Terrence
October 1, 1942
“Hey, Harris.” Sometimes that weasel guard’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard.
Terrence looked up from the history book on his lap. His stomach twisted when he saw the white boy slouched next to the guard.
The kid rubbed his hand back and forth on his crew-cut blond head and glared at Terrence with icy blue eyes.
What was going on? That guard for damn sure wasn’t gonna put no white boy in the same cell as a black kid.
“This here’s Carter. Your new cell mate.” The guard sneered.
What? Did he think he was being funny or something?
A memory from a few years back flashed into his mind. When Momma accidentally splashed dishwater into a pan of hot cooking oil. That oil sizzled and spattered right out of the pan. Burned Momma pretty bad.
Some things just didn’t mix.
Terrence tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal and pretended to keep reading. But he felt Carter’s cold stare on him as he shuffled to the empty bunk above his.
He closed his eyes. Tried to imagine slapping the stupid grin off the guard’s face. Tried to ignore Carter.
He opened his eyes and focused on what he’d been reading before the guard thought he’d be funny.
Fourscore and seven years …
He struggled to pretend Carter wasn’t there. Mr. Blake was coming to test him on the Gettysburg Address that afternoon, and Terrence wanted to prove he’d studied.
… a new nation, conceived in liberty …
“Hey, boy. What’s your name?”
There it was. Boy. A blow to the gut. Impossible to ignore. Now what?
Carter pounded the wall. Bang. Bang. Bang. “You hear me? You know my name. Now what’s yours?”
“Terrence,” he said, his gaze fixed on the Gettysburg Address.
“Terrence?” Carter snickered. “What kinda sissy name is that?”
His heart pumped an explosive brew through his body. The words in front of him blurred. Still, he tried to focus. Concentrate.
… dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
“Ter-rence, Ter-rence, Ter-rence,” Carter chanted.
Shit. All men are created equal? No way this asshole was equal to anybody, especially Terrence. His head throbbed, and he was ready to explode. But he knew damn well it would only cause trouble.
“Look, man. I got a test this afternoon. Leave me alone, will you?” He gritted his teeth. “How about we finish this conversation later?”
“Oh, you a smart boy, huh? No wonder you got a name like Terrence. Terrence, the smart nigger. ’Sif that’s possible.”
Boom. Boom. Boom. It wasn’t Carter hammering the wall this time. It was Terrence’s heart, banging in his neck and head, his fisted hands.
Gotta ignore him. Shut him out.
The mattress squeaked above him and Carter moaned. “You might think you’re a smart boy, but guess you ain’t smart enough to carry on no conversation with me. Okay. Later, then.” Finally, his gurgled breathing turned to a roaring snore.
Snoring rumbled through the jail like rolling thunder, but it didn’t bother Terrence near like the piercing glares and bullet words that Carter had fired off moments before.
The hours passed too fast, and queasy nerves rippled through Terrence when the guard came to his cell to tell him Blake was waiting. At least Carter the Creep had slept the rest of the morning, so Terrence had near memorized Lincoln’s address. Slapping his book shut, he gathered a few papers.
“Best not mess up on your test, Smart Boy,” Carter said, yawning. “And don’t forget. We’re gonna get to know each other better when you get back. Right?”
Great. Just what he needed to be reminded of. He sneered at Carter and followed the guard to the visitation room.
The guard chuckled. “Sounds like you boys are gonna get along just fine.”
When Terrence walked in, Mr. Blake was sitting between a neat stack of books and a pile of newspapers, hands folded on the table. Somehow, the perfection of the scene didn’t mesh with Blake’s wrinkled shirt and rumpled tie. A blank tablet and pencil had been placed across the table. All very proper.
The guard shut the door, and the click of its lock echoed in the quiet room. A new set of nerves surged as Terrence feared losing everything he’d just studied.
“Afternoon.” Blake hitched his pants up when he stood. “Ready for your first exam?”
“Yessir, I guess so. Might’ve been more prepared though, if I hadn’t got a new cell mate this morning. Kind of hard to concentrate, if you know what I mean.”
“New cell mate, huh? What’s he like?”
“Rather not talk about it now, if you don’t mind. I got all this information in my head, and I best let some of it out, else it’s gonna disappear. Can I just take the test?”
