Youngblood (Brown Thrasher Books Ser.) [Revised ed.] 0820322016, 9780820322018

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Youngblood

oungblood by

JOHN 0. KILLENS

(iiiJ\

THE DIAL PRESS, INC.

~NEW

YORK 1954

Copyright, I954, by john 0. Killens Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-7I23 DESIGNED BY WILLIAM R. MEINHARDT MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY BOOK CRAFTSMEN ASSOCIATES, INC., NEW YORK

Second Printing, 1955

To GRACE and "THE FOLKS"

PART ONE In the Beginning

Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel And why not every man'!From a Negro Spiritual "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel"

Chapter I LAURIE LEE BARKSDALE began this life along with the brand new century. About one minute after twelve, a black cold night, in Tipkin, Georgia, January the first, nineteen hundred and zero-zero. As the church bells rang and the pistols fired and the whistles blew all over town, the new baby cried. But she didn't cry much. The mother smiled at the father as he walked in nervously from the back porch. The old midwife said, "She sure is a pretty youngun." And the mother's mother wiped her brow and said, "U mph - Aah Lord - - " And the mother lay in the bed and smiled. The father's name was Dale. He kissed his wife on her forehead, went to the chest and got his gun, went out on the back porch and shot into the night, till his fingers got tired and his strong hand trembled. Load and reload. He had expected a boy, but it didn't matter much. She sure was a funny looking baby. Just as red as a beet. Didn't favor a thing. Got to work twice as hard now, Dale Barksdale. Got to give her all the chances you didn't have in spite of these crackers. His face filled up and his throat and his shoulders. He felt weak, helpless, and scared, he f~lt strong and mighty. As the whistles still blew and the church bells rang and the guns fired out, he raised his gun and BANG BANG BANG. And-a Great God Almighty, what you gonna name this pretty little child? The years jumped by, and the girl grew pretty and strong 3

and healthy, and Dale and Martha were as proud as punch. Everywhere they went people said - That child sure got a pretty head on her shoulders, and mother wit too. They would look at Dale and say- Whachoo swelling up so about? She don't look like you. She Martha up and down. Well, Dale would tell them, that's all right about that. When she was four years old she said a long recitation by heart in church at an Easter exercise, and she didn't seem nervous. Right then and there folks said she was going to be a school teacher. When she was eight years old, she was pretty as a peach and round and plump, except for her slender hands, her long tapering fingers. Folks told Dale and Martha that God had given their little girl a gift and she was born to play pretty music, be a great musician. And Dale believed it. On her ninth birthday he brought home a second or third or fourth-hand piano and got Professor Larkins to give her music lessons. And how she loved to tickle those keys. So it was church recitals and playing for the B.Y.P.U. and this and that and everything else. When her nimble fingers ran up and down those keys, she made you laugh and sing, she made you cry and shout, she filled your eyes with shame-faced tears. Dale was good to his children, Laurie and Tim, worked hard like a dog. Folks would say to him - Dale Barksdale, you sure ain't got no sense at all, working so hard. Ain't got the sense you were born with. You ought to sit down and rest a little while. Children these days ain't worth all them sacrifices, I do declare. Grow up to be something, tum they back on you sure as you born to die. That's alright about that, Dale would tell them. I ain't looking for no rewards. Just want them to do better than I did. Git an education. Be something else 'sides a workhorse for white folks. Thatta be good enough reward for me. And he meant that thing. Laurie Lee Barksdale: eleven years old now, and her old mischievous grandmother told her that very morning at the breakfast table. "Gal, you jes beginning to smell your pee, you old 4

pretty thing you!" Later that morning she was coming from town. There wasn't a prettier girl her age in all Johnson County no matter the color. Feeling good and walking with bouncing steps through Woodley's Lane, with the sun reaching down into the alley and resting on her face and her neck and her shoulders. Thinking about next Sunday's recital, mixed up with thoughts about the pretty-faced boy in the ninth grade always smiling at her. She was about halfway through the alley. She saw a tall lanky white man walking towards her, but she didn't think about it, till he walked right up to her, and he grabbed hold of her before she knew it in broad open daylight - Lord Lord Lordi "Tum me loose, man! Turn me loose!'' Struggling with an anger and fright and strength hitherto unknown to her. She looked desperately around her - not a soul in sight, but two great big old alley cats on top of a garbage can. Nicely dressed, middle-aged white man with brown squinting eyes, mixed with whiskey-red. He mumbled to himself as he grabbed her plump buttocks. And he wouldn't let her go. Scared crazy with her heart in her mouth and blood flowing in the well of her stomach. Greatgodalmightyl She kicked him on his shins, she kneed him in his groin, but he wouldn't tum her loose. "Tum me loose!" His hand found her young breast, a recently developed wonder to her. He squeezed them till they hurt. "Come on, yaller bitch, you got something good and I know it. Ain't no needer keeping it to yourself." Grabbing at her skirt and fumbling at his fly. She could hear other voices now. "Damn I reckin - Thassa fiery little nigger heffer." "She sure is pretty." "Leave her lone, Mr. Hill, you old no-good hound." Breathing and snorting in her face and on her neck and her ears. His breathed smelled like whiskey puke. Upped her skirt and peed on her thighs! She raked her fingernails down his long scrawny face, draw-

