Rain Falls Like Mercy by Jack Todd

Author:Jack Todd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

26.

ON FEBRUARY 26, 1942, THE TENNESSEE, THE Maryland, and the Colorado leave Puget Sound, bound for San Francisco. The first morning out, Bobby eats an early breakfast in the galley with Lucian. Lucian is boiling mad. “My grandpa’s in jail,” he says. “Eighty-six years old and they hauled him off to jail.”

“Why’s that?”

“He got into an argument. White man ran his pickup into Grand-daddy’s old Model A that he shines every morning. Granddad is awful proud of that automobile. He wasn’t pleased to see it dented up, so he told the fella he’d have to pay for the damage. Man wouldn’t do it. Said he wasn’t goin to pay for bustin up some nigger’s car.”

“What happened?”

“Grandpa knocked him down with his hickory stick. This fella aint more than forty, and he got hisself knocked down by a old man, so he went and complained to the sheriff and the sheriff arrested Grandpa. Says they’re going to hold him until he says he’s sorry, and he won’t do it. Grandma tried to talk to him, but he said he’s had a bellyful of that kind of thing his whole damned life, and he won’t take it anymore. Not if it means he has to sit in that jail until doomsday. He was born in 1855, my granddaddy. He’s old enough to remember when he was a slave.”

“That’s a helluva note, Lucian.”

“Damned right. I’m out here fighting this war, and back home, we get treated the same as always. Like shit on a white man’s shoes.”

“I’m awful sorry.”

“You didn’t do a thing to be sorry about, Wat. Right from the first time you come to the galley, you were always real polite. Please and thank you. Never called me boy, never treated me like less than a man. I appreciate that. There’s some like you on this ship, but there’s plenty who are the other way, fellas who would like to see a branch of the Ku Klux Klan in the Navy. They aint all from the South, either. Anyhow, I just want the old man out of jail.”

“I doubt they’ll hold your grandpa for long. County jails never have much room, not for a man his age. They get a few drunks Saturday night, they’ll kick him out.”

“I know. It’s the principle of the thing. I’ll bet that bastard white man never pays for the damage to the Model A, either.”

“Is that why you always call yourself Lucian Quigley the Fourth? Because your grandpa would be Lucian Quigley the Second, right? You never say Lucian Quigley or just plain Lucian.”

“Cause that’s what I am. The fourth Lucian Quigley. My great-grand-daddy was born a slave. I’m proud of him and I’m proud of his name. He’s the one who taught us all to hold our heads up high. He lived to be a hundred and two, the first Lucian Quigley. Used to sit right there in the middle of our parlor with a big old hickory stick. If one of us kids got to acting up, we’d get it right across the behind with that stick.

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