Part Two

 

Carrie's Crossing and Belle City, Georgia

and

The Mountains of North Carolina

1934 - 1945

 

***

 

– Carrie's Crossing –

Jonas

 

Jonas swung the golf club like the pro he often imagined himself to be. He was on the driving range at the Belle City Country Club, but he imagined himself on the newly-opened course designed by the great Bobby Jones. He already had a set of Bobby Jones golf clubs, and he'd imitated the Bobby Jones swing so long and so often that he had all but perfected it. He watched the ball smoothly lift and soar for what seemed like forever before it began its descent. It was a thing of beauty, golf was, and Jonas easily could spend the rest of his life in pursuit of perfecting it. He certainly could afford it, but he was almost thirty years old. Bobby Jones had quit the game before his thirtieth birthday.

Jonas sighed deeply and as he bent to place another ball on the tee, he felt, rather than saw, someone approaching from the rear, and it annoyed him. All this space out here and somebody wanted to practice next to him. When he turned to face the interloper his annoyance increased, tinged with surprise.

"Young Jonas Thatcher, all grown up."

"Mr. Edwards," Jonas said sourly, noting that the man still wore plaid knickers with striped knee socks.

"Mark of every good business man that he remembers the names of the men he does business with," Horace Edwards said, sticking out his hand.

Jonas shook it. "We haven't done any business together, Mr. Edwards," he said.

"Not yet, Jonas, but I'm hoping that we will." Edwards looked all around. They were alone on the golf course. "Practically every businessman in America is wringing his hands—those who haven't already jumped out the window—and I hear you spend several days a week practicing your swing, sometimes even playing a round. When there's somebody to play with." He gave Jonas an appraising look. "And a mighty fine swing it is, too. You look like Bobby Jones from a distance."

"Practice makes perfect," Jonas said, wishing the man would go away. He didn't like Horace Edwards—hadn't liked him when he'd met him all those years ago, in the parking lot of this very club, and he didn't like him now, though if pressed he wouldn't have been able to say exactly why. Something to do with the man's arrogance. And his insistence, all those years ago, that Jonas "rent out" Beau Thatcher to him.

"I'd like to know what else you were practicing that's let you survive this great depression perfecting your golf swing." Horace faked a drive and gave Jonas a hard look. "If you don't mind me asking."

"Not being greedy," Jonas said, getting the kind of reaction he knew Edwards would have: Anger. With Horace Edwards and men like him, the anger was always just beneath the surface.

"You wanna explain that?"

"What I want is to get back to practicing my off-the-tee shot."

"Your drive is perfect, Jonas, and you know it. What I want to know is what you meant by that being greedy remark. What I hear is that you didn't lose any money when the market crashed because you didn't have any money in the market. Or in the bank."

"Since you already know that, what is it you want me tell you?"

"How, dammit, did you know the market was gonna crash?"

"I didn't. I just don't believe, number one, in giving my hard-earned money to another man, no matter that he calls himself a banker or a stockbroker. He's a man just like me, and I can't think of a single reason I should give him my money on his promise to give me back more than I gave him. And that's where the greed comes in: This notion of getting something for nothing. I give a man—a banker, a stockbroker—a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand dollars, and in a year or two he gives me back a hundred twenty or twelve hundred or twelve thousand dollars, and I'm supposed to be so excited that I'll then give him all my money. And what happens if he's a thief, or worse, a fool? All my money is gone is what."

Edwards gave Jonas a long appraising look then said, "I'd like to make you a business proposition, Mr. Thatcher."

"Why me, Mr. Edwards? You don't like me and I don't like you."

"That's true, Son, but you're the only man I know who's still got any money."

Jonas had to laugh. He wasn't interested in any proposition Horace Edwards had to offer but he'd listen; that much arrogance deserved to be heard. Jonas believed that you had to ask for what you wanted, that you didn't get anything or anywhere waiting for something or somebody to come to you. There were only two possible responses to a request, which meant a fifty percent chance of getting what you wanted. "What is it, Mr. Edwards?"

Horace nodded his head, as if he'd already gotten the answer he wanted. "I've bought up a lot of land in and around Carrie's Crossing. Stupid name, by the way, needs changing. Anyway, I can't make the notes on the loans for the land. I don't want to forfeit because that land is valuable, and it's going to be even more valuable when the economy gets itself right again."

"What land in and around the Crossing?" Jonas asked, and when Horace Edwards told him, Jonas knew the man was right: The land alone was worth a fortune. Anything built on it would be worth two fortunes, whether residential or commercial. "I won't give you a loan, Horace, but I will partner with you."

Edwards gave a nasty bark of laughter. "I don't want a partner, boy. I am the H.L. Edwards Real Estate Company all by myself, and I intend to keep it that way."

"Until the bank forecloses on you and puts your land up for auction. And with me being the only man around with cash money, I'd end up with it all anyway."

"You little bastard." Edwards opened and closed his fists at his sides. He wanted to punch Jonas, that was clear, but Jonas, still holding a golf club, was younger, taller and stronger, not to mention richer.

They stood looking at each other for a long moment, each man standing his ground, but only one of them from a position of strength, and they both knew which one. Then, almost simultaneously, they shifted their gaze to the green lawn of the practice range, an expanse that no longer was nearly as lush as it should have been, and the fact that it was mid-October had nothing to do with it. Jonas hadn't noticed before now; all his attention had been focused on his ball and its flight. Looking at the country club's lawn, he saw the Depression. He looked at his watch. "I need to go," he said, returning his club to the bag.

"I'll be at your store first thing in the morning with the partnership papers for you to sign," Edwards said, his expression speaking the self-disgust his words did not convey. "Or should I look for you out here?"

"I'll be in the store," Jonas said. "I open at seven o'clock sharp."

 

Seven is when he opened, but Jonas had been there since six. He finished washing the front window, a task he'd enjoyed ever since his father first opened the store more than ten years ago. He always used a mixture of vinegar and water, and he scrubbed the glass with newspaper until it squeaked. He'd once wondered why he liked washing the store's window until he realized that standing on the ladder, looking out at the street, gave him a bird's eye view of all that happening on the town's main street among the town's principal merchants and their customers, drawn from the most prosperous and or socially elite segment of the town's population. That was back when he was a child and intimidated by people and commerce. Now, at ripe old age of twenty-nine, he was one of the town's leading merchants, and while he no longer was intimidated by people, he'd still rather observe them than interact with them. And he could do all his observing without seeming to be observing because he was, after all, merely washing the window. However, Jonas also liked—had always liked—order and cleanliness and the sparkling front window screamed order and cleanliness. These days, of course, there wasn't much to see from the front window. Yes, those merchants lucky enough to still be in business were, as he was, preparing to open for the day, but unlike in times past, there were no car-loads of customers jockeying for parking spaces on the street, just a cluster of fallen leaves scurrying past, pushed by a brisk, fall breeze.

He climbed down from the ladder and put it in the storeroom and got out the mop and broom. These tasks he took less pleasure from, but since the onset of hard times that people were calling The Great Depression, he couldn't afford to pay anybody to clean up, even if there had been someone willing to do the job—and for the last few months, there hadn't been anyone. The poorest of Carrie's Crossing's citizens had all left, though Jonas wasn't sure where they'd gone. Doc Gray said they'd gone to Belle City, where it was possible to get a bowl of weak soup and crust of day-old bread, even if it no longer was possible to find work—in Belle City or anywhere else.

"The Great Depression," Jonas muttered to himself as he pushed the mop back and forth across the tile floor, emphasizing the word great. "Like everybody being broke is a wonderful thing. Like they called the war The Great War. Nothing great about it," he said of the war that had left his older brother dead in the French mud in 1919 at the hands of Germans.

Jonas knew he was more fortunate than most of the other merchants in town simply because, like Horace Edwards said, he still had his money. So much money that he literally could not count it all, the large majority of it the proceeds of the bootleg whiskey business he'd run with Beau Thatcher for the thirteen-year duration of Prohibition. The thought of Beau and their business brought a quick smile. While they both were relieved when the law finally was repealed last year, they had, for a while, enjoyed flouting it—and not just the law that forbade the selling or drinking of whiskey, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the one that made it illegal for a Colored man and a white man to do business together.

Jonas finished mopping and sweeping, wondering if it was wasted activity, wondering if any paying customers would cross the threshold of THATCHER'S MARKET this day. It had been three days since anybody had bought anything, though he'd given away quite a bit, his reasoning being that having somebody eat it was better than having to throw away spoiled food. He'd closed the furniture store until further notice. His only employees were his sister Rachel and her husband, Cory, and he'd asked them to come in an hour later than usual today. He didn't want them to be affected if things got ugly with Edwards. He didn't expect that, but matters pertaining to money these days often led to unexpected places. People were broke and desperate and therefore were unpredictable. It was a testament to the sorry times they lived in that there were people who'd do more work for less money, just in order to have some money at all, even if there was precious little to buy with it. The price of everything was sky high, and people were buying only what they truly needed. That's why he'd closed the furniture store: Nobody really needed a table or a chair or even a bed, if the choice was between the furniture and food.

One of those Jonas felt most sorry for was old Doc Gray, who had lost every penny of his savings between the failed banks and the crashed stock market. Jonas, who'd never been sick a day in his life, had taken to visiting the doctor every week, each time with a newly imagined ailment. Mrs. Gray was acting as his nurse again—a job she'd relinquished two dozen years earlier—and she'd greet Jonas the same as always: "And what brings you to see us this fine day?" He'd feign embarrassment, say it was something he needed to discuss with the doctor, and she'd usher him into the examining room where the doctor would listen to his heart and lungs, look down his throat and into his eyes and ears, thump his back, take his pulse, and then ask Jonas to describe in more detail his new ailment. Then the old doctor would take out his pad and write some instructions for Jonas to follow: Eat more vegetables. Get more rest. Soak tired muscles in hot water. Drink warm milk with honey before bed. Jonas would thank him, get dressed, and go out to the front. Doc Gray would follow him and give Mrs. Gray the chart and Jonas would give her an envelope of cash. Neither of the old people would look at the envelope. They looked at Jonas, directly into his eyes, told him to take better care of himself, smiled at him, and kept the smiles in place until he'd left. Of course, Jonas wasn't the only one showing kindness to the Grays; he was just the only one able to give them money. Any number of others brought them food—cooked dishes as well as chickens, eggs, freshly caught fish and freshly killed rabbit or deer—because it was well and widely known that Doc Gray had never turned away a patient who couldn't pay in good times. He certainly wouldn't in hard times. The grass was cut, the hedges trimmed, the gutters cleaned, the trim painted, and it was the patients who took care of the doctor and his home because he no longer could pay his hired help, either.

Jonas shook his head, as he often did, at the truly sorry state of affairs, and wondered, as he often did, how much longer it could last. He wondered what ultimately would happen to those who, like Doc Gray, had lost so much, and he wondered what would happen to those like himself who were holding on by sheer force of will. He returned the ladder and cleaning supplies to the storeroom, removed his smock and replaced it with a dress shirt, tie, and suit jacket. Business men wore suits to business meetings, even if the meeting was in a grocery store. He checked his reflected image in the sparkling clean glass, straightening his tie, before he unlocked the front door and turned the CLOSED sign around to OPEN. He took his place behind the counter. He was open and ready for business if a hundred people came today—or if nobody but Horace Edwards came. He reached down to the low shelf and turned on the radio, which had become a constant source of companionship and comfort to him, as well as his primary source of entertainment. He still relied on the newspaper for news and information, though the radio people were getting pretty good at that, too. Classical music was playing now. He didn't know what, just that it probably was coming from New York or Chicago or Detroit and that he liked it. He also liked that jazz music but people were trying to make the radio station in Belle City stop playing it because it was nigger music. As if music had a color.

The bell over the door tinkled, and Jonas looked up. Horace Edwards walked in the door, briefcase in hand. His hat looked newly blocked, his brown suit was freshly pressed, his white shirt crisply starched, his shoes highly polished. He gave the store a top-to-bottom and front-to-back scrutinizing. Then Jonas got the same treatment when he stepped from behind the counter and Horace's eyes widened as he saw how Jonas was dressed: Exactly as he himself was except Jonas's suit was navy blue. "Nice place, Jonas," he said, covering his surprise. "Top of the line. Especially the black and white tile floor. Saw one like it in a market in New York City but never one down here." He stopped studying the store and turned his appraising gaze to Jonas. "You been up North?"

Jonas shook his head. "I saw it in a magazine and liked it."

"Where'd you come by the tiles?" He bent over and rubbed the smooth floor. "Not from around here."

"North Carolina," Jonas said.

"That suit didn't come from North Carolina," he said. "Those shoes, either."

Jonas smiled. "No, they sure didn't. Might not have cost so much, though, if they had." He'd custom-ordered both from New York, but he suspected Horace knew that.

Horace smiled, too, then nodded, more, it seemed, at the thoughts in his own head than at anything Jonas had said. He touched the place on his face where he'd cut himself shaving. "You're a natural, Jonas. You were born to be a business man. You could not have been anything else."

Jonas looked down at the floor, looked at the pattern of the tiles. He did like his floor. He also liked people's reaction to it—to its uniqueness. He looked up at Horace. "I wanted to be a writer, but we didn't have money for me to go to school. Then when we did have money, I was needed in the store. Then my pa died and, well, there didn't seem to be much point after a while. School is for young people. I missed my chance." He paused a moment, seemingly as surprised as his audience that so many words had poured from him at one time, then added, "Besides, I think you're right: Best to do what comes naturally and, to tell the truth, writing was hard work. Reading's easier."

"You read a lot, Jonas?"

"Whenever I'm not working, Mr. Edwards."

"I think, Jonas, under the circumstances, you can call me Horace." He stuck out his hand and gave a lopsided grin that gave him an almost boyish look. He'd removed his hat and his light brown, almost blond, hair fell forward. No money, then, for a haircut and a shave. "So, what do you like to read? Probably the same stuff as my daughter."

Jonas shrugged. He'd revealed enough information about himself for one day. Now he wanted Horace to talk—about the land he owned in Carrie's Crossing and about his plans for it—and this Horace was happy to do, for unlike Jonas, Horace very much liked talking about himself. It followed, of course, that he also liked hearing himself talk, and Jonas noticed that he sounded not quite as uncouth and ignorant as he had when they'd met last. He was, however, every bit as annoying. He also clearly was a canny and astute businessman who had carefully, methodically—and brilliantly—watched and invested as Carrie's Crossing grew from a small country town a few miles down the road from the big city into its own city, a thriving, prosperous place populated almost entirely by wealthy white people. Wealthy, that is, until the stock market crashed and the banks failed. All the property that Edwards owned in Belle City and in Carrie's Crossing was, for all intents and purposes, worthless and would remain so until the financial tide turned. But when it did, Horace Edwards would become one of the wealthiest men in the entire state. So would Jonas.

Horace put his briefcase on the counter and opened it. He inhaled deeply, then withdrew a stack of papers. Papers that would make Jonas a full partner in the H.L. Edwards Real Estate Company. He gave the papers to Jonas to read and sign. "Even though I'm not happy about having to do this, Jonas, I do appreciate it."

"Believe it or not, I wish you didn't have to do this either. I know I wouldn't like it if I had to turn over half my business to another man, but I also don't think you'll be losing anything in this deal." Jonas looked directly at the older man as he spoke.

Horace inhaled again. "You're wrong about that, but I won't argue with you." Then, at the look on Jonas's face, he took another breath and said, "My pride." He tapped the sheaf of papers. "This represents a great loss of pride to me, and not only because I need your money…how old are you?"

"Twenty-nine."

Horace gave a bark of laughter. "Five years older than my daughter. Who, by the way, had to leave school because I couldn't keep up with the tuition. She rides around with me, calling herself my secretary, but I know my wife put her up to it, to keep an eye on me because she—my wife, that is—is worried that I'll drink too much and run my car into a tree or a ditch." He made that noise again, but it was more sob than laugh. "I've got two kids saving my hide and you think I haven't lost anything?"

"I'm sorry you feel this way."

Horace waved him off. "Nothing for you to be sorry about. I'm just glad you've got so much money, Son, because this is gonna cost you a lot of your secret money." The arrogant, brash Horace Edwards, the one Jonas didn't like but whom he was beginning to understand, was back. "And I don't mind telling you I'd feel lot better about all this if I knew where you got all that money, boy, and why you wouldn't put it in the bank."

"If I'd put it in the bank, I wouldn't be able to bail you out, would I?"

"You would if you'd put it in the First National Bank of Belle City. Only bank in the entire state that's still in business."

"Is that where you bank?" Jonas asked, and when Horace nodded Jonas said, "Then how is it you don't have any money?"

"Because I haven't been able to make any money," he snapped. "I didn't lose any, but everything I had saved I had to spend to keep my business going, until I didn't have anything left. Answer your question, Jonas?"

Jonas turned away from Horace and began to read the documents before him. His future partner stood still as a rock, watching and waiting, and Jonas knew what he was waiting for. He smiled inside himself and kept reading. Only two people in the world knew that on those days he drove over to Belle City to play golf, his real reason for the journey was that he was taking business classes at the state college. Horace didn't expect that he'd understand what he was reading. Jonas understood every word of it and was thinking that Horace Edwards had himself one heck of a good lawyer when the bell over the door tinkled.

He looked up from his reading, briefly alternating between being annoyed that he would have to stop reading the contracts and hopeful that a paying customer was at hand, and was struck speechless. The young woman who entered could have stepped directly from the pages of one of those New York fashion magazines. She was tall and lean and had clear blue eyes that sparkled all the way across the room. She wore a cloche hat and two-toned shoes and a dress that hugged her like somebody's arms. She looked around in delighted amazement.

"Papa! This looks just like that market on Broadway. Why didn't you tell me that Mr. Thatcher was so au courant? Where is he? I want to meet him." She danced forward and grabbed Horace's arm. He melted like an ice cube on the sidewalk in August.

"Jonas, this is my daughter, Audrey."

"You're Jonas Thatcher?"

Jonas stepped from behind the counter and extended his hand. "Miss Edwards. Pleased to meet you, sorry to disappoint you."

She laughed as she took his hand. "I'm not disappointed. Not at all. It's just that I was expecting an old man. Or at least one as old as my papa."

"Your papa's not old," Horace growled, trying to sound menacing, though his daughter knew better, knew him better.

Audrey backed a step away from Jonas and gave him a frank, appraising look, one that made him flush. "But you're not as young as Jonas Thatcher," she said.

Horace looked closely at his daughter and her reaction to Jonas. Then he looked at Jonas's reaction to his daughter: The boy was grinning like a circus clown, his cheeks and nose red, his eyes wide and staring. The sight put Horace at war with himself. The man who was the father of this girl was witnessing the reaction of a woman to a man, and he wasn't ready for that. She was his only daughter and his baby. The man who lived and breathed business, however, saw a deal in the making. His two sons were useless as tits on a boar hog—stupid as well as lazy. Audrey, on the other hand, was smart as a whip and was learning as much about his business as he was willing to teach her. He'd thought, more than once, that it would be his daughter who inherited his business—and if his daughter should marry Jonas Thatcher?

"How'd you like to take a ride with us, Jonas, and see what's what?"

Jonas looked at his watch. "I'd like that a lot, Horace. My sister and brother-in-law should be here any minute—"

At that moment, the bell tinkled over the door, and Rachel and Cory entered the store. Jonas introduced them all to each other, hands were shaken all around, and Rachel assured her brother that everything would be well taken care of. He nodded and kissed her cheek, causing her to blush deeply. They had not grown up with such displays of love and affection, and while they both felt awkward about it, they also both wanted very much to be part of a family that had such strong feelings for each other and expressed it. They knew families who greeted each other with hugs and kisses every time they saw each other, which often was daily. But even though they did it—hugged and kissed each other—it was neither easy nor natural for them. Ever since he was a child Jonas had wished that he and his siblings loved each other the way Ruthie and her brothers loved each other. Now that he was grown, he understood that children learned how to love from their parents, and while he was certain that his mother had loved her children, she had not given out hugs and kisses with frequency, and the only time his father touched his sons was to smack them. As far as Jonas knew, his father had never touched his daughters.

And as that thought crossed his brain, Horace Edwards put his arm across his daughter's shoulders and guided her out the door. Once outside, Audrey put her arm around her father's waist and they strolled toward their automobile—a two-year old, four door Packard. They stopped and waited for Jonas to catch up.

