16 — Fall, 1887

As Douglas, John, and Greeny disembarked at the Union Depot, they saw the haze and felt the ever-present heat. The autumnal equinox had just occurred, easing Atlanta out of the summer, but tropical winds from the Gulf kept the air hot and humid.

Brick-and-mortar and wooden buildings choked the blocks along the dirt streets. Traffic hummed with streams of coaches, phaetons, cabriolets, broughams, gigs, and barouches, all indications of a commercial area. They were in the heart of Atlanta.

The street sign said PEACHTREE. They headed north.

Greeny lagged behind as Douglas and John ambled along Peachtree Street. When they reached the intersection of Peachtree and Wheat Streets, John looked behind him. Greeny was lying along the side of the street, his head resting on his forelegs. He whimpered. John handed Douglas his haversack and walked back to Greeny, picked him up, and sat down on the walk in front of an old building on the corner of the intersection, his back resting against the building as he scratched Greeny’s head. “What’s wrong, boy? Tired? I’ll get you something to eat soon. But for now, I need to know if you can walk with us.” He touched his nose to Greeny’s nose.

John stood up, holding Greeny in both arms, and walked to Douglas, carrying his twenty-five-pound freight.

“What’s wrong with Greeny?” Douglas asked.

“I reckon he’s just hungry; he’ll be fine once he gets something in his belly,” John said. “Empty out my bag, would you?”

“Why?”

John pointed his head down to Greeny, signaling that he was going to carry Greeny in his haversack. Just as Douglas began to remove John’s belongings from the haversack, Greeny became fussy, and writhed in John’s arms, demanding to be put down like a toddler wanting to walk and not be held. As John opened his arms to release him, Greeny jumped to the ground and looked at John as if wondering what the fuss had been about. John shook his head and put his belongings back in his haversack, thinking that perhaps Greeny was homesick, but was now feeling better. Greeny now led Douglas and John as they headed east on Wheat Street.

The signs above the entrances announced their business—Kellogg Clothier’s, Carlson’s Barbershop, Bandar Shoes, Wheat Street Baptist Church, Wilson’s General Store, and on and on.

The wafting smell of pork ribs pulled John and Douglas to the intersection of Wheat Street and Younge Street. They stood at the corner inhaling hickory smoke, unable to ascertain its precise location; then a middle-aged man walked out from an alley.

“Where can we get some of those ribs we smelling?” Douglas asked the man.

“Right there,” the man said, pointing to a small, two-story brick building with a lopsided roof called Granny’s Barbeque Ribs.

A man was standing at a pit turning over a hefty slab of ribs when John, Douglas, and Greeny walked in.

“What can I getcha?” the man asked.

John and Douglas sat at the wooden counter, exhausted. Greeny settled to the floor and nuzzled John’s feet.

“Be all right if we sit here?” Douglas asked.

The man nodded and moved slabs of ribs around. He turned around and looked at Douglas and John with one eye. His right eyelid hung over his right eye like a closed curtain. “What yous boys want?”

“We’re trying to get to Alabama,” John said. “But we’d like to know if we can get some fixings?”

The man put both hands on the plank board that served as a counter and looked over Douglas and John with his one eye. “You boys’re going to need to fatten up before moving on to Alabama. Yous gonna need some fat reserves, like them bears that hibernate.”

John’s stomach gurgled, as his hunger was palpable.

The one-eyed cook heard the whirling sounds coming from John’s stomach. “You boys hold on a little longer; got two plates coming your way,” he said, while tending to several husks of corn on the pit. The one-eyed man sat down on the other side of the counter facing Douglas and John.

“Can yous boys wash dishes?” Douglas and John nodded in unison. “Then, yous got a job. Nothing’s free ’round here.”

“What time do you open up?” John asked.

The cook told them that the restaurant was open from five o’clock in the afternoon until two o’clock in the morning, most of his business occurring during the late hours when patrons from the local dives found their way to line their stomachs in between drinking shots of whiskey.

“Yous boys go to the washroom and wash up,” the cook said, pointing the way, “and I’ll have your grub ready when you get back.”

