Graduation
It was the summer of 1965. Even
before Principal Clancy had laid the diploma into his palm, Joe Emerson had put
some serious thought into his future. He had briefly considered college but he
hadn’t really seen himself as the scholarly type. He wasn’t afraid of cracking
open a book every now and then, but he preferred a more “hands-on” approach to
learning. Thus, he had picked up vocational training in automobile repair
during school. Unfortunately, the sole repair shop in town was a family affair
and that family looked like they were all going to wait until the Alabama
National Guard was camped right out in front of their business before any of
them would think of hiring a Negro. His only other real job option in town was
picking up a few dollars doing odd jobs for Ennis Brown but that was only good
for the short term. The way he saw it, a real man shouldn’t be content to
nickel-and-dime his way through his entire life like that.
Joe had his plan worked out in
head. As soon as he had scraped up enough for bus fare, he’d head out to the
Army recruiting center in Montgomery
and enlist. The times being what they were or at least what he’d seen on Ennis
Brown’s television (he and his father Henry hadn’t yet gotten one of their own)
he felt it was time to assert his right as a Negro, an American, and a man to
be all he could be, see the world, and make his mark in it. And he was as sure
as he was born that he wasn’t going to be able to do that anything like that in
some little backwards backwater town like Placid Creek.
On the evening of July 17, Joe
gained even more motivation to get out of town after he cold-cocked Johnny
Blackman for addressing him as “nigger” one too many times. It had been
something Joe figured would happen if he’d stayed in that town too long and, lo
and behold, he turned out to be right. Earlier in the day, he and a teacher’s
daughter named Rosalyn Mays had been enjoying a sunny afternoon repast of moon
pies, peanuts, and RC Cola. He had lost track of the whole world in her kiss,
his first and what would be his only for some time afterwards. Then Johnny had
sneeringly come along and spoiled the whole moment.
Joe hadn’t decked the fool in front
of Rosalyn, though. She’d been a firm believer of Dr. King’s doctrine of
nonviolent resistance, loving one’s enemies, and turning the other cheek; so
Joe had waited until later when he found Johnny’s drunk-as-usual ass alone
behind the general store and turned that fool’s cheek with a right hook.
It was only as Johnny laid out flat
on his back in the dust and contemplated the new stars he was seeing did Joe
come to grips with the idea that he had made a very big mistake: Johnny
Blackman was the sheriff’s son. Placid Creek didn’t actually have a creek and
“placid” wasn’t a fitting description for some of the town’s heavily armed
“God-fearing” residents who were more concerned about nonviolent Civil Rights
protesters than they were about any particular deity’s wrath. Joe was enough of
a country boy to know that when dumb animals got upset they could get vicious.
He also knew from the start that
running back home would be a bad idea: that would be the first place Sheriff
Blackman would look once Johnny woke up and went crying for his lawman daddy.
Moreover, Joe’s own father would panic and waste too much precious time yelling
at him, smacking him upside the head, and calling him all sorts of stupid
jackass. Instead, he ran to Ennis Brown’s home.
Ennis Brown was banker for the
town’s black folks, insurance underwriter for the town’s black folks, pastor of
the only black church in town, and generally the kind of man who seemed to know
things. Rumor had that Pastor Brown also “knew” a few townswomen in the
biblical sense. After showing the sheriff’s knuckleheaded son his Muhammad Ali
impersonation, however, Joe wasn’t interested in town gossip. He was interested
in town departure.
As it turned out, Ennis Brown had
seen such a predicament coming a long time ago. The pastor knew Joe was not
normally stupid or hot-headed; but a young man could only swallow his pride so
many times. If it hadn’t been Joe who cleaned Johnny Blackman’s clock, some
other black man would’ve taken a swing at that bigoted bully. Seeing the need
for a clear head and decisive action; Brown gave Joe’s father a very quick
phone call and explained the situation. He then gave Joe some pocket money from
his office safe and drove the young man to a friend’s [Brown’s] home in
Montgomery…all the while taking every opportunity to yell at Joe, smack him upside
the head, and call him all sorts of stupid jackass.
Thus did Joseph Lee Emerson finally
get out of Placid Creek, Alabama,
just as he intended if not exactly as he planned.
*
It only
when he’d gotten on the bus to Fort Hood
that Joseph felt any guilt about the affair. Not about going upside Johnny
Blackman’s thick head, but about not telling anyone—even Brown—about his intent
to join the Army. As far as the pastor and his father had known, he had been
lying low and working in Montgomery
until things back home had died down. In reality, Joe had only stayed long
enough for Brown to mail him his birth certificate. If he’d been asked then why
he had kept his plans secret, he couldn’t have really said. No one had known
until his first letter home from boot camp.
