A Thousand Never Evers (13 page)

CHAPTER 20

October 15, 1963, Dawn

From my seat on the swing, I see the sky’s the soft blue it only turns fall mornings. A few stars still sparkle. And right about now, the world seems half-asleep, stuck in a place where everything’s all right and everyone who should be in it is. Past the oak leaves, I watch folks stroll down the lane, wiping sleep from their eyes. Most every one of them is off to church, where they’re going to meet up before the picking. They’re following Reverend Walker’s plan, showing up to pick at dawn, even though us Negroes weren’t invited till noon.

No one seems to notice me out here on my swing. No one except Delilah. She’s wearing her dress for courage, the orange one with the yellow iris down the back.

“You coming?” she asks, and walks into the yard.

Course I’m more than dying to go to that picking and see what all the fuss is about. I want to see what Mrs. Tate’s been planning for months. I want to know what stand the reverend will take, and if he’ll get the white folks to give us any kind of respect. But if I go to that garden picking and Mama hears of it, I’ll never see daylight again.

“Gotta go to school,” I say.

But here’s Delilah fixing her eyes on something bigger than her own appearance and getting all high-and-mighty about it too. “You should come,” she says. “It’s the right thing to do.”

And I can’t believe it: Delilah Montgomery telling me, Addie Ann Pickett, the right thing to do! I push my feet against the ground to set the swing in motion. “You’re just jealous I get to walk all the way with Cool Breeze,” I tell her.

“Thrills, chills, and charges!” she says, and throws back her shoulders. Her pecan eyes roast with determination. Then she turns round and folds into the wave of folk marching down the lane.

I want to jump off the swing and run after her, but Mama would boil up if she found out I even thought about going to the garden picking.

More neighbors shuffle by till at long last Cool Breeze saunters into the yard looking fine as ever.

“Well, come on!” he calls, and walks away.

I grab my schoolbag from beside the swing and race to catch up. But when I reach him, Cool Breeze seems like he’s concentrating on something real important. Together, we rush down Kuckachoo Lane. As usual, we don’t toss a word between us.

But the second we turn onto the highway, Cool Breeze pushes the mulberry branches out of the way and steps into the bush. Before I know what’s happening, his long fingers are digging into the crook of my arm. And here I am in the bush too, my face right near his. I smell ginger on his breath. I take in his long lashes. My arms and legs buzz. And all of a sudden, it’s clear: the silence between us as we walk to school each day isn’t empty silence. No sir. It’s full. Full silence overflowing with yearning, desire, and love. Now I’m tingly all over.

Cool Breeze leans toward me.

I pucker up, and in the humid air, I relish the kiss to come.

My heart flutters like a sheet on a drying line. It all happens so fast. I think many thoughts at once, feel everything at the same time. Soon we’ll kiss. Then we’ll walk hand in hand. One day we’ll get married.

But all of a sudden, his lips screech to a halt beside my ear.

“I’m going to the picking,” he whispers.

My dream, it shatters like the honey jar in the Corner Store lot.

“You can’t tell anyone at school where I’m at,” he says.

I suffer my humiliation among the mulberry branches. Not only doesn’t Cool Breeze kiss me, but now he’s made me late. And being late for class at West Thunder Creek Junior High School is nothing like being late at Acorn Elementary.

My chest tightens in a double panic.

“It’ll be a sight!” he says, and smiles. “With the rumors floating, you know. I can’t miss that.” Then he says, “Why don’t you come too?”

I pull my schoolbag over my shoulder. “I can’t. My mama would find out.”

“Now how’s she gonna find out? So many folks will be there. They’ll think it’s odd if you’re not there.”

Well, I’ve got to admit, Cool Breeze Huddleston can sure think out a problem. He’s got a point. If no one from my whole family goes to the picking, folks will wonder whether us Picketts are loyal to the cause. And right about now, we can’t afford to have anyone thinking that.

