Legend of Buddy Bush (9781439131824) (8 page)

Grandma goes about her daily chores as Ma gathers her two grocery bags for her walk home.

“Pattie Mae, stay here with your grandfolks. I will be back soon. I will bring your clothes for church tomorrow. And something for you to wear in the field next week.”

Just what I need, my field clothes.

But staying here is just fine with me. A Saturday night with Grandpa.

As soon as I can't see Ma anymore, and
Grandma goes into the sitting room to dust, I go in to check on Grandpa, but he is taking a nap. Sitting here watching him seem like forever. His light skin is starting to look like the rattlesnake that he killed last year in the strawberry patch. Why does he look so old? Then I just close my eyes and pray, but not aloud.

“Oh, Lord, please help my grandpa. I promised Grandpa I was going to Shaw University someday. He promised me he would come to my graduation. He always keeps his promises, so please let him live until then. Pleeeease. Grandpa is a good man. And Lord, while I'm praying, please, please take care of my uncle Buddy. Amen.”

After I finish begging the Lord, I climb over Grandpa's weak body and lie down beside him. The cotton sheets are wet on his side of the bed. It's June, but not hot enough for all that sweat. I don't say anything. I just lie there and listen to him breathing.

It's getting late now and Ma still ain't back. Grandma's walking through the house, closing all the windows. With her fly shot, she spraying bug
spray in each room until every bug, ant, and candle fly in the house is dead or dying. Hudson sees her coming and he runs under the bed. Surely Grandpa and me will die in our sleep with no way to breathe.

I don't care. I keep my eyes closed and think about how unbearable life will be on Rehobeth Road if something bad happen to Grandpa. Then I start thinking about us dying together. Grandpa and me in heaven. What a time we would have away from the controlling women.

I fall to sleep and dream about heaven. No snakes, no mean sheriff, no cotton to chop. Uncle Buddy is in heaven with us, not in jail. It is so beautiful.

G
randma is up praising the Lord this Sunday morning. She cooks and prays. She asks the Lord to heal Grandpa and to bring Uncle Buddy home. She speaks in tongues every time she prays about Uncle Buddy. Ma joins her and they shout all over that kitchen, before and after breakfast.

When Mr. Charlie arrives, Miss Doleebuck doesn't stay sitting in the car like most Sundays. She comes inside, lays her hat on the table, and grabs Grandma's hand and they pray again. Then they shout together. One by one, all dressed in black, in the middle of June, the women march out
to the car. Grandpa and me follow them in shock. Mr. Charlie loses his patience with the women folks halfway down Rehobeth Road. “Can y'all please wait until we get to church before you do all this carrying on?” Grandma stops shouting long enough to roll her eyes at Mr. Charlie and then shouts louder. I want to laugh so bad I don't know what to do. I can tell by the carrying on that the women folks are doing that there is going to be some shouting going on in Chapel Hill Baptist Church this morning.

“Amazing Grace,” “Precious Lord,” “Somewhere Around God's Throne”—all before we reach the church parking lot.

When we get there, the women folks are out of breath and I am scared to get out of the car. I just don't know what they are going to do next. I look at the tree and the poles and they are all filled with signs. Me and Ma are the only two in the car that can read and today I wish I couldn't read either. I make the mistake of reading one of the signs aloud. “Look at the signs, Grandpa. They say ‘Free Buddy Bush.' ”

Right there on the church ground the women shout.

Lord do they shout.

Once inside the church it is chockablock full.

Reverend Wiggins is preaching like he ain't never preached before. He mentions Uncle Buddy in every breath and the church is on fire with the spirit. All the deacons stomp their feet louder than usual in the amen corner to the right. The deaconesses in the amen corner to the left shout amen and fan each other with the new church fans. Miss Sally faint while Betty Lou sing “Let the Church Say Amen.”

“Go on and preach,” Miss Lucy Bell yells as she grabs her wig so that it won't come off. Then she dances down the aisle to her own beat. When the choir sing “Take Me to the Water,” she joins their beat and her wig is now flying across the red carpet, under the wooden bench, where I am sitting next to Grandpa.

