Nobody talked about Levi, at least not in my hearing, anyway. Ma Pearl and Papa acted as if their words might get picked up by the wind and carried over to Mr. Robinson’s ears if they said anything about the shooting. Hallelujah had said that folks acted the same way when Reverend George Lee was shot in Belzoni back in May. Some, he said, even claimed it was the preacher’s own fault that he was killed. “If he’da just took his name off them voting records like the white folks told him,” he’d heard a woman at church whisper, “he wouldn’ta got hisself kil’t.”
I was glad when I saw Reverend Jenkins’s brown Buick stirring up dust along the edge of the field, as I was sure Hallelujah would have some news about Levi.
When Hallelujah jumped out, Reverend Jenkins—?his thick glasses glaring in the sunlight—?said something to him, probably instructing him to mind his manners. Then he waved and drove off. He honked and waved at Papa at the far end of the field as the tires of his Buick crunched rocks on the road.
I paused (not that I was doing much work anyway) and leaned against the hoe. “Hey,” I said, waving at Hallelujah before he even reached me.
Hallelujah smiled and waved back. It was good to see him smile again. But as hot as it was out there—?and I mean heat that wrapped its arms around me like a long-lost relative giving a hug—?that boy was wearing his dark brown fedora instead of a straw hat.
“What you trying to do,” I said as he got closer, “get black like me? You gonna burn up in this heat.”
Hallelujah touched the tip of his hat and grinned. “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”
“Who told you that lie?”
“Read it in a book,” he said.
I chuckled and started chopping again. “Even the devil got sense ’nuff to wear a straw hat in this heat.”
Hallelujah followed me as I crept along the row. Again, he didn’t bother to stop by the barn and pick up a hoe to help out. But there really wasn’t much to chop, seeing that Papa knew how to take good care of cotton. We didn’t have many weeds, like I’d heard about in some fields. But I was still slow. Even little Adam could outchop me.
I was dressed in Fred Lee’s too-big overalls and his long-sleeved shirt, and it took a lot of effort for me to walk up and down quarter-of-a-mile-long rows of cotton in the suffocating heat for five hours straight. I stopped for a water break at the end of every row. It’s a good thing I worked under Papa’s supervision instead of a white supervisor like Ricky Turner’s evil pappy.
“What’s your business today?” I asked Hallelujah.
Hallelujah shrugged. “Preacher let me take a break from the store. ‘A couple hours only,’ he said.”
“You helping Miss Bertha today?”
Hallelujah nodded. “Yep.”
“And you need a break already,” I teased him.
Hallelujah grinned and pretended to wipe sweat from his brow. His aunt, Bertha Jenkins, owned a small grocery store—?the only Negro-owned business in Stillwater. Even though she sold mostly staples, like flour, cornmeal, and sugar, white folks still weren’t too happy about her store, seeing that it took business away from theirs. It had been broken into more times than anybody cared to count. She could barely keep her shelves stocked. The police dismissed the vandalism as “coloreds destroying their own property to try to make God-fearing white folks look bad.” But we all knew who was really trying to sabotage Miss Bertha’s business.
“So, what’s Miss Sweet cooking today?”
No matter how many times I heard it, I just couldn’t get used to people calling Ma Pearl “Miss Sweet.” She was about as sweet as a slice of lemon soaked in vinegar. Her real name, of course, was Pearl, but I couldn’t see how that one fit her either, seeing that a pearl is usually a thing of beauty.
I squinted at Hallelujah. “It’s Tuesday. Not Sunday. What else she go’n cook besides beans?”
“What kind?”
I shrugged. “Pinto, I reckon.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Hallelujah said. “Beats the air soup I would’ve eaten.”
I teased him. “So you really stopped by to get fed, huh?”
He patted his thick middle and said, “Yep.”
I glanced down the row to make sure I was still far away from Papa, as he and Fred Lee were coming back down the row toward me. “Heard anything about Levi?” I asked under my breath.
Hallelujah stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Preacher’s getting the NAACP involved.”
Spit caught in my throat, and I almost choked. I stopped chopping and placed a finger to my lips to shush Hallelujah. “Not so loud,” I said, my eyes darting toward Papa.