A Place at the Table: A Novel Read online

  “We gotta get Granddaddy,” James said. “Granddaddy will know what to do.”

  • • •

  By the time they reached their house, the rounded moon was high in the sky. They were so late. They were supposed to have been home hours before. Mother, Granddaddy, and Grandma Rachel were all waiting in the living room, their mouths straight lines across their faces, a child’s drawing of angry adults.

  “Praise Jesus,” whispered their mother when they walked in the door. She was already out of her seat, running toward her children. She knelt before them, embraced them together, one in each arm. She must have fried something for dinner, for she smelled of peanut oil and, just beneath, lavender, which she dried and poured into sachets to bury beneath her undergarments. Her embrace lasted only a moment. She put her nose first to Alice’s head and then to James’s. She inhaled, as if checking to make sure these really were her kids, fleshy and alive.

  She was crying, but her words were angry. “You my only babies, you know that? Alone in those woods, at this time of night.”

  Their granddaddy had risen from his chair. He stood behind their mother, a thick leather belt wrapped around his hand. When he spoke his voice was more somber than Alice had ever heard it. “You have anything you want to say for yourself?”

  He was talking to James.

  “We found a boy,” said James, speaking quickly, as if he could stop what had happened in the woods if he got the words out fast enough. “A colored boy. Hung by a rope. We saw the men who did it, too. Three white men with two bluetick hounds. I don’t know their names, but I could point em out if I was looking at em.”

  The muscles in Granddaddy’s face froze. He loosened his grip on the leather belt. It uncoiled and fell to the floor, the metal buckle hitting the wood with a clang.

  “You know who this boy was?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The men who did this—they see you? They know you was there?”

  James shook his head. “No, sir. We was high up on a trail and they passed under us, coming back from it. I had my rifle. If I had known what they had done, I would have shot em all dead.”

  Granddaddy was in James’s face, grabbing the boy’s cheeks with his hand. “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “I ain’t joking.”

  Granddaddy didn’t flinch at the word “ain’t.”

  “You sure they didn’t see you?”

  “I’m sure. We waited till they was way off before we cut down the body.”

  “You did what?” This came out a roar. Alice felt something seize up in her, and she worried she might go to the bathroom, right there.

  “We cut him down. Weren’t gonna leave him hanging there. I cut him down with my knife.”

  Granddaddy let loose James’s face. Backed up and sat back down in his rocker, made from a felled pine tree. The old man sat and stared straight ahead.

  “Anyone see you cut down that boy?”

  “No, sir. Was just Alice and me there.”

  “Thank God. Thank God Almighty. He was watching out for you, that’s for sure.”

  “I was only doing what was right.”

  “I know, son.”

  Alice glanced at James, but her brother did not seem to notice what Granddaddy had just called him.

  “But you can’t go messing with a white man’s killing. Hurts my heart to tell you, but it’s the truth.”

  “You didn’t see what they did.”

  “You think I don’t know? You think I ain’t seen things? You think I wasn’t born into life under the mercy of a white man?”

  “But that was back in slave days. Now they call you mayor. Now Hicks sells your hams.”

  Granddaddy shook his head. “Hicks sells my hams cause he makes money doing so. Simple as that. And you can bet he don’t go advertising a colored man raised them, neither.”

  “But we’re the Stones. That’s how we got this land in the first place. Cause we proved our worth.”

  James and Alice, along with all of the other children in the community, had long ago memorized the story of the founding of Emancipation Township, same as they memorized Bible verses for Sunday school. How after the War Hortican Stone gave Granddaddy’s parents twenty-five acres of land in North Carolina, just across the state line, not forty miles from Hortican’s own farm near Danville, Virginia, where William and Nellie had been stalwart and loyal servants. How Granddaddy and his family moved onto the land in 1869, when Granddaddy was only fourteen. How young as he was, Granddaddy already had a vision of what the land could become, a refuge for all freed men, where colored families lived, worked, played, and prayed together.

