One of the big colored churches was having a camp meeting. The church was maybe half a mile away from where Pearl and Reece and their baby were living near Acorn.
Reece ordered some whisky so he would have it there to sell to folks.
So this particular night he went up to the church to put out the word to those he wanted to tell.
People were coming and buying pint bottles for a quarter and going on back.
A fellow, Bubba, came and bought a bottle.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Who knock?”
“Bubba.”
Reece got it from the truck where he had it and gave it to Bubba. Bubba paid and went on.
After a little while, knock, knock, knock.
“Who knock?”
“Bubba.”
Same thing. Reece got it and gave it to him and Bubba paid and went on.
Pearl asked, “How well you know him?”
“Bubba? Bubba all right.”
Pearl didn’t like him and told Reece so.
“You always think you know something. Bubba all right.”
Some more people came and then knock, knock, knock.
“Who?”
“Bubba.”
Pearl whispered to Reece, “Don’t you sell him no more liquor. Because there’s something behind it.”
Reece waved her off and opened the door.
Bubba said, “Can I get some more?”
Reece sold him that third bottle. It had gotten late and Reece said he was going up to the meeting and find his brothers Champ and Perce.
His brothers were working at the Kimbroughs’ place farming. They were rooming with Pearl and Reece. They had been at the meeting the whole evening. Up there trying to meet some girls.
Soon after Reece left: knock, knock, knock.
“Open this door, it’s the police.”
Pearl couldn’t do anything but open it.
Two big white Acorn policemen walked in, looking around. “Where is that liquor you been selling?”
Pearl picked the baby up and told the police she wasn’t selling whisky.
One of the policemen walked straight to the trunk at the foot of the bed where the whisky was.
“That’s my whisky,” Pearl said. “I’m sick. I have asthma and the doctor put me on whisky.”
“You ought to know better than to lie to me, gal.”
They took the four or five bottles that were there and left, saying they were taking the whiskey to city hall.
When Reece, Champ, and Perce came back she told them what had happened.
She said she thought it was because Bubba was a police spy and that he had turned Reece up. Reece didn’t argue the point. He said he was going down in the country to his Uncle Johnny’s to keep the police from getting him. He tried to get Champ and Pearce to go with him, but they said they didn’t have any reason and they did not go. They were both a little high and they went on to bed.
Sometime after midnight the police came back. Pearl got up and let them in.
They police asked where Reece was.
When would he be back?
Pearl said she didn’t know.
The police told Champ and Perce to get up. They were going to take them down.
Still laying in the bed Champ said, “I ain’t going nowhere. I didn’t sell no whisky and I ain’t going nowhere.”
The policemen were standing there with their big guns on their belts.
“Oh, yeah, you going.”
Perce got up and said, “Aw, Champ, quit being stubborn. Get on up.” Trying to laugh with the policemen. “He just mad ’cause one of them church gals wouldn’t go off with him.”
“You’ll be all right if you go now, Champ,” Pearl told him. “You’ll be all right.”
Champ and Pearce finally got dressed and the police took them out to lock them up.
Reece showed up late that next morning, Monday.
He had word that the people Champ and Perce worked for had gone to City Hall and gotten his brothers out of jail so they could go on back to work.
“I ain’t got no white folks to stand for me,” he said. “You got to pack up,” he told Pearl, “we’ll go on back home . . .”
She cut him off. “I’m at home.”
“Naw, naw. We got to go back to Church Creek for a while till this blow over and then we’ll see . . .”
Pearl said she’d already seen what she needed to see.
She was cooking bacon in a skillet on the stove.
“I am not going back to work on no farm.”
“But I got to go back till this blow over, Pearl.”
“What did I tell you when we left the country?”
He thought before he answered. “That you wasn’t ever going back.”
She forked the bacon over to its other side. She nodded.
The baby was crawling under the table by his daddy’s feet.
“Did you take that for a joke?”
“Well I got to go back or go to jail.”
“Going back’ll be the same to me as me being sent to jail. I ain’t. That’s my last word on it.”
Reece played what he thought was his hole card. “How you think you going to make it with you and the baby—without me? What you going to do?”
She turned to face him. “The same way I left the country is the same way I’ll leave you. Now you want grits, or not?”