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ing his blood, and she sunk her teeth deep into his arm, and she got away from him. Jesus Have Mercy, she got away! "Goddamn no-good nigger bitch! Come back here. Doncha run from me." She heard crackers laughing till she turned the corner. Running and crying most of the way home - Through the heart of Crackertown, across the railroad track and through Tucker's Field, she reached Colored town. She stopped running and crying, and she leaned against an evergreen tree, and she looked at the shanties scattered over the valley, but her eyes saw nothing. "What's the matter, Laurie Lee?" "Nothing, Miss Susie. I'm all right, I thank you." Somehow she straightened up just before she reached the house, because she didn't want the folks to know; wanted nobody in the whole wide world to hear about it. Sneaked around the side of the house and into the woodshed. She looked hard at the axe. She should chop off her legs. Whack them off clean up to her belly. A sharp chill ran across her shoulders and down her back. She stripped off her clothes, and she got into a washtub full of water, and she scrubbed the skin off her young brown body with washing powder and lye soap. Her legs and her thighs were on fire. Standing in the tub now, naked and trembling. One thing sure, she wouldn't tell the folks. Later that evening after the chickens got quiet and a little old unexpected breeze got busy and stirring, she sat on the back porch listening to her Mama and her Big Mama talk. Looking straight into Big Mama's mouth like she usually did. Big Mama doing most of the talking. "You listen to these-shere rich white folks, honey, talking about slavery was a good thing - talking about good-hearted marsters. Won' no sicha thing. I done told you that a million times. If a marster was good, he wouldna had no sl.aves - he'da sot em all free. Crackers always talking about the slaves cried when Marster Lincoln sot us free. We cried all right, honey. Aah Lord - we cried. Won' a Negro's eyes dry that time. We cried for joy and shouted 6

hallelujah." She glanced down at Laurie Lee and she rocked back and forth, singing to herself:

Free at last . .. . Free at last . .. . Thank Godamighty I'm free at last . ... Listening to Big Mama, Laurie Lee felt like she was being lifted upon a great silvery cloud, going higher and higher, sailing around and around and higher and higher towards a bright purple moon - Big Mama stopped singing and she laughed that short dry laugh of hers and she looked down at Laurie. "Aah Lord, doll baby, all this time and we ain't free yet." Suddenly, all that had happened to Laurie Lee in the alley that day came back to her, the evil old white man and everything else. Her bosom became heavy and her face filled up and she turned her head- didn't want to let on. "What's the matter, doll baby?" Big Mama asked her. She started to say, nothing Big Mama, but her voice choked off and her eyes filled up and she couldn't hold it back. Steamed up and boiling right over. Telling it now, bit by bit, then fast and fiercely, pouring it angrily out of her system. There was a pitiful scared look in her mother's eyes, anxious and terrifying, as she begged and pleaded with the girl "Don't say nothing to your Papa about it, please, sugar pie. Do, he'll go outer here and get himself kilt, sure as gun's iron!" Laurie Lee looked up at her slavery-time grandmother, as she sat in her rocker, with her wrinkled-up face drawn tight towards the going-down sun, with those deep-dark, at-thepresent-time, completely black eyes. Talking between puffs on her corn cob pipe. Speaking with a calmness, nurtured painfully in hatred and meanness and born-in-slavery militance. "Donehoo cry, honey," she said, as she rubbed Laurie Lee's shoulders with her rough bony hands. "Git mad, yes Godamighty, but donchoo waste a single tear. Crying all the time don't do a damn bitter good." She puffed twice on her pipe, watched the gray smoke, her

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eyes almost closing. "Hit's always been thataway, doll baby. Aah Lord, honey, goddammit - Crackers make way with the black women folks, and black man bet not even now say a mumbling word!" Laurie Lee looked sideways up into Mama's eyes, desperate, wide and pitiful. Mama - Mama - Mama! She looked up at Big Mama, felt the strength from the old woman flow into her young body. She got up and walked through the kitchen into the big room, and she cried no more. NINETEEN TWELVE WAS A YEAR AND A HALF -A COW AND A CALF. It was the year that white men came to the house and took her piano away, while Big Mama cussed. And it didn't matter that Mama went around all day long shaking her head in a helpless fashion, or that Big Mama kept telling Laurie Lee, Donehoo cry honey, or that Papa was mean and cross with everybody for over a week, the piano was gone and it stayed gone. Laurie Lee felt like dying, but she felt like living, and she kept on living, 'cause it was better than dying. Laurie Lee got a job that summer working for old Lady Tucker over in Radcliffe Heights. Taking care of her little old eight year old girl. It was a real hot summer, burning up, and old Lady Tucker was fat in the stomach, just as big as a house. "Laurie Lee - ee - - " Laurie was in the great big beautiful kitchen feeding the white child and also getting something to eat for herself. What did that contrary old white woman want this time? Laurie Lee this and Laurie Lee that "You Laurie Lee-ee-ee - " She could hear Mrs. Tucker coming down the stairs and shuffling through the hall. Well let her come. Laurie Lee wasn't going to be running up and down those stairs every time Mrs. Tucker had an urge to call her. Bring me this and take care of that"Laurie Lee, didn't you hear me calling you?" Laurie looked up from the plate, stared the white woman straight in the face, then looked brazenly and contemptuously 8

at her big fat belly. Mrs. Tucker changed colors from white to red. She used to be slender and pretty, but lately her stomach hung down and poked out terribly, and her eyes carried great big double rings around them. "No mam, Miss Sarah, I didn't hear nothing." "You must be deaf. Need to wash out your ears." "Yes, mam." The white woman's eyes roved around the big kitchen, rested on the little white girl, then roved some more, and back to Laurie Lee. "Laurie Lee, you know Becky, I mean Rebecca, she is getting to be a mighty big girl." She paused, catching her breath, waiting for Laurie to express agreement, but the girl said nothing, just kept on looking straight at Mrs. Tucker. "What I mean is, Laurie Lee, it doesn't look right for you to be calling her Becky and she getting to be a young Miss already." White woman cleared her throat. Laurie Lee cut her eyes over at the little gray-eyed girl, who kept on eating. "She ain't that big, Miss Sarah." "What I mean is, d