In Search of Bisco Page 6

The other big thing my school-teacher wife helped me out about was how to get along being poor like everybody else in the same fix. Everybody needs a true saying to fall back on when things get too discouraging and I didn’t have nothing like that till my wife provided it for me. When I’d complain about something or another and said I wished I could get hold of enough extra money to fix up the store a little bit, she’d say to me to quit worrying about it and be satisfied like it was. She had a way of saying something that calmed me down every time. I’ll tell you about that.

  My wife sounded so educated when she said what she did that it made me want to learn it from her exactly. And now I can say it almost as good as she can. She says it just like I’m going to say it now. You listen to it. Poverty is a relative thing because it’s kin to so many people in the world.

  For a while I couldn’t figure out just what it meant when it was said like that. Anyhow, I went ahead and learned to say it from her and now it makes me feel satisfied as soon as I say it to myself.

  One of the times when that saying helped a lot was when there was a big train wreck. A few years ago a freight train jumped the track on a curve on the railroad about two miles from here near Cordova and three of the box cars loaded with sacks of flour and all kind of canned goods rolled off the track and busted wide open on a rock ledge down at the bottom of a high bank. I tell you, that’s a sight you don’t see a lot of in a lifetime. Anyhow, it wasn’t long before everybody for miles around heard about it and hurried down to the wreck with every kind of sack, poke, and tote-bag you can name.

  Those people loaded up with all the sacks of flour and canned goods they could carry off. And then they didn’t stop at that, neither. They made as many as four or five trips, some of them. And they done that all night long, too. There was a creek down there where the three box cars busted open just like a May-pop when you step on it in June or July and all those canned goods got good and soaked in the creek water before they could all be carried off.

  Anyhow, what I’m getting at is that all the paper wrapping came off of the cans soaking in the creek water and the folks who carried them off home couldn’t tell what in the world was on the inside of them. But that didn’t make no difference, because it was all free even if folks never knew when they opened up a can to eat if it was going to be beans or hash or some sort of juice. That made eating-time a pretty little trick to try and guess what you’d be putting in your belly.

  But that’s only part of what I started out to tell you about. It all leads up to the main thing, though. What that was was that the folks around here got so much free flour and canned goods they didn’t have to buy none of that from me here in the store for almost a whole year and all I could sell them was a little snuff now and then and maybe a box of matches and a quart of coal oil and a few nails and some strap-hinges. Things got so bad for me with hardly no money coming in that I couldn’t help but complain to my wife about it. There’s nothing like hard-times to provoke a man to talking.

  Now, I told you before that my wife was an educated school teacher when I married her, and she never lost none of her education being married to me. And so when I complained to her about people not buying much to speak of, she said that same thing again you know about. Poverty is a relative thing because it’s kin to so many people in the world.

  I’ll tell you, when a man gets to know a saying like that by heart, it’s a mighty comforting thing, because the next thing you know you’ve got your mind off what you started to complain about. Of course, you keep on being poor as the devil like you always was, but having the comfort of an educated wife makes you able to go along with it a lot better than anything else could. I don’t know if a rich man needs an educated wife, but it sure makes things tolerable for a poor man like me.

  Maybe rich men don’t have much of a chance to find out about it, but I know for a fact that an educated wife is the best kind to have around the cook-stove and in the bed besides when there’s an argument with the preacher.

  And I’ll tell you why. I got to arguing with the preacher over at the church not a long while ago and he made me so mad I could’ve jumped him right there and then if it wasn’t for my wife. The way it ended up just goes to show how much good an educated wife can do for a man. I had my coat off and was getting ready to haul off and beat hell out of that preacher for saying I wasn’t acting religious enough to suit him, but she told me to put my coat back on and go home with her and let her calm me down like she knows how.

  That all got started when the preacher said everybody in the church got down on the knees except me when he was praying and that a man who failed to do that needed religion more than anybody else. Even before I left home and went to church that Sunday I told myself I was wearing the first new suit of clothes I’d had for seven years and I wasn’t going to get down on no floor and get the pants all baggy in the knees the first time I wore them.

  Anyhow, I told that preacher I’d whoop and holler and put a little something extra in the collection box but I wasn’t going to ruin a brand-new suit getting the pants baggy in the knees so soon. He got all shaky and shouting and said a man who talked the way I did ought to go to hell and stay there when he died.

  It was right there and then when I shucked off my coat and would’ve jumped him if it hadn’t been for my educated wife. She said she wanted to take me home and calm me down. The preacher said he wanted her to stay after me and everybody else left so he could talk to her in private about my religion. She told him she wouldn’t do that, because it was plain to see he was looking her up and down with poontang in mind. If she hadn’t been an educated school teacher, and if I hadn’t been watching, he could’ve got her where he wanted her for sure.

  Everything worked out just fine after that. The preacher left in a couple of weeks and went off somewhere else and the new preacher who came along said he wanted everybody to stand up in church while he was praying and not get down on their knees on the floor.

