The Road to Memphis Read online

  As Harris stepped into the store, Kaleb Wallace glanced over, then paid no more attention to him. Kaleb Wallace was in the middle of telling a story, and despite his new customer, he went on with his story in a most leisurely fashion. Harris didn’t say a word. He just stood at the far end of the counter, away from the others, patiently waiting for Kaleb Wallace to conclude. When the story finally ended, Kaleb Wallace turned to Harris and greeted him. “’Ey, there Harris! What bring you in here, boy? Your Grandma Batie needin’ herself some more snuff already?”

  “No, suh,” answered Harris, ignoring Kaleb Wallace’s belittling tone. “Come in for some shells.”

  “Shells?”

  “Yes, suh. Figures to go huntin’.”

  “That a fact? Wheres ’bout?”

  “Down ’long the Rosa Lee.”

  “Well, what ya huntin’?”

  “Squirrel,” said Harris.

  “Squirrel?” retorted Kaleb Wallace. “Why, boy, don’t you know it’s coon huntin’ season now!”

  “Yes, suh, sho does. Already gots my traps ready to set. We be huntin’ coon t’night—”

  Statler Aames let go a laugh, taking a sudden interest in the conversation. “Coon! That’s a good one. Coon huntin’ coon! You ever heard the story ’bout the coon and the monkey, boy?”

  There was a pause from Harris before he answered. “N-no, suh, Mr. Statler . . . I don’t believes so.”

  “Oh, Lord,” I muttered to Little Man, “he’s about to start up.” Little Man concurred with a nod. Statler Aames and his brothers got a big kick out of teasing colored folks, and for the most part all colored folks could do was stand and take it, for white folks ruled things, and talking back to them with a smart mouth could only get you into big trouble. Hitting one of them could get you killed. That was the way of things.

  “Well, seems there was this monkey was hunting this coon,” said Statler, getting on with his story, “and this ole monkey, he chases the coon up a tree. Then he gets the coon cornered, but he ain’t been able to get his hands on him. ’Stead, the coon, he shines a light on the monkey and says, you lookin’ for me? And the monkey, he says, yeah, I’m lookin’ for you all right, and see I done got ya too. And the coon, he says, well, come on up! Well, then the coon, he turns off the flashlight, and the monkey, he hurries after him. When he gets to the top of the tree, he hollers to the coon, where are ya, coon? And the coon, he shines a light on the monkey, and the monkey looks down and sees that ole coon is out the tree and standing on the ground. And the coon says, I guess it’s true what folks say. And what’s that? asks the monkey. And the coon, he says, monkey see, monkey do!” With that Statler howled with laughter; so did Leon and Troy, Kaleb Wallace, and the other men, all except Jeremy Simms, who fingered his soda bottle and looked down solemnly at the table. Harris smiled politely. Then Statler said to Harris, “Now, just which one are you, boy? The monkey or the coon?”

  Harris grinned awkwardly and stepped away from the counter. Statler laughed again and didn’t press him to answer. But Kaleb Wallace said, “Where you goin’, Harris? You ain’t yet got your shells.”

  Harris apologized. “No, suh, I guess I ain’t,” he said, and stepped back to the counter. Kaleb Wallace got the shells, and Harris thanked him, paid for them, and turned to leave. He got as far as the door, then Statler started in on him again.

  “’Ey, fat boy!” he called. “You sure you wanna be huntin’ coon, hot as it is?”

  Harris looked around. “Gets hungry, Mr. Statler, no matter what the weather.”

  “Yeah, well, we can tell that. See you got a mighty fine appetite there.”

  Harris nodded in silent agreement and again turned away.

  “Boy!” Statler got up and stepped toward him. “Ya know, my brothers and my cousin here, we been thinkin’ on doin’ some huntin’ ourselves tonight. How’d you like to join us?”

  Harris looked baffled at the invitation. “Well, suh, that’s kindly of ya, but Clarence Hopkins and me, we was gonna go down to the Rosa Lee—”

  “Clarence and you, huh? You sayin’ you ain’t wantin’ to hunt with us?”

  I knew Statler was only teasing. Maybe Harris knew it, too, yet he looked cautiously around at the others before he replied, and when he did, fear was in his voice. “Why—why, no, suh, I ain’t sayin’ that—”

  “I find that insultin’.”

