How High the Moon Page 4

  No. He probably doesn’t even know to look for me.

  He may have moved up north like Ella’s mama. To Boston or New York. Heck, I’d love to move up to one of them cities. Up there, colored folks can live differently. They can come and go as they please without worrying about white folks all the time. Without being scared all the time.

  Bad things can happen to colored folks here.

  Two years ago, Loretta and I were coming home from school. We were taking a slightly different route than usual. As we wandered through the woods, we noticed several trees with thin, raised bark ribbons swirling ’round the surface of their trunks like veins on a man’s forearms.

  “What is it?” Loretta said, each of us sidling up to a tree, necks outstretched for a closer look, but careful not to touch anything. Somehow the raised surface didn’t seem like it belonged to the tree. It looked new and fragile, and even unwanted. I searched the ground for a small branch.

  “What you doing?” Loretta asked.

  With a sharp stick, I punctured one of the bulbous bands.

  Loretta let out a shriek.

  As I suspected, its casing was thin and broke open easily. Then hundreds—thousands!—of ant-like insects poured out of the encasement like pus from a boil. First streaming out in a fury, and then quickly scattering, covering the whole of the trunk until the entire thing appeared to be pulsing and twitching.

  “Oh, my Lord!” Loretta jumped back, and I jumped back, too, but a handful of the insects had made their way along the stick and onto my arm.

  “No!” I shouted, tossing the stick far away from me and smacking at my arms, trying to shake off the nasty bugs. “They’re on me! They’re on me!” My imagination got the best of me, and it began to feel like they were on my shoulders, my neck, in my hair. I was beating away at my body like someone gone mad. Loretta, who hadn’t even been anywhere near the stick, started clawing at her own arms and legs, too.

  In a frenzy, we ran, slapping at our bodies, squealing, screaming, and eventually laughing hysterically. We finally stopped in a circle of trees. A perfect patch in the woods. We were stooped over, trying to catch our breath. As we straightened, Loretta gasped. She was looking just past me, over my head.

  I turned to see what had surprised her.

  A tiny stockinged foot dangled directly over me.

  Motionless bodies like Christmas tree ornaments, but without any sparkle or cheer. They were close to each other but not touching. The daddy’s dark straw hat had fallen off and was lying at the base of a tree a few feet away. The baby girl’s brown buckled shoe was just below her, but hard to see against the floor of dead leaves. Other than those two fallen items, they were all dressed like they’d just left the house to go to the store together. Sweaters buttoned. Belts cinched. It must’ve happened only a few hours before we’d arrived, perhaps in the morning just before school. Couldn’t have been long. Except for the grim expressions, they looked the way they must have in life.

  A regular colored family.

  Loretta and I didn’t say a word. We hardly moved a muscle as we looked from one sad face to the next. I didn’t recognize any of them, and we knew just about everyone in Alcolu. Loretta didn’t know them either, or she would’ve cried out.

  Nearby, in the bushes, something stirred. Loretta grabbed my arm and we took to running. I think we both knew that it was probably only a squirrel or a bird, but we couldn’t stop. Our legs were moving fast, taking us far away as quickly as possible. We didn’t speak the entire way home, but Granny heard our sobbing, and our sorrowful squeals, before we’d even reached the front yard. She came running and we collapsed into her. Shushing us and kissing our heads, she held us close and let us know we were safe.

  “There now,” she said as she led us into the house. “You’s okay now. Granny gotcha.”

  We told her what we saw. Described the family and all the horribleness of it. She squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head hard. I heard her say a quick and quiet prayer under her breath as she disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with a glass of water for each of us.

  “Been a long time since I heard of anyone in Clarendon County getting theyselves lynched,” she said, shaking her head again. “I reckon those folks was from somewheres else and was running. The daddy probably got into trouble with some white folks and they had to run.”

  I remembered the flowers on the mama’s dress, the daddy’s large hands, the tiny stockinged foot.

