EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

HOUSING

The New York Times featured an interesting guest editorial this morning by an economics professor. It was a "we can build our way our of it" solution to the affordable housing crisis by someone who has probably never attended a planning commission meeting. He says that zoning and bureaucracy are significant obstacles blocking our way.

I call, “Bullshit.”

 I can name a half-dozen cities in our state that have the land and utility capacity and would approve vast "Levittowns" tomorrow. Assuming some sort of construction "Deus ex Machina" miracle that suddenly lowered material and labor costs, the projects could be built quickly and with minimal red tape.

So why not?

Just check the racial composition of those cities.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 CHANGE

We hear old sailors speak of a sea change. We hear philosophers talk about paradigm shifts. We hear the malevolent talk of alternate facts. Old folks on the porch simply say, “Things aren’t like they used to be.”

People in their senior years have seen a lot of change. I only know about America. And here:

Time was a man could murder his wife for supposed infidelity and have a fair hope of acquittal.

Time was an African American family couldn’t enter a fine restaurant or sit in the main lobby of a movie theater.

Time was a judge, always a male, would award a man who had kicked a wife and child out to make room for a younger woman would set the child support payment at less than the cost of daycare.

Time was one could only marry the person they loved if that person was of the opposite sex.

Time was a company could work men in unsafe conditions for less than sustenance pay and have parks named after them for the profits they earned.

Time was we felt that bedrock slums were fine for families simply labelled as "those people."

Time was prominent pastors encouraged parents to beat their children in order to maintain discipline.

Ooops. That time is still with us.

Anyway … the point is this. When I hear someone say, “Let’s make America Great Again,” I want to know what America they are talking about.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

BELIEFS

My parents had their own view towards religion. They claimed it and defended it when pressed, but in popular parlance, “took it with a grain of salt.”

One, Sainted Mother, grew up in a strict Baptist environment. Father attended a rural Methodist church but back in those days there wasn’t a lot of difference.

As I say, they supported religion but didn’t let it dominate their existence. They dragged us to church each Sunday morning and, on rare occasion, Sunday night. They didn't go in revivals and other extracurricular activities. They ran our little grocery store six days a week.

They were honest and caring to those in need, but this evolved more from the cultural surroundings than from the religious banter of a Sunday morning. In fact, of the few types of people on earth my mother despised, one of the most prominent was what she called “religious fanatics.”

These days, that would apply to most evangelicals and they would not be offended, if fact would be pleased, with what they felt was an honorific.

Religious fanatic.

That included about anyone who brought up the subject in ordinary conversation without being prompted.

That included those who would “stick their nose into someone else’s business.”

That included those who denied their children the fun of—because the Devil lurked there—going to a swimming pool or movie theater.

That included people who funded a church while their children went hungry.

Were my parents perfect? No, far from it. They would never have countenanced an African American as president and would probably have gone to voting for the dark side of America.

The lure of bigotry was a failure, one that was supported by their religion.

They weren’t averse to corporal and abusive punishment.

The appeal of physical abuse was a failure, one that was supported by their religion.

On the other hand, they never failed to provide help and comfort to the least of those among us.

The appeal of kindness was a blessing, not one universally supported by their religion.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

BACK DOORS

It was the evening watch and I had only been sailor in the United States Navy for a few months. It was a small but important base located on a former hotel complex. The fleet admiral housed there. I served with a young Ensign on quarterdeck duty in what once been the hotel lobby. My job was to assist and run errands. That’s when it happened.

A message came in for the Admiral. The ensign took it, folded it into an envelope, wrote the proper note, and told me to take it to the admiral’s quarters.

I did. Right up to the door I went and knocked on the door respectfully. A steward answered and I delivered my assignment.

He took it, looked at me as if I had just crawled from under a kitchen cabinet and said, “In the future, you should use the back door.”

No big deal but I took my time walking back to headquarters thinking. I was a grown man, a white one from a middle-class family. In my entire life, I had never been told to go to the back door of any home.

No big deal, but it made me feel small and think of people I had known, including shipmates, whose parents and grandparents had been told this for their entire lives.

I guess that’s why I don’t hold the town of Savanah, Georgia with such religious ecstasy as my friends and colleagues do.

Oh, I think it must be quite a beautiful place in its central core. I can see why some people make their friends and families travel there for a wedding. It must contain a plethora of significant homes.

But I would always wonder, as I worshipped, if the slaves who made the bricks, produced the lumber for those homes, and built them for whatever pay their owner saw fit had ever been allowed, socially, to use the front doors. 

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 AMERICA

Given the daily news, that so many Americans condone behavior most similar to that prevalent in 1930s Germany, we must wonder. Has something happened to America? It would appear so as a superstar of mendacious conduct controls a cult comprising a terrifying percentage of our people. Many of those had behaved, in all outward aspects, within normal boundaries until recently.

We now seem to have normalized bad behavior. It generates seductive news reporting and thus receives more than its reasonable share. We can’t seem to escape wallowing in its repulsive filth. Some examples:

-          Insurrectionists are heroes.

-          Facts are tools of the Dark One.

--       America needs a government operating on evangelical Christianity.

-          The Sermon on the Mount is banned from pulpits.

All at a time when America is outpacing the rest of the world in most standards of living.

Did something happen that threw us from an orbit of cognitive thought and rational behavior?

Or, some might say, have there always been flaws within our system? Did the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America open fissures that allowed the demons to escape?

We hope not.

A STORY OF LITTLE ROCK

 THE ASSIGNMENT

Truth be known, I didn’t want to do the piece in the first place. Hell, I wasn’t even a journalist. I was a consultant, a pretty good one, and should have stuck to it. But I had been doing these modest little columns for a Little Rock quarterly that promoted historic preservation. I was acquainted with the editor, I lived in a so-called historic district, and I knew most of the people who lived there. Little Rock was the city that nourished me for most of my adult life. So I agreed to help.

 It was a good fit. People associated living in historic neighborhoods with eccentricity back in those days. They welcomed things that supported that paradigm. So, folks liked my little “human interest” pieces. As for me, I was happy to stick to them. There was no chance of running out of characters, and I didn’t have to travel.

            Then the editor called me one day and asked me to stop by. When I got there, she up and gave me an assignment. Just like that, like I was some cub reporter or something. This posed a noticeable departure from the usual process whereby I just picked out some local oddball and wrote about how they had adjusted to living in an old house.

