CHAPTER 16

Becky Reeves spent Saturday afternoon and night working on her Sun Bonnet Sue quilt. During the week, she had gone to the teachers’ meeting, put pictures up in her classroom, and completed lesson plans for three weeks. Fred Vestal called from the furniture store and, with apologies for waiting until the last minute, invited her to supper and a picture show in El Dorado, but she turned him down, blaming a tiring week. He struck her as nice but uninteresting and she planned to spend the whole holiday weekend sewing. Then Hazel Brantley popped over from next door and invited her to go to church again.

All over the country, people woke up on Sunday before Labor Day looking forward to one last chance to catch the monster fish that kept getting away, go water skiing, or grill steaks in the backyard.

Sam got up thinking about church and wondering if Becky would be there. Earlier in the week, he had learned that Billy was going to be in her class. He was excited about having a teacher who had a firsthand acquaintance with the Cardinals, and Sam expected he would try to sit near her again today.

Sure enough, when Sunday school ended and Sam walked in for worship, he saw Becky sitting in the same place as last week, with Billy and Mary Jane right behind her. Becky had on a pale green blouse and a white hat with little feathers, and Sam thought she belonged on a movie poster. Both she and Hazel, who was sitting beside her again, were reading their bulletins. Becky glanced up, saw Sam walking up the aisle, and smiled. He smiled back, and when he pulled even with her row, she mouthed, “Good morning.” He did the same, took his seat, and tried to focus on his bulletin.

The service followed a predictable track. Opal Jolly sang a moving solo of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” and Brother Byrd preached another one of his spellbinding sermons. When he finished, he prayed for “peaceful resolution of the differences within our state.”This time a few more members than last week noticed his vague reference to the events in Little Rock, but again, most in the congregation were already planning dinner and the rest of the day.

When the worshipers began filing out, Becky turned toward Sam and the children. “Hello, Tate family. Billy, are you ready for school on Tuesday? I suppose you know we’ll be learning things together.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Billy said, smiling from ear to ear and buttoning his sports jacket like a grownup. “I’m anxious to hear all about Busch Stadium.”

“That’s great,” Becky said, as they all moved into the aisle. “We’ll have some other interesting things to talk about too. It’ll be a fun year.”

“I’ve never seen him so ready for school to start,” Sam said, walking slowly alongside Becky. He noticed she was wearing the same perfume she had on the day she came into the Otasco store. “How about you?” he asked, breathing in the pleasing scent. “Is Hazel taking good care of you?” He spoke loudly enough for the landlady, now ahead of him, to hear.

“Yes, Hazel has told me everything I need to know about Unionville, and I’m anxious to get going on Tuesday.” Becky did not say that Hazel had also passed along just about everything she knew about Sam and his family.

“Well, if there’s anything we Tates can do for you, don’t hesitate to let us know,” Sam said, unable to come up with anything better.

“Thank you. I appreciate that. Hey, Mary Jane. How are you today? That surely is a pretty dress you’re wearing.”

“My grandmother made it,” Mary Jane said, walking on the other side of her daddy.

“Well, she certainly is a good seamstress.”

“Gran makes quilts too,” Mary Jane added.

“Oh, does she?” Becky said. “So do I.”

Across the sanctuary, Emma Lou nudged Gran. “Looks like Sam and that new teacher are getting along good. They sure make a handsome couple.”

“Emma Lou, you know I don’t want to hear that kind of talk,” Gran said. “I done told you. Sam ain’t got truck for no Yankee woman. He’s just being polite.”

“Ida Belle’s right,”Almalee leaned over and whispered to her shorter companions. “I’m sure when Sam’s ready to think about marrying again, he’s gon’ want a nice southern girl like Opal.”

“Did I say anything about marriage?” Emma Lou asked. “Gosh almighty, y’all!”

Later, when the Tates were driving home, Gran asked Sam, “What were you and that Yankee schoolteacher talking about?”

