Hallelujah stood right beside me, but his words seemed distant as he detailed the little he knew of Levi’s murder. My mind was on Levi and what a fine young man everybody said he was. So all I heard from Hallelujah’s rant was “forced off the road” and “shot in the head.”
I could see Levi’s dark brown face as if he were standing right in front of me. It hadn’t been a week ago that I heard him brag to his younger brother Fish that this would be his last summer “chopping some white man’s cotton.” He was the first person in his family of eight boys to graduate from high school and attend college. After his first-grade teacher declared him brilliant, his parents scratched and scrimped for nearly twelve years in order to send him. In the summer, he came home and chopped cotton to help out, with the promise that when he graduated, he would get a good job and move his parents off Mr. Robinson’s place. That September would have been the beginning of his last year at the colored college Alcorn. And it was all for nothing. Levi was dead. Gunned down like a hunted animal.
“Something needs to be done about folks being killed for registering to vote,” I said, my teeth clenched. “First Reverend Lee in Belzoni, and only two months later Levi?”
Hallelujah wiped his face with his handkerchief, then put his glasses back on. He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “White folks won’t do a thing to another white for killing a Negro,” he said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he stared out toward the cotton field, where Papa and Fred Lee were mere dots on the horizon. “They won’t even do anything if a Negro kills a Negro. A Negro ain’t worth a wooden nickel to them. Kill one, another one’ll be born the next day to take his place.” He took his glasses off again and wiped his eyes.
Hallelujah plopped down on the porch beside me. We both stared out at the chickens clucking aimlessly around the yard. Slick Charlie, our only rooster, stood guard at the door of the henhouse, as if to say You hens better stay out there in the yard where you belong. Stay out there till your work is done.
When the screen door burst open, I jumped so hard I almost fell off the porch.
Queen stormed out the door. It was well past nine o’clock, and she still wore rollers in her hair. Her pointy nose stuck up in the air, as if she smelled something foul. She pinned her hazel eyes on me and Hallelujah and said, “Y’all cut out all that racket. I’m trying to sleep.” A copy of Redbook magazine hung from her hand.
Hallelujah tipped his hat. “Morn’n, Queen,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
Queen ignored Hallelujah as if he were a leaf on a tree. Instead, she glowered at me. “Can y’all hold down the noise?”
“Queen, Levi Jackson got shot last night,” I said.
Queen shrugged. “Niggas get shot round here all the time.”
Hallelujah stared at Queen, his eyes narrowed. “Levi’s dead, Queen,” he said sternly. “They say some white men in a pickup forced him off the road and shot him in the head.”
For a brief moment, shame crossed Queen’s face. Then, as quickly as that moment came, it vanished. Queen turned up her nose and said, “I knew that uppity nigga would get hisself killed one day.” She stormed back into the house, allowing the screen door to slam shut behind her.
Hallelujah and I stared at the door in silence.
A few seconds later, I sighed and shoved myself off the porch. “I’ve gotta get back to the field,” I said. “Ma Pearl will beat the black off me this evening if she finds out I’ve been sitting around talking to you instead of working like I’m supposed to.”
“Preacher’ll be back shortly to pick me up,” Hallelujah said. “I’ll just head on up the road and meet him.”
“No!” I said, grabbing his arm.
Hallelujah flinched with surprise.
I quickly moved my hand and said, “Don’t walk down the road by yourself.”
Hallelujah stared at me, confused. “I meet Preacher along the road all the time.”
I told him about my encounter with Ricky Turner.
He slumped back down on the porch. “I’ll wait for Preacher,” he said.
Chapter Five
TUESDAY, JULY 26
THAT MORNING, MR. ALBERT WAS RIGHT BACK IN Mr. Robinson’s cotton field with sixteen-year-old Fish and one of his younger sons, Adam, barely ten. Adam would replace Levi.
Mr. Albert’s three older sons had left, one by one, for Detroit six years prior. Like Mr. Pete, they had packed up their young families and fled the dirt clods of the Delta as soon as they saved up enough money to start a new life someplace else.