Bitter stares at the receiver in his hand. “Where’s the cord?” he says.
“It’s a cell phone,” I explain, tossing the wrapping and the box. “I want you to keep this handy on Thursday while I’m gone. If you have the slightest pain, even a twinge, you call Ariyeh at school. I’ve left the number on the table.”
“Ahh — ”
“I’m serious, Uncle. Don’t mess with this.”
He leaves the phone on the counter, next to a jelly-smeared knife, then goes to play a record. I pour myself a glass of water, walk to the porch, stretch my back and arms. Across the street, in the Magnolia Blossom, two paper-pale men stroll among the tombstones. Satchmo purrs “The Potato Head Blues.” I stiffen. I don’t want to assume, automatically, that any fancy-dressed white man poking through a black neighborhood is the enemy. I’m no conspiracy nut, like Reggie.
“Want a beer, Seam?”
“Thanks.” I take a last look. The fact is, I know a developer when I see one.
On Thursday, I spin along the swamp roads, pick up Kwako and Barbara. On the radio a newscaster tells us that the “former H. Rap Brown,” now known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, is awaiting trial in Georgia for murdering a sheriff’s deputy. “Mr. Al-Amin once helped lay the foundation of the civil rights movement, along with Julian Bond, John Lewis, Huey Newton, and Stokely Carmichael, registering voters, forming the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee,” the newsman says. “In the ensuing years, the civil rights leaders scattered into various philosophical camps, some distinguishing themselves, others falling into disgrace.”
In the back seat, Kwako clucks his tongue. “Hot-headed boogee. Had so much going for him. How he let it all get away from him? It’s just like Elias.”
I switch the radio off. “Tell me about him,” I say.
“Elias? Well, let’s see. I ‘member the day the Texas Southern students sat at the Weingarten’s lunch counter over on Almeda Street, protesting the WHITES ONLY sign. Elias was with them. Till then, Houston papers was proud to say, ever’ day, how ‘docile’ the city’s coloreds had been. But one or two lunch counters, and that was it in Houston. The moneymen was too damn skittery. Signs came down straightaway.”
“And that was the end?”
“Not overnight. The Major Leagues had integrated their teams, so when a guy like Willie Mays come to town, you had to put him up in a nice hotel with all the rest of the players. Baseball what finally broke the color line here. But Elias and them others, they was out front early. Solid and brave.”
“So what happened to him?” I ask. All around us, in barbed-wired fields, cows wobble, heat-stunned, near steaming stock tanks. Old barns crumble into kudzu. I roll my window up, punch on the AC.
“Drifted out to West Texas, worked at the Pantex plant, making nukes. Come back here — ”
“No, I mean how did he let things get out of hand?”
Kwako scratches his beard. “That you’ll have to ask him.”
“Is there … I don’t know how to put this.”
“Say it.”
“Is there something wrong with us? These men were heroes, right? H. Rap Brown? But now he’s just another black man with a gun. Another brother in jail …”
“Yeah, and his old buddy John Lewis is an important U.S. congressman. Don’t go painting with a broad brush.”
“You’re right, you’re right.”
“Sometime I think the big shots of history just got lucky to be where they was. Circumstances a hair different, you know, they’d be sinners ‘stead of saints. Hotheads, all of ‘em — that’s why they’s out front when historyring its bell. Looka the Alamo — we call those fellas heroes, right? Hell, they’s a bunch of rough-and-tumble scalawags. If they’da died in a saloon fight, which was real possible in most their cases, we wouldn’t be saying their names.”
We pass tupelos and sweet gums, a “Live Minnows” shop, old red-clay mule-cart roads winding off among dark pines, past gravestones sinking into weeds.
“Still, there is a lot of black men in jail,” Kwako mumbles. “That’s a fact.”
Barbara spots a fruit stand and asks if we can stop. I pull over by a series of pine crates stacked to form tables. Watermelons, apples, and pears. From my purse I grab a wad of bills. “On me,” I say. I hand her ten twenties. “And this is for your lovely quilt.”
She smiles and tucks the money into her bright yellow skirt. “You like to learn piecework? I’ll show you sometime. Then you can be like your mama.”
“I’d like that,” I say.
She greets the big, hearty man behind the crates. He’s filbert-colored, gray-haired, and sweating. Horseflies swarm a row of cantaloupe. The air smells rancid and sweet: moist sugar, overheated auto brakes.
“Hardwoods mostly gone from here,” Kwako says, glancing around at the pines. “Steam skidders dragged ‘em all away …” A wistful bemusement hovers just at the edge of his voice, reminding me of Bitter. It accounts, I’m sure, for my ease with him.
“Did you finish sculpting your bears?”
“Three oak cubs.” He grins. “And a brand new zebra made from Coke bottles and a suitcase.”
Barbara asks the fruit seller to bag her up half a melon and a pair of Granny Smith apples. She leans close and whispers to him. He leads her to a box of Ziploc pouches next to some peanut sacks. The pouches are filled with fine white grains. Barbara smiles at me, embarrassed.
“That’ll be two bucks for the fruit, dollar forty-eight for the kaolin.”
It looks like chalk — fertilizer for houseplants or something. Barbara seems shamed by it so I don’t ask her, but as she turns from the fruit stand, she opens the pouch, pinches a bit of powder between her forefinger and thumb, and sucks it into her mouth.
“Dirt,” Kwako tells me softly. “Fresh from the Georgia hills. She craves it like some folks crave popcorn or crackers.”
Barbara’s shy now, but I give her a sympathetic smile. She admits, “I’d eat it for breakfast, lunch, and supper, with a little iced tea, if I could, but it’s bad for my system. Stops me up, you know, and leaves me tired.”
“Forgive me. I’m curious,” I say. “How did you —?”
“When I’s a girl, my mama’d give me fifteen cents and say, ‘Go get me some kaolin from Miz So-and-So.’ She ate it whenever she’s pregnant with my little brothers and sisters. Said it settled her tummy. Sure enough, when I’s carrying my firstborn and got sick in the mornings, I remembered what she’d said and hunted some down for myself. Been hooked ever since.”
“There’s a big dirt trade from Georgia and all through the South, over here to the coast, even up to Chi-town, along the Delta,” Kwako tells me.
Back in the car, as we’re heading through the woods, Barbara says, “You know the way the earth smells after a long dry spell, then a spit of rain hits it, stirring up old pebbles and leaves? That’s how kaolin tastes to me.” She chews a creamy pinch. “Doctor tells me, ‘Girl, this stuff is used in paint, ceramics, fiberglass, it’s used to make paper — it ain’t to be eaten!’ and I know he’s right, but Lord, my mama was right too. Calms me like nothing else.” I’m glad she trusts me enough to give me a glimpse of her life. Two kids, boys, she says, both grown — I wonder how old she is? — working in the Ship Channel, loading boats. “Hell-raisers, but they made good men. Married now. Responsible daddies. We’re right proud of ‘em.”
Kwako says, “You done good, Mama.”