CHAPTER 6
August brought hot days and hard work. Since there was just Grandma and me, it was pretty much sunup to sundown. Her stamina made me embarrassed to feel tired. The only time we got to rest was Sundays or when it rained. Saturday night’s meeting with Fancy got to be regular. A couple of hours alone with her made life more tolerable.
On Labor Day, the Wilsons invited the community to their house for a pig picking. The menfolk in the crowd stood in one group and the women in another. I walked over to join the men. They sipped shine whiskey from glass jars. Mr. Burley Mason said to the group, “How can a nigger tell when she’s pregnant?” Somebody asked how. “When she pulls out her tampon and the cotton’s already been picked.” That got a big laugh all around. Arthur Mills started another one, but I moved away. They were loud enough I knew Roy and Clemmy could hear. I’d listened to that kind of talk all my life at corn-shuckin’ parties, hog killings, even standing around the churchyard. It was hard to understand how they could hate the people not a one of them could make a living without. Or maybe understanding that was why they did hate them. I glanced at Roy, but he sat with his head down studying his cooking fire. Clemmy busied herself with table chores, and Fancy stood way at the edge of the yard. Made me wish I could protect them, but all I could do was keep my mouth shut, pass and repass.
Roy had been up all night smoking the hog over hot wood coals in a pit dug in the ground. The pig was ready by sundown, and everybody helped themselves. I took a plateful around to sit in the swing on the porch, sick of listening to foulmouthed farmers with their guts full of liquor.
Fancy followed and sat on the steps. “This is good, ain’t it, Junebug?”
My mouth was full of pig and potato salad. “Your daddy sure knows how to cook a hog.” By the time we went for seconds, the stars were out bright and a breeze stirred the humid air enough to keep mosquitoes away.
Fancy finished her plate and sat staring up at a bottom-lip moon. “What’s your dream, Junebug?” Crickets scratched loud and lizards darted through the grass searching for them.
“About what?” I was so full I was miserable.
“I don’t know, the rest of your life. What do you want to be?”
“Never thought much about it. I’m not much for rules, so that don’t figure to work out any better with a public job than it does in a public school. I like farming pretty good, don’t have to be beholden to other folks. What’s yours?”
She hugged her knees and bent her head to rest her chin on her arms. “Like to see something of this world, wear pretty clothes, be something other than some house nigger walking around with babies on my hip, bowing and scraping for white folks. Don’t know how it’d ever happen, though. Sometimes my life don’t feel any different than them slaves I read about in school.”
The hurt in her voice was plain. I realized I had no idea what it was like to see the world through her eyes. I moved to sit on the steps. “If a person can’t dream, how can they ever have any hope, Junebug?” She squeezed my wrist. “I like that I’m able to talk to you.” When Fancy turned her face up, tears filled the corners of her eyes.
“If any person could make a dream come true, Fancy, it would be you.” I wanted to tell her it would be all right, but I didn’t know if it would be the truth.
* * *
Early on a Friday morning three weeks after Labor Day, Grandma and me packed the truck bed with sticks of cured tobacco, covered them with a wide piece of burlap, and headed to Durham. The crop had turned out good, the leaves golden and pliable. We expected to get a decent price.
Grandma pulled the truck into the wide double doors of the Liberty Warehouse, and we unloaded. The smell of piles of dried tobacco made my nose burn. Selling began about noon. An auctioneer moved down the aisles, shouting in a rapid singsong voice, saying words I couldn’t catch. Buyers walked behind and bid on the stacks. When it was over, Grandma went to the cashier to get a check for almost a thousand dollars. “We’ll go to town tomorrow so I can pay what we owe.”
At King’s Hot Dog Stand across from the Durham Bulls Park, we celebrated by buying two hot dogs apiece and Cokes to wash them down.
The next morning after breakfast we started to Apex. When we passed the Wilson place, Fancy was out by the road playing hopscotch in the dirt. I touched Grandma’s arm. “Can we take Fancy with us? She never gets to go anywhere.”
She slowed and stopped in front of the driveway. Fancy stood back. Grandma leaned across me to talk out the passenger window. “Fancy, you want to ride to Apex with me and Junebug?”
