August 1945
Conrad sat in his upstairs room and stared morosely out the window. The afternoon sun slanted through the big magnolia tree, creating shifting shapes on the ancient Oriental rug at his feet. It was a beautiful afternoon—or so his mother had told him countless times in the past hour and a half. He should be “out playing.”
Playing, she said. For pity’s sake, he was seventeen years old! He would probably be forty before his mother realized he didn’t play anymore. What he should be doing was marching home in victory with some gorgeous dish hanging on his arm, like the guys in the newsreels. But he had been too young when the war started, and now it was over.
Mother wouldn’t have let him sign up, anyway. He would have had to lie about his age, and with this blasted round baby face of his, no one would have fallen for it. So he was left to sit here and stew while other guys got the girls and the glory.
He poked the toe of his shoe at a worn place in the rug and cursed to himself. If only he had been old enough to go to war, he wouldn’t have to be stuck in this hick town for the rest of his life. Rumor was, the government was going to start handing out money hand over fist for veterans to go to college—money that could have gotten him out of here and into some kind of life of his own. But no, Conrad Wainwright would not be leaving Cambridge, Mississippi, anytime soon. Tomorrow he was supposed to go over to the university to register, and his mother acted as though he ought to be grateful for the opportunity.
Well, he wasn’t grateful, and he wasn’t going to pretend to be happy about the situation. He was pretty ticked off, to tell the truth. Mother accused him of pouting, but then she was a danged saint, the woman everybody loved, some kind of paragon of virtue. The original do-gooder. He was tired of listening to her spout platitudes about being thankful for what you had and sharing it with others, sick of her endless talk about God’s blessings. He hadn’t been blessed, or he’d be on the first train out of here. Instead, he was going to college in Cambridge. He was going to live at home, under the watchful eye of Saint Amethyst.
What he really should do is what Grandpa Abe had done—just disappear, take a new name, begin a new life somewhere else. Anywhere his mother couldn’t find him.
It was a great idea, a vision that sustained him when he just couldn’t stand it anymore. But deep down he knew he didn’t have the nerve, and he sure didn’t have enough skill at poker or blackjack to support himself.
Yet.
But maybe that would change.
The one redeeming factor in the situation was that Noble House seemed to be filling up with college students. Young men, mostly—guys only a year or two older than Conrad himself. Most of the ones he had met so far seemed like wimps—mamas’ boys whose parents wanted them looked after and protected. They repulsed him, the little panty-waists, but he had to admit they would probably be good targets. A few games of five-card draw with these guys would fatten his wallet considerably.
“Conrad!” his mother’s earnest voice called up the stairs. “Come down, please. It’s almost time for dinner, and Silvie and I could use some help.”
He let out a disgusted huff. A college man had no business serving in the kitchen and setting the table like a common busboy. Why couldn’t that colored woman do it?
Con had grown up with Silvie, and Mother always insisted that she be treated like one of the family. But a servant was a servant. A nigra was a nigra, and no amount of social action or claims of equality would change that. Grandpa Abe had told him so.
He pushed himself up off the bed and started slowly down the stairs, dragging his feet with each step. Too bad things weren’t like they had been in Abe’s day. Then he would have been a landowner’s son, rich and respected, with a fine bay horse and slaves at his beck and call. . . .
Amethyst looked around the table and surveyed her new boarders. All four of them were young, and to be perfectly honest, she had balked at the idea of taking in college students. But times were hard and money was scarce. A person did what she had to do.
As she scanned the fresh faces, however, a new vision took shape in her mind. They were barely more than boys, most of them—only a little older than her own son. And although they tried hard to carry themselves like mature men, they had a rather lost look about them, like children whose mommies had gone away.
She knew the feeling all too well. At seventeen she had been alone—both parents dead, or so she thought—with a house to run and bills to pay. She didn’t know how she would have survived without the support of Silvie and Uncle Enoch.
Maybe this was the new calling she had been seeking from God: to be mother to a group of fledgling young men who undoubtedly thought they didn’t need a mother anymore. To help them find the right path—a path of honor and truth and compassion.
She waited while Silvie set a huge bowl of mashed potatoes on one end of the table and slid into her seat. A few eyebrows went up, but no one said anything. Clearly some of these boys had never sat down to a meal with a black person at the same table. All the more reason for them to be here.
Two or three hands reached for the food, grabbing biscuits and scooping up potatoes and peas. Amethyst watched in silence until, one by one, they looked up.
“At Noble House it is our custom to give thanks before every meal,” she said quietly. A fork clattered onto a plate. Two of the new boys blushed bright red. Uncomfortably, they folded their hands and bowed their heads.
“Silvie, would you say grace, please?”