"Audrey'll chauffeur while you and me sightsee, Jonas." He opened the driver's side door for his daughter then walked around to the other side of the car. Jonas got into the back seat, Horace took his place up front, and Audrey started the car. The next hour left Jonas reeling. He'd thought of himself as a businessman, and a pretty good one—maybe even a better one than Horace Edwards, since the older man was borrowing his money. How wrong he was. Looking at the land that Horace had bought, and listening to his plans for developing it, Jonas realized that the man was purely brilliant. Some day soon—as soon as the depression was over—Carrie's Crossing would be as important as Belle City. It certainly would be richer, for Horace's plans didn't include making any provisions for anybody who couldn't afford his prices. No wonder he'd been furious at having to accept Jonas as a partner.

"My hat's off to you, Horace. I've lived here all my life and I never would have seen what you've seen, to say nothing of having what it takes to bring a dream to life."

"You've done all right for yourself, Jonas. Better than all right, especially for such a young man." Horace looked out at the empty field at the back end of Carrie's Crossing, his eyes seeing much more than the waist-high weeds and wild flowers and stands of pine, all lush and green thanks to the narrow trickle of Carrie's Creek that ran through it. He tapped the rolled up blueprint against the palm of his hand, the drawings that would transform the field into an exclusive residential enclave. "In fact, you've got something that I don't have, something that I need."

"What's that?"

"You can hold on to a dollar and I can't for the life of me. I make a lot of money, but I spend it soon as it comes in the door. But you—I'll bet you've got the first dollar you ever made. Am I right?"

Jonas wasn't certain that he wasn't being made fun of. It was Audrey's smile that let him know that wasn't the case. "Pretty much," he answered.

"That's because we're opposite sides of the same coin, you and me."

"How's that?"

"We both came from nothing. Oh, don't get your back up, boy. I asked around about you and learned all about your pa, and if you asked about me up around Mountain View way, you'd know that my pa was worse than yours by miles. At least I hear good things about your ma. Mine wasn't much better than the old man. And at least yours left you something, gave you a start. Everything I have, I got on my own, usually with somebody standing in my way, trying to stop me."

"I thought you were from Belle City."

Horace gave a nasty bark of laughter, reminding Jonas who lived inside the man. "Naw, I'm a backwoods, country boy. I didn't even have a pair of shoes until I was just about a grown man, and I stole them. I couldn't run away all the way to Belle City on my bare feet." He laughed again, but there was no humor in it. He looked at his watch. "Come on. Got something else to show you."

They climbed back into the car. Horace didn't speak. Remembering his past, it seemed, brought on a dark moodiness. Audrey, who seemed to know her father very well, kept the conversation going, asking Jonas about himself, telling him about herself, all the while handling the vehicle smoothly and surely.

"How long have you been driving?"

"Since I was nine. Pa was teaching H.J. and Gil—that's my brothers—and I threw a fit until he taught me too."

"And she's the best driver of all," Horace said, literally shaking himself out of his dark place. "She's the smartest one in the family."

"No, I'm not," Audrey said. "Mama is."

Horace turned around and looked at Jonas. "She's right about that. Her ma—my wife—she's the first thing I ever fought for and won. And she's the reason I've fought for everything else I have 'cause her pa sure didn't want her to marry me. He said I came from nothing and would amount to nothing, and I have spent my life proving him wrong."

"Papa," Audrey said, drawing his attention back to the road as she drove into the lot of Carrie's Crossing High School. She parked beside a new Cadillac, and Horace was out of the car before she turned off the engine.

A tall, thin, slightly stooped man got out of the Cadillac, and Horace hurried over to him and shook his hand. It took a moment but Jonas recognized the man and he, too, hurried over, hand extended.

"Mr. Allen."

"Why if it isn't Jonas Thatcher." His eyes narrowed as he looked from Horace to Jonas and back again. "I think I know who your new partner is, Horace, and I approve."

Horace looked from his banker to his new partner, uncertain how to feel about the obvious warmth between the two men. "How is it you two know each other?"

Grady Allen ignored the question and pointed to the land adjacent to the school's parking lot. "Did Horace tell you what we're doing here, Jonas? Tell him, Horace."

Horace Edwards swallowed and did as he was told, the pecking order between the two men clearly established: Grady Allen was the founder and principal shareholder of the First National Bank of Belle City, the only financial establishment in that town not to fail, primarily because Allen's personal wealth was sufficient to prop up his bank's stock and guarantee the safety of the deposits. When his customers realized that he'd put up his money to protect their money, not only did they leave their money in place, but people from as far away as North Carolina brought money to deposit with Grady Allen. It is said that he'd open an account for a person with as little as a dollar. Grady Allen's new bank, the First National Bank of Carrie's Crossing, was to be built next door to the elementary and high schools on land owned by Horace Edwards.

"We're going to have a bank?" Jonas was asking a question though it didn't sound like it. He was flabbergasted. "Your bank?"

"As I recall, you told me eight or ten years ago that I should put a bank here. Have you changed your mind?"

Jonas shook his head. "No, sir. I just…I didn't think…" He shut his mouth, annoyed with himself for being so tongue-tied. He sounded like an ignorant kid, and Horace noticed. Grady Allen seemed not to.

"I knew you were right. I just didn't know it would take me so long to get around to doing it."

"But the Depression," Jonas said.

"I think maybe we've turned Hoover's corner—"

"I know we have!" In his exuberance, Horace failed to notice the old banker's displeasure at being interrupted.

"Thanks to Mr. Roosevelt," Allen said and waited for the response he obviously knew was coming.

"It's got nothing to do with Roosevelt," Horace all but shouted.

"It's got everything to do with Roosevelt," Allen said quietly. "If Hoover were still the president we'd all be in the poorhouse by now, me included. Hoover was dead wrong about the government not being responsible for fixing the mess we're in. Only the government could fix it, and with Roosevelt putting people back to work, we'll soon get back on track."

Horace looked sour, but he didn't say anything.

"How does that help us, Mr. Allen? Mr. Roosevelt's public works projects, I mean," Jonas said. "Us here in Carrie's Crossing, I mean." He wanted to kick himself for sounding so childish, but Grady Allen gave no hint that he was talking to a child.

"I understand that a major road construction project is due to start up right around the first of the year out at the end of the county, out Stevensville way, run around to the old Colored Town Road, and connect up to the Belle City Road."

"That's a big project," Horace exclaimed, his pique forgotten. "A lot of workers. And they'll have to spend their money somewhere." He looked at Jonas. "Good thing you kept the food market open, and you might have to open up the furniture store."

"And we'll have the only bank—only open bank—for miles around."

Jonas listened and nodded his agreement to all that was said. "They're going to need somewhere to live, all those workers, aren't they?"

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Grady Allen gave a hoot of a laugh and clapped him on the back, but addressed Horace. "I like the site, Horace: Next to the schools. People drop their children off, make a deposit, go on to work. Yessir, I like it a lot. I like your new partner, too. Yessir, I like a man with ideas. We can do the paperwork tomorrow at my office if that's all right with you boys."

"But I thought you needed to have the money today," Horace said.

"If it was anybody but Jonas Thatcher I would need it today. But if he says he'll be in my office first thing in the morning with the money, then that's all right with me. We can get the contracts signed and notarized and get you back in business, Horace. Besides," and he gave Jonas a sly grin, "I don't have time to wait around while he digs up all that money." He laughed and clapped Jonas on the back again.

Horace was back to being deeply morose by the time they settled into a booth in the Crossing Café, but Jonas was too hungry to focus on anything but eating. Besides, he had a pretty good idea what was stuck in Horace's craw and it wasn't meat loaf, mashed potatoes and string beans. Horace Edwards could pout all he wanted, but Jonas had not the slightest intention of telling him that Beau Thatcher, a Colored man, had introduced him to the richest man in Belle City more than ten years ago. Instead, he and Audrey focused their attention on each other. He liked talking to and listening to her. She was smart and funny and she had traveled—to Philadelphia and New York and Boston and to Europe. She'd been to Paris and London!

"I've only traveled in my mind. Through books and magazines. You're lucky," Jonas said.

"I know, believe me. Especially now, with everything so…so…I'm just glad I had a chance to see some of the world when I did, in case…in case…"

"You'll go again, Audrey. This depression won't last forever."

"It's already been five years. It feels like forever."

"I know. But men like Mr. Allen and your father wouldn't be building a new bank if they thought otherwise. And don't forget that road construction project. I don't think a man like Mr. Roosevelt would be spending so much money—"

Horace cut him off with a snarled, "Taxpayers' money."

"People are getting back to work," Jonas continued. "That's what matters."

She wrinkled her forehead in thought. "You're right, I suppose. Of course you're right, Jonas. Nobody would build a new bank if they thought it would fail."

"Besides," Jonas said as he was pondering whether he'd have apple pie à la mode or bread pudding for dessert, "with a bank right here in town, especially one owned by Mr. Allen, I might even make a deposit or two myself."

That roused Horace. "Since you and Grady Allen are such good friends and all, any reason why you don't already have your money in his bank?"

"His bank is in Belle City. Like I just said, when his bank opens here, where I live and work, I'll give some thought to depositing some of my money in it." Jonas didn't want to be rude to Horace in front of his daughter, but he was tired of the man's moody and childish behavior. "What do you all want for dessert?"

"What are you having?" Audrey asked.

"Bread pudding, I think."

"Oooh. Me too."

"Any reason you can't tell us how it is you happen to know the man?" Edwards all but spat the words, shocking his daughter who'd probably never seen this side of him.

"It's none of your business," Jonas said calmly, politely even, shocking Audrey even more. Her breath caught and she looked from one man to the other, confused and a little bit frightened, which aroused a strange sympathy within Jonas. He looked at her, and when he spoke, it was to her that he said, "A mutual friend introduced us, a man who had survived The Great War and thought that we could, I don't know, comfort each other since he had a son and I had a brother who had not survived it. And he was right: We did and probably still do provide an odd kind of comfort for each other, even though we no longer need to talk about it."

"Oh, Jonas, I'm so sorry." Audrey looked truly sorry, as if the death of his brother had just happened. "How old was your brother?"

"Nineteen," Jonas said, as he tried—and failed—to conjure up an image of his long dead older brother. He barely remembered his name. He looked at his watch and stood up. "I'm sorry but I don't really have time for dessert. I need to get home to change clothes and get back to the store." He put some money on the table. "You all stay as long as like, have tea or coffee or dessert—whatever you like—no need for you to rush." He finally looked at his new partner. "I'll see you in the morning, Horace." Then he looked at Audrey and smiled. "It was a real pleasure meeting you, Miss Edwards. I hope to see you again. Soon."

Horace stood up quickly. Audrey did too, still looking distressed. "We'll give you a ride home, Jonas," Horace said.

"Why do you have to change clothes?" Audrey asked, then blushed at the look her father gave her.

Jonas laughed. "I don't wear a suit and tie every day like Mr. Allen and your papa because I work in a grocery store, not a bank or a real estate office."

"Speaking of which," Horace said as they headed for the exit, "we're gonna need us an office here in Carrie's Crossing so we can figure out where all those road workers are gonna live."

"I think I can help with that," Jonas said, leading them out of the restaurant and toward the three buildings he owned on the street. They passed the furniture store and the grocery store and stopped in front of the defunct pub. He unlocked and opened the door and switched on the light, then stood back for Audrey and Horace to enter. Audrey stood beside him. Horace walked all around, front to back, even pushing his way through all the boxes of canned goods, to see every corner of the space. "What do you think?" Jonas asked when Horace finally completed his inspection.

"I remember you told me about this place the first time we met. You remember that?" When Jonas nodded, Horace said, "I think you better get used to wearing a suit and tie every day" and clapped him on the back, as if there hadn't been a moment of tension or hostility between them. "This is perfect. And right in the heart of downtown."

"I'll find new warehouse space and get this place cleaned out," Jonas said. "And I guess I'd better buy some new suits."

"Come on, we'll take you home," Horace said, and Jonas stopped himself from refusing the offer. He knew that Horace wanted to see where he lived, and he could avoid that for only so long. After all, the man now was his partner. He'd have to invite him and his wife to dinner…or whatever it was that high class business people did. He'd need to learn the rules.

The drive from his stores to his home was a brief one. Horace was driving now—too fast—and he skidded to stop just past the driveway, requiring him to back up and then turn in. He drove all the way up beside the house, threw the car into gear, and got out. Then he walked all the way around the house, the way he'd walked all the way through the warehouse just a few moments ago. The house sat atop a small rise and there were no other houses visible, though one of Horace Edwards's developments would, one day in the not to distant future, rise on the other side of the woods.

"This is a very nice house, Jonas," Horace finally said.

"It's a very beautiful house, Jonas," Audrey said. "A bit unusual, but beautiful."

Jonas didn't say anything because what he wanted to say would do nothing but cause upset and trouble, and there was no point to that. And anyway, his house was none of their business. "If you take a right turn out of the yard here, Horace, the road will run you right into the Belle City Road. You won't have to go back through town unless you just want to."

Horace gave him a look he was learning to understand all to well. It was the look of a balking mule: Stubborn, recalcitrant, rebellious, hostile. Horace wanted to ask about the house, but he was learning a bit about Jonas too: To ask about what was none of his business likely would earn him the kind of stinging rebuke his ego was loathe to accept. "I didn't know there was a shortcut to the Belle City Road."

Jonas gave him a conciliatory smile. "Nobody but us old-timers knows about it. It wasn't even paved for a long time, nothing but wheel ruts and mud."

"This is the road Grady Allen was talking about, isn't it? Colored Town Road, isn't that what he called it?" Horace stared at the road behind Jonas's house. "Colored folks lived 'round here? This close to your house?"

"That's right," Jonas said, spoiling for the fight he'd been avoiding all day. Horace looked beyond the road and pointed toward the empty fields and the acres of wild growth beyond it. "Who owns all that land yonder?"

"I do," Jonas said.

"All of it?" Horace asked.

"All of it," Jonas answered.

"Well," Horace said and lifted his hat and scratched his head. "Well, now," he said, and let his eyes scan the horizon. Then he turned away, walked to his car, got in and started the motor. If his daughter hadn't run to open the door and fling herself into the passenger seat, Jonas thought the man would have left her. He watched them disappear down the road, his thoughts a jumble of contradictions. He was flat-out glad to see the back of Horace Edwards and was not looking forward to the following day when he'd have to see him again. On the other hand, he'd have liked to spend more time with Audrey, and he hoped that she would accompany her father to the bank in the morning.

He walked to the road and looked beyond the emptiness into the past. He could see Maisy Cooper's house and barn, and the houses and farms of the other Colored families who had lived there. He allowed himself a momentary delight as he realized that Horace thought that he had lived on Colored Town Road across the street from Colored people. The thought took hold and, as he recalled the look on the man's face, he laughed out loud. Then, as always happened when he looked across the road and remembered, the shade of sadness dropped down. He had bought up all the houses and land stolen from the Colored people the night that his own pa had stolen Will Thatcher's land, and the KKK thieves were happy to sell it, especially those like the police chief who were, themselves, being run out of town. He'd driven over to Belle City, to First Freeman's house, with the five property deeds in his pocket, proud to be able to return the land to the rightful owners. He would never, if he lived to be a hundred, forget the look on the old man's face: Stunned amazement that quickly turned into disbelief that just as quickly was replaced by something that felt to Jonas like pity. "They don't want that land, Jonas. They don't want no parts of the Crossing, not no more and not ever again. They call Belle City home now. They forgot all about a place called Carrie's Crossing, like it never was."

Jonas shook himself back to the present. He needed to go get his car and to begin cleaning out the warehouse so that it could become a real estate office and he could become—what?

 

He shook hands with Grady Allen and Horace Edwards after all the contracts were signed. Both men clapped him on the back. "How does it feel to be a real estate developer, Jonas?" Allen asked him.

"Is that what I am? A developer?"

The two older men chuckled in a worldly, all knowing kind of way. "What do you think we should call you?" Horace asked in a challenging kind of way.

"How about builder?"

"You plan on building something, Jonas?" Allen asked.

"Yep," Jonas said, looking at Horace. "Me and my real estate partner are gonna build some places for those road construction workers to live. On some of that land I own on the old Colored Town Road. And we truly do need to give it a new name."

They looked at him, each in a different way. Allen's look was speculative. He was imagining the housing. Horace's look was belligerent and defiant, and he was shaking his head back and forth. "One thing we don't want in Belle City, not now, not ever, is low class people, and you build some place for construction workers to live and it starts out as low class and goes down from there. You might as well keep the Colored Town name."

Jonas studied him for a moment, then turned to look at Grady Allen, who was studying him. Jonas let him and waited for him to speak.

"What's your thinking, Son?"

"We're going to need to run water and electricity through there anyway. You know there isn't any because we didn't put it in for the Colored." Allen flushed a bit at those words, but nodded for Jonas to continue. "We can build some dormitory-like places for the workers—nothing but men anyway, right? But they'll have hot and cold running water and toilets and kitchens and heat. We can put those up cheap and when the road is finished, we can pull 'em down and put up something better, something nicer. Something more high class, Horace. And they'll be paying rent, the road workers, which should off-set the cost of building the places and tearing them down."

Allen was nodding. "Can probably get the government to pay to level the land and cut the road through."

"Maybe run the water and electricity, too?" Jonas asked.

"Then we better get started," Horace said. "Weather is holding pretty good for it being almost winter, but it won't last. Nobody but that damfool Roosevelt would start to build a road in the winter time."

 

From the Diary of Jonas Farley Thatcher

Christmas 1934. I wish I had a friend, somebody I could talk to about things, about what I think and feel. About whether I should marry Audrey Edwards. I do truly like her a lot, more than I ever liked a girl, and people keep telling me it's time to get married and start a family. Until I met Audrey I didn't agree with that but now I do. Except I don't know if she loves me more or loves her pa more and I don't think a man should have a wife he cannot trust. I also donnot like her mother. Alice is her name and she calls colored people niggers and coons all the time. She did it so many times at dinner tonite at Mr. Allen's house that Mrs. Allen had to ask her to stop that kind of talk at the dinner table. She was talking to Mrs. Allen's help, calling them things right when they were in the room serving the food. Mr. Allen said he didn't like that kind of talk either, like his wife. Then I said I didn't like it either and Audrey looked at me, then she looked at her pa. I never heard her talk like that so I don't know if she thinks that way but I will have to find out. I think I will have to ask my sister what I should do because I donot have any friends. I wish Beau thought I was his friend but he does not. Si either. I wish Mr. First was still here but he is gone now--him and Miss Maisy Cooper both. I tell myself I should be more happy. I am rich. I have maybe more business than a man needs. The men are ready to start building Mr. Roosevelt's road. The CCC it is called and it will be one place in Georgia where The Great Depression will be over. No matter what Horace Edwards says or thinks, Mr. Roosevelt is a good president. He is doing good things for everybody.

 

***

 

– Belle City –

Ruthie

 

"It might be a new deal for some people, but it's the same old deal for us." Little Si paced back and forth, fists tight balls at his sides. "No Colored men will be hired to help build that road from Carrie's Crossing to Belle City. What exactly do we have to do to get a fair deal?"

Big Si held up several newspapers—the Chicago Defender, the Amsterdam Daily News, the Pittsburg Courier—newspapers that he could not read but which his two children who could read would read to him in their entirety almost every day. "But I thought it said that Colored were getting work in that CCC and WPA." He looked over at Little Si, who was still pacing, and at Ruth, who was sitting beside her husband, head on his shoulder, almost asleep. "Isn't that what y'all read in these newspapers? And didn't I hear that same thing on the radio? Isn't that what you read to me, Ruth?"

Ruthie roused herself. "Yes, Pa—" she began, but Beau cut her off.

"Roosevelt's paying for it, Pa, but he's letting the local governments do the hiring, by their own rules, and no government down here is gon' hire Colored. So Si is right: It's the same ol' deal for us."

"So it's only the Colored people up North who're getting' the New Deal?" Big Si asked.

They all nodded, and Beau added, "We won't see the end of this Depression 'til all the white folks in America is back to work. Maybe the white folks in Italy and France and Germany, too. Then maybe we can find ourselves a job."

"I hope it's soon." Mack, Ruth's husband, stood and began to pace, but had to stop because the living room wasn't large enough for both him and Little Si. "I can't build houses if people don't have money to buy 'em."