“We were just exchanging the time of day, Momma.”

“She makes quilts, Gran,” Mary Jane said, “just like you.”

“That’ll be the day.”

As always after Sunday dinner, Sam and Billy helped Gran clean up the kitchen, then Sam played games with Mary Jane and read to her. In mid-afternoon, he and Billy gathered balls, bats, and gloves and headed to the horse pasture. Old Ned, long experienced with flying baseballs, took to the barn as soon as he saw them coming.

They followed a routine. First, they used shovels and a wheelbarrow to pick up fresh horse apples. Then came a game of catch to warm up and, after that, batting for Billy. Unionville did not have a Little League and Billy had never played in a real game. The closest he ever came were occasional sandlot games with friends in the summer and during recess at school.

To compensate, Sam had built a low mound and a small chicken-wire backstop at home, and he made their Sunday afternoons special by calling out imaginary hitting situations. Billy had a good eye for the ball and took in batting tips like Old Ned’s saddle blanket soaked up sweat. Sam rarely had to remind him anymore to keep his back elbow up. “This next one’s gon’ have a bend in it,” Sam said, after Billy murdered a batch of straight pitches. Sam threw a slow curve, and Billy smashed it toward what would have been right field on a real ball diamond.

“Good hit!” Sam called. He loved watching Billy swing.

After a while they switched to fielding, first with grounders then fly balls, Billy’s favorites. When they finished, they went to the back porch, sat in the shade, and drank lemonade with Mary Jane and Gran. Although Gran didn’t like baseball, she liked seeing Sam and Billy play together and she always made them something cold to drink afterward.

“Billy,” Sam asked, as they cooled off, “how would you like to go see the Black Tigers play a real game tomorrow afternoon? Provided we get all our chores done in time.” After Labor Day, stores no longer closed on Wednesday afternoons, and Sam always used the holiday to get work done around home.

“Yes, sir!” Billy said. “That’d be great!”

“Sam!” Gran said, puffing up. “I done told you! Y’all ain’t got no business over there with them coloreds, especially with all that mess going on up at Little Rock. People are gon’ talk and they’re gon’ stop buying from you.”

“No, they won’t, not as long as I have what they want and the price is right. Besides, if someone doesn’t like it, that’s their problem. I’d a whole lot rather be sitting over at the ball park watching a good ball game with coloreds than sitting in the barbershop getting a haircut with the likes of Jim Ed Davis.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Gran said.

On Monday morning, Sam got up early, hitched up Old Ned, and tilled the garden for a fall crop of turnip greens. He had them planted before anyone else woke up. After breakfast, Billy helped harvest several long rows of peanuts, which he and Sam stacked under a fenced-in shed behind the barn. In a week or two, Billy and Mary Jane would help pull them off the vines for drying. During the winter, Sam kept a pan full roasting on the big flat-top gas heater at the store. They attracted customers and fueled the Saturday night bull sessions.

Sam and Billy worked past noon, and when they finished, Gran told them, “Me and Mary Jane ate already and what’s left is cold. I didn’t aim to keep food warm just so y’all could run off over there and mix with them coloreds.”

As he and Billy headed for the ball park after a dinner of warmed-up leftovers, Sam began to feel a little unsure about going. Whites never attended Black Tiger games and despite how he and Billy had been practicing with the team, he was not sure they would be welcome. If they went, no one would ask them to leave, but he did not want to embarrass Leon Jackson. So, instead of going through the ticket gate, Sam parked on the school grounds and he and Billy walked between the woods and the outfield fence and sat down in the grass well outside the unenclosed right field foul line.

A hundred or more people were scattered around the small grandstand and along the foul lines near the dugouts but none paid the uninvited guests any attention. Sam and Billy had never seen the Black Tigers in uniform, and although their cream-colored suits were old and worn, they looked sharp. Each shirt had a homemade orange “U” stitched to the front and a homemade black number sewed on the back. Their caps were plain black and their stockings orange.

