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All the Days Past, All the Days to Come
Author: Mildred D. Taylor

PROLOGUE


   (MARCH 1944)

 


   Man and I were waiting for the bus.

   I had been visiting with Great-Aunt Callie down near McComb, and my brother Clayton Chester, whom we all called Little Man, had come from where he was based at Fort Hood in Texas and met me there. I had gone down to McComb at Big Ma’s request during a class break from Jackson College because Aunt Callie was feeling poorly and Big Ma was worried about her sister. By the time Man arrived, I had been with Aunt Callie, helping tend to her, for almost a week. Man only spent the night catching up on all the news, and the next morning the two of us left amidst tears as we all mourned at the thought that we might not see each other again. Miles were distant, Aunt Callie was bedridden, and now there was the war, which could separate us forever. Clayton Chester—Man—was a soldier soon to be in that war. As unbelievable as it was to all of us, he was the first in our family going to the war. Time was short, and within days, he would be overseas fighting a war in Europe that few of us cared about.

   It was late Saturday morning and the March sun was shining brightly when the bus arrived. It was a local bus coming out of Biloxi and going all the way north to Jackson. There would be numerous stops along the way. With one more round of hugs we said our final good-byes to members of Aunt Callie’s family who had taken us in their wagon to meet the bus, then we got in line. The bus driver asked where we were headed. Wallace store, we told him and gave him our fares.

   And he told us, “Go on to the back.”

   That was something we did not need to be told. We knew where we were supposed to go. We did not like it, but we knew. I led the way down the aisle, past all the white folks seated. One woman glanced up at us, then turned her attention back to her child. She knew that we were headed toward the curtain that separated the front section of the bus from the back section, the curtain that separated whites from colored. Not all buses had curtains as a line of separation, only signs, but this one did. Once we passed through the aisle and behind the curtain, there was no longer any need for us to be seen. It would be almost as if we were not even there.

   We reached the curtain. It was a tarp-like material that hung in two sections, one on either side of the aisle. The curtain was hung on a rod that, as more white people boarded, could be moved backward into the area currently set aside for colored passengers, allowing white passengers more seating on the white side of the curtain. Colored passengers were forced to move farther back. For that reason, most colored folks traveling went right to the long seat at the very tail end of the bus to avoid having to move again. I did not want to sit on that rear seat and neither did Man. Already the seat was almost full, and for us to sit back there would have made for an uncomfortable ride. All but one of the other seats were unoccupied. An elderly gentleman sat in the first row behind the curtain. Man and I chose to be more prudent and sat several rows behind the curtain on the other side of the aisle. I took the window seat; Man was on the aisle.

   “I think we’ll be okay here,” I said.

   Man only grunted his agreement, but I understood. His eyes were on the curtain. I too looked at the curtain and felt the humiliation of it. I hated that curtain. Then I looked at my brother. I knew Little Man was fuming. He had sat at the back of the bus behind a curtain all the way from Fort Hood. There he sat, forced into a segregated army to fight a white man’s war against more white folks and the Japanese too in some far-off place on the other side of the world. There he sat, the most scholarly of all my brothers and me, forced to leave school and being shipped off to the Second World War as soon as possible. There he sat in a soldier’s uniform behind a black curtain so that white folks would not have to be reminded of his existence.

   “Too bad Stacey couldn’t come get us,” I said, attempting to distract his thoughts. Our oldest brother, Stacey, lived in Jackson, along with his wife, Dee. Little Man had lived with them until he was drafted into the Army. Our other brother, Christopher-John, lived with them too, and so did I. Both Stacey and Christopher-John worked at the box factory, and even though it was a Saturday, they would be putting in a full day at the factory before leaving Jackson and heading down the rural roads to our land and family home. They knew the time the bus was expected at the Wallace store and planned to pick us up there. I glanced at Man, expecting him to say something. He did not, so I went on. “Would’ve made this trip a lot easier.”

   Little Man checked his watch.

   “It’s a long ride,” I said.

   “I just want to get home, Cassie. Could be the last time.”

   I looked at him, but did not say anything more. I did not want to admit that I was thinking the same thing.

   More people got on the bus. A family of five came through the curtain and sat in front of us. They nodded at us in greeting and we returned the nod. The bus began to move. I pulled out one of my schoolbooks. Man had a book too. As we rolled past dormant cotton fields north of McComb, the bus stopped several more times, but no one else came through the curtain. Then, halfway through the trip, the bus stopped again. The bus driver came down the aisle and stood on the colored side of the curtain. “Move on back!” he ordered. “All y’all up front here, move on back!”

   The family occupying the rows in front of Man and me got up and moved to seats several rows behind us. Little Man and I both stared at the driver without moving.

   “Y’all hear me?” questioned the driver. “I said move on back! Folks’re gettin’ on the bus.” He looked at the old gentleman seated in the first row behind the curtain. “Startin’ with you, uncle,” he said. “I said get up!”

   The old gentleman raised his head. “Suh?”

   “You deaf? You need to step quick, boy!” This time the bus driver did not use the politer form of “uncle,” which most white folks thought a respectful reference to a colored man of years. “I got a bus to move!”

   The old man seemed confused. Man immediately stood and went over to him. “Sir, may I help you?” he asked.

   The man turned to look at Clayton Chester and, seemingly recognizing another person of color, smiled wide and toothless. “You a soldier, boy?”

   “Yes, sir,” Clayton Chester quietly answered.

   “You here in this new war?”

   “Yes, sir.”

   “What you doin’ fightin’ in this here new war, son?” the old man asked.

   “Not my idea,” said Man.

   “Boy, you move him on back!” ordered the driver. “Then you and this gal here with ya move on back too! Got a lotta folks gettin’ on.”

   Little Man’s body seemed to freeze as he turned toward the driver. I held my breath, hoping Little Man would not do what was probably on his mind to do. But then he helped the old man up, and I got up as well. Clayton Chester, supporting the old man, walked with him to the back row, so he would not have to move again. Now there was no space for another passenger on that rear seat. As Little Man left the old gentleman in the care of the other rear seat passengers, the old man called after him. “You be careful now, son!”

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