“Thanks, sir,” John said with appreciation. John looked at the ribs on the pit, smelling the intense aroma of the honey-whiskey sauce, then spied a sign above the pit that said—GRANNY’S. “Where’s Granny?” John asked.

The one-eyed man guffawed. “Granny’s been cooking them ribs, started hours ago.”

“Is she here? Can we meet her?”

“Yous looking at her,” Granny said, extending his long arms and revealing a wry smile and mild laugh lines on a fawn-colored faced that looked well lived in.

With a bewildered countenance, John asked, “You’re Granny?”

“Since when does a granny wear a wide mustache?” Douglas asked, looking at Granny’s salt-and-pepper mustache that touched the bottom of his nose and almost covered his lips.

Granny chuckled. He told them that he’d named his restaurant after his grandmother who was known for her mouth-watering ribs. “My granny got me started. She always told me the secret was in the honey-whiskey sauce. If yous boys learn the secret, yous boys keep that sauce a secret, hear?”

Douglas and John returned refreshed to the plank board counter where they saw the ribs and corn waiting for them on their plates. Greeny had obeyed John’s command to stay put.

“Don’t yous boys want a knife and fork?” Granny asked as John and Douglas wasted no time in separating their slabs with their hands. Douglas and John sawed through the sinewy ribs. Granny grabbed a pan of cornbread and put it next to them. John broke off a piece of meat and tossed it in Greeny’s waiting mouth. “Go ‘head and give that dog some more food,” Granny said to a surprised John, who was happy that Greeny did not have to hide anymore.

Douglas bent over, grabbed his bag, and put it on the counter. He retrieved the flask John had let him keep with him. John figured it was better to separate the flasks – that way, if something happened to one, he’d perhaps have the remaining one. And he began to wonder more and more if he’d ever return to Richmond to find the answer that lay engraved on the flasks.

Douglas took a swallow of Jack Daniel’s. Granny nodded when Douglas asked if he wanted some. He removed the bottle from his bag and poured the last of it into a glass for her.

Granny took a swig. “This some good whiskey. Where’d you get it?”

Greeny whimpered. John looked down as Greeny rubbed his nose against John’s left foot. He licked John’s sauce-laden left hand as John rubbed his head with his other hand.

“Leave me alone!” a woman shouted, looking back as she entered the front door to Granny’s joint.

“Who yous talking to, Sally?” Granny asked.

“That boy I been mentioning want to get with me.”

Granny reached under the counter, retrieved an old rifle, and held it up. “Yous tell that boy your papa got something for him.”

“Papa, no need to shoot him. He knows better to put a hand on me,” Sally said, patting her left hip as she slinked away, capturing Douglas and John’s attention.

“Yous boys get her out of your sights, now. Baby girl just turned sixteen.”

She looked older, wearing a dress that accentuated her hips. Granny didn’t seem to mind Sally’s attire; it was good for business.

Douglas turned to Granny and nodded.

“John,” Granny said, “I see I gotta keep an eye on you.”

“C’mon, Granny. I suspect you know how to use that rifle.”

“That’s right.”

John laughed.

“I could stand some help around here. Yous boys can clean, help bring in the meat. How long y’all plan to stay?”

“Long enough to get to know Sally,” John said to himself.

“Couple of weeks, maybe,” Douglas said. “We can stand some rest from walking.”

“Y’all can sleep in the attic on the upper level. Not much space, but it’ll do.”

k

Just over three weeks after arriving at Granny’s, the heat still gripped Atlanta. But the heat didn’t stop a bustle of people—colored and white—from crowding the stores and vendor carts on a Friday mid-afternoon. Men looking for a leisurely time filled that time gazing at women, and many women wore alluring attire to attract men’s eyes.

Sally, despite her age, welcomed the attention of male admirers as she walked down Wheat Street with John at her side. John wore a tattered cotton shirt and weather-beaten tan corduroy pants held up by galluses; Sally wore what she often wore when not working, a neat tight dress that magnified her curves and a jaunty, wide-brimmed green straw hat.

