CHAPTER 7

About Uncle Jesse Lee …

Folks say he’s ’bout the most superstitious person the good Lord ever made. He believes in ghosts, or “haints” as he calls them. If you want the worse cussin’ imaginable, just sweep across his feet with a sturdy straw broom or toss a dustpan of dirt through his front door at night. He don’t play ’bout stuff like that. He says his luck is bad enough already.

A bird flew off with a tuft of his hair one breezy Saturday afternoon thirty years ago—why he was combing his hair outside no one knows—and Uncle Jesse Lee’s been looking for the winged demon ever since. He went as far as to climb the tree in which the feathered thief disappeared, hoping to find his silky, black strands entangled in a nest, but there was no nest. There wasn’t even a bird, but you couldn’t tell Uncle Jesse Lee that. He believed in his heart that the bird had taken his hair away, and would one day return it. Otherwise, he’d have a headache the rest of his life.

He’d descend the tree at sunset, whatever tree he’d chosen that day, rubbing his throbbing forehead, convinced that God would make the bird penitent and he’d be healed. Jesse Lee never did have no sense, folks said. Most waved up at him as they passed, shaking their heads and laughing out loud. Uncle Jesse Lee didn’t care. He needed his hair back, and he had the patience to wait for it.

He could’ve been handsome had he cared about such things. Aunt Clara, his oldest sister, said he had the blackest, smoothest skin she’d ever seen on a baby, and, as he matured, it never blemished. At seventy-something, if not eighty, he lounged beneath Swamp Creek’s oaks, cypresses, and maples as the morning sun darkened his already bronze complexion. People’s “Ump, ump ump” was more about the waste of his beauty than the shame of him chasing a bird. Graying only at the edges, his soft, curly hair covered his perfectly rounded head like a wig. The two times in life he shaped his unsightly facial hair—his momma’s funeral and his wedding—women flirted with the intent to give, although Uncle Jesse Lee never noticed. He shaved only because Aunt Bertha Mae wouldn’t have married him otherwise, and he didn’t want his momma mad at him from the grave. But even with a scruffy, patchy beard, folks saw a fine Negro underneath, and often told him so. Uncle Jesse Lee shrugged the compliments off as foolishness. The only thing he treasured was his hair, and he’d wait a lifetime, if he had to, he said, for that damn bird to bring it back.

He was blessed with more Indian blood than the other children, Aunt Clara said. Cherokee, no doubt, since that’s the only tribe black folk ever heard of. Uncle Jesse Lee’s red undertone, which people loved to announce, made him a source of envy in Swamp Creek, since most wanted nothing more desperately than Uncle Jesse Lee’s smooth, silky, black hair. Years ago, in celebration of his Native American ancestry, someone gave him a dream catcher they’d bought at a Native American festival. Uncle Jesse Lee didn’t know what to do with the thing. He’d never heard of a dream catcher before, but he liked the picture of the bald eagle, standing proudly in the oval center, so he hung it on the wall next to his bed. His side of the bed. Aunt Bertha Mae said she believed in Jesus—Oh praise His name!—not idol worship, so she hung a picture of the crucified Christ on the opposite wall. “We’ll see who wins!” she supposedly said.

Daddy warned people not to think of Uncle Jesse Lee as a fool. “He ain’t never been dumb. He might be a lil’ strange, but strange don’t mean stupid.” As children, we realized that when folks said Uncle Jesse Lee (or anybody for that matter) didn’t have no sense, they didn’t mean he didn’t have no sense, they meant he didn’t have enough sense. And that was probably true. But he wasn’t crazy. Uncle Jesse Lee fed, clothed, and housed thirteen children, practically by himself. Aunt Bertha Mae was present, folks loved to say, but she couldn’t be counted on for much work. Every now and then, she’d cook a meal or comb the girls’ hair, but usually she spent her time visiting and gossiping with women who later gossiped about her. Uncle Jesse Lee was the real cook, and sometimes folks went by at suppertime solely with the hope of being invited to the table. It didn’t matter what he cooked; everything tasted scrumptious—squirrel, rabbit, coon, deer, possum, armadillo—and people ate like guests at God’s Welcome Table. No one ever knew how Uncle Jesse Lee seasoned possum until it tasted like roast beef, but it did. And he wouldn’t tell his secret. The kids ate so well they didn’t want to leave home, but Uncle Jesse Lee put all of ’em out at eighteen, whether they had somewhere to go or not. Most of ’em cried ’cause they knew they’d never eat that good again, but oh well. When Jesse Lee said go, he meant it.

