All the Days Past, All the Days to Come Read online

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  The bus soon passed us and as it did, we stepped back into the forest to avoid the billowing dust. Once the dust cleared, we stepped back onto the road. Even with the sun shining down on us, the day was cold and soon the sun would begin to set. As we walked along the red road we said little. Little Man had slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and had wanted to carry my bag as well, but I told him I would carry it. I had always figured to be as tough as my brothers. I shifted the bag from one hand to the other until finally Little Man said, “Cassie, just let me have the bag. We can move a lot faster. You want it back later, you can have it.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, I knew Man was right. Although we were of the same height, though not of the same weight, my little brother was now stronger than I, had been for several years, and with all the Army training he had an endurance much beyond my own. Still, I kept the bag. At nineteen, going on twenty in the summer, I refused to admit I couldn’t carry my own weight.

  The sun had already set when a wagon came rolling slowly up the road behind us. Lanterns hung from its sides to light the way. There was a full moon and we could still see the road as we continued walking until the wagon neared, then we stopped and stood aside, waiting for it to pass. We were both apprehensive, for we could not see who was driving. As the wagon approached we saw that a black man sat alone on the wagon seat. We did not know him, but that was all right. There was always a kinship when seeing another black face, especially on a Mississippi road at night. The driver stopped. “Y’all lookin’ mighty weary,” he said. “Where y’all young folks headed?”

  “Over toward Great Faith,” I said.

  “Well, I’m going a ways past there, far as that store, then I’ll be headed on north. Y’all welcome t’ ride far’s I go.” He gave us a studied look. “What happen y’all t’ be walkin’ this road after dark anyways?”

  “Nothing much,” answered Man. “Just lost our ride, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the farmer, doubt in his voice, but he chose not to question us further about it. “Well, y’all get on up here, y’all want this ride.”

  We thanked the farmer, then both Little Man and I climbed onto the back of the wagon. It felt good to be off our feet. We rested our backs against the wagon side boards and listened to the farmer’s talk, but said very little ourselves. Finally, the farmer grew quiet, and we rolled on through the darkness. After some while we passed Great Faith Church and School silhouetted in the night against the black forest and shortly after passing them reached the next crossroads and the Wallace store, dark and closed for the night. Clayton Chester and I again thanked the farmer as we got down from his wagon. He went on north, headed toward Strawberry. Man and I headed west. We had only a few miles before we would be home.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  As we walked up the long dirt driveway, the dogs started barking, then quieted as they recognized us and came over wagging their tails. The driveway ran along the side yard of the house, past the well all the way to the barn. Stacey’s car was parked at the top of the drive. As we approached the house, the side door opened to Mama and Papa’s room. Papa was standing in the doorway. “’Bout time y’all got here,” he said.

  Mama quickly joined him, and Big Ma was right behind her. “What happened to you?” Mama asked. “Why weren’t you on the bus?”

  And Big Ma exclaimed, “Lord A-Mighty! We sho been worried ’bout y’all! Get on in here!”

  Little Man and I stepped inside and put down our bags, then hugged Mama, Papa, and Big Ma. Stacey and Christopher-John came over and we hugged them too. “We were waiting for you up at the store when the bus came in,” Stacey said. He looked at Man. “We thought maybe you didn’t get in from Fort Hood and Cassie was waiting for you before heading home.”

  “Yeah,” said Christopher-John, “we were thinking of running down to McComb first thing tomorrow if you didn’t make it in.” He slapped Little Man’s arm fondly. “You looking good! Course, looks like the Army took a few pounds off you.”

  “They’ll take a few pounds off you too when they call you up,” Little Man wryly returned with a slow smile.

  Stalwart Christopher-John punched at his own stomach. “Well, maybe I can use that!” Then he laughed.

  “Y’all all right?” asked Big Ma.

  “We’re fine, just dead tired,” I said.

  Big Ma put her arm around me, hugging me to her again. “How’d y’all leave yo’ Aunt Callie?”

