NYU Black Renaissance Noire Spring/Summer 2014 | Page 9

We rode in his brown Chevy pickup
pulling a horse trailer down fm 521
South headed to Angleton, Texas. Cold
Schlitz rested in the coffee holder next
to my Big Red. Charley Pride crooned
on the eight-track asking if anybody
was going to San Anton’ or Phoenix,
Arizona. The ac was on full blast.
Driver’s-side window cracked slightly
so that my middle name wouldn’t
change to Benson & Hedges. A cb
radio crackled under the ashtray with
random gibberish, a foreign language
understood by men who spent long
hours on the white line. Father had
been a member of that fraternity from
time to time, privy to its secret codes
and rituals.

“Who’s Cookie?”
“The girl that got hit by the bus.”
“I imagine.”
“But she ain’t get baptized. Sister Marie
Thérèse said you gotta be baptized to
go to Heaven.”
He took his time with that one.
“Everybody don’t go to Heaven, Ti’
John,” he answered.
“They go to the hot place?” I asked.
He lit a cigarette.
“I’ma tell you something and you better
not repeat it. Understand?”
I nodded.
“Ain’t no such thing as Hell, Ti’ John.
That’s just some bullshit them white
folks came up with to get people
scared,” he answered.
“What about in the Bible?”
“White folks wrote the Bible.” He
grabbed the cb receiver. “Breaker
one-nine, pushing down 521 South,
who got their ears on?”
He joined the precursor of online chat
rooms—the cb chat room—effectively
ending our discussion on the afterlife.
I stared at passing crops. Green. Brown.
Tan. Brown. Green.
“Daddy, look at that,” I said, but he
stared straight ahead while getting
reports on Smokey in between lurid
jokes. He didn’t see it, I thought.

About a hundred feet off fm 521 in a
barren field of dirt I noticed a figure on
its knees, hunched over. As we got
closer I could see it was a man, a dark
man in dark clothes wearing a large
hat. He saw me staring. I think. I knew
it. Just as we passed by, the man stood
up, facing my curious eyes, took off
his hat, and leaned forward with a
deep ceremonious bow. It was friendly,
respectful, even regal.
“Daddy, did you see that man?” I asked
more urgently, but Father ignored me.
I peeked through the side view and the
man was still there watching. I think
he waved.
“That’s peas over there. See? Look at
that. Boy, I usedta pick some peas
back in Basile,” Father said fondly after
hanging up the cb.
It didn’t matter which crop it was, he
always would say he used to pick, cut,
or dig that particular crop when he was
growing up. Field peas. Mustard greens.
Sugarcane. Potatoes. Rice. Turnips.
Watermelons. And cotton. Cotton.
Even Mother admitted to picking
cotton back in the day. Now, when
I first heard this cotton admission
I recalled the tv movie Roots, with
slaves picking cotton. It didn’t make
sense to me. How could they have
picked cotton? Response? Somebody
or the other had a cotton farm and the
cotton had to be picked. In Father’s
case, it was part of his upbringing
as sharecroppers if that’s what was
growing. But Mother, she took a more
noble explanation, saying that all of her
cousins had to go to their grandparents’
house and toil under the sun to make
the load as a rite of passage but, more
important, as a lesson in hard work
and how far black people had come.

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

“Crying never solved anything, Ti’ John.
It only makes you focus on your failure
and bad shit. Don’t cry. Focus on how
to do things right the next time so that
you don’t have to cry. Do you understand
what I’m tryin’ to tell ya?” he said.

“Daddy, you think they gonna let
Cookie stay in Heaven?” I asked.

7

We loaded up a palomino named TJ.
A beautiful, cream-colored horse that
Father had been training for calf roping.
Then we loaded in a jumpy quarter
horse called Black Jack. That was my
horse and part of Father’s blatant
attempt to make me a horseman.
Black Jack had come off the racetrack
and was a bit skittish, prone to take
off without any warning. And although
I protested about Black Jack being
my horse, wanting a kinder, gentler
ride, Father was adamant. If he rares
up on ya, grab them reins and jerk
’em and tell him to cut it out, he said.
Take control of the animal is what he
meant. Take control. Don’t get used or
run over. Grab the reins. But it didn’t
matter. I got thrown off that horse
more than I care to mention. And
every time I was thrown off, Father
would run