"You should've been hired to help build that road, or those new school houses," Little Si said. "They're closing schools for Colored children 'cause they say they can't pay the teachers, but they're building new schools for white children. It's wrong, Pa. It's just plain wrong, and I'm sick and tired of it."

"But the law," Big Si said, still brandishing the newspapers. "Don't the law say they got to let Colored get some of this gov'ment money?"

"They make laws to fit their wants and needs, not ours," Little Si said bitterly.

"I wish that wasn't the truth," Mack said, "but the truth is: It is."

Big Si looked up at them. "Why don't y'all sit down," he said in his steady, calm voice, but it was not a request, and both men sat, Mack beside his wife and Si beside his wife, and for a brief moment there was no sound but the crackle and pop of the fire that roared in the grate. Though it was just a little past three in the afternoon, wintertime dusk was falling outside, so the fire did double duty: Heat and light.

This after-church Sunday dinner was rare in its peace and quiet because all the children were elsewhere—with grandparents or aunts and uncles. Rare also because it was just Big Si's children and their spouses at Big Si's house—the house that had belonged to First Freeman until his death four years earlier. Big Si had added a second sofa to the living room and had Mack build a dining table long enough to seat twenty adults, and there still wasn't enough room when the whole family gathered. Only Mack's parents had a house that large, and they had hosted the New Year's celebration five days ago, though there wasn't much joy or merriment. The only good thing about the arrival of 1935, they all agreed, was it brought an end to 1934. The Depression, however, was still going strong.

"Are you ready to eat, Pa?" Ruth asked, getting so slowly to her feet that Mack had to help her. She was exhausted; it was her natural state these days and Mack stood beside her, supporting her. Despite the fact that she loved her children to distraction, she was glad to have them parceled out today: Nellie at Mack's parents' and the boys at Tobias and Little Si's mother-in-law's. As much as Big Si appreciated the huge extended family that his offspring's marriages had produced, he got real pleasure from having them to himself on occasion. It meant he got to see how they were doing, and Ruth looked about to fall over. He stood up at the same time that Tobias's wife, Belle, pushed herself to her feet, one hand to her lower back, the other cradling her eight months of pregnancy. That got Toby to his feet and they all headed for the kitchen. Big Si turned to see if Little Si and Catherine followed and what he saw hurt him more deeply than he had words to express: They sat side by side, not looking at each other, not talking to each other, not touching each other. Two granite statues.

"Pa, do you know what's troubling Little Si and Cathy?" Ruthie was at his side, leaning into him, as she placed bowls of food on the table to join those that he'd already placed there. There would be a lot of food. Whoever served food these days made extra for the visitors to take home. Whoever had food these days shared, as a matter of course, and Big Si Thatcher had more than most: His entire backyard was a garden. All his years of experience as a farmer had been recalled, thanks to the depression.

"I was thinkin' maybe you knew," he said sadly. "Whatever it is, it's bad."

"Belle's baby?" Ruth whispered the query. That Little Si and Catherine remained childless was a pain borne not just by them but by the entire family. Belle's baby would make three for her and Tobias. Ruthie and Mack had four. Only the unmarried Beau and Belle and Cathy's unmarried baby sister, Helen, had no children. Both said, with obvious and heartfelt relief, that they were content to be auntie and uncle.

"Her Ma said she wasn't upset by that anymore."

"Then I don't know, Pa," Ruthie said. "I can ask Mack to ask Si—"

Big Si was shaking his head. "Don't do that. Just leave it be."

"But if something's wrong—?"

"If they want us to know, they'll tell us," he said and called them to the table. "Silas, Catherine. Y'all come on so the food don't get cold."

Everybody's spirits picked up with the eating of good food. Ruthie's exhaustion abated as Beau regaled them with tales of his illegal whiskey dealing during the thirteen years of Prohibition. Nobody but Pa had known while it was happening, and it still would be a secret had Beau not inadvertently let it slip while talking about something else, but he had, and then was forced to tell all. They never tired of hearing about the risks and the near misses—events that Beau could laugh about now but which, when they happened, frightened him to his core.

"I do wish I coulda seen the look on Zeb Thatcher's face when he got outta jail and got home to find all his whiskey gone," Pa said, laughing his deep belly laugh. "Y'all didn't know Zeb, hadn't seen him cut the fool the way he could. I give that youngest boy of his, Jonas, real credit. He had to be scared half to death of that man."

"But it was his own pa, wasn't it?" Catherine asked.

"Didn't matter none at all. Zeb Thatcher was one mean, evil white man. He hated whatever lived and breathed, his own kin included. If my pa was still with us, he'd tell you 'bout Zeb. That boy, Jonas, used to come over here and talk to 'Mr. First,' he called him. Told him all kinds of things." He looked from Ruth to Little Si. "Y'all always said that boy was y'all's friend. We didn't believe it at first, but it was true."

"It was," Ruthie said. "He was my friend, but he was more Silas's friend."

They looked to Silas to speak of his friendship with the white boy, but when Silas spoke, he said, "I'm going north. To Chicago." He spoke in a quiet, determined way, and it took several seconds for all the minds at the table to shift from evil Zeb Thatcher and his not-evil son to what Si had just said. Then there were more full, heavy seconds of stunned disbelief. Then everybody was talking at once. Everybody but Catherine, who was sitting again like a stone statue, her head lowered as if praying. She didn't look at anyone, and especially not at her husband, not even when he stood up.

"I know what you all think and feel. I've been doing nothing but thinking and feeling for weeks, and I'm convinced that I'm doing the best thing." He looked at his sister. "They made you the school principal and they fired me, Ruthie. I'm happy for you but I'm angry too. I'm the one with the Ph.D."

"They shut your school down, Si." Beau was on his feet now, too, glowering at his brother. "You can't blame Ruthie for that."

"I'm not blaming Ruthie for anything."

"That's what it sounds like, Si. They made Ruthie a principal 'stead of you, so you gon' run off to Chicago 'cause you're mad."

"That's not why I'm going. You think just because you made so much money on your illegal whiskey that you know so much, but you don't. You don't know anything. You can't even read."

Beau was stung, but he shot back, "Readin' ain't everything."

"It's the only thing that is truly important, Beau."

"You wrong 'bout that, Si. Havin' something to call your own is more important. Something nobody can take from you. Not even white people."

"Knowledge, Beau. That's exactly what I'm talking about: Nobody can take what I've got in my head, in my brain," Si said.

"But they can take your job, little brother, 'cause it wasn't yours to start with. It was their job in their school, and they took it from you and all your book learnin' couldn't stop 'em."

"And what do you have that's yours, Mr. Know-It-All Beau Thatcher?"

Ruthie jumped up and put a hand out to Beau. He was so protective of her that it sometimes was frightening. He even thought that her own brother—their own brother—was a threat to her. He'd been this way ever since their Ma was murdered. It was as if he meant to keep all harm from her. She reached out to both men, to both of her brothers, but did not speak. She didn't know what to say, but she did know that if she spoke to either brother by name, the other would feel insulted, hurt. She looked at Tobias. Older by two years, he usually managed to have a calming effect on Little Si, but Tobias was watching the food on his plate, his brow wrinkled in a deep frown. What was wrong with him? For the first time in her life, Ruthie resented her big brothers, all of them, including Eubanks whom nobody had heard from in more than ten years. She wanted to yell at them, to chastise them in the name of their mother, but that, she knew, would only make matters worse. Big Si solved the problem.

"Beaudry. Silas." That was all he said, but the tone of his voice is what took all the air out them. Yes, he was angry, but there also was hurt and sadness and confusion. The bewildered look on his face was as unnerving as the tone of his voice. His boys. This behavior from his sons, talking against each other. How was that possible? He'd never witnessed any dispute among them that called for voices raised in anger, not even when they were children. He sighed deeply, and the sound he made in his throat was something they'd never heard, not even when his beloved Nellie was snatched from him so horribly.

Ruthie was at his side in a second, the fatigue that had wracked her body, mind and spirit for days, forgotten. "Pa!" She wrapped her arms around him, and he bent his head into her neck and let her hold him, just for a few seconds. Then he patted her back and eased himself up straighter in his chair. He looked at Silas.

"Didn't they put you in charge of the school over at the church?"

"That's not a school, Pa. That's some tables and chairs in a church basement."

"You're teaching and chil'ren is learning. It's a school." Pa was fully mad now. No trace of sadness or confusion remained. "Everybody over there calls you Professor Thatcher or Dr. Thatcher, just like they ought to. You always complained that the white folks down at the Board of Education always called you Silas. Never would give you the credit for your education. But now you got that, and it ain't enough? It ain't enough that your people give you what you said you wanted: To be in charge of a school and have the people call you by your right name?" Pa waited for an answer and when none came, he asked, "You think the white folks at the Board of Education in Chicago is gon' call you Dr. Thatcher? Is that why you goin' to Chicago? To hear some white folks call you by a certain name? Is it gon' sound better when they say it?"

Little Si shook his head. "I'm going to Chicago, Pa, because I think things are better for us in the North. There are more opportunities…"

"More opportunities to starve to death," Beau said. He pointed to the platters and bowls heaped with food. "You think folks in Chicago can grow food like this in the backyard?"

"I didn't go to school all those years to be a farmer again."

"Nothin' wrong with bein' a farmer," Big Si said, challenge hard in his voice, "'specially when you own the land that's growin' your food."

"I didn't say there was, Pa—not for anybody who wants to farm. But it's not what I want."

"What do you want, then?" Big Si asked, and waited for his son to answer.

"I want to teach, maybe to write. I want to use my mind, my brain, and I believe I can do that in Chicago better than here."

"Chicago! Just full of opportunity, ain't it?" Beau snarled.

"Yeah, Beau, it is," Little Si shot back. "Plenty of opportunity."

"To freeze to death while you're starving."

"Is that what you think too, Catherine?" Pa asked quickly before Si could rejoin. "That things are better for us in the North?"

Catherine, who hadn't spoken all evening, raised her eyes and met the glance of every pair of eyes at the table, except those of her husband. "I'm not going to Chicago with Silas," she said.

The stunned silence that met those words could have been considered humorous by someone seeing only six wide-eyed people, their mouths gaping, staring at the prim and proper young woman who had lowered her head again to stare at the trembling hands folded in her lap.

Tobias's wife, Belle, grabbed her pregnant belly and cried out to her younger sister, cried out to ask why, what was wrong? Then she grabbed Catherine and held her close, the two sisters holding each other and whispering and crying. Belle looked over her sister's shoulder at her husband, pleading with her eyes for him to do something.

"Si—" Tobias tried, failed, to find some words. He gave his wife a helpless look.

"Why not, Catherine?" Mack asked, his arm tight around Ruth.

Catherine raised her eyes and looked at him, giving him a small smile. She and Belle and Mack shared an undiscussed bond: They had married into the closely-knit Thatcher clan, and while they knew they were loved and respected within the family, they also felt that they were, in some sense, outsiders. "Why what, Mack? Why I'm not going to Chicago, or why I don't think things are better for Colored up there?"

Mack nodded his head. "Both things."

She inhaled and looked at her husband. The look was almost defiant but her words were not. They were sad. "I don't have as much education as Silas, but I can read, and I've read about how Colored are treated up north: Same way we're treated down here, and I don't think I want to go so far from home just to be a nigger when I get there. And they got all manner of foreign people up north—people who can't even speak English, but they can call us nigger. That's one reason I don't want to go to Chicago." She turned in her chair and looked directly at her husband. He met her gaze. "And Silas, you can't tell me for sure that we can have a house in Chicago. We have a house here with a garden in the backyard. And I know we don't have family in Chicago. We have family here—" She stopped suddenly and put her hands to her mouth. She looked around the table. "Oh my Lord. If I don't go with Silas, will y'all still be my family?"

A great sound erupted from the gathering, voices raised, chairs scraping the floor as people jumped to their feet and swarmed her. Arms grabbed and hugged her, voices joining the assurances that she was a Thatcher "for good and always." She sought Mack and Belle, and the look they shared said that maybe they weren't outsiders after all.

"Why can't you all feel that for me?" Little Si said. All the pain and anger and resentment Little Si had been holding inside for months escaped in a sorrowful wail. "I tell you I'm going to do something big and important and I get criticism. Catherine tells you she's going to do the exact opposite and you can't show her enough support." If he'd been younger he would have wept.

"That's not how it is, Silas," Pa said.

"That's exactly how it is. That's exactly how you all are. Catherine's too afraid of being called a nigger to try to make a better life, and that's fine with you all. Beau runs up and down the road with some cracker selling illegal whiskey and that's fine with you all. Tobias runs a gambling parlor and writes the numbers and sells illegal whiskey and that's all right with you—"

"Tobias does what?" Beau jumped up so fast he knocked his chair back into the wall, leaving a mark in the paint. "What are you talking about, Si?"

"Ask Tobias what I'm talking about."

All turned to Tobias who looked angry enough to chew rocks. Belle grabbed his hand but he shook her off. "You feel better now, Si? I guess I don't have to worry 'bout tellin' you nothin' else 'cause you won't be here to talk to, and right now I'm thinkin' that'll be a good thing."

"Is that true, Toby, what Si said?" Ruthie asked. "A gambling parlor?"

"That ain't none of your business," he snapped.

"It is my business," Pa said.

"No, Pa, it ain't. I'm a grown man."

"You're my son and if you're breakin' the law, it's my business."

"What law, Pa? Something some crackers made up? Every time one of us takes a breath, some cracker makes a law tellin' us we can't take so many breaths. If they got 'em a law says I got sit by and watch my wife and chil'ren starve to death, I'll be happy to tell 'em what they can do their law."

"But Toby—"

"But nothin', Ruthie. Mack ain't makin' no money buildin' houses, but I 'spect that's all right 'cause you makin' money bein' the school principal and teachin' French to college students on the side. But I ain't makin' no money cuttin' hair, and Belle ain't making no money curlin' hair, and the reason we ain't makin' no money is Colored folks ain't got no money to buy houses or worry 'bout how their hair looks."

"But they got money to play the numbers and gamble," Beau snarled.

"Yeah, Beau, they do. Just like they had money to buy your illegal whiskey. No matter how hard times get, a drink of whiskey and believin' you got a chance to win a few cents or a few dollars—those are things that can keep people from givin' up hope."

"Me and Beau ain't gon' let you and Belle and the chil'ren go without, Tobias. You know that."

"I'm a grown man, Pa. I ain't gon' be asking you or my brother or my sister to take care of me and my family. Now, y'all just go on about your business and leave my business alone. Just forget Si ever opened his big mouth."

"We can't just forget it, Tobias."

"Then don't think about it, Pa. Don't talk about it. Don't worry about it. Me and Belle and the chil'ren are gon' be just fine." He touched his wife's shoulder. "And the new one is gon' be just fine, too."

"Just don't you have my wife involved in your illegal activities," Little Si said, meaning to have the last word but instead igniting another firestorm over the fact that Belle actually worked alongside Toby in the gambling room, which occupied the flat above their barber shop/beauty salon where Beau had lived before he moved in with Pa.

"Number one, Si, keep your mouth off my wife. And number two: If you care so much about what your wife is doing, stay here and look after her 'stead of running off to Chicago." And that was the last word.

Ruthie was never so glad to be going home. She'd always enjoyed spending time with her family. Today was an exception. She'd been exhausted when she arrived, and if the situation with Catherine and Little Si drained the last energy from her, the news of Si and Belle's newest enterprise pierced her with what felt like thousands of pain darts. It was the first time that they'd all taken leave of each other without declarations of their love.

They barely looked at each other as they cleared the table and fixed bowls and plates of food to take home, and they all but ran to the front door in an exit that was more escape than leave-taking, and the knife-sharp cold air that met them told how the temperature had dropped during the afternoon. As Ruthie and Mack hurried to their car, she looked to see if Catherine and Little Si would travel home together. She saw Pa grab Little Si's arm, saw Little Si pull away and run down the front porch steps, saw Catherine get in the car with Belle and Tobias. That's when the tears started. Mack looked over at her but he didn't speak. He didn't know that there was anything he could say that wouldn't make an already awful situation worse. She fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes and blew her nose, but she still stared straight ahead without speaking. Their drive home was a short one and tonight, a direct one as it already had been decided that that the children would stay the night with their relatives.

The house was dark and teeth-chattering cold. They hadn't been home since leaving for church that morning and all the brightness and warmth of playing children—of family—had long since seeped out. Mack hurried to light the fire in the living room, a small one, just to knock the chill off, and then he rushed upstairs to light the one in their bedroom—a bigger one of both wood and coal chunks that would burn hot and bright for a while, before slowing to a simmer that would warm them through the night. Ruthie lit a similar one in the big potbelly stove in the kitchen and put the kettle on. Mack had been so upset by the goings-on at the table at Pa's house that he hadn't eaten any dessert or had an after-dinner cup of coffee. He'd want both now. So would Ruthie, for that matter. He'd also want to talk to her and hear what she had to say about what they'd learned about her brothers, for Mack knew only what she said to him when they were seated at the kitchen table, warmed by the heat from the stove and the coffee and the apple pie. "I want to see it," Ruthie had said. "Whatever it is that Tobias and Belle are doing, I want to go there and see it with my own eyes."

Mack knew he should have expected this. Ruthie would not pass judgment on any person, and especially not on a member of her family, without firsthand knowledge of the situation. When Beau's rum-running activities came to light, while everybody else was expressing fearful shock, her first question to him had been, "How'd you happen upon that enterprise, Beau?" She understood perfectly the forces that had driven her brother and sister-in-law into illegal activity. What she'd want to know is why they chose that one, and how were they making it work. That it was risky—dangerous, even—was a given, for being Colored was risky and dangerous.

"I want to see it for myself, Mack."

He nodded his understanding. "I know you do, but you also know if Colored are doing anything illegal—and making money at it—white folks know about it, or they soon will. You know that."

"Yes, I surely do. Quite a few Colored people earn all of what little money they have telling white people what we're up to."

"So, if they haven't been raided or arrested yet, either they're paying some cops to look the other way, or it's just a matter of time before the raid happens, and I don't want you to be one of the ones arrested."

She gave him a long, speculative look, then took his hand and kissed it. "Then I guess neither one of us will know what a gambling parlor looks like." She stood up and began clearing the table. Her back to him, she said, "I must say, Mack McGinnis, that you have gotten right clever in the wife-managing department."

"I wouldn't call it that," he said.

"That's why you're so successful with it," she said.

They both enjoyed the warmth of the moment, then Mack said, "You're not mad about what Tobias and Belle are doing, are you?"

"No, I'm not mad. They're right: They have to do whatever is necessary to take care of their family. But I am...maybe not frightened, but...worried. You?"

Mack nodded. "Yeah, me too. Worried. But here's what I think, Ruthie: I think maybe the police already know and Tobias is paying them to look the other way. This Depression has made poor folks out of everybody."

"We were already poor, and they just keep finding ways to steal another penny or drop of water from us."

Her bitterness and anger startled him. She never gave in to those feelings and never let anybody else do it, either. "That's how they act," she'd always say. "We start acting mean and nasty, and we'll be just like them." He put his arms around her and pulled her in close. She held herself rigid for a moment, then relaxed into him. "They'll be just fine. And so will Si."

She pulled away from him. "I don't want to talk about Si."

She might not have been mad about Tobias and Belle's gambling parlor, but she surely was mad about Si's plan to go north. He could tell, though, that she was a long way from being ready to talk about it. So was he, for that matter. Bad enough Si wanted go away, but being willing to leave Catherine behind? There was no understanding that.

 

Emma Johnson, Belle and Catherine's mother, returned the four McGinnis boys to their parents at six o'clock the following morning, fed, dressed and ready for school. Though it had been less than twenty-four hours, Ruthie and Mack greeted their sons as if they hadn't seen them in weeks, and the boys regaled them with their exploits as if they'd been away for weeks. It always surprised and amazed Ruthie that Emma never tired of the boys; she insisted that as the mother of three daughters, she delighted in the wild and rambunctious nature of the boys in the same way that Mack's parents, after having raised four sons, never tired of time spent with Nellie and thought that every breath she took was a miracle of creation. Of course she and Mack felt the same way, after waiting so long for their girl.

"What are they cooking for our lunch today, Ma?" Jack asked.

"Didn't you just eat breakfast?" Mack asked his youngest son. "I know for sure Miss Emma fed y'all."

"She did, Pa,"" Jack said, hopping around like a cricket, "but I'm hungry again."