“Looks like they got those uniforms used somewhere, but I bet they still had to save up a long time for them,” Sam said.

“I bet Leon cleans them in his shop,” Billy said. “Look, there he is, coming out of the dugout. He’s got on shin guards and stuff. There comes B. J. too. I bet he’s pitching.”

Being the home team, the Black Tigers took the field first. Their opponents, the Strong Cyclones from over near Crossett, batted first. Their uniforms were old, too, and some were not complete, but still they looked good. The pants and shirts were gray and the stockings, homemade numbers, and caps red.

“Come on, B. J.! You’re the man, B. J! Show him your smoke, B. J.! He can’t hit!” some of the Black Tigers yelled when the first Strong hitter stepped into the batter’s box. Others whistled encouragement.

B. J. Long peered in at Leon to get the sign for the first pitch then went into his windmill windup and let fly. Ball striking mitt sounded like a rifle shot. The hitter never moved his bat.

“Strriikee!” the umpire bellowed.

“Wow!” Billy said.

The next pitch made the same sound, only this time the batter swung and missed.

“Strriikee two!” the ump bellowed again.

“Watch for Miss Lilabell this time,” Sam said.

B. J. got Leon’s sign, wound up, and delivered.

“Ungh!”The batter’s strained exhale could be heard all over the park as he missed B. J.’s favorite pitch by a foot.

“Strriikee three! You’re out!” the umpire yelled.

Leon shot the ball to the third baseman and the players whipped it around the infield and yelled,“Atta boy, B. J.! Way to pitch!”The crowd cheered loudly.

“Daddy, this is exciting,” Billy said.

“Yeah, it is,” Sam agreed. He was glad they came.

The next two batters went down in order, one on another strikeout and one on a weak grounder to Otis Henderson at short. When the Cyclones took the field, a giant of a man strode to the mound. He was bigger than Leon and blazed his warm-up pitches to the plate. Otis led off for the Black Tigers and went down swinging on three straight fastballs. Charlie Foster came up next and fouled off two fastballs before bouncing a ball weakly to short. Leon strode from the on-deck circle to bat third.

“If that pitcher keeps on throwing fastballs, Leon’s gon’ park one,” Sam told Billy. “Just you watch.”

The first pitch popped loudly into the catcher’s mitt. Leon took it for a strike.

“That’s okay,” Sam said. “He’s just getting the timing down.”

The second pitch was another fastball in the strike zone, and again Leon watched it go by without moving the bat held high behind his head. The pitcher, sure now that he had the upper hand, wound up and delivered again. This time, Leon stepped forward, put his weight into a perfectly timed swing, and used his wrists to snap the bat into the ball. It exploded off the barrel, rose on a steady line over second base, and looked as if it were still climbing when it cleared the center field fence.

“What did I tell you?” Sam said, clapping.

The Cyclones’ pitcher learned from Leon’s blast and started mixing his deliveries, but he was no match for B. J. By the eighth inning, Unionville led 9 to 0. Leon slugged another home run in the fourth, this one a towering fly to left, and no Strong batter hit the ball out of the infield. With a win well in hand, Leon took B. J. out of the game to give another Black Tiger a chance to pitch. When Leon walked to the mound to go over signs at the start of the inning, he looked out toward Sam and Billy and tipped his cap. Billy waved back and Sam gave a thumbs up.

“Looks like the Black Tigers about have it wrapped up.” Sam said. “Let’s go so I can read some to Mary Jane before supper.”

“Just one more batter, please?” Billy begged.

“All right,” Sam said, sitting back down on the grass.

The Strong hitter lined the new hurler’s first pitch toward the gap in left center field.

“That might be a double,” Sam said, as Charlie Foster raced to his left.

“Rabbit on the run!” Billy shouted, as the batter rounded first base. The Black Tigers were yelling too.“Rabbit on the run! Rabbit on the run!”