This time she picked the subject. Why? Beats me. Maybe I was getting stale, or she was trying to sell more copies or something. Rather than speculate, I went along with her for the moment.

            Well guess what? You never know what dish life is going to serve up and what decisions are going to throw themselves in front of you, threatening your hemostasis like a group of western bandits with their pistols drawn and ready.

Here’s how it started.

            A local bigwig, known to us all as a neighbor and a nice guy, had bought one of the most historic homes in the city. It boasted such long-term provenance that the house and grounds came with a caretaker who had worked there since the Great Depression. Mr. Pitts cared for the grounds and lived in a small apartment attached to the carriage house, a.k.a. the garage. He was a quiet little man of advanced age who lived alone and remained out of sight when not working. All the neighbors knew him to nod at, but none of us had ever talked to him.

            The editor explained the human-interest angle. Supposedly, a friendship had grown up between Mr. Pitts and the banker’s young son Alfie—Alfred Chidester LaRue was his full name—a little blond-haired kid from the high-rent side of life. Get it? Old black gardener and white heir apparent, the image of an odd couple as corny as it was appealing to our liberal audience. All I had to do was interview the old man, mine a few historic nuggets and take a picture of him and the kid together. It would produce enough “ain’t that cutes?” to make a tough man buy a round of drinks. There was no Pulitzer looming, but it would get me through until another deadline appeared like a hungry tiger emerging from the mist. No problem.

Anyway, I didn’t have to. These columns represented a public service for me. In other words, I didn’t get paid. Seeing my words in print provided my only emolument. So, I had a degree of leverage unavailable to a poor inky wretch actually writing for a living.

I could have refused the assignment and interviewed, instead, a friend who was restoring a cottage near ours and who looked more like Charles Manson than Manson did himself. He played cello in the city’s symphony orchestra and would have been great material for a photo essay, the research being carried out over a couple of beers. Why should I spend a dry afternoon interviewing the town’s oldest gardener? It didn’t make a bit of sense. “To hell with the editor and her aspirations,” I kept telling myself. Was I my own man or what?

            Naturally, I took the assignment. I had to go through the bigwig himself and he pretty much outlined what he wanted the piece to say. Alfie was an only-child and, having few young friends in the neighborhood, he had taken up with Mr. Pitts. Followed him everywhere. Shared secrets with him. Even helped with the yardwork. Well, maybe a little. The important thing was the friendship that had developed between man and boy. That was the angle.

            Sure. One of the greatest and most persistent dreams of American Caucasians is that, someday, an African American will love them. But I could pretend with the best, so I pressed on to complete the assignment.

            I set up an appointment for the next Saturday afternoon. It was a nice autumn day that welcomed a person outdoors. I grabbed an ancient Rolliflex camera that I used for such work, made sure I had pen and paper, and walked the two blocks to the house.

The house sat on a half-block facing one of the two main streets leading directly to downtown. When it was built, wealth had followed the topography. The larger houses were on the highest ground and homes fell off in size and value as the topography dropped into the flood plain. It was never more than a short walk from the mansions to the homes from which domestic help could be hired, for practically nothing, in the good old days. In other words, urban form followed economic function. Households weren’t separated by income as they are now. That’s how, thanks to the historic preservation craze, I could afford to live near a bunch of mansions.

            I arrived. Mr. Pitts had dressed up a bit. He always wore neat clothes with a narrow-brimmed dress hat. Today he had added a tie. He stood at attention with his hands to his side and presented a smile like a boot-camper at inspection. Alfie was bouncing a ball against a tree and the parents stood by with pride. All was set for this to be a painless adventure. Wham, bam, thank you m’aam and I meet my deadline.

            I called little Alfie over and made him sit for a picture with Mr. Pitts. As I lined it up, I pulled a few grunts out of the kid to the effect that he liked Mr. Pitts and enjoyed helping him with the yard work. Mr. Pitts sat smiling through thick eyeglass lenses that distorted his face to where it looked like one of those cartoon characters that has just seen something either real juicy or real dangerous.

            So far, so good.

            Figuring I had about all out of Alfie I was going to get, I excused him with “Now Alfie, why don’t you let Mr. Pitts and me visit while you get back to your yard work?” In other words, “Scram, kid!”

            Alfie was more than happy to be rid of adults, so he walked to beyond the garage. There, someone had dug a shallow pit from which smoke was rising. Within the pit, I assumed from the smell, were dead leaves, trash, and some sort of organic waste. Alfie amused himself by kicking more leaves into the fire.

His mother saw the opportunity and appeared from nowhere with a tray of cookies and iced tea. She sat them on the bench between us and asked, sweetly, and devoid of sincerity, the way only a southern woman can ask, if we were comfortable. After receiving affirmatives, she then swished away amid a crackling of petticoats and an almost audible smile. I pushed the tray toward Mr. Pitts. He smiled and pushed it back toward me.

            “No, please, go ahead,” I stammered, fumbling for my writing pen.

            “Thank you, suh,” he said. He exaggerated the “suh” so I—so we both—would know he didn’t attach any meaning to it. Then he took a cookie in one hand and a glass of tea in another. He neither drank nor ate right away, though. He rested the arm with the cookie on his leg and wrapped a hand around the glass of tea as if to keep it from flying away. He smiled at me. His eyes looked even larger than before.

            A breeze filled the yard and blew smoke from Alfie’s fire toward us. As it did, Mr. Pits finally raised the cookie in a soft arc to his mouth and took a small bite. He lowered it and raised his glass with the same grand gesture and sipped his tea.

            Hoping to get started, I asked him how long he had lived around there.

            “Oh, I was born around here,” he said. “I been here for as long as I can remember. We lived on Tenth Street but it went for the freeway. House ain’t there no more.”

            He chewed his cookie with what I thought was a grim expression. As he did, the smoke circled us and I caught the pleasant smell of burning leaves punctuated by the sharp odor of the other trash smoldering in the pit. Mr. Pitts stiffened and his eyes retreated behind his thick glasses.

            “I been here since when things were different than they are now,” he said. “Way different.”

Then, that far into the interview, he stopped talking. His voice didn’t exactly trail away as much as it fluttered beyond us like a feather caught in a whirlwind.

