Let the Circle Be Unbroken (7 page)

We passed the Mercantile which had belonged to Jim Lee Barnett. I pointed it out to Little Man and Christopher-John. The shades were drawn as if it were closed, though I had
heard that Mrs. Barnett with the aid of her brother had kept the store open after her husband’s death. A farm wagon loaded down with a white family and household furniture was parked in front of the store. We glanced at them, then quickly looked away before they saw us. We guessed they had lost their farm. These days dispossessed farmers were not an uncommon sight. Another block down was where Mr. Jamison’s office had stood and where rebuilding was already underway. Across from his office was the courthouse square, but before we reached the square, Joe pulled up on the reins and stopped the wagon.

“What you stopping here for?” demanded Clarence. “The courthouse is down thataway.”

Joe’s eyes followed the direction of Clarence’s finger pointed northward, up Main, then looked back at Clarence. “This here’s far as I’m gon’ go thisaway.”

“Ah, Joe, go on down to the courthouse,” wheedled Little Willie. “It ain’t gonna take you but a minute.”

Joe shook his head with great animation. “Not me! No sirreeee! One time I gone farther’n this, up McGiver Street there, and Mr. Deputy Haynes seen me and he asked me what I was doin’ goin’ down that street on the white folks’ side of town and I told him I ain’t even knowed that there was the white folks’ side and he sez to me, he sez, ya knows it now. Then he sez he better not never catch me down there no more less’n I got business, and he ain’t gonna neither! Now y’all get on out and walk if ya goin’ and don’t be takin’ no long time comin’ back here ’cause I’se gon’ be ready to go back home ’fore that sun get past them trees yonder.”

“Ah, Joe, come on—” started Clarence.

“It ain’t but a block,” Stacey said, jumping down. “We jus’ wasting time here.”

As soon as we were off the wagon, Joe, without a backward
glance, let out a “ged on up, ole mule” and rolled away. For a moment, we stood watching the wagon and feeling just a bit deserted, then with Stacey leading the way walked the block down Main to McGiver Street and turned up the dusty street to the courthouse.

The courthouse was a wooden building in need of a coat of paint. It faced a wide yard and a colorful flower garden which gave the area a festive air. Standing around the yard and on the steps were clusters of farm people, faded-looking men in faded overalls and faded-looking women in dresses cut from brightly patterned cotton flour sacks; townspeople stood apart from them, looking a bit smarter in their serge suits and store-bought fashions.

“Is it over?” I said.

No one knew so no one answered. Not daring to ask any of the people gathered on the lawn, we made our way through the crowd to the other end of the building, where we saw an elderly Negro gentleman sitting under a gnarled pine. Stacey approached him and asked if the trial was over. He was told that the jury had only been selected. The trial was to start after lunch.

The day was warm and the courtroom windows had been raised. We went over to the building and, climbing onto the concrete ledge which ran along its base, peeked in. Only a few people remained inside. A group of men stood talking at the front, where two sizable tables and a towering desk set upon a platform dominated the room. Two women in dark, sober-looking hats and print dresses sat on a bench midway back, and at the very rear of the room, in the left-hand corner, sat Mr. and Mrs. Avery and three of their eight children. With them were Mr. Silas Lanier and the Reverend Gabson, a few other members of Great Faith, and three people I didn’t know. T.J. was not in the room.

We returned to the old man and asked him if he thought we could sit inside. He laughed. “Y’all younguns see that speck of space the colored folks squattin’ in? Ain’t none of ’em gon’ move ’cause they’s ’fraid they lose they space.”

“You mean that’s all the room there is for the colored?” said Stacey.

“What y’all see is all they is. White folks thinkin’ they’s doin’ good to ’lows that much.”

We thanked the man for his information, then settled beside him to wait for the trial to resume. We decided that since we could not get into the courtroom, we could station ourselves close enough to the windows to at least see T.J.

As we waited, Mr. John Farnsworth, the county extension agent walked past. Mr. Farnsworth was a pleasant-looking man whose job originally had been to visit all the farms in the area to give agricultural advice. But since last year—1933—it had also included administering the government’s crop-control program, which meant keeping a close eye on each farmer’s cotton production. Mama and Papa said that this additional responsibility had made him less than popular. Now as he walked through the crowd, he was greeted with cold stares and angry grumblings.

