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At eighty-two,
I’ve lived a long life. A long-time Mississippian, I loved keeping a cigar
dangling from my mouth, and it didn’t have to be lit. I just kept it
comfortably on my tongue to taste the raw cedar. In Tulla Springs, a small town
toward the west of Mississippi ,
I was known for having the best lawn. I would be outdoors making sure my yard
was the finest among all of my neighbors. My perfect white, two-story house, with
a white picket fence, was one hundred percent pure American. Best of all was my
favorite sitting place under the oak tree that stood in my beautiful yard.
Feeling the breeze tap against my wrinkly, old skin was almost as good as
Heaven.
So far, I was
living the perfect life, and it felt so good and peaceful to live in a remote area
on the outskirts of town. Suddenly, in 2006, Tulla Springs drastically changed
its color landscape. Once it was primarily a white area where we ran all the
city offices, school boards, and businesses, but now the town is full of Coloreds.
There’s a colored sheriff, deputy mayor, school superintendent. There are even
a few so-called black-owned businesses. I mean, the whole thing made me sick!
Why I remembered years ago before that Civil Rights Movement, Coloreds knew how
to stay in their place. It was simple. They kept to themselves and we whites
kept to ours.
From generation to generation of my family, we
firmly believed whites were the superior race. We were put here by God to take
care of this world, and the Coloreds and everyone else were meant to work in
it. My daddy told me this was a fact because according to him, it was written
in black and white in the Bible.
Inside my house
were pictures and plaques during my days of rallying with the Ku Klux Klan. In
fact, I still have my white garb and the hat hanging freely upstairs in my
bedroom next to a few of my late wife’s things. Abigail and I were together for
fifty-five years, although she passed on five years ago. I hoped I would
someday pass it to my children, but unfortunately, she couldn’t bear any.
On a warm fall
afternoon, I was sitting at my favorite spot under the oak tree with my
brother’s oldest son, Billy. The wind was just right while the sun was peeking
softly from behind the clouds.
“Yep, I did live a
good life,” I said, slowly lighting my cigar. “You know every liberal folk out
there, whose sayin’ segregation or Jim Crow laws was wrong, is a damn fool! It
happened ‘cause it was good for this country. And if it wasn’t for that Martin
Luther King, and all of those other Coloreds in this country, we would still be
number one!”
Even though my
nephew gave me one of his sorry stares, I was still proud of him. He served his
country well by fighting those Iraqis and taking care of those enemies before
they tried to come in our backyard and kill us. Remember 9/11? That tragedy
summed it up. Get them before they get us!
As I rocked in my
mahogany chair that was handed down by my daddy, I glanced at my nephew wearing
a gray Army t-shirt and jean shorts. With a receding hairline and brunette hair
like my momma’s, Billy continued to shake his head.
“Hey, Unc?” he said,
in his Mississippian accent; a southern drawl heavy like molasses. “What about
that black soldier when you were in World War II? Was he bad for the country,
too?”
I rolled my eyes
and sucked my teeth at his foolish question. The solider he was referring to
was this massively tall Colored man named Jeremiah Johnson. With perfect teeth
that were whiter than snow and a big baldhead, he was known as Preacher Man
because he gave sermons and prayed for fallen soldiers. Actually, I don’t know
too much about his personal life. I just remembered Jeremiah telling the other
Coloreds that he had a wife and two children back in Tennessee . He still should’ve stayed in his
place. If he were in my shoes, I doubt I’d take a grenade for him.
After Billy shook
his head in disgust at my rants, he went to work at the local post office,
leaving me alone under the oak tree.
“That damn
liberal,” I said about him as he drove away in his late model truck.
I closed my eyes
to enjoy the rest of that beautiful day. The only thing I heard was the soft
whistling of the wind and an occasional car driving past my yard. Other than
that, I was living in my own world.
As I reclined in the
chair to catch a quick nap, I suddenly developed the worst headache I’d ever
had in my life. It throbbed from the top of my head to the back of my neck. I
tried to get up to go get some pain medicine out of the house, but I fell to
the ground with paralyzing numbness on one side of my body. Even though I felt
I had the strength within my other limbs, I couldn’t scoot or scream. It was as
if I became camouflaged in the grass because no neighbor or passerby could see
me. It seemed my suffering was meant to be.
