It really is amazing how one little old vision can make you light on your feet. Suddenly I was running so fast that my feet were barely touching the thick carpet of leaves covering the path. When I burst through the back door and into the kitchen of my family’s rundown old shack, my mother was mixing cornbread batter.

She glanced up for a second. “Hey there, Peter Cottontail. You’re late. Bossy got out agin and I done already sent Brad out to find her. You and Oz go ahead and git started with the milking.”

The air spilled from beneath my winged heart and I went into a stall from which I could not recover. Down I spiraled to crash and burn against the scarred and worn out linoleum of our kitchen floor. There was something in Momma’s voice that told me she was onto my game. I didn’t even care. My life was already ruined because I wasn’t getting into the woods that afternoon.

Chores must be done, and there’s no point in moping even when you’re sad. Like all my brothers and sisters, I had learned to be inscrutable. If you let your emotions show in your face, grown-ups messed with you. They asked difficult questions, which was never a good thing because it was a sin to lie. I had long since developed the resilience that comes with surviving, black and poor, for seventeen years. I would survive this night as well. And on the other side of night was morning, school—Wait. Was it Thursday or Friday? Whew. It was Thursday. Yeah, I still had school tomorrow—and her: Sunday Tice. Her nickname had started off as Sondie, short for Cassondra, but to the drawl-drenched ears of her people, Sondie and Sunday sounded exactly the same, so Sunday she became.

Later in the evening, I got a sort of consolation prize, which eased my suffering a bit. We heated water for washing up after milking and for cleaning the milk buckets and strainers outside in an old cast iron pot. Most of the time, we just let the fire go out. But on some days, something as inscrutable as my brother and sisters and I drew us together during those last few minutes of a brief autumn twilight as the day gently gives up the ghost. At first the firelight would glimmer small against the friendly, yellow light streaming from the window of the kitchen, where Momma and the girls were getting supper ready. As the last color in the day washed out against the night, the embers of the dying fire seemed to glow brighter. I and my two brothers next to me in age, Ozell and Braddock, would sit on stumps while we gazed into the coals and listened to Rhythm and Blues on the radio. Usually we sat silently, each of us wrapped in his teenaged thoughts, until Momma called us in.

That evening, two of our three stumps were taken. Uncle Ernie, my mother’s brother, had come over. He and Daddy were sitting around the fire drinking a couple of beers. Uncle Ernie was the chief deputy sheriff of Kosciuszko County and he always had good stories to tell about the bizarre and eccentric behavior of many of our fellow residents of the land between the rivers. Usually his stories were funny and just the ticket for lifting a guy out of the doldrums. Uncle Ernie’s visits were rare events because he was a busy man, but when they happened; his and Daddy’s laughter drew us to them. They weren’t laughing this evening, even though they were drinking beer. Instead of calling us in, Momma came out and sat on the third stump.

Uncle Ernie glanced up as Oz and I walked up. He was telling Daddy how the hospital wrist band belonging to Ruby Ellis’ baby had been found. “They found it cross the river over in Missouri.”

When I heard that, the bad vibes of summer engulfed me again. Uncle Ernie must have seen a change in my face. His already friendly features softened a bit more and he beamed the light of a faraway star from his face to mine. Unfortunately it was the last drip from a dead star and it wasn’t enough to flog away the gloom of stolen hearts. The shadows only deepened after its passing. I listened expecting the worst.

Daddy wasn’t saying anything, but Momma said, “How it git over there?”

“Don’t nobody know. Fella cuttin weeds longside the road found it.”

Momma said, “Maybe they’ll git some finger prints off it.”

Uncle Ernie burst out laughing, but then he turned serious again. “I don’t know what they’ll git off it, but whoever stole that baby done assed up now. That’s cross state lines. Now J. Edga Hoova in it for sure.”

All around the cast iron pot, there was a collective intake of breath. I felt a little surge of electricity go through me. Presidents, generals, governors, politicians of all stripes, and even popes came and went, but J. Edgar Hoover was eternal. His name was not even a name any more. It was more of a title, JEDGAHOOVA. Nobody in his right mind messed with J. Edgar Hoover. And now he was coming here.

Of course, I understood that J. Edgar Hoover was not coming himself. He was sending out his minions in the same way that God sent out his preachers and prophets. The believers talked to the prophet and the prophet talked to The Lord.

God sent out his preachers, and there were still plenty of people who didn’t believe in God. However, nobody didn’t believe in J. Edgar Hoover. If his FBI was here, then J. Edgar Hoover was here. We were finally going to get to the bottom of this baby vanishing business.