"You're always hungry," Mack Jr. said, suddenly grabbing his baby brother and holding him upside down. "Maybe if I shake the food from your big feet, your belly will recollect all them grits and eggs you ate."

"Pick me up, Mackie. Do me too, Mackie!" Thatcher, a year older, was hopping from foot to foot and yelling while Jack, upside down, laughed hysterically.

Wilton, next to Mack Jr. in age, attempted to accommodate Thatcher but wasn't yet tall enough or strong enough, and both boys ended up in a pile on the floor, causing them to shriek with laughter.

Ruthie looked at Mack, and and he made to calm and quiet them before they got all dirty. "Go get your books and things and get in the car." He would take Mack Jr. to the school in the basement of their church, the school run by Dr. Silas Thatcher Jr., and then pick up his baby daughter from his parents. The youngest boys would go with their mother to the school where she was principal, and she didn't know what the children would be fed for lunch. Since the city no longer provided food for the Colored schools, it had fallen to her and a handful of parents to scrounge and scavenge for lunch provisions, and she didn't know what was left in the kitchen pantry. More than likely it would be beans and rice, and for too many of the children, it would be the only food they would have that day. She cursed the meanness of white people, cursed it because she'd given up trying to understand it.

Despite the neglect of the school board, Ashdale Elementary School was, Ruthie thought, a beautiful sight. It was a small single-story brick building, its white wood trim and red door shiny with new paint, its small patch of front yard grass bright green in spring and summer and closely cropped all year—all thanks to the generosity of parents whose children attended the school and of local merchants and residents who took pride in every aspect of their neighborhood. The playground behind the building was recently paved, thanks to the McGinnis Construction Company which, unable these days to build houses, had both the time and the resources to grade and pave the schoolyard.

The front door of the school building opened as Ruthie opened her car door. She knew from the smoke billowing from the chimney that caretaker George Tennison had arrived. He saw it as his duty, if not his job, to have the building heated when the first pupils arrived, which usually was as soon as the parents knew that heat was spreading through the building, for just as the food they ate at school was their only meal, this was the only heat many of the children experienced.

The boys scrambled out of the car and raced down the walkway to the school, their shouts of "good morning, Mr. Tennison" ringing in the frigid morning air. Ruthie gathered her belongings and followed her sons, adding her greeting to theirs.

"Good morning to you, too, Miz. McGinnis." He touched his hat and held the door open for her. "How's Mack?"

"Like you, Mr. Tennison: Bored to tears and ready to get back to work," she told him and was surprised not to receive the response she expected. She looked more closely at him. "Is something wrong, Mr. Tennison?"

"Three little children," he said. "When I got here they were sittin' there on the steps, shakin' with cold and hunger. Nothin' but babies, two of 'em. It was an awful sight to see first thing in the mornin' and that's the truth."

"Where are they now?"

"I put 'em in the kitchen so they could get warm. I don't know how long they'd been sittin' on them steps, but they weren't hardly dressed, wrapped in the thinnest old blanket you ever saw. And…and…I fed 'em, Miz McGinnis. I'm sorry but…"

"You did the right thing, Mr. Tennison." She paused at her office to deposit her bags and coat and then followed him down the hallway to the cafeteria and kitchen, not once taking her usual pride and pleasure in the highly polished wood floors, the gleaming white walls, or the artwork of the children that hung on one side of the hall facing the art and portraits of notable Colored Americans that hung on the opposite side. She'd known George Tennison for as long as she'd been married to Mack, and while he was not an unkind or a cold man, he also was not an emotional one, so whatever circumstance had occurred this morning to so thoroughly alter his behavior was worthy of her total focus.

They entered the cafeteria to a chorus of "good morning Mrs. McGinnis" at full voice by the two dozen or so students, including her own children, clustered around Mrs. Roberta Samuels who volunteered to read to them every morning. Ruthie returned their greeting with love and warmth but continued on to the kitchen where it was indeed warm.

And curled up in a corner of the battered sofa were three children, deeply asleep under a thick blanket that Ruth herself had brought to the school. The older child she recognized, a third grader named Hazel Hill. Under each of Hazel's arms was tucked a smaller child, a girl and a boy, and Hazel held them tightly, as protective as if she were their mother, and as she watched them, a feeling was churning in Ruth's stomach, one that warned that something was very wrong and that she should have known about it. "What did you give them to eat, Mr. Tennison?"

"I heated up some of the powdered milk and put some of that blackstrap molasses in it, and some of that hard, old bread, and they ate it like it was meat and potatoes."

At that moment the back door flew open admitting Gertrude Butler, the cook. Her noisy, bustling arrival awoke Hazel and her siblings—startled them, really—and the little ones began to howl in fear. Hazel's wide eyes proclaimed her own fear, but she didn't cry. "Miz McGinnis. Is I'm in trouble?"

"Am I in trouble, and no, Hazel, you're not in trouble. Not at all," Ruth said. "It's really all right to be here, all of you," she said, and to the relief of the other two adults, the little ones ceased their wailing. "Your sister and brother?"

"Yes'm," Hazel said, sliding off the couch to her feet. "This here is Dor'thy and this is Will'am. She three and he four. Stand up, y'all," Hazel ordered, and Dorothy and William struggled to their feet and nobody could say a thing. Not only were the three of them filthy, not only were their clothes barely more than rags, they were little more than skin and bone. Ruth had known that Hazel wore the same two or three outfits to school every day, but so did most of the children, and the clothes were patched hand-me-downs if the children were fortunate, tied-together rags if they weren't. But what Ruth witnessed on the skeletal frames of Hazel, William and Dorothy Hill was worse than anything she'd ever seen, and she didn't know what to say. Had she become inured to others' misery?

"I have a daughter your age," she finally managed to say, forcing a smile at Dorothy. Then she looked at William. "And my Uncle Will taught me how to hunt and fish and ride a mule." The children gave her the kind of wide-eyed stare that suggested that they had not understood anything she'd said, which really left her at a loss for words until Mrs. Butler took over.

Just as George Tennison was so much more than a janitor and maintenance man—he was, in reality, the construction foreman for the McGinnis Construction Company—Mrs. Gertrude Butler was much more than a cook: She was the dietician at one of the Colored hospitals until it was forced to shut it doors, another casualty of the Depression. Ruth had hired them both, embarrassed to offer the pitiful salary the school board paid its Colored employees, but both had accepted the jobs, grateful to be earning any money at all. Mrs. Butler also collected old clothes and shoes, most of it barely more than rags, but often enough better than what many of the school children had. She was a large woman with a large voice, and she always proved a calming, soothing presence. This moment was not an exception. She put one hand on Dorothy's head, the other on William's. "Y'all look cold and hungry," she boomed.

They looked up at her and nodded, saying "yes'm" in unison.

Ruth managed a smile of thanks. "Hazel, will it be all right if the children stay with Mrs. Butler for a few minutes while you and I go talk in my office?"

"But I'm cold and hungry too, Miz McGinnis," Hazel wailed, all her big sister strength and resolve ebbing away.

Ruth looked at the big-faced clock on the wall. Everything was behind schedule. She looked at Gertrude. "I'll take the three of them with me while you get the oatmeal ready, then we'll come back in time to eat. How's that?" By now there probably were at least fifty students waiting for breakfast before the bell rang for the start of classes. She had far too many thoughts and feelings vying for her attention at the same time. First things first: Let Mrs. Butler get breakfast ready and the children fed; let Mr. Tennison get the classrooms open and ready for the teachers; and she would find out why Hazel and her siblings were here. "Mr. Tennison, please make sure my boys lend a hand," Ruth said, another way of saying make sure they didn't eat food meant for children who hadn't had any breakfast. Wilton and Thatcher knew better, but Jack wouldn't hesitate.

She started toward the door that would lead them through the cafeteria and halted. She couldn't parade Hazel and the children through that room full of students.

"Let's take the secret passage to your office," George Tennison said.

"Secret passage!" They had Hazel's full attention. "We got us a secret passage in this school, Mr. Tennison?"

"Sure do," he said, unlocking the storage room and turning on the light. He led them through the cavernous space—empty, aside from the few clothes Gertrude had collected and surplus bits and pieces of wood and cans of paint Mack donated, because the Ashdale Elementary School had nothing to store. A door at the far end of the room led to the back of the library which was unused in the winter because they couldn't afford to heat it, and they all but ran through it, it was so cold. George unlocked the door and stepped into the warmth of the center hallway, two doors from the Principal's Office.

Hazel was impressed. Ruth was, too, having forgotten that the various rooms and areas of the building connected to each other. "When breakfast is over, ask Miss Gert if she'll bring some clothes for the children." He nodded and left them. Ruth got Dorothy and William comfortable on the couch and Hazel in the chair adjacent to her desk, and she took her place behind the desk. She looked at the girl. "Where's you mother, Hazel?"

Tears filled the girl's eyes. "They won't let her come home."

"Who won't let her come home?"

"The white folks what she does for. They ain't got no money to pay her. They ain't paid her in a month, and they say she can't leave 'cause she won't come back, and she won't go back. Ain't hardly nobody got they Colored help 'cause the white folks ain't got no money, and Ma said it don't make no sense to work for no money. She said they used to call that slav'ry back in the old times." Hazel took a deep breath, giving Ruth an opportunity to ask a question.

"How long has it been since you've seen your mother?"

The girl's eyes filled. "It's been two weeks since they started lockin' her up in her room at night."

"You've had responsibility for William and Dorothy for two weeks? All by yourself?" Ruth didn't know whether to be more appalled at the notion of an eight-year old having total responsibility for two younger siblings or the reason why it was necessary.

"I don't need no help takin' care of Will'am and Dor'thy. I know what to do. I wouldn'ta had to come to the school if we hadn'ta run outta food. And there wasn't no more wood or coal for the stove. We was cold. And hungry."

"I'm not blaming you, Hazel. In fact, I'm very proud of you—for taking such good care of William and Dorothy and for knowing when it was time to get help."

Hazel accepted the praise with a nod of her head, the grown-up response halted abruptly by a wide and unstifled yawn. Add sleepy to cold and hungry, Ruth thought, at the same time relieved to know that the child was no longer frightened and neither were the little ones; they were both fast asleep, huddled together in the chair in a ball, like kittens.

"Do you know the names of the people your mother works for, Hazel? Or their telephone number?"

Hazel rattled off the name and number so fast Ruth had to ask her to repeat it as she wrote. Then she picked up the telephone and dialed, not certain what she would say until she heard Sadie Hill's voice.

"Woodbridge residence."

"This is Ruth McGinnis at Ashdale Elementary School," she began and heard the ragged intake of breath, a choked-bad sob. "Your children are fine, Mrs. Hill. They're sitting here with me in my office. All three of them: Hazel, Dorothy and William, and they're fine, I promise."

"They can't answer the phone right now. Can I give 'em a message?"

"When can I call you back? When can you talk?"

"If you want to leave a number, I'll ask Miz Woodbridge to call you."

Ruth gave the office number and as the call disconnected, she wondered if she should have given her home number; there was no telling when the woman would have the time or the opportunity to make a telephone call. As if reading her mind, Hazel said her mother would call after the Woodbridges finished their breakfast and the kitchen was cleaned up. They read in the library until lunch while Sadie cleaned the upstairs rooms. "They got a telephone upstairs too, and Ma can use it if she talks real quiet."

Hazel, it was clear, was no ordinary eight-year old, wise as she was in the ways of the adult world and in the ways Colored people were called upon to navigate that world. Sadie Hill most likely had no other person in whom to confide the intricacies of the world that was her home-away-from-home and especially not under the existing set of circumstances. The ringing of the bell meant that she would not, for the next several minutes, think anymore about the Hill family. Just as Ruth stood, the office door opened to admit Gertrude Butler and George Tennison carrying food and clothing for the Hill children. Ruth smiled her gratitude and, knowing that everything would be taken care of, made her presence known in the hallway as the children flowed, on best behavior, to their respective classrooms, their teachers, ever observant, monitoring their progress.

She heard a chorus of "good morning Mrs. McGinnis" and she touched several heads and shoulders and hands as the children filed past her. They knew her love for them—she never concealed or withheld it, just as she never concealed or withheld it from the five who were her own. Children were children and every one of them needed not only to be loved but to be shown that they were. And as far as she was concerned, it was extra important for Colored children to know love.

When all the children were in their rooms, she checked to make certain the front doors were locked, then visited each classroom, as was her habit. Because the school board also had eliminated all paid clerical staff from the Colored schools, often she would wait until all the rolls had been called and take the tally sheets with her, but not this morning; she didn't want to miss Sadie Hill's call. She made eye contact with each of her teachers, got the nod that told her all was well, and hurried back to her office.

"We had oatmeal with 'lasses and raisins, Miz McGinnis," Hazel proclaimed with excited joy. "I ain't never had that before."

"Haven't, Hazel, please."

"Yes'm," Hazel said, her excitement undiminished by the correction. "I haven't never had that before and I likes it a lot."

Hazel certainly didn't need to miss anymore school, but unless, somehow, they could get her mother back…Ruth couldn't complete the thought. Of course Sadie Hill would return home. She had to because there was nobody to take care of her children—not every day. The Depression had drained and leeched out every ounce of surplus or extra anything that anybody had, including goodness and kindness. Everyone she knew, including family, neighbors, church members, former classmates—everybody—was in a day-to-day frame of mind: If I can just make it through today. So, Sadie Hill needed to come home today. Surely there had to be a law against what the Woodbridges were doing to her. "They make laws to fit their wants and needs, not ours." Little Si's angry words rang in her memory, and she knew them to be true. How many times had her Uncle Will and her grandpa, First Freeman, said, "They can do any damn thing they want with us or to us and nothing we can do about it."

She shook off the thoughts and returned to the present to find five pairs of eyes on her, the children's frightened, the adults' worried. "Hazel, will you help Mrs. Butler take these bowls back to the kitchen? And maybe help her fix our lunch?"

Hazel nodded proudly. "Yes'm. My Ma says I helps real good in the kitchen."

"Thank you," Ruth said. Then, turning her attention to Dorothy and William, she asked if they'd like to keep their sister and Mrs. Butler company in the kitchen. They would and exited the office as if launched. When they'd gone, Ruth turned to George Tennison, but he spoke before she did.

"I'm gon' go stoke all the stoves and make sure it's plenty warm in the rooms and make sure Miss Gert got enough wood stacked where she can get to it. Then I'll be back here in case you need me."

She nodded her thanks and tried for a smile that failed. She felt totally exhausted and the day had barely begun. She dropped down into the chair behind her desk and tried to order her thoughts. Suppose Sadie Hill didn't—or couldn't—call? What would she do with the three Hill children? This shouldn't be her problem. She didn't want it to be her problem. Yet it was because there was no one else to give it to. No one else who would take it. She looked up at the wall clock and marveled that the school board hadn't ordered them removed. Probably forgot we had them, she thought. In just a few moments students would begin arriving from the various classrooms with the roll call tally sheets since she hadn't gone to get them. She got up and went to stand in the hall to receive each of the messengers, calling each by name, inquiring about his or her family, and thanking each with a hug.

She returned to her desk and checked the sheets, noting who was absent—in her class, Hazel Hill was marked ABSENT, with a note from her teacher asking what Ruth could do if the school received no answer to its "Request for Student Information" letter sent a week ago to Hazel's home. Ruth froze momentarily, then pushed her chair back so she could reach the file cabinet behind her. Each week, all of the roll call tallies were compiled and sent to the school board, with special note being made of any abnormalities and, if necessary, requesting that the central office send a letter to the home of the student in question requesting information and, in this case, concerning the student's protracted absence from school. Hazel Hill hadn't been to school for a week prior to her appearance this morning. She'd been absent every day last week. Ruth buried her face in her hands. Even if the central office had sent the notice to Sadie Hill—which she knew was doubtful—she hadn't been home to receive it.

The despair that she struggled daily to keep at bay descended like a sudden fog on the leading edge of bad weather. Mack had so often pleaded with her to give up teaching, to stay home. She should have done as he asked. Of course, if she had, perhaps they'd be running a gambling, parlor, too…

The phone rang, and she snatched it up, grateful in that moment that there was no clerk fielding calls. "Ashdale Elementary School, Principal McGinnis speaking."

"This Sadie Hill. My chil'ren all right, Miz McGinnis?"

"They're fine, Mrs. Hill, but I need to know if what Hazel said is true: Are you being held in that home against your will?"

"Yes'm, Miz McGinnis. They say I can't leave 'cause Miz Woodbridge, she ain't never in her life cooked nor cleaned nothin' and they ain't never lived in a house without no help. Everybody else left when we didn't get paid but I didn't 'cause I believed Mr. Woodbridge when he said he had some money comin' and would pay me." She took a deep, ragged breath. "They locks me in my room ev'ry night after dinner."

"What time is dinner?"

"Seven o'clock sharp, ev'ry night 'cept if they have company, which they don't no more 'cause they ain't got no money for them big dinners, all that food and whiskey."

"Tonight, Sadie, when you put the food on the table, run! I'm coming to get you. Can you get out of the house without being seen?"

"Yes'm. But…"

"I'll be parked in front of the house. You just run. You hear? Just run."

 

Mack and Beau sat across from the desk staring at her as if she were some strange and alien life form they'd never seen before. She sat there, waiting for one of them to say something. They'd both come immediately when she'd called and had listened intently as she told them about the situation with the Hill family and what she'd done. They'd listened and watched her until she finished talking. That was approximately three very long minutes ago, and not one of them had spoken. Until Beau did.

"You can't go. Mack and me'll go get her but you can't go."

"I have to. She doesn't know you. She knows me."

"You can't go, Ruthie," Mack said. "And since I don't imagine there will be a lot of automobiles with Colored people in them in front of the Woodbridge house tonight, I doubt she'll be confused."

"But why can't I go?"

"Because, Ruthie," Beau said, his voice hard and flat the way it got when he was well and truly angry, "if something bad happens, we don't need two sets of chil'ren with no Ma to look after 'em."

She gave them the address. Beau knew exactly where the street was and the house from his years of hauling with Mr. First Freeman. "Those people used to throw out a lot of stuff—clothing and furniture—that nothing was wrong with. They'd just get all new and throw out what they had. No wonder they're broke. They oughta be."

Mack and Beau made Ruth promise that after school, she'd take the Hill children home and wait until they brought their mother. Nobody asked what would happen if they failed because there was no acceptable answer. After they left, she told Gert Butler and George Tennison everything. After they first agreed that Beau and Mack had been right not to let her go, they then both agreed to join her at the Hill home after school. Without Ruth having to suggest it, they packed a box with rice and beans and powdered milk and oatmeal and Blackstrap molasses and raisins, firewood, coal and clothes, and at the end of the day, after all the children had gone and the doors and windows were locked and the ashes cleaned out of the stoves, the three Hill children left Ashdale School with Mrs. Butler in her automobile. Mr. Tennison followed in his truck. Ruthie knew that Mack had taken Nellie to his parent's and Mack Jr. to Big Si's, where she dropped the three younger boys—she'd already called Pa to ask if she could bring them and told him why—then followed his directions to the street where the Hills lived. He'd wanted to drive her, but neither of them wanted to tell the boys what she was doing, and he needed to be home when Little Si dropped off Mackie. Pa whispered, "You be careful, Ruthie-girl" and his tight hug stayed with her for the duration of the trip.

She was appalled by what she saw in the neighborhood called Pig Town. She knew that there was desperate poverty in Belle City, but she'd never seen it and could not have imagined what she saw. She knew that the name originated at the turn of the 20th century when the area was all farmland, when pigs, goats, chickens and cows roamed freely. There still were many plots of what in spring and summer would be carefully tended vegetables but now were overgrown, winter-burned ugliness. The streets were unpaved, there were no streetlights, and, from what she tell, very little electricity. The houses were little more than shacks, unpainted and weather-beaten, piled on top of brick columns that served to keep them off the ground which would be thick, gooey mud at least half the year.

She found the Hill house easily: It was the only one with two vehicles parked in front of it. Ruthie added her own and was halfway up rickety steps when the front door opened and Hazel dashed out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her up the last two steps and inside. The house was surprisingly well furnished, and, recalling what Beau said about the Woodbridge's propensity for throwing things away, she imagined that Sadie had been able to take full advantage of her employers' wastefulness. The place also was spotless, but it was icy cold. George Tennison had gotten fires going in the fireplace and in the stove in the kitchen, but the place obviously had been without heat for many days.