  “Why, no, suh . . . ain’t meant it t’ be. I was jus’ sayin’—”

  “Or maybe you too dumb to know when you insultin’ somebody. Listenin’ to you here, I’m thinkin’ maybe you make a better monkey than a coon. Seem like to me you a bit too dumb to make a good coon. I’m figurin’ a coon’s too smart for you, boy. But you tell me, Harris, which one you figure you be?”

  Harris stared at Statler in fearful silence, his mouth agape.

  “Well, answer me, boy!”

  “I—I—”

  “He can’t answer, Stat,” said Leon, grinning, “maybe he can show ya.”

  Statler smiled at the suggestion. “Yeah . . . yeah, that’s an idea, all right. Harris, go ’head and show us how good a monkey you can be. Show us how a monkey act.”

  Poor Harris just stood there with his bag of shells, not knowing what to do. Little Man looked at me and I looked at him and we were uncertain what we could do to help Harris. But then Jeremy got up and said, “Ah, Stat, leave him be.”

  Statler turned. “What you say there, Cousin?”

  “Said . . . said, leave him be. He ain’t done nothing. Harris, you go on.”

  Harris looked from Jeremy to Statler and waited for Statler’s approval. Statler silently studied Jeremy, then said, “How come you always defending niggers, Jeremy?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I—I ain’t defendin’ him. He just wasn’t doin’ nothin’. Just figure you oughta let him go on and leave.”

  Statler stared long at Jeremy, then gave Harris a nod. “All right, boy, you go on.”

  Harris gratefully hurried out, passed Little Man and me, and crossed the road to the wagon. We followed. Christopher-John took note of our faces and got down. “What is it?” he asked, but Harris didn’t answer. So I did.

  “Statler Aames and them were in there messing with Harris,” I told him. “Somebody needs to knock him out!”

  “Wish it could be me,” said Little Man vengefully, then slammed the flat of his hand against the side of the wagon.

  “It . . . it don’t matter,” said Harris, shrugging off the humiliation. “He ain’t meant nothin’.”

  “He’d’ve meant something if you’d’ve talked back to him!” I surmised.

  “Cassie,” said Christopher-John, shaking his head in sympathetic admonishment for Harris.

  I looked at him and was quiet. I knew he was right. Again. Harris probably was feeling bad enough without hearing from me.

  Harris looked meekly at me in apology. “I . . . I’m sorry I ain’t found out ’bout the bus, Cassie.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” I said with a sigh. “They probably didn’t know anything anyway.”

  “Jeremy, he wasn’t messing, was he?” asked Christopher-John as Jeremy came out onto the porch.

  Harris looked over. “Naw. He don’t never mess.”

  We watched Jeremy speak to the ruddy-faced travelers, then start across the road toward us. As he neared, Harris stepped around to the other side of the wagon.

  “How y’all doin’?” asked Jeremy, joining us.

  “All right. Yourself?” we said.

  “All right, I ’spect, ’ceptin’ for this heat.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his neck. He looked at the wagon. “Y’all here pickin’ up a load?”

  “We waiting on Stacey,” said Little Man.

  “Stacey? He coming in from Jackson?”

  “S’pose to be. Got a letter from him the other day, and he said he was. Little Willie and Moe coming, too, but the bus is late.”

  “Well, it most times is.”

  I turned, di
sgusted at that same fact being pointed out. “Anybody say anything inside about how come it’s late?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t figure there’s cause for worry, though.”

  “Suppose not.”

  He glanced up the road, as if expecting the bus any minute, then looked again at me. “You going back to Jackson with Stacey this time, Cassie?”

  “Suppose to.”

  “‘Spect you lookin’ forward to it.”

  I shrugged. “Not all that much. I get homesick way up there in Jackson.”

  “Well, you been going up there the last two years. Figure you’d be used to it by now. Y’all stay with kin up there, don’t ya?”

  “Yeah, but I still get homesick. It’s not home.”

  “’Ey, Cousin!” Jeremy turned. Statler, Leon, and Troy had just stepped out to the porch. “Thought you said you had to go!” called Statler. “See you got time to talk and pass a spell with that gal Cassie there.” He grinned over at me, ignoring the fact that all the boys were standing there too. “Course, I don’t much blame you for that, now.”