  Loretta’s glassy eyes were lost somewhere out past the window. The sadness she wore only moments before had been replaced by something newly roused. I was feeling it, too: a low boiling anger.

  Like she sensed it, Granny placed her other hand on my shoulder. “Do not get involved in other folks’ messes. Understand me? Don’t get it in your head to try to help in some way, or to go cutting them down from the trees.”

  “But—” I started.

  She gave my shoulder a sharp shake.

  “No! But nothin’!” In an instant, her face went from tender to hardened steel. “That’s the sheriff’s business and you don’t go messing in it less you wanna find yourself strung up with them folks.”

  I always knew that bad things happened in the world, even though they’d never touched me. But knowing it in your head is one thing. Seeing the horror of it right in front of you makes you believe in monsters.

  I couldn’t understand how one person could do something like that to another. Poppy said that sometimes, when the world presses down hard on folks and they can’t take it no more, they feel the need to lash out at somebody else. To give them some of their pain. There’s men that do it to their women. Mamas that do it to their children. And then there’s white folks that unload on colored folks like they wasn’t nothing human at all. Kicking them, beating on them, spitting in they faces, and hanging them from trees.

  What Granny said made no sense to me. Sure, nobody wants to get theyselves lynched, but what does just sitting around and watching evil do for anybody? I mean, you gotta do something. You gotta say something. If you don’t, how’s evil gonna know it’s not okay?

  myrna

  Every year the fall church picnic was held down by Creek’s Clearing. Several men from the church, including Poppy, would bring tables and chairs for the picnic. We’d spread lots of blankets out, too. There was music and dancing, everyone from the congregation brought food, and the kids would spend hours up in the trees, or down by the creek.

  We got there just past noon, when most folks had already arrived. Peggy and Loretta immediately came running. They tore me away from the family, chattering about George Stinney. Apparently, they’d overheard George say that he was “waiting on Myrna to show up.” My whole face caught fire when they told me. I did a quick scan of the grounds. I spotted Fred and Ben sitting on a couple of low branches of the oldest tree in the clearing, close to the creek. George was perched on a high limb, looking right at me. I grabbed hold of the lace ribbon ’round my neck and turned away.

  “Where’s the food?” I asked. They quickly led me to three large tables laden with chicken, biscuits, rice, greens, and more. Henry and Ella were already there, heaping mounds of mashed potatoes and gravy onto their flimsy paper plates.

  “Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, MY!” Henry sang, rubbing his hands together and grinning over the feast spread out in front of him.

  “I ate so much,” said Loretta, holding her potbelly with both hands. “Right when I got here. It’s so good. Get you some candied yams. Miss Priscilla made them and they are better than anything you’ve ever had in your life!”

  “I made the buttermilk pie right there.” Peggy pointed to her golden pie with its matching perfect golden crust. Peggy favored herself the best baker in all of Clarendon County. She brought a pie—always buttermilk—to every occasion, and they usually were near perfection. It was her special badge of honor.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t eat nothing. How come you won’t eat?” Loretta got up close to Peggy and crossed her arms
.

  “I told you, I’m just not hungry,” Peggy said, her voice wavering a little. She bent her head, walked past Loretta, and poured herself a glass of water. “Why are you so concerned?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked off, shaking her head and pretending to be focused on the boys in the tree.

  “You crazy trying to watch your figure! You’re already a beanpole! I swear, if you turn sideways, you’ll disappear! Tell her, Myrna. She’s too skinny to not be eating. You think boys like that?”

  “I don’t care what they like!” Peggy called over her shoulder. “Just stop bothering me. I’m not hungry!”

  George Stinney was no longer on his high branch. He wasn’t on the lower branches with Fred and Ben either. I turned to see if maybe he’d headed off for the creek, and when I turned, I bumped square into him.