“Hey, Farnsworth!” called a white farmer nearby. “Too bad it’s near winter, ain’t it? Ain’t got no cotton for ya to go plowin’ up!”

Mr. Farnsworth ignored the taunt and went up the steps into the courthouse.

The farmer stared malevolently after him, then spat on the ground. “Like to plow him up.”

“Don’t start,” said a man with him, his voice stringently testy.

I glanced over at the group and recognized the man as Mr. Tate Sutton, a white tenant on the Granger plantation.

The first man turned angrily. “I’ll doggone start if I wanna. Got a right to say many times as I feels like it what that Farnsworth done. Here I done planted them ten acres in cotton a year ago this past spring and him and Mr. Granger come along and says I gotta plow three of ’em up! Lordy! All that seed and fertilizer and sweat gone to waste and what I got to show for it? Huh? John Farnsworth tells me the government gonna pay Mr. Granger and Mr. Granger gonna pay me, but more’n a year done gone by and I ain’t seen a cent. Not a blasted cent!”

“And you think the rest of us have?” demanded Mr. Sutton. “You talkin’ like you the only one it happened to.”

The first man looked away.

A third man cleared his throat and spoke. “Hear tell there’s some folks talkin’ union.”

“Union?” said Mr. Sutton. The first man turned back.

“That’s right. Say that maybe that’s the only way we get our money.”

“You mean that union business with niggers?” said the first man.

“Mos’ likely.”

“Well, far’s I’m concerned, hell’s gonna hafta freeze over ’fore I go joinin’ anything with a stinkin’ nigger.”

“Same here,” hastily agreed the man who had brought up the union talk. “Things may be bad, but ain’t nothin’ that bad. . . . Lordy! Nothin’!”

The clusters of people began to break up and drift back into the court building. As they did, a thin boy with corn-blond hair wove his way toward us. He was Jeremy Simms, the younger brother of R.W. and Melvin Simms.

“Hey, Stacey. Moe. All y’all,” he said.

Stacey and Moe stood to greet him.

“Hey, Jeremy,” we replied.

“When’d y’all get here? Didn’t see ya inside.”

“Few minutes ago,” Stacey answered without going into why we had not come earlier. “What’s happening in there?”

“They picked the twelve men for the jury, that’s all.”

“Yeah, we know. It take all mornin’ jus’ for that?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Folks say it shouldn’t’ve, but Mr. Jamison, he was asking a lotta questions of every man up for jury duty—”

“Like what?”

Jeremy looked uneasy. “Like . . . like did they respect the law and would they ever take the law in their own hands? . . .”

His voice trailed off, but we knew what Mr. Jamison had been trying to do. Everyone, black and white, knew of the attempted lynching. “No wonder it took so long,” I muttered. “I’m right surprised they even got their twelve.”

Stacey glanced at me with harsh disapproval, warning me not to be so open about how I felt in front of Jeremy. The look was justified. It was just so hard to remember that I could not say in Jeremy’s presence what I could when Moe or Little Willie or Clarence were around, for Jeremy was a friend despite being a Simms. More than once he had proven that friendship and we all knew it. But he was still white, and that was what separated us and we all knew that too. Resigning myself to say nothing else, I got up and walked back over to the courthouse. Christopher-John and Little Man went with me.

“He there?” Christopher-John asked as I climbed to the cement ledge and peered in. The benches were quickly filling, but the area in front was still empty.

“Nope.”

“I gotta go,” Little Man said. “Where’s the outhouse?”

I surveyed the area. “Maybe it’s ’round back.” I jumped down and we went to see. There was nothing.

“I
gotta
go!”

“Well, go on over there in them bushes then,” I suggested. “Won’t nobody see.”

Little Man was outraged. “I ain’t neither! There’s folks all ’round here!”

I shrugged, ready to dismiss the problem and let Little Man work it out for himself, when I remembered what Uncle Hammer had said about some people in town having plumbing. “Maybe it’s inside,” I told him.

Little Man looked doubtful. “Inside? What’d it be doin’ inside?”

“Come on, we’ll see,” I said. We found a side door and we all went in. Following a narrow hallway, we came to double doors which opened to the main corridor. A man and woman, walking briskly as if they were afraid they might miss something, hurried toward us and turned into a room midway down the hall. Two more people did the same. The rest of the corridor was empty.