            I was losing him. I hurried back to work.

            “Different in what way?” I asked.

            He just looked at me. He seemed to struggle to respond and when he did, it wasn’t really to me but, it seemed, to the trees and the garden and maybe to the city itself with all its history and smoky secrets.

            “Way yonder different. Folks weren’t as good to you then.” He took another bite of cookie and drank from his glass. That energized him.

“My folks had it hard back then.”

            I tasted panic. Alfie had disappeared behind the garage and I felt as if I were on an asteroid hurtling through space with an alien. This affair wasn’t going according to plan. I nodded as if I understood and scratched on my pad without looking up. He continued.

            “The worse was what they done to Mr. Carter.”

            “Mr. Carter?” That was all I could manage.

            “Ain’t nobody should have had that done to them. Nobody. I don’t care if he was colored.”

            I gave up and stared at my pad. What was he saying, and where was he taking me? I stared right through my pad and into the ground. From therein oozed a memory. I met it halfway and solved the mystery.

Back in the 1920s, there had been a lynching in Little Rock, less than a half-mile from where we sat. It happened right in the middle of what was then the center of the “colored” commercial area, along Ninth Street.

“Oh my god,” I thought. “This is where he is going.” I tried to raise my head but it took three attempts to overcome the gravity created by that realization. When I did manage to look up, Mr. Pitts was somewhere far away, and scared. I mean really scared. His hand was shaking so much the tea was spilling.

            “I remember that day like it was yesterday,” he continued. They made us all go inside, for they knew there was to be trouble. I was just a child, but the oldest. My Momma put the youngest under the bed and made me watch after them. She said the white folks had done killed Mr. Carter and was draggin’ him down Ninth Street behind a car. She was scared and she made us all cry.

“We could hear people yellin’. They was honkin’ their horns and yellin’ so loud we could hear them in the bedroom. Wasn’t no colored folks on the street, except Mr. Carter and he was dead. They hung him and beat him and drug him up and down Ninth Street. We was all hidin’ and cryin.’ My Momma was tellin’ us to be quiet.” He stopped, looked away and back, directly at me.

“They shouldn’t have done that.”

            Here I was. It was a nice brisk autumn day and I should have been somewhere else, but I was sitting in someone else’s yard listening to an old man reciting his version of our city’s most awful moment and I couldn’t escape.

            “They drug him and drug him. All back and forth on Ninth Street. We could hear the cars and them horns honkin’, the honkin,’ oh my lord, the honkin’. Ain’t nobody ought to have that done to them. We was still cryin’ when they built a fire at Ninth and Broadway and burned him up. We could smell the smoke and that made us cry harder. My momma had some cookies in her apron pocket and she gave one to the younger kids to hush them up. She broke one in half and gave me a piece. She took the other half and then she started cryin’ too.”

            He looked at the cookie in his hand, then returned to that awful day.

            “Somebody said they broke one of his arms off and waved it at the cars going down Broadway,” he said. “I don’t know. Nobody looked out the window the whole time, for we was too scared.”

            I pretended to write something.

            “Too bad,” he said so low I barely heard him. “Them was bad days. Bad for us all.”

            The smoke circled us and I sat as still as I could. Mr. Pitts stopped talking and sat with his hand with the cookie resting on his leg. As the fog of remembrance cleared, he began to smile. He didn’t say anything. He was done talking to white strangers for the day.

            He sat there proud and triumphant, a black-skinned Cicero having had his say, needing neither accolades nor approval. I thanked him, not sure at all whether he even heard me, and then eased away and headed home. I was all confusion, trying to sort out what had just happened. I still had an assignment but what the hell was I going to write? The truth about what happened? That would be the honest thing. It might even be a good piece. Shake the readers up a bit. Let them know that history wasn’t all about cute Victorian houses. Hell yes!

            Back home, I sat in the kitchen and stared through the window. When I tried, I could hear the shouts on the street, feel the throb of the car engines running, and smell the acrid smoke of man and wood burning.

Damn that old man!

Outside the afternoon was dissolving into evening. The shadows got longer and darker the way our thoughts will as we doze. Beyond the kitchen window, the air was still crisp and clear. Inside, it was dark and gloomy. The evening sky changed purposefully that time of year like a lover moving from caresses to kisses, and then to the dark undertones of passion. My thoughts moved that way, too, as I reflected on the day and what it was trying to tell me. Maybe it was trying to tell me to be brave, or truthful …, or honest. Maybe it was suggesting that I approach what I was doing with something a little deeper than just seeing my name in print. Maybe it was just trying to tell me to say something else entirely, before darkness came. Maybe. Maybe.

After a time, I stood up and retrieved a beat-up Remington typewriter and package of paper from a closet and carried them, with as much gentleness as I could muster, into the kitchen. I placed the typewriter on the kitchen table so I could see beyond it into the deepening gloom. Then I slid a page of paper into it and turned the cylinder so the paper positioned itself precisely across the top, aligned there neat and worthy of higher-level thought. I drew and released a long breath of sad air—air that had once moved through the city and down the streets and around the large oak trees past the moving cars and quaint old houses and had once even flowed around the twitching, smoking body of John Carter.

I didn’t want to, but I smelled that smoke.

Click, click, I advanced the paper.

I was ready. My mind was as clear as the way of a traveler making the last turn on the last curve before home. I rubbed my hands. I thought how funny it would be to make the Sign of the Cross.

Instead, I started to type: “Mr. Otis Pitts, age 70 and a lifelong resident of Little Rock, has a new best friend who is only five years old.”

An Alarming Epiphany

 AN ALARMING EPIPHANY

After working my way through Steven Plinker’s “Blank Slate” and following his recommendation to “The Nurture Assumption” by Judith Rich Harris, I’ve come to the unsettling conclusion that our actions depend, for the most part, on evolutionary psychology. Exhaustive research finds no demonstrable impact by the home. It explains so much, like how the military can turn average young people into raging warriors with a few weeks of manipulation. More alarmingly, it explains why people I once knew as caring, compassionate, and thoughtful individuals now embrace a culture of hatred, violence, and cult obedience.

We don’t have to take people forward, just help them step backwards toward the evolutionary psychology of tribalism, xenophobia, and violence. Going back is a much easier task than going forward. What we call moral improvement or the advance of civilization consists of difficult and slippery reciprocal agreements:

• We won’t attack your village if you won’t attack ours.
• We'll leave your property alone if you leave ours alone.
• We won't try to kill you if you don't try to kill us.