  Behind me, Loretta let out a sharp laugh before running off, dragging Peggy with her, both of them giggling loudly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you were—”

  “Dang, girl!” He laughed, grabbing a napkin from the table to clean off the punch I’d made him spill down the front of his pants.

  I looked over at the tree again and saw that the boys there were all grabbing their midsections and laughing up a storm. “Well, what you doing walking all up on me like that? What’d you expect?”

  “Uh-huh. Okay, Miss Myrna. It’s my fault.” He tossed the paper napkin on the table, then he stepped back and smiled. “That’s a pretty dress,” he said. He lifted the end of my lace scarf and nodded approvingly. “You look real nice.” I put a hand on my hip and waited for the joke that was to follow but it didn’t come.

  “I like the picnic better over here. More space than at the church grounds,” he said, taking in the clearing, the trees, the creek. “I haven’t been to the creek since I was… I don’t know, maybe ten. Been a long time.”

  “We go fishing there sometimes. Well, I used to. Not so much these days,” I said.

  “I used to love it.” He was staring off at the water, remembering something.

  “Me too. You can get you some big bass there.”

  Peggy, Loretta, Fred, and Ben were still hanging around the tree, laughing and goofing around. They’d lost all interest in me and George.

  “Will you walk with me down to the creek?” George asked. I was taken aback by how sweet he was. I was so used to him yukking it up with Ben and Fred. Everything was always a joke with those boys. This was a side of him I’d never seen. He offered me his elbow and I quickly looked over at the tree.

  “Don’t mind them,” he said, without so much as a glance in their direction.

  No one was watching us. I took his arm and let him lead me away.

  The creek’s water flowed easily and with little sound. Sometimes the current could be dramatic. Rough and even dangerous. But today it was peaceful. As gentle as George.

  “It’s much smaller than I remembered,” he said.

  Without thinking, I rested my hand on his shoulder so I could unstrap my sandals. His hand shot up and grabbed mine.

  “Careful there,” he said. He pretended he was trying to keep me from falling, but I knew he just wanted to hold my hand. “Here.” He led me up onto one of the large rocks along the water. Once I was situated, he climbed onto the rock next to me. We sat there in beautiful, awkward silence and listened to the water’s tranquil roll.

  “I was baptized here,” I said, finally breaking the quiet.

  “Me too. Brother Gavin—”

  “Yeah! Brother Gavin performed mine, too!”

  “Remember Sunday school with him?”

  “Not a whole lot, to be honest.” I shook my head. “I do remember that Sister Ellen served us beets.”

  “Mmm… those beets!”

  “Ugh! I refused to eat them!”

  “Aw, you gotta give ’em a try. I loved ’em!” He laughed. “I did! Kids would stack those little disks on my plate when she wasn’t looking. I gobbled them up!”

  “No, George, no!” I cringed.

  “Beets are good! And they’re good for you. You know what? You need to have me cook for you. I’ll make you some killer beets, some sweet potato pone…”

  “You cook?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s my passion.”

  He was serious. It was so cute!

  “Don’t go telling folks, though. I mean I really cook. Can’t find greens better than mine! They out there on the big table.” He motioned to the picnic area.

  “Well, well, I guess I’m gonna have to get me some of them greens ’fore the day’s over, Mr. Chef!”

  “You think I’m playing, but I’m serious. My pop says I could have my own restaurant one day. Lord knows I got enough family to help me run it.”

  The sun shifted and the huge oaks around the clearing began making wide shade. Goose bumps covered my arms. I guess George saw them, ’cause he removed his coat and put it over my shoulders.

  “I remember looking forward to hearing you sing in church before I even knew you,” he said.

  I felt myself blush and had to look away. I couldn’t remember when I’d first seen George. He and his family had just always been around. At school. At church. In the neighborhood. But it wasn’t until the last year or two that I really noticed him.

  “Would you sing for me now?” he asked.

  “What? Now?” I blushed.