William and Dorothy looked wide-eyed at the unusual goings-on in their home, their gazes shifting from George Tennison's fire-building to Gertrude Butler's cooking beans and rice and corn bread to Ruth's whispered conversation with their big sister. Ruthie was trying to stop short of promising the girl that her mother would be home for dinner, but Hazel was a believer. Ruthie was still at the prayer stage.

 

Neither Mack nor Beau was big on praying. They trusted in what they could do and what they could see. Because it was winter and night fell early, they drove over to the North Side of town and parked off the road, in a woods less than a quarter mile from the Woodbridge home. Beau, driving because he was familiar with the area, told his brother-in-law what he knew of the Woodbridge's street and the adjacent ones. Because it was dark and cold, he didn't expect much activity. Most people, like the Woodbridges, would be having their dinner. Those lucky enough to still have gainful employment would be making their way home, but one vehicle at a time, not in a stream. At exactly seven, Beau backed out of the woods and drove carefully to the Woodbridge's street, turned in, and, lights off, in neutral, coasted toward the house and to a stop. Almost immediately they saw a figure in the darkness moving toward them, rapidly.

"I don't believe I ever saw a woman run that fast," Beau said.

"I didn't know a woman could run that fast," Mack said, as he jumped out of the car and held the door open. "Miz Hill," he said and after the barest hesitation, she got in. Mack closed the door and got into the back, the door not closed when Beau eased into gear and slid away from the Woodbridge house. "I'm Mack McGinnis and that's Beau Thatcher, Ruth's brother. We're taking you home."

With a great cry, Sadie Hill released all the emotion she'd pent up for the past two weeks. She wept so fiercely that Beau stopped the car, which stopped her tears. "Don't stop. Please, don't stop. Keep goin', Mr. Beau. Keep goin'." So he kept going—slow enough not to arouse suspicion, not so fast as to attract attention, and Mack stretched out in the back until they reached the Colored part of town because too many Colored people in a vehicle automatically drew white suspicion.

Sadie wept again, when in front of her house she saw three vehicles parked and from the chimney a thick plume of smoke and from the windows, lights. She jumped from the car and ran up the steps and flung open the door. It was a good thing that Beau and Mack were behind her because when all three children flung themselves at her, she was knocked backwards. She recovered her balance and immediately quieted the children who, though they needed her command to be quiet, refused to release their grip on her.

"I don't know how to thank y'all."

"You don't need to," Ruth said.

"Yes, I do," Sadie Hill said, sounding almost angry. "Ain't nobody ever done me a good deed in my life, and what you people done for me this day made up for a whole lifetime of hard luck, and I won't forget it. Not never. And I will, somehow, someway, do a good deed for each one of you. I mean that."

She shook each of the men's hands and hugged Gertrude and Ruth. "These three chil'ren is all I got left in this world. I don't know what happened to my…to Mr. Hill. He left goin' to work one day and just…I guess…kep' goin'. But I live for these chil'ren and I'm gon' do my best by 'em." She looked at Ruth. "Hazel gon' be at school on time ev'ry day from now on. And soon as I find me a job…" Emotion took over again and she wept, her children trying to comfort her. "I know that sounds crazy, don't it? Ain't no jobs in this world for Colored people, I know that. But I got to try. And I'll tell you this: I won't never work for no white folks again. Not never."

Mack and Beau exchanged a look that initially confused Ruth. Then she got it.

"Would you stop by my office in the morning when you drop Hazel off?"

Sadie said she would, and she thanked them all again, this time hugging everybody, the men included, and when they stepped out into the frigid night, they realized how warm it finally had gotten in Sadie's house.

Gert and George said good night and hurried to their vehicles. Mack opened the door for Ruth, put her in the car, and then turned to have a whispered conversation with Beau.

"I know what you're up to," Ruth yelled through the closed car door. Mack opened it and stuck his head in.

"You think it's a good idea?"

"It's a wonderful idea," she said, and added, "I want to go too." When both Beau and Mack shook their heads, she said, "I thank you, too, for what you did tonight."

"You did right to help her," Beau said, heading for his car. "I'll call y'all when I get home."

Mack got in the car and started it but didn't put it into gear. He sat looking at the house—the shack, really—that Sadie Hill called home. It looked like every other home on the block and on the adjacent ones. "What you did for those little children tonight, Ruth—you saved their lives is what you did. It was good and it was right, like Beau said. I don't know what made you tell that woman you'd go get her, but I'm glad you did."

"Hazel hadn't been to school in a week, and I hadn't noticed. She was skin and bone and wearing rags and I hadn't noticed. I'm not good, Mack."

"How many don't show up every day? And you feed them out of your own pocket and Miss Gert brings clothes and George brings firewood and coal because y'all know they're hungry and cold and raggedy. What else can you do—especially when the school board is doing nothing? Those crackers ought to be shot!"

Ruth sighed, rubbed her eyes. "Hazel is one of the brightest children in that school, but it doesn't matter because we both know that she'll have to go to work as soon as her Ma can find two jobs—one for herself and one for Hazel—" She stopped mid-sentence and turned toward her husband. "That child cannot work in a gambling parlor!"

Mack chuckled, patted his wife's arm, put the car in gear and eased away, taking extra care on the deeply rutted, unpaved road. "We don't know for sure that Sadie's even going to have a job there, so don't you start worrying before time."

"I think Tobias will forget he's mad at Beau and give him a big ol' hug. He can't be happy about Belle being…doing…working…what does she do, exactly?"

"I don't have any idea, but I think you're right: Whatever it is, no man in his right mind would want his wife working there, especially in Belle's condition. She looks 'bout ready to have that baby any minute now."

They rode in silence for a while, knowing that they were having the same feelings and thinking the same thoughts, especially about being in a hurry to retrieve their own children and take them home. But the thought of her own children returned Ruthie to thoughts of those she was responsible for every day at the Ashdale Elementary School—Colored children abandoned by the education authorities who didn't care whether they learned or not, didn't care whether their school buildings had heat and lights, didn't care if there was food to feed their bodies or books to feed their minds. Didn't care if there were enough teachers to fill the classrooms and didn't think it necessary to pay the few teachers who remained even half what the white teachers were paid.

"I did what I did tonight because I'm tired of white people and their meanness. Their evil! When I told Sadie Hill I'd come get her, I wasn't thinking about those children, I was thinking about how that woman was stolen from her family, just like those people were stolen from Africa and brought here to be slaves. That woman was a slave in that house and neither she nor us could do anything about it. We don't have not one law that helps us or protects us. All their laws, every one they make, tells us what we can't do, where we can't go, and I'm sick of it, Mack." She was crying as hard as Sadie Hill had cried earlier, and maybe for the same reasons. But just as there had been nothing he or Beau could have done or said to ease Sadie, there was nothing he could do or say to soothe his wife.

They agreed to pick up Nellie first, from his parents, then gather the boys from her father's. All had been fed dinner and were practically asleep, but the arrival of their parents spurred them into wakefulness, and the boys were especially pleased to see their baby sister and she them. She giggled with delight as she was passed from brother to brother for a hug and a kiss, then finally to her grandfather who swung her high over his head and held her there for a moment gazing at her, before lowering her into a tight hug and gently whispered, "My Nellie."

"My GaPa," she whispered back to him in his ear, rubbing his back the way he rubbed hers. Their bond was special, and it was as heartbreaking to witness as it was heartwarming: She, the girl finally born to her parents after three sons, as Ruth finally came to her parents after four sons—and named Nellie after the grandmother she'd never know. Nellie, the name of the wife GaPa mourned and missed every day of his life. "I got my Nellie back," he'd whisper to the child. "My Nellie."

With Nellie nestled in one arm, Big Si Thatcher enveloped his four grandsons in the other, pulling them in tight and close and planting a kiss on top of each of their heads and threatening, as always, to sprinkle them with Stop Growing So Tall Powder. Truth be told, he wouldn't be able to kiss the tops of their heads much longer and the old man, as he often did, marveled at the miracle of creation that was playing out before him for the second time in his life: Boys growing into men in the blink of an eye, a girl into a woman. He loved his grandchildren with the same passion and pride he'd visited upon his children and took every opportunity to tell them so.

Ruthie kissed his cheek and would have relieved him of Nellie but he wouldn't let her go. "Everything went all right, then," he said, a statement, not a question.

"Fine, Pa," Ruth answered.

"Better than fine," Mack said. "Like a miracle, really."

"Speaking of which," Big Si said, disentangling himself momentarily from the four boys still snuggling under his arm and reaching for an envelope on the table. "What do you make of this?"

Mack took the envelope and his eyes widened as he read the front of it. He passed it to Ruth and her surprise was greater than his. "Open it!"

Mack read the front of the envelope again: TO Mack McGinnis Construction Company, Ashby St. Alley, Belle City, Georgia. But it was the return address that grabbed their attention: EDWARDS/THATCHER REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT CO., Carries Crossing, GA. He opened the envelope and removed a single sheet of paper. Ruth watched his face, his eyes, as he read. Her father and her children watched Ruth as she waited for Mack's response to whatever the miracle envelope contained. With apparent effort, Mack tore his eyes from the paper and held it out to his wife. "Did you know that Jonas had a real estate company?"

"No, I didn't," Ruth said, taking the paper but keeping her eyes on her husband. "What does that have to do with you?"

"This is an invitation to bid on a construction project in the Crossing. On Jonas's construction project."

 

***

 

– Carrie's Crossing –

Jonas

 

When the telephone jangled at seven minutes before eight o'clock, Audrey didn't even look up from the Saturday Evening Post she was reading. Nobody would call her that early in the morning; the phone would be for Jonas. Still holding the piece of bacon he'd just bitten, he got up and went to the phone in the hallway and swallowed before he answered. Good thing he had because he almost choked when he heard Beau Thatcher's voice.

"How are you, Jonas?"

"I'm real fine, Beau, yourself?"

"I'm good, and everybody over here is good so I don't want you worryin' 'bout why I'm ringing your telephone so early in the morning."

Jonas laughed softly. "I guess you know me pretty well."

"I guess I ought to," Beau replied, the tiniest hint of times past in his voice. "I'm sorry to call so early, 'specially since what I want to say might rub you the wrong way and I truly don't mean to do that, to say something you might take offense to."

Jonas, taken completely and totally off guard, didn't, for a long moment, know how to respond, and he knew that Beau would know that, allowing time for Jonas to recover.

Then Beau said, "I know you got that bid opening at eight o'clock. Mack is probably parked outside your office right now, waiting for the clock to tell him it's all right to go inside..."

"It is all right, Beau. I wouldn't have sent him the invitation to bid if it wasn't."

"That's not what I mean." Beau inhaled so deeply that Jonas heard it down the telephone line. "And Mack's got nothin' to do with my thinkin' so if it makes you mad, don't take it out on him."

"What in the world?" Jonas let his exasperation fully express itself. "What are you going on about? What could you say that would make me that mad?"

"I keep thinkin' and rememberin' how we lost our house. How the tax office closed up that day and we didn't know 'bout it."

It took a full five seconds for Jonas to understand what Beau was talking about and one second for him to respond. "Why you saying something like that to me, Beau?"

"'Cause I know Horace Edwards, know the kinda man he is."

Jonas did too, and the sudden memory of his partner's insistence that Jonas didn't need to arrive early for the bid opening caused his stomach to jump. "I'm going to the office right now, Beau, and I promise you if Mack's there, his bid will get the exact same attention as anybody else's."

"Can't ask for any more'n that. Thank you, Jonas."

He pressed the bar to disconnect Beau's call and quickly dialed the office, fully expecting Horace to answer. Instead, the line rang and rang. Horace should be there. He slammed down the receiver and ran up the stairs. Good thing he'd already bathed and shaved and that Audrey had laid out his clothes. He stripped off his pajamas and threw on his pants, shirt and shoes and, carrying his suit jacket and tie, rushed back down the stairs and into the kitchen, startling his wife. His kiss landed somewhere to the left of her mouth. "I gotta go. I'll call you later."

"Jonas!" she cried out, but he didn't hear her. He was out the door, down the steps and halfway to the car.

Taking the back way to the office naturally would have been quicker, but that road—the old Colored Town Road—was being paved and, despite his protestations, was being re-named Thatcher Road. It was a few minutes after eight when he pulled up in front the Edwards/Thatcher Real Estate Development office and saw Mack McGinnis getting into a pickup truck that had McGINNIS CONSTRUCTION painted on the side. He tapped his horn as he slowed to a stop. He leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window. "Mack," he said, and he could tell by the look the other man gave him that Beau's suspicions were correct.

"You left your bid, didn't you?"

"No, Jonas, I didn't because nobody was there to leave it with." Mack gave him a long look. "But somebody's inside your office. I saw a white fella go in as I was parking. I know him. Jasper and Sons Construction. I was on here on time, Jonas."

"Your bid will get the same consideration as the others, Mack."

The other man's response was overridden by a blaring horn. They were blocking several parked cars, and somebody wanted to move one of them. Jonas signaled that he'd move his car. They didn't speak as Jonas waited for the other car to leave and took its parking space. They didn't speak as they walked back to the Jonas's office. At the front door, they met Grady Allen who, because he was driven by his chauffeur that morning, hadn't had the problem of looking for a parking space.

"'Morning, Jonas," he said extending his hand, and, turning to Mack, "Do I know you, young man?"

"This is Mack McGinnis, Grady. Beau Thatcher's brother-in-law," Jonas said.

"Of course. I've heard all about you," the banker said, extending his hand. "I understand you're quite a fine builder of homes, Mr. McGinnis."

Mack, taken aback, didn't know what to say and was saved from having to figure something out by the opening of the office door. Horace Edwards's grin froze in its place when he saw who was with his son-in-law partner and his banker. Jonas pushed him back out of the way, gestured for the older man to enter, then Mack. He closed the door behind him and swung around to face Horace so fast that the man, backing up out of the way, stumbled and only kept himself from falling by grabbing the edge of a desk.

"Dammit, Jonas. What's wrong with you?"

"Who are these people?" Jonas said, pointing to three men standing at the rear of the office. Then, addressing them directly, "Who are you?"

"I'm Alvin Jasper, this is my brother—"

Horace asserted himself and stepped between Jonas and the other men. "These are the fellas who got their bids in on time."

Jonas walked over to them. "What time did you get here?" He turned quickly to Horace and raised a hand to stop him from speaking and turned back to the men. "Well?"

"We all were here at seven-thirty, just like Mr. Edwards told us to be," Jasper said and looked to Horace for confirmation.

"The letter we sent—the invitation to bid—that letter said eight o'clock."

"Yeah," Jasper said, "but then Horace—Mr. Edwards—he called and said to be here at seven-thirty."

"I see. Well, thank you. We'll consider all the proposals and notify you by mail of our decision." Jonas walked to front door and opened it.

"What about him?" Jasper said, pointing at Mack.

"What about him?" Jonas said, the challenge in his voice cold and cutting.

"His bid is late."

"His bid is none of your business."

Jasper and the other men looked to Horace for help. Horace was looking to Grady Allen for help. Grady Allen was looking at his watch as if it could explain the reason for the time discrepancies. The men finally left with a last questioning look at Horace. Jonas closed and locked the door then looked from Horace to Mack to Grady as if deciding whom to address first. The banker relieved him of the decision. "If you didn't have Jonas for a partner, I'd never do a dollar's worth of business with you again," he said. "I don't believe I've ever heard of anything so underhanded. I don't do business that way, Horace, and I don't do business with people who do."

"And I don't do business with niggers," Horace said. "I told you that, Jonas."

Ignoring Horace, he walked back to the desk and picked up the two bids. He read through them quickly, each three pages, then turned to Mack. "Can I see your bid?"

Mack handed over a thick envelope which Jonas opened. He spread out a sheaf of papers, read intently for several seconds, then whistled. "Will you look at this."

They did. "Where did you get this, boy?" Horace snarled. He whirled around to face Mack when there was no response. "I asked you a question."

"What do you mean, where did I get it? It's my proposal. I wrote it out and my wife typed it up for me."

"What about the blueprints?" Horace snarled.

"I'm a draughtsman," Mack replied.

"Let me see the others," Grady Allen said, then, "You only sent out three?"

"We sent out five," Jonas said. "What happened to the other two, Horace?"

"I know these boys, the Jaspers and Billy Mike O'Connor. I've worked with them before. They're good—"

"What happened to the other two, Horace?"

"I told 'em I didn't need 'em this time, that I'd have work for 'em later on. This time around, I'm gonna let Billy Mike build the housing for the road crews and Jasper and his sons can build the bank, Grady."

"The McGinnis proposal is far superior to the others—"

"I told you I ain't havin' no nigger building nothin' for me."

"You don't tell me who will build my bank."

"Your bank is on my land."

Grady Allen looked at Mack. Then he gathered up the pages of Mack's proposal, returned them to the envelope and returned the envelope to Mack. "You put a lot of work into this, but it wasn't a total waste, Mr. McGinnis. I'd like you to build my bank." Then he looked at Jonas. "I believe you own some land in that area? Is it enough for the bank?"

"No, Grady," Horace exploded. "You can't do that!"

"With my money, Horace, I can do anything I want. What do you say, Mack? Want to build a bank? The First National Bank of Carrie's Crossing?"

Mack's heart was beating so hard and fast he thought it would explode through his chest. "I'd be pleased to build your bank, Mr. Allen."

"Then what say we go look at the site right now? I can tell you what I'm thinking and seeing and you come up with some sketches and plans—"

"Grady. Please don't do this."

Allen gave him a long look, the kind that sought to see beneath whatever was on the surface, right into the core. "Why not, Horace?"

"Because it's not right."

"What's not right," said Jonas, his voice sounding rusty, scratchy, as if he'd been silent for much longer than the last few minutes, "is what you did here this morning. You seem not to understand the nature of a partnership. You are not in business by yourself, Horace. I am your partner and Grady Allen is our banker. You don't make decisions alone—especially ones that involve my money and Grady's money. And you don't do dishonest business in my name. And if you ever do again, I will take every one of my dollars out of this company."

"You can't. Audrey won't stand for it."

Jonas gave him another hard look, then everything about him changed and he laughed out loud. "Mack," he said, "when you've finished looking at Grady's bank site, would you come by my house? My wife and I've been talking about putting on an addition or doing a renovation—I don't know what she wants to do—but whatever it is, I think you're just the man to do it."

Mack looked at Jonas and realized what he'd been asked, and remembered: Ruthie's house, Ruthie's home! Jonas and his wife wanted him to remodel Ruth's house. "I'd be honored to do work on your home, Mr. Thatcher," he said, and with those few words, all the years of distrust and dislike they harbored for each other dissipated. He looked from one man to the other. "Bank first? Then the house?" Both men nodded. "You'll have to direct me," Mack said, with a pointed look at Jonas, who got the message: Mack would be, as far as anybody was concerned, a stranger in Carrie's Crossing. He didn't think there was anybody still around who'd recognize him. He hadn't grown up here and none of the white residents would have known or cared who Ruth Thatcher married, wouldn't have known him to be in-laws to the Colored Thatchers.

"You can ride with me, Mack," Grady Allen said, and then he added, as if he'd been privy to Mack's thoughts, "You might know my driver. He used to live here. Or he had people who lived here—I'm not sure which. Fella by the name of Tom Jenks?"

Mack's head swam for a second before he got control of himself. "I'm not from these parts, Mr. Allen—Belle City is my home—though I do know quite a few people who are from around here, my wife included. I don't remember any Jenks family, though."

"If y'all don't mind," Horace said nastily, "can we get back to the business at hand, namely building the housing for the road construction crew? We're supposed to decide on a contractor today so we can get started."

"You already decided, Horace. Hire whoever you want. Just make sure I see the contract and that we both sign it. Otherwise it won't be worth a Confederate dollar."

Horace shot Jonas such a look of pure hatred that Mack wondered if it didn't hurt him somehow, didn't bruise or burn his skin. He held the door open for Allen and Jonas and followed them out, closing the door behind him. A Colored man in a black suit and cap jumped out of a shiny black Cadillac sedan and stood waiting. Tom Jenks, Mack thought. He'd never met the man. The only two of their family who had, Nellie Thatcher and First Freeman, were dead, but they all knew who he was: The man who let Nellie be murdered. Mack was moving like a man in a dream. All the joy and excitement he'd felt about telling Ruthie their Great Depression was over faded in the face of having to tell her, all of them, that their search for Tom Jenks was over. Then, he thought, he could not possibly ride in the same vehicle with the man. He'd strangle him!