When it is prayer time, Ma and three other women, including Miss Doleebuck, almost faint at the altar. Brother Boone even takes his green
necktie off. Mr. Charlie just nods his head to agree with “the word,” and pats Grandpa on the back every time he thinks he is getting upset. I'm holding Grandpa's hand tight and I pray this service is over soon.

By two o'clock, the women of the church have shouted more than I have ever seen them carry on before. Surely Sheriff Franklin will hear them a mile away. He is probably ready to release Uncle Buddy now so he can be saved from hell, that everyone here have condemned him to.

Lord, when service is over I am so tired. So is everyone else. I just pray that Sheriff Franklin releases Uncle Buddy by next week's service. I can't go through this two Sundays in a row.

I
t's Monday morning, the land is dry, and I have to go back to the cotton fields to chop weeds. Ma tells me that what was going on with Uncle Buddy is grown folks business and no harm is going to come to me.

I wave good-bye to Ma and stand at the end of the path and wait for the truck to pick us up. Jones Property is before the slave house if you coming from the other end of Rehobeth Road near the river, so Randy can see me standing here. He is the official driver for Ole Man Taylor this summer.

The Edwards are already on the back of the
truck, all ten of them. Randy's sisters and brothers. Like me, they don't have a daddy either. They live in Old Man Taylor's other house on Rehobeth Road with their ma, Miss Blanche. When I climb on the back of the truck, I notice a new woman with us. She is sitting in the front with Randy. She can't be his girlfriend. Randy is Miss Blanche's middle boy, but he ain't old enough for a girlfriend. I believe he is about sixteen. He shoo ain't old enough to be driving. But Ole Man Taylor don't care as long as we get to the field every day. I try to get a good look at her, but that is not going to happen with the Edwards blocking the window like sardines in a can.

I touch my friend Chick-A-Boo, Randy's youngest sister, on the shoulder. “Who's the new lady in the inside of the truck?”

Chick-A-Boo is mad about her being in the inside. “She is some city lady named Nora and she thinks she is too light skinned and pretty to sit back here with us. She came back to Rich Square a while ago and according to Ma, she went to work at the sewing factory Saturday morning and they
told her she didn't work there no more. So I guess she going to have to get off her high horse now, working with us in the fields.”

“Nora! That's Uncle Buddy's friend.”

“We all know that,” Chick-A-Boo snaps.

“That's the reason she got fired.”

I'm not about to tell Chick-A-Boo that I saw Uncle Buddy give Miss Nora worms, because she is still fussing about Miss Nora riding in the front with Randy. I didn't get a good look at her face on Saturday because I was so busy looking at Uncle Buddy's hand on her tiddies.

Finally I said, “Don't worry. When she finishes chopping and pulling weeds, she will be black like the rest of us.” I try to assure Chick-A-Boo. But no one is as black as Chick-A-Boo, who we called “Skillet.” Now, Uncle Buddy calls her “Pretty Lady.”

Uncle Buddy says it must be a dead cat on the line, because Chick-A-Boo is the only dark Edward. On Rehobeth Road “dead cat on the line” means you don't have the same daddy that your sisters and brothers do. Ma told Uncle Buddy he don't
know who that girl daddy is and he best stop talking to me about Miss Blanche's business. And she says it don't matter what color you are if you that pretty. As a matter of fact, she said it don't ever matter to God what color you are, just to the crazy folks around here. And everybody says Chick-A-Boo is the prettiest girl on Rehobeth Road. Maybe in all of Rich Square. Right now she's just being jealous. So I'm not going to pay her any attention while she talks about Miss Nora. She know better than to talk about folks anyway. When she does, I tell her she sounds like Sylvia. A nasty two-faced little gossip. I tell her that Grandpa says, “Never worry about the bone, just the dog that's carrying it.”

When the truck turns onto the dirt path, all I can see is cotton plants with weeds that don't suppose to be in them, all mixed in together, waiting for us to chop out. Our hoes lie at the end of field where Randy left them last Thursday, before the big rain came.

