Mississippi Bridge Read online

  PRAISE 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

  WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER AWARD

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United States of America by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990

  First published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000

  This edition published by Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

  Text copyright © 1990 by Mildred D. Taylor

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL BOOKS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Taylor, Mildred D.

  Mississippi bridge / by Mildred D. Taylor; pictures by Max Ginsburg.

  p. cm.

  Summary: During a heavy rainstorm in 1930s rural Mississippi, a ten-year-old white boy sees a bus driver order all the black passengers off a crowded bus to make room for late-arriving white passengers and then set off across the raging Rosa Lee Creek.

  [1. Race relations—Fiction. 2. Afro-Americans—Fiction. 3. Prejudices—Fiction. 4. Southern States—Race relations—Fiction.] I. Ginsburg, Max, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.T21723Mi 1990 [Fic]—dc20 89-27898 CIP AC

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66626-5

  Book design by Cara Petrus

  Version_1

  In memory of my beloved father, the storyteller.

  Once again I have drawn from one of the stories he told.

  M. D. T.

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Mississippi Bridge

  Logan Family Tree

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Mississippi Bridge

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

  1

  It 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.”

  “Well, it won’t hurt nothin’ t’ try it on. There’s a mirror right over here.” He handed her the hat. “Go on, Miz Hattie, brighten up the place. It be a joy to see you in it.”

  Miz Hattie took the hat and placed it on that mop of red hair of hers. She pinned it down with a huge stickpin. Rudine and her mama were still in the store. I seen them watching.

  “Now ain’t that fine?” said Mr. Wallace. “Makes you look like a schoolgirl.”

  “Well, it sure is pretty all right,” confessed Miz Hattie, primping at herself in the mirror. “It surely is. . . .”

  While Miz Hattie was making up her mind about whether or not she was going to buy that hat, I seen Josias Williams coming up the road carrying a small bundle in his hand and all dressed up in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Josias was a full-grown man, some ten or more years over, but he wasn’t yet married. He said he just ain’t found his woman yet. Said, too, that was just as well ’cause there were so many mouths already to feed in his family, and that was sure enough the truth. There was a bunch of them living on a fourteen-acre spot of sharecropping land near to our place. ’Cause they were so close, Josias and me, sometimes we gone fishing down on the water Rosa Lee together. Josias and me, we was friends.

  “’Ey, Josias!” I called.

  He seen me and he smiled that wide-toothed grin of his. “Wet ’nough for ya?” he asked, stepping onto the porch.

  I asserted it was and he laughed. “Keep it up ’round here and we gonna hafta start building ourselves an ark, just like ole Noah!”

  I smiled up at him, then took note of his bundle and asked straight out, “You travelin’ today, Josias?”

  “Yes, suh! Got me a chance to get myself a job. Gonna go lumberin’ ’long on the Trace. Man say I be there today, I’m gonna have me a job!”

  “Well, I sho’ do hope you make it, Josias.”

  “Oh, I’m gonna make it all right. Spite all this here rain, Lord smilin’ on me today! I knows He is!” Then he laughed and gone on in the store.

  I got up and I gone in after him.

  “Well, there, Josias,” greeted Mr. John Wallace, “what got you all dressed up on a rainy weekday like this?”

  “Well, suh, Mister John, I’m gonna take myself a trip!”

  “That a fact?”

  “Yes, suh!”

  “Now where you get money to go takin’ a trip, boy?”

  “Scraped together ever’ penny I could lay my hands on. Had to borrow a little bit, but it’s gonna be worth it, ’cause I got a job waitin’ on me!”

  Pa began thumping the table with his fingers. Most times he done that when things ain’t set too right with him. “Now, Josias,” he said, “what kinda job you figure waitin’ on you?”

  Josias turned to Pa. “Well, Mr. Charlie, got a letter from my cousin doin’ some lumberin’ down long the Natchez Trace. He said I come on down, man’d hire me on and pay me cash money, so I’m sure ’nough goin’!”

  Pa frowned. A lot of men were going begging for jobs these days. White men. And here Josias was talking about taking on a lumbering job along the Natchez Trace.

  “What ’bout your plantin’, boy?” asked Mr. John Wallace. “Ain’t you got land to crop?”

  “Ah, Mr. John, you know they’s plenty of hands at home for that. They ain’t gonna miss me none. Be better I’m off workin’ makin’ some cash money.”

