One With Others: [A Little Book of Her Days] Read Online Free PDF

rental car. There is an electrical and plumbing supply place. A collection of prefab structures.
It could not look more ahistorical.
I think of him coming over the rise, ten thousand times since then, and every single time, sensing a turbulence in the air above the surface of his skin. The way when my daddy took us back to his homestead, and we would pass a certain farmhouse, he would say, There was a murder in that house when I was a boy. It caused a great commotion.
Some thing happened on that spot. No one was shot. No one got strung up, but belligerent men glommed in a parking lot.
Some one among them said, We aren’t going to do anything to you. Whoever it was that spoke was heeded, a narrow channel formed through which the young African American men could go forward to the glass door. They are cursed, spat upon, mocked, threatened. Then they hear a tremendous crash. The truck, Toad’s truck has been hove on its side. But the one of their number in front, maybe James, opens the door, walks inside, picks up a ball [it had to be a ladies’ ball, blue and speckled like a mockingbird’s egg] and lets it drop down a lane or down the gutter [he does not linger to see if a pin falls]; turns and walks out. The four move as one to the overturned truck and hoist it upright, climb aboard, not a word spoken. Toad pops the clutch.
After that, was the bowling alley integrated.
After that, it burned.
After that, we tried to integrate the lunch counter at Harmon’s.
What happened.
They tore out the lunch counter.
The marchers are resting in the city park. They dine on neck bones, black-eyed peas, and soft drinks.
No incidents have been reported.
Well, what about so-and-so, I say. He’s not a bad sort.
Yes, but a well-meaning white man, he can just go so far. So we beat him at the polls. It was time. It did not mean we would get a better man for the job, but we would get shed of the skin of the injuring parties. It is something that had to be done.
I ask if he has any memory of any good-intentioned whites.
Had a little old cleaning job. An older man came in while I was sweeping. He called me [N-word]. Bawled me out for stirring up dust. The owner came from out behind the counter, moving fast-like and close-up. Don’t you ever call him out of his name again, you hear me. That was a stand-up moment he would not forget. He could not recall any other.
IN HELL’S KITCHEN, she is dying in her chair. We watch an old black-and-white on television; we see the man’s black arm. We see his serving arm. He carries a tray and his arm enters the screen, some tender band of wrist is exposed. With glasses balanced just so, and a white napkin draped over his forearm. He has no speaking part. And the rest of him stays out of sight. An invisible man.
Any simple problem can be made insoluble.
God’s plan. We go on thanking Him for all these benisons which are theirs. This is not His fault. Baby Jesus is not to blame. He is just a blameless little old baby. So like our own.
El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. The print on her wall, torn from a tired-out book. Goya, she would have run off with, if he’d only asked.
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FORMER STATE LEGISLATOR: I edged out the representative who introduced legislation to label the blood. White blood/black blood.
After a recount.
Got beat by the sheriff who told the kids they were to be taken to the woods and there shot.
Got beat by the sheriff who told the kids they were to be taken to the pool and there drowned.
Beat by the sheriff who told the farmers that posted the blanket bond he would call the claim on their deeds if they voted against him and then would he take their lands.
Beat by the sheriff who kept a man’s testicles in a jar on his desk until the word got around; he flushed them to the underworld from which no smoke escapes.
Bought a color TV from her husband the year the Longhorns beat the Hogs. By one measly point in the last fifteen minutes. Game of the Century it was touted.
The Big Shootout.