Mountain Part 27

"Dey's burnin' de Meth'dis' chu'ch down de street."

"Police?"

"Won't he'p none."

One of the men spoke up. "Mah boss, Mistus Rylan, he tole me ef trouble ever come, to git in his cellar an' he'd pertec' me. We kin go 'cross lot. You all go on; I'm gwine to go by for Mamie an' de folks upstairs."

Stella rounded up the four larger children, took "Babe" on her arm, and steered Tom and two others of the committee across back fences, and obliquely through hot July fields of st.u.r.dy smartweed and brown-dusted gra.s.s. As they came out of an alley, just a block away from the Rylan back gate, they saw a moving flood of figures down the street two blocks away. The thinned tumult reached them. They sneaked across, running; Stella waved her bruised hand spasmodically. "Lawd, Lawd!"

Mrs. Rylan came at once in answer to her cook's excited message. "Gracie will show you the way to the cellar. I hope you'll be safe there. My husband phoned me that the rioting was serious."

In the underground dimness Stella appropriated for her sobered flock a garden bench, its back broken, standing on end in one corner. Tom's coat, spread in a barred chicken crate, made a pallet for "Babe."

"Keep mah place fuh me, Diany," she whispered fiercely. She helped the new arrivals get fixed on barrel tops, soap boxes, a rickety wheelbarrow, even an old set of bed springs tucked away in the darkest corner.

"Maw, will dey git us heah?" the children repeated in panicky insistence.

Stella smelled again the acrid liniment which had come through the crude bandage. "Ain' yo' pappy heah? Ain' he said de Lawd gwineter pertec' us?

An' ain' de white man sont us heah? You shet up 'n' go ter sleep."

There were more than twenty in the big cellar finally; but the bacon and greens held out, and the ominous rioting only once howled through the street just outside.

Long after the uproar had quieted, Tom rose reverently from his cramped knees, stained by the lime on the floor. "Dar now! Ain't de Lawd done shelter' his own?"

"Amen, brudder! Amen!"

The third morning, Gracie came down with a lamp, followed by Mr. Rylan.

"It's safe now," he announced. "The police are at last keeping order....

You can go home."

"De Lawd bless you, suh, an' yo' chillun an' all yo' folkses. De Lawd pertec' you----"

He brushed aside their tearful grat.i.tude. "I was only too glad I had the chance," he said simply.

They stumbled into the sunlight, squinting with weakened eyes.

"I thought I'd die in dat place," one young woman chattered.

"You'd a died ef you wuzn't dar," an older one corrected her.

They started back across the parched fields. One by one they separated, until only the Coles and another family were left. When they came to their block, a hopeless depression gripped them. The packed row of houses across the street was a gray patch of ashes, where an occasional smoke-mist still climbed. Their own house was half-wrecked: panes broken, furniture hacked wantonly, the house torn and trampled as if a cyclone had driven through it. Tom's favorite new Bible, given by his congregation, his few gift books, were wrenched apart and scattered about the yard. The china and pans had been smashed. On the sidewalk was a charred pile of clothes; Ed's new suit, Babe's little pink shoes, one end of a sheet Miss' Land had given Stella last Christmas.... Nothing was as it had been.

On the top kitchen shelf, hidden in h.o.a.rded newspapers, Tom discovered the tattered old family Bible he had bought from an agent just after the marriage. G.o.d had protected His word....

There were no negroes to be seen on the street. Babe gooed uncertainly, Diana, who was only ten, cried her tears into the gingham slip of the baby she was holding. The boys looked on in simple wonder, unable to comprehend how things could change so.

An old negro hobbled by on a stick. "Whar's everybody, Brudder Jinkins?"

"Mos'ly driv' away. Some done lef' town fer good. Reckon Ah'se goin'

back to Memphis. Dey doan' have no riots dar."

"When you gwine?"

"Mawnin' train, de ten-ten."

"We'se gwine too."

Stella listened without comment. There was no reason to stay here.