Amethyst saw a couple of shocked glances shoot around the table. Silvie cleared her throat, offered a simple prayer of thankfulness, and asked the Lord to bless each young man who shared their meal.
When the “Amen” was uttered, nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
It was the quietest meal the residents of Noble House had ever experienced.
“Is your mother always like that?” demanded Clarence Bogart, whom everyone called “Bogey.” He was a gangly kid with hands and feet too big for his body—nothing at all like the famous star of the silver screen. But he seemed proud of the nickname and corrected anyone who dared call him Clarence. Conrad thought it was funny. And Bogey was the only one who had gotten up the nerve to verbalize the question everyone was asking silently.
“Like what?” Con was pretty sure he knew, but he liked seeing Bogey squirm.
“Well, so . . . so spiritual. Praying and all that.”
“Yep,” Con answered. “I’m afraid so. Get used to it.”
His cynical response seemed to loosen up the others and give them permission to speak their minds.
“And that nigra woman—she always eats at your table?” This came from George Hatfield, a beefy, red-faced boy from the Delta.
“She lives here. Always has, since before I was born.”
Jackie Rudolph, a pale seventeen-year-old with a bulging pimple on his right cheek, piped up. “Naw. You can’t be serious.”
“Yes.”
Dooley Layton, from Natchez, was older than the rest of them by a year or more, and gave off an air of being worldly wise and sophisticated. His great-uncle, Rube Layton, had been mayor of Cambridge years ago, and his parents had sent him to the university so that he’d have family to keep an eye on him. According to Dooley, he didn’t need anybody to wet-nurse him, and he had no intention of having any more contact with the Cambridge Laytons than was absolutely necessary. “Where I come from, white folks wouldn’t be caught dead breaking bread with a nigger.”
Con tried to keep the shock from registering on his face. The “N” word was expressly forbidden in his mother’s household—Dooley would be out on his hind end quicker than a snake on a mouse if Mother got wind that he had applied it to Silvie. “Dooley, I wouldn’t use that word in my mother’s presence if I were you.”
“What word? Nigger?” Dooley challenged. “You a nigger-lover, too, Wainwright?”
Conrad hesitated. It wouldn’t do to get Dooley on his bad side so early in the game. He had to play it smooth, get along, if he wanted these guys to respect him. “Who, me? ’Course not. A nigra is a nigra, I always say, and nothing good comes out of letting them rise above their station. I was just warning you, Dooley—you want to stay here, you’d better keep your mouth shut around my mother, that’s all.”
“Don’t sound like you and your mama got much in common,”
Con shrugged. “Not much,” he said. “Not much at all.”
The poker game turned out to be a weekly event. Dooley’s apartment, in the converted carriage house, became their headquarters, and the five of them met every Saturday night. Con told his mother they were studying, and she left them alone.
Dooley was a pretty experienced cardplayer, and he and Con ended up having to teach George and Bogey how to play. Jackie claimed to have played before, but he kept trying to call wild cards every time he dealt.
“What kind of sissy poker do you think we’re playing here?” Dooley snarled, dragging on a cigarette and sending a blue haze of smoke into the air. “There ain’t no wild cards, Rudolph—how many times do I have to tell you? It’s draw or stud, that’s all. You wanna be a man, learn to play a man’s game.”
Once or twice Dooley had Jackie on the verge of tears, but he bucked up and played on. He even tried one of Dooley’s Camels, only to choke himself and turn green when he attempted to inhale. For the most part, Con and Dooley took the pots, but Con could usually beat Dooley when it came down to the two of them. Like Grandpa Abe had taught him, he kept an ace and a jack under his cuff, and when things got tight, he could count on them to pull him through.
“So,” Dooley asked one night as Conrad dealt the final hand, “just how old is this nigra woman Silvie?”
Con looked up. “I don’t know. Old. Fifty, maybe. Why?”
“Fifty, huh? I don’t think so. She’s still one fine-looking woman.” Dooley blew a lungful of smoke into Con’s face and leered at him.
Con’s heart dropped into his stomach. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Everybody knows black women want it all the time.” He lifted one lip in a sneer. “Insatiable.”
If Dooley had been talking about his own sister, Conrad could not have been more stunned. Silvie was a fixture in the house—she was like his aunt, except that he would have denied it if any of these guys had accused him of caring for her. And here was Dooley, making all kinds of lewd implications about her as if she were some kind of streetwalker.
“She’s old enough to be your mother,” he said lamely.
“But she ain’t my mother, is she?” Dooley laid a couple of cards facedown. “I’ll take two.”
“I’ll take four,” Bogey said.