We achieve harmony not through some quest for righteousness but through actions that move us away from our primitive nature and toward a stable environment. Unsettling, but enlightening.

 THE ROOTS THAT CLUTCH

By Jimmie von Tungeln

This day showed promise. Sheila knew it when she saw a pair of turtle doves courting in a tree before she started to school. Their soft cooing caught her attention and she stopped to watch the male nuzzle the female in the morning fog. She watched quietly as their heads bobbed in ancient ritual. In the mist the two appeared as a single gray organism, joined in an almost musical rhythm. Sheila bobbed her own head, smiled once and then sailed a rock into them. It caught one squarely in the chest—the first direct hit of her life.

"Be damned," she said as she watched feathers drift to the ground, following the body in a slow, orbiting motion.

"Why'd you want to do that?" Robert asked. He jumped a ditch bordering a cotton field, swinging a rusty lard bucket that carried a small lunch for him and Sheila. “Doves is in The Bible."

            "Don't care," his sister said. "I'll kill 'em ever by god chanct I get."

"That don't hardly seem right," Robert said. Then his attention was caught by a blur on a far away county road. It was an automobile and he stopped to stare.

"Model A, I'll bet,” He said. “Ford Motor Company."

“Who cares?" was Sheila's answer as she scanned the fencerow for birds, a well balanced rock in hand. Straining, she failed to see the Hinson boys approaching.

           "Ya'll ain't pickin' cotton today?" asked Timmy, the older of the two as they joined the others. He also carried a worn and much dented lard bucket, hanging at his side like a burden of the world thrust upon the young.

           "Mamma said cotton still ain't opened up on account of the rain. So she said we might as well go to school. Papa may hire some hands to help us." Then she said "I kilt a bird."

           "You ain't never," said Roland, the younger. "Girls can't hit no bird, can they Robert?'

           "She oughten not to have done it but she did," Robert said and then asked "Know what makes an automobile run?”

           "Motor, I reckon." said Timmy with caution, looking at Robert sideways. "Ain't that right?"

           "It's internal combustion. That's what does it. They say that someday we'll all have one. Everybody in the world will have one...their own car to go places in. Can you picture that?"

           “Golly snot," said Roland, He was struggling with that image. He had trouble seeing himself even riding in a motor car, much less driving one. He looked to Sheila for validation but, seeing none, turned back to Robert.

           "Could I ride one to your house any time I wanted to?

           "Heck, you could drive it to Little Rock," said Robert.

           "Golly snot," said Roland.

           "I ain't havin'one," said Sheila. The conversation had strayed too far from her, a situation that she began to correct the way a person might direct a stray calf back into a herd. "My husband will have a buggy with a fine red mare to match my hair. He'll take me anywhere I tell him to, even Little Rock." 

           "But them cars will pass you right up," said Timmy absentmindedly, immediately regretting it as Sheila twirled upon him with the fury of one of those storms that descend sharp and wild, from time to time, upon the helpless delta. She was thin, but two inches taller than the boy and she swelled above him.

           "Well I wouldn't by-god worry about it if I was you!"

           "No, no I won't," Timmy said, and he dropped several steps behind the group.

           They walked in silence for awhile, the Hinsons hoping for Sheila's wrath to subside while Robert contemplated the mysteries of the internal combustion engine.

           Finally he looked up. "I'm sure gonna have me one."

           "You're a real dope," said Sheila.

           Robert didn't respond. He felt the cough coming and he needed his energy. He had spotted something on the edge of the ditch and was forcing himself to keep from looking at it directly. He turned to Timmie and asked him to hold the lunch bucket.

           "A dope like you couldn't ever afford a pair of mules, much less an automobile", Sheila said, hoping for continuity.

           "Look what I found", said Robert. He had leaped into the tall grass suddenly and claimed his prize: a long length of chain dropped from a wagon or bounced from a truck and laying unmissed by its owner.

           "I saw it first," cried Sheila. "Give it here."

           "We'll use it for the bridge," said Robert, ignoring Sheila. "This is what we need." Then he began to cough.

           "That's what you get," said Sheila. "You know you ain't supposed to get excited."

           Robert didn't answered and the coughs came deeper from his lungs as he struggled to stand erect.

           "Golly Robert, you sound worse than ever," said Roland.

           "I'm okay," Robert said as he knelt on one knee next to his new belonging and wheezed, fighting the pain. Finally catching his breath, he added, "Let's hurry and get to the bayou. We got time to make some progress today."

            “A brand new chain,” said Roland. “Golly snot.”

           "I'm gonna bust you up if you say that again," said Sheila.

           The four of them started off down the road.

           There were two routes leading to school, each leading through fields that today drooped with unopened bolls of cotton needing to be picked but waiting as the rains persevered day after day. Today a soft grey mist covered the fields and the world seemed mysterious and unchanging as the four moved through it. Soon they would be at the turning off place.

The main road to the school passed the small farms that covered the delta like the squares on a giant quilt. It served as a collector for the minor roads, paths, and finally trails that connected each farm with the world. It, itself, connected to the state road on which, it was said, a person could go all the way to Memphis.

The school was a simple white building sited on a small patch stolen from the corner of a cotton field. It sat just beyond a bridge that crossed a wide bayou in a low spot too wet for farming. The road made a wide arc toward the bridge whose builders had sought the narrowest crossing.

           The other way ran straight on a tangent to the old road led directly to the school across a wide stretch of bayou. It could only serve in the dry months since it crossed a bayou too deep to be forded during wet weather. Created by the impatience of youth, it was hardly more than a path. It was said that the children favored it more for the adventure of the crossing than for the short distance it saved.

           The two paths diverged just past the home of Fate Johnson and as the four came near, Sheila attacked.

           "You ain't speaking to them people today are you?"

           "I might," said Robert.

           "I'll tell; you know what Mama said. Why you want to anyway?"

           "They ain't hurtin' anybody, they just like to wave at us, that's all."

           "They's black and it ain't right. They don't know us."

            “You may not know them but I do.” 

“I told Mama that you ate their food. She said for you not to and for you not to be talkin' to them."

"They ain't hurtin' anybody, they just want to be friendly."

