IBO - Brian R. Lundin (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

grass. As a child, Johnny could remember sitting at his grandfather’s knee listening to him fondly talk of Ole Bessie, his black nanny, who had raised him, in between sips of moonshine and spits of chewing tobacco.
Johnny and his wife were childless and lived in a big, old grey house that sat at the end of a crushed white rock driveway behind the church. They had a few chickens, a milk cow and three pigs. The flowerbeds along the house were weed-less and well kept by Ester. The long wide lawn was thick and well cut, Johnny’s job. The old house had been in the Ester’s family for generations and was an historical landmark. The family was as poor as a church mouse, but he was from old money, and that made him a leading citizen of the community and above all, they believed, he was a messenger of God. Johnny was cordial to the women in his congregation, but his preference was for black women and he had slept with many of the young black prostitutes in the city.
In March 1945, Ethel died of the, “coughing sickness,” leaving Naomi alone. Naomi grew into a beautiful young woman, she had long coal black hair that she wore in a ball, had a nice shape with big breast, shapely legs and a wide behind. She had flawless light brown skin and a beautiful smile. The women and men alike of the congregation often commented on how pretty she was. Johnny had begun to notice her as she matured into a beautiful young woman.
Ester was ten years older than Johnny and at one time had been an attractive woman but she kept her thin figure camouflaged under a loose fitting cotton dress or a bulky sweater, which she preferred when tending to her flowers or her vegetable garden. She never wore makeup and kept her long red hair pulled back and pinned on top of her head. Ester believed that sex was only for procreation and she was barren. Since Ester could not have children, sex was not a part of their marriage. Ester had her suspicions that her husband was sleeping around with some of the black women in the town, but she did not mind, a man had to get his ease she often said to herself.
Tom Jackson was tall, very dark skinned and had been born and raised in Gulfport. When Tom left to join the United States Army in 1942, Naomi was a young girl. While serving in the South Pacific as a truck driver, Tom was wounded and came home to recuperate. After the war ended in 1945, Tom was discharged and came home for good. Tom got a job collecting garbage and met Naomi while picking up the garbage at the church. Tom noticed Naomi who was still working and living in the church. Tom begins to spend more time at the church and they started dating. Naomi was fifteen years younger than Tom, but she liked him. They would take long walks together and Tom would related his army experiences and the strange lands that he had been, and they went to the movies, usually on Saturday nights.
It was after the Sunday morning church services and the congregation had gone home after eating lunch at the church. Ester had gone home to tend the flowers and her husband told her that he would be home later; he had to visit and pray with a sick member. Naomi was in the church kitchen washing the dishes and straightening up when Johnny came in.
Johnny had often fantasias about having sex with Naomi. Like his grandpa, Johnny liked to drink the moonshine he brewed in the woods behind his church. He and the moonshine had been building up courage for the last three hours, and now the whisky had removed his inhibitions as he approached Naomi from behind and put his arms around her waist. He pressed his body close to hers, the smell of the moonshine and his foul body odor sicken her and his bloodshot eyes frightened her, but she did not move. Johnny began kissing Naomi on the neck and behind her ears as he started moving his body against hers and she felt his manhood rising. Johnny turned her around and kissed her hard on the mouth. Naomi pushed him away and tried to leave the kitchen but he stopped her.
“You little black bitch, watyoudoin’, pushing me away?”
“Pastor, sir, I no nothin’ about no men. I still a virgin.”
“Bout time, you learned about men and their needs for a woman,” Johnny said roughly grabbing one of Naomi’s breasts.
“Please sir, leave me be,” Naomi said, tears coming to her eyes.
“If you don’t fuck me, get out,” Jimmy said angrily.
Naomi despised the Messenger from God but what could she do; she was fifteen, alone and had nowhere else to go. Whenever Johnny had his full of moonshine, he would come into her room and demand sex. Naomi complied and gritted her teeth as he got his relief; fortunately, the act only lasted for a few minutes.
Ester began to notice how her husband looked at Naomi and seemed to always find a way to put his arms around her. She also noticed how her husband became aggravated or angry whenever Tom and Naomi went out on a date or when some of the other young black men would talk to her. They had argued many times about Naomi and she wanted her husband to put Naomi out, but Johnny always refused. One Sunday, after services, Johnny came into Naomi room and demanded sex. As Naomi and Johnny was having sex, Ester suddenly busted into the room with a shotgun. She was crying and waiving the shotgun from Johnny to Naomi. Johnny jumped off Naomi and tried to talk to his wife. Suddenly Johnny grabbed the gun and Naomi ran naked out the front door of the church, she heard a shot, but kept running. As Naomi, ran down the dirt road she saw Tom Jackson in his pickup truck, Tom stopped and Naomi got in and told him what had happened. Tom covered Naomi with an old coat he had in the truck and they drove to his house.