After walking two blocks and witnessing both colored and white men stare and whistle at Sally, John spied a sycamore tree and ambled to it. She sat first, then John.

“You sure gather lots of attention,” John said.

“Don’t hurt to look, right?” she asked and batted her eyes, a technique that seemed well practiced. “You don’t look, or do you?”

“Sally, you’re a pretty girl.…”

His eyes locked on Sally’s eyes that were as open and inviting as her effervescent personality; they then drifted to her button nose, ruby-colored lips, then her ample bosom. She caught John gazing at her bust, which caused her to lean forward exposing more cleavage.

John had proven to be a fast study when it came to reading and writing, and he absorbed the world around him in an intuitive way that impelled him to want to live a bigger life. He didn’t seem to have time to be intimate with anyone, or at least the desire, after what Madame Billingsly had done to him when he was fourteen.

But the Madame Billingsly nightmare occurred a few years ago, and he wondered whether he should try it with Sally, especially since his hormones were clashing hard with his mind.

“Oh, so you do look.”

“Okay, of course I look,” he said. Deflecting his thoughts about having sex with her, he said, “But that’s all I do. Granny’s rifle saw to that.”

She smiled lightly with closed lips. “Pa go after men who I don’t like and I tell him I don’t like.”

“Your pa is a good man. I don’t know what to do after working for him for about three weeks. Douglas’s telling me we need to move on. Maybe I stay here, not go on to Alabama. Maybe Doug can go on without me.” He began to imagine a life spending time with Sally.

“Give me your hand,” she said. John extended his right hand and she held it with her left hazelnut-colored hand. “What’s tearing you apart?” She squeezed his hand as to reassure him he could open up to her. “You can tell me.”

“I’m tired of running. I just want a place to call home.… ”

“Go on,” she said prompted after a minute of John’s silence.

“I promised my mama I would go to Mount Hope, Alabama, and find Cousin Riley. I have no idea who he is or where he is.”

Sally nodded. “What’s your mama’s name?”

“Ann.”

“What’s she like?”

“Everyone likes her. That’s because she cared for everyone. I just hope I can see her again someday.”

Sally nodded again.

“Truth be told, Sally, I like you. I’ve been thinking of asking Granny.… ”

She cut him off. “You don’t have to ask my pa nothing. I like you …”

When she didn’t complete her thought, John filled in the space and said with a chipper smile, “You do?”

She laughed, then paused to allow her voice to ready itself for a serious tone. “But, I can’t let you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Stay here, be with me.”

“Why, pray tell?” using language that he often heard Monsieur Billingsly say.

She was a coquette and good at it. It was part of her survival technique. She could be that way with others to extract money, but not John. If she were, and he stayed with her, he’d soon crack under the weight of her fast life.

“John,” she said, “you a good boy, a smart boy. I see the way you add numbers in your head, the way you use nice language, the way you talk to Pa’s customers. You got a special gift. I could only disappoint you.”

With inflamed hormones, John said: “No, you wouldn’t!”

She removed her hat and lay her head against his chest. “Listen to me. I’ve been pregnant two times. The first time I lost the baby. Second time I had the baby. The baby’s in some orphanage now. I know the streets, you don’t. Keep your promise to your mama.”

John was silent.

“Say something, John.”

John held her head on his chest. “Thank you, Sally.”

k

On the day before they were to depart, Granny had a dinner to thank Douglas and John for working for him. Douglas asked him for directions to Atlanta University. Although he didn’t know the directions, he asked one of his customers who knew. The customer drew a map for Granny, who then gave it to Douglas.

They threw their haversacks over their shoulders. As with every departure from a stay more than a day or two, especially when the haversacks were not tied to them, John checked to make sure he had one flask and Douglas had the other.

They had a little lucre left between them and didn’t know how much luck they’d have with keeping it. The rifle Douglas carried would run interference if need be to prevent them from being robbed.

Time had come for them to see Professor Bodie, the man they’d learned about during their stay in Raleigh with Rick.