Alligator Bayou (9 page)

fifteen

S
unday afternoon I’m walking home from Frank Raymond’s. I told him today that I’m going to Patricia’s school in autumn, so I wanted painting lessons instead of tutoring from now on. But he told me he’s leaving town at the end of the month anyway. He likes to wander—see the world. The thought of him disappearing makes me feel strange. I still can’t believe it.

At least there are four more Sundays left in this month, so we can paint till he goes. Today was a good lesson. I made a birthday present for Rocco—a picture of an owl. The paint is drying. I’ll go back for it before supper tomorrow. Rocco will like it. The owl’s eyes glitter.

I turn the corner. Three boys stand over a boy on his side. One of them is kicking him! The boy is curled around his middle, his hands over his cap, groaning. It’s Cirone!

“Stop!” I run up and grab the kicker by the elbow.

He stumbles aside in surprise, but in the same moment I’m shoved hard from behind. My chin smacks on the sidewalk and I hear a crack inside my head. I roll onto my back, cradling my chin.

“Watch where you going. You bumped me,” says one of the boys.

“Yeah, y’all blind or something? The both of you dagoes, blind as bats.”

“Stupid is more like it.”

“Are you stupid, boy?”

“All dagoes is stupid.”

Three pink faces glare down at me.

I look past their legs. Cirone’s still on his side, silent now, but he’s rocking his head, so I know he’s conscious.

My chin bleeds into my palm. I lean to the side and spit out half a tooth.

“Ha! How many teeth you planning on losing today? That’s only number one.”

None of this makes sense. I don’t recognize any of these boys. What was Cirone doing here? Did he do something to them?

I look around. A man turns up the sidewalk, sees us, and crosses to the other side. There’s no one else about. Maybe they all ducked inside when they saw what was up.

I keep one hand on my chin and pick up my cap with the other.

A boy kicks the cap out of my hand, giving my fingers a wicked blow.

I don’t move.

This must be how Joseph felt when he was still Uruna, when the boys buried him alive. He must have known where it was going.

Cirone must have known, too. Does he realize I’m here now? Please, Lord, tell him he’s not alone.

I keep looking at them.

“Playing dumb?”

“Y’all speak English. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

“Yeah, talk.”

“Who cares if you talk, anyhow? We saw you. And we told. Oh, yeah, we told on you good. The whole town’s talking now.”

“And y’all know what they’s talking about?”

Patricia. They must have seen me kiss Patricia last night. She said I didn’t know what they’d do if they saw. Cirone got beat up for something I did.

I pull my elbows in close, ready to punch. Giuseppe taught me how to fight when I arrived—said it would come in handy. I thought it was just Giuseppe being grumpy. I look over at Cirone. Oh, yeah, they’re going to beat me up, but I’m going to make it hard for them.

“They’s talking about how y’all went to a darkie gathering. All you dagoes.”

“Eating the same food, from the same plates.”

“Disgusting.”

“I saw you licking each other’s fingers.”

“Really? Ain’t that something. I’d have vomited if I saw that.”

My breath comes free again. They don’t know about Patricia. They won’t do anything to her. “We were at school,” I say. “Sicilians are allowed at that school.”

“Ain’t no school in summer. That was a party.”

“Fraternizing with them cotton pickers. That’s what Pa calls it. Fraternizing.”

“Next thing you know, y’all be giving the darkies ideas.”

“Fraternizing and big ideas. And selling stuff too cheap.”

“Yeah. Making deals with the dagoes in New Orleans.”

“Ruining the company stores.”

“What you doing?” A woman stands in the street. Mrs. Rogers’ Lila.

“Mind your own business.”

I hate him sneering at her like that, but that’s good advice. These boys aren’t likely to care what Lila thinks, not with the color of her skin.

“I work for Mrs. Rogers.” Lila comes up onto the sidewalk. She looks over at Cirone, who’s managed to work himself to a sit by now. He’s hugging his knees and still rocking his head. “These boys the greengrocers Mrs. Rogers buy from. Mrs. Rogers’ favorite grocer boys.”

“Mr. Rogers don’t like dagoes,” says one boy. “I heard him say that.”

“And Willy Rogers, he hates them,” says another. “He says we ought to run them out of town. Ain’t a single one worth spitting at.”

“Mr. Rogers like to eat,” says Lila. “Willy do, too. These their favorite grocer boys. Stand back.”

The boys don’t move.

Lila steps forward with a loud noise through her nose. Almost a bugle sound.

One boy takes a step away. The other two follow suit.

“Get up, child,” she says to me.

I get to my feet and help Cirone up. He stays bent, both hands on his belly.

“See you in the morning. At the stand.” She looks at the boys. “Like always.”