  “Son, we got that land cause Hortican Stone started messing with my mother since before I was born and didn’t let up till his mind was so addled he couldn’t bother her no more. Got to thinking she was his wife once his own wife died of smallpox, right after the War, and neither Mama nor Daddy did anything to convince him otherwise.”

  Alice looked at her brother. He was staring at Granddaddy and Granddaddy was staring at him and an electric understanding buzzed between the two of them. No words were spoken, but Alice understood what was being said.

  White blood could hide inside dark skin for only so long.

  There was a reason James was so light.

  “You saying we didn’t earn this land?”

  “We earned it all right.”

  “You saying even though we kin to Hortican Stone, a group of white men could lynch any one of us, anytime, and there ain’t a thing we can do about it?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the sort. I’m saying we got to be careful, that’s all. I’m saying we can never forget what a blessing it is we own this land. Don’t matter how we got it. Matters that it’s ours. Matters that we keep it ours. We got a precious, precious life here, son. You know that. Yeah, it’s dangerous out there, and nothing in this world is pure. But inside Emancipation, we doing bout as good as we can. We just have to be careful when we step outside, that’s all. We just have to know it’s another world out there. You’ve always known that. We all have.”

  Except James hadn’t. This Alice knew for sure, as sure as she knew he was thinking of a chicken the other night, then an apple, then a horse.

  “It’s just how it is, son. It’s just something you got to learn to live around.”

  Three times that night Granddaddy called him son, but for James it no longer seemed to matter.

  • • •

  The next week, when they went into town to buy supplies, James stood by his mother at Sam Hicks’s counter and pointed to the bolt of blue fabric with the little red flowers scattered across it like a loosened bouquet, the fabric Alice admired every time she went to the store, thinking how pretty she would look in a dress made from it.

  Of course James knew it was the fabric Alice had always wanted.

  “Five yards, please,” he said, winking at Alice, as if he were doing something nice for her, as if he were doing something kind.

  “Cain’t sell you that one, boy,” said Hicks jovially. “But I got a pretty red one I can cut for you. Real similar pattern, as a matter of fact. A mouse or some critter chewed up on its edges, so I moved it over here to the colored shelf, and now, lucky you, looks like it’s got your name on it.”

  He pointed to a bolt of dusty red fabric lying beside the burlap and the muslin.

  “Didn’t know my money was a different color, too,” said James, enunciating every word, just as their teacher Miss Robinson had taught them to do.

  Alice wanted to point out that her brother was lying, that he didn’t have any money to buy the fabric with in the first place.

  Hicks sucked on his teeth and stared hard at Alice’s mother.

  “He been sick, suh,” she said. “Real feverish. He outta his mind. I so sorry. We gonna get him home. Get him home and into bed and when he all healed up you better bet his granddaddy gonna make it so he never say nothin like that again.”

  Alice had never h
eard her mother speak so country.

  “He needs to check himself and do it quick,” said Hicks, nothing friendly about his tone.

  Alice heard someone walk into the store. She looked up front and saw a man with a shock of red hair, vibrant as the skin on a crisp fall apple.

  • • •

  When Granddaddy learned what happened at the store, he did not steer James out to the barn to try to beat sense into him, as Alice thought he would do, but instead ordered him into the cellar to wait until they figured out a plan. James had to be hidden. He had to be hidden until they could get the details worked out. James was no longer safe on the farm. He had to go away. They had relatives in New York City. James would go live with them. There was no other choice. The boy was out of control. He didn’t realize the danger he was in. It was like that time two years before, the only time Granddaddy ever whipped him, when James had walked through the front door of Hicks’s store, on a dare from one of his cousins, even though colored people had to enter from the back. Once inside you could walk all the way to the front if you wanted, but you had to enter through the back.

  If Hicks noticed James walking through the front door, he hadn’t recognized the transgression, hadn’t recognized that James was colored, that he belonged with the Stones. But back at the farm, after Granddaddy learned what happened, he started shaking he was so mad. He had used the horsewhip on his grandson. He had torn James up.

  But James still hadn’t learned.