“Sure. Have a seat.” Blake opened a notebook. “I’ve got a list of questions I’m going to read to you. You write down as much as you know about each. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I guess so.” Terrence panicked, as bits and pieces of information he’d read over the last few days began to leak from his mind, like sugar pouring from a sack a rat chewed up.
Blake tapped his pencil on the table. “Hey. Just do the best you can.”
Terrence took a deep breath. “Yessir. Guess I’m ready.”
“Okay. First question. Why did Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address?”
Terrence put his pencil on the blank sheet of paper and waited for the words to come. His mind started to fill up with things Carter said. Flooded his brain so fast, it pushed everything he’d learned to some faraway place he couldn’t reach. What was he going to say to Carter when the test was over, when it was “time to get to know each other better?” Carter damn sure didn’t have any interest in getting to know a black kid. So what was the deal?
He stared at the point of lead pressed on the blank paper. It hadn’t moved. What happened to all that stuff he’d learned about Abraham Lincoln?
Stop it! Forget about that jerk.
“Terrence?”
Mr. Blake’s voice ripped him away from thoughts of Carter. He looked up.
“You need me to repeat the question?”
“No … uh, yes. That might help,” Terrence replied.
Mr. Blake repeated the question slowly.
At last his brain overflowed with facts he’d learned, until his hand couldn’t keep up with thoughts that demanded to be put on paper.
… these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom …
After several minutes, he dropped his pencil and shook out the cramp in his hand.
“Okay,” he said. “Ready for the next one.”
An hour later, Terrence had finished answering the five questions Mr. Blake had asked. Heaviness left his shoulders. He felt good about how he’d done.
Mr. Blake took the pad of paper and flipped the pages, looking over Terrence’s answers. “You want to wait here while I grade it?”
“How long will it take? I only have another thirty minutes.”
“Maybe twenty. Depends on the quality of your answers.” Blake winked. “In the meantime, I brought these newspapers for you to read. Circled a couple of articles you might be interested in.”
Terrence read the circled headlines: Atlanta Constitution, October 7, 1941, “Jury Charged with Defense of Civil Rights”; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 3, 1942, “Lawyers Urged to Stand Guard on Civil Rights”; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 14, 1942, “Thousands Gather to Demand End to Discrimination in Factories.”
“As you can see,” Blake said, wiping glasses that never seemed to be clean, “there’s a lot going on in the big world out there. People trying to right some of the wrongs being done.” He returned his glasses to his nose and turned his attention to Terrence’s test. “You know they could use the help of people like you.”
There he was planting seeds again. Only this time, maybe the planting season was right. Terrence was hungry to learn. Hungry to get hold of anything he could read about how folks on the outside were working to change things. Right some wrongs, as Mr. Blake had said.
But he still wanted to know why Blake cared about his education. And he for sure didn’t get why Blake was interested in civil rights, being a white man and all. He browsed the article in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Jury charged with defense of civil rights? Maybe Mr. Blake knew some of the lawyers who were “standing guard” for civil rights. Was that where all this was leading? Planting seeds. Maybe Blake wanted him to become one of those kind of lawyers. Heck. Could he really be a lawyer one day?
“Mr. Blake, why are you …”
Blake stopped grading the test and looked across the table at Terrence. “Why what?”
But time was almost up and Terrence decided he wanted to know how he scored more than he wanted answers to his questions. At least for now. The questions would have to wait. “Uh, sorry. It ain’t … I mean, it isn’t … anything. Do you know how I did yet?”
Mr. Blake continued to peer over his glasses, his bushy eyebrows arched. “Everything okay?”
“Yessir. Just anxious to know how I did.” He turned the newspaper page, and tried to keep reading. But curiosity and anxiety caused the words on the page to jiggle around so that he couldn’t catch them. Couldn’t get what they were trying to tell him.
Blake put his pen on the table. “Very good.”
Terrence’s heart beat like it’d been jump-started by those two words. He watched, waited for Blake to say more.
Very good.
He remembered being in first grade, running across the front yard, waving his report card in his hand. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” he’d called. “Miss Woods gave me two ‘excellents.’”
His father had come through the screen door, smiling big and proud. Made him feel all warm inside seeing his father smile at him like that.
The screen door slammed, and Daddy disappeared.
Mr. Blake took off his glasses and clutched them before scooting the test across the table. “Fine answers, Terrence. I can tell you studied.” He smiled, big and proud.