I nod to myself, and Cool Breeze can see I’m coming along. But then I hit a rock in my thinking. A rock so big it’s blocking the road and I can’t see any way over it. “What about Mrs. Jacks?” I ask. “She’s gonna rip you up, and me too, if we skip out.” There’s no explaining to Mrs. Jacks why you’re late, or why your homework’s only part finished, or why you slump down at your desk. I can hear her saying it right now: “I went to sixteen years of school—that’s more years than any of you been singing to the Lord—and I never, I mean never, missed a day. Learning’s too precious to give up even one minute for something silly like your stomach aching or goblins sneaking out your nose.”

I push aside the branches and climb out the thicket.

Cool Breeze follows.

By the way he still tries to convince me, I reckon he really does want me to go to the picking with him. And if I do, that kiss might land on my lips by the end of the day.

A school bus rushes down the highway. As usual, a few white students yell something nasty out the window. No matter how many times it happens, their taunting voices still make me want to scream.

“Do as you like,” he says. “But trust me, even if Mrs. Jacks does find out, she’ll be nothing but proud when we tell her we stood up for ourselves. Heck,” he says, and laughs, “she’s probably gonna make us give a report to the class so we can be examples to others.”

It’s true. Mrs. Jacks always says we need to dream bigger and fight harder than everyone else just because we’re Negroes. Maybe Cool Breeze is right. Maybe she’ll put us up in front of the class. Now wouldn’t that be something! When Elias was in her class, Mrs. Jacks asked him to teach the other students how to give a persuasive speech. She said Elias could orate just like Frederick Douglass. Mama cried, she was so proud of him for that.

“We’ll take the back path to church so your mama won’t see,” Cool Breeze says. Of course, he doesn’t have to worry about his mama finding out, because he said she’s gone down to Sunflower for the day to take care of her sick sister. And he sure doesn’t need to worry about his daddy finding out, because he split when Cool Breeze was in first grade.

“You’re already late for school anyhow!” he says. Then he takes off running down the path through the woods.

I haven’t had time to make up my whole mind about it, but I figure, Cool Breeze, he’s smarter than me. So I push the branches out of the way and tear down the path after him. My schoolbag thumps against my hip. By the time we turn off to First Baptist, I’ve got to hunch over, hands on my knees, to rest.

Cool Breeze huffs and puffs too, but he stands up straight like our sprint was nothing. “Here,” he says. “Gimme your bag.”

I hand over my schoolbag, and Cool Breeze sets it down beside his in a ditch. “Now no one will know we’re supposed to be at school at all,” he says.

I smile, thinking how smart he is, how he’s seeing to all the details, how he’s taking care of me.

Then the two of us go on inside the church and stand in back. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought it was the Easter service. There’s not an empty pew in the place. By the look of things, lots of kids from Acorn Elementary are missing class today. Why, they’re sitting right with their parents.

Up front, the reverend bellows. Each word swells in his belly, then shimmies across his tongue. “This past spring, the young Negroes of Birmingham stood up when they marched for equality. Six, twelve, sixteen years old. Some were bitten by police dogs. Some were toppled by the force of fire hoses. But their actions helped desegregate Birmingham’s downtown stores.”

And I know “segregate” means “to separate,” so “desegregate” must mean “to mix back together again.” I whisper that word, “desegregate,” and it tickles the roof of my mouth.

“In Jackson,” the reverend says, “although it was against the law, Negro college students stood up by trying to eat at a white lunch counter while white customers threw ketchup on them and beat them bloody. And even your little old reverend here stood up this summer, when he marched on the nation’s capital and urged Congress to pass the president’s civil rights bill.”

And I still can’t believe that our very own Reverend Walker went all the way to the nation’s capital on a bus and told our country’s president what he ought to do. One thing’s clear: our reverend’s come back a changed man. At long last his name fits him like a Sunday suit, because now Reverend Walker doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk! He wants to get up and fight! Of course, he won’t fight with weapons—only wisdom and courage. It’s what Martin Luther King Jr. calls nonviolent resistance.