  “She’s about the same,” I replied, “but her spirits are good. She sent love. Everybody did.”

  “Come on, sit down,” Papa ordered, and we all headed past Mama and Papa’s bed to the wooden chairs, their seats covered in deer hide, that sat in a semicircle in front of the fireplace. Light from the fire lit the chairs, and two kerosene lamps—one on Mama’s desk at the windows overlooking the drive, the other on the nightstand beside the bed—lit the remainder of the room. There was no electricity. Stacey’s wife, Dee, sat in the rocker closest to the hearth. Stacey had married Dee in March of 1942. Their first child, Marie, called Rie by us all, had been born in December that same year. They were now expecting their second child. Both Man and I went over to greet Dee. She was in the seventh month of her pregnancy and did not get up. I kissed Dee and asked about Rie.

  “Already in bed,” said Dee. Then she turned to Man, now bending to kiss her. “How’re you doing, Clayton?” she asked. Unlike the rest of us, Dee always called Man by his given name. Like Mama, she had been a teacher at Great Faith and had tolerated no nicknames in her classroom. I sat down with a heavy sigh beside Dee, kicked off my shoes, and rubbed my feet.

  “Both of you look beat,” Stacey said.

  “Guess we should. Man and I walked all the way from the Wallace store and then some before that.”

  “What do you mean you walked some before that?” inquired Stacey. I didn’t answer.

  “Rob,” Dee said, tightening the shawl around her shoulders and rubbing her arms, “honey, could you put some more wood on the fire? I’m feeling a bit chilly and I expect Cassie and Clayton are too.”

  Stacey gave me a questioning look before going over to the bin at the far side of the stone fireplace. He took several logs and piled them high on the flames, then turned to Dee. “That better?” he asked.

  Dee smiled up at him. “Much better, Robert, thank you.” Just as Dee had chosen to address Little Man by his given name, she had also chosen to address Stacey by his first name. She said she preferred to be the only person who called him that. Stacey smiled back and added still more logs to the fire.

  When all of us but Stacey were seated, Papa turned to Little Man and me. “All right now,” he said, “tell us what happened. Why weren’t y’all on that bus?”

  Man stared at the fire and didn’t say anything, so I said, “We got off the bus. Got off at Parson’s Corner.”

  “Parson’s Corner?” Mama questioned in alarm. “Why? What were you doing getting off the bus there?”

  Both Little Man and I were silent.

  Papa frowned. “They put y’all off?”

  I glanced at Man and answered Papa. “No, sir. We decided that on our own. Bus driver told us to move.”

  Mama looked from me to Man. “That’s it?” She knew, we all knew full well what the policy was. “Clayton Chester, that’s it? The bus driver asked you to move?”

  Little Man’s gaze left the fire and he looked at Mama. His voice was matter-of-fact when he spoke. “We decided we weren’t going to move again.”

  For several moments no one said anything and there was only the sound of the fire popping. It was Papa who broke the silence. “That driver know who you are?”

  “No, sir,” I assured him. “Got no idea.”

  Stacey moved from the fire and sat down. “So, how’d you get home? You couldn’t’ve walked all the way
from Parson’s Corner.”

  “Would’ve if we’d had to,” I said. “We were on our way to doing it when a man came along in a wagon and gave us a ride far as the Wallace store—”

  “Colored man?” asked Papa.

  I sighed. “Now, Papa, you know Man and I wouldn’t have gotten on otherwise.”

  Again the room was silent; then Big Ma stood and went over to Little Man. He looked up at her and she put her hand on his head and rubbed his hair, now butchered into an Army cut. “Umph, umph, umph,” she mumbled. “All that beautiful hair, gone.” Aunt Callie pretty much had had the same sentiment, and so had I. Little Man’s hair had always been wavy and long, often hanging in his face and to his shoulders. Big Ma said he had gotten his hair from Grandpa Paul-Edward’s white father and his half-Indian mother, as well as her own mother’s people. She sighed heavily and let her hand drop. “Well, I know one thing. Y’all must be mighty hungry. Y’all sit and rest. I got supper waitin’. Jus’ needs warmin’.” She moved briskly toward the kitchen. In her seventies, Big Ma was able-bodied, still strong, and moved almost as quickly as she always had.