"Somebody told me they just got married," said Timmy.

"That's crazy", said Sheila, "They's colored."

"They get married too", said Timmy, defensively.

"But not like everybody else, do they?" asked Roland.

"No, they do every thing different from us", Sheila said, silencing Roland with a glare so severe that he felt its force hot upon his face. He stumbled to the rear and walked quietly.

Robert stared ahead, thinking of how, with the addition of the chain, they could complete a bridge across the bayou.

"I didn't know they got married like white people do," said Roland. "Do they really, Robert?"

"Shut up," Robert said.

            He walked for some time and then he realized that Timmy Hinson was walking beside him. Sheila and Roland walked a few yards ahead. Tommy kicked a dirt clod into the ditch and looked at Robert. He held the chain in his hand and it dragged behind them in the muddy road.

            “Do you really know them people?” he asked.

            “I reckon I do.”

            “How?”

            “That man’s daddy used to work for mine sometimes. I didn’t know him until one day he yelled at me when I was riding our mare by here.

"Mamma says you keep hangin' out with coloreds, you start actin' like one," Sheila yelled back.

            Robert ignored her and continued. “What he wanted me to do was let him milk our mare. He said that a mare’s milk could cure a baby of the whooping cough and that his little brother was about to die of it. I didn’t see any harm that could come to it and he looked like he was about to cry. So I let him. I can’t see no harm in helpin’ anyone if you can.”

            “Golly snot,” Timmy said. “I never heard of such in my life.”

            “Anyway, he was thankful. He said the baby would be fine now, and that it would be my baby from here on. I just told him not to tell my daddy I let him. You know what?”

            “What?” Timmy asked.

            “It worked. He told me later,” he said and walked a little farther. “A real mystery… knowin’ that could come in handy some day.”

            “Is that why him and his wife do it?”

            “Do what?”

            “Run out on the porch and wave every time you come by?”

            “No, I just think they get lonesome.”

            Robert looked up in time to see Sheila walking back towards them.

            "They're waitin' on you and you better not talk to them today. And don't eat nothin' they offer you. We got food."

"Shut up," Robert said again. "Timmy, when we get to the bayou, we'll tie this chain to that big log and we can all four pull it down to the water. That'll finish the bridge."

"Don't you look at them Robert. If they got a biscuit, you don't eat it. You just keep walkin'."

Robert wanted to stop and speak but as he reached the corner of their fence, his breath failed and he felt the coughing coming again. From the corner of his eye, he saw the young couple sitting on their porch as always, the man waiting for the wagon that would take him to the field if the rains stopped and the woman waiting with him to wave at the children.

Walking without surrendering to the cough took the last measure of Robert's effort. He took each step with a resolution that exacted full payment in effort and he stared ahead. He could think of nothing but the pain and effort of breathing.

Sheila watched from the corner of her eye, her strength and determination ready. When Robert stumbled, she darted but he regained his footing and concentrated his entire consciousness on holding the chain.

The young couple held hands and waited, smiling and eager.

Only this morning there would be no greeting. There would be no chance to offer their gift. The boy stared straight ahead as he walked by, dragging a chain and gasping for breath. He tossed a hand at them but just barely, weakly. The girl walked backward in front, waiting to grab the chain if he faltered or turned to look at the couple. She stared at them victoriously, and the two younger boys followed obediently behind. They were gone quickly.

"I'll be," the husband said. Then he stood up, turned, and walked through the dark door of the house, leaving his wife alone on the porch as the soft rain began falling again over the fields.

"You all right?" Timmy asked.

"I'll be fine, just leave me alone."

"Last one to the bayou's a nigger baby," said Sheila, and she starting running, first along the road and then veering along the path that led to the trees that bordered the water. Roland started after her and then Timmy, who first checked to see if Robert was coming. Robert continued to walk, dragging the chain and struggling to breathe. The rain framed a curtain before him and he walked through it into the woods.

The place was quiet and seemed of another place and time to Robert. Giant oak trees towered above the lesser vegetation. Even in the middle of summer it would be a dark, sunless place and never quite dry. The forest floor was smooth with the tracks of millennia buried beneath its mud. It seemed as if he had entered a large, dark building. It was a mysterious place, suitable only for gathering, communing, and, today, planning.

When he reached the edge of the water, the others were gone. They had followed one on the many paths, some made by animals, and others by people, that followed the edge of the bayou. They were looking for wood - logs, limbs, pieces of broken lumber - that they could use to finish the bridge.

Robert sat on the stump of an ancient cedar and coiled the chain at his feet. He watched the flow of water and knew that it was higher, and faster, than before. He watched eddies as they sucked and whirled in the coffee brown water and he knew the flow was unstoppable.

The spot where he sat, the spot where they had chosen to work, had once been a large grove but the bayou had shifted over the years and now ran in a narrow course between the spreading trees. It was the right place to build a bridge, he was thinking, even though the water was too high today. He began to sing – aloud, but just barely and to himself, as the waters rolled by.

           "On the Jerico road....there's room for just two,

           "No more and no less....just Jesus and you."

           Roland had returned and was standing behind Robert now, waiting and watching as if he didn't quite belong in what was going on. Finally, hearing the others coming, he spoke.

           "How long we got to work today?'

           "Robert finished a verse and then replied, "Prolly half and hour. We'll have time to go back around the other way if we start when we hear the first bell sound."

           "We won’t finish today?"

           "No, not today, water's too high," and he started to sing again.

           "Oh brother to you ... this message I bring

           "Though hope may be gone ... he'll cause you to sing.

           "At Jesus' command ... sin's shackles will fall.

           "On the Jerico road ... will you answer his call?"

           "Shut up that goddam singing," Sheila was shouting as she and Timmy returned from upstream. "Let's get this stupid bridge built so I don't have to walk so far .... how much time we got?"

           "Not much," said Robert. "You find any wood?"

           "You dang sure didn't," she screamed, and then addressing the group "We don't need any more wood."

           "Why?" asked Timmy.

           "I figured out a new way since we found the chain."

           "Robert found the chain," said Roland.

           "It's half mine and I know how to finish the bridge with it," said Sheila. "You piss ants gonna help or not?"

           Robert still sat on the cedar stump with his feet resting on the coiled chain.

           "We'll finish next week," he said. "Water's too high today."

