CHAPTER 13

Sam and Billy had barely finished putting out display merchandise on Saturday morning when Boomer Jenkins came stomping through the wide-open front doors.

“Hey, Sam, you got any fishing line worth a damn?” he called, his deep voice filling the store and startling Miss Ruthelle. Billy heard it way in back where he was emptying sawdust from sweeping. He picked up his broom and hurried up front.

A powerful, craggy-faced man, Boomer’s real name was Jeremiah, but folks called him Boomer because it was easier to say and suited his personality and the noise he made walking and talking. He had lost his left leg below the knee in World War II. No one knew exactly how because he never told the story the same way twice. All anyone knew for sure was that he had been a medical corpsman. The army gave him an artificial leg, but when he got home, he threw it away and carved one out of cypress wood. Black leather straps around his stump and waist held the contraption in place, and a metal rod welded to the clutch pedal of his Dodge pickup enabled him to drive. He always wore a floppy black hat and carried a big hunting knife in a black scabbard that stood out against his khaki clothes. Because of his getup, size, and gruffness, most people gave him a wide berth and he loved it.

“You bet,” Sam said, parking a hand truck loaded with cartons of auto parts. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

“Well, I sure hope you’ve got something better than the crap you sold me last time,” Boomer said. “It wouldn’t hold squat. I can’t make a living if my trotlines keep breaking.” Boomer lived way back in Corney Bayou over in Claiborne Parish and stretched his disabled veteran’s pension by supplying catfish and frog legs to restaurants in nearby towns. Jim Ed Davis was about the only friend he had, and they had little in common other than military service and a strong dislike for blacks.

“Morning, Miss Ruthelle, how’re you doing?”

“You watch your language Boomer Jenkins!” she called from the office. “There’re women and children here!” Not much intimidated Miss Ruthelle.

“Excuse me, Miss Ruthelle. I sure as hell didn’t mean no offense,” Boomer said, laughing.

“Boomer, look on the second shelf there,” Sam said, walking over. He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Elmer Spurlock came into the store.

“Good morning sinners!” he called out.

“Damn it,” Boomer muttered under his breath. “If I’d known that Bible-thumping son of a bitch was gon’ show up, I’d have went to the hardware store.”

“Good morning, Brother Spurlock,” Sam said, using the title whites preferred for their preachers. “I’ll be with you as soon as I finish here.”

“That’s all right, Sam,” Spurlock said. “I just need a little paint for one of the Sunday school rooms. I expect Miss Ruthelle can help me.”

“What color do you want?” she growled, making no attempt to hide feeling put out by having to get up from her chair.

Spurlock played shepherd to a flock of independent Baptists six miles west of town on Newton Chapel Road. The congregation rejected all mainstream Baptist organizations and took every word of the Bible literally. Their part-time preacher was pushing sixty, had a barrel chest and a face like a bulldog, and had not needed a comb in years. In addition to being a self-taught preacher, he also drove a school bus and painted houses when he could get the work. His once-white coveralls, which he wore everywhere except to church, had almost as many stains as the bed of the eight-year-old Chevy pickup he used to haul his ladders and scaffolding.

While Sam helped Boomer and Miss Ruthelle waited on Spurlock, Lester Grimes came rolling in from the sidewalk, belly jiggling and mouth running. “Hey, Sam, did you see the new Unionville Times? Upshaw’s got more information about that mess in Little Rock.”

“What’s it say, Lester?” Spurlock asked. He had hated blacks ever since he was a boy growing up dirt poor next to the quarters in Magnolia, over in Columbia County. The only thing that gave his family an edge over their neighbors was skin color, and he was paying close attention to what was happening in Little Rock.

“It says here there’s gon’ be bloodshed,” Lester reported.

“Let me see that,” Spurlock demanded.

Lester handed over the paper. “This Brother Paxson is a good man,” Spurlock said after a moment. “I hear him on the radio sometimes. He knows the scriptures. And he’s right. All these integrationists are doing the devil’s work and they’re gon’ be punished in eternal damnation.”

“I don’t care nothing about no preachers, no scriptures, and no eternal damnation,” Boomer said,” but I’ve heard about Daisy Bates, and I for one ain’t gon’ put up with none of her crap. If somebody don’t settle that fuss up there pretty quick, first thing you know, all the coloreds down here are gon’ be acting up.”

“I sure hope not,” Spurlock said. “We don’t need integration in Unionville. Our schools are fine the way they are.”

“Amen,” Miss Ruthelle chimed in.

Sam did not say anything. His customers’ opinions were no surprise, but the depth of their anger was. He had to admit that Upshaw’s first issue had hit home with at least some folks.

Later, after everyone had left and Miss Ruthelle had gone back to her invoices and sales receipts, Billy asked, “Daddy, is there gon’ be some kind of fight? I don’t understand what that was all about just now.”

“No, son, I don’t think so,” Sam said, as he opened a carton of fuel pumps. “There’re just some folks up in Little Rock that want colored kids to go to school with white kids.”

“Why, Daddy?”

“Well, son,” Sam said, placing two pumps on a shelf, “I guess they think colored kids will learn more that way. Reach in that box there and hand me some more of these.”

“Can’t they learn stuff in their own schools?” Billy asked, grabbing two boxes.

“Yeah, seems like they can. Give me some more.”

“Why’s everything separate anyway, Daddy?”

“Colored people have different ways than we do.”

“I still don’t get it,” Billy said, digging out two more pumps. “Like Mary Jane was saying about Ollie Mae the other day, she does things just like we do. And Leon and B. J. play ball just like we do.”

Sam did not know what to say to that. All his life he had heard Gran and other white people fuss and cuss about black folks and never thought much about it. He had known them only as people he sold things to or hired to do unskilled work. Since his last practice with the Black Tigers, however, he had been thinking a lot about the ballplayers. He saw them differently someway but he was not sure how exactly, or why.

“Speaking of baseball,” he said, changing the subject, “I think maybe the Cardinals are on the TV Game of the Week today. Why don’t you go get the newspaper and see? Maybe we can watch a few innings after dinner.”