Let the Circle Be Unbroken Read Online Free PDF

to go? You go, I’ll go.”
    I looked at Stacey, curious as to what he would say, but he didn’t answer. The afternoon bell began to ring and he left the circle. The rest of us watched him go; then we were forced by the bell to disperse. Christopher-John in the third grade and Little Man in the second slowly wandered off to the primary-grades building. Son-Boy, Maynard, and I crossed in silence to the middle-grades building, where we went into our fifth-grade classroom and wordlessly slipped into our seats. Class began and I opened my book, with T.J. Avery on my mind.
    *   *   *
    On a dry day the walk home took about an hour. On wet days, what with the slipperiness of the mud road and having to scramble onto the forest bank to avoid any passing vehicle, the journey took some fifteen minutes longer. Today the weather was fine and we arrived at the second crossroads in good time. With the long shadowing arms of the Granger forest trees stretching over us, we walked the last half mile toward home. Finally, towering alone and beaconlike, the old oak which marked the boundary of our four hundred acres came into view. On the right side of the road the forest continued. On the left it ended, leaving in its stead the massive oak and the open richness of red Mississippi farmland.
    Beyond the oak lay the east pasture, and beyond it the cotton field, left dead-looking by the August fire which had started there and swept across the rows of green and purple stalks, taking fine puffs of cotton ready for picking and bolls of flowered richness still blooming. The fire had destroyed a quarter of the year’s crop and damaged much of the rest withits smoke and heat. The pasture, which before the fire had boasted a soft greenness, was scorched brown, and the oak had been singed by the heat of the fire, a fire Papa himself had started to stop the lynching of T.J. But no one except the family and Mr. Wade Jamison knew Papa had set the fire; it was too dangerous for anyone else to know.
    The fire had not extended beyond the pasture. Men who had come to hang T.J. had ended up fighting the fire instead, in order to stop its encroachment eastward to the Granger forest. None of Mr. Harlan Granger’s 6,000 acres had been touched.
    The cotton field ran to within a hundred feet of the house and was bordered with a barbwire fence which continued to the back of the house and the garden gate. Past the fields was the lawn, long and sloping upward to the house. On its western edge a dusty driveway cut from the road to the barn. Beyond the lawn and the drive lay the west fields where hay, corn, soybeans, and sugarcane were planted each spring. The fire hadn’t burned them, but it wouldn’t have mattered as much if it had. Mostly, the hay and the soybeans and the sugarcane were not cash crops; it was the cotton we depended upon for our income. Perhaps too much.
    Going up the drive, we followed the path of giant rocks leading to the back porch and entered the house through the kitchen. There we found Big Ma at her usual place by the cast-iron stove stirring a pot smelling strongly of collard greens. One look at her and it was evident where Papa had gotten his looks. Tall and strongly built, her coloring was the same pecan-brown and she carried no fat. She turned as we came in, with a smile that started vanishing when she saw our faces. The years had taught her to discern whenever something was wrong, and before we could say anything she demanded to know what was the matter. When Stacey toldher, she shook her head muttering, “Lord, Lord,” and absently continued to stir the collards.
    Stacey watched her a moment, then went through the curtained doorway which separated the closetlike kitchen from the dining room, and into the room he shared with Christopher-John and Little Man to the right of it. Christopher-John and Little Man followed him, but I stayed behind to ask Big Ma about Mama, Papa, and Mr. Morrison. Once I had found out where they were, I