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Then came a Monday night, early August. The last night we ever smoked together.
I will tell you how the nightmare began, at least how I remember it.
Jacob and I were a little light-headed from smoking three cigarettes in quick succession. We heard noises on Commerce Street and walked down the alley beside the bank to see what was stirring.
The first thing we saw was a group of men coming out of the basement of the First Methodist Church. I immediately recognized Leon Reynolds, the “dirty man” who did the sweeping and manure hauling in front of the stores around the courthouse square. He had a hard job, a big belly, and a sour-mash-whiskey attitude.
Across Commerce Street, on the sidewalk in front of Miss Ida Simmons’s sewing and notions shop, we saw three colored teenagers standing and shooting the breeze. Lounging against the wall of Miss Ida’s, they were facing the wrong way to see that there were white men bearing down on them.
I recognized the tallest boy as George Pearson, whose mother sometimes did washing and ironing for our neighbors the Harrises. Beside him was his brother Lanky. I didn’t recognize the third boy.
If Jacob and I could hear their conversation this plainly, so could the men walking down the sidewalk toward them. George Pearson was doing most of the talking.
“Shoot, Lank, they couldn’t do a damn thing ’round here without us,” he said. “Let ’em try to get along without colored folks. Who’d curry their hosses and pitch their hay? Who’d they get to cut cane and pick cotton?”
Jacob looked at me. I looked back at him. We knew black boys were not supposed to talk this way.
The white men walked right past us and stepped down into the street. I don’t think they even registered our presence. When they heard what George was saying, they started walking faster, and then they ran. They were almost upon the three boys when one of the men boomed, “Hell, George, you one smart little nigger to figure all that out by yourself!”
Chapter 16
GEORGE PEARSON TURNED, and I saw nothing but the whites of his eyes. It was stupid of him to be talking like that in the open on Commerce Street, but he quickly demonstrated that he was smart enough to run.
Jacob and I watched him leap the horse trough in one bound and take off sprintin
g through the skinny alley beside the church. Leon Reynolds and his pals gave chase, huffing and cursing and yelling “Stop, nigger!”
“We better go home, Ben,” said Jacob. “I’m not kidding you.”
“No,” I said. “We’re going after them. Come on. I dare you.”
I knew Jacob would lay down his life before taking off in the face of a dare. Sure enough, he followed me. We kept far enough back so as not to be seen. I had not been a very religious boy up till then, but I found myself praying for George Pearson to get away. Please, God, I thought, make George run fast.
The men chased him all the way to the end of Court Street, out past the icehouse. As they went along, a couple more men joined the chase. George seemed to be getting away! Then, from out of nowhere, a bucket came sailing out of the icehouse door, tangling his feet and tripping him up.
Within seconds the men were on George. Leon Reynolds punched him right in his face. The man next to him hocked up a big wad of spit and let it fly. Another man reached down, grabbed George by the testicles, and twisted his hand.
“Holy God,” Jacob whispered in the bushes where we’d taken shelter. “They’re gonna kill him, Ben. I swear to God.”
The men yanked George up by one arm and set him stumbling in front of them. They taunted and teased and pushed him toward the swampy woods behind the icehouse. One of them had a torch. Then another torch was lit.
“We gotta do something,” I said to Jacob. “We gotta. I’m serious, boy.”
“You crazy? What in hell can we do? They’ll twist our balls off too.”
“Run home and get your daddy,” I said. “I’ll try to keep up with ’em.”
Jacob looked at me, plainly trying to gauge whether his departure now would mean he had failed to live up to my earlier dare. But finally he ran for help.
Leon Reynolds yanked George up hard by his ear. I found my hand clutching at the side of my own head in sympathy.
Two men lifted George as easily as if he were a cloth doll. Blood poured from his mouth, along with a load of bile and vomit.
One man held George at the waist while another pushed and pulled his head up and down to make him perform a jerky bow.
“There you go, nigger boy. Now you’re bowing and showing the respect you should.”
Then, leaning in, with one firm tug, Leon Reynolds pulled George’s ear clean off his head.