Charlie scooped the skidding ball off the grass, pivoted, and hurled it on a line to second. It arrived before the runner could even start his slide.

“Out by a mile, Daddy!”

“Son,” Sam said, “that fellow was out as soon as he decided to go to second. He just didn’t know it. Come on. We have to go home now.”

“Okay, Daddy. Mary Jane’s probably waiting for you.”

When Sam and Billy rose to leave, so did the man looking on from the woods on the hill behind them.

While Sam and Billy watched the Black Tigers, the Braves swept a doubleheader from the Cubs in Chicago and the Cardinals lost a pair to the Reds in Cincinnati. This put the Cardinals eight and one-half games back in the National League pennant race.

In Little Rock, School Superintendent Virgil Blossom, NAACP leader Daisy Bates, and parents of the seventeen students scheduled to enter Central High School on Tuesday morning suffered a much more important setback. Frightened by all the talk of violence, eight of the students and their families went to Blossom’s office and withdrew their applications to attend Central. While that was going on, the superintendent’s secretary received a telephone call from a man who refused to give his name but claimed some two hundred armed men were on their way to Little Rock to “get” Blossom. After reporting the call to the police, Blossom telephoned Faubus and asked for more protection. He responded by scheduling a statewide television address for late that evening.

The Tates stayed too busy to watch a lot of television but each had favorite shows. Mary Jane loved Howdy Doody, Billy never missed Dragnet, and he and the adults watched Gunsmoke every week. They all liked I Love Lucy, and Gran and the children often watched Father Knows Best. Sam stopped watching it after Mary Jane said, “Daddy, I wish I had a momma like Mrs. Anderson.” If Tucker had not called Sam to tell him about the governor’s speech, he would have missed it.

A little before ten o’clock, with Billy and Mary Jane long in bed, Sam and Gran sat silently in the living room waiting for the broadcast. He thought about how his mother seemed to tire so easily of late, how much things had changed during her lifetime, and how they would surely change more, even drastically from her point of view. He wondered how much longer he, Billy, and Mary Jane would have her.

Like Sam and Gran, people all over Arkansas sat in front of their TVs or near their radios. When Faubus appeared on the screen in stark black and white with his hair slicked back from his jowly face, he looked worried. He talked about the need for deliberate rather than quick change and explained how he had asked the courts for more time to work out the details of integration and how federal judges had rejected his pleas.

Now, he said, a telephone campaign was underway to assemble a large crowd of protesters at Little Rock Central High School at six o’clock the next morning. Repeating rumors like ones he had described in court earlier, he said he had reports that caravans would converge on Little Rock from all over the state. “If that happens and Negro students attempt to enter the school,” he speculated,“blood will run in the streets.”Accordingly, he said he had called out the National Guard to keep order and protect lives and property. The troops were already in place as he spoke, having arrived an hour earlier in jeeps, trucks, and half-tracks, and were armed with rifles, bayonets, tear gas, and riot clubs.

Faubus went on to say he had come to the inevitable conclusion that, for the time being, schools in Pulaski County must remain segregated. In violation of a federal court order, he directed that the integration of Little Rock Central High School be put on hold.

The broadcast sent shock waves across the state. Regardless of position, responsibility, or opinion, everyone saw that the dispute had become a crisis.

“It’s about time somebody showed some gumption,” Gran said, when Faubus finished speaking.

Sam got up and turned off the set. “I’m not so sure it was gumption, Momma. Looks like he’s just postponing something that’s gon’ happen no matter what he does.”

Elsewhere in Unionville, Brother Spurlock reached for a pack of cigarettes and a notepad. Preston Upshaw went to his typewriter. Reverend Moseley got down on his knees. Principal Woodhead went to bed fearing her last school year might not go as smoothly as she had hoped. And Becky Reeves began making new lesson plans.