The Lesser People Read online

  Daddy pushed me forward, said, “Get in and keep your mouth shut until I tell you to speak.”

  I climbed into the back seat feeling chastised and not knowing why. The tension the situation brought with it made me desire sweets, pie and such, to bring the rush of life into my bloodstream and to drive away the discomfort of not knowing much at all. My brother glanced over his shoulder, smiled at me with a gleam in his eye like Tommy’s. He knew better than to say anything and I expected the smile would disappear from his face when he turned back to study the road, watching our dad out of the corner of his eye, maybe expecting a pop in the side of the head for smirking like he did. But the smack never came and Dad’s fingers were tight on the wheel, his eyes on the rearview mirror as we pulled out onto the quiet, worn lane with a canopy of thick branches gone heavy with leaves, the beginning of that dark summer riding with us in the car.

  Chapter Two

  Momma sat in a rocker beneath the porch awning, half-hid in the shade. She was slim and beautiful and hardened by the place we lived and the time she grew up in, shaped by it the way she shaped her children without even realizing it.

  I used to hate her for that, for not realizing, because it sure as hell didn’t seem like she cared about us having our own thoughts. Ben looked a lot like Daddy but was predisposed to carry the same opinions as mother, whereas I looked more like Momma but more than anything wanted to be a man mirrored in image and belief of the father who guided the car easily and assuredly, the father from my past and the man he would continue to be in the future despite the anger it infused in others.

  She set her lemonade on the table next to her as we parked in the drive, the city far behind us, the sweet scent of farmland and forest all around us. She stood as we climbed out and Daddy pulled my brother aside and whispered something in his ear. I waited for them as Momma waited for us. Her face was like white stone above her dress, her eyes reminding me of the preacher’s. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that first impressions, easy comparisons, they’re not always on the mark.

  Our house was an old farmhouse that Daddy had grown up in, and it became his when his parents moved on to greener pastures in shiny black boxes that strong men set low in the earth.

  The land had gone to hell since Daddy refused to work it or keep lesser people around to toil away in the hot sun, baking on their scarred feet until night settled about us. He said the place needed a lot of work and always would and if he could sell it and move up to Detroit where his sister lived and find the strength to start all over, with a fresh slate, he’d do it. But his pride left him there to rot and us to rot with him is what Momma said. She said he didn’t know how to live with his own people, probably never learned, probably never would since men can’t be reshaped or retaught.

  And from the tone of her voice and the seriousness of her face I imagined and believed she’d really tried. She told stories about how Daddy used to be tough, how she was a woman of exquisite beauty before time had robbed her, and how my father had fought for her, to keep her, when men with more money and more smarts and more potential tried to steal her away. But all she’d ever wanted was him, though they had their differences, though her grandfather owned a farm with a hundred slaves that worked sun up to sun down, and my father’s grandfather had been from the north, up near Detroit, and made a fortune in the auto industry that had evaporated as quickly as summer rain.

  They moved as one toward the steps and the dark porch and I followed along thinking of all they had been that I couldn’t understand, some of it too much for my young brain, and as Daddy’s shoulders tensed and Momma with her aging but still pretty face smiled, I thought of Isaiah laying in the muck with his unseeing eyes, enjoying life as much, or more than many around Forksville, or as far out as I’d been in the county, it seemed. The poor Negro seemed happy before someone stole his life away and even though Momma and most everybody else treated them like cattle, I felt sorry for him, to be robbed like that of all the things he could have done, that he had a right to do because he was a human being.

  Momma crossed her arms, her face a study of contrasts—eyes hard and knowing, her lips curved up in something crossed between smile and sneer—as she said, “I can tell by the look on your face that it was one of them.” She dropped her shoulders, sagged her head, as if not understanding why he couldn’t just get on the wagon with everybody else in Forksville.

  She said, “Hank, you know your father…”

  Daddy’s face reddened. He jerked her toward the front door, said, “Get Eli cleaned up so we’re not late.”

  My brother smiled at me, almost envious, like he was wishing he’d been the one to find Isaiah and a creeping, sinking feeling worked its way into my guts because I could imagine him out there by the dead boy, my brother holding a stick and poking it at him like some animal in a cage.

  Momma said, “How about we skip today and you think about which side of the fence you’re working for.”

  Daddy frowned, stared at her with a horrible sadness and squeezed her elbow harder. He said, “I got enough trouble in town without it in my own household. Now get him ready so we’re not late.”

  Momma tried to jerk her arm free but wasn’t strong enough. She tried to level Daddy with her gaze but he was a mountain.

  She whispered harshly, “I don’t know why the hell I married you.”

  “Me either,” he said.

  He released her, nodded at me and said, “Get inside and wash up.”

  I nodded back, said, “Yes, sir,” then wiggled between his wiry frame and the casing of the door, escaping into the still and humid air of the house.

  In the bathroom I ripped my clothing off and tossed it in the hamper, stood there in my underwear and stared at the dirt under my fingernails. I could still feel the damp ground beneath my bare feet, feel the rising sun warming my cheeks as the day brightened, saw those red dots on all the foliage and spattered against the trunks of trees.