He would’ve put Aunt Bertha Mae out, too, if her performance in the bedroom had ever waned. She loved sex, any way she could get it, and folks said Uncle Jesse Lee loved giving it. She was the top, people teased, riding Uncle Jesse Lee until he simply gave out. Daddy said Uncle Jesse Lee agreed to do everything else around the house if Aunt Bertha Mae never stopped screwing him, and, as far as people knew, she kept her end of the bargain, so he kept his. After all the children moved away—or got put out—he cooked less, and folks said Bertha Mae did fewer sexual favors, although she never stopped altogether. Then, when the bird flew away with his hair, insomnia set in and left Uncle Jesse Lee sitting up half the night in his old rocker, wondering where in the world that damn bird could be. At first, Aunt Bertha Mae asked, “Ain’t you comin’ to bed, old man?” but, according to rumor, Uncle Jesse Lee frowned and said, “Bed’s for two thangs. We done done one of ’em, and since I ain’t sleepy, what’s the point?”

He took up reading to pass the time. A King James Bible and a 1955 set of Britannica encyclopedias were the only books he owned. Aunt Bertha Mae had argued years ago that the encyclopedias were a crucial investment in the kids’ intellectual development. Uncle Jesse Lee didn’t agree, but Aunt Bertha Mae stole the money from him and bought the series anyway. He didn’t say a word when the books arrived. He just started hiding his money in a leather pouch and burying it somewhere in the woods. No one ever discovered where. When the family needed things, he’d vanish into the thicket and return with enough money to meet the need. Folks, including his own sons, considered following him to find out where he kept the stash, but Uncle Jesse Lee promised to kill any nigga dead who dared invade his privacy. They knew not to try him.

Reading from the Bible only those passages he liked—most of God’s writing was boring, he said—Uncle Jesse Lee spent the majority of his reading time lost in Aunt Bertha Mae’s old encyclopedias. He’d thumb pages for hours until encountering a topic that captured his attention. Anything dealing with animals was always a winner. Or foreign countries. He loved learning about life in different places and looking at pictures of people in strange clothes, standing in an environment he could only imagine. Fearing he’d never leave Swamp Creek, he’d close his eyes and travel those foreign lands, eating foods whose names he couldn’t pronounce and staring at exotic flowers more grand than anything he’d ever beheld. The day the bird flew off with his hair, he simply took the books with him and sat beneath his favorite tree, passing the time in China, Africa, and Bangladesh.

Back in the thirties, Uncle Jesse Lee learned the harmonica while his siblings chopped cotton. Aunt Clara said he played lame for two years until their father caught him walking from the outhouse one day when Uncle Jesse Lee thought everyone was away. He’d fallen from the old persimmon tree in the front yard and faked his own paralysis. He was seven. No one doubted the authenticity of his injury. Even Doc Henderson was fooled, diagnosing that Uncle Jesse Lee would never walk again. Aunt Clara said he had the act down pat! His legs, like a paraplegic’s, hung limp and weak beneath his torso, and his brothers willingly toted him wherever the family went. Miss Liza, the community healer, cooked up all kinds of potions for him to drink, but nothing seemed to help. Of course there was nothing wrong with him. When Great-granddaddy discovered as much, he didn’t say anything. Just disappeared into the woods and returned with a hickory limb and commenced to beating Uncle Jesse Lee’s ass like an old, nasty rug. Aunt Clara said they found him later that evening, sprawled out facedown in the front yard, covered in his own blood. Granddaddy might’ve killed him had he had the time. He left him right there on the ground and walked back to the field like nothing had happened. Great-grandmother screamed when she found him. She fell to her knees, Aunt Clara said, and began speaking in unknown tongues. When Uncle Jesse Lee revived, rose, and walked like a natural man, Grandma reached her hands toward heaven and danced in the Holy Ghost. Their father said nothing. He later told Uncle Jesse Lee, “You gon’ do all the work you done missed. I’ma see to that.”

