The Road to Memphis Read Online Free PDF

Moe said, smiling now.
    I took a moment to look at that deep-set dimpled smile of his before I answered. I loved Moe’s smile. Moe wasn’t what most girls would have called a good-looking boy. He wasn’t a bad-looking boy, just all right-looking, except for that smile; it was wonderful. I looked again at the car. “Yeah, it is. He’s certainly proud of it too.”
    “Well, he got a right to be.”
    “Like that time Uncle Hammer came down from Chicago with that new Packard,” I said, speaking of Papa’s older brother who lived in Chicago. Stacey had gotten a lot of his car-loving ways from him. “We all were sure proud of that car too.”
    Moe laughed. “Y’all weren’t the only ones. Every Negro ’round here was proud of that car . . . almost like it wastheirs. I know I was.” He turned to the fields once more. “One of these here days I’m figuring to get myself a car. First, though, I’m gonna buy me that land and give it to my daddy.”
    I didn’t say anything to that. Moe had been talking this same talk about land for his daddy for as long as I could remember.
    “I get the money, I’m going to buy us a nice little piece of land, then there won’t be no more sharecropping for this family. Course, I know we probably won’t ever have a place big as y’all got. Y’all was lucky, you know, your granddaddy buying up them four hundred acres all them years ago. Y’all ain’t had to worry ’bout trying to get land.”
    “No . . . just worry about trying to keep it.”
    He nodded, still looking at the fields. “One day we’re gonna have something too. I got my mind set.”
    “I know that, Moe.”
    He turned suddenly and smiled generously. “I got my mind set on something else too.”
    “And what’s that?”
    “You.”
    I heaved an exasperated sigh. Moe sometimes liked to tease about courting me, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Moe and I were best friends, not courting partners. Besides, up in Jackson he already had himself two girls he was courting. “Boy, don’t be talking that talk to me. I got other things on my mind.”
    He folded his arms across his chest and laughed. “I know. High schooling and college.”
    “You’re right about that.”
    Moe laughed again. “Yeah . . . so what’s this you said you had to tell me? It got to do with schooling?”
    I grinned, pleased at my news. I always shared my schoolnews with Moe. “Got my application from Tougaloo and Campbell College the other day.”
    “Already?”
    “What do you mean, already? It’s October.”
    “But you not going off to college till next September.”
    “Got to start early on this kind of thing, Moe. I don’t want September to roll around again and I don’t have all my stuff together. I have to get myself some scholarship money, you know that.”
    “Wish I could help you.”
    “Well, I thank you, Moe, but you be helping anybody, you best be helping yourself. Besides, I’ve got plenty of help. Stacey and Uncle Hammer, they’re both planning on letting me have some money, and Mama and Papa, they’ll do what they can. I get a scholarship, though, I won’t have to put a hardship on anybody.”
    “Still, wish I could help you.”
    I gave him a hard look. “You know you ought to go ahead and put some money on yourself, maybe even finish school.”
    He shrugged. “Too late for that, Cassie.” He looked past me out to nowhere.
    I didn’t say anything further. He and Stacey and Willie, too, had all dropped out of high school at tenth grade to go to work. They had all figured that working and earning some money was better than going to school, and I could hardly fault them for thinking that way. There weren’t all those many jobs open to educated colored folks except to teach, and none of the boys had an inclination for teaching. Besides, there were some other jobs around that paid a whole lot better than teaching.
    “Cassie!” Stacey called. “We best be getting home now.”
    “All right,