The next day when Tom went to the church, he overheard the people talking about how someone had killed Johnny and the sheriff was looking for Naomi, whom Ester had said was the last person who had seen her husband. Tom fearing that if the sheriff got hold to Naomi, before it was finished, she would be the main suspect in Johnny’s death, not his wife. It would be scandalous in this God fearing community, if a jealous wife had killed their Messenger from God, and a man of old money over a black witch who had apparently put a curse on him, Naomi was a better suspect.
Before sunup, Tom and Naomi left Mississippi and headed to Chicago. Tom turned his pickup onto US 49 North. The paved road turned into a dirt road as they approached Wiggins, Mississippi a small cotton-farming town. Tom followed the road towards Hattiesburg, the first town of any size. They passed rundown ramshackle house, large plantations and dusty country stores which all seemed to have a large Coke sign in the windows and the close colorful juke joints where the blues, a combination of gospel and country music was born that spread north and spawned rock and roll. Tom turned to the blues station on the radio and listened to the local blues artists.
South of Hattiesburg, soy beans and cotton fields ran in all directions. They stopped at a dusty truck stop for gas where four old white men in dirty blue coveralls were playing checkers and swatting flies. Naomi had to use the washroom, but the sign over the colored washroom said closed. She decided once on the road she would go behind a bush.
A small army of tractors with plows behind them crisscrossed the endless neat rows of leafy foliage leaving behind a cloud of dust. Occasionally they would see a crop duster that skimmed the top of the fields, release their poison then soared upwards. The nearer they got to Hattiesburg the traffic got heavier and slower, sometimes coming to a complete standstill as a monstrous John Deere tractor of some variety inched along as if it was his private highway. Tom drove a cautious forty-five miles per hour and refused to pass anyone. Tom and Naomi was patient, they were not in a hurry. They did have any time schedules they had to meet. Tom knew from talking with friends who had moved to Chicago in search of better jobs and housing that the best route was US-49 towards Jackson, but you had to watch out for the troopers who were always on the lookout for blacks heading north. They passed more cotton and soybean fields and clusters of impoverished row houses and dirty mobile home parks; all for some strange reason situated close to the highway. An earlier rain had left puddles in the grassy ditches beside the road and had washed clean the cotton and soybean plants, which was now knee-high. Tom remembered picking cotton as a boy with the hot sun beating down on his back and shuddered.
Tom and Naomi marveled at the fine homes sitting way back off the highway under heavy oak and elm trees, usually with a fenced swimming pool where little white children were playing. As they turned onto I-20 West a small two lane highway they felled behind a large tractor casually puttering down the highway. Tom slowed down and stayed behind the tractor. The operator was an old white man with a dirty white beard and dirty cap, motioned for Tom to pass. Tom waived back and stayed behind the tractor driving twenty miles an hour. Although there was no other traffic in either direction, Tom did not want to pass the tractor. He knew that the state troopers often hid behind a road signs and would accuse the black driver of speeding. He had heard from friends heading north that the white highway patrol officers often stopped blacks on bogus traffic violations, given a ticket and fined.
A random clod of dirt and debris was hurled from one of the tractors rear wheels and landed just inches in front of the pickup. Tom slowed a bit more letting the tractor get further ahead. The old white man operating the tractor seemed to be getting irritated because Tom would not pass him. His mouth moved and his face was bleak red as he motioned Tom to pass. Tom was suspicious of the tractor driver and merely smiled and waved, but stayed behind him. About half mile up the road Tom passed a state police car hidden around a curve in the road. Tom smiled to himself as the tractor turned onto a dirt road, he waived at the operator who was mumbling something and shaking his fist at Tom. A mile up the road they passed another state patrol car hiding behind a sign, Tom smiled to himself. Eventually Tom turned onto I-57 the main interstate that would lead them to Chicago, the “Promise Land.”
In the mid 1930’s, one-third of the black families living in Chicago had an annual income of less than $1,000 per year. During those times the extended family was very common in the black community, relatives relocating from the south would stay with relatives until