Daddy finally spoke up. “Ain’t nobody done took that baby cept one a them nurses down at the hospital. And everybody know that baby wuzn’t none a Elroy’s nohow. How two people, both of em black enough for charcoal to make a white mark on em, gonna make a baby that light skinned?”

Momma and Ruby Ellis were close friends. She got a little testy. “Aw, you jes saying something. That was brand new baby. Jes two days old. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks before their color comes in.”

Now Daddy laughed. “Shit. Wudn’t no mo color coming into that baby. And how come the damn baby bald headed then? That baby wuz half white. That’s why it so light skinned. I don’t b’lieve Elroy done nothin to the baby, but I b’lieve he know somethin about it. One of them hospital nurses wanted a baby or knowed somebody who wanted a baby, and Elroy saw the baby wuz half white and didn’t want to git all shamed and embarrassed, and so he give it up. That’s what I b’lieve happened.”

Uncle Ernie nodded. “That’s what I think too. How somebody who didn’t work at the hospital gonna jes come in and sneak a baby out. Somebody who worked there had to have somethin to do with it. And how’d they know the baby was goin home the next day? If they had waited one more night, they wouldn’a had no chance.”

“Then how come yall ain’t arrested nobody?” Momma’s tone was angry. She didn’t usually challenge Uncle Ernie or Daddy in front of the children, at least not in that tone. She and Ruby Ellis were true sisters in the church. The fate of the Ellis baby was really bothering her.

Uncle Ernie’s brow wrinkled. He was either taken by surprise or just uncomfortable with Momma’s tone. “The sheriff done questioned everybody at the hospital. And some fellows from the state police come in and talked to everybody too. Ain’t nobody seen nothin. But somebody gonna see somethin now cause J. Edga Hoova in it now.”

Momma got up off her stump. “J. Edga Hoova ain’t shit! He cain’t do nothing yall cain’t do. And yall ain’t done shit.” She huffed away from the fire toward the house and then called back over her shoulder. “Yall come on in and eat your dinner.”

Nobody moved. You don’t want to be too close to a woman who just blasphemed J. Edgar Hoover. I had an excuse because I was standing there thinking that wasn’t so bad.

Finally Daddy got up. “Yall come on.”

We boys started walking. When Daddy said move, you moved.

Uncle Ernie stood up and hitched up his pants. “I’ll be gittin on, Mat.”

“Aw, you might as well stay and have some dinner.” It was the obligatory southern hospitality. You could tell Daddy was just going through the motions. Uncle Ernie couldn’t be expected to remain in a den of blasphemers.

“Naw. The old lady got dinner waiting for me at the house.”

We Henrys went in to a quiet dinner. Momma was not in a good mood and it was better to be subdued and let it pass. She obviously wanted to believe in her friend Ruby, but I found Daddy and Uncle Ernie’s explanation quite reasonable. On the surface, we lived in a society where the races observed a strict separation. Below the surface, there was a parallel universe where miscegenation was common place.

Race mixing had been boiling away since long before I was born. Now it was bubbling to the surface. It didn’t help—or hurt, depending on your point of view—that our school district had recently been “integrated”.

The Cache River Consolidated School District had been cobbled together from four tiny segregated school districts many years before, but everything remained segregated except for the basketball team and the baseball team. The sports teams were integrated and played home games over in Levee City because they had the best gym. Everything was fine and everybody was happy until a new interstate came through. Suddenly people from all over the country were driving right down the middle of Kosciuszko County.

Despite the fact that the local people, black and white, were happy with the status quo, the State of Illinois declared that the district was integrated in name only. The state ordered everybody to go to school together. Our new high school was just completed, and this was the first year that students from all four segregated districts would be together in the same high school. Even though Cache River Consolidated was still a very small district, most of us rural farm boy types didn’t get out much and we didn’t know each other.

Already, the unheard of had happened. Gwen Sherman, a white girl, was pregnant. The baby’s father was black, which meant that Gwen should have gone to “visit her aunt” long before she started showing. When she returned, she would no longer be pregnant. But Gwen wasn’t going anywhere. She was going to keep her baby. I had to admire her. She had lost her friends, but she was keeping her baby.

Omar Reese, the baby’s father, wasn’t losing any of his friends. One day after a student council meeting, I was riding the activity bus home. There were no girls on the bus and Omar had treated us to a little ditty. “Turkey, turkey. Guinea, guinea. White girl pussy good as any.” Where he got it from I don’t know, but he certainly enjoyed singing it. The white boys sat tight-lipped while he sang through several rounds. We all knew whom he was talking about. Gwen wasn’t from a “good” family. She was—to hear Momma tell it anyway—trailer trash, but she seemed to be a nice person. She didn’t deserve being made fun of in that way. Why would she own up to somebody like Omar?