Mack felt a hand on his arm: Jonas, one hand on him and the other reaching out for Grady Allen, already halfway to the door the chauffeur was holding open for him. "I've got an idea, Grady. If it's not too cold for Mack, I'm thinking we could walk to the bank site so I can show him a bit of the town, some of the development we've got planned, and he can see what's near where the bank will be, get a feel for things."

"Too cold for me, Jonas, but if you young men don't mind, I think that's a right good idea."

"Then we'll see you in a little while, Grady," Jonas said and waited for the older man to get into his car. Then he turned to Mack. "I'm sorry about this morning, Mack. Truly I am," and he was startled when Mack threw back his head and laughed.

"I'm not sorry. I'm gonna build a bank and work on a house that means as much to me as my own." He suddenly grew serious. "I am surprised, though, that a man like that is your partner. You don't seem to have much in common with him."

Jonas didn't know how to reply, so he didn't. He started walking, and Mack fell in beside him, looking all around as if he really were a stranger in town. He had given no thought to Carrie's Crossing since the night thirteen years before when they made their middle-of-the-night escape from the KKK, led by Jonas's father. Big Si, Ruthie, Beau, Tobias, Little Si, none of them ever spoke of Carrie's Crossing, and, like First Freeman, didn't call it or consider it home. Belle City was home for them. When they spoke of Nellie and Uncle Will, it was with love, not longing for a past time or place. So, Mack could look at the city of Carrie's Crossing with new eyes and if a memory of a person or a place surfaced, he'd file it away to tell Ruthie about...unless he felt he could ask Jonas about it. But nothing like that would happen in this part of town. When he searched his memory, he thought he'd been in the white section of Carrie's Crossing only once, and that was in a blizzard at the back door of Jonas's food market.

Jonas didn't talk much as they walked, except to speak to people who spoke to him and that was almost everyone they encountered. If any one of them wondered or took offense at the richest man in town walking about with a Colored man, Mack never heard, felt or saw evidence of it, which made Horace Edwards's behavior all the more odd. Why had Jonas ever partnered with such a man? He couldn't wait to talk to Ruthie about it. Also to tell her how good the town looked, almost "big city."

"The Depression doesn't seem to be hurting you all too bad over here. You opened up a new real estate business—congratulations, by the way—and Mr. Allen's building himself a new bank." Mack gave a wry chuckle. "Maybe Hoover was talkin' about you all over here in Carrie's Crossing when he kept claiming prosperity was just around the corner."

Jonas gave him a wry, crooked grin. "Oh, we're hurting plenty bad, Mack, it's just that most folks try to keep the evidence behind closed doors. Or rather in the backyard. Everybody—and I do mean everybody— is growing greens and cabbage and peas and corn out behind their houses, and half of 'em got chicken coops." Then he pointed to the stores they walked past, the OPEN signs prominent in the windows. "Most of these people come to work every day to have something to do, not because they're doing any real business. I do the same thing: I go to the grocery store every day, put my apron on and get behind the counter, whether anybody comes to buy or not."

"You don't go to the real estate office?" Mack asked, giving a hard look to Jonas in his suit, causing him to explain in the driest terms how he stumbled into the real estate business, how relieved he was to have his warehouse building being used despite his misgivings about the business itself, and how he still thought of himself as a grocer. Though, he added, he didn't mind if Roosevelt's New Deal was going to spell prosperity for Carrie's Crossing.

"Ah," Mack said, "the New Deal."

"You don't think Mr. Roosevelt is going to bring an end to this Depression?"

"I think some people will get a new deal and some people won't."

They walked in silence for a few steps, Mack trying to decide whether to tell Jonas about Sadie Hill, Jonas trying to think of something to say that wouldn't sound too stupid; of course people with little money to start with—white and Colored both—would be feeling the pain of the Depression like a Max Baer punch to the gut. Mack spoke first and when he finished telling Sadie Hill's story, he told Jonas about Silas's plan to move to Chicago and the reason for it. Jonas was speechless for a long moment. Then his face lit up in wide, happy grin. "Ruthie's a school principal! And when I see Si I'm gonna have to call him Doctor! I'm real proud of the both of them, Mack. Will you tell 'em that for me, please? Will you tell 'em both that I'm real proud?" He said nothing about Sadie Hill, most probably, Mack thought, either because there was nothing to be said or he was thinking about people he knew, people like Horace Edwards, who'd treat the Sadie Hills of the world the same way without a single moment's hesitation. But he did speak to the issue of the poor treatment of Colored schools by the board of education…in a way: He told Mack that he knew of four school buildings scheduled for complete renovations, courtesy of the WPA, three of them in Belle City and the one in Carrie's Crossing. None of the contractors would be Colored. Neither would the renovated schools. "You're right. Same old deal." But Mack couldn't tell whether Jonas thought there was anything wrong with that; his tone of voice gave no indication.

Grady Allen stepped out of his Cadillac as they approached, excitement lighting up his face. It faltered and faded when he saw the grim expressions of the two younger men. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Mack here was just telling me how there's not so much of a New Deal in his part of Belle City."

"No," the banker said, "I imagine that's true."

Knowing that he had to change the mood, and quickly, Mack straightened himself and gave his head a patrician tilt. "I think I'll start calling myself Mack Roosevelt since I'll be starting my own new deal," he said, imitating the President's distinctive drawl. "Between building your bank, Mr. Allen, and renovating your house, Mr. Thatcher, I'll be putting enough men back to work to make a difference to a whole lot of families."

They looked at him, at first not certain what he was talking about and then, their faces and manner still very serious despite his attempt to inject a bit of lightness and humor, they both nodded.

"I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right," Grady Allen exclaimed. "You can't build a bank by yourself or renovate a house by yourself. You have to hire men to work for you." He kept nodding his head. "Good. Good." Then he walked a few steps away from them and pointed toward the empty field adjacent to the school. "That's where I was going to put the bank. But down the road, what, Jonas? A quarter mile? Turn right and that's where Jonas owns a few parcels. Bigger than this one, actually, when you put 'em together." The old man seemed to be talking to himself, thinking through ideas and plans only he knew about.

Mack began walking up the road. Jonas followed for a few steps, then halted as Mack turned around and came back to them. "That's where the new WPA road is coming from, isn't it? And where it'll connect to the old Colored Town Road?" And when he got confirmation of what he already knew to be true, Mack suggested that would be a better place for the bank. "When that road is built, all kinds of cars will be coming through, some coming here to the Crossing, others going on through to BC, but all of 'em riding right past your bank. Right here, next to the school, nobody will see it but the people who already live here." Mack stopped talking. He knew what he said made sense, but the decision wasn't his and it didn't matter to him where the man wanted to build his bank. What suddenly and overwhelmingly mattered to Mack was whether he could, actually, really and truly, build it. He knew he could build a house—any kind of house. But a bank. What had he gotten himself into? Why had he said he could build a bank when he'd never done such a thing? Suppose he couldn't?

"Next Monday morning, nine o'clock, Mr. McGinnis," Grady Allen said, "will you come to my office at the Belle City bank? And bring your drafting pad?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Allen," Mack said, knowing it was too late to say anything else.

"Good, because we're going to design ourselves a bank. And Jonas? I'll need something from you saying I've got permission to build a bank on your land and what you intend to charge me for the privilege."

The man shook their hands, got into the backseat of his car and appeared to think no more about them as he immediately began reading a newspaper. Chauffeur Tom Jenks tipped his hat in their direction, got behind the wheel, and drove slowly away. Mack let out a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. "Do you have a surveyor's map of that land, Jonas?"

He nodded. "It's at home. You have time to go look at my house now?"

Mack nodded and they walked back to where their vehicles were parked. Mack got in his truck, Jonas got in his Packard, and they drove to the house that had been home to them both and to give Audrey Edwards Thatcher the shock of her life.

"I didn't think he was paying any attention to me at all, Mr. McGinnis, when I'd talk to him about what I wanted to do. I thought he was ignoring me." Audrey was more excited than Jonas had ever seen her, which made him almost sorry that he hadn't thought to call Mack months ago. Jonas followed behind the two of them as they walked around the house, back to front, front to back, twice, three times. Mack readily agreed that yes, it was possible to add an enclosed porch to the back of the house from top to bottom, that it would pose no difficulty to open the back of the house to receive the addition. It was when Mack suggested adding wings to either side of the house and creating a formal entry hall at the front that Audrey all but swooned. She jumped up and down like a little girl, happiness pouring from her like water from a spigot. She could discuss her plans for the house for the next hour. Jonas could not.

"I've got to get back to the office and to the store, Audrey. You and Mack can make your plans and fill me in later."

Mack was so startled he couldn't speak for a moment. He quickly gathered his wits and addressed Audrey. "Let me make some drawings, Mrs. Thatcher, which I'll send to you for your approval. You'll be able to write on them, tell me what you like, what you don't like, until we come up with a final plan." He looked at Jonas. "Is that acceptable?"

"Of course," Jonas said, not hiding his annoyance with Mack.

"It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Thatcher."

"I'm thrilled, Mr. McGinnis. When can you get started?"

"As soon as you all approve the plans and give me the OK." He shook her hand and followed Jonas down the front steps and around the house to the back where their vehicles were parked and then released his anger. "Don't you know you can't leave me in your house with your wife, Jonas? What were you thinking?"

Jonas was totally confused. "What's wrong with you, Mack?"

Mack was furious. And frightened. "I'm a Colored man. She's a white woman—and your wife. That's what's wrong with me."

As it dawned on Jonas what Mack meant, his steps faltered and he tripped, almost falling. Mack caught him, steadied him, and they looked at each other, each man seeing the other as they had that night long ago, Mack the man on the inside of the house with a wife to protect, Jonas the interloper standing outside.

"I didn't think...nobody would," Jonas said. "Audrey's... she's not that kind of person, Mack, to say...things."

Mack had heard from Ruthie and her family for years how Jonas was not like other white men, had heard it and even had seen evidence to prove the point. However, he couldn't believe that even if the man didn't behave like his brethren, he didn't know where the perils and pitfalls lay. "Don't forget the kind of man your father-in-law is," Mack said and hurried to get into his truck and be on his way before Jonas left.

Jonas was too shocked to move, not even when Audrey came running down the front steps, hurling herself at him. This time, he was stone to her bubbling excitement.

"What's the matter, Jonas? And why did Mr. McGinnis leave like that?"

He told her and was surprised when she understood immediately. "I didn't even think about that. Poor man. Whoever would do such a thing? Make up a lie just to get somebody in trouble?"

"The lies don't just get 'em in trouble, Audrey, they get 'em lynched. As for the who: Your ma and your pa would do such a thing. Your brothers."

"No, Jonas, they wouldn't. I don't believe it."

He told her what Horace had done that very morning and then left her standing there in the chilly morning air while he went to confront the man who was her father, the man she loved more than she loved her husband, and he wished that she had come with him when Horace's first words were, "Did you leave that nigger in the house with my daughter?"

Jonas hit him then, punched him right in the nose, and was glad that Audrey was not with him. Blood spurted and Horace fell to his knees, cursing and crying. Jonas wanted to hit him again, but he wanted more not to have to be in the man's presence any longer. "Get up, Horace, and wash your face so we can talk about who's going to build the dormitories for the construction workers. But I tell you, I've got a mind not to do it. Just not to be bothered."

"That's too much money to let go, Jonas. The rent, the groceries, the furniture." Even gushing blood, Horace Edwards didn't lose sight of money-making opportunities.

"And if I do lose it, it'll be your fault. The McGinnis proposal was the best one and you know it. These?" He snatched up the two remaining bids and waved them at Horace. "They're not worth a depression nickel." He threw the papers on the desk and they flew into the air and toward the floor. "What materials they gonna use? What's the start date? The completion date? What are the payment dates? Penalties? None of that stuff is in here, Horace."

"Is it in the...other one?" Horace asked, struggling to get to his feet.

"Yeah, it is. All that and more, including a couple of different drawings of what the buildings could look like, letting us make the choice."

"Then get him to give it to you. My man can build it from his plans."

Jonas grabbed Horace by his shirt front and hauled him to his feet and pulled him in close, not caring about the dripping blood. "You get two proper bids in here by tomorrow this time. We got to have that housing built by the end of March." Jonas released the older man and pushed him away then Jonas turned and headed for the door. "I'm going to the store."

"Why'd you do it, Jonas?"

"Do what?"

"Ask him to bid. Why?"

Without turning or answering, Jonas walked out, closing the door hard, and trying to find an answer. The right answer. Why had he invited Mack McGinnis to bid? Most likely because he remembered Beau and First Freeman talking about what a master builder the man was. If he were honest with himself, he'd have to admit that it certainly was not because he had any idea of the man's professional proficiency. Maybe it was about Ruth: She still haunted his memory and his thoughts. But no, it wasn't that. It was, he realized, that he thought he could get the job done more cheaply; that McGinnis, being Colored, would be so happy to be working that he'd do the job for less. He envisioned the dollar amounts of the three bids. Mack's was the lowest. He went back inside the office. Horace, wet towel to his face, was dialing the telephone.

"When you talk to Jasper and O'Connor, tell 'em to knock fifteen percent off their bids," Jonas said. "And tell 'em it's your fault they're not making a killing on this job."

"You're a bastard, Jonas."

"Takes one to know one, Horace."

 

From the Recorded Memories of Ruth Thatcher McGinnis

What should have been a wonderful couple of years suddenly became nightmarish. Those two years—1936 and 1937—were the heart of the Depression for almost every Colored person in America, but for a precious few of us in Belle City, Georgia, those years began a period of prosperity, and if I'm honest, I have to thank Jonas Thatcher. When Mack was hired to build Carrie's Crossing's first bank and renovate Jonas's house, he was able to put to work, almost overnight, about twenty men. And the way we were looking out for each other back then, that meant forty families lifted out of poverty. Mack had to hire a subcontractor to help with the bank because he had no idea how to put a steel vault inside a building. The fella he hired was white and a much bigger contractor than Mack, but he was so grateful to have work that from that day forward, every job he got, he offered Mack work. Then, when people saw what he'd done to Jonas and Audrey's house, everybody wanted him to build or renovate their homes. He was so busy that he was away from home more than he was present, which gave me the opportunity to leave the school system on a positive note instead of an angry one, because I truly was angry at how we had been treated. I was able to resign, I told the superintendent, because I was needed at home, and I was. My Pa and Mack's parents were getting too old to keep up with young children. For that matter, there were days when I felt too old to keep up with them. By the end of 1937, we were financially set for life, Mack and me and the children. I should've know better than to expect it to last…no, it's not cynical, it's realistic. I'd experienced it—overwhelming good fortune, followed by excruciating pain and disappointment. Sorrow follows joy as night follows day. What? Lose our money? Oh, no. We didn't lose our money. That we could have withstood. Money could have been replaced. No, we lost…Sissy, please turn off the recorder now. I can't…that's enough for now, please.

 

***

 

–Belle City–

Ruthie

 

It was times like this that Ruthie sorely regretted having left the structured and mandated order of Ashdale Elementary School for the absolutely unpredictable life of full-time wife, mother, and student. The wife and mother part were manageable, though she knew women who marveled at her ability to keep all six of those balls—five children and one husband—safely in the air. She had an excellent role model: Her mother, who'd managed a home of five children, a husband, and an uncle; a twenty-plus acre farm that usually employed a dozen workers; and was central to a community. No, the family and the home didn't pose a challenge for Ruthie. Completing a dissertation, however, was proving to be more than a mere challenge; it was a mountain that grew taller every day. She no longer knew why she'd ever thought she needed a Ph.D. And in French! She'd more than made good on her promise to learn the language—she was fluent—and she knew as much about the history and geography of the country as it was possible to learn from a book. However, since she'd had no contact with her brother for more than five years now and since it became less likely with every passing year that she'd be able to journey across the Atlantic Ocean to look for him, the pursuit of things French seemed an absurd one. But what else would she do with her time? All five of the children went to school every day, none more enthusiastically than Nellie, and Mack worked, ate, and slept.

She was so relieved when the telephone rang that she sprung up from the desk and all but ran down the hallway to answer it.

"McGinnis residence."

"Good day, Miz McGinnis, and I'm sorry to bother you. This is Grady Allen."

"Good day to you, Mr. Allen, and you're not bothering me at all, and I'm sure you want Mack, but he's not here."

"No, m'am, it's you I want…"

Ruthie sat down hard in the chair beside the telephone stand. The man's words and tone of his voice—Beau! "Mr. Allen! Beau? Is it about Beau?"

"Yes, ma'am, it is. He's…I think you'd better come and get him. He's here at my house. And he's…not well, Miz McGinnis. He's sick."

She wrote down the address Grady Allen gave her, along with his telephone number. Then she sat holding the handset until she heard the operator asking her to please hang up. She did, and still she sat. Her brain had ceased to function in a logical and linear fashion. Beau was sick. She had to go get him. She couldn't. What to do? Beau is who they all turned to when there was a problem—Beau and Mack. And now it was Beau who needed help and Mack was—she didn't know where he was.

She forced herself to her feet and found herself in the kitchen. She turned around and went back to the phone. Pa would know what to do. She dialed his number but then quickly put the phone down. Pa was sick, too—something with his heart. He wasn't to get upset, the doctor said, and Beau being so sick that they had to go get him would surely upset him. Silas was in Chicago. Tobias! She would ask Tobias to go with her. She donned coat, hat and gloves, grabbed her purse and keys, and ran out of the house, then ran back in to get Grady Allen's address and was back out and in the car faster than she would have thought she could move. It reminded her of what Beau and Mack said about Sadie Hill the night they rescued her.

"Beau. Beau. Oh, please be all right, Beau."

The curtains were drawn at Toby and Belle's house, and a small stream of smoke drifted lazily from the chimney. It hadn't occurred to her to call first, but surely they'd be home; where else would they be? The barber and beauty businesses had been closed for years now, and, as she understood it, they didn't go to the gambling parlor until night. So, Toby would be home. She prayed that he would be home.

Sadie Hill opened the door to her knock and each woman showed her surprise at the sight of the other. "Miz McGinnis. What you doin' here? What's wrong? Somebody is sick? Your Pa? Mr. Thatcher?"

"Calm down, Sadie, please. Pa is fine. It's Beau—"

"Mr. Beau! What's wrong with Mr. Beau?"

"He's sick, and I need Toby to go with me to get him."

Sadie stiffened and her expressive face, which had, in the last few seconds, registered shock, joy, pain and sorrow, shuttered like a window in a storm. "Oh, I don't know 'bout that, Miz McGinnis."

"There's nothing for you to know, Sadie. Tobias is my brother and I need him to help me bring Beau home. Now, go get him, please."

Now her face re-opened and anguish is what was there, and shame. "You don't know 'bout how things is with your brother these days, Miz McGinnis."

Ruthie snapped. "I don't know what you're talking about Sadie, and I don't have time to listen to it. Tell Tobias I need him right now. I don't care if he just got home from his gambling two minutes ago."

At that moment Belle appeared behind Sadie, covering a yawn with one hand and holding a red silk robe together with the other, the nails of both hands and her lips the same siren red as the robe. "It's me just got home from the club, Ruthie, and what Sadie is tryin' so hard not to tell you is that whatever it is you want with Tobias, you can't have it because he's on the drugs."

Ruth didn't understand and said as much. Belle yawned again, told Sadie that it was fine to explain it, excused herself, and left them standing there. Sadie hung her head and mumbled something, then lifted her head and repeated it: "He's a heroin addict, Miz McGinnis. Like them jazz musicians what you read about in the magazines."

"That's absurd. Where is he? Where's Toby?" Ruth pushed past Sadie into the dark and heavily curtained living room. Jazz played on the radio and smoke rose in a spiral from an ashtray on the floor next to a big, overstuffed easy chair, in which Toby sprawled. Ruthie knew that it was Toby because it must be. What other man would be sprawled in the easy chair in Toby's living room? A room that looked and smelled like a...like a...gambling parlor.

"Miz McGinnis." Sadie pulled on Ruth's sleeve, tried to prevent her from getting any closer to Tobias. She shook off her hand and walked up to him.

"Toby, Toby. Wake up!" She reached out, grabbed his arm, shook him. "Toby! Wake up! Beau's sick and we have to go get him."