  Little Man’s jaw tightened, and I cut him a hard look, warning him to keep his silence. He balled his fists, jammed them into his pockets, and looked away.

  Jeremy’s face reddened, and he stepped back. “I’m . . . I’m headin’ home now.”

  “Want us to run you up there?”

  “No. I’ll walk.”

  “All right, then. See ya t’night?”

  “Yeah, see ya.” Jeremy nodded us a silent good-bye, turned, and walked away to the south. Statler, Leon, and Troy remained on the porch awhile talking to the two traveling men, then they got into their truck and headed west, back toward Soldiers Bridge.

  Harris, too, prepared to leave. “Was hoping to holler at Stacey and them, but ’spect I best get on home,” he said, “’fore Ma gets t’ missin’ me.”

  “Wait,” said Christopher-John gazing back up the eastern road. The rest of us including Harris looked that way too and waited for we figured Christopher-John had heard something, and he had. Soon a bus was speeding toward us. It passed the wagon, pulled in front of the store, and stopped, and Christopher-John, Little Man, and I hurried over. Harris stayed by the wagon. Impatiently, we waited as the bus door opened and the bus driver and several people got off; Stacey, Willie, and Moe weren’t among them. We kept on waiting, checking the windows all the while to see if maybe they were just slow in gathering up their things. But then when the two men who had been waiting on the store porch picked up their bags and got on, and so did the driver, who shut the door, turned the bus around, and continued on west toward the bridge and Smellings Creek, we realized that Stacey, Moe, and Willie weren’t coming home.

  “Now, just where the devil are they?” I exclaimed as the bus sped away.

  Christopher-John shook his head. “Maybe they’re still in Jackson.” Disappointment was all across his face.

  We returned to the wagon. “They ain’t come?” said Harris.

  “You see them standing here?” I snapped.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Little Man, his voice flat. “Stacey said he was coming, and it’s not like Stacey to go change his mind, not after he said he was coming.”

  Christopher-John nodded agreement with that, then frowned and stared again up the road. “Y’all . . . y’all don’t s’pect maybe something done happened to them?”

  I sighed and climbed back onto the wagon seat. “Boy, don’t go to worrying, now. They probably still sitting up in Jackson, doing just fine. In any case, they won’t be coming now. Let’s go.”

  Little Man took one more look up the road, and then got on in back. “Come on, Harris,” he ordered. “We give you a ride far’s your road.”

  Harris nodded his thanks and heaved his tremendous body up and sat on the edge of the wagon bed with his legs hanging over. Christopher-John turned to climb on as well, but then stopped and glanced again at the road. “Boy, stop wasting time,” I said, not in the best of moods and certainly not wanting to spend any more time here.

  “Something else coming.”

  “Well, that’s got nothing to do with us.” We all knew that there would be no more buses from Jackson, and I wasn’t interested in anything else. “Boy, get on this wagon and let’s go!” I ordered.

  Christopher-John obeyed. As he settled down beside me and took up the reins, a car came into view. Christopher-John waited for it to pass before heading the mules out. The car, wine-colored and with chrome shimmering in the October sun, came full speed up the road. As the car drew near, it slowed, then pulled right in front of the mules and stopped. In silence, we stared at the car, wondering what it was doing stopping in front of us. Then the driver’s door opened and a handsome young man, tall and slender, wearing a short-sleeve shirt, dress pants, and a fedora stepped out.

  It was Stacey.

  “Well, aren’t you all going to speak?” he said.

  I spoke, all right. “Boy, what are you doing driving that car?”

  Stacey just grinned as Moe Turner, tall, thin, and cocoa skinned, got out on the other side, and Little Willie, a runt of a young man, got out the back. They were grinning too.

  Little Man jumped over the side of the wagon and ran to Stacéy. “Where’d you get the car?” he asked eagerly as Harris and Christopher-John got down too. “What you doing with it?”

  “You like it, Clayton?”

  “Why, sure I do, but—”

  “Then, that’s good!” Stacey slid his hands into his pants pockets and leaned toward Little Man as if to share a secret. “Because I bought it. It’s mine.”

