racism.
The hood of his car stopped directly in front of Peg, cutting off her path. His hand darted out, grabbing at Peg, who flinched, wrenching her arm out of his grasp, then scurried around the back of his car and continued rapidly down the street.
John turned right, following her. “I’m gonna come get me some more of that dark meat, girl. You watch out,” he called. He sped up to the red light and braked with a short screech. She sidled on, her shoulders bunched forward, her head low.
“Hold this.” Addie handed me the bag of curtain cloth, then jogged ahead to John’s car. She slapped the top of it to get his attention. Before John could turn to her, she bent over and whispered something in his ear. Just as the light changed to green, his head jerked to the side and his shoulder came up as if he had been tickled. He floored it then, and his daddy’s old Ford sped across the intersection and straight into a telephone pole in the middle of the next block.
Ahead of us, Peg looked from Addie to the car, her eyes wide. Addie and I rushed to the car. His hand dangled out the window. His head hung over the steering wheel and rested against the bloody, smashed windshield. A single line of blood rolled out of his left ear and down his neck. Then the streets filled with people.
After the ambulance had taken John away, I asked Addie what she had said to him. “I told him I didn’t like what he said.”
Later, at home, as we chopped cabbage to make sauerkraut, I asked, “Did you know that he would do that?”
“No. I just wanted him to leave her alone.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t trying to make him do anything. I didn’t mean for him to get hurt, but I don’t regret trying to keep him from her. He’s not a decent man.”
“Did you use your other voice when you spoke to him?”
“Not the way I do with you at night. Not the lower voice I use to calm Darling. But what I said to him came from the same place.” She pressed her fist to her breastbone. Then she scooped the cabbage shreds up and dropped them into the wide measuring bowl.
The next time we went to Pearl’s for barbeque, she waved our money away. “My Peg says you were a help to her. Today, your ribs are on the house—Pearl’s house.” Peg stepped out from a dark corner of the shack and smiled shyly.
Addie’s hand disappeared in Pearl’s grip. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll relish our supper.” Then Peg delicately shook her hand.
After that, when we passed Peg on the street, she would say, “Hey, Miss Addie.”
“Hey, Miss Peg,” Addie would respond.
From the day of his accident, John Thompson was deaf in his left ear, and never again held a job. He spent the rest of his life harmlessly wandering around town collecting bottles for the penny deposit. I never heard of him harming or insulting anyone after his accident. The old men who hung around downtown, outside the drugstore, let him sit in on their conversations and laugh at their jokes.
Because everyone knows everyone else in a small town, there can be an appreciable acceptance for human idiosyncrasies, for the accidents of the body and heart. Privacy was limited in Clarion and most of us assumed we would live and die close to where we were born. By our mid-twenties, we knew a great deal about each other. Knowledge accumulated over decades of church bulletins, brief exchanges on the street, and casual observation. Faces filled with health and hope or fell into the stupor of love or work or misfortune. We watched each other grow older, our gaits and wardrobes reflecting both age and fortune. And we knew that we were known by others as we knew them. All of this made for a kind of quiet personal tolerance—but only for the accidents and stupidities that we or our children might fall prey to. Acceptance of those who were clearly different was another thing entirely. Race mattered more than anything. Racism is the laziest hatred. The quickest, most peripheral glance is all it takes to categorize.
Other than what happened with John Thompson, Addie and I lived on the farm without incident. By the end of our second harvest together, I had been on the farm over four years. She quieted my restlessness. I no longer imagined