  Keeping me from fighting the preacher wasn’t the only thing my wife had a hand in. Like it is, the politicians come around every year or two wanting promised votes, and just last spring one of them walked in here and paid me a dime for a soda pop and then started talking big like God Almighty who’d bought and paid for both me and my wife’s votes. He stomped around on his feet and said he was keeping the black folks in their place and not letting them get a chance to think they could act as good as white people. After a lot of that kind of talk he said me and my wife’s votes would help him keep up his good work against the black folks. That made me mad as hell and I’ll tell you why.

  It was the way that politician came in here and spent a dime and then acting like he was doing me and my wife a favor to keep the black folks from acting like they was as good as white people but not asking me if I wanted that kind of favor done. He kept on talking like that about the colored and I got madder and madder.

  That’s when I opened up and told him if he was so set against the Negroes and all colored people he ought to move clear out of Alabama himself and go somewhere they wouldn’t bother him. He said I talked like a nigger-lover and ought to be ashamed of my white face and that the whole state would go to hell and ruin if it wasn’t for politicians like him who kept the black folks from going to the same schools and churches with whites. Then he ended up saying if I didn’t vote right he was warning me that he’d get some men he knew in Jasper to come around some night and straighten me out for my own good.

  I don’t take that kind of talk from nobody, not even a big politician, and I told him to get the hell out of my store and stay out.

  Right then was when my wife happened to come in the store and she could tell right away how mad I was about something. She knew what to think about it, just like the time I was fixing to jump that preacher, and she went straight behind the counter where I keep my old shotgun handy in case it’s needed. She wasn’t saying a single word when she picked up the gun and breeched it open.

  The politician took a
good look at her and asked me who she was. I told him who she was and he said she didn’t look all-white to him and then wanted to know if I was race-mixing with a half-black. Just the same, even if he was a pure-white politician, I could see him looking her up and down with her kind of poontang in mind.

  I was about to tell him plenty about minding his own business when he looked again and saw my wife holding up that breeched shotgun. She’d only done that to take out the two shells so I couldn’t kill nobody, but that politician didn’t know that. He thought she was loading the gun and he got out of there so fast he left his hat behind.

  While he was getting in his car, my wife ran outside waving his hat at him, but he wasn’t taking no chances. He got his car started and turned it around to get back to Jasper. I grabbed the shotgun and jammed the shells in the barrels and then fired both of them up in the air one after the other.

  When the politician heard the gun go off, I reckon he thought for sure he was getting shot at, because he ducked his head down as far as he could and drove that car up the road making so much noise it sounded like a gravel truck stuck in a mud hole and trying to get out.

  The whole thing about it was I’d forgotten about that shotgun when my wife came in the store, but she remembered it as soon as she saw how mad I was. All I had in mind was to brain that politician with the empty soda pop bottle for trying to buy me and her votes for only a dime and then saying my wife’s looks didn’t suit him for politics because she’s not all-white. Maybe her color didn’t please him for his kind of politics, but he sure had his eye on her for the other thing. He acted just like the preacher when it came to that.

  8

  EARLY IN THE NINETEENTH century, long before the Civil War, an act of Congress provided a land grant of several townships in area for two hundred French colonists to enable them to establish a settlement in America. Inspired by the revolutionary American theory of democratic government, and exiled from France because of their political beliefs, the colonists sailed across the Atlantic to Mobile and then came a hundred and fifty miles up the Tombigbee River in Western Alabama to seek realization of their dreams.

  Being imbued with the spirit of democracy, and true to its principles of human freedom, the colonists brought no African slaves to the settlement they founded on the cliffs of the Tombigbee and which they called Demopolis.

  It was in retaliation for their exile from France that the refugees used the Greek language instead of French to create an appropriately descriptive name for the place they expected to live in democratic freedom.

  Demopolis, or The People’s City, was an idealistic experiment that failed so disastrously that all now left to show for it is the name of the town itself. The deceptive black topsoil, which became known as the Black Belt of Alabama, covered a rock-like hardpan of white clay only a few inches below the surface and was not suitable for growing grapes and olives as the colonists attempted to do. Besides, the malarial climate brought early death to men, women, and children, and there were no slaves for the hard labor of producing cotton in subtropical heat.

  In the end, with their language being their only remaining possession, the few colonists who survived the ordeal returned to France after the Napoleonic Wars. Cotton planters, bringing their Guinea slaves from nearby plantations, were quick to take over the abandoned land.

  Now, a century and a half later, Demopolis is just another Alabama town of less than ten thousand people with an equal number of white Protestants of Anglo-Saxon origin and third- and fourth-generation descendants of Guinea slaves. Ironically, all of them, both white and Negro, are dominated by the antithesis of democracy—the lingering traditions of plantation slavery and white supremacy.

  Since the only remaining evidence of the French colonists’ idealistic effort is a place name—The People’s City—it would not be unlikely if that too were obliterated. The possibility is that some of the white citizens, perturbed by the implication of the town’s name when translated from Greek into English, will successfully petition to have it changed from Demopolis to Wallaceville.