Tobias shifted in the chair and his eyes opened to narrow slits. He mumbled a bit, things that didn't sound like words, and he smiled lazily. Then his eyes closed again, the lazy smile still in place. For a long moment, Ruth did nothing, thought nothing. She stood like a statue, immobile, emotionless, staring at what once had been her brother, her friend. At the thought of yet another brother lost, anger rose in her like the cigarette smoke in the ashtray and she grabbed Toby's shirt front with more strength than she'd have thought she possessed and pulled him almost straight up. "Wake up!" she yelled at him. "Do you hear me, Tobias Thatcher? Wake up!"

"No, he probably can't hear you," Belle said from behind her. Startled, Ruthie released Toby and he flopped back into the chair like a rag doll. "And if he does hear you, he doesn't understand you, doesn't understand what you want or why you want it." Belle bent down and picked up the cigarette that was burning in the ashtray, put it to her mouth and inhaled, then stubbed it out. She angled her head up and blew smoke from the corner of her mouth, away from Ruth, then lowered her head and met her eyes. "But the really bad, really hard thing to take, Ruth, is that he doesn't care. If he heard what you said, if he understood what you said, what you wanted—he wouldn't care. That's what hurts."

"How did you let him get like this, Belle?"

"I didn't let him. Nobody lets a person start using that stuff, and nobody can stop 'em once they start. He'd have to want to stop." She looked down at her husband, then turned away from him, took Ruth's arm and led her toward the front door. "This is how Tobias decided to deal with the Depression and with white folks. He escaped. For him, the Depression is over and white folks don't exist."

"But that's crazy."

"'Course it is, but Tobias don't know that."

Ruth kept the front door closed; she wasn't yet ready to leave. She had to understand. "What about the children?"

"What about 'em, Ruthie? Do they know their pa is...sick? Yeah, they do. Do they understand what it is and why? 'Bout like I do. But I know what it is you're really asking: Suppose that happens to one of them? And you want the honest truth? I would rather one of 'em be on the dope than locked up by some crazy white people or bein' called nigger every day of their lives, workin' theirselves into bad health for four or five dollars a week. I know you don't think what I do is respectable, Ruth, but don't nobody call me nigger and I make more money than most folks, Colored or white, and if this is what my chil'ren do 'stead of cleanin' up after white folks—well, all right with me."

"But suppose they want to be doctors or lawyers or teachers?"

Belle gave her a slow, lazy smile; not the kind of lazy one Toby had given, but lazy like a cat stretching after a nap. "Well, that'd be all right—the doctor or lawyer part—but not the school teacher part. You and Silas showed us 'bout how much that's worth."

Ruthie stumbled down the walkway to her car, the only clear thought in her mind was the need to get Beau and bring him home because he was her last brother. Eubie was lost somewhere in France. Si may not have been lost but wherever he was in Chicago, he was of no use or value to her now. And Tobias—he certainly was lost. Where was Mack working? She should know…Big Mack. That's who would go with her. She needed to turn around and go the other way, but she found that she couldn't see to back up. She was crying. She had to stop. She had to get control of herself. Beau needed her.

Family and friends always used the kitchen door at Big Mack and Clara's but Ruth went to the front door and rang the bell—as much to guarantee that Big Mack would be the one to open the door as to save time. But when her father-in-law opened the door, expecting a stranger, she fell into his arms, weeping so hard she frightened him. His panicked call for Clara brought her at a dead run, and Ruthie realized too late that they thought something had happened to Mack or one of the children.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking," she said, but she couldn't stop crying.

"You're going to make yourself sick," Clara said, shushing and soothing her, and after a few minutes, she calmed down enough to tell them everything. Big Mack had his hat and coat on in seconds. Clara said she'd pick the children up from school, take them home and wait there for Mack. "Where will you take Beau? Do you want to bring him here?"

Ruthie thought about that. It was a good idea, but she knew that Pa would want him at home if he were sick. She enjoyed a moment's refuge in her mother-in-law's strong embrace. "I'm so sorry that I frightened you."

"The fright leaves with the fear. Mack and the children are all right. That means we have the strength to take care of Beau." She looked at her husband. "And Tobias."

Big Mack snorted a response that was less than agreeable, took Ruthie's arm, and led her out of the front door and down the walkway. She gave him the keys and when they got in the car, she read him Grady Allen's address. "I know where that is," he said and headed north. "I know Beau's been acquainted with Mr. Allen for some while, but I don't know how that came about. And I know Beau's been chauffeuring them for 'bout a year now, but I don't know how that came about, either. Can you tell me, Ruthie, before we get there so I know what's what?"

It was, she thought, not only a reasonable request but an excellent way to get her calm and quiet before they got there, so she began talking. She knew very well how Beau and Mr. Allen became acquainted, and the memories invoked in the telling did what Big Mack wanted: They calmed and steadied her. She found a deep joy in the memory of her mother and of First Freeman, of Beau's first motor vehicle and of their first visits to Belle City, of Beau's eventual healing from the brutality of his experiences in The Great War.

"I know Mack thinks a lot of him, and I must say he sounds like a good man, Mr. Grady Allen does," Big Mack said.

Ruthie nodded. "I think that's true. I know he thinks highly of Beau." What she didn't know, though, was how or why Beau became the Allen's chauffeur. "I know that Beau likes automobiles—likes driving them, fixing them, polishing them. But I also know that he does not like the idea of working for white people, Grady Allen included, and I don't know what changed his mind about that."

"Well, we're 'bout to find out. This is the street," Big Mack said, turning on to a wide boulevard with houses the size of hotels looming on both sides and set so far back from the road they'd be invisible in the spring and summer when leaves were on the trees. "And this is the number," he said, turning into the long drive leading to the house.

"Good Lord," Ruthie exclaimed when Grady Allen's house became visible.

"How many people live here?" Big Mack asked.

Ruthie shook her head; she didn't know. She'd heard Beau and Mack speak of Mr. and Mrs. Allen but never of children or grandchildren. And given their descriptions of the Allens, they were elderly, so any children would be grown and gone. "All of our houses would fit inside this one—yours, mine, Pa's, Catherine's—with rooms left over."

Big Mack automatically drove around to the back of the house where its size was even more evident. And there was a swimming pool, just like in some Hollywood movie magazine. He parked the car adjacent to the Service Delivery Entrance and they got out, and all of Ruthie's fear and trepidation returned in a rush. She grabbed Big Mack's arm and they approached the door. It opened before they could ring the bell. The man who opened it could only be Grady Allen. He was tall and thin with just the slightest hint of a stoop, but he had a full head of white hair, and the crinkles around his eyes were proof of a man who looked at the world with a sense of enjoyment.

"You are Miz McGinnis, and I can't tell you how pleased I am to make your acquaintance, though I do wish it had occurred under different circumstances." He held her hand tightly for a moment, then released it, ushered her inside, and turned his gaze on Big Mack. "And this must be your…why, no. Not your pa, Mack's. The resemblance is quite strong. That's a fine, fine boy, you have Mr. McGinnis, though I'm sure you both know that."

He ushered them through a storage area and into an industrial-sized kitchen that was warm and aromatic: Several things were cooking, the overwhelming smells being of roast beef and pastry. He led them to a table set with a coffee pot and three cups and a covered cake dish with a knife and three forks and plates. Ruthie wanted to scream. This was not a social visit. Where was Beau? She wanted Beau.

"I know you want your brother, but I'd appreciate it if you'd sit for a moment, have some coffee and cake, and let me explain. It's my fault, you see—"

"Please, Mr. Allen. Just tell us," Ruthie said.

He sighed deeply and dropped down into one of the chairs. Ruthie and Big Mack could only join him at the table. "Beau was arrested—"

Ruthie gasped. "But you said he was here."

"He is, he is. I made them bring him here to me when I found out—" He inhaled deeply and released the breath in a whoosh. "Beau drove us, my wife and me, to a New Year's Day celebration at our daughter's house over in Stevensville. We got there around eleven in the morning because it was our granddaughter's Sweet Sixteen birthday and we wanted to be there to open presents with her. But it's also New Year's Day, so there were people in and out all day, and food and drink and even a live band for dancing. It was a wonderful party and we had a wonderful time, but by seven, or a little after, Laurel—my wife—was ready to leave. She tires easily. But we'd brought our cook, so after he drove us home, Beau was to go back and get her, take her home, and then just take the car home with him. Only he never made it. She thought we had forgotten about her so she called her husband to pick her up. We didn't know anything was wrong until Monday. You see, the bank was closed the day after New Year's—Sunday—so I wasn't expecting Beau until Monday…this is all my fault. I should have known he wouldn't just accept it—"

"What happened, Mr. Allen? Please," Ruthie said.

He nodded, took a sip of coffee, wiped his mouth. "The police called here early Monday morning, said they had my car, where did I want it? I asked where my driver was and they said in jail. To make a long story short, I called the Chief of Police and told him to find out what had happened and where Beau was." He inhaled deeply again and swallowed. "They had put him on a chain gang—"

Ruthie fainted and would have fallen to the floor had not both men jumped up and reached for her at the same time. Big Mack put her in the chair while Grady Allen filled a glass with ice and water and got a cold towel. Her father-in-law bathed her face, and, as she began to come around, he got her to drink some cold water. Her eyes focused and she looked directly at Grady Allen. "Dirt and filth and mud. For almost forty-eight hours. Is that where he was? In dirt and filth and mud?" And when the old man nodded, she asked, "He's like he was when he came back from France, isn't he? A walking dead man." She swayed and Big Mack held on to her until she steadied. She struggled to her feet. "Where is he? Where is my brother?"

Big Mack held up his hand. "What did you mean, sir, when you said you knew it was your fault because somebody wouldn't accept something?"

"I hired Beau even though Horace Edwards wanted me to hire one of his sons. I know both of Horace's boys, and they're both useless and worthless. I would never trust one of them with my wife or with my car. The one who arrested Beau is a city policeman named Gilbert Edwards. The one who wanted the job is Horace, named after his pa, and he's just a bum. But it gripes Horace that I'd hire a Colored man over his son."

"You had a driver before Beau, Mr. Allen. My son met him one time, over in the Crossing, the day you asked him to build your bank."

"I remember," Allen said, nodding. "Tom Jenks. He got himself killed last year in a gambling parlor, of all places. He was some kin to Sue. My cook."

This time it was Ruthie who took the deep breath. "Sue Thomas is your cook," she said, making it a statement, not a question. "I know Sue. I knew her mother very well. She lived up the road from us in Carrie's Crossing. And Tom Jenks was her cousin."

Grady Allen was nodding. "That's right. She recommended him for the job, and I hired him on her say so. And I will say that I found him completely satisfactory, never had a single reason for complaint. If he chose to frequent a gambling parlor on his off time, well, that's none of my business, is it?"

Ruthie had stopped listening; she was thinking, figuring: Sue had known where Tom Jenks was but hadn't told them. Beau had found out somehow. From Tobias? They all had known that gambling was Tom's weakness—he'd been gambling the night before Nellie was killed and was late meeting her. If he'd been on time…and finally Beau had found him, and Ruthie knew with absolute certainty, he had killed him. And that's why he'd taken a job working for a white man—because he'd killed Grady Allen's chauffeur.

"Thank you, Mr. Allen, for saving Beau," she said. "We never could have gotten him out of that place on our own. In fact, we never would have known where he was, so we owe you a great debt of gratitude."

"You owe me nothing, Miz McGinnis. Like I said, this whole thing is my fault." He turned toward a passageway. "Beau's in here," he said and led them into a labyrinth of small, narrow rooms off a small, narrow corridor. The servants' quarters. He opened a door but did not turn on a light. Beau hated bright light, especially sudden bright light. But he hated mud and dirt and filth worse than anything.

"Beau," she said softly. "It's me. I'm here. We're going to take you home."

"Ma? Ma, is that you?" he said and followed it with a deep, dark wail. "They won't let me out, Ma. They won't let me go home."

Ruthie rushed into the room and grabbed her big brother and held him tight, wrapping her arms all the way around him. He'd become skeletally thin so quickly. "I'm taking you home, Beau, and I don't care what they say. Come on. We're going home." She tried to pull him up to stand but could not budge his dead weight. Big Mack moved her aside and lifted Beau as if he were a child.

"Pa? Is that you, Pa?"

"Yeah, Son. It's me and we're gonna take you home, but you got to walk 'cause you too big for me to carry. That's right, come on now."

They led, dragged, pushed, and carried Beau out to the car and laid him in the backseat. They thanked Grady Allen again and drove as fast as they thought they safely could back to the Colored part of town. Big Mack hesitated only briefly where he would have turned going to his own house. He knew as well as Ruthie did that Big Si would want his son at home. He parked in front of the house, and Ruthie went in to explain the situation to her Pa. He was out the front door and down the walk before she finished talking.

"Beau, boy. I'm gon' take care of you just like I did before, when you come back from that filthy war. 'Member how we looked after you? Helped you get better? We gon' do it again, don't you worry none."

It required a great effort to get him from the car into the house and into bed, more than before because now Beau wasn't walking at all, wasn't speaking, wasn't moving. He was an inanimate object, a dead weight. They all were winded, but Big Si's breath came in great, loud gasps.

"Sit down, Pa."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not. Now please sit down." She knew she'd spoken too sharply, but she was on the edge. She reached out a hand to him in apology. He took her hand, then sat down and asked them to tell him everything again, from the beginning.

"You believe Beau killed Tom Jenks," he said to Ruth. When she didn't say anything, he asked, "You think anybody else knows? Sue? Tobias? That's got to be the gambling parlor he was talking about."

Ruthie hadn't told him about Tobias and now wasn't the time. "I think Sue knew where Tom Jenks was all along and didn't tell us."

"Prob'ly 'cause she knew what would happen. He is her kin, after all."

Ruth nodded her acceptance of this fact. "I just care that she doesn't tell, and I think if she had told, Beau already would have been arrested."

Big Mack agreed. "Anyway, they don't care 'bout us killing each other. As far as they're concerned, Jenks is just another dead Colored man, killed by one of his own. It's the kind of thing we do," he said dryly. "Only reason they asked any questions at all is 'cause of who he worked for."

They agreed to that truth. "So," Big Si said. "Beau is safe?"

"I think so," Ruth said.

"Me, too," Big Mack said."

"Then," Big Si said, pulling himself up to standing, "let's try to get him well, and hope we can do it twice."

 

***

 

– Carrie's Crossing –

Jonas

 

The antics of two-year old Jonas Farley Thatcher Jr. were the only reason that Grady Allen was still seated in the same room, at the same table, with Horace Edwards, and Jonas thought that Grady was doing a pretty good job of being polite to Horace, though Horace, of course, didn't see it that way. Typically, he'd made himself the injured party: He professed not to understand why Grady would hold him responsible for what his son had done. For more than six months, Grady had flatly refused to meet with or talk to Horace because of police officer Gilbert Edwards's illegal arrest of Beau Thatcher. Jonas had played intermediary only because his partnership agreements with Horace were too complex for easy extrication. At the moment, though, what was more galling to Horace was the fact that JJ preferred Uncle Grady to him—his own grandfather! The little boy toddled back and forth on the highly polished conference room table between his Papa and his Uncle Grady, ignoring all attempts by his grandfather to capture him—or even his attention. To add insult to injury, their meeting, called at Horace's request, was being held in the First National Bank of Carrie's Crossing boardroom because Grady refused to step foot in the offices of the Edwards-Thatcher Real Estate Company as long as Edwards remained a name on the stationery.

"Uncle Grady Allen! Catch me!" the little boy sang out and launched himself at the old banker, who caught him on the fly. Jonas initially had tried to restrain JJ. A two-year-old's exuberance was sometimes too much even for him, and Grady Allen was, he guessed, at least seventy—even the man's grandchildren were grown. But the old man loved the interaction with the little boy and never seemed to worry about what was happening to his crisp white shirt or his silk tie or the gold watch chain across his vest.

"You're not his uncle," Horace snarled, "and I am his grandpa!" As if those facts were in doubt. "And we're supposed to be having a meeting, in case y'all forgot."

Jonas reached for his son. "Come here, JJ, and give your papa a big hug."

The boy flung himself at his father and buried his face in his neck. Jonas held him tightly, amazed, as always, at the intensity of his feeling and wondering, as always, if his own father had ever loved him as much since he'd never displayed his love.

"What is it you want to discuss, Horace?" Grady snapped open his pocket watch, and the message was clear: I've got plenty of time to play with a little boy but not much to listen to you.

"The situation in Europe is what I want to talk about. War, to be exact."

"Why do you want to talk about the war in Europe? That's got nothing to do with us, and I hope we keep it that way," Jonas said.

"That's where you're wrong, Jonas," Horace said. "Everything they do over there is tied to us, and everything we do over here is tied to them. It's almost like that Atlantic Ocean's not even there. If some of those boys are spoiling for a fight, you can bet a dollar or two that some of our boys will be right in the middle of it."

"I still don't see what that has to do with us, especially since I haven't read or heard about anybody in our government backing such a notion. Just the opposite, in fact," Jonas said, shifting in his chair so that he could better hold a yawning JJ; the boy would be asleep in just a few moments. "All those neutrality acts the Congress has passed over the last few years—they mean we're not going to war."

"Don't you believe it. Roosevelt's not gonna sit still and watch them Germans and Italians take over all those countries like they been doing."

"Nothing Roosevelt can do about it. It's none of his business," Jonas said.

"And anyway," Grady said, finally joining the conversation, "it's illegal for any American business to sell guns or any kind of war weapon to European countries. Not that we have any weapons to sell. So how is it you think you can make a dollar?"

Horace grinned widely. "The other part of that law says those countries have to pay cash for anything they buy."

"So what? You want us to sell the German government Doc Gray's house and farm?" Grady laughed.

Horace scowled. "We should buy up as many pairs of underwear and socks and shoes as we can. We should buy up cans of soup and beans and...and...bags of rice and sugar and flour—stuff people are gonna need. And we'll be the ones who'll have it and who they'll have to buy it from."

Jonas had to admit there was a certain logic in the idea. "But why would they come to us? Why not a businessman in their own country?"

"'Cause they're gonna be at war—they're already at war—and war uses up lots of things real fast. That's the good thing about war: It's a big, greedy machine that just—"

Grady pushed back from the table so fast and stood up so quickly that his chair tipped over, and he rushed from the room without a backward glance, slamming the door.

Jonas sighed. "You can't seem to not make him mad, Horace."

"Now what's wrong?"

"He lost a son in The Great War, and I lost a brother. We don't think there's too much good about war at all."

Horace hung his head in momentary shame; he'd forgotten about Grady's son and Jonas's brother. "I guess First Bank of CC won't be giving us a loan for our goods in stock business. That's what I think we oughta call it, by the way: Goods In Stock. Whatever people need, we've got it in stock. And we don't need Grady Allen. That fella at State Bank has been after me for a while. We can get a loan from him."

"You don't get it, do you Horace? We are partners. That means we discuss plans, especially for a new business. You don't go off on your own."

"I don't need to discuss my ideas and plans with you. That's a good idea and you know it, Jonas, whether or not you think war is good for the economy. There's gonna be a war, and people are gonna need basic supplies, and somebody is gonna sell those supplies, and it might as well be us."

"It is a good idea, and there's nothing stopping you from pursuing it." Jonas hoisted JJ up on his shoulder. The boy weighed a ton. Audrey could barely lift him.

"Then why don't you want to be in on it?"

"Because it involves too many things that I know nothing about, and they're things I don't care to learn anything about, including the laws on international trade. We'd have to hire a bunch of lawyers and accountants who do understand those things, just to make it possible to do business with people I don't think I want to do business with." He headed for the door, Horace close on his heels. "And anyway, I really don't believe there's going to be another war," he said, once they were outside. "At least not one involving us."

Horace gave him a look, a mixture of disdain, disgust and disappointment. "And my daughter thinks you're so smart. You think the whole world is just gonna let Hitler and that crazy Italian take over all those countries? And I'll bet Hitler's good and mad now." He gave a wild cackle. "First that Jesse Owens wins all those gold medals, then the other day Joe Louis whipped that Schmeling. Ol' Hitler's prob'ly tryin' to figure out how he can take over America."

Jonas lay JJ down on the backseat of the car and turned to Horace. "You're glad that Jesse Owens and Joe Louis whipped the Germans?"

"That's what they do. They run and they fight. That's what they're good at, so no, I don't mind that they won. Besides, I made a lot of money on that fight."