As I tried to cry
for help once more, the pain in my head worsened. Then strangely, I felt a
weird sensation as though my body wanted to drift away. Darkness slowly covered
the sky like a window shade, fading everything black.
“Mista,” said a
child’s voice, as I returned to consciousness. “Mista? You’re okay now!”
When my eyes
focused, I was stunned to see this light-skinned Colored boy with sandy brown
hair standing on my property. The boy appeared to be about six or seven,
wearing clothes my nephew’s son would normally wear. Yes, the same colorful
t-shirt with blue jeans. In his eyes, I noticed a familiarity as if I’d seen
him somewhere before.
Amazingly, I was
able to get up off the grass, but still wondered whom this child was. “Boy,
where you come from?” I firmly asked.
The boy laughed,
ignoring my seething intimidation. So I tried again, but this time I stepped
closer to him. Looking down onto his tiny body and squinting, I approached him
with a firmer tone. “Boy, you got five seconds to get off from my land,” I
snapped.
Where did he come from? I wondered, as he, again, ignored my daunting words by
laughing them off. Then that kid did something weird. He extended his hand,
asking me to come with him. I was stunned and didn’t know what to make of him. Is this boy connected to some of my enemies
in town? Is he lost? Or is he just mental?
Once more, I tried
to scare him. “Look, boy, didn’t I say get off my land?” I yelled.
The boy didn’t
move. He only chuckled.
“That does it,” I
huffed, stomping off to my house to get my shotgun to scare him for good, but
when I tried to open the screen door, the strangest thing happened. The front
door disappeared, and the screen door was nailed shut. I pulled and shook the
screen until I thought of running to the backdoor. As I continued my mission to
get inside, I noticed from the reflection in the window that something was
different. My whitish gray hair had reverted to its original brunette color,
and my wrinkly face was ironed out with a youthful glow. Even my limbs were
limber as it felt like I was in my twenties.
“What the hell?” I
gasped, feeling my face. “What’s going on here?”
Out of confusion,
I looked at the little boy. Is this some
sort of dream?
I looked beyond the
white picket fence to discover the neighborhood I’d known for over fifty years
was gone. There were no cars driving down the street, no houses, or paved
roads. There was only a dirt road framed with an abundance of trees lining the
pathway. Being puzzled was an understatement. I was petrified.
“Where am I? And
who are you, boy?”
Again, the boy
extended his hand and answered in his tiny voice. “You’re earthly life is over.
It’s time for you to begin your journey.”
Out of shock, I
fell limp against a porch chair, placing my hand on my head and trembling in
fear. If my earthly life is over, what is
this place? Heaven, hell, or the in-between?
Panicking, I
yelled to the boy. “No! It can’t be. You don’t mean I’m dead, do you?”
The boy didn’t say
a word. His hand remained extended as if I was supposed to abide to him, so I
ignored his request.
“I’m not going
with you! Ain’t it when you die you go through some tunnel to meet your loved
ones?” I angrily questioned. “You ain’t no kin to me, so why don’t you go with
your own people!”
“If you don’t go
with me, then you’ll have to stay in this house with them,” the boy finally
replied.
“With who?”
The boy pointed
inside my house to a frightful sight. There were several black, shadowy
creatures standing in my living room along with disfigured, skinless monstrous
beings with sharp demonic teeth. As soon as they saw me through the window,
staring in awe, they rushed toward me with an ear-piercing growl. I screamed as
I leaped backward, falling into the porch furniture, but the boy didn’t give up.
He extended his hand down to me.
“If you come with
me, they won’t get you.”
This time I didn’t
want to be a fool, so I took his hand. “Where are you taking me?”
The boy smiled and
guided me to the cleanest dirt road I’d ever seen. The dirt was brighter than
the red Mississippi
dirt. It was softer than sand, but very light as though I was walking on air.
“Harold, don’t be
afraid. It’s a journey that’s necessary for what’s left of your soul,” the boy
said. I didn’t reply. I was just curious as to what was to come.
“Since I’m going
with you, boy, what’s your name?”
The boy looked at
me with his big, brown eyes. “Thomas.”
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