Midnight Without a Moon(13)

I learned from Hallelujah that Reverend George Lee had been shot in the head while driving his car. He ran off the road and crashed, dying before he made it to the hospital. Nobody was arrested. Just like probably nobody would be arrested for Levi’s murder, either.

“What are they so afraid of, Hallelujah?”

“Nobody wants to die, Rosa Lee,” Hallelujah said quietly.

“I don’t mean colored folks. I mean white folks. Why are they so afraid? Why are they killing people just because they want to vote?”

Hallelujah furrowed his brow. “Rosa Lee,” he said, “with the privilege to vote—?to choose—?we can change things, even put our own people in power.”

“You know how crazy you sound? Colored folks can’t even own a store round here without white folks sabotaging it. Can you imagine a Negro running for office?” I removed my hat from my head and fanned myself. “He’d have a bullet in his head before his name got on the ballot good.”

Shielding his face from the sun with his hand, Hallelujah pondered what I had just said. He was always thinking, always digging deep into that reservoir of information he had gleaned from the magazines and newspapers he frequently read. I knew he’d come up with an answer to any challenge I might present. Sure enough, after a moment he pointed at me and said one word: “Kansas.”

I questioned him with my tilted head and raised brows.

“Brown versus the Board of Education,” he said. “Topeka, Kansas.”

I shrugged.

“The Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional,” Hallelujah said, smiling. “No more separate?but?equal. White folks have to let colored children go to school with white children in that state now.”

I still didn’t understand.

Hallelujah squinted. “Don’t you see, Rosa? Now that we have the power to vote, we can make that happen in Mississippi, too.”

Hallelujah’s words took a moment to soak through my heat-damaged head. But when they did, I dropped the hoe and doubled over. I thought I would die laughing. This time I knew Hallelujah had gone too far with his crazy thinking. Whites and coloreds at the same schools in Mississippi? Never in a million years.





Chapter Six


TUESDAY, JULY 26


WHEN THE SUN BEGAN INCHING ITS WAY TOWARD NOON, Hallelujah folded his arms and said, “Ain’t it about quitting time?”

“C’mon,” I told him. “I’m ’bout to die out here even if it ain’t. I’m so thirsty my mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.” I dragged my hoe back along the row, too tired to pick it up. “If we walk real slow,” I said, “it’ll be close enough to twelve by the time we reach the house. And maybe Ma Pearl won’t be cross with me for leaving the field a few minutes early.”

When we reached our grassless backyard, the first thing we saw was Slick Charlie chasing three hens toward the henhouse. Hallelujah laughed. “Ain’t them hens got sense enough to run in opposite directions?”

“I think they like being chased by Slick Charlie,” I said, nudging him in the side. “Kinda like how Queen likes being chased by you.”

Hallelujah took off his hat and fanned himself. With his light brown complexion, I could see a hint of pink spread across his cheeks. “Humph,” he said. “I ain’t stud’n Queen. If Queen had any sense, she’d be chasing me.” He snapped his suspenders and said, “I’m a man who’s going places.”

“One, you ain’t a man,” I told him. “And two, the only place you’re going is to Ma Pearl’s kitchen to eat up her food.”

Hallelujah tucked his hat under his arm and broke into a strut. “I’m going up north like everybody else,” he said. “Except I’m going to Ohio. Columbus. Because it was named after the fellow who discovered this country.”

I spat a dry spit and said, “You ain’t going nowhere.” But I didn’t mean it. I’d never heard of any Negro going to Ohio. But if Hallelujah said he was going, then he probably was. The Jenkinses always did things differently from other colored folks. And Hallelujah was forever plotting to be the first Negro to do this or the first Negro to be that. I just hoped he didn’t leave before I figured out a way to get to Chicago. There was no way I could survive the dusty Delta without him.

In the middle of all that heat, a breeze picked up. The threadbare sheets and pillowcases Ma Pearl had hung on the line that morning flapped and snapped in the wind. It made me think maybe God was smiling at me instead of frowning. And maybe he’d send old Gabe down with a few clouds and some wind for the afternoon chopping time.

When we climbed the steps to the back porch, the scent of pinto beans hit my nose. I should’ve been tired of beans, seeing that we ate them nearly every day, but Ma Pearl didn’t fix beans the way other folks fixed them. She simmered hers with tomatoes, brown sugar, onions, and green peppers because that’s how Mrs. Robinson liked them. She had seen the recipe in Better Homes and Gardens and had Ma Pearl fix her beans that way ever since.

After washing my hands with the lye soap in the basin of water sitting on the porch, I hurried and kicked off my dusty shoes and left them at the back door. Hallelujah did the same. As soon as we walked through the screen door and saw Queen sitting at the table, I swear I heard Hallelujah’s knees knock together. He stammered when he spoke. “A-afternoon, Queen. Y-you look lovely today.”