In the backyard, music thinned across a heavy truck’s gasping airbrakes as I slipped through the gate.
Our gray-muzzled pup, Yeats, pushed himself up from the grass, wobbled, then found his starched legs and ambled over to greet me. I bent over and pulled his snout to my face, gingerly rubbed his ears and dropped kisses atop his head.
Jackson had found the flea-infested mutt nine years ago at his construction site. He’d scooped him up from a pile of dirt and rubble, and the pup quickly wriggled his way into our hearts.
Yeats followed me to the patio as Lesley Gore cried out “It’s My Party.” The snappy tunes drifted across the yard. Elijah Jack was fond of the strange new sounds called rock and roll, especially a group named after what sounded like a hardshell bug that had swept the airwaves. He carried his pocket transistor radio everywhere, the leather case worn and curling.
I watched the two of them work the narrow stretch of grass. The city garden never amounted to much, often struggling to produce, its soil hesitant to latch root. Still, every year Jackson insisted. And I know’d working the land, as tiny as it was, helped ease his pain of missing home.
We were lucky if we reaped enough tomatoes, heads of cabbage, and peppers for me to do a little canning. Jackson and Elijah Jack craved the chowchow relish I’d make and always hoped we could put up enough jars for the winter. It was Mama’s recipe and when I prepared it, I could almost feel her hands folded over my childlike pudgy fingers of yesteryear, steadying the spoon, helping me measure just so.
I looked over at Elijah Jack and remembered the stir-offs in the fall where I’d helped make the sorghum syrup and biscuits. Pa would cut the stalks, press, strain, and boil the sweetening.Come daylight, Mama would clean off an old tree stump and dump her dough atop it and we’d take turns beating the tarnation out of it. At least three hundred whacks. If coal miners from Pa’s mine were coming, it had to always be six hundred and fifty wallops exact, until the air in the dough was just right.
Later, she’d pull an apron over my sack dress and let me stir the syrupy juices in Pa’s metal tub until it thickened. Then Pa would drain the rich sorghum into buckets, leaving me with a full mason jar to pour over Mama’s hot, beaten biscuits in the iron skillet she’d set warming atop the woodstove.
Elijah Jack would never experience the traditions from his kin, and at times the guilt kept me awake at night with a helplessness known only to those who had no way out.
My son lifted his damp brow and called out a greeting from the yard before driving the hoe back into the dirt.
I waved a bag full of rhubarb and strawberries my supervisor had shared with the librarians. “Brought your favorite.”
Jackson startled and twisted around. “You were supposed to stay put until I fetched you home.”
“I tried to telephone and let you know I was getting off early, but I reckon you’ve been busy out here. A gentleman patron walked me partway.”
Relieved, Jackson pointed to the small patio table. “Bought you a paper today. Of all the wonders, there’s news of the president visiting back home.”
Curious, I placed the sack on the table and plucked up the April newspaper. Lately the front page screamed volatile reports about the war in Vietnam. Growing concerns of organized crime bosses and rising tension and civil unrest in the big cities as black folks rallied for their rights, and ugly brute forces pushed back.
The beginning of the sixties was a difficult time for all folks, and 1964 was proving no different. But today’s headline bolded news on a different story about another holler not far from Troublesome.
Surprised, I peered closer at the photograph of PresidentJohnson squatting on the porch of a man named Tom Fletcher. The front page read, “President Kicks Off His War on Poverty in Inez, Kentucky.”
Jackson dropped his shovel and smacked his hands as he walked over to the table and pecked me on the cheek. “They done went and told those people they were poor. Called ’em hillbillies. When there’s never been a more self-reliant person in this world than a Kentucky man.” He gave a short laugh, his stance proud. “We were rich until coal kings and government came in and fattened themselves off our minerals, the land and our people. For decades, newsmen and presidents have sneered at us from a distance while guzzling down our fine Kentucky whiskeys from their fancy crystal glassware.”
He sounded a lot more like Pa with each passing year, the news rising a rebellious spirit.
I scanned the article. They’d found a couple witheight children living in a decrepit house, the paper read. It reported that their living condition weren’t nothing more than a tar paper shack, despite the photograph showed it was a shingled brick-patterned siding that looked neat and nearly new. The article stated Mr. Fletcher was unemployed, noted his bad teeth, and that the family was only given a few hours’ notice to play host to the president.
The young’uns looked healthy and well fed, long past the ugly days when the Depression and pellagra bit at our backs.
Mr. Fletcher’s daughters wore homespun play dresses, and the sons had trimmed haircuts and sported clean britches and sturdy shoes.
The family seemed robust and doing fine.
Jackson wiped his brow and muttered, “It’s not our people who’s poor; it’s the miserable ones crammed inside this Motor City’s hot tin box.”
A lot of families had struck out from the South to cash in on better jobs, bigger pay. I looked out toward the smokestacks that soldiered the town. Most days the city belched its angry whistlessignaling another factory shift change, folding into the wails of fire trucks and police vehicles.
“I reckon if the rich tell the small folk they’re poor long enough, they’ll start believing it,” I said quietly.
Again, I glanced up toward the winter-baked Detroit skies, the color a constant dismal gray through the seasons. Pondering, I couldn’t recall a single morning where I’d seen a children’s moon since we’d arrived eleven years ago. The smoking factories had choked out the blue and robbed the cityfolk of the spectacle.
I sighed and steered the conversation to a lighter subject. “They’re getting electricity up into the hills now; did you see it, Jackson?”
He hovered over my shoulder as I studied another photograph of the Kentucky family. It showed a long wooden porch with new plank boards, and I spied a meter where electricity was attached to the home. I lingered over Lady Bird’s fashionable spring dress, coat, matching hat and shoes. “She’s a right elegant First Lady,” I told him. “They say she loves flowers and is planting them on highways, in cities and parks. Going to beautify America.”
“We could use some of that beauty here. I’m headed down to the stockyards to get manure. Try to turn this sandy clay they call dirt.” He motioned to Elijah Jack. “Come on, son, let’s go get that load now.”