“Kuckachoo may not be a big city and Dr. King may never stop at our door, but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna sit by and watch while white folks steal our dignity right out of our hands,” the reverend says.

He shuts his eyes, rocks on his heels, and prays the Lord will watch over us. After all that, he picks up something from behind the pulpit and carries it down the center aisle. When he passes, I see he’s got a long metal stick in his hand.

“What’s that?” I ask Cool Breeze.

“A crowbar,” he tells me.

The whole lot of us follow the reverend out the church door. Elmira hands us each a picking sack.

“Well, why’s he need a crowbar?” I ask Cool Breeze.

“Beats me!” he says.

Then we all trek down Magnolia Row, and I wonder if joining this garden picking will be the sorriest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But if I tell this to Cool Breeze, he’ll think I’m nothing but a nervous Nelly. And I know Cool Breeze, he’s impressed I’m here. So I walk on, my heart hammering in my chest, my soul praying the white folks won’t fire on us.

When we get to the tall fence that borders Old Man Adams’s farm, Reverend Walker sets the crowbar down on the grass. Then he weaves his fingers together and tells Cool Breeze to place a foot inside his clasped hands.

While Cool Breeze steps up and hoists himself over the fence, folks beside me hold hands and whisper. I hear only pieces. Pieces of whispers.

Dead.

The whispers get stuck in my hair.

Fight.

They wrap around my neck.

Ours.

The whispers cut off my breath and the grass moves and the reverend fades and the people fall and I can’t breathe and the whispers and my breath are short and fast and I’m alone. Here alone. And I won’t call Flapjack. This is my mess. Not his. Then there’s sunlight. Sunlight bouncing off the silver crowbar back in the reverend’s hand.

“Heads up!” the reverend shouts, and throws the crowbar over the fence.

The sunlight on the crowbar flying over the fence covers me in an arc. An arc of glitter. Yellow and orange glitter. I close my eyes. But I’m not under the sheet. I’m not in bed.
Breathe!
I tell myself.
Breathe!
The long strand of whispers breaks off my neck, breaks apart, into a thousand tiny butterflies. The butterflies fly. Fly away. Over the fence. Into the garden.
Breathe!

My belly gets full. Full of sunlight. Full of breath. I’m not here. Not beside the fence. Not going to the picking. I’m above myself. Looking down at that river. That river flowing. That river rushing over rocks. Rushing fast. A force without beginning or end. A force that can’t be broken. I’m above the river, looking down on it, watching sunlight sparkle on the water’s surface. Gooseflesh washes over me. I hear him. I don’t see him. I hear him. “Stand up,” my brother says. “Stand up.”

By the time I open my eyes again, I don’t hear whispers at all. It’s quiet. And I don’t hear my breath alone. I hear everyone breathing hard together. Even though I’m terrified to be here at this picking, for one whole minute I’m sure I’m doing the right thing. I know Elias, he’s proud. And now that Cool Breeze has followed the reverend’s instructions—taken out the nails and removed a section of the fence—we all crawl through before the whole lot of us get too chicken and run back home.

We march single file down the edge of the field, between a wall of sky-high corn and the tall wooden fence, dragging our empty sacks, singing “We Shall Overcome.” From the wavery sound of our voices, I can tell that everyone’s frightened as me.

When we get to the garden gate, we spread ourselves across the iron bars, another wall of corn at our backs. I see faces on the other side of the garden gate. The mayor’s red cheeks, the sheriff’s bulging neck, and Mrs. Tate’s wide-open mouth. And that’s when the truth of the matter sends a chill right through me: We’re inside the garden. The white folks, they’re left out!

Before Mrs. Tate can spot me, I take a step back and hide in the cornstalks. Although I can’t see the reverend, I hear his voice rumble as he shouts out to the white folks, “We don’t want your leftovers!”

When I hear the reverend’s words, I feel shimmery, like sunlight on steaming hot pavement. Here’s the reverend yelling to white folks about what’s on our minds and we all could die because of it! I reckon I never did think this picking thing through, because till about an hour ago, I was going to school like a good girl.