  Pa thumped the table again. “What you doin’ talkin’ ’bout cash money, nigger? White men ain’t hardly gettin’ no cash money these days. What? You think you better’n a white man?”

  The smile that had been shining all cross Josias’s face sure gone quick. His eyes got big and I know’d he was scared. I had done seen that look before. “Why . . . why, no suh, Mr. Charlie. Ain’t . . . ain’t never thought such a thing.”

  “Then what you doin’ standin’ up there bald-faced lyin’ for, sayin’ you done got yourself a job?”

  “Why, no suh, I . . . I ain’t lyin’—”

  “Then you sayin’ you can get a job when a white man can’t?”

  Poor Josias, he ain’t know’d what to say. I’d’ve been him, I’d’ve been in the same fix. Pa was a mean one when it come to colored folks. Josias glanced around at Rudine and her mama. They stepped back, looking scared. Miz Hattie turned from her mirror to look at him. Grace-Anne sucked on her candy stick and stared too.

  Then Pa let that hand go. He slammed it hard against the table. “That what ya sayin’?”

  “No! No—no, suh, Mr. Charlie! I—I ain’t sayin’ no such a thing! I ain’t got me no job! I was jus’ sayin’ that, poppin’ off my mouth, tryin’ t’ be big! I ain’t got me no lumberin’ job, Mr. Charlie, and I ain’t got me no cash job whatsoever!”

  “Then what you doin’ takin’ the bus for?”

  Josias hung his head. “My cousin . . . my cousin he needin’ help on his place. He been sickly all the winter and . . . and now he needin’ me t’ help get his crop planted.”

  Pa sneered, just like he know’d that all the time. R.W. and Melvin, they gone to grinning at Josias’s humiliation and started mumbling about how Negroes lie. They was proud of Pa for making Josias admit the truth and they let him know it too. The other men, they done the same.

  Josias, he got what he come in for and gone out again. I waited a few minutes, then I gone out too. I ain’t liked the way Pa done talked to Josias. Josias was a nice man. He wasn’t hurting nobody. But I know’d that was the way for Pa and the other men to talk that way to Josias and for Josias to take it. Colored folks seemed always to have to take that kind of talk. One time I seen Pa and Melvin and R.W. and a whole bunch drag a colored man down the road, beat him till he ain’t hardly had no face on h
im ’cause he done stood up for himself and talked back. That ain’t never set right with me, the way Pa done. It wasn’t right and I just know’d that, but I ain’t never let Pa know how I was feeling, ’cause Pa he could get awful riled and riled quick. Last thing a body wanted to do, blood or not, was to get on Pa’s wrong side. You got on Pa’s wrong side and you done had it.

  I stepped out onto the porch and I seen Josias down at the far end leaning against a post. That bundle of his was set next to his feet. He seen me and put up his coat collar to warm his neck, then he crossed his arms and stared out at the crossroads, waiting on the bus. His mouth was clenched tight. He was looking right different from when he was inside the store. Then he had been scared. Now he was angry. I could see it all over him. I walked down and leaned on the post right side of him. “Josias,” I said real quiet-like. “You got yourself that lumberin’ job, ain’tcha?”

  Josias flicked his eyes my way, but he ain’t said nothing.

  “You got that job all right. Wish . . . wish you ain’t had to go lyin’ on yourself, Josias.”

  Now Josias he looked on me long and hard. “You want me to say different? You want me dead?”

  “Wh-what?”

  “’Cause I backlip yo’ daddy, make him think I got somethin’ he ain’t got, that’s what gonna happen to me, boy. Sho is. Here he a white man and me black as night. Happen t’ me sure.”

  “But you got yo’self a right t’ make some cash money!” I declared. “Shuckies! Ever’body wanna make some cash money, and you got a right much as anybody, Josias!”

  Josias just stared at me, then looked back out at the road. He weren’t speaking to me no more.

  I moved away from him and gone on down to the other side of the steps and sat on the bench ’front of them store windows. For some while Josias just stood there leaning against his post, and I sat there on my bench and we ain’t said nothing. It seemed mighty odd, the two of us on that porch and us not speaking. Rudine and her mama, they came out and gone down and stood near to Josias. After a while, Miz Hattie and Grace-Anne they came out too and they sat down beside me. Miz Hattie was wearing that springtime hat. “Jeremy!” called Grace-Anne. “You seen Granny’s hat?”