Alligator Bayou - Donna Jo Napoli [29]
“My family?” I give a whoop.
We pull up to the church, and a man helps us unload. “This here’s Uncle Bill.”
Not much later I’m standing in the kitchen porch beside the last box from the wagon, watching the women chop kale, cardoon, chicory. I’ve kept my eyes open since I got here, but I haven’t caught a glimpse of Patricia. Slowly I take celery out of the box and pile the stalks onto a table. Maybe if I hang around awhile, she’ll turn up.
I step close to one of the women. “Could I make myself useful, ma’am?”
The women hush and look at me, as though I’ve said a bad word. Then the one I addressed smiles wryly. “You already been useful, child. And polite. Much obliged.”
“So that’s where you at.” Charles comes in. “Want to see my classroom?”
I follow him down to the basement. Each of the two rooms has a long center table with side benches. I wonder where Patricia sits.
Shelves line the inner walls. Some hold stacks of writing slates. Others have paper tablets. And books! Frank Raymond and I read his newspaper together. But he doesn’t own books. I walk along, scanning titles. Copies of the Bible. Hilliard’s First Reader. Hilliard’s Second Reader. Cowley’s Speller. The New York Speller. And there’s that playwright that Patricia told me about: William Shakespeare.
Patricia’s probably held all these books. I pick one up.
“I just finished second year of upper,” says Charles. “I’m good in my books.”
I think of Patricia saying she’s not going on to upper school in autumn. She’s going to get her working papers. Why can’t she be the one to go on in school? “Doesn’t your family need you to work?”
Charles looks at me. “I work all summer. All day long. And I don’t stop when school start. I get up and milk the same seventeen cows of Mr. Ralph Burton every morning before school. In autumn I go to Mr. Coleman and chop ten rows of cotton before school and come home to chop another twenty. You ain’t the only one who work, Mr. Calo-whatever. Maybe surrounded by fruits and vegetables all day, you think food is everything. Geography and history and music and composition and declamation and ’rithmetic. I care about all that.”
So do I. But I don’t want to argue. I search for something to say. “Today’s July first. How come you didn’t have this graduation weeks ago, when school ended?”
“This ain’t the ceremony. We had a graduation ceremony, with our teacher and all, the last day of school. This is a celebration for families—proud of us young-uns for getting an education.” He puffs out his chest.
I ride the wagon to the grocery. The empty boxes bump around in back.
Francesco greets me with a smile. “A party. And we’re invited. You made us friends. That’s what we’ve been missing. Friends and women. You can buy women in Vicksburg, but you can’t buy friends. No amount of my offering cigars and drinks has made us friends. The Negroes here are so much more timid than the ones in New Orleans. They just won’t take your hand, no matter how far out you stretch it. But you, you changed all that, Calogero. You made friends just selling fruits.” He stops. “Ah! Alligator friends?”
I swallow.
He puts up a hand. He drops his head and walks in a circle with that hand still held high. “You are never going in a swamp again! Never!”
“Never.” I would stake my life on that promise.
“Never!” he shouts.
“Never.” My word is a stone.
He finally stops circling and drops his hand. “Then we understand each other. There are other things to do with friends. Safe things. And that’s that.” His voice calms and his face changes back to normal. He takes a deep breath. “I like that Uncle Paul. He’s all right. And it makes sense we should go to a party at that school. That’s supposed to be our school. Sheriff Lucas said so. We’ll stay outside where the dancing and singing are. We won’t go in the Protestant church part. Just the school grounds.” He smiles and shakes his head as if in disbelief. “A party!” He dances between two rows