  There were several people seated at tables in the roadside restaurant and eating a native noonday dinner of fried pork chops, black-eyed peas, cole slaw, and chitterling cornbread. And of course drinking the traditional year-around Deep South beverage—iced tea and sugar. On the wall, draped with a battle-size Confederate flag, there was a large framed placard in colorful show-card lettering. A black mourning band had been fastened to the gilded frame.

  WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SEAT OUR PATRONS OR DENY SERVICE TO ANYONE. ANY PERSON CREATING A DISTURBANCE ON THESE PREMISES AFTER BEING DENIED SERVICE WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  The ingratiating, fiftyish, florid-faced real estate salesman had finished eating his noonday dinner and a quick smile of concern came over him as he glanced at the elaborately-framed and flag-draped memento on the wall. He was one of the civic leaders of Demopolis. He had acquired that distinction by being a member of several businessmen’s clubs, chairman of a white citizens’ committee, a bank director, a Methodist, and by belonging to the country club and a fraternal lodge.

  Such an impressive list of memberships and activities is just about average for a white citizen having the distinction of being known as a prominent civic booster in a Deep South town the size of Demopolis or a city as large as Birmingham. Doctors and lawyers rarely have the inclination to devote themselves to such a variety of activities, but merchants, bankers, and salesmen know that they have a better opportunity to make money if they become aggressive civic boosters.

  It’s a sad thing about that sign up there on the wall, he said. But law or no law, and even if what it says can’t be enforced like it used to, it’s worth preserving just like the Confederate flag. Maybe it won’t keep blacks from coming in here, but it’ll keep them reminded of who’s still boss in this part of the South.

  I’ll tell you what the whole trouble is. It’s all because people in the rest of the country just don’t understand the racial situation down here. They’re ignorant about it and we’ve got to educate them by showing them how to manage it. People up North think the blacks ought to be treated like anybody else and they criticize us for the way we handle them. They’ll learn some day that we know more about it than they do.

  What they don’t understand up North is that niggers—or Negroes, as they say it—haven’t gone through evolution as far as white people. They’re still primitive—just like wild Indians used to be. They just don’t have the intelligence we’ve got and it’s going to take time for their brains to grow bigger so they can go through their cycle of evolution like we’ve already done.

  We’re letting them get educated now, but that’s only a start. It’ll be three or four generations from now before their brains are fully developed like a white man’s. That’s why it don’t make sense to claim they ought to be paired with a white man when it comes to voting and living in the same part of town and everything else they say they want to do. It’ll be another hundred years before they can complete their evolution and grow more brains and be ready for things like that.

  It’s just like I said. We know how to handle the blacks. We’ve been raised up with them and we know what’s good for them better than they do themselves. I can take you over to their part of town and you’ll soon see what I mean. The older ones—the real black Guineas—never went to school a day in their life. They can’t even speak English enough for you to make out what they’re trying to say. It’s all Guinea-mumble.

  That’s the reason you won’t find niggers from Georgia living in Demopolis. They can’t understand Guinea-talk and they’d keep on the move till they got to Mississippi or somewhere else. You could spend a whole week in Demopolis looking for somebody named Bisco and still wouldn’t find him or any half-white Geechee. I never heard of a nigger with a name like Bisco, anyhow. And if you asked me, I’d say a name like that is too good for a nigger in this part of the country. We make our niggers have real common names and keep the good ones for wh
ite people.

  We call our niggers Guineas because they came straight down from the old-time Guinea slaves brought over here from Africa to work on the cotton plantations in Alabama and that’s why all the old ones, and most of the young ones, too, talk a kind of Guinea-mumble. When we work with them, we can make them understand what we want them to do, but that’s about the limit you can go with them as far as talk is concerned.

  Now, it stands to reason they don’t have the right to pair their votes with white people. They don’t know any more what the voting’s all about than a cross-eyed hoot owl. When the blacks get educated in a few more generations from now, then you’ll be able to reason with them so they’ll learn the right way to vote. But even that’s a long way off.

  Right now the blacks talk among themselves about civil rights and integration. I’ve overheard some of that and most of them don’t even know what such things mean. I’ve heard some of them say civil rights was going to let them move anywhere in town to live next door to white people and integration was going to give them the right to pick out a white woman to marry.

  If trouble-makers would only leave things alone, we could get the blacks educated in a few more generations and keep them in their place in the meantime. But it just don’t make sense to say we ought to let them go to the same schools with white children here and now—no more than saying they can live next door to you and marry your daughter.

  It’s not that we don’t want them sitting in the same school room and mixing on the playground with our children just because they’re black and we’re white. That’s not the real reason. It’s because they don’t have the brain capacity to learn as fast as white children do and that holds the white children back so the colored can catch up. That’s the only reason we don’t want integrated schools now.

  A big criticism you hear from outsiders is that we mistreat the colored people down here. That’s just not so. There’s not a bit of truth to it. If anything, it’s a big lie. We’ve got some Southern customs you don’t find in other parts of the country, just like people elsewhere have some customs that we don’t have—and don’t want, neither.