My cap lies behind one of the boys. I know I’m pushing my luck, but I already lost a hat on the ’gator hunt. I don’t want to know what Francesco will do if I lose this cap. Besides, pride gets the best of me. I walk past that boy. Our chests are only a foot apart. He tenses up. I reach behind him and grab my cap. I put it on and touch the tip of it in farewell to Lila.

Cirone and I walk away. Slowly.

It takes a long time for my thoughts to unscramble.

“How bad does it hurt?”

Cirone straightens a little. “No blood.” He looks at me. “Your chin’s a mess.”

“What were you doing in town?”

He turns his head away and straightens a little more.

“Come on, tell me.”

“Where did you go last night, huh?” Cirone presses on his belly with both hands and takes a deep breath. “You’re not the only one with secrets.” He puts a fist to his mouth and chews on a knuckle. “Calo, don’t tell what they said about fraternizing. You do, and that’s the end of parties. That’s the end of everything good here.”

I lick blood off my bottom lip. “I want us to go to every party we get invited to.”

“Right. It makes me mad when they say we can’t be friends with Negroes. They don’t want us with whites and they don’t want us with Negroes. They think Sicilians belong nowhere, with no one. Like we’re not people at all.”

“Well, we are.”

We hook arms and cross the grass.

sixteen

“R
otten kids.” Carlo picks dirt and tiny pebbles from my chin. He heated water to wash the gash. This last picking part hurts like mad. He makes hissing noises as he works. He knows he’s hurting me and I think it bothers him more than me. “Nasty little no-goods,” mutters Carlo. And he doesn’t even know about my broken tooth.

Or about Cirone’s bruises. They’re hidden under his clothes. But my chin was out in the open.

Francesco comes through the door and takes me in with one swift glance. He glowers. “What did you do now?”

“Me? It’s not my fault. They jumped me.”

“Who?” snaps Giuseppe. He followed Francesco in, with Rosario at his heels.

“Three boys.”

Rosario looks quick at Cirone. “What about you?”

“I was out back. Nowhere near.”

Cirone lies good. How much practice has he had?

Francesco looks over Carlo’s shoulder to inspect my wounds. “How old? What did they say?”

“My age, maybe. They said all dagoes are stupid.”

“Oh yeah? Did they say what we do that makes us so stupid?”

“Something about deals with dagoes in New Orleans.”

Francesco gives a
harumph
. “Is that everything?”

I’m working on keeping my eyes steady.

“Come on, Calo. What else did they say?”

“That we’re ruining the company stores,” I mumble.

“Enough!” growls Giuseppe. “They’ve got to be stopped.”

“Sit!” Francesco points to the benches. “Everyone but Carlo and Calogero.”

Giuseppe shakes his head, but he drops onto a bench. The others do, too.

Francesco crosses his arms on the table and leans onto them. “We have to talk this over. Make sure we do the right thing.”

“We do nothing,” says Rosario. “They’re just kids.”

I’m with Rosario; this has to end here. If Giuseppe makes a fuss with those boys, they’ll torment Cirone and me every time they catch one of us alone.

“Kids.” Giuseppe shakes his head. “Kids don’t talk about business. This is coming from their fathers. We all know the price of cotton keeps dropping. They’re hurting, and they need their company stores to make a profit. But everyone’s buying from us instead. This is a warning. And if we let it go, if we don’t stop them cold, it’ll be New Orleans all over again.”

Everyone hushes.

My skin tightens. “What are you talking about?”

Carlo holds me by the ear. “Don’t move your jaw while I’m cleaning your chin.”

I put up my hand to block Carlo’s wash cloth. “Tell me,” I say to Giuseppe. “What happened in New Orleans?”

Rosario looks sideways at Cirone. “It’s not worth talking about.”

“Is it about lynching?”

The men gape at me. Cirone’s face changes. He looks as if he might vomit.

“So you know about it?” asks Francesco.

“No. Tell us. Tell Cirone and me.”

“They need to know,” says Giuseppe to Rosario. His voice sounds sadder than I’ve ever heard it. “It’s starting all over again. They need to know.”

“Don’t be absurd,” says Rosario. “In New Orleans it started because of a gun. We don’t carry guns.”

I look at Francesco. He carried a shotgun that day he was mad at Willy Rogers. But he doesn’t speak up, and neither does Carlo. The others saw that gun in the corner before Francesco put it away—but they don’t know the story behind it. It’s our secret. That’s so odd. Probably everyone else in Tallulah knows why Francesco had a shotgun that day, but Rosario and Giuseppe and Cirone don’t—and no one’s going to tell them.

“They should know,” says Francesco at last. “They’re Sicilian.”

“No,” says Rosario. “Cirone was only five when it happened. He had nightmares. He didn’t stop till we moved up here. It’s behind us now. He’s forgotten.”

