“You back talk him?”
Little Man shook his head. “We just got off.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” said Mama, “there shouldn’t be any trouble about it.”
Little Man turned to Mama. He spoke softly. “Maybe that’s what you think, Mama, but tell you the truth, I wanted to kill that man.”
“Clayton!”
“I’d’ve done that, I guess there’d been trouble all right.” Then what I knew had been coming all day finally happened; Little Man’s temper exploded. “Here I am forced to go fight their war and they make me and Cassie sit at the back of their bus behind their curtain so they don’t have to see us! Like we weren’t even there, and still that’s not good enough for them! So they make us move, not once, but twice, so the good white folks could have our seats and still that wouldn’t have been good enough for them if they’d needed more seats! They’d have moved us right off that bus if they needed our seats and we all know that!” His voice grew louder. “Yet they want me to go fight their damn war! Took me out of school so I can go fight their white man’s war and there’s nothing I can do about it! Nothing any of us can do about it!” He jumped up suddenly, and his wooden chair clanged backward to the floor.
At that, Papa, Stacey, and Christopher-John sprang up. Christopher-John grabbed at Little Man’s arm. “Ah, Man, come on!”
Little Man jerked away.
“Son, calm down,” Papa said as Big Ma came rushing in.
“What’s goin’ on in here?” Big Ma demanded to know. “Heard all this shoutin’ and ruckus!”
Little Man turned toward Big Ma, looked at her in silence, then hurried out the side door.
“Clayton!” Mama called after him.
“I’ll talk to him,” Stacey said, touching Mama’s arm in reassurance, and followed Man out. We all watched Stacey as he left. If anyone could calm Little Man, it was Stacey.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
When Clayton Chester was born, I was too young to remember the events of those days. Stacey, however, who then was going on six, did remember and over the years the story was told many times: how Mama had almost died from the birth and Little Man had too. His was a breech birth. It had not been an easy pregnancy for Mama. She had been sick throughout and when the time for Little Man’s arrival finally came, he was premature. Big Ma was a midwife and had delivered Stacey, Christopher-John, and me, but she did not deliver Little Man because he came more than a month before expected. Big Ma was not at home. She had gone down to McComb a few days after Christmas to visit with Aunt Callie, and Little Man was born the day after the new year in 1927. Another midwife in the community attended the delivery.
Stacey said he remembered Mama’s screams that night and when the screaming stopped, there were no sounds of crying from the new baby. He said he had listened at the closed door and when he had heard the traditional slap on a newborn’s bottom to bring the baby to life, there was still no crying, no life. There had been another slap and yet another, and finally at last he heard crying. When Stacey, Christopher-John, and I were allowed in the room to see our new brother, Stacey observed that the baby did not cry much; then he rubbed Clayton Chester’s tiny fingers and declared, “He’s a little man!” All in the room agreed, and the name stuck.
From that moment, Stacey took Little Man under his big brother wings. That was partly because Clayton Chester was so tiny and remained in questionable health for weeks after his birth, and also because Papa had gone back to work on the railroad. As Little Man grew stronger, Mama returned to teaching at Great Faith and taking on other community activities. Big Ma, too, was busy cooking, taking care of the house as well as the fields, and Stacey, who was not that old himself, was a big help to them in seeing after Christopher-John, Little Man, and me—especially Little Man, who for a while seemed to be threatened continuously with some physical ailment or impending catastrophe. He went through a bout of pneumonia before he could walk and again almost died. Later, he fell from a wagon and his broken leg took a long time in healing. Another time a bull got loose; Papa had smashed a dexterous two-fisted punch into the face of the bull and stopped its charge toward Little Man. Through it all, though, Little Man lived up to the name Stacey had given him. He was tough in spirit, set in determination, and certainly had a mind of his own.
By the time he was six, it was difficult to get Little Man to do what he was determined not to do. Unlike other six-year-olds, he did not cry when he was hurt, although once he had cried when he was humiliated at the hands of whites, his brand-new school clothes covered with mud-soaked water. But he certainly did not cry when he got a whipping. That was troubling to both Mama and Papa, who did not hesitate to whip the boys and me when we did something wrong. They explained the whippings by telling us that they had to be hard on us, to make us understand right from wrong and what was expected of us in this life. They also said that the whippings were to keep us alive, for we needed to know and follow rules, and that no black person in Mississippi could survive without following those rules.
The years of slavery and Jim Crow had proven that.
While we were growing up, Stacey, being older and also having a determined mind-set of his own, did not cry when being punished, but Christopher-John and I certainly did. That let Mama or Papa know we were truly sorrowful, and also that we had been punished enough. Sometimes, as soon as the leather strap hit our legs, the two of us began to scream, just to get the whipping over with, and Mama or Papa would let us go. Knowing that Stacey had no intention of crying, after a few licks of the strap they let him go too. But they seemed not to know what to do about Little Man, who refused to cry and show his remorse.
“Boy, why don’t you just cry and get it over with!” I once advised him. “They’d stop whipping on you if you’d just cry.”
Little Man had given me a long look, then said, “It’s not that I don’t want to cry, Cassie. I just can’t. Something won’t let me. Stacey doesn’t cry. I don’t either.”
So, that’s the way it was with Little Man too. Little Man followed Stacey everywhere and tried to do whatever Stacey did. Many things Papa would have taught Clayton Chester had he been home, Stacey taught, and Little Man was eager to learn about everything. His mind absorbed all put before him. Everyone acknowledged that Clayton Chester had a brilliant mind. He had even skipped a grade. Everyone also acknowledged that whatever Stacey asked of him, Little Man did. Stacey was Little Man’s hero.
With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States’ declaration of war a day later, we all worried that Stacey would be called up to fight. But when Stacey was drafted, he was deferred because of his health. At fourteen, Stacey had run away to the cane fields of Louisiana to try to earn money for the family. During that time, he had come down with some sort of fever that had sickened him for weeks and had weakened his heart. It was early in the war when he was called up, and a number of colored men were deferred for any number of reasons, including flat feet. It was said that the government was concerned about Negro soldiers and interracial mixing in Europe, but whatever the reason for the deferment, when we learned that Stacey was not being inducted into the Army, we fell to our knees in gratitude and thanked God.