And Big Ma exclaimed, “Lord A-Mighty! We sho been worried ’bout y’all! Get on in here!”
Little Man and I stepped inside and put down our bags, then hugged Mama, Papa, and Big Ma. Stacey and Christopher-John came over and we hugged them too. “We were waiting for you up at the store when the bus came in,” Stacey said. He looked at Man. “We thought maybe you didn’t get in from Fort Hood and Cassie was waiting for you before heading home.”
“Yeah,” said Christopher-John, “we were thinking of running down to McComb first thing tomorrow if you didn’t make it in.” He slapped Little Man’s arm fondly. “You looking good! Course, looks like the Army took a few pounds off you.”
“They’ll take a few pounds off you too when they call you up,” Little Man wryly returned with a slow smile.
Stalwart Christopher-John punched at his own stomach. “Well, maybe I can use that!” Then he laughed.
“Y’all all right?” asked Big Ma.
“We’re fine, just dead tired,” I said.
Big Ma put her arm around me, hugging me to her again. “How’d y’all leave yo’ Aunt Callie?”
“She’s about the same,” I replied, “but her spirits are good. She sent love. Everybody did.”
“Come on, sit down,” Papa ordered, and we all headed past Mama and Papa’s bed to the wooden chairs, their seats covered in deer hide, that sat in a semicircle in front of the fireplace. Light from the fire lit the chairs, and two kerosene lamps—one on Mama’s desk at the windows overlooking the drive, the other on the nightstand beside the bed—lit the remainder of the room. There was no electricity. Stacey’s wife, Dee, sat in the rocker closest to the hearth. Stacey had married Dee in March of 1942. Their first child, Marie, called Rie by us all, had been born in December that same year. They were now expecting their second child. Both Man and I went over to greet Dee. She was in the seventh month of her pregnancy and did not get up. I kissed Dee and asked about Rie.
“Already in bed,” said Dee. Then she turned to Man, now bending to kiss her. “How’re you doing, Clayton?” she asked. Unlike the rest of us, Dee always called Man by his given name. Like Mama, she had been a teacher at Great Faith and had tolerated no nicknames in her classroom. I sat down with a heavy sigh beside Dee, kicked off my shoes, and rubbed my feet.
“Both of you look beat,” Stacey said.
“Guess we should. Man and I walked all the way from the Wallace store and then some before that.”
“What do you mean you walked some before that?” inquired Stacey. I didn’t answer.
“Rob,” Dee said, tightening the shawl around her shoulders and rubbing her arms, “honey, could you put some more wood on the fire? I’m feeling a bit chilly and I expect Cassie and Clayton are too.”
Stacey gave me a questioning look before going over to the bin at the far side of the stone fireplace. He took several logs and piled them high on the flames, then turned to Dee. “That better?” he asked.
Dee smiled up at him. “Much better, Robert, thank you.” Just as Dee had chosen to address Little Man by his given name, she had also chosen to address Stacey by his first name. She said she preferred to be the only person who called him that. Stacey smiled back and added still more logs to the fire.
When all of us but Stacey were seated, Papa turned to Little Man and me. “All right now,” he said, “tell us what happened. Why weren’t y’all on that bus?”
Man stared at the fire and didn’t say anything, so I said, “We got off the bus. Got off at Parson’s Corner.”
“Parson’s Corner?” Mama questioned in alarm. “Why? What were you doing getting off the bus there?”
Both Little Man and I were silent.
Papa frowned. “They put y’all off?”
I glanced at Man and answered Papa. “No, sir. We decided that on our own. Bus driver told us to move.”
Mama looked from me to Man. “That’s it?” She knew, we all knew full well what the policy was. “Clayton Chester, that’s it? The bus driver asked you to move?”
Little Man’s gaze left the fire and he looked at Mama. His voice was matter-of-fact when he spoke. “We decided we weren’t going to move again.”
For several moments no one said anything and there was only the sound of the fire popping. It was Papa who broke the silence. “That driver know who you are?”
“No, sir,” I assured him. “Got no idea.”
Stacey moved from the fire and sat down. “So, how’d you get home? You couldn’t’ve walked all the way from Parson’s Corner.”
“Would’ve if we’d had to,” I said. “We were on our way to doing it when a man came along in a wagon and gave us a ride far as the Wallace store—”
“Colored man?” asked Papa.
I sighed. “Now, Papa, you know Man and I wouldn’t have gotten on otherwise.”
Again the room was silent; then Big Ma stood and went over to Little Man. He looked up at her and she put her hand on his head and rubbed his hair, now butchered into an Army cut. “Umph, umph, umph,” she mumbled. “All that beautiful hair, gone.” Aunt Callie pretty much had had the same sentiment, and so had I. Little Man’s hair had always been wavy and long, often hanging in his face and to his shoulders. Big Ma said he had gotten his hair from Grandpa Paul-Edward’s white father and his half-Indian mother, as well as her own mother’s people. She sighed heavily and let her hand drop. “Well, I know one thing. Y’all must be mighty hungry. Y’all sit and rest. I got supper waitin’. Jus’ needs warmin’.” She moved briskly toward the kitchen. In her seventies, Big Ma was able-bodied, still strong, and moved almost as quickly as she always had.
Dee got up. “I’ll help,” she said.
“Girl, you sit down. I can manage.”
“I’ve been sitting all day and I want to help.”
Big Ma’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Dee, then she shrugged. “Have it your way then. I recall, I felt the same way when I was carryin’.”
As Big Ma and Dee left for the kitchen, Papa, looking first at me, then at Man, said, “There any trouble ’bout y’all getting off that bus?”
Little Man gave no answer. So again, I answered. “Not really.”
Papa’s eyes stayed on Man. “Clayton?”
Man looked at Papa. “No, sir, no trouble. We just told the driver we weren’t moving back again. We’d already moved once and we weren’t moving again and he told us we’d move when he said we needed to move. So we decided to move all right. We moved right off the bus.”