  Little Man let go a whoop of a yell and got inside. Christopher-John walked slowly around the car in awe. Harris, too, eased closer. Now I got down from the wagon and took a better look. The car was a Ford, I knew that, and it looked like new. Despite the road dust that had settled on it, there was a shine to all the chrome and a soft sheen to its wine coloring. It had whitewall tires and there wasn’t a dent or a scratch anywhere on the body. Inside, the felt gray upholstery was spotless and unworn and the dashboard was all wood and chrome and gleam. Even the rug mats hardly looked stepped on. It was a fine-looking car.

  I turned to Stacey. “Where’d you get the money to buy a new car?”

  “Car’s not new,” he replied. “It’s a ’38.”

  I looked again at the Ford and frowned. “Well, it sure looks like new. Where’d you get the money for it?”

  “Saved it. Told you I was going to get a car.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you were talking about next year sometime.”

  Stacey wiped the dust from the right sideview mirror with his fist. “Was. But that was when I was thinking to pay cash.”

  “When’d you change your mind about that?”

  Little Willie laughed. “’Bout ten o’clock this morning, wasn’t it, hoss?” Then he took over answering my questions, and that was just as well since Stacey could be awfully tight-lipped sometimes. “That was ’bout the time when Stacey got tired of riding that bus!” Little Willie was some eight inches shorter than Stacey and Moe, both of whom measured a little over six feet. I was even taller than Willie, but height didn’t bother Willie. He talked as if he were eight feet tall. Like Stacey and Moe, he was twenty, near to twenty-one, an assured young man with all the world before him. “Ya see, lotta colored folks was on the bus traveling today, and the back seats got all filled up, so some folks had to stand. Course, now, there was some empty seats up front, where the white folks sit, but you know we couldn’t hardly sit up there, so folks had to stand and that done included the three of us. By the time we got to Strawberry, ole Stacey, he was mad as a dog! Wasn’t you, hoss?”

  “You telling the story,” Stacey said quietly.

  “Yeah, you was mad all right! We got into Strawberry, and Stacey said he wasn’t going one more foot on that bus, and my boy got off!”

  Stacey laughed. “See you got off too.”

  “Yeah, course we di
d! Had to keep an eye on you, man! Thought you’d gone mad, talking ’bout buying yourself a car! Moe and me, we followed the boy, not knowing how we was gonna get ourselves home. Followed him straight to Mr. Wade Jamison’s office and listened to him bargain himself a deal for this car right here! Used to be Miz Jamison’s!”

  I studied the car anew. No wonder the car looked so good. Mr. Wade Jamison was a lawyer in Strawberry whose wife had died two years ago. I turned to Stacey, “Well, what kind of deal you make?”

  Stacey smiled modestly. “Well, I told Mr. Jamison I knew he most likely wouldn’t want to part with the car, seeing it belonged to Mrs. Jamison, but if he was willing to part with it, I’d like to talk about buying it. He said he’d sell it to me on time, so I put every penny I had in my pocket on it, and Mr. Jamison said he’d give me a year to pay off the rest. I figure to pay it off ’fore the year’s out, though.”

  Little Man sat behind the steering wheel. “Well, it sure is something, all right.”

  “Yeah . . . ” murmured Christopher-John in admiration. “Yeah . . .”

  “It’s got a few little problems,” said Stacey. “Heater doesn’t work very well, and the engine seems to be missing.”

  “Well, I can take a look at that for ya, Stacey,” Harris volunteered eagerly. “Maybe the carburetor just needs adjusting a bit.”

  “Well, I’d be obliged, Harris,” Stacey said, and put up the hood.

  Harris was good at mechanical things. Though there weren’t those many colored folks with cars in the community, a few had trucks and farming equipment that needed fixing from time to time, and for the last couple of years Harris had managed to keep mostly everything running. He studied under the hood, then asked Stacey if he had a screwdriver. Stacey got him one from a toolbox in the trunk and Harris adjusted the carburetor with it. “Give that a try,” Harris said, grinning. “Oughta help.”

  Stacey told Little Man to start the car. It sounded good. Stacey smiled his appreciation. “Why, thank you, Harris.”

  Harris carefully lowered the hood. “It’s a fine car you got here, Stacey,” he said, wiping a spot with his handkerchief that his fingers had smudged. “One of these days I’m hoping I can get me a car and fix it up. Got that ole wreck of a truck runnin’ my grandpap used to have. Only thing is, can’t ’ford no gas for it.” He looked longingly at the Ford. “Sure would like t’ see how this one runs.”