After boot
camp, he learned how to repair helicopters and other vehicles. During that
time, he received occasional letters, two of which were from Ennis Brown. In
both, Joe’s father—who’d never been keen on reading and writing beyond what was
absolutely necessary—had sent along the same messages: “Hello. I’m getting by
here. Hope you’re doing the same.” Joe suspected his that father had also had
some choice words about his fool son running off and joining the Army but Brown
had opted to leave those out.
He also
wrote three letters to Rosalyn who never wrote back.
The third
message from Pastor Brown had been via a phone call. Someone had to track him
down to tell that his father had been hit by a car while he’d been walking home
from a friend’s house one evening. He got as many dimes as he could and
called—well, he couldn’t call home: there had been nobody there but him and his
father. His mother and older sister had long since been taken by cancer. His
father, despite another two short relationships with women, never had any more
children. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and family reunions had been
something other black people in Placid Creek had. Joe had never heard much
about his mother’s side of family. His father had two sisters, no brothers;
both women had long ago, married, moved out of state, and passed away.
So Joe
called Ennis Brown’s office, received condolences, and found out that his
father’s funeral had been the previous Sunday.
“What?” Joe
shouted into the phone, ignoring the looks some of the GI’s waiting in line
gave him. “Why the hell didn’t somebody call me sooner?”
“Joseph,
I’m going overlook that outburst because I know you’re upset.” Brown’s tone,
however, indicated that there was a limit to how much he’d overlook.
“Look, he
was all the family I had left in that town. You damn right I’m upset.”
“Bill
Blackman was there at the funeral.”
That gave
Joe pause enough to drop his voice some. The sheriff had been watching the news
and thus had decided to be a little bit more careful than his son about what he
said about black folks when he suspected they might be listening. Joe suspected
the sheriff had done so to learn how to avoid becoming the news; he wasn’t sure
the elder Blackman was actually all that concerned about justice for all races.
“Okay, now what was he doing there?” Joe said.
“Now, I see
you’ve calm down a little bit and that’s good,” the pastor continued. “I
shouldn’t have to remind you that you still got trouble waiting for you back
here and that you do not need to go shouting about it for everyone around you
on your end to hear. So I’m going tell you what happened and you are going to
listen until I finish. You’re going to have to be the smart man I know you can
be: ‘man’ because it’s long past time to put the ‘boy’ behind you and ‘smart’
because you can’t always expect to get away with ‘dumb’.
“If you can
hear me, don’t talk. Just nod.”
Joe nodded.
After a
moment, the pastor continued. “The sheriff was there because it was Johnny
who’d run your daddy down. The boy was drunk again. They were going to try to
rule it an accident—”
“What?”
“I’m not
finished and you’re supposed to be listening. As I was saying, the sheriff had
been about to call it an accident until somebody went and called the NAACP. A
reporter has already been in town asking questions. Sheriff’s going around
huffing like it’ll be my fault if the President sends in the National Guard to
haul his son off to jail while you get away Scot free. You think it would’ve
done any good for you to come back here and get arrested?”
“No, but—”
Joe had to fight a bit to hold his tongue. Yes, he owed Brown but what right
did the man have to decide whether or not he could attend his own father’s
funeral?
“No ‘buts’.
Anybody with any sense should understand you’d have been there if things around
here weren’t so touch and go. Thing is…I wish I could sugar-coat the situation
a little more, but I wouldn’t be doing you any favors: the Blackmans wouldn’t
be your only problems if you came back here. Quite a few white folks around
here are grumbling about you working for Malcolm X and giving black people all
sorts of ideas. Best thing for you is to stay out of Placid Creek for a while.
In fact, I’d you might want to stay out of the whole state for awhile.”
“How long a while?”
“I think you know the answer to
that question already.”
Joe’s
shoulders sank in resignation. He was too numb to think about revenge or to
rage about Brown keeping him away from his father’s funeral when that should
have been his decision or to dwell on how he had not once seen his father in
the months since he’d struck Johnny Blackman. The next thing he heard was the
operator asking him to deposit more money.
For a moment, he considered doing
that but he couldn’t think of single thing to say or ask that wouldn’t have led
to the same answer: there was nothing in Placid Creek for him to go back to.
When he had fled, he hadn’t had time to go back for any keepsakes, any
reminders of what had technically been home. The only vague connection he had
was his birth certificate listing his place of birth as Montgomery.
His past had cut him off as readily as he tried to cut it off. The operator’s
voice was as good enough of a goodbye as any.
After he
hung up, he finished the day’s duties, found solitude in a base chapel and sank
his head into his hands when he thought about how he could have asked about
Rosalyn. A moment’s thought told him that that question too had been already
answered.
He sat there with isolation for
company until mess call. At dinner, he tried not to choke as the other guys
talked about home.
Copyright 2010-2015 Anthony Anderson