During the paralysis, Uncle Jesse Lee escaped every day to the honky-tonk, deep in the woods, where he sat with Joe Tex, who taught him the intricacies of the harmonica. Old Man Joe could play any genre of music and make it sound good, but Uncle Jesse Lee loved the blues best. It did something for his soul, he told folks. He saw more God in the blues than in gospel, so he tried to play the blues in church one Sunday, but people had a fit. “We rebuke the devil in the name of Jesus!” they cried, according to Aunt Clara. Uncle Jesse Lee cried, too. “This is Jesus!” he demanded, but they didn’t agree, so they formed a circle around him and prayed and laid hands upon him, begging God to destroy his love affair with evil. God didn’t do it. Instead, Uncle Jesse Lee played everywhere else he went—the general store, the cornfield, the Jordan River—and opened the doors of the church all by himself when he finished. A few actually accepted Jesus from his ministry. He directed them to the church so they’d have consistent fellowship, but he warned them not to look for Jesus every Sunday. “He don’t always do church,” he said. “Jesus can’t take a lotta bullshit.”

What pissed off Uncle Jesse Lee’s daddy most was that these clandestine musical lessons occurred while the rest of the family earned the boy’s living. And after the crucifixion—or the resurrection, depending on who tells the story—Uncle Jesse Lee’s musical interest waned and his days of leisure were replaced by days of excruciatingly hard labor.

Most called Uncle Jesse Lee stubborn in his old age, but he thought of himself as determined. That’s why he went to the Meetin’ Tree every single Saturday. Sure, he wanted his hair—and he intended to get it—but he also meant for that bird to know his persistence. That was his other crowning glory, his persistence—his hair was the first—and, hell or high water, that bird was going to know whose hair it had taken.

After having waited patiently for a year, Uncle Jesse Lee started shooting every bird he saw. He’d sit still as a decoy, high in the Meetin’ Tree, and plant pellets in anything that flew his way. He still didn’t find his hair. Folks thought the plague of dead birds signaled the beginning of the end, but when Aunt Clara exposed the truth, they said, “Sheeeeit! Somebody need to take Jesse Lee Chambers’s ass off somewhere! That nigga’s crazy as hell!” He apologized to God, they said, and stopped killings the birds, but he didn’t stop going to the tree.

Never bothering to change his clothes, Uncle Jesse Lee wore the same brown, tan, and white plaid pants for twenty years. He patched holes—him, not Aunt Bertha Mae—whenever they grew too big to ignore, and during the winter he simply wore ragged long johns underneath. It didn’t take long for the pants to tighten around his extra-high behind, but Uncle Jesse Lee wouldn’t let them go. He kept pulling until the waist rested barely beneath his nipples, leaving his droopy balls outlined and pressed against his inner left thigh. He owned three dress shirts of the exact same style, one white, one blue, one gray. The blue was obviously his favorite although it matched least, but Uncle Jesse Lee didn’t care. It was that damn bird he was after. And if it took a lifetime, he was determined to sit at the Meetin’ Tree and wait. The blues would keep him company.

He told TL something years ago that TL never forgot. He was sixteen. They sat at the Meetin’ Tree, just the two of them, lounging away a pretty, warm, fall evening when the weather shifted from calm to chaos. Wind gusts rattled the tree, and miniature tornados, formed from dry Arkansas red dust, skipped across the distant landscape. TL smelled the coming rain. No need runnin’, he thought. The tree offered the best shelter, tossing its limbs in the wind as though beckoning him to stay, so he obeyed.