  He nodded. “C’mon. Just a little bit. Don’t nobody sing prettier than you, Myrna.”

  “Oh, stop!”

  “C’mon, girl. You know it’s true.” He gave me a poke to the ribs.

  “Stop!” He did it again. “That tickles! Stop it!”

  “Give me some song, girl! C’mon!” He sat back, grinning.

  “Okay, okay… wait… um.…” I looked up into the beautiful day. In the distance, I could hear the music and laughter from the picnic, but they were far from George and me. Couldn’t nobody hear me.

  O they tell me of a home far beyond the skies,

  O they tell me of a home far away;

  O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise;

  O they tell me of an uncloudy day.…

  O they tell me of a home where my friends have gone,

  O they tell me of that land far away,

  Where the tree of life in eternal bloom

  Sheds its fragrance through the uncloudy day.

  When we returned to the picnic, our friends had all abandoned the tree to join the large crowd in the center of the field. The phonograph was turned up louder than before. Folks were whooping it up and dancing. George and I found a clear spot where we could see through the wall of bodies. Granny and Poppy were dancing. Miss Priscilla and her daughter, Theodora, danced together. Amie was dancing with her daddy. When she saw George, she ran to him and dragged him out there with her. Without hesitation, he spun her about, flipped her around. She giggled uncontrollably. I just prayed George didn’t ask me to dance! No way! I was already wearing his coat. It was enough scandal for one day.

  Loretta and Peggy wasted no time descending on me and filling my ears full of questions:

  “Where’d you go?”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Did he ask you to be his girlfriend?”

  “Did he try to kiss you?”

  “Did he kiss you?”

  I shushed them good. Told them to mind their business. Soon enough, their attention shifted, distracted by Ben and Fred dancing out on the grass.

  Henry and Ella were dancing, too. Henry was dancing with his mom, and some friends from school were teaching Ella a new dance. They danced close to us, and Ella and Henry both made sure to make silly faces at me as they went by. Henry, always the show-off on the dance floor, jumped up in the air and landed on the ground in a half split. The girls, not to be outdone, tried out some fancy moves of their own.

  Loretta leaned in to me and pointed to Ella. “I swear, sometimes she looks just like a white girl!” She threw her head back, laughing
. It made us all laugh, but when I looked over at Ella again, she’d stopped dancing and was staring at the ground. She shot a quick look at me over her shoulder before walking off the dance floor and to the food tables.

  henry

  I ain’t never been on a train. Neither has Myrna. Ella’s lucky.

  The station was real crowded with all sorts of folks on their way somewhere else. But even before the crowd, dominated mostly by soldiers and their girls, it was the smell that hit me. Diesel and cigarette smoke mingled with musty coats and urine to create something altogether new and foul. Ella pinched her nose closed.

  “I sure hope it doesn’t smell like this on the train,” she said. Poppy assured her it was a station thing. After train hours, plenty of folks without a place to stay used the Charleston station as their temporary living space.

  “And as their toilet!”

  There was lots of chatter, some laughing. Folks were calling to each other from across the platform, and someone kept blowing a whistle. A couple of soldiers kissed their girls for what seemed like an eternity, right in the middle of the platform like no one else was there. I looked around, but it didn’t seem like anyone else cared too much. People were too busy with their own good-byes.

  A little boy, straddled on his mama’s hip, was wiping the tears from her face as she nodded to his daddy, another soldier. The daddy, in his crisp uniform, was saying sweet things, trying to make her laugh. I knew this scene. I had lived it before. I had been that little boy, unaware that Daddy was going far, far away, for a long, long time, and that those tears his mama was crying would soon be his.

  All kinds of folks. Every age. I was surprised at how many colored folks there were.

  After a while the smell of the place became too much for me so I walked to the edge of the platform hoping to get some air and get a look at the tracks. Ella snuck up from behind and grabbed me.

  “Boo!”

  I jerked forward and darn near fell onto the tracks.