I Got to Keep Moving_Made in Michigan Writers Series by Bill Harris

Author:Bill Harris [Harris, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000 Fiction / Literary, LCO002010 Literary Collections / American / African American, LIT018000 Literary Criticism / Short Stories
ISBN: 9780814345931
Amazon: 081434593X
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2018-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

16

Going to Town

Smith’s Crossing, Georgia, c. 1938

Under Carpenter’s supervision the crew of locals were rigging the bleachers and raising the tent.

Peck, first cornetist, was smoking a ready-roll he’d bummed off Napoleon Hampden. He was standing with Son. They’d rehearsed and were ready for their opening that night in Ford’s Bend. He was watching Jasper Graves, Royale & Rhymes’ advance man, who’d just come in from placing handbills on posts and walls in town and window cards in local businesses, and was talking to R.W. Peck could just barely overhear them.

“You aren’t going to like it,” Jasper said.

R.W. waited, not liking it already. “Another show posted over Royale & Rhymes’ handbills all over town,” Jasper told their boss.

“Who done it?”

“You ain’t going to like it,” the thin, wavy-haired, light-skinned, hazel-eyed man said, stalling the bad news. “It was another minstrel outfit.”

He didn’t think it was a damn opera company, R.W., said, but whoever in the hell it was he wasn’t going to blame Jasper for bringing the news if he told him what the news was sometime before sundown and time for the damned show.

Jasper, only slightly less anxious, said, “They’re a four-car unit down at the other depot.”

Peck could see R.W. rifling through his mind for troupes with four train cars.

“They white. Robben’s White Smart Set Minstrels out of New Orleans.”

“Any sight of them?”

They hadn’t set up at the pavilion in the town square when Jasper’d left. But they were expected to any time soon.

Stepping into the sunlight out of the shadows of the tent, Professor Elmore Sawyer, the band director, sensing something, joined them. What was wrong?

Jasper repeated his report in a rush, adding, “and you know the smoke ain’t hardly cleared from the last lynching they had around here.”

“That was over in Nelson County,” R.W. said.

“Y’all all right?” Peck, joining them, asked, his hand on Son’s shoulder.

“You think lynchers don’t cross country lines?” Jasper asked.

Graves asked if they ought to pack up, citing R.W.’s number one rule about the possibility of trouble and the law. He had a bad feeling.

“We were here first,” R.W. told him.

“But they here now,” Graves countered, “and this is a mostly white town. When they get a scent of blood . . .”

That didn’t make any difference, Sawyer said, as Bump Reynolds joined them.

“What’s up?”

Professor Sawyer explained.

“Them crackers got to learn,” R.W. concluded as he fetched his 21-jewel railroad model Waltham from his vest pocket. An 18-wheel steam locomotive hand carved into its gold top. He thumbnailed it open with a soft pop.

“Time for school,” he said. The watch closed with a click.

Son asked, “We going to town, R.W.?”

“Yeah, Son, we’re going to town.”

At the end of his long list of orders rattled off like Bobby Collier’s snare drum paradiddles, they knew who was going, and those who were staying in camp were to continue with the set up and to be ready for possible trouble.

The band went in led by R.W.

Peck could see the boy, with his hand on R.W.’s arm, could feel the calm and the excitement.

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