Oblivious to the impending storm, Uncle Jesse Lee leaned back onto the worn, splintered church pew and puffed his pipe casually, blowing smoke into the turbulent air. Lone droplets fell at first, precursors of what was to come. Thunder roared, but with no lightning, they felt safe beneath the armored limbs of the tree.

“Looks like we ’bout to get a good rain,” TL said.

A halo of tobacoo smoke rose and surrounded Uncle Jesse Lee’s head. “Yep, looks like it.”

The elder’s cool, tranquil demeanor comforted TL. Together, they sat and studied the chaotic heavens as if looking for some new manifestation of God. As always, Uncle Jesse Lee wore his favorite brown, tan, and white plaid slacks and the baby-blue long-sleeved shirt, which badly needed washing. He turned slowly and winked at TL.

“You got to watch God, boy. He always talkin’, but we ain’t always listenin’.”

“Yessir.”

“And, anyway, what’s a young fella like you doin’ sittin’ ’round wit’ a old man, starin’ at a storm?”

“I don’t know. Just trying to figure out my future, I guess.”

Uncle Jesse Lee’s slow, methodical nod reminded TL of those tiny toy dogs, resting on dashboards, with heads that bobbed at the slightest touch. “What is you tryin’ to know?”

Thousands of raindrops descended onto leaves above their heads, creating an ensemble of natural rhythms that vibrated into the tumultuous universe.

“I don’t know,” TL repeated. “I just wonder ’bout things sometimes. Like why I’m here. On the earth.”

Again, he nodded slowly and said, “Folks been askin’ that question since the beginnin’ o’ time. Most o’ ’em don’t never find out.”

“Yeah, but I want to.”

He puffed the pipe a few times. “What do you wanna do?”

TL had an answer, but he didn’t want to say it.

“Listen, son. Don’t seek nothin’ you ain’t strong enough to carry. God don’t play wit’ chil’ren. A man’s destiny is a serious thang.”

The wind intensified. “I wanna teach. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, but how do I know that’s what God wants me to do?”

The right corner of Uncle Jesse Lee’s mouth lifted into a half smile. “’Cause he’s the one what gave you the desire. You can’t want nothin’ ’less God plant the yearnin’ in you. You’s mighty lucky. Most young folks don’t even think ’bout such things. Not until they get too old fo’ it to make a difference.”

Rain fell in horizontal sheets as the wind played hide-and-seek.

“I think about it all the time,” TL said.

“Well, good fo’ you. You might make somethin’ outta yo’self after all. We gon’ need a teacha ’round here soon. Swinton can’t do it fo’ever.”

“Oh, I don’t mean here, Uncle Jesse Lee! I mean someplace else.”

“Don’t care what you mean. When God give a man a gift, He prepares a place fo’ him to do it. It ain’t yo’ decision. He’ll direct yo’ steps, here o’ yonder.”

Within seconds, the rain became torrential. Dark clouds gathered and shifted nervously, unsure of where to rest. Uncle Jesse Lee and TL were slightly damp but not wet, and for that TL was grateful. A few savvy droplets meandered through the leaves and fell upon their heads as if to anoint them. With each pellet, TL flinched from the sting of the cold. Uncle Jesse Lee didn’t seem to mind. Only when drops ran down his eyelids did he respond, blinking until they moved on. The storm had captured his consciousness and lulled him into a trance, a kind of dreamy hypnotic state, sustained by the rumble of the wind, rain, and thunder. At one point, he closed his eyes and bowed his head, like a man in deep prayer, then, suddenly, he lifted it and looked wide-eyed as if having received a revelation.

“There’s always more than one way to do a thang, son. Yo’ job is to find the right way fo’ you.”

TL stared into the purple-gray sky in hopes of seeing what Uncle Jesse Lee had apparently seen, but all he saw was gloom. Then, as if someone had turned the pages of a children’s book, the storm subsided, leaving behind a clear blue sky and a light, easy fall breeze.