“Right,” says Carlo. He comes over, put both hands on the table, and slowly lowers himself to the bench as though he’s become ancient in a second. “We got away from all that. It doesn’t help anyone to bring it up again.”

I look at Cirone sitting on the bench near Rosario. “Do you want to know about New Orleans, Cirone?”

His eyes lock on mine. “Yes.”

“Tell us,” I say to Francesco.

“They lynched eleven men,” says Francesco.

“Hold it,” says Giuseppe. “Let me tell it. From the beginning. Rosario and I were there. You and Carlo weren’t.”

“I thought you all came over together,” I say.

“Carlo and I followed,” says Francesco. “We were supposed to come a couple of months later—but then there was all that trouble and we waited to see what would happen. We waited so long, it was the next summer before we got on a ship.”

Giuseppe points to the spot on the bench beside Cirone. “Sit down, Calogero.”

This is going to be awful. Numbness creeps up the sides of my head, making my ears ring. I sit on the edge of the bench.

“These are the facts,” says Giuseppe. “First, just the facts. Six days after Rosario and Cirone and I got off the boat, on the night of the fifteenth of October, 1890, David Hennessy, the big chief—”

“The police commissioner,” says Francesco.

“The police commissioner of New Orleans, he got shot,” says Giuseppe. “He died the next morning. But before he died, he said, ‘Dagoes did it.’”

“Dagoes.” Carlo shakes his head. “You’d think he was some ignorant, backward man to say such a word—as ignorant as those rotten boys. But he was the police commissioner.”

“Who are you kidding?” says Francesco. “Some of the richest men in America call us dagoes. Not to mention that piece of garbage, Willy Rogers. I should have taught him a lesson last month. Only I held back out of respect for Dr. Hodge’s wishes.”

I think of Dr. Hodge Saturday night, calling out as he chased the goats, asking if I was one of those damned dagoes. I hug myself to keep the shaking inside from showing.

“Let me finish,” says Giuseppe. “Police came through our neighborhood with guns. We stayed inside, but, even so, they arrested over two hundred and fifty. Young, old, boys smaller than you two. They beat them. Then a committee indicted nineteen.” He looks at the ceiling. “Nineteen for one murder.” Giuseppe falls silent.

No one talks.

The silence goes on so long, my throat grows scratchy and I cough.

Giuseppe talks again: “They decided to have two trials, the first for nine men—the second for the rest.

“The first started the last day of February 1891. The press said Italians were murderers; all of us, Mafia. Suddenly people threw that word at us anywhere we went. In their eyes we were all criminal.

“Still, the jury listened fairly. Six men were found not guilty. For the other three the jury was undecided. There was no translator, and those men spoke so little English, they couldn’t answer questions. It was a mistrial. This was announced March thirteenth. They put all nine men in the prison overnight.” Giuseppe stops and clears his throat.

“The next day the newspaper called for a mass meeting at Canal and Royal streets. Thousands came. More joined as they marched through town. By the time they reached Congo Square, they say there were twenty thousand. Twenty thousand stormed the prison.” Giuseppe’s voice becomes monotonous. He talks as though he’s said these words in his head a thousand times before.

“The warden, he was honest, like the jurors. He wouldn’t turn the prisoners over. So the mob went around back and beat down the gate.

“The warden locked all the prisoners in their cells except the Sicilians. He told the Sicilians to scatter—hide in the women’s section—do anything to save themselves.

“The mob shot nine inside the prison. So many bullets…their bodies were destroyed. Another one, Emmanuele, they found him muttering in his cell. Everyone knew he was crazy. They hanged him from a streetlamp, and when he tried to climb the rope, they shot him. Twenty-eight years old and…demented, and…they still shot him.” Giuseppe pauses and I see his chest shudder. “The last one they found…he was pretending to be dead. They hanged him from a tree. Shot him, too.

“Eleven men. Murdered.

“Society ladies came out to see. Dipped handkerchiefs in the blood. Souvenirs.” Giuseppe stops. He’s crying.

Rosario puts his hand on Cirone’s shoulder. Cirone keeps staring at Giuseppe.

I lay my hands on the table. “Didn’t anybody do anything to the lynchers?”

“Italy threatened war,” says Giuseppe. “Louisiana argued that the men were Americans. But only two had become American citizens. The rest were Italians. Italy was enraged. And that is why I will never give up my Italian citizenship. Never.”

“But there was no war, right?” I say. I was only six back in 1891, but I would have heard if there was a war.

“Italy settled,” says Rosario, bitter.

“A grand jury looked into the lynchings,” says Giuseppe. “Two months later they said the mob was responsible citizens protecting the public from danger.” He puts his hands on his forehead in a gesture of agony. “We should have been the responsible citizens. Not them.”

“What? What do you mean?” It’s so hard to see Giuseppe like this.

