Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 58

CHAPTER 2

Easter, Mavis, and the older children carried the scant pieces of furniture from the house and set them down in the front yard beneath the hot Georgia sun. The chintzes swarmed and the children screamed and pointed as the tiny black bugs made a beeline to their death.

Easter soaked rags in camphor oil, dropped them into cooking pots, and set them aflame, filling the house with smoke, killing the chintzes that remained hidden in the walls.

Outside the younger children played tag and hide-and-go-seek. Mavis sat in her rocking chair with her eyes closed and Easter laid herself down beneath the shade of the tupelo tree and read.

Over the past few months it had been her great pleasure to work for Mrs. Olga. The woman had recognized Easter’s intelligence early on and did not miss the longing that flashed in her young employee’s eyes whenever they swept across the hundreds of books that lined the shelves.

“Can you read?” she’d asked one day as Easter rubbed mineral oil into the wood moldings around the doorway.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Really? Who have you read?”

Easter rattled off an impressive list of writers and their works. Mrs. Olga was flabbergasted, she had never met a well-read Negro. “Well,” she said as she removed her glasses and rubbed the strain from her eyes, “you are more than welcome to borrow any book that strikes your fancy.”

Easter was delighted, and devoured four books in just as many days. She read deep into the night. She read until the flame of her candle burned down to wick.

The two women discussed, in depth, the books that Easter had read. Mrs. Olga was impressed with her insight and was happy to find that Easter’s aptitude stretched beyond the frivolity of the dime-store romances most of the women in her generation swooned over. Olga started to feel that she had found a kindred spirit in the young Negro maid.

The day began to slip away and the sun swelled until it was blood-orange and then began its descent. Mavis and Easter went into the house, raised the windows, and opened the doors. They swept the dead chintzes into a black pile in the middle of the floor and then scooped them up and sprinkled them into the flames that crackled and spit in the fireplace. They moved the furniture back into the house and Mavis made a dinner of boiled yams, snap peas, and stewed chicken feet. The children were fed and put to bed. Mavis and Easter were sitting at the table enjoying a slice of pecan pie when the sound of a shotgun blast ripped through the quiet. The children bolted out of their beds, Mavis’s fork clattered loudly to the floor, and Easter pressed her hand to her heart. A second shot sounded soon after the first and everyone dropped to the floor. They waited for a third shot, but none came, just the pounding of fleeing feet. They crowded under the table, trembling and clutching one another, until the flame in the oil lamp burned out and the house went as black as the deed that had been done.

The following day, clusters of people gathered along the road, on porches and out in front of the general store, and the story of what had taken place the previous night jumped from one mouth to the next. A white man named Hampton Smith had been shot dead as he sat taking his supper. The second bullet had struck his wife in the shoulder.

“That nigger done gone and lost his mind,” Mavis’s neighbor, a widower named Bishop Cantor, said as he eased himself down onto the porch step, removed his hat, and fitted it onto the broad cap of his knee.

Easter stood near the doorway, her hands clamped at her belly.

“Who?” Mavis asked.

Bishop dropped his eyes and mumbled something Mavis didn’t quite hear.

“What you say, Bishop?” she hissed, stooping down alongside him, her youngest child straddling her hip.

Bishop drummed his fingers on the rim of his hat. “They say Sidney Johnson was the one that done it.”

Mavis puckered her lips and shook her head pitifully. Her knees cracked when she rose.

Bishop saw the dark wetness on the material of her dress. “Boy needing changing,” he grunted before he placed his hat back onto his head and stood. “Sidney must be miles away by now, and done left a heap of trouble behind him. White folk gonna make sure somebody pay, don’t matter who, jus’ as long as it’s one of us niggers.”

Mavis nodded her head in agreement and reached over and pulled a rotten splinter of wood from the railing.

“It’s gonna be hell here,” Bishop declared. “White men with shotguns coming in by the wagonload since six this morning.” He pressed his palms into his lower back and stretched. “Mavis, make sure you keep your boys close to home, ya hear?”

And with that he was gone. Mavis blinked and saw the gray of his shirt disappear around the corner of the house.

The killing spree started that evening. Three innocent men were lynched over just as many nights, and on the dawn of the fourth day a woman’s terrified screams echoed through the blue darkness. “Another one,” Easter gasped as she tiptoed to the front door.

“A woman?” Even as Mavis uttered the words she couldn’t believe it.

“Who you think they got?” Easter whispered.

Mavis stared wide-eyed.

The two women had used the kitchen table and chairs to build a barricade in front of the door and now Easter began to quickly dismantle it.

“What you doing?” Mavis’s voice was filled with panic.

Easter ignored the question. “Help me move this table.”