  And now he had to be hidden and hidden well, because who knew what might happen? Who knew what James might do next if left unchecked and on his own? Even if James were to change his behavior, recognize the gravity of the situation, who knew what damage had already been done? Somebody might come looking for the boy who attempted to buy white fabric at the store, the boy who dared to give lip to Sam Hicks, the boy who had the audacity to suggest his money was as valuable as a white man’s.

  The cellar beneath Granddaddy’s house was cool and dank and lined with packed dirt. They kept turnips and rutabagas and parsnips in there, and big burlap sacks full of potatoes. That evening Granddaddy went down to where James was waiting, bringing his grandson a tin of biscuits, each stuffed with precious bits of ham trim and butter. Granddaddy told James to eat them all. While James ate, Granddaddy emptied one of the giant burlap bags of potatoes, cutting a small hole at the bottom with his knife. He instructed James to climb into the bag, lining up his face with the hole so he could breathe, tucking his legs up under him so nothing stuck out. Granddaddy told James that someone would come check on him as often as possible, to let him out so he could relieve himself, to bring him something to eat, but there might be long stretches in between. James protested, but Granddaddy was stony and unmoved. James acquiesced, crawling into the bag. Granddaddy rolled the potatoes back into it, surrounding his grandson in grit and starch. And then he left James down there while he rode his horse to relatives who lived more than fifty miles away, asking them to send a telegram to New York saying James was coming. If Granddaddy were to send it from Cutler, someone in town might inform Hicks, who might inform the men who had lynched the boy, who might be waiting for James when he arrived at the station to board the train.

  Alice was so lonely in bed at night, without James curled up on his cot in the corner of her room. She lay next to Mother, silent and rigid, biting her fist, trying not to think of anything, because there was nothing she could think of that was okay. Nothing was safe. All of this time living in Emancipation, and nothing had ever been safe.

  She lay like that for a long time. So stiff, so scared, she did not know how she would ever feel calm again. How she would ever again sleep. But then she must have fallen asleep, because she was dreaming, and in the dream she found the sow. On her own, walking through the woods, she came upon the animal, rooting in mud. She was even bigger and nastier and uglier than Alice had remembered. The sow looked at Alice with her mean black eyes and snorted. And then she was charging toward Alice. She was going to knock Alice down. Alice put her hands out. Alice put her hands out and her nails, sharp as the spikes on a bear trap, sank into the sow’s hair-covered flesh. And then the sow disappeared and it was the hung boy Alice was embracing, the hung boy Alice couldn’t release, the hung boy whose mouth was still stuffed with feathers. And suddenly Alice knew the awful truth. The hung boy was James. It was James who had been whipped and hung from a tree. It was James who was dead.

  Every night they listened in fear for the sounds of men riding onto their property, looking for the boy who had dared to claim his worth equal to theirs. But the men never showed up. Still, James stayed hidden in the cellar for three days, until his exodus was fully arranged. When he finally emerged one early, early morning, with only a moment to say good-bye to Alice, James appeared even paler than before. Alice had been staring at her brother since before she could remember, but during that first brief absence—followed by a longer, final one—she must have forgotten how light he really was. So light was he that for a moment Alice believed she was looking at a white boy.

  Part One

  Bobby in Georgia

  1

  ROYAL AMBASSADOR

  (Decatur, Georgia, 1970)

  Some people think being a Royal Ambassador is just like being a Scout, but boy, are they wrong. It’s better! Cause everything we RAs do, all of the games and craft projects and circle shares and stuff, is in the name of Christ. And as our RA leader Mr. Morgan says, nothing is as sweet as Jesus, not even Coca-Cola. Mr. Morgan even has a T-shirt that has “Jesus” spelled out in fancy letters like it is on the Coke bottle, and beneath that it reads, “Is it!”

  Once I drank a whole one-liter bottle of Coke by myself and I got so fidgety my hands were vibrating like our seventy-two-year-old neighbor down the street, Mr. McDade, who Mama says has the shakes. Mama made me run around the house ten times just to get out some of my energy. At least she didn’t hook me up to the zip line, which is what she used to do with my brother Hunter, who’s wild.