           "We'll wrap the chain around this tree here and tie the other end to that one there", said Sheila. "Then we'll push it over and it'll fall upstream. That'll stop the water 'til we finish," and she leaned against a tall, full, cedar whose roots were so damaged from erosion that it leaned far out over the stream.

           "Golly snot," said Roland, "That might work."

           "Damn right it'll work. Now let's get busy." Sheila turned toward Robert and waited.

           "We'll build it like we planned...water's too high today," Robert said and as he said it, he felt something terrible begin deep in his body and move toward his chest.

           Sheila took a step toward him. "You don't even have to help, just give me the chain and you can watch us."

           "We'll build it like we…," Robert started, but he never finished. The sickness sprang into his lungs and turned his world into a red nightmare. He dropped from the stump onto his knees through the redness saw the chain snake toward Sheila's hand and then knew it was in her hand and following her like an obedient child. Then he could see nothing but the redness and feel nothing but pain.

           When the coughing stopped, he was still weak, but managed to stand, and then to sit on the stump. He watched, wanting to speak but not able. In his mind spun the secret formulas and vectors that defined the danger but when he tried to distill, to coalesce, the thoughts into words they swirled and become part of the mist that rose from the spinning brown waters of the bayou.

           He watched helplessly as Timmy and Roland secured both ends of the chain and he forced damp air into his lungs desperately while Sheila directed the boys.

           "Goddamit hurry up!" she yelled as she began to push against the leaning tree as if her energy would complete in that moment the process that erosion had been working for years. She hurled herself against the tree again and again as Timmy and Roland completed the securing of the chain. "Help me", she screamed and the boys ran over to join the frantic assault.

           "That tree won't fall", Robert started to say but before he had finished, Sheila conceived another plan.

           "Timmy, get your ass up that tree."

           "What?"

           "You get up the tree and we'll push from here. When it starts to give, slide down and we'll catch you."

           "Why me?'

           "You're the heaviest, stupid."

           "I ain't gonna."

           "Yes, by God, you're gonna!" and with this she shoved him backwards into the muddy bank where he sat looking, alternatively, at her and Robert, waiting for the decision that he knew he deserved, knew was waiting, and knew that he feared in the very depths of his heart.

           "Don't", came softly from Robert, not spoken as much as aspirated into the mist where it lay without force or power.

           "You heard me damn it", said Sheila and the words flashed within the grove like the hiss and crackle of lightening.

           Timmy stood slowly and walked toward the tree.

           "You’re one of the saints now, brother," said Sheila proudly. "You just get it started and watch out!"

           "Timmy, don't", said Robert as the other boy inched his way up the tree.

           Sheila twirled upon him. "Shut the hell up!" Then she turned and joined Roland as they began to push against the base of the tree.

           "Roll Jordan roll", she began to yell as she pushed and then Roland joined her.

           "Roll Jordan roll," they yelled.

           "Roll Jordan roll."

           "Roll Jordan roll."

           Robert stood up now and walked toward them. He was only a few feet away when he heard the crack of the roots giving way and the sound of Timmy’s screaming.

           "Hold on Timmy", Robert yelled and as time slowed he formed the arc of the tree in his mind and calculated its destination. As the tree fell, he spun in a half circle and ran obliquely to its base, past the horrified faces of Sheila and Roland and then into the sliding waters of the bayou as the tree, and Timmy, hit the water at once in an brown liquid explosion of water, tree, and boy.

           Timmy sank completely beneath the water as the tree crashed in a wild boil, but then Robert saw him surface as the trunk of the tree sprang back straight. Timmy held to the very end of the branches as if taking some ride. His hair was plastered on his forehead and Robert noticed bubbles forming around his nose. By some miracle, Robert thought, his head stayed just above water.

           "Don't move," Robert yelled and began to slide his way further into the water which was becoming more turbulent as it sped into the tree. Just beyond his reach he could see Timmy and it seemed to Robert that his eyes were bulging so they might pop from his face.

           "Hold on, I'm almost there." To Robert's great relief, the bed of the stream did not fall steeply at this spot, and he was soon able to grab the boy's hand and begin to work him toward the bank.

           "The chain held," said Sheila as Robert and Timmy reached the edge of the bayou. "Roland, help your brother out of the water."

           "Golly snot", said Roland.

           "Just shut up, the both of you," said Robert as he and Timmy walked up the bank. The bank was wet and slippery and the younger boy stumbled several times as Robert helped him forward. Timmy was numb and he stared straight ahead as if led by some light that the others didn't see.

           "I didn't wanna," he said, "She made me," and for the first time his fear found expression and he began to cry, the tears marking a trail on his face through the brown mud of the bayou. "She made me do it Robert. I didn't wanna."

           "It's okay," said Robert, leading him farther away from the other two. "Don't let them see you cry," and he and the other walked out of the darkness of the woods back towards the main road.

           "It's time for school to start," shouted Sheila from behind them. "Where ya'll goin'?"

           Neither Robert nor Timmy answered. He removed his coat, wet nearly to the chest, and covered the younger as they started home.

           Sheila's screaming became fainter and more distant with each step. "By God you tell 'em he fell in. You'll be sorry if you don't." Robert heard Sheila but neither he nor Timmy acknowledged her commands. "Me and Roland are goin' on - you mind what I said." Then they couldn't hear her anymore.

           They walked back slowly, the two of them. The soft rain fell again upon the fields of cotton rotting for lack of sun and the fields lay damp and dying in the dullness of the delta. They passed Fate Johnson's house again but this time there would be neither smile nor wave. Those were gone now and so were the plans for a bridge across the bayou. Soon they would be home and they expected heat and dry clothes there. But for now the cold settled into them like a vapor. The trip seemed endless.

           The younger boy still cried softly. As he walked he looked at Robert through his tears as if a veil had been pierced in the fall and the crash and he mourned that he could not make it never have happened.

           "I didn't wanna, she made me."

           "I know," said Robert. "You go ahead and cry because of it if you want to," and he put his arm around Timmy's shoulder. In the direction of the Hinson home he saw a thin slice of blue sky emerge from the clouds. As they walked, he began to sing:

           "On the Jerico Road,

           "There's room for just two,

           "No more and no less

           "Just Jesus and you."