Tom talked to the two police at the next block. "They started to run away all the n.i.g.g.e.rs, Uncle. Then they got better sense. Who in h.e.l.l would do the work, if the n.i.g.g.e.rs left? You don't have to go now."

Tom thanked them, and went on over to Judge Land's. Stella's week's wages were unpaid. The courteous Judge, upset at this conflict between the lower elements of both races, did his best to change Tom's mind. "Ah gotter go, Jedge. Dey's wu'thless nigguhs an' po' white trash ev'rywhere; but dey don't have trouble lak dis ev'rywhere."

He withdrew from the bank all his savings, which were deposited with the church's money, careful not to disturb the congregation's balance.

They reached the station early. The Jenkins family was already there; they had been drowsing since sun-up in the colored waiting-room. Tom went to buy the tickets. Here was a hitch. The money would not stretch to cover fares for all of them to Memphis, even with half-fares for the three oldest, and Babe and little Will free.

"You can get tickets for Adamsville, and have two dollars left over,"

said the uninterested agent. He knew the peculiarities of negro finance.

"Aw' right."

On the train, the little Coles and Stella were squeezed into one seat; elder Jenkins, Tom, and two other traveling negroes found a compartment together. The fugitive preacher was at once at home; he expounded the Africanized doctrines of the Baptist faith interminably. "Hit's only grace what kin save," he repeated. "Does de Lawd's grace dwell in yo'

heart? Is you been bawn agin?"

Finally one of the strange negroes, who was highly impressed with the insistent doctrine, drew out from Tom the vague state of his plans.

"Ah'll fin' somethin' to do," the black tongue of G.o.d concluded.

"An' you doan't know n.o.body in Adamsville? Doan't you belong to no lodge, or nothin'? Ain't you a Risin' Star, or a Suns.h.i.+ner?"

Tom rubbed a s.h.i.+ny mahogany ear in earnest reflection. "Ah does belong to de Sons an' Daughters of Ancient Galilean Fishermen, for a fack."

"Dar now! Now, nigguh, I knows Adamsville, forrards an' back'ards. You git off at de Union Depot, den walk down to Avenoo C, an' go east twill you gits to de lodge. 'Bout Thuhty-fo'th Street. Dey'll fix you up."

They reached the lodge; its chairs furnished a place for the younger Coles to munch cold fish sandwiches and cram overripe bananas, while Tom went househunting. "Jus' you walk out to Joneses' Hill, in West Adamsville. You kin find a house, an' maybe a job with it." The business agent was full of suggestions.

At the first corner, the old negro considered carefully. West?... One horizon appeared an endless level; the other ended in a gentle hill climbing high above the houses at its base. "Dat mus' be dis Joneses'

Hill."

He walked due east. On and on he plodded, on the lookout for the railroad yards that ran just below the hill; but there were no tracks to be seen. At last he struck Highland Boulevard, and then the slope to the mountain. The railroad must lie beyond it. He ambled aimlessly up the long dummy line to the breezy gap, then followed the curving road to the south. There were no houses here, only a sleepy July woodland.

Jays jawed at him from towering blackgums and bluegums, tiny hedge birds, flushed by his approach, whirred noisily into leafy coverts. He feasted on plump blackberries pocketed in a moist hollow, disturbing two quarrelsome chipmunks, who continued to scold after he had pa.s.sed them.

A homeless cur sidled cautiously, sniffed, was satisfied, joined his train.

He found a good stick, and walked on. Must be a railroad somewhere.

He stopped at last before a vacant house, old and decrepit, with sagging front porch, broken panes stuffed with weathered brown newspapers, a general air of run-downness. Maybe he had gone the wrong way. He decided to knock and ask. He knocked at the front door. No answer. He peered through the dusty, fly-scarred windows. Nothing inside, except one broken-down bed and piles of dusty yellowed papers on the floor. He walked laboriously around the house, looking in at each window. No one within. There was a good table in the kitchen, a rusted stove, an old clothes basket hanging on the wall beside a broken lantern, a dilapidated splint-bottomed chair. He came around to the front again.