Midnight Without a Moon(48)

“You wouldn’t,” I challenged him.

He nodded. “Would so. My daddy would too. He said Preacher Wright is one of the bravest men he knows.”

“If he’s so is brave, how come he let them take his nephew in the first place?”

Hallelujah stared at me as though I had turned as orange as the sun. After a moment his forehead wrinkled. “He didn’t know they’d kill him, Rosa. They said they wanted to talk to him. He trusted them. Wouldn’t any colored man do the same if two white men came to his house in the middle of the night asking to speak to one of his kin?”

“Scoot over,” I said, plopping down on the step next to him. “I guess if there was a colored man with him, like Reverend Mose believed, then he wouldn’t think they’d do something so violent.” I took off my hat and fanned myself. “I bet even Papa would’ve let Fred Lee go if two white men came saying he’d done something wrong and they wanted to talk to him.”

As I fanned myself with my straw hat, I realized how badly I needed that bath. “Sorry if I stink,” I said.

Hallelujah pinched his nose. “Pee-eww. Yes, you do.”

Playfully, I slapped the fedora off his head. “So how was school today?” I asked.

Hallelujah narrowed his eyes at me as he retrieved his hat from the yard.

He sat back down on the step and fanned himself with the hat. “Folks keep whispering about the Chicago boy and the NAACP, and Miss Wilson’s about to have a fit worrying about white folks getting word of it.”

Miss Wilson was a new teacher at the colored school. She had been out of college for only a year, with plans to move up north. But her mama, although she was only in her fifties, got sick with what Ma Pearl called “old-timer’s disease.” And since her mama refused to leave her home, Miss Wilson remained in Stillwater to care for her.

“Miss Wilson can’t afford to lose her job,” I said.

With a roll of his eyes, Hallelujah said, “She ain’t nothing like Miss Johnson.”

“I bet she ain’t,” I said, rolling my eyes back at him.

Hallelujah scowled and placed his hat on his head. “I ain’t talking about the way she looks.”

After silence sat between us for a minute, Hallelujah finally spoke. “You know how Miss Johnson is. She’s brave like Preacher Mose. She’d encourage us to talk about what happened.”

“What’s Miss Wilson like?”

“As scared as a chicken in a fox den.”

I chuckled, but Hallelujah didn’t even bother with a smile. “She wants us to put on a patriotic play for the fall and sing that stupid song about ‘This land is your land. This land is my land.’”

“So?”

Hallelujah’s brows shot up. “So?” He motioned toward the cotton field. “Is that your land you just picked cotton from?”

“You already know it’s Mr. Robinson’s land,” I said, annoyed at him.

He nodded toward the cotton sack. “How much you gonna get for spending the day in the blazing hot sun filling that thing with cotton?”

“Nothing,” I muttered.

“Because this land ain’t your land,” he said, smiling, satisfied.

I recalled what Mr. Pete had said to Papa before they left for Chicago: A Negro can own all the land in Mississippi and still be treated worse than a hog. “You know that’s why Mr. Pete left, don’t you?”

Hallelujah scoffed. “What good is it for a Negro to own acres of cotton if the white man owns the scales?”

I laughed and told him how I always thought Mr. Pete was rich.

“No such thing as a rich Negro in the Mississippi Delta,” he replied. “Unless you count Dr. Howard in Mound Bayou. But that’s because Mound Bayou was built by Negroes and is run by Negroes.”

“Papa said that all Mr. Pete got for his land was enough to buy a fancy car and drive it to Chicago. He thinks it’s a shame he’s working for Armour and Company, making soap.”

Hallelujah winced. “He’ll make more in a factory in Chicago than he would’ve made growing cotton in Mississippi. But if he was white . . .”

He didn’t finish the statement. He simply stared out at the rows and rows of cotton and glowered.

“You gonna do the play?” I asked.

“No.”

“What’d Reverend Jenkins say?”

Hallelujah shrugged. “Haven’t told him. But he’ll probably agree with me.”

“Just do it,” I said. “Don’t cause any trouble for Miss Wilson.”

Hallelujah gave me a sideways glance. “Did you read the last few lines in that article?”

“I read the whole thing.”

“‘If this slaughtering of Negroes is allowed to continue,’” he read from the magazine, “‘Mississippi will have a civil war. Negroes are going to take only so much.’” He slapped the magazine shut. “Those were the words of Dr. T.R.M. Howard of Mound Bayou. And I agree with him. Jim Crow has muted colored folks in Mississippi for too long. It’s time for us to speak up and be heard.”

“And get shot.”

“They’re gonna kill us anyway. Might as well die a hero.”

“Or a fool.”