CHRISTY TUCKER RODE into the plantation town on muleback late in the afternoon, whistling all the way. He had been hewing new pickets for the fence around his house all morning, and he was feeling good for having got so much done. He did not have a chance to go to the plantation town very often, and when he could go he did not lose any time in getting there.
He tied up the mule at the racks behind the row of stores, and the first thing he noticed was the way the other Negroes out there did not seem anxious to speak to him. Christy had been on friendly terms with all the colored people on the plantation ever since he and his wife had moved there three months before, and he could not understand why they pretended not to see him.
He walked slowly down the road toward the plantation office wondering why nobody spoke to him.
After he had gone a little farther, he met Froggy Miller. He caught Froggy by the arm before Froggy could dodge him.
“What’s the matter with you folks today?” he said. Froggy Miller lived only a mile from his house in a straight line across the cotton field, and he knew Froggy better than anyone else on the plantation. “What’s the matter, anyway, Froggy?”
Froggy, a big six-foot Negro with close-cropped hair, moved away.
He grabbed Froggy by the arm and shook him.
“Now look here!” Christy said, getting worried. “Why do you and everybody else act so strange?”
“Mr. Lee Crossman sent for you, didn’t he?” Froggy said.
“Sure, he sent for me,” Christy said. “I reckon he wants to talk to me about the farming. But what’s that got to do with —”
Before he could finish, Froggy had pulled away from him and walked hurriedly up the road.
Without wasting any more time, Christy ran toward the plantation office to find out what the trouble was.
The plantation bookkeeper, Hendricks, and Lee Crossman’s younger brother, Morgan, were sitting in the front office with their feet on the window sill when he ran inside. Hendricks got up when he saw Christy and went through the door into the back room. While the bookkeeper was in the other room, Morgan Crossman stared sullenly at the Negro.
“Come here, you,” Hendricks said, coming through the door.
Christy turned around and saw Lee Crossman, the owner and boss of the plantation, standing in the doorway.
“Yes, sir,” Christy said.
Lee Crossman was dressed in heavy gray riding breeches and tan shirt, and he wore black boots that laced to his knees. He stood aside while Christy walked into the back room, and closed the door on the outside. Christy walked to the middle of the room and stood there waiting for Lee Crossman.
Christy had moved to the Crossman plantation the first of the year, about three months before. It was the first time he had ever been in Georgia, and he had grown to like it better than Alabama, where he had always lived. He and his wife had decided to come to Georgia because they had heard that the land there was better for sharecropping cotton. Christy said he could not be satisfied merely making a living; he wanted to get ahead in life.
Lee Crossman still had not come, and Christy sat down in one of the chairs. He had no more than seated himself when the door opened. He jumped to his feet.
“Howdy, Mr. Lee,” he said, smiling. “I’ve had a good chance to look at the land, and I’d like to be furnished with another mule and a gang plow. I figure I can raise twice as much cotton on that kind of land with a gang plow, because it’s about the best I ever saw. There’s not a rock or stump on it, and it’s as clear of bushes as the palm of my hand. I haven’t even found a gully anywhere on it. If you’ll furnish me with another mule and a gang plow, I’ll raise more cotton for you than any two sharecroppers on your plantation.”
Lee Crossman listened until he had finished, and then he slammed the door shut and strode across the room. “I sent for you, nigger,” he said. “You didn’t send for me, did you?”
“That’s right, Mr. Lee,” he said. “You sent for me.”
“Then keep your black face shut until I tell you to open it.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lee,” Christy said, backing across the room until he found himself against the wall. Lee Crossman sat down in a chair and glared at him. “Yes, sir, Mr. Lee,” Christy said again.
“You’re one of these biggity niggers, ain’t you?” Lee said. “Where’d you come from, anyway? You ain’t a Georgia nigger, are you?”
“No, sir, Mr. Lee,” Christy said, shaking his head. “I was born and raised in Alabama.”
“Didn’t they teach you any better than this in Alabama?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lee.”
“Then why did you come over here to Georgia and start acting so biggity?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Lee.”
Christy wiped his face with the palm of his hand and wondered what Lee Crossman was angry with him about. He began to understand why the other Negroes had gone out of their way to keep from talking to him. They knew he had been sent for, and that meant he had done something to displease Lee Crossman. They did not wish to be seen talking to anyone who was in disfavor with the plantation owner and boss.
“Have you got a radio?” Lee asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I bought it on time.”
“Where’d you get the money to pay on it?”
“I had a little, and my wife raises a few chickens.”
“Why didn’t you buy it at the plantation store?”
“I made a better bargain at the other place. I got it a little cheaper.”
“Niggers who live on my plantation buy what they need at my plantation store,” Lee said.