"I've got to go."

"You going home? I'll go with you, make sure my daughter's all right, see if she needs anything."

"My wife is fine, you don't need to check on her, and anything she needs, I'll get for her." JJ stirred and whimpered. "I've got to go."

"Audrey told me the new baby, if it's a boy, she's gonna name it after me."

"If he's a boy, he'll be a he and not an it, and we haven't decided on a name yet," Jonas said, not telling the whole truth. Audrey did want to name their next boy after her father, but Jonas, if he had a baseball team of boys, wouldn't name one of them Horace. He'd name one Edward, but that's as far as he was willing to go. Besides, he wanted a girl next—a boy and girl—that would be perfection.

Horace looked at his watch. "You really don't want any part of stockpiling goods in advance of the war, huh? Well, your loss. But you do make a good point about lawyers and such who know about international law. I'm gonna go to the office right now and start makin' some calls."

"I'll be there later. I'll take him home, then go check on Rachel at the store."

They got into their respective cars, doors slamming almost simultaneously. The older man started his engine first, backed too fast out of his parking space, and screeched off. Jonas sat for a moment, thinking too much about his father-in-law, then forcing all thoughts away and clearing his mind because thoughts of Horace upset him. He started the car, slowly backed up, and just as slowly headed toward home, constantly reaching into the backseat to make certain his son was in no danger of rolling off. What Horace didn't know—what he and Audrey didn't want either of her parents to know—was that she had been having a very difficult time with this pregnancy. That's why Jonas took JJ with him as often as possible—that and because he enjoyed the boy's company. Audrey simply could not keep up with him, and they'd had no household help in months. Nobody in The Crossing had any help because, since the Beau Thatcher incident, Colored domestic staff from Belle City had refused to make the journey to Carrie's Crossing, either by car or bus no matter how much they needed the money—and they all needed the money. What Jonas had not known was that for years, Colored men had been vanishing from Belle City—all kinds of men. They'd leave going to work or to the barber shop or to a baseball game and just never come home. What happened to Beau Thatcher was the straw that broke the camel's back. Add to that the Sadie Hill story—and that was a story everybody, Colored and white knew—and Colored people literally feared for their lives every time they left the safety of their homes.

JJ woke when Jonas picked him up, and he was glad he didn't have to carry the boy into the house. "You've got to stop growing, boy," he said.

"I like growing, Papa."

"You do? And why is that?"

"I get big like you."

"In that case, I guess you'd better keep growing. But maybe we should ask your Mama, see what she thinks."

"Yaaaa! Go ask Mama! Go ask Mama!" he yelled when Jonas opened the door. Then he had to run to catch him before he took a flying leap at Audrey.

She'd been lying down on the couch in the solarium and was barely in a sitting position when they entered the room. She's too pale, Jonas thought as he swooped JJ up into a flying bird, catching him just before he launched himself at his mother. "Tell your Ma why you're not going to stop growing," he said, settling him on the couch beside her.

"I grow big like Papa."

She put her arms around him and kissed him. "Yes, you will, my boy," she said. Then to Jonas, "How was your meeting?" Meaning, What did my father want and did you argue with him? Jonas knew that his dislike of her parents—and he actively disliked them both—was hard for her to accept, and he truly did try to limit his negative responses, especially verbal ones, and especially in JJ's presence. He told her about the meeting, omitting what Horace had said that upset Grady. He told her only his reaction and the reason for it. "It does sound like it would be an awful lot of work," she said.

"I've got an idea about something else," he said, an idea had sprung into his head that very moment. "What if I called Mack and asked for his help organizing a...a...I don't know exactly what to call it—a transportation group. Some way to safely get help back and forth between here and BC. At first, we'd have to do all the driving—white folks, I mean. We could probably get Grady to talk to the police chief and tell him what we're doing and to leave people alone. Then, after a while, the Colored could do all the driving or ride the street cars. I bet most people would even pay a few cents a week to help out. I know I would."

"It's a wonderful idea, Jonas. Really wonderful. Thank you."

He lifted JJ into his lap and sat next to Audrey. "Here's another thought: Suppose we turn that little building out there into a maid's room or servant's quarters. We'd have to run some water out to it and some electricity, but it would be private. Nobody working in this house would ever have to fear being locked in."

She leaned into his embrace and wept. He held her, not really alarmed, because he knew enough by now to understand that her pregnancies caused wide and wild swings of emotion. He'd witnessed it in his mother and his sisters but hadn't understood it. Now he did.

"Those poor people, Jonas. They shouldn't have to live like that, in fear all the time."

Jonas agreed with that thought but said nothing for fear that it would lead to a discussion of her parents' beliefs, and that he didn't want. "I'll call Mack tonight. I'm sure he's at work this time of day."

"Maybe not tonight," Audrey said. "Wouldn't it be better if we could say for certain that people would be willing participate? I could make some calls then you could say how many people were willing to drive, even say how many jobs were waiting."

And so two weeks later, Jonas made his call. Mack was often at work until nine o'clock at night during the summer months when it was light that late, so it was Ruthie that Jonas talked to when he called that evening. They hadn't talked to each other since that night in 1921 when the Colored Thatchers left Carrie's Crossing for the last time, and their initial conversation now was hesitant and stilted. Ruth congratulated him on the birth of his son and Audrey's new pregnancy. Jonas said he already felt overwhelmed at the thought of two children and asked how she managed five. She laughed and said, "Don't think about it." He laughed and the ice was broken, and Jonas told her the reason for his call. She listened intently, as was her way, then she thought about what he'd said before she spoke, and though he couldn't see her, he remembered how her eyes focused and seemed to darken when she was deep in thought, and he felt a pang of loss so intense it caused a pain in his chest. Finally she spoke.

"That is a very good idea, Jonas, and I certainly will help. People here need to go to work and not be afraid. I also like the idea of using the old schoolhouse as a private residence for your housekeeper. Maybe others will do the same thing for their live-ins, at least until people have had time to forget what happened to Sadie."

They spent another half-hour talking, working out the details. Ruth promised to get a list of people willing to participate—maids, cooks, gardeners, chauffeurs—and to call when she had the necessary commitments. Jonas had thirty job offers, and Ruth expected no difficulty in filling them. Jonas hung up the telephone with a sense of satisfaction. Not only had he performed a useful and necessary service to and for his neighbors, but he had bridged the gulf of distance between Ruthie and himself.

 

***

 

–Belle City–

Beau

 

Beau knew more people than he could begin to count, and more different kinds of people. For such a solitary man, for such a private and internal man, he was a people magnet. All those years of driving a mule cart and later a horse cart and finally a truck all over town picking up salvage, and later, all those years of delivering cases of illegal whiskey back and forth across Belle City, put him in the path of good people and some not-so-good people and some truly bad people. Beau treated them all the same. He spoke to everybody he encountered: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. He tipped his hat to every woman he encountered: Grandmothers, mothers, aunties, sisters, teachers, cheap women, for sale women. He had been known to give a dime or a dollar when asked, and to give much more than that when not asked—when he saw the need. So when Beau Thatcher asked for a favor, he didn't have to ask but once, and the request wafted over the Colored neighborhoods of Belle City like the scent of fresh baked peach cobbler on a summer afternoon. What Beau wanted was the name of the white police officer who had put him in the work camp. He knew that Grady Allen knew the man's name but he would not ask, partly because he didn't trust white people, not even the "good" ones like Grady Allen, but also because he didn't want anybody close to him knowing that he was looking, and that would have included his sister and brother-in-law had he known that they knew the white policeman's name. And perhaps if he'd known that, he'd not have had the thoughts he was having, that plagued him: He needed to kill this man just as he had needed to kill Tom Jenks. He wanted the man's name and anything else anybody could find out about him. Nobody asked why Beau Thatcher wanted this information because anybody who knew him knew why. They also knew to forget that Beau had ever asked and, if it came to that, to forget they'd ever known Beau.

The information came quickly and in greater detail than he could have wished for. The white policeman's name was Gilbert Edwards, and he had an unreasonable hatred of Colored people. Beau had encountered more than a few white people like that—people whose hatred of Colored people was a raw, festering ugly thing that contorted their features and sometimes their very bodies. Mr. First used to say that hating Colored made them feel better about themselves since the only thing that separated poor white people from poor Colored people was skin color, but Beau thought it was more than that, though he really didn't care why he was hated. He knew it to be unreasonable and ridiculous since the rigidity of the laws of segregation made it impossible for Colored people ever to have gotten close enough to white people to do anything to warrant such hatred, so he didn't waste time trying to understand it. He merely avoided them. The only white people he'd ever had regular contact with were Jonas Thatcher and Grady Allen. Jonas he hadn't seen since the end of Prohibition, and prior to his brief stint as the man's chauffeur, the only time he saw Mr. Allen was when one of his relatives needed a new motor vehicle. In addition to all the other things he owned, Grady Allen also owned the local Ford and Packard motorcar stores, and he would sell a car to a Colored person for the same price he sold them to white people. He was the only white man Beau knew of who didn't charge Colored more for the same things, whether for food, clothing, or an automobile. This did not mean, however, that he liked them or considered them friends. Business was business. Mr. First had taught him that and both Jonas and Mr. Allen reinforced it. That they didn't seem to hate him, that they didn't appear enraged by the very fact of his existence, is what had made it possible for Beau to conduct business, and both men had profited from their business relationship with him.

What Beau did not understand at all were those white people who violently hated Colored people but still sought them out. Gilbert Edwards, he learned, was such a man. He spent considerable time in the most disreputable Colored establishments of the Fourth Ward. He drank, he got drunk, and he beat people, men and women—the women after he'd forced himself on them and then refused to pay. Friday and Saturday nights, Beau was told, he could almost always find Gilbert Edwards parked in one of two unpaved alleys well off the main thoroughfare and in so broken and ragged an area that even longtime Fourth Ward residents wouldn't know they existed.

Beau wore his oldest clothes and shoes and rode the trolley car across town. Even though he was well-acquainted with the East Side of Belle City, and had been given explicit directions, he still got lost. This was as ugly and desolate a neighborhood as he'd ever seen. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets, one of them cradling a knife, the other a lead pipe. He had only enough money to ride the trolley car back to the West Side and hoped that nobody would jump him and take it; he didn't want to have to walk around here any longer than absolutely necessary.

Loud shouts and the sound of breaking glass caused Beau to stop in his tracks and lift his head. He was practically at the mouth of an alley he'd not have seen otherwise, for the darkness down that alley was complete and total. He took a hesitant step forward, arms outstretched, like a blind person in an unfamiliar room. He brought to mind the sketch he'd drawn of the area. The alleyway really was a driveway behind the buildings on parallel streets, residential on one street, commercial on the other, but both so poor that little light would spill out from the buildings because there was no electricity here. If the inhabitants were lucky, there'd be a kerosene lantern. If not, wax candles would light their way. Six steps into the alley and Beau could make out structures on either side, but no light was visible in any of them, not necessarily surprising on the residential side: It was after midnight, and people who didn't earn a living working the work that the night offered were asleep. Beau turned his attention to the right side of the alley, creeping forward slowly, step by step, arms moving from side to side. Suddenly he saw dim light ahead, and heard the tinny sound of radio music. And saw the Belle City Police Department car parked in the mud beside a grime-covered Packard roadster that he knew belonged to a hoodlum named Ollie Smith and which hadn't been driven in months because Ollie, his reputation as a high roller notwithstanding, couldn't afford to put gasoline in it.

Beau stood still, his breathing shallow, while thoughts bounced around in his head until they formed a plan. With the knife in one hand and the lead pipe in the other, he hastily circled the police car, slashing all four tires. Then he slashed Ollie's tires, as he saw his plan gain clarity. He planned to kill Gilbert Edwards as soon as he showed his face, but he had experienced a moment of trepidation when he tried to imagine the firestorm that would erupt when a white man—a white policeman—was found murdered in a Colored neighborhood. The thought of Ollie Smith being the Colored man called on to explain the situation almost made Beau smile, but the levity was momentary as angry shouts ruptured the still darkness. It was him—Gilbert Edwards. He was drunk enough that his words were slurred, but the vile hatred that he'd spewed at Beau now was directed to a woman whom he was dragging into the alley by her hair. He cursed her. He threw her to the ground and kicked her. She tried to stand, but he knocked her down, and as she tried to crawl away, he kicked her again. The he turned away from her and, drinking from a bottle, he staggered toward his car.

"Somethin's wrong," he muttered as he approached the car. "Wha's wrong?" He got to the car and leaned heavily on it. He bent over to look at the tires and fell into the mud and mire. "Goddammit!" he roared. "Goddamn niggers! I'll kill you. I'll kill every one of you ugly..."

Beau was behind Edwards and whispered in his ear, "You won't kill nobody, and you won't hurt nobody, not ever again."

Edwards whipped around and when he did, Beau hit him with the lead pipe, and as he dropped to his knees, he looked up, surprise and recognition in his face giving way to snarling hatred. Before he could speak, Beau kicked him in the gut, just as Edwards had kicked the woman, except Beau kept kicking him, and then he no longer was in a filthy alley in East Belle City but back in the prison work camp being forced to wallow in mud and slop for the amusement and entertainment of the prison guards who wanted to see the Colored pigs "do what comes nat'rally." Beau kicked and kicked. Then he bent forward and grabbed Edwards by his shirt front and pulled him into a sitting position. His head rolled from side to side as he struggled to open his eyes. Beau hit him in the face and blood gushed out of his nose. Beau hit him again, and kept hitting him, neither man any longer feeling pain—one because his body was dead, the other because his spirit was.

"Hey! Hey! Who you? Get on 'way from here 'fore Mr. Gilbert find you up next to his police car. He won't like that none atall. Go on, now. Git!"

Beau dropped to his knees, as much from exhaustion as to disappear from sight. A weak lantern light had illuminated a tiny circle around the man who'd called out, but there wasn't enough light for him to have seen anything more than the shape of a man. On his hands and knees in the mud, Beau wretched as he felt around for his knife. He didn't care about the pipe—anybody could have a lead pipe—but the knife was distinctive. Beau had taken it from a German soldier who had tried to kill him. The two soldiers had rolled around in the stinking mud, grunting and growling, their hands too slippery to grip or to hold anything—a man or a knife—and the German had dropped it when Beau gave him a head butt. Beau had grabbed it and shoved it into the German's gut, lay beneath him while he died, then rolled away, snatching the knife as he did. This mud this night was not as deep and not nearly as putrid as that French mud those long years ago, and this night Beau was not afraid. He found his knife, struggled to his feet and lurched toward the mouth of the alley. He did not look back.

He could see the glow of the streetlights ahead of him and knew that he could not walk there in his condition. He'd passed a horse barn and his nose led him to it. There'd be a trough inside, and buckets. The owner would wonder in the morning at his horse's sudden great thirst, Beau thought, as he scooped out water and poured it over himself. He made sure to get the mud out of his hair and off his face and hands. He couldn't see himself, but he could feel when he was free of the thick, cloying goo. Because it was July, it was as hot at night as during the day, so his hair and clothes dried a bit as he made his way out of the alleys and dead ends back to the main street and a trolley stop.

He kept his head down as he walked, waiting for a feeling of some kind to present itself as it had—quite suddenly—after he had made Tom Jenks pay for what he'd done to Nellie. He hadn't expected to feel anything. He knew where the man would be and when. He watched and waited and attacked when the opportunity presented itself. He made sure Jenks saw him and knew who he was so he'd know why he was about to die. Afterward, he felt an enormous relief, as if some huge weight had been lifted. But he felt nothing as he walked away from the dead Gilbert Edwards, not relief or excitement or satisfaction.

 

***

 

– Belle City –

Ruthie and Jonas

 

Neither Audrey nor Grady wanted Jonas to go to Belle City to talk personally to the Colored workers who'd be making the weekly journey under the auspices of the newly formed Belle City-Carrie's Crossing Transportation Committee, quickly dubbed by Ruth the BCCCTC. It was, they said, too dangerous. Jonas argued that if it was dangerous for him, it certainly would be dangerous for the Colored people they were trying to convince it was safe. "We can't have it both ways," he said, deliberately ignoring the real source of their fear, the reason neither would say out loud: Jonas would be meeting with Mack and Ruthie and some thirty-five maids, butlers, chauffeurs, and gardeners at the Baptist church most of them attended. What Audrey and Grady didn't know was that Jonas was no stranger to Belle City's Colored communities, that he'd been driving in and out of them for close on fifteen years.

Jonas wanted to tell them that he, a white man, was safer in their parts of town than they ever would be in his, but then he'd have to explain how he knew this and that he could not do. The only thing bothering Jonas was the fact that he did not like churches—any of them. He belonged to the First Baptist Church of Carrie's Crossing at his wife's insistence. He went under duress, the Sunday morning service merely the beginning of his least favorite day of the week, since after church they made the obligatory journey to her parents' house for Sunday dinner. It was bad enough he had to endure her parents, but to also endure her two brothers, their wives and children was too much though, thankfully, Horace Jr. rarely attended because he usually had to work on Sunday. But to make bad matters even worse, now Jonas had to shelter JJ from the stupidity of his mother's relatives.

He pulled into the parking lot behind the Friendship Baptist Church eleven minutes early. He knew where the church was because he knew this was where Ruthie had gotten married, though he'd never acknowledged that fact to any one. He parked his Packard sedan next to an identical one and, after his surprise abated, he surmised that it probably belonged to the pastor, until he saw that the parking spot labeled PASTOR was empty. His question was answered when the church door opened and Mack stepped out. It was Mack's car. They walked to meet each other and Jonas got another surprise. He'd only ever seen Mark dressed in his work clothes—either the overalls, flannel shirts and well-worn boots he wore while on a construction site, or the khaki pants, jacket and shirt he wore to meetings or bid openings. Today he was dressed like the pillar of the community he obviously was in a suit, shirt, tie and shoes the excellence of which rivaled Jonas's own. New York haberdashers were doing great mail-order business in Belle City.

"Thank you for coming, Jonas," Mack said, extending his hand.

"Thank you for making it possible, Mack, you and Ruthie. I don't doubt for one minute that the people inside are here because y'all told 'em it was all right to be here and that it would be all right—and safe—for them to come to the Crossing to work, and I do appreciate it." He gave a sideways grin. "So does my wife, even more than me."

Mack held the door open and Jonas stepped into a long, cool hallway. He could hear the low murmur of voices coming from one of the meeting rooms near the fellowship hall, knew because this church—all Baptist churches, he thought—was laid out like the one he attended. The front door was for church service; the side door was for meetings, social gatherings, fellowship, though he doubted that any pastor, Colored or white, would call what was about to happen here "fellowship." He wasn't sure what exactly it was, but he knew the information about this evening's meeting, in the wrong hands, would spell trouble for all the participants, which probably is why the PASTOR space in the lot was empty. It did speak well of the man, though, that he allowed the meeting to take place in his church, and it made clear how highly Mack and Ruth McGinnis were regarded.

Jonas thought that since he'd spoken to Ruth, since they'd had a relaxed and warm conversation, that he'd have no particular reaction to seeing her. He was wrong. At the sight of her, the breath caught in his chest just as it had done all those years ago when he first saw her. She was more beautiful now—still tall and lean and bronze but now with the poise and elegance of a grown woman. Her hair was gathered at the base of her neck in a bun. She wore a suit that only could have been handmade. Audrey had told him that men could order designer suits from New York and have them fit. A woman, she said, could not. Clothes had to be tried on, and even then, adjustments had to be made. Or—and this was Audrey's preference—start from scratch with a good pattern and a talented seamstress. Judging by the suit Ruthie wore, the seamstress was extremely talented. Nobody looking at her would imagine that she'd borne five children, the oldest of whom was sixteen years old.

The circle of people that was surrounding her shifted, and she looked up and saw him. She smiled warmly and walked toward him, hands outstretched. "Jonas. How wonderful to see you. Thank you for coming."

He took her hands in his. "I'll tell you the same thing I told Mack: I'm the one should be doing the thanking since you're the ones doing the favor."

"We should get started" Jonas heard Mack say; he'd forgotten the man was there.

"Yes," Ruth said, "if we want to be finished before it gets dark." And they did, all of them, want to be finished and gone before night fell. A young man approached them and both Ruthie and Mack smiled at him. "Jonas, this is our oldest son, Mack McGinnis the third. Mackie, this is Jonas Thatcher from Carrie's Crossing."