 

 

The Assignment

By Jimmie von Tungeln

           

Truth be known, I didn’t want to do the piece in the first place. Hell, I wasn’t even a journalist. I was a consultant, a pretty good one, and should have stuck to it. But I had been doing these modest little columns for a Little Rock quarterly that promoted historic preservation. I was acquainted with the editor, I lived in a so-called historic district, and I knew most of the people who lived there. So, I agreed to help.

 It was a good fit. People associated living in historic neighborhoods with eccentricity back in those days. Things that supported that viewpoint were always welcome. So, folks liked my little “human interest” pieces. As for me, I was happy to stick to them. There was no chance of running out of characters, and I didn’t have to travel.

            Then the editor called me one day and asked me to stop by. When I got there, she up and gave me an assignment. Just like that, like I was some cub reporter or something. This posed a noticeable departure from the usual process whereby I just picked out some local oddball and wrote about how they had adjusted to living in an old house.

This time she picked the subject. Why? Beats me. Maybe I was getting stale or she was trying to sell more copies or something. Rather than speculate, I went along with her for the moment.

            Well guess what? You never know what dish life is going to serve up and what decisions are going to throw themselves in front of you, threatening your hemostasis like a group of western bandits with their pistols drawn and ready.

Here’s how it started.

            A local banker, known to us all as a neighbor and a nice guy, had bought one of the most historic homes in the city. It boasted such long-term ownerships that the house and grounds came with a caretaker who had worked there since the Depression. Mr. Pitts cared for the grounds and lived in a small apartment attached to the carriage house, a.k.a. the garage. He was a quiet little man of advanced age who lived alone and remained out of sight when not working. All the neighbors knew him to nod at, but none of us had ever talked to him.

            The editor explained the human-interest angle. Supposedly, a friendship had grown up between Mr. Pitts and the banker’s young son Alfie—Alfred Chidester LaRue was his full name—a little blond-haired kid from the high-rent side of life. Get it? Old black gardener and white heir apparent, the image of an odd couple as corny as it was appealing to our liberal audience. All I had to do was interview the old man, mine a few historic nuggets and take a picture of him and the kid together. It would produce enough “ain’t that cutes?” to make a tough man buy a round of drinks. There was no Pulitzer looming, but it would get me through until another deadline appeared, like a hungry tiger emerging from the mist. No problem.

Anyway, I didn’t have to. These columns represented a public service for me. In other words, I didn’t get paid. Seeing my words in print provided my only emolument. So, I had a degree of leverage unavailable to a poor inky wretch actually writing for a living.

I could have refused the assignment and interviewed, instead, a friend who was restoring a cottage near ours and who looked more like Charles Manson than Manson did himself. He played cello in the city’s symphony orchestra and would have been great material for a photo essay, the research being carried out over a couple of beers. Why should I spend a dry afternoon interviewing the town’s oldest gardener? It didn’t make a bit of sense. “To hell with the editor and her aspirations,” I kept telling myself. Was I my own man or what?

            Naturally, I took the assignment. I had to go through the banker himself and he pretty much outlined what he wanted the piece to say. Alfie was an only-child and, having few young friends in the neighborhood, he had taken up with Mr. Pitts. Followed him everywhere. Shared secrets with him. Even helped with the yardwork. Well, maybe a little. The important thing was the friendship that had developed between man and boy. That was the angle.

            Sure. One of the greatest and most persistent dreams of American Caucasians is that, someday, an African-American will love them. But I could pretend with the best, so I pressed on to complete the assignment.

            I set up an appointment for the next Saturday afternoon. It was a nice autumn day that welcomed a person outdoors like an old friend wanting to show you his garden. I grabbed an ancient Rolliflex camera that I used for such work, made sure I had pen and paper, and walked the two blocks to the house.

The house sat on a half-block facing one of the two main streets leading directly to downtown. When it was built, wealth had followed the topography. The larger houses were on the highest ground and homes fell off in size and value as the topography dropped. It was never more than a short walk from the mansions to the homes from which domestic help could be hired, for practically nothing, in the good old days. In other words, urban form followed economic function. Households weren’t separated by income as they are now. That’s how, thanks to the historic preservation craze, I could afford to live near a bunch of mansions.

            Anyway, I arrived. Mr. Pitts had dressed up a bit. He always wore neat clothes with a narrow-brimmed dress hat. Today he had added a tie. He stood at attention with his hands to his side and presented a smile like a boot-camper at inspection. Alfie was bouncing a ball against a tree and the parents stood by with pride. All was set for this to be a painless adventure. Wham, bam, thank you m’aam and I meet my deadline.

            I called little Alfie over and made him sit for a picture with Mr. Pitts. As I lined it up, I pulled a few grunts out of the kid to the effect that he liked Mr. Pitts and enjoyed helping him with the yard work. Mr. Pitts sat smiling through thick eyeglass lenses that distorted his face to where it looked like one of those cartoon characters that has just seen something either real juicy or real dangerous.

            So far, so good.

            Figuring I had about all out of Alfie I was going to get, I excused him with “Now Alfie, why don’t you let Mr. Pitts and me visit while you get back to your yard work?” In other words, “Scram, kid!”

            Alfie was more than happy to be rid of adults so he walked to beyond the garage. There, someone had dug a shallow pit from which smoke was rising. Within the pit, I assumed from the smell, were dead leaves, trash, and some sort of organic waste. Alfie amused himself by kicking more leaves into the fire.

His mother saw the opportunity and appeared from nowhere with a tray of cookies and iced tea. She sat them on the bench between us and asked, sweetly, and devoid of sincerity, the way a southern woman can ask, if we were comfortable. After receiving affirmatives, she then swished away amid a crackling of petticoats and an almost audible smile. I pushed the tray toward Mr. Pitts. He smiled and pushed it back toward me.

            “No, please, go ahead,” I stammered, fumbling for my writing pen.

            “Thank you, suh,” he said. He exaggerated the “suh” so I—so we both—would know he didn’t attach any meaning to it. Then he took a cookie in one hand and a glass of tea in another. He neither drank nor ate right away, though. He rested the arm with the cookie on his leg and wrapped a hand around the glass of tea as if to keep it from flying away. He smiled at me. His eyes looked even larger than before.

            A breeze filled the yard and blew smoke from Alfie’s fire toward us. As it did, Mr. Pits finally raised the cookie in a soft arc to his mouth and took a small bite. He lowered it and raised his glass with the same grand gesture and sipped his tea.