Christopher-John nodded toward the open doors where the people had entered. “You s’pose that’s where they got T.J.?”

“Most likely that’s the courtroom,” I said.

“Where’s the outhouse?”

I sighed irritably. At the moment Little Man’s mind was on only one thing. Leaving the protective cover of the doors, we ventured down the corridor looking from side to side, not really sure what kind of structure we were looking for.

“Look there,” said Christopher-John with a nod toward a man in the last stages of buttoning his pants coming through a door marked “Gentlemen.” Without a word, Little Man dashed down the corridor and through the door. Christopher-John
followed him. The man took no notice of either of them as he too headed for the courtroom.

For several moments I waited outside the men’s room, then, drawn by the open doors, went down to the courtroom entrance where I tried to peek between the spaces not filled by people, several deep, lining the back wall. I thought about squeezing in and working my way around to where Reverend Gabson and the Averys were, but before I could make up my mind to do so, a man stepped to the doors and closed them. It hadn’t been such a great idea anyway.

With nothing further to see, I turned and headed back down the corridor. As I did, a young woman came from an office and bent over a water fountain. I watched her drink, the water arching toward her like a colorless rainbow. When she stepped away from the fountain, she saw me watching her. She glanced at me somewhat oddly, then crossed the hall, her high heels clicking noisily against the wood floor, and went back into the room. As soon as the door closed behind her, I hurried over to the fountain and twisted the knob. The water shot up, slapping me coldly across the face. I jerked back, startled, then tried again.

“Cassie!”

I looked around. Jeremy Simms stood at the main entrance of the courthouse staring down at me.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

Walking, then running, Jeremy came toward me, his arms waving frantically. “Cassie! Get away!” he hissed in a whispery cry which filled the empty corridor.

“Boy, jus’ what’s the matter with you?” As Jeremy reached me, I could see that his face was flushed. “You sick or somethin’?”

Jeremy didn’t answer as he looked nervously around him.
“C-Cassie, you can’t—you can’t drink from there. Ya best get ’way ’fore somebody sees ya.”

“You crazy? You ain’t Stacey. You can’t be tellin’ me what to do—”

Before I could finish, Jeremy grabbed my arm and pulled me several feet from the fountain. I jerked loose, furious. “Boy, you jus’ wait till we get outside—”

“Cassie, Cassie,” he murmured hoarsely, waving his hand to silence me. There was an urgency in his manner as he turned away and stared down the corridor. I followed his gaze. Three farmers had just entered. They plodded heavily to the courtroom, opened the door, and disappeared inside. With his eyes still on the door, Jeremy asked where Christopher-John and Little Man were.

“Jus’ don’t you worry ’bout where they are, ’cause boy, you done torn your britches with me.”

Jeremy looked at me now. “Where, Cassie?”

Again, there was that urgency.

“They in there,” I said, pointing to the men’s room.

Without another word, Jeremy rushed over to the door and swung it open. Before the spring had pulled it to again, he was at the entrance with Little Man and Christopher-John in tow. With his right arm outspread, keeping Little Man and Christopher-John securely behind him, he searched the corridor. Finding no one there but me, he pushed them out and toward the side entrance. He didn’t say a word to me. I followed them, as he no doubt knew I would. Once outside I lit into him again.

“Jeremy, how come ya done that, huh? How come ya went and pulled me like ya done?”

Jeremy stopped and looked at me. “You—you jus’ shouldn’t’ve been drinking in there, Cassie.”

“Whaddaya mean I shouldn’t’ve been drinking there? I was thirsty!”

“I—I know, but—”

“Other folks was drinking there—”

“Yeah, but—”

“Aw, you jus’ make me sick. I wasn’t even finished.”

“I’m jus’ real sorry, Cassie, but—”

“—You ole peckerwood!”

Jeremy’s face paled as he stared at me through eyes that were a faded blue. Before he looked away, I saw the pain there.

“Jeremy—”

“Stacey,” he said, pointing up ahead and not letting me finish. “Here he come.”

I looked around. Stacey was coming with Moe beside him. That he was furious was obvious.

“Lord-a-mercy, Cassie, where’d y’all go off to?” he demanded, anger and relief both mixed in his face. “We been looking all over the place for y’all. Little Willie and Clarence even gone back up to the main road and here the trial is gettin’ started. Now where y’all been?”