The War Between the States had been over now for going on four-years, and now a new sport was taking place in Ozark, Alabama, it was called chasing the colored girls, and if they complained, there was only trouble behind closed doors for them.
“I know that old man, Ritt, chases your daughter Burgundy around the stores and town and all,” said the sheriff to Fanny Lue Jackson, she was the kin to Amos from Shantytown, “but if I give him holly hell, he’ll give me my retirement papers, youall got to be careful down here in Ozark, why not keep your daughter out of Ozark, and stay there in Shantytown?” said the Sheriff.
That was the best Fanny Lue, got out of the Sheriff (and her husband Giaus, he was too fearful to appear and complain), matter-of-fact, if the colored girl attempted to complain too much, there was no telling when the KKK, would be on your doorsteps with a lit cross in the background—if you know what I mean. It simply wasn’t safe to complain, there was only trouble to come out of it, because Mr. Hobby was doing the same thing with Burgundy’s younger sister Witty, and Otis from the bar, was doing it, and even Yancy from the stables, everyone was do it with someone, if they found a pretty colored girl that is, and Burgundy was near as pretty as Ashley. And there was no judge even going to look at such a case, if indeed the girl brought it to court, and if she lived long enough to tell her story.
With Burgundy Jackson, an attractive mulatto, her younger sister Witty, her mother Fanny Lue (a first cousin to Amos), and her brother, Hark, was becoming a test for the whole township of Ozark. And Hank was easy pray for the frustrated and reckless white folks of the city—they’d mock him as they saw him in town about his two sisters, they like to bully the women as much as the young men, all these folks, Hobby, Otis, Ritt, and Yancy, the older folks of the city, inside their little group, and figured they were going to sweep over this innocent family or any colored family with a pretty young one, and bring on a patter of tragedy if need be, one no one could rescue them from. Fanny Lue had threatened to go to the Governor of the State over this matter.
Hark, you might say was a sleepy-eyed young fellow (so he looked), seventeen years old, light brown skin, a motto also, the nicest of all those boys one might find in Shantytown, or Ozark, “Where’s mama and papa?” he asked his sister Burgundy, two years younger than he, it was just a sudden thought. “Mama said you’re supposed to watch over me, cuz she went someplace for a few days, I rightly don’t know where, she wouldn’t say and papa went along, I reckon it might be to see the governor, as she said she might…” said Burgundy.
“Well, I’m going over to the Hightower Plantation; Emma wants me to do some house cleaning I reckon. She’s going to pay me five dollars for one day’s work?”
Burgundy knew Hark liked Emma, and was fearful Emma might have taken a liking for him, her attitude and demands were usually simple but beguiling. In other words, she teased him, and she was a year or two, or three older than him. And she often wondered what would have happed if she had a happy likening for him that brought on a tussle, and ended up in the hayloft or in her bedroom with him, she hugged him often as with a childish audacity when he visited her.
As it was though, Ella and Granny Mae Walsh kept an eye on her when Hark was around. It seemed Emma was shy to all other boys but Hark. He was Emma’s fancy.
It was that afternoon, Burgundy and Hark were visiting, and Emma gave Burgundy work to do in the barn, with Silas, and Granny Mae was out picking cotton with Amos, Jamaica, and Jordon.
Hark was waxing the wooden floors in the state room, and unexpectedly, he heard someone running down the stairs, and Hark swallowed hard as if he was anticipating something, and began talking in a quick surge of indescribable words, and when he saw Emma in the doorway, he tried to conceal his nervousness—she was naked as a jaybird. He suddenly began wondering why she had come to the state room in such a condition, she was standing in the doorway, she was seemingly inciting, perhaps teasing: he shifted his weight to look the other way, now awkwardly from one leg to the other.
“Is that all you can do, there’s a rat in my bedroom,” she said with a tormenting smile.
He could feel an uneasy pain grip his inners; he knew she was in part, teasing him, although she may have planted a rat in her bedroom—that’s to say—she had a plan.
“Answer me, Hark!” said Emma.
“Miss Emma, please don’t start like that,” he begged with a powerless feeling.
“Today you’re timid,” she implied.
“No, I’m just careful!”
“Well,” she said, “if white men can chase black girls, white girls can chase black men, so go ahead and answer me!”
“But if you’d simply not make me do it!” he said.
She stomped her foot immediately, “Come up to my bedroom and get the rat out; because you know as well as I do, if you don’t.”
Hark reached behind him, pulled himself up to his feet, his legs were kind of numb, he realized how helpless the women felt now, the girls caught in such situation, or situations, before he even wondered if the girls were asking for it, like the white folks implied. He now remembered what Burgundy told him, “You know what Mr. Ritt said he’d do to me if—if I didn’t stay with him in his back office of the bank, and, and do you know what!” And then the boy felt: it was bad enough just being colored, and once a slave, but now this was a new awful kind of trouble, and he ended up, walking up those stairs with her, and she watched him with an amused expression, until he lay abruptly down on her bed, and she undressed him confidently until he was suddenly lost with her grips, both in a darted state of anxiety, and ecstasy.
No one mentioned the old black Jackson couple in Ozark (those two folks who went to see the Governor) from Shantytown, I guess the sheriff was right, it was better to stay in Shantytown, or simple live quietly and accept one’s fate, Burgundy was right also, contended Hark, everything kind of looked that way anyways. Every time Hark went to Ozark that week, after his mother and father went on their trip, the town sort of lost interest in Burgundy, and even Emma in Hark, people stood on the wooden sidewalks staring at them both, as if they were ashes, shaking their heads.
Hark and Burgundy waited a second week for their mother and father to return, and one evening, Hark up and said plainly, “It feels to me like it’s going to be bad year for cotton, and for colored folk around here. Maybe we ought to find our way up north, Amos said old Josh’s relative lives up there, by the name of Boston, he’s doing fine I reckon.” And Burgundy had no qualms with that.
No: 599 (2-9-2010)
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