She broke out in a big grin. “Yes’um, I sure would.”
“Go ask Clemmy and Roy. Tell ’em we’ll be back before too long, and see if they want anything while we’re in town.” Fancy took off running.
“Thanks, Grandma, feels good to do things for other folks, don’t it?”
She smiled patiently.
Fancy came back, changed into a clean dress and some shoes. “They said it would be fine if y’all didn’t mind. And Momma sent a dollar for a five-pound bag of sugar, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Get on in. Junebug, why don’t you sit by the door and let Fancy in the middle?”
Down on Highway 64, Grandma stopped at a Gulf station. Fancy and I stayed in the truck while the man pumped gas. “Junebug, can we go in the store?” she asked.
I looked at the five or six oversized farm boys standing outside the front door. “We need to be going so Grandma can get to Apex.”
In town, Grandma was feeling generous, and gave Fancy and me a dollar each to spend. We headed up the street, leaving nose prints on glass windows. I started in the drugstore door, but Fancy stopped. “Junebug, I don’t think I’m supposed to go in this way. Have they got a colored door?”
It hadn’t occurred to me. I went around the side and checked. “This is the only way in. Come on. This lady knows me and I think she’ll be all right. Won’t nobody say anything.”
I nodded to the woman behind the counter. She gave a hard eye at Fancy. Fancy stared at the floor. I decided on three comics and an ice cream cone. Fancy thought she would get her momma a small tube of red lipstick and a cone for herself.
The schoolteacher-faced lady leaned over the counter and frowned. “Son, I can sell you the ice cream, but not her. You buy ’em and take them outside if you want to.”
Fancy flushed, handed me her dollar, and left. I could feel the red burn up my face. I was embarrassed for Fancy.
Outside, we walked a little ways, then sat down on the concrete curb to eat the ice cream before it melted. Fancy wouldn’t look at me, and when she spoke her voice was aimed at the pavement. “Why white folks hate black folks?”
I studied the bank across the street.
“I sure do get tired of it, Junebug.”
“I don’t think it’s really hate, they just do what’s expected.” It pissed me off that I was making up such shit. I should have thrown the ice cream at the woman’s face. “Things will change one of these days, Fancy.”
The muscles in her jaw were clenching and releasing, like she was chewing a mouthful of disgust. “Been like this a long time before we was born.”
Cars passed up and down the street in front of us. Nobody lifted a hand.
“I can’t wait to get back to school. Get to see some of my friends.” She put a little extra on the “my.”
Maybe Fancy was tired of being around white folks. I tried to change the subject. “Got a boyfriend in school?”
“Oh, some boys are always playing and teasing, but I don’t pay them no heed. I might get a boyfriend this year, though. Did you have a girlfriend last year?”
“Most girls act too stupid.”
White cream was all over her mouth. “Well, I’m a girl and I damn sure ain’t stupid.”
“You’re different.”
“Because I’m colored?”
“No, because we’re like brother and sister, almost family.”
She pulled her head back, giving me a look that said she didn’t believe me. “Well, Junebug Hurley, you really feel that way?”
“Sure.”
“Then you can call me sister.” Her red tongue licked the stickiness from around her lips.
“I’m going to call you Fancy like always. Let’s get down to Salem’s. Grandma is probably ready to go.”
She hopped to her feet and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go, brother.”
I jerked my hand back. “You can’t do that out here in public!”
Fancy stood staring. A crooked smile worked its way bit by bit across her lips. “Why, Junebug, you got more than them two faces I see?” She slowly lifted the ice cream cone and slammed it into the gutter.
I yelled after her, “Don’t be stupid, you know what I mean.” She walked with her nose up like she smelled shit, refusing to turn around. When Fancy was pissed, she could ignore a person like nobody’s business.
I slapped myself on the leg, “Okay, sister, you got me.” I didn’t have the courage to stand up to my words and she knew it. I trailed behind like a whipped dog, head down, hands stuffed in my pockets, moping. I doubted another bag of candy would make up for this. We spent the entire ride home with her making sure we didn’t touch each other.