  Daddy built the zip line a long time ago, as a sort of a combo Christmas present for all three of us Banks boys. It runs through the backyard, just before the land turns to woods, where all sorts of squirrels and rabbits and frogs live. What the zip line is, really, is just a long wire stretched tight between two trees. And there’s a handle on wheels that runs along the wire. You walk up the hill to the starting post, grab the handle, lift your knees, and whoa! There you go. Sometimes Daddy will give me a big push to start, and that’s the best because then I go flying through the air, the wheels squeaking and screaming on the wire. When I’m just about to smack into the other tree either I touch the ground with my legs, sort of bumping to a stop, or my brother Troy—he’s the oldest—will grab me, stopping the flight.

  But what Mama used to do to make Hunter calm down was attach him to the zip line using a bungee rope and two carabiners, which are these big clips, one that would hook on to the handle and one that would hook on to the belt loop on the back of Hunter’s pants. Course, he could have reached back and unclipped the carabiner, but he knew if he did he’d be in real trouble when Daddy got home. So Hunter would go along with whatever Mama told him to do. Usually she’d make him sprint up and down the length of that wire for half an hour or so. Mama said that way he could get out some of his energy without getting into any real mischief.

  • • •

  Hunter is also an RA, but he doesn’t take it seriously. He’s only in it for the M&M’s. The other day he got in trouble for not listening during Mr. Morgan’s talk about the Wayne and Evelyn Marshall Truth Tellers Foundation, which is the missionary group we help sponsor. The third time Mr. Morgan caught Hunter goofing off he made Hunter pull his chair right next to his. Then he kept on telling us about our missionaries. He said that Mr. and Mrs. Marshall are originally from Kansas, but they moved all the way to Calcutta to help run an orphanage for children living on the streets. “And sure,” said Mr. Morgan, “the orphanage provides food and shelter, and
that is wonderful, but more importantly, it introduces the poor orphaned children to Jesus. Can you imagine,” Mr. Morgan asked, “growing up without parents or Jesus? And I’m not just talking about children in India,” he said. “There are poor, godless orphans living right here in Decatur, Georgia, too.”

  Then Mr. Morgan showed us the picture of the special boy we are sponsoring, a boy who lives at the Marshalls’ orphanage in Calcutta. He’s my age—nine years old—and his name is Amit Patel. He is dark brown and real skinny, even skinnier than me. The funny thing is, when I looked at his picture, even knowing he doesn’t have a mama and daddy, I didn’t feel sorry for him. That’s cause he’s got a smile like he’s holding onto a wonderful secret. It’s a smile that makes me want to meet him, that makes me think he and I could be good friends.

  I want a good friend, a best friend. There are boys in the neighborhood I play with sometimes, but Hunter’s always with us and that makes it not as fun. Hunter says I act like a sissy and then he starts pretending to talk with a lisp, and it’s not fair cause that’s not how I talk! It’s just that sometimes when I get really excited the words get jumbled up in my mouth and they don’t come out good. It’s cause I’ve got too much to say and I don’t slow down enough to say it clearly. Least that’s what Mama says, and she should know; she majored in child development at the University of Georgia, where she also earned her MRS. (That’s a joke Daddy likes to tell, and whenever he does Mama will sort of slap him on the arm and tell him to hush, she was a very good student.)

  There is a picture book Mama used to read to me called Little Black Sambo. It’s about a boy who lived in the jungles of India. Even though I’m in the advanced reading group at school—Miss Lisa says I read at the eighth-grade level—I still like to flip through the pages of that old book. I wonder if Amit Patel is smart like Little Black Sambo. Little Black Sambo is so smart he tricked four tigers out of eating him. What happened was, Sambo was taking a walk through the jungle and he ran into four hungry tigers who thought Sambo would make a good breakfast. But instead of letting them eat him, Sambo tricks the tigers into chasing their own tails round and round a tree until they run so fast they turn into butter, which Sambo then eats, melted on top of a tall stack of hot pancakes.