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Ninety Days Inside The Empire: A Novel by William Appleman Williams

The Reverend

Page 12

"You ever wonder-" angling off on Seaview to get to Bay Boulevard-"why I drive this fancy car?"

Mr. Hank squirmed and then blurted it out. "Well, yeah, Reverend, I has."

"Don't blame you, Mr. Hank. Good thing to do, and I'm goin' to tell you as soon as I get us to the right place. We's riding out a ways on the Boulevard and park and I'll tell you the story."

He found his place and stopped. They left the car and walked through some brush into a piece of land that ended at the bluff about the bay. Maggie and Mr. Hank had seen the Gulf many times, and on the sly had even waded in it now and again. But they had never imagined it could be so beautiful like this. Maggie was nervous. "Sure it's safe for us to be here?"

"The bank ain't goin' to crumble, Maggie. There's a place we can walk down to the beach if you want."

Maggie was embarrassed, scrubbed her foot in the dirt. "You know what I mean, Reverend."

"It's safe, Maggie, I own it."

Mr Hank turned and flared. "You foolin' with us and I don't take to that. You supposed to be honest and helpin' with us and you tellin' us a big silly lie. I's leavin."

The men were about two feet apart; both big and muscled. Mr. Hank was in better condition, but the Reverend knew more about how to use his body. Both knew they would be fools to fight, but the adrenaline was beginning to blind the brain.

-- Griff remembered his apprenticeship with the old preacher. "Now you got to learn to surrender without losin'."

"I went at it wrong, Mr. Hank, but I'm not walkin' on your soul. You hear me out and if you don't like it I'll take you on home."

"Talk."

The Reverend Jones took a few steps closer to the edge of the bluff and began the story.

"You probably heard I got beat on up in back country Mississippi for saying that Jesus didn't worry too much about the rich, and for helpin' the white sharecroppers with their aches and pains. So Lette and me wandered a good bit of road before we got here. In that time it was a sleepy kind of place gettin' swamped with all kinds of money and people. So we stopped and started to wiggle our feet into the ground.

"People seemed to think we were helpin' them and we got some money to a bank for a key to a house and to repair the church. It gave me somethin' to think about, Mr. Hank. Us folks, and the poor whites, ought to stop settlin' for just gettin' by. If we going to be equal, let's be equal. Let's move up. Maybe crazy, but that's the way I started to think.

"So I snick around looking for workin' land. Found this and some croppin' land nobody had ever bothered with. None of us had money for all that, but I did find The Judge -you know The Judge, Mr. Hank?"

Maggie busted in: "I met him once downtown when they was pushin' me out the store. He stopped it and they left me alone. Never been back, though."

That last was for Mr. Hank, whose eyes made it black clear he did not like owin' strange white males.

Griff saw that exchange and moved to drown it. "Mr. Hank, The Judge helped me raise the money to get this land and the other stuff for folks who just wanted to farm. You know the-"

"You owe him?"

"Not any more. The war got us enough to pay it back."

"'Bout 100 percent I's expect."

"One percent."

That stopped Mr. Hank. "You driftin' off, what about the fancy car?"