Catfish Alley Read Online Free PDF Page A

is it? I've got work to do."
    Ruth
nods toward me. "This is Mrs. Reeves. She is here to see you."
    Tanner
looks up in surprise. Apparently, in his tirade, he hadn't noticed me. Now, of
course, he is all smiles. He walks over to me with his hand out.
    "Hello
there, Mrs. Reeves. Good to see you again. Please, come in and tell me how I
can help you today."
    I
follow him into his office and sit in the uncomfortable folding metal chair he
offers me. Tanner slides into the chair behind his wide pine desk, leans forward
and smiles broadly, showing a gold front tooth. "I remember doing business
with you, Mrs. Reeves. You came in about those beams for the Dillard kitchen,
didn't you?"
    I
nod. I bet you remember, I think to myself. That was quite a lucrative
transaction for you. Personally, I thought the price was ridiculously high, but
Rose Dillard was tenacious. Once she heard that the beams were milled locally
in approximately the same year her summer kitchen was built, there was no
stopping her. Of course, I'm comfortable negotiating for lumber to remodel a
one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old structure, but I'm not sure how I'm going to get
that little old black woman waiting for me in the car through the gates of Del
Tanner's lumberyard.
    "Mr.
Tanner ..."
    "Please,
call me Del." Another flash of the gold tooth.
    "Del
... You may not know that I am the director of the Clarksville Pilgrimage Tour
of Antebellum Homes. We plan the annual spring Pilgrimage Tour, several events
related to the history of the area, and the Holiday Home Tour."
    "Yes,
yes, I know the pilgrimage. Good for business in town, I hear. 'Course those
tourists aren't buying lumber" — he laughs at his own humor — "but I
support what's good for Clarksville. I didn't know you were the director,
though. That must be a big job."
    "Yes,
it's a pretty big job...."
    "Are
you needing something for a restoration project? Because I just got in a load
of beams from a torn-down house over in Yalobusha County. They'd be perfect for
a restoration."
    "No,
Mr. Tan ... Del. What I'm interested in is the building you keep that lumber
in."
    "Come
again?"
    "It
has been proposed to our committee that we include an African-American tour as
part of the pilgrimage events."
    Tanner
rolls his chair back from the desk, crosses his arms, and stretches out his
long legs. He looks puzzled. "What's that got to do with me?"
    "Are
you aware that your warehouse was once a school for black children?"
    Tanner
laughs and looks at his watch. "No, ma'am, I sure wasn't aware of that.
This business has been in my family for more than sixty years and nobody ever
said nothing about a school around here. All that building's ever been to me is
a storage warehouse for old lumber. Listen, Mrs. Reeves, I hate to hurry you,
but I've got a load of pine coming in here in about fifteen minutes ..."
    It
starts to dawn on me that this might not work out.
    "I
won't take much more of your time. What I'd like is for you to let me drive
through the gate so that Miss Grace Clark, our consultant for the
African-American tour, can show me that building."
    "Consultant?
You got you some educated nigger from up north to consult? How about you hire
me as your consultant? You want to have an African-American tour in
Clarksville, Mississippi? I'll tell you where you ought to be touring. Down
there at the unemployment office is where you'll find 'em all. I hire them, but
I can't keep one on the job. Drink up their paycheck, beat their wives, get
thrown in jail, and don't show up on Monday morning."
    I
wasn't ready for this and I'm not sure how to react. He does have a point about
the black people and the unemployment office, but still there are the Humboldts
and their insistence on this tour.
    "No,
we don't have a consultant from the north. Grace Clark was a schoolteacher for
many years at the black elementary school and then at Clarksville Elementary
after they integrated. She knows a lot about the history of the area."
    "Look,
Mrs.