“I didn’t want to go into debt to you, Mr. Lee,” Christy said. “I wanted to come out ahead when the accounts are settled at the end of the year.”
Lee Crossman leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs, and took out his pocketknife. He began cleaning his fingernails.
There was silence in the room for several minutes. Christy leaned against the wall.
“Stand up straight, nigger!” Lee shouted at him.
“Yes, sir,” Christy said, jumping erect.
“Did you split up some of my wood to hew pickets for the fence around the house where you live?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lee.”
“Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted you to do it?”
“I figured the fence needed some new pickets to take the place of some that had rotted, and because I’m living in the house I went ahead and did it.”
“You act mighty big, don’t you?” Lee said. “You act like you own my house and land, don’t you? You act like you think you’re as good as a white man, don’t you?”
“No sir, Mr. Lee,” Christy protested. “I don’t try to act any of those ways. I just naturally like to hustle and get things done, that’s all. I just can’t be satisfied unless I’m fixing a fence or cutting wood or picking cotton, or something. I just naturally like to get things done.”
“Do you know what we do with biggity niggers like you in Georgia?”
“No, sir.”
“We teach them to mind their own business and stay in their place.”
Lee Crossman got up and crossed the room to the closet. He jerked the door open and reached inside. When he turned around, he was holding a long leather strap studded with heavy brass brads. He came back across the room, slapping the strap around his boot tops.
“Who told your wife she could raise chickens on my plantation?” he said to Christy.
“Nobody told her, Mr. Lee,” Christy said. “We didn’t think you’d mind. There’s plenty of yard around the house for them, and I built a little hen house.”
“Stop arguing with me, nigger!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want chickens scratching up crops on this plantation.”
“Yes, sir,” Christy said.
“Where did you get money to pay on a radio?”
“I snared a few rabbits and skinned them, and then I sold their hides for a little money.”
“I don’t want no rabbits touched on my plantation,” Lee said.
He shook out the heavy strap and cracked it against his boots.
“Why haven’t you got anything down on the books in the plantation store?” Lee asked.
“I just don’t like to go into debt,” Christy said. “I want to come out ahead when the accounts are settled at the end of the year.”
“That’s my business whether you come out owing or owed at the end of the year,” Lee said.
He pointed to a crack in the floor.
“Take off that shirt and drop your pants and get down on your knees astraddle that crack,” the white man said.
“What are you going to do to me, Mr. Lee?”
“I’ll show you what I’m going to do,” he replied. “Take off that shirt and pants and get down there like I told you.”
“Mr. Lee, I can’t let you beat me like that. No, sir, Mr. Lee. I can’t let you do that to me. I just can’t!”
“You black-skinned, back-talking coon, you!” Lee shouted, his face turning crimson with anger.
He struck Christy with the heavy, brass-studded strap. Christy backed out of reach, and when Lee struck him the second time, the Negro caught the strap and held on to it. Lee glared at him at first, and then he tried to jerk it out of his grip.
“Mr. Lee, I haven’t done anything except catch a few rabbits and raise a few chickens and things like that,” Christy protested. “I didn’t mean any harm at all. I thought you’d be pleased if I put some new pickets in your fence.”
“Shut your mouth and get that shirt and pants off like I told you,” he said, angrier than ever. “And turn that strap loose before I blast it loose from you.”
Christy stayed where he was and held on to the strap with all his might. Lee was so angry he could not speak after that. He ran to the closet and got his pistol. He swung around and fired it at Christy three times. Christy released his grip on the strap and sank to the floor.
Lee’s brother, Morgan, and the bookkeeper, Hendricks, came running into the back room.
“What happened, Lee?” his brother asked, seeing Christy Tucker lying on the floor.
“That nigger threatened me,” Lee said, blowing hard. He walked to the closet and tossed the pistol on the shelf.
“You and Hendricks heard him threaten to kill me. I had to shoot him down to protect my own life.”
They left the back room and went into the front office. Several clerks from the plantation store ran in and wanted to know what all the shooting was about.
“Just a biggity nigger,” Lee said, washing his hands at the sink. “He was that Alabama nigger that came over here two or three months ago. I sent for him this morning to ask him what he meant by putting new pickets in the fence around his house without asking me first. When I got him in here, he threatened me. He was a bad nigger.”
The clerks went back to the plantation store, and Hendricks opened up his books and went to work on the accounts.
“Open up the back door,” Lee told his brother, “and let those niggers out in the back see what happens when one of them gets as biggity as that coon from Alabama got.”
His brother opened the back door. When he looked outside into the road, there was not a Negro in sight. The only living thing out there was the mule on which Christy Tucker had ridden to town.
(First published in The Nation)