Mavis backed away. “I will not!”

Easter summoned all of her strength and pushed. The table slid across the floor and Easter pulled the front door open and stepped out onto the porch.

“Git your black ass back in here, gal, are you crazy?”

The torch-wielding mob stomped past the house and Easter hitched her gown above her ankles and started after them. Mavis didn’t call to Easter again. She watched her niece sprint down the road and was sure it would be the last time she would see Easter alive and so turned her face to the heavens and asked God to make Easter’s death swift and painless.

Taking shelter behind a tree, Easter stood, unnoticed, not more than three feet from a mother who had her arm wrapped casually around the shoulders of her young son.

The abducted woman shrieked out again. Easter recognized the voice and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The crowd parted and Easter’s eyes fell on Mary Turner’s terrified face.

Mary stood whimpering and shivering with her arms wrapped protectively around her swollen belly.

Someone yelled, “String the bitch up!”

Isaac, a big, brawny, red-haired man, shoved Mary hard to the ground and two men rushed forward, one bracing her flailing legs, the other pinning her arms, both taking pleasure in digging their dirty fingernails into her brown flesh. Isaac wound the coarse lynch rope once, twice, three times around her ankles, and then did the same to her wrists.

“Castor!” Isaac turned to the crowd and yelled for his son. “Castor!”

The woman who stood spitting distance from Easter bent over and whispered in her son’s ear, “Go on, Castor, your daddy’s calling you.”

Castor dutifully trotted over to Isaac and a jubilant cheer rose up from the crowd.

“This is my boy’s first lynching!” Isaac proudly announced, and he handed Castor the tight end of the rope. The boy appeared to Easter to be no more than five years old. Isaac hoisted his son up and onto his broad shoulders. “Toss it over the limb,” Isaac instructed, which Castor did successfully on his first try.

Ten pairs of hands and dozens of mouths heaved and hoed and Mary’s body slowly rose up … up … up … until she swung like a pendulum, ticking away the seconds until she would be dead.

Someone threw a stone that struck her over her eye. The next stone caught her squarely in the center of her forehead. The third one sliced her cheek, all this as Mary begged for her life and her eyes cried a waterfall of tears.

There was a splashing sound and the night air was suddenly filled with the scent of gasoline.

Again Castor was called upon. His father handed him a torch and Castor wrapped his small fingers around the stem. The flames cast a luminous light across his face. The boy was smiling. Time stopped for a moment, and when it started again Mary was ablaze. She screamed, a horrible, haunting scream that would stalk the dreams of Valdosta’s residents for years. Her body jerked and twitched wildly as the flames quickly engulfed her and she was dead.

Then the vilest thing happened, the thing that turned the stomachs of even the evilest members of the group. A young man, maybe sixteen, maybe younger, fought his way to the front of the crowd; his arm was raised, shielding his face from the heat of the flames. In his other hand he clutched the wooden handle of a rusted machete. He charged toward Mary with the machete held high above his head and when he was in striking distance he brought it down in one precise stroke and the blade split Mary’s belly clean open.

The infant tumbled bloody and squirming from her womb, careening downward, stopping just inches above the ground, its impact thwarted by the umbilical cord.

The air sucked away. Some women bent and spilled sick onto their feet. Others clasped their hands over the eyes of their children. The men looked away and then looked back again. The second swing of the machete severed the cord and the baby hit the ground with a soft thud and uttered a pitiful wail.

Isaac looked around and saw that shame had replaced the rage of the crowd and one by one the people turned their backs on him and started home.

Castor peered down at the crying infant, then up at his father. “Can I have it, Daddy?”

Isaac shook his head, raised his foot, and brought the heel of his boot down onto the baby’s skull.

The following day Valdosta was as quiet as a crypt and Easter was packing to leave.

“They turn on you,” Mavis murmured as she watched Easter throw the few pieces of clothing she owned into her suitcase. “I don’t know why, but they do.” She sat down on the bed and pulled her knees to her chest. In that moment Mavis looked just like Easter’s mother, and Easter almost cried.

Mavis smoothed her hand absentmindedly across her hair. “You know, Mary nursed that boy when his mama was too sick to do it herself.”

“Which boy? The one that cut her?”

Mavis shook her head no and leaned back on her arms. “Castor, the one that lit the flame.”

Easter glanced around the space to make sure she had everything. When she looked back at Mavis she said, “You should come with me. You and the children.”

Mavis stood and wrapped her arms around Easter and squeezed. “You don’t even know where you’re going.”

“Any place gotta be better than here.”

Mavis stepped away and snorted laughter. “Girl, every place the same as here, they just go by different names. Anyway, I’d rather stay here and deal with the devil I already know.”