  Dee got up. “I’ll help,” she said.

  “Girl, you sit down. I can manage.”

  “I’ve been sitting all day and I want to help.”

  Big Ma’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Dee, then she shrugged. “Have it your way then. I recall, I felt the same way when I was carryin’.”

  As Big Ma and Dee left for the kitchen, Papa, looking first at me, then at Man, said, “There any trouble ’bout y’all getting off that bus?”

  Little Man gave no answer. So again, I answered. “Not really.”

  Papa’s eyes stayed on Man. “Clayton?”

  Man looked at Papa. “No, sir, no trouble. We just told the driver we weren’t moving back again. We’d already moved once and we weren’t moving again and he told us we’d move when he said we needed to move. So we decided to move all right. We moved right off the bus.”

  “You back talk him?”

  Little Man shook his head. “We just got off.”

  “Well, if that’s the case,” said Mama, “there shouldn’t be any trouble about it.”

  Little Man turned to Mama. He spoke softly. “Maybe that’s what you think, Mama, but tell you the truth, I wanted to kill that man.”

  “Clayton!”

  “I’d’ve done that, I guess there’d been trouble all right.” Then what I knew had been coming all day finally happened; Little Man’s temper exploded. “Here I am forced to go fight their war and they make me and Cassie sit at the back of their bus behind their curtain so they don’t have to see us! Like we weren’t even there, and still that’s not good enough for them! So they make us move, not once, but twice, so the good white folks could have our seats and still that wouldn’t have been good enough for them if they’d needed more seats! They’d have moved us right off that bus if they needed our seats and we all know that!” His voice grew louder. “Yet they want me to go fight their damn war! Took me out of school so I can go fight their white man’s war and there’s nothing I can do about it! Nothing any of us can do about it!” He jumped up suddenly, and his wooden chair clanged backward to the floor.

  At that, Papa, Stacey, and Christopher-John sprang up. Christopher-John grabbed at Little Man’s arm. “Ah, Man, come on!”

  Little Man jerked away.

  “Son, calm down,” Papa said as Big Ma came rushing in.

  “What’s goin’ on in here?” Big Ma demanded to know. “Heard all this shoutin’ and ruckus!”

  Little Man turned toward Big Ma, looked at her in silence, then hurried out the side door.

  “Clayton!” Mama called after him.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Stacey said, touching Mama’s arm in reassurance, and followed Man out. We all watched Stacey as he left. If anyone could calm Little Man, it was Stacey.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  When Clayton Chester was born, I was too young to remember the events of those days. Stacey, however, who then was going on six, did remember and over the years the story was told many times: how Mama had almost died from the birth and Little Man had too. His was a breech birth. It had not been an easy pregnancy for Mama. She had been sick throughout and when the time for Little Man’s arrival finally came, he was premature. Big Ma was a midwife and had delivered Stacey, Christopher-John, and me, but she did not deliver Little Man because he came more than a month before expected. Big Ma was not at home. She had gone down to McComb a few days after Christmas to visit with Aunt Callie, and Little Man was born the day after the new year in 1927. Another midwife in the community attended the delivery.

  Stacey said he remembered Mama’s screams that night and when the screaming stopped, there were no sounds of crying from the new baby. He said he had listened at the closed door and when he had heard the traditional slap on a newborn’s bottom to bring the baby to life, there was still no crying, no life. There had been another slap and yet another, and finally at last he heard crying. When Stacey, Christopher-John, and I were allowed in the room to see our new brother, Stacey observed that the baby did not cry much; then he rubbed Clayton Chester’s tiny fingers and declared, “He’s a little man!” All in the room agreed, and the name stuck.