“We Sicilians. We should have armed ourselves and defended the prison. Instead, we hid. I hid.” Giuseppe buries his face in his hands. “For days.”

“I did, too,” says Rosario. “We had to.”

“You had Cirone to look after. I hid like a rat.”

“No one could do anything,” says Rosario. “They would have killed us. You know that. You sat beside me and listened as people read us the newspapers. You heard how that animal Theodore Roosevelt called the lynchings ‘a rather good thing.’ And that congressman from Massachusetts, that Henry Cabot Lodge, he said we were filth. All of America was against us.” Revulsion spreads across Rosario’s face. “Still, Italy settled.”

“What could Italy do?” says Carlo. “President Harrison said he deplored the lynchings. He gave money to the dead men’s families. Italy had to agree. Besides, war is no answer.”

Everyone’s out of words. Giuseppe’s hands still cover his face.

“Now the rest,” I say. “Giuseppe?”

“What?” Giuseppe opens his hands and looks at me with a tired face.

“You said the facts first. What’s the rest? Who killed the police commissioner?”

Giuseppe gives a sad little laugh. “I don’t know. It never really mattered. No one talked about him anymore. Once the lynching had been declared reasonable, people started complaining about the Italians. Posters went up. People said Italians monopolized the produce business. And fishing. They said we had taken all the jobs for peddlers and tinkers and cobblers.”

“So everyone fired us,” says Rosario. “Overnight, we were all out of work.”

“The only place that would hire us was the plantations,” says Giuseppe. “That was the point of the lynchings in the first place.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell this part,” says Francesco. “I know this part as well as anyone.” He studies his hands. “After the Civil War so many Negroes went North, the plantation owners didn’t have enough people to do the labor the slaves used to do. So they brought in Chinese. But the Chinese wouldn’t put up with the bad conditions and the lousy pay. So the plantation owners brought in Sicilians.”

“They put up posters in Palermo,” says Rosario. “They said everything would be terrific. We fell for it. Who could help it? We were desperate in Italy. Dirt poor.”

“We came,” says Francesco, “so many Sicilian men, and we worked their plantations. They made fun of how we eat and talk. And all we did in return was work. Sugarcane work is backbreaking. You swing heavy machetes in the scorching heat while the mosquitoes eat you alive. In autumn you work overtime at night in the sugar mills, grinding, boiling, refining. We got skinny as rails. Worked hard as dogs. Dogs! Because to us thirty or forty dollars for a harvest season of sugarcane was a fortune.”

“So why do they hate us?” I ask.

“Simple,” says Giuseppe. “We’re not dogs.” The look of raw pain on his face scares me. “We’re smart. We made gardens on slopes no one wanted and sold vegetables. We caught fish and oysters in the Gulf. We fed ourselves easy. We made friends of the South Americans, and traded with their fruit boats. We were good at Spanish. We had our own businesses fast. We didn’t have to work on their stinking plantations anymore.”

“That’s why they lynched those men,” says Francesco. “Hennessy’s murder was just an excuse to put Sicilians back on the plantations. That’s why they keep bringing over more of us. They’re so convinced we’re dumb animals, they can’t believe we’re good at business—they see it, and they still don’t believe. The lynchings were supposed to teach us a lesson, put us in our place.”

“But we showed them,” says Rosario. “Today Sicilians run the dock-import business again. Like before.”

“New Orleans is a good place to live now,” says Francesco. “But we didn’t know it would turn around. So as soon as we had enough to buy land, we came up here.”

“To someplace without Sicilians,” says Rosario. “Someplace where no one already hated us.”

“Beppe came over with Salvatore months later,” says Carlo. “But they went to Milliken’s Bend so that it wouldn’t seem like too many of us in one place. The plantation owners get afraid when there’s too many.”

“A fresh start,” says Francesco.

“Ha!” says Giuseppe. “We didn’t understand.” He’s silent. Then, “We’re hated everywhere.”

I remember Cirone saying everyone hates us, the night we met the boys picking up manure on Depot Street. I shake my head. “That can’t be.”

“Carlo?” Giuseppe jerks his chin at Carlo. “Get the newspapers.”

Carlo goes to a chest. He digs down to the bottom, and comes out with an armload of newspapers wrapped in blue paper. He sets them on the table.

“Read, Calogero,” says Giuseppe. “You know how. Read to Cirone. Our friends in New Orleans pack newspapers in the fruit crates. Every time someone writes something bad about Italians, they send it. We can’t read them, but we know what they say because it’s always the same. Why should Tallulah be different?”

“Tallulah is different!” The blood pounds my head. “My friends don’t hate us.”

“Sit down, Calogero,” says Francesco.

I hadn’t even realized I’d stood up. I sit again.

“You’re right,” says Francesco. “They’re good people.”