein born with different-colored skin. And I know what it’s like to walk around with my eyes down low to keep it from happenin again.
That’s what I did after the draggin.
I was maybe fifteen, sixteen years old, walkin down the road that passed by the front of the plantation, on my way back from my auntie’s house. That’s when I seen that white lady beside her blue Ford sedan. She was bendin down a little, peekin up under the back side a’ the car, but kinda ladylike, tryin to keep her white skirt outta the dirt. Her hat was white, too, a little one, just big enough to cover the top of her head, with a brown rib-bon around it, like a stripe of chocolate. Like I told you before, she was dressed up like maybe she’d been to town.
I asked her if she needed any help, and she said yes. I took the jack outta the trunk and set it down under the car, pickin out as firm a spot as I could find. I cranked the jack handle around and the car swayed, inchin up enough to where I could get the tire off.
I was just puttin the lug nuts back on when them three boys rode outta the woods and asked the lady did she need any help. ’Course, the redheaded fella with the big teeth was the one that first spotted me and called me a nigger. And the next thing I knew, I had a rope squeezed tight around my neck and black terror slitherin through my belly like a water moccasin.
“We gon’ teach you a lesson about botherin white ladies,” said the one holdin the rope.
’Cept I hadn’t been botherin her, just fixin her tire. But she didn’t volunteer no other story, and I didn’t say nothin ’cause for sure they wadn’t gon’ be believin me. I figured if I spoke, it would just add to my troubles.
I kept an eye on the boy with the rope, and when he lashed it to his saddle, I knowed what was comin and got real scared. With both hands, I reached up to try to get the rope loose. That’s when they snapped their reins and took off just a-laughin.
The horses trotted at first, goin slow enough for me to run. I was stumblin along behind, my hands still graspin at the noose and me tryin to keep my feet under me. The horses was only maybe ten feet in front of me, and I could hear their feet beatin the dirt. The dust stung my eyes. I could taste it.
Then I heard a whoop and a holler. My feet flew out from under me and I crashed down in the dirt, my knees and elbows skiddin down the road. The horses pounded and pounded and I held on to the noose like a steerin wheel, tryin to pry my fingers inside of it to keep the noose from closin in tighter. The dirt was blindin me and chokin me. My shirtsleeves and the knees of my britches tore away, then my skin peeled back like a rabbit ready for the skillet. I couldn’t hear no more laughin, just the terrible thunder of them horses draggin me down to die.