“See, sometimes, if you wait, yo’ change’ll come. It will come. You young folks get in too big o’ hurry to know what you tryin’ to know. Just plant yo’ seeds and God’ll bring the increase. He’s good at what He do.”

Humid, muggy air returned as the sun resumed its throne.

“See? Change can come just like that!” He snapped. “Don’t never underestimate God.”

TL told him how frustrated he was at home.

“God’s just gettin’ you ready, son. He done put all them brains in yo’ head, now he gotta teach you what to do wit’ ’em. Smarts ain’t jus’ fo’ school. Remember that, you hear?”

“Yessir.”

“Sometimes, God makes a man’s life hard so he ain’t confused ’bout what he wants. If it was too easy, he wouldn’t never do nothin’.”

TL nodded. It made sense.

“Do yo’ learnin’ good. If you wanna teach, that’s ’xactly what you gon’ do. But if God sent you to teach, you ain’t gon’ be like the rest of ’em. And you ain’t gon’ get to do it where you want to. You gon’ have to do it where He send you. And He might send you right where you at.”

TL didn’t want to believe that. God knows my heart, he thought. There’s no way He’d make me stay here.

As though reading the boy’s mind, Uncle Jesse Lee said, “Son, this place ain’t what it used to be. You wouldn’t’ve ever wanted to leave here if you’d seen it in its heyday. I’m tellin’ you what I know. Folks can’t see it now, but, once upon a time, this was a great city.”

“City?”

“Did you hear what I said? Folks came from all ’round to do business here.”

“When was this?”

“Long befo’ you come along. Befo’ yo’ daddy, too. But when I was a lil’ boy, this was a busy place.”

“Come on, Uncle Jesse Lee! There might’ve been more people, but a city? A city has a—”

“I know what a city got, boy! I ain’t crazy! And I know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. Hell, I was here! How old you thank I am?”

TL knew not to answer.

“I was a grown man when yo’ granddaddy come along!”

How could he challenge him?

“Me and yo’ great-grandpa used to run together. We’d come to town on Saturday afternoons, and there’d be people everywhere! From all ’round.” He pointed in every direction. “We’d get to play wi’ kids we barely knowed and eat Mr. John’s homemade ice cream. It was a nickel a scoop, and I mean a big ol’ scoop! Some Saturdays, it’d be fifty o’ sixty kids in the middle of Swamp Creek playin’ while the grown folks talked or handled business.” He closed his eyes. “We had all kinda stores—dry good, grocery, hardware, blacksmith, restaurants—”

“Restaurants?”

“Restaurants!” he shouted. “Two o’ three o’ ’em. And they was owned and runned by colored people. Didn’t no white folks own nothin’ in Swamp Creek. Not back then. Hell, it wunnit even called Swamp Creek.”

“Really? What was it called?”

He smiled as his memory crystallized. “Black Haven. That’s what it was called.”

“Black Haven? Why?”

“’Cause colored peoples all over Conway County came here to do business. And I mean they came! By the hundreds, from miles around, in every direction. You believe what I tell you!” He dumped the ashes of his pipe onto the roots of the tree. “Black Haven was the train stop, the last one headed west ’til Fort Smith. It was the only town ’round wit’ a colored school that went from the first through the twelfth grade. Most children didn’t go regular, but some did. They come from Hattieville, Happy Bend, Hickory Hill, Kenwood, Willow Oak … all ’round. Black Haven was somethin’ else, boy!” He stared into the distance. “There were eleven different towns all together, each with its own road leadin’ to Black Haven.”

He went on to explain that one could enter from the north by three different paths, or “gates” as he called them, all of which crossed the Jordan River. If it rained, folks were stuck for weeks until the water receded, and even then most couldn’t travel since the road was nothing but muck and mire. But during the summer, people came from the north, he said, like the children of Israel bound for the Promised Land. They crossed the Jordan in shallow places, jerking back and forth in homemade wagons that threatened to disassemble with each move. Some crossed on foot, carrying shoes in their hands and delight in their hearts that, once again, they were headed to Black Haven.