            Hoping to get started, I asked him how long he had lived around there.

            “Oh, I was born around here,” he said. “I been here for as long as I can remember. We lived on Tenth Street but it went for the freeway. House ain’t there no more.”

            He chewed his cookie with what I thought was a grim expression. As he did, the smoke circled us and I caught the pleasant smell of burning leaves punctuated by the sharp odor of the other trash smoldering in the pit. Mr. Pitts stiffened slightly and his eyes retreated behind his thick glasses.

            “I been here since when things were different than they are now,” he said. “Way different.”

Then, that far into the interview, he stopped talking. His voice didn’t exactly trail away as much as it fluttered beyond us like a feather caught in a whirlwind.

            I was losing him. I hurried back to work.

            “Different in what way?” I asked.

            He just looked at me. He seemed to struggle to respond and when he did, it wasn’t really to me but, it seemed, to the trees and the garden and maybe to the city itself with all its history and smoky secrets.

            “Way yonder different. Folks weren’t as good to you then.” He took another bite of cookie and drank from his glass. That energized him.

“My folks had it hard back then.”

            I tasted panic. Alfie had disappeared behind the garage and I felt as if I were on an asteroid hurtling through space with an alien. This affair wasn’t going according to plan. I nodded as if I understood and scratched on my pad without looking up. He continued.

            “The worse was what they done to Mr. Carter.”

            “Mr. Carter?” That was all I could manage.

            “Ain’t nobody should have had that done to them. Nobody. I don’t care if he was colored.”

            I gave up and stared at my pad. What was he saying, and where was he taking me? I stared right through my pad and into the ground. From therein oozed a memory. I met it halfway and solved the mystery.

Back in the 1920s, there had been a lynching in Little Rock, less than a half-mile from where we sat. It happened right in the middle of what was then the center of the “colored” commercial area, along Ninth Street.

“Oh my god,” I thought. “This is where he is going.” I tried to raise my head but it took three attempts to overcome the gravity created by that realization. When I did manage to look up, Mr. Pitts was somewhere far away, and scared. I mean really scared. His hand was shaking so much the tea was spilling.

            “I remember that day like it was yesterday,” he continued. They made us all go inside, for they knew there was to be trouble. I was just a child, but the oldest. My Momma put the youngest under the bed and made me watch after them. She said the white folks had done killed Mr. Carter and was draggin’ him down Ninth Street behind a car. She was scared and she made us all cry.

“We could hear people yellin’. They was honkin’ their horns and yellin’ so loud we could hear them in the bedroom. Wasn’t no colored folks on the street, except Mr. Carter and he was dead. They hung him and beat him and drug him up and down Ninth Street. We was all hidin’ and cryin.’ My Momma was tellin’ us to be quiet.” He stopped, looked away and back, directly at me.

“They shouldn’t have done that.”

            Here I was. It was a nice brisk autumn day and I should have been somewhere else, but I was sitting in someone else’s yard listening to an old man reciting his version of our city’s most awful moment and I couldn’t escape.

            “They drug him and drug him. All back and forth on Ninth Street. We could hear the cars and them horns honkin’, the honkin,’ oh my lord, the honkin’. Ain’t nobody ought to have that done to them. We was still cryin’ when they built a fire at Ninth and Broadway and burned him up. We could smell the smoke and that made us cry harder. My momma had some cookies in her apron pocket and she gave one to the younger kids to hush them up. She broke one in half and gave me a piece. She took the other half and then she started cryin’ too.”

            He looked at the cookie in his hand, then returned to that awful day.

            “Somebody said they broke one of his arms off and waved it at the cars going down Broadway,” he said. “I don’t know. Nobody looked out the window the whole time, for we was too scared.”

            I pretended to write something.

            “Too bad,” he said so low I barely heard him. “Them was bad days. Bad for us all.”

            The smoke circled us and I sat as still as I could. Mr. Pitts stopped talking and sat with his hand with the cookie resting on his leg. As the fog of remembrance cleared, he began to smile. He didn’t say anything. He was done talking to white strangers for the day.

            He sat there proud and triumphant, a black-skinned Cicero having had his say, needing neither accolades nor approval. I thanked him, not sure at all whether he even heard me, and then eased away and headed home. I was all confusion, trying to sort out what had just happened. I still had an assignment but what the hell was I going to write? The truth about what happened? That would be the honest thing. It might even be a good piece. Shake the readers up a bit. Let them know that history wasn’t all about cute Victorian houses. Hell yes!

            Back home, I sat in the kitchen and stared through the window. When I tried, I could hear the shouts on the street, feel the throb of the car engines running, and smell the acrid smoke of man and wood burning.

Damn that old man!

Outside the afternoon was dissolving into evening. The shadows got longer and darker the way our thoughts will as we doze. Beyond the kitchen window, the air was still crisp and clear. Inside, it was dark and gloomy. The evening sky changed purposefully that time of year like a lover moving from caresses to kisses, and then to the dark undertones of passion. My thoughts moved that way, too, as I reflected on the day and what it was trying to tell me. Maybe it was trying to tell me to be brave, or truthful …, or honest. Maybe it was suggesting that I approach what I was doing with something a little deeper than just seeing my name in print. Maybe it was just trying to tell me to say something else entirely, before darkness came. Maybe. Maybe.

After a time, I stood up and retrieved a beat-up Remington typewriter and package of paper from a closet and carried them, with as much gentleness as I could muster, into the kitchen. I placed the typewriter on the kitchen table so I could see beyond it into the deepening gloom. Then I slid a page of paper into it and turned the cylinder so the paper was position precisely across the top, aligned there neat and worthy of higher-level thought. I drew and released a long breath of sad air—air that had once moved through the city and down the streets and around the large oak trees past the moving cars and quaint old houses and had once even flowed around the twitching, smoking body of John Carter.

I didn’t want to, but I smelled that smoke.

Click, click, I advanced the paper.

I was ready. My mind was as clear as the way of a traveler making the last turn on the last curve before home. I rubbed my hands. I thought how funny it would be to make the Sign of the Cross.

Instead, I started to type: “Mr. Otis Pitts, age 70 and a lifelong resident of Little Rock, has a new best friend who is only five years old.”

 July 2009

Revised 2017