“Four?” Dooley laughed in his face—a sinister, menacing kind of laugh. “Bogey, you’re hopeless.” He turned back to Conrad. “Admit it, Con—you’ve noticed how sexy she is. Don’t tell me you haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t,” Con stammered. “And you shouldn’t, either.”
“I shouldn’t?”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Con narrowed his eyes at Dooley. “She’s not that kind of woman. Besides, I thought you didn’t like nigras.”
“I don’t like nigras buttin’ in where they don’t belong. I don’t like nigras gettin’ uppity and thinkin’ they’re as good as everybody else. But didn’t you know, pretty-boy? It’s an old Southern tradition, the master taking whatever slave girl strikes his fancy. They expect it. Shoot, they like it. That gal Silvie would fall all over herself to get her hands on a college man like me.”
“She might get her hands on you,” Conrad retorted, “but I wouldn’t want to have to look at your face once she’s done with you.”
The other three laughed, but Dooley was not amused at being made the butt of the joke. He said not a word in response, but his jaw clenched until the veins in his neck popped out.
And Conrad suspected he might have made a big, big mistake.
“Miss Amethyst, can I talk to you?”
Amethyst looked up from her book to see Clarence Bogart standing in the doorway, his long arms and huge hands dangling awkwardly at his side. He reminded her of a young colt—gangly and gawky and not yet proportioned quite right. Someday he might grow up to be a reasonably handsome young man, but right now his development seemed halted at its most unattractive stage.
“Of course, Clarence. Come on in.” She motioned him to the chair opposite hers. “What can I do for you?”
He glanced around the room nervously, as if afraid someone might overhear.
“It’s all right, Clarence. We’re alone.”
“Yes ma’am. Well, I, uh—”
Amethyst’s heart went out to the poor fellow, and she reached a hand in his direction. “Tell me what’s bothering you, son.”
At the word son, huge tears welled up in his eyes. He turned away and blinked rapidly. “I got something in my eye.”
“It’s okay, Clarence.”
“No ma’am, it’s not okay. I mean, I guess it will be, eventually, but right now it’s not.”
“What’s not okay?” Amethyst asked, silently entreating God to give her wisdom—and patience. It might be midnight before he ever got the words out.
“College is a lot . . . a lot harder than I thought it would be. I—I ain’t doing too good, especially in English.”
Amethyst suppressed a smile. “I see.”
“We gotta do this writing stuff all the time—essays, you know? I just don’t get it. And I don’t see what good it’s gonna do me anyhow.”
Amethyst restrained herself from launching into her speech about the benefits of clear and concise writing—heaven knows she had given it to Conrad enough times over the past twelve years or so. Instead, she said, “And what else?”
His eyes widened. “How’d you know there was something else?”
“Just a hunch. I am a mother, you realize.”
“Oh, yeah,” he answered, as if motherhood explained everything. “I guess . . . I guess I’m in a little trouble.”
Amethyst closed her eyes and prayed. “A girl?”
“Oh, no ma’am, nothing like that!” Clarence grinned and shook his head. He almost seemed pleased with himself, grateful that she would think him capable of attracting a girl, much less doing anything about it. “I think I’m a little—” He paused, and his neck flushed a bright red. “Homesick.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “What can I do to help, Clarence?”
“I dunno. Just let me sit in here a while, I guess.” He pointed to the book. “Whatcha reading?”
“Robert Frost.” She cocked her head and took in his blank stare. “He’s a poet.”
The light came back into the boy’s eyes. “Oh, yeah. I know that name. We hafta read some of his stuff and then write about it for English class.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked away. “I don’t understand poetry.”
Amethyst smiled. “It’s pretty simple, really. Just words, but in a different form than you’re used to. Would you like to read some and then talk about what it means?”
“You mean like doing homework, when my mama used to help me?” She watched him closely as he fiddled with the top button on his shirt. Clearly this wasn’t his idea of the way a college man should be spending his evening, and he was ashamed.
“Maybe. More just like two friends discussing a poem together.”
“Well, okay.” He brightened, and his lanky form relaxed.
“Tell you what.” Amethyst rose and held out the book. “I think there are a couple of pieces of apple pie left over from dinner. I’ll go get us pie and milk while you read a poem. Then when I come back we can talk about it.” She gazed down at him, this innocent man-boy, and smiled. “What were you assigned to read?”
“Something about a road, I think.”
“Ah. ‘The Road Less Traveled,’ I’d expect.”
“Yes’m. That’s it.”
Amethyst flipped pages. “All right. Here it is.”
He heaved a sigh of relief. “It’s short, anyway.”
“Yes.” She chuckled. “It’s short.”
She left him to ponder over the poem and went out to the kitchen. What had the Lord gotten her into this time?
“‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,’” she murmured to herself as she cut two slices of pie and poured the milk. “‘And I—I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.’”