  I shivered, standing there, unable to move. I heard Daddy’s voice boom but his words were unclear. I heard Momma laugh a bitter laugh and slam the door before it flew open again and crashed against the wall.

  My brother probably loved every second of it. He had a strange sense of humor back then, before the things happened that changed him.

  My parents argued and something fell off a shelf.

  I turned on the bathwater, adjusted the temperature until I had it where I liked it and climbed in, began scrubbing as the tub filled. It felt like a sin to wash the dirt from beneath my fingernails but I was happy to be rid of the grime. The mirror fogged and I wiped my eyes with the back of my wet hands, thinking for a second that I saw a face staring out at me from the other side.

  I scrubbed quicker, rinsed off before the tub was half full and killed the water. The house was quiet as if everybody had left without me. I wondered how Preacher was holding up.

  I dressed quickly in my bedroom, putting on my Sunday suit, the tight black shoes, sweating there, just standing, staring off at nothing.

  My brother came in, already ready, said, “They’re waiting in the car. You missed all the fun.”

  “I heard it,” I said. “Didn’t sound like fun, and you shouldn’t joke about it.”

  He laughed quietly, winked at me, whispered, “I’m not one of them, you can’t tell me how I should think or how I act. I’m white, see?” He traced his hands down his face, almost looking girlish. “Just another dead nigger out there,” he said. “Less trouble for everybody else.”

  I thought, You’re wrong, though I didn’t know why I thought it, or my reasoning for such a thought. I assumed it came from my father. He liked some of them, treated them like equals, said that they have the same hopes and fears as white folk.

  I doubted him sometimes because most everybody else said different.

  My brother said, “Hurry the hell up. They’re both in a bad mood now.”

  I nodded, almost said Yes, sir, but held my tongue because the olde
r I got the more distant me and him seemed to grow. It scared me a little. He scared me a little.

  I tied my shoes, pushed it from my mind, and followed him out to the car beneath the wind-swept oaks, the breeze ruffling my clothes and that familiar tick in my throat that always seemed to warn me of impending trouble and trouble recently passed.

  Touching the rear passenger door, about to pull it open, I saw Momma turn her head and glare at me like I was Daddy. Her eyes were puffy, one of them a mixture of bright red like Isaiah’s blood, like my blood, and a quickly fierce purple spread from the bridge of her nose across to her cheek bone.

  Daddy yelled, “Get in.”

  My brother was already behind his seat, his long legs kicked out like he wanted to press his shoes to the back and push Daddy into the steering wheel, but he knew what that would get him so he didn’t, just toyed with the idea.

  I pulled my gaze from Momma and opened the door.

  Daddy drove purposely toward the church, and unknowingly toward destruction.

  *****

  The car felt too hot and my clothes too tight as I thought about eternal damnation. Preacher’s sermons always gave me nightmares, which I guess was his point, but it didn’t seem fair to scare me or anybody else like that. Daddy said life wasn’t fair very often and that I had to get used to it if I wanted to be a good man. I trusted him on that but it hurt my heart to think how bad people could hurt each other over nothing.

  The church sat on the other side of town where the river moved on toward Alabama. The single story building was hunched alongside a stand of swamp red birch and red maples. A dirt parking lot occupied one side, hot beneath our feet, a too green lawn bordering it, and I wanted to lay in the grass, pretend that bad things weren’t happening.

  There were several blacks slapping white paint on the tattered clapboards of Preacher’s church. They didn’t make eye contact with us as we quietly moved toward the entrance, my dad holding my shoulder and using me like a buffer between him and Momma.

  My brother lagged behind, giving the slaves the stink eye, making faces at them, looking proud of himself. It was funny in a way, sad in a way, and I couldn’t watch him for long because my dad said, “We’ve got to have a talk later.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or Momma or Ben. All of us nodded in accord just to be certain, and said, “Yes, sir.”

  We were baking in our suits, and Momma in her dress, sweat gathering along our top lips, matting our hair to our foreheads and running like a river down Momma’s tan legs by the time we reached the door. The evening service had already started and the purple in the sky matched the purple around Momma’s left eye.

  We went in. Preacher’s voice carried through the dark vestibule doors, slammed against them and cut through. I shivered, thinking he sounded like he was drunk, his words slurred, emotional, broken and angry.

  Daddy’s hand tightened on my shoulder. He gave Momma a quick glance and she raised her eyebrows, smiled a little with that look that said I told you so.

  Daddy opened the doors and we followed him in, right up to his spot in front of all those people. My brother hung his head like he was embarrassed that we were late and it was nice to see him not being cocky. Momma glanced at some of the men and a few of the women, smiled her best Sunday smile, and sat against the hard wooden pew like it hurt her back.

  Preacher had never broken stride, dancing from one side of the altar to the other, nearly kicking over potted plants, as he screamed in loss and rage, “It takes a strong lot to murder a little blind boy, never mind the color of his skin. It takes a roomful of grown men to bleed a boy, doesn’t it? Men who work, men who run banks, men who own farms, men who fear that one day that little boy will grow up to be a man and he’ll look at a white man’s daughter and that boy become man in his dark skin, with his heart full of sin, will lust after that fair skinned beauty.