  From that moment, Stacey took Little Man under his big brother wings. That was partly because Clayton Chester was so tiny and remained in questionable health for weeks after his birth, and also because Papa had gone back to work on the railroad. As Little Man grew stronger, Mama returned to teaching at Great Faith and taking on other community activities. Big Ma, too, was busy cooking, taking care of the house as well as the fields, and Stacey, who was not that old himself, was a big help to them in seeing after Christopher-John, Little Man, and me—especially Little Man, who for a while seemed to be threatened continuously with some physical ailment or impending catastrophe. He went through a bout of pneumonia before he could walk and again almost died. Later, he fell from a wagon and his broken leg took a long time in healing. Another time a bull got loose; Papa had smashed a dexterous two-fisted punch into the face of the bull and stopped its charge toward Little Man. Through it all, though, Little Man lived up to the name Stacey had given him. He was tough in spirit, set in determination, and certainly had a mind of his own.

  By the time he was six, it was difficult to get Little Man to do what he was determined not to do. Unlike other six-year-olds, he did not cry when he was hurt, although once he had cried when he was humiliated at the hands of whites, his brand-new school clothes covered with mud-soaked water. But he certainly did not cry when he got a whipping. That was troubling to both Mama and Papa, who did not hesitate to whip the boys and me when we did something wrong. They explained the whippings by telling us that they had to be hard on us, to make us understand right from wrong and what was expected of us in this life. They also said that the whippings were to keep us alive, for we needed to know and follow rules, and that no black person in Mississippi could survive without following those rules.

  The years of slavery and Jim Crow had proven that.

  While we were growing up, Stacey, being older and also having a determined mind-set of his own, did not cry when being punished, but Christopher-John and I certainly did. That let Mama or Papa know we were truly sorrowful, and also that we had been punished enough. Sometimes, as soon as the leather strap hit our legs, the two of us began to scream, just to get the whipping over with, and Mama or Papa would let us go. Knowing that Stacey had no intention of crying, after a few licks of the strap they let him go too. But they seemed not to know what to do about Little Man, who refused to cry and show his remorse.

  “Boy, why don’t you just cry and get it over with!” I once advised him. “They’d stop whipping on you if you’d just cry.”

  Little Man had given me a long look, then said, “It’s not that I don’t want to cry, Cassie. I jus
t can’t. Something won’t let me. Stacey doesn’t cry. I don’t either.”

  So, that’s the way it was with Little Man too. Little Man followed Stacey everywhere and tried to do whatever Stacey did. Many things Papa would have taught Clayton Chester had he been home, Stacey taught, and Little Man was eager to learn about everything. His mind absorbed all put before him. Everyone acknowledged that Clayton Chester had a brilliant mind. He had even skipped a grade. Everyone also acknowledged that whatever Stacey asked of him, Little Man did. Stacey was Little Man’s hero.

  With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States’ declaration of war a day later, we all worried that Stacey would be called up to fight. But when Stacey was drafted, he was deferred because of his health. At fourteen, Stacey had run away to the cane fields of Louisiana to try to earn money for the family. During that time, he had come down with some sort of fever that had sickened him for weeks and had weakened his heart. It was early in the war when he was called up, and a number of colored men were deferred for any number of reasons, including flat feet. It was said that the government was concerned about Negro soldiers and interracial mixing in Europe, but whatever the reason for the deferment, when we learned that Stacey was not being inducted into the Army, we fell to our knees in gratitude and thanked God.

  We all prayed that the war would be over before Christopher-John was drafted. But by the end of 1943, we knew that was wishful thinking and that Christopher-John would most likely be called up. The war had escalated as Axis forces continued to maintain their grip over Europe and in the Pacific. The Army was no longer being as selective about its draftees. They needed every man they could get. We steeled ourselves for Christopher-John’s eighteenth birthday. Christopher-John turned eighteen in late 1943 and graduated high school. As required, he was registered for the draft within thirty days of his birthday. He had not yet been called. We figured we had another year before we had to start worrying about Little Man. That turned out not to be the case. Little Man was drafted before Christopher-John.