The Book of Lost Friends(82)
The rope jerks me up before I can let go, and I fly forward off Missy. Next thing I know, I’m belly-down in the street and looking in that horse’s eye. It’s big and black, shiny like a drop of wet ink, white and red at the edges. It blinks one time, slow, looking into me.
Don’t be dead, I say in my mind and see the rider pushing hisself out from under the laid-over colt. Other men run over, pulling at the ropes that’ve got the poor thing tangled. One more blink, and they shoo the horse to its feet, and it stands there splayed and heaving, better off than the man, who’s on one leg. He tries to stand but folds, and howls and goes halfway down before somebody catches him.
“Gimme my rifle!” he yells out, struggling for the scabbard on his saddle. The colt spooks and buggers away. “Gimme my rifle! I’m-a git rid of us a halfwit and its boy! You be needin’ a shovel to pick up what’s left when I git through.”
I shake the fog out of my head. Need to get up, get away before he puts a hand on that gun. But the world spins, everything moving like a dust devil—old Florida, the sorrel colt, a red-and-white-striped pole by a store, the sun shining on a window glass, a woman in a rose-pink dress, a wagon wheel, a barking dog on a leash, the shoeshine boy.
“Hang on. Now just hold on,” somebody else says. “Sheriff’s comin’.”
“That halfwit tried to kill me!” the man hollers. “Him and his boy tried to kill me and steal my horse. He’s broke my leg! He’s broke my leg!”
Go, Hannie, run, my mind shouts. Get up! Run.
But I don’t know which way is up.
CHAPTER 20
BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987
Few things are more life affirming than watching an idea that was fledgling and frail in its infancy, seemingly destined for birth and death in almost the same breath, stretch its lungs and curl its fingers around the threads of life, and hang on with a determination that can’t be understood, only felt. Our three-week-old history project, which the kids have dubbed Tales from the Underground, in a mixture of the original Tales from the Crypt idea and an homage to the Underground Railroad, the freedom chain that helped escaped slaves make their way north, has found its feet.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays in the classroom, we’re reading about heroes of the Underground Railroad like Harriet Tubman, William Still, and the Reverend John and Jean Rankin. The room that was once so deafeningly raucous I couldn’t hear myself think, or so quiet I could hear—even over my own reading of Animal Farm—the clock ticking and the soft wheeze of students napping at their desks, is now noisy with tapping pens and pencils and snatches of lively, perceptive debate. Over the past two weeks, we’ve talked at length about the national and political conditions of the antebellum time period, but also about the local histories we’re uncovering on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when we line up and march two blocks down the street, not always in an orderly fashion, to the old Carnegie library.
The library itself has become a partner in our Tales from the Underground project, adding colorful local history to our discussions, not only because of the story of how the grand old building came to be but also what it meant and how it served for decades. Upstairs in an old theater-style community room, aptly dubbed the Worthy Room, framed photos on the walls testify to a different life, a different time, when Augustine was officially divided along the color line. The Worthy Room hosted everything from stage plays, political meetings, and performances by visiting jazz musicians, to soldiers mustering for war and Negro league baseball teams forbidden to bunk at the hotels and in need of a place to sleep over.
In the nearby Destiny Room, with a couple weeks of hard work by the kids, borrowed folding tables from the church next door, and the help of some legacy descendants of the library’s Ladies New Century Club, we’ve created a temporary research center of a sort. It’s the first time this much of the area’s historical information has been gathered in one place, as far as we know. Over the years, Augustine’s history has been tucked away in desk drawers, attics, file boxes at the courthouse, and dozens of other out-of-the-way spaces. It has survived mostly in bits and snatches—in faded photos, family Bibles, church baptismal records, deeds of sale for land parcels, and memories passed down from generation to generation as children sat at the knees of grandparents.
The problem is, in today’s world of fractured families, readily available cable TV entertainment, and video games that can be plugged into home television sets for hours of Pong and Super Mario Bros. and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, the stories are in danger of fading into the maelstrom of the modern age.
And yet, something in these young people is curious about the past, about what led to those who are here now and what…or who…came before.
Aside from that, the idea of dead people, and bones, and graveyards, and playing dress-up to bring ghosts to life is too much even for my most closed-off kids to fully resist. Perhaps it is the presence of Granny T and the other New Century ladies, but my students are all business in the Destiny Room and cooperative in sharing the ten pairs of white cotton gloves loaned to us by the church’s bell choir. And thanks to a speaking appearance by a history professor from Southeastern Louisiana University, the kids understand the fragility of old documents and why using the gloves really does matter. They’re careful with the materials we’ve borrowed from the library’s archives and the record cabinets of local churches, as well as those we’ve transported from Goswood Grove and the attics of various families around town.