The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips Page B

enough?”
    “I ain’t got no gun to shoot at nobody, and I don’t want nobody shooting at me, ”Skip Carson said.“But getting back to this thing Sam was talking ’bout. I think we just ought not go out in them fields no mo’. Just let them crops stand out there ’til they shrivel up and die. Don’t hoe, plant, or pick nothing else for ’em.That’ll teach ’em.”
    “And while the crops are dying, what will you be doing, Skip?”
    Junior asked.
    “I been thinking ’bout something,” Skip said.“We don’t have to stay here. Hambone say they got good jobs for Negroes up north, like in Chicago where he was staying. I say we move to Chicago.”
    “Nah, Skip,” Harvey said. “Man, you talking crazy.We can’t all just pack up and move nowhere.”
    “Some of us can,” Junior admitted wistfully.“But some will have to stay and fight this battle the right way.”
    Their voices grew louder as they divided over the issue of fight or flight. I allowed myself a yawn, more from sleepiness than boredom. I was not bored; I was waiting to hear what they intended to do.
    Finally, Sam, who Junior had termed a leader, spoke. “There’s one question I done asked myself more than a hundred times,” Sam said. “If the grass is greener everywhere else, how come people always move back to Pakersfield? Seems like they can’t make it nowhere else. I can’t stop nobody from leaving here, and I wouldn’t even try.All I gotta say is good luck. I wanna leave here myself. But when I leave, whether it’s on a bus or train or in a pine box, somebody gon’ know I was here. They still think I’m a boy, and they don’t ever have to know I’m a man, but one day they gon’ know that Samuel Quinn was here.”
    “What are you planning to do, Sam?”
    “I don’t know that I got no plan, Junior. It’s just these times we living in, man. The times say I gotta do something.You gotta do something, too.You all time writing them letters and talking ’bout education, but what good is that? We just a small town, and ain’t nobody coming here to help us do nothing. Education ain’t nothing but words, man.We gotta show ’em that we mean business.”
    “Yeah,” Andy agreed. “I’m all for that.”
    “I’m with you, too, Sam,” Junior said, “but you have to know what you want, what you’re trying to accomplish, before you make a move.”
    “Okay,” Sam consented. “I want what everybody else want. I want a job. I wanna drink from that fountain down at the courthouse. I want Andy to be a sheriff if that’s what he wanna be. I’m tired of being on the back end of things like I just don’t count. I wanna be able to move my mama outta this house, move her to East Grove or Meadow Hill. I wanna see Chadlow brought down, and I wanna feel like a man in this town. I want a whole lotta things, Junior.And if I can’t get ’em, I wanna take one of them pencils of yours and erase this town off the face of the earth.”
    When Sam finished speaking, it was so quiet in the yard it seemed the others had left, but then Junior said, “All right, Sam. Let’s start with the water fountain.”

eleven
    I t was the first Thursday in February, and I had lit the kerosene lamp and settled in an armchair to read a novel when I should have been doing my chores. I was no more than five pages into my reading when the sound of pounding against the exterior wall of our house startled me. The sound came again—an object striking rapidly against wood.
    The boys were not home, and Tarabelle was asleep in Mama’s room. I tipped out to the kitchen. I got Martha Jean’s attention, and signed to her that someone was outside.
    Keeping Laura and Edna close to her, Martha Jean followed me to the front door. I opened it slowly and peered out.The first thing I saw was an old, banged-up, brown car parked down on the dirt road. There was a man sitting behind the steering wheel, but I could not make out who he was.
    As I turned my head to the left, I came