“Did the best I could.” Terrence felt silly, sitting there smiling, but heck, he couldn’t help it.
Blake cleared his throat. “Okay. On to the next assignment. Read the next three chapters. I’ll test you on those in two weeks. Day after tomorrow, let’s see how well you’re doing with algebra. Any questions?
“No sir. I’ve been working on the algebra problems, too. Might need a little help later on. We’ll see.”
Mr. Blake’s gaze penetrated. “We still have a few minutes,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Anything you want to talk about?”
A few minutes. There was a lot he wanted to talk about. Like why was Blake so interested in him and his education? What’d he care about civil rights? And what should he do about Carter the Creep? Too many questions. And they were all backing up behind a wobbly wall that wasn’t gonna hold much longer. But a few minutes? No way he could talk about it in just a few minutes.
Blake’s fingers kept drumming. “I can see there are a lot of questions swimming around in that mind of yours. Come on. Pick one. If we don’t finish today, we can take it up next time.”
Yeah, right. Pick one. Which one? Terrence wanted answers to all of them. He glanced at the clock on the wall, and swore the second hand moved faster than usual. “Better hurry,” it told him. “Time’s a flying.”
“Carter the Creep.” The words escaped before Terrence realized what he’d said. But that was the one he figured he’d better talk about first, having to face the kid again in a few minutes and all.
“Carter the Creep?” Mr. Blake asked, half smiling.
“I mean, Carter. My new cell mate. He’s gonna give me trouble. I can tell already. Why’d they even put a white boy in my cell?” He shot a quick glance at Blake and shifted his stare to the clock again. Probably shouldn’t have said “white boy” in front of Mr. Blake. “Sorry. Anyways, I just know they did it to stir up trouble. Matter fact, the guard even said he wanted to ‘mix things up a bit.’”
“So what kind of trouble’s he giving you?”
“All kinds. Making fun of my name. Calling me a smart boy—” Should he say it, tell Mr. Blake how bad it really was? That second hand was moving even faster now. “A smart nigger. Said I was ‘Terrence, the smart nigger,’ just ’cause I was studying for a test. Now how I supposed to study with talk like that going on ’round me?”
“Now how am I supposed to study,” Mr. Blake corrected.
Terrence rolled his eyes.
Mr. Blake’s moustache twitched with a sudden smile. “Sorry. Your momma asked me to watch the way you talk while you’re here in prison. Said she worked too hard raising you to talk right to let it all go down the drain here.”
“I know, I know,” he replied. Momma. How was it she could pester him even when she wasn’t around?
“Anyway, back to how you’re supposed to study with this Carter around. Maybe you should get to know him.”
“Huh? Why would I want to get to know that jerk? How I supposed to do that?” He took a deep breath. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Find some common ground between the two of you. What kind of sports does he like? What’s his favorite food? You know, that kind of thing. Just because you’re black and he’s white, doesn’t mean you don’t have anything in common.”
What the hell was he talking about? Common ground. He didn’t have nothing in common with that white boy. Except the damn jail cell they shared.
“Terrence?”
He felt kind of sick to his stomach and now his heart was beating a whole lot faster than that second hand was moving. He shouldn’t have brought it up. Better calm down. Didn’t want to make Mr. Blake mad, else he wouldn’t come back to help him with them … those … algebra problems he didn’t want to admit he needed help with.
“Appreciate the advice, Mr. Blake. I just don’t see as we’re gonna have anything in common though.”
“Trust me, Terrence. Try to find something you two have in common.”
“I don’t know what much good it’ll do.” He heard the jingle of the guard’s keys and scooted his chair out. He rose and shuffled to the door. “Guess it’s time to go.”
“Think about it this way,” Mr. Blake said, quietly. “When you beat up Mr. Kimura …”
You mean killed Mr. Kimura. The unspoken words were still like a punch in the gut that knocked the breath clean out of him. He stared at the floor.
Blake loosened his tie. “ … you saw him as a faceless Japanese. It was easier that way, wasn’t it?”
Terrence turned to the door. Wasn’t nothing he could say.
“Terrence,” Blake said, walking toward him, “as much as you hated the Japanese at that moment, would you have done it if you’d known him? If you’d known the two of you had Nobu in common? Your friend? His son?”