When the truck stops, I jump off first, trying to get a better look at Miss Nora. Everyone runs to the field, trying to get the row that has less weeds
and grass on it. I don't budge. I want to see the city lady. I saw that mess she was doing with Uncle Buddy, but never did see her face. I wonder where her worms are. What is she like, the one Uncle Buddy likes enough to take to the picture show? Why would she give up the city life to come back to Rich Square? I will ask her sooner or later. What about the movie theaters and all the stores I see on Grandpa's TV? Don't she want to go to the Chinese restaurant on Saturday nights and the Savoy? I hear that they dance all night there.

When she steps out of the truck, I want to laugh. But Grandma and Ma would skin me alive for laughing at anyone. I want to laugh because I had never seen anyone dressed up going to chop cotton before. Miss Nora has on a pair of pretty blue pants with little splits on the side. Her blouse is red with white flowers on it. Her shoes are a dead giveaway that she hasn't been in a field in a long time, if ever. They look almost as good as Ma's Sunday go to meeting shoes, just lower heels.

I move closer, so I can speak to this city lady.

“Hey, Miss Nora, my name is Pattie Mae.”

“Hi, Pattie Mae. How are you?”

“Kind of sad about my uncle Buddy, but I'm okay.”

“Me too, but he's going to be all right. You must be Mer's girl.”

She pauses. “And Buddy's niece.”

“Yes, ma'am, I am.”

“Your Uncle Buddy told me all about you, and you look just like Mer when she was a young girl.”

“You know my ma, too?”

“Yes, Lord. She was the smartest thing at Creecy School. I used to cheat off of her paper every day.”

Miss Nora laughs at her own self.

I laugh too because everyone is always talking about how smart Ma was in school and how they all used to cheat off of her papers. One day Uncle Buddy was copying Ma's work so hard that Ma said he wrote her name down instead of his own. He got ten licks for cheating and Ma got one lick for not telling the teacher.

Folks say the only reason Ma didn't finish school and become a schoolteacher is because when Grandpa bought his land on Rehobeth Road, there
was no school bus to pick up the colored children that far away from town. My uncle Buddy, who had quit school years earlier, wouldn't get out of bed and take Ma to school, so she eventually quit. Too far to walk. I guess he was a little lazy back then, but not now. Not my uncle Buddy. Everyone in Rich Square said Ma would have surely become a schoolteacher if she had just been able to get to the schoolhouse. Grandpa wouldn't take her because he ain't drove one mile since he got hit over the head. I don't mean to be selfish, but I'm kind of happy Uncle Buddy slept late back then. If Ma had become a schoolteacher, I don't think she would have had time to have babies and I would have never made it to the oven. Schooling or no schooling, Miss Nora, like everybody else around here, knows that Ma ain't no dummy. When folks tell Ma she smart, she always say, “I ain't smart, I just know what I know.”

“So where's Mer?” Miss Nora asks.

“She can't make it. Grandpa, he's not feeling so good, and she and Mr. Charlie taking him over to Rocky Mount to the doctor today. Then she is
going to go and talk to the law about Uncle Buddy.”

Miss Nora looks sad.

“Tell Mer hello and tell her that I hope Mr. Braxton will feel better soon.”

I assure Nora I will tell Ma that she asked about her as we walk to the cotton field together. Everyone else has already started. Randy walks between four rows of cotton so that he can chop two on each side of his.

He chops fast.

“Such a smart boy,” Ma always say when she talks about Randy.

To me, if he is so smart, he should know he don't have to chop four rows at a time. He still ain't going to get but $2.00 a day. The same amount I'm going to get for taking my time.

Miss Nora reaches in her pockets and pulls out a pair of white gloves nice enough to wear to church. She slowly put them on as I watch in amazement. I know when I get to Harlem, I will learn to put my gloves on just as easy. The only difference is, I'm not coming back here to chop in my gloves.

I wish for gloves when I pick up the raggedy hoe
that has been left behind for me to use. Then I wish I was back at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I wish I could make him feel better. But most of all, I wish Uncle Buddy was home.

At least I have someone to talk to, because Miss Nora chops even slower than I do. Unlike everyone else, who is now all over the field chopping fast, like they are going to make more money if they finish earlier. The way I see it, we are all going to make the same pennies. No need to hurry.

The morning is going by fast, as I question Miss Nora about the North. How many stoplights are on her street? We only have one light in Rich Square. Where does she shop? I want to know everything.