Cassondra Tice, the girl in my vision, was a white girl too. From there my chances only got worse. Her father was known to be some kind of bigwig in the local Ku Klux Klan. Yet, she had always been nice to me. At least I thought she was nice to me. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe my vision was a lie. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that in some respects my vision was a lie. When she arced like an arrow across the sky, Sunday had been impossibly beautiful. I knew her. I saw her almost every day at school. She wasn’t that beautiful.

Daddy had a phrase for girls like Cassondra Tice, “Jes a lil too”. She was just a little too skinny. She was just a little too short and her calves were just a little too big for her thighs. Her hair was just a little too thin and stringy. The ears that poked like elfin ears from beneath that hair were just a little too big for her head. She had the sort of skin that didn’t tan, but rather turned ruddy in the sun. The skin that put the red in redneck: just a little too pale. When I came to think of it, she didn’t have all that much in the tits and ass department either: just a little too flat. Lips, such as they were, still managed to be just a little too thin for a mouth that was just a little too small for her face. At least her voice wasn’t just a little too. She talked loud, deep and raspy. There was no lilt, almost like the gruff voice of an old lady.

And yet, in my vision at least, she made it work. Somehow in my mind, the real Sunday Tice had become beautiful. She was like the beans I was happily spooning into my mouth. Some people said beans were a poor man’s dinner, but I would take beans seasoned with a little bit of salt jowl over just about any other food. I looked at my plate. A great northern bean and Sunday had about the same complexion. A little piece of salt pork could season a whole pot of beans. You couldn’t even see it, but you could always taste it. The more I thought about her, the more I wanted to taste it. Then the old fear rose in me. Could I bring myself to talk to her?

I was already getting scared and I wasn’t even through my plate of beans yet. I needed a plan. My First Period class was Latin. Sunday was in English. I knew that because I saw her every morning when I came out of class. That’s when she smiled at me. I knew I couldn’t talk to her in the hallway. Could I ask her to meet me during lunch? Except I wasn’t sure how to ask someone for a lunch date. We couldn’t just walk into the cafeteria and sit together. Man! That would have set tongues to wagging. I rather liked the idea of causing a stir by openly sitting with a white girl, especially the daughter of some grand poohbah in the Klan. But that kind of scandal would get back to Momma and Daddy before I got home from school that same day. Then there would be hell to pay.

Besides, Sunday had a shambles of a family. Maybe she had a few friends too. Why would she agree with being a public spectacle? No, the thing to do was ask her to meet me in the library during lunch. Lunch lasted half an hour, but we could eat in fifteen minutes. That would give us fifteen minutes in the library. Except for the school bookworms, which would be Lillian Berry, the Finkelstein brothers and me, nobody went into the library during lunch. Sunday and I would probably be alone.

Why would she agree to meet me in the library? I couldn’t think of a reason that made any kind of sense. And to say some false thing, get her into the library, and then tell her that I liked her would be like lying. Or would it?

I thought back to a day last summer when I had been making extra money—for Daddy of course, not for me—by working in the bean fields. While I was picking beans alongside Mrs. Braun, she looked me over and said “You a nice lookin young man. You got a girlfriend?” When I told her no, she said that all I had to do was tell a girl that she was pretty and that I liked her and that girl would be my girlfriend. When I admitted that I was uncomfortable with lying, she said, “Aw, Sugah, that ain’t lying, that’s jes sweet talkin. Ain’t nothin wrong with that.”

What if I just met Sunday in the hallway and said, “Sunday, I really like you. If you like me too, meet me in the library for the last half of lunch today.”

No. I needed a better line than that.

Then it hit me. I had been given a vision. What if Sunday had been given a vision as well? What if she was sitting at her dinner table, eating black beans, and wishing I would just come up and talk to her tomorrow. Maybe we had double vision. Goddamn!

“WHAT did you say?” That was Momma’s voice.

Oh my God. What had I just said? I looked up without lifting my head. “Nothing.”

I must have been daydreaming. Stay calm.

Fortunately, Daddy’s remarks about Ruby Ellis and her baby were such a sore point with Momma that she probably resented wasting even so much as a dagger look on anybody other than him. She let me off easy. “You watch your mouth, you hear me.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Salma, you’re off dish duty tonight. Rail can take over for you.”

Rats! Maybe not so easy. Why did females always have to be so… difficult? Turkey turkey. Guinea, guinea… I was seventeen, but was I man enough to find out?

Next Chapter: Finkelstein