  “As if none of us have ever known such a thing, never dreamed it, never entertained a thought. But we’re different, aren’t we? Oh, by God, we’re special, we’re supreme.”

  He moved back to center, glared at the congregation and slammed his hand on the pulpit before he said, “Bunch of cowards.”

  One of the men off to our right stood. A few men around him shifted their position, hands on their knees, their eyes cold and hard like spring night rain. Daddy’s hands balled into fists. He watched the standing man that stood rigid, watching Preacher. No one spoke for a time. I thought I heard mice in the walls, thought I heard Isaiah calling my name from a far distant field.

  Momma cleared her throat. Other women waited, nervous, their unease etched into their tanned faces.

  Preacher smiled at the standing man but there wasn’t any kindness in it. He said, “You have something to say in rebuttal, Fred?”

  The standing man looked like a lawyer, or maybe a dentist. Most of the adult men looked alike to me when they wore their suits, the farmers with dark skin poking from beneath their sleeves and above their collars, and the others, the professionals like this man, pale from working so many days and years inside some building.

  The man named Fred cleared his throat like Momma had. His teeth were the straightest and whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. They glowed more than the polished varnish on the pulpit. He said, “You going to preach or just flap your lip about something that means nothing to nobody?”

  Several men around him, his friends I guessed, gave a hearty amen, soft chuckles. Beyond Fred and his perfect teeth, I saw my grandfather, Daddy’s dad, with his hands on the church pew, his knuckles white and bony. He was slim and his hair was thick and black, and his suit looked so sharp I was always afraid of hugging him. He didn’t acknowledge me. Like Uncle Tommy he thought I was a fat little shit and that reflected my character, perhaps making me lazy, or a glutton. I never argued with them because I was kinda lazy and I liked to eat a lot, but if God thought that was a sin, then He’d never starved or broke a sweat.

  I expected Preacher to storm down from the altar like the hand of God, but he shook his head. He said, “I don’t have faith God can save any of you lot.”

  He wiped a shaky hand across his brow, drained of color, and marched between the pews and down the aisle and passed through the doors we’d come in only a minute ago. They clicked shut behind him with a disturbing finality.

  Some of the men made jokes. Fred straightened his suit coat and moved up to the front. Daddy tapped his knee with his knuckles, staring straight ahead for a moment before he stood and followed Preacher outside. I didn’t know if we were supposed to follow him or stay put, but Momma didn’t move so I didn’t either.

  Fred raised his hands, said softly that everybody should quiet down though nobody had made a sound. He studied us and I studied him, wondering if he was going to be the new preacher or if the old one would come back once he was done crying, after Daddy told him that it would all be okay.

  Fred said, “This is the kind of thing we’re worried about, folks. One bad apple can ruin the whole barrel. Preacher loved a boy that somebody killed but that boy, whatever his name was, is here no more. And has the world stopped turning? No. It goes on because they are not made to be missed or mourned, my people. They are here to do what we tell them, to do it to the best of their abilities, and be grateful for what we give them, a roof over their heads so they don’t have to sleep in the streets or a jail cell, food in their stomachs to quench their hunger and supply energy for the day’s tasks, and that should be enough.”

  He nodded to himself. Looked about, not directly at anyone, but I kept watching him, thinking on what he said about the world not stopping when Isaiah had been murdered. I chewed on my lip, thinking on what he’d said, harder than I’d ever thought on anything, and slowly my hand seemed to rise of its own accord as if I was in a classroom and not some sacred place. A few heads turned my way. Fred noticed them. He blinked at me. He said, “What, boy?”

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. I heard doors open and close, felt my br
other’s right elbow digging in my side, felt the heat in my face, felt Momma to my right, motionless.

  “You said the world didn’t stop for him when he died.”

  Fred nodded, dug his hand into his jacket pocket and removed a pocket watch like he meant to measure how much of his life I was stealing away. He said, “Yes?”

  “Right,” I said. “So, do you think that the world will stop when you die?”

  Fred tapped a finger against the watch. His gaze hardened. He stepped up to Momma’s side. He set a hand on her shoulder and I heard the door open again right before he said, “Your boy…”

  I heard my Daddy’s voice, low and measured, say, “What about our boy?”

  Fred turned his head toward the aisle, toward the tall, dark doors, toward my father. I turned, felt a kink in my neck like I’d slept wrong, saw Daddy moving up fast. Fred jerked his hand from Momma’s shoulder. He looked from me to Daddy, his mouth open. Daddy glanced at his own father and stared hard at him for a minute, both of them frowning, cold, expecting something to snap in the air like lightning.

  Daddy said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?” Fred said.

  Daddy looked at me. He asked what I’d done. I told him what Fred said, and what I’d asked and my old man seemed to smile a little, if only with his eyes. He turned back to Fred. I wondered where Preacher had got to. My brother sat tense next to me. Quiet and waiting. I looked at Daddy again. He was closer, almost within arm’s reach of the lawyer or dentist.

  Fred said, “This how you raise your boy?”