“From the west”—he pointed down Highway 64—“folks walked several paths that twisted and turned throughout the Williamses’ place. The paths crossed over one ’nother like a spiderweb, but each led to the heart of Black Haven. People from Happy Bend took one road, folk from Hickory Hill took another, and folks from Atkins Bottom took the other. On the east side, traveling was a lot better. Kenwood, Germantown, and Hattieville folks all had they own good roads leadin’ to town ’cause white folks lived there and made sure they could get in and out whenever they wanted to. Two o’ the roads was even graveled, and that was way back in the thirties!

“From the south”—he nodded toward a field of freshly cut hay—“folks came to Black Haven on what was called the Palmer Trail—a narrow lane that connected the Palmer estate to the rest o’ the world. Old Man Palmer lived way, way south of here, almost to the Arkansas River. All the black folk down there worked fo’ him, and it was a whole lot of ’em.”

“So they just had one way to get to Black Haven?”

“Naw. They had two. The people he liked he let use his road, but the other ones had to walk through the swamp. They’d show up in town wet from the knee down. He was just like that—ol’ racist bastard—but wunnit nothin’ they could do ’bout it, so they came on and dried off wit’ the sun. I ’member laughin’ at some o’ ’em one day when I seen ’em comin’, and Daddy slapped me in the mouth so hard my lip bled all over my shirt. He wouldn’t let Momma tend to me. Said if I bled to death that’s what I get for mockin’ decent folks. ’Course Highway 113 came in from the south but it was too far out o’ the way to be useful. Folks didn’t start comin’ that way ’til I was near ’bout a old man.”

TL imagined all the roads leading to Black Haven like eleven winding capillaries pouring into the same river. It was a virtual metropolis, to let Uncle Jesse Lee tell it, a kind of cosmopolitan epicenter where everyone gathered on Saturday afternoons to transact business and fellowship. The more he described it, the more prideful he became until he was standing and shouting.

“You can’t imagine it, boy, but I’m tellin’ you! It was somethin’ else!” The cane trembled under his weight. “Swamp Creek ain’t what it used to be. Jus’ a shadow of a old town, but once upon a time, it was like goin’ to heaven!”

TL cackled.

“I ain’t lyin’! There was black doctas and lawyas and school teachas and business peoples. We didn’t need white folks fo’ nothin’! Hell, they come to us when they needed somethin’!”

Pride had straightened his back a bit.

“You young folks don’t know who y’all is. That’s the problem!” He shook his head as his cane pounded the damp, bronze earth. “Y’all come from a great people, son. The mistake most young folk make is thinkin’ that what we is now is what we always been, but that ain’t so. Why you think they called the place Black Haven?”

Didn’t you already answer that? TL thought, but remained silent.

“’Cause o’ what we looked like when we stood together! That’s why! Peoples came here from miles around to pour into somethin’ they believed in.” He nodded hard and resumed his seat. “While we was together in town, fellowshippin’ and talkin’, couldn’t nobody bother us. We was one people! Strong!” His arthritic fist trembled before TL’s nose. “And couldn’t nobody do nothin’ ’bout it. I ’member it like it was yesterday.”

Sadness replaced his joy.

“The Depression came through here and wiped out everythin’. All the businesses closed, and folks started goin’ to Morrilton and Atkins to buy whatnot, but at its height, Black Haven was ’bout as close to heaven as you could get.”

Uncle Jesse Lee chatted into the evening. When TL rose to leave, the old man said, “God’s gettin’ you ready fo’ a great work, son. I know ’cause you think like a old man. Whole lotta people’s lives gon’ be changed ’cause o’ you. But remember this: When God lift up a man, He prune him first. You ain’t gon’ represent God half-steppin’. Not for long.”

“Yessir.”

“You gon’ be all right. Just don’t fight Him when you figure out where He’s sendin’ you. He know what He’s doin’.”

The old man nodded and chuckled as TL walked away.