Read Online A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg - Free Book Online

say. And that’s when Uncle Bump notices I’m here. He puts an arm round me while I remember what happened to that fourteen-year-old boy. I was only four years old when two white brothers murdered him. It happened in the town called Money. Some folks say Emmett Till whistled at the white lady who worked in the shop. Others say he called her “baby.” Either way, he was out of line. But he wasn’t from Mississippi. He was from the city of Chicago, in the state of Illinois, way up North. Emmett didn’t know how things are down here. And those boys, his friends, they dared him to do it. They hardly expected it would get him killed.
    “As you know,” the reverend says, “they tied Emmett’s body to a cotton gin fan. Then they threw him into the river to swim home to the Lord who gone and made him a Negro in the first place.”
    Every time I hear about Emmett, I can’t help but wonder,
How could grown men murder a teenage boy?
I asked Mama this a couple times, but wouldn’t you know it, each and every time she changed the subject. And when I asked Uncle Bump, he just said, “There’s some questions that ain’t got answers.”
    Now Reverend Walker looks to the sky. “Listen, Lord,” he says. “You can’t take Elias the way you took Emmett.”
    I want to tell the reverend to hush up. I want to tell the reverend that sure Buck chased Elias into the bayou, but my skinny brother’s strong as a hailstorm. I want to tell the reverend Elias can outrun anyone, white or Negro don’t matter. But there’s so many sobs coming out my throat, I can’t say a word.
    Uncle Bump pulls me closer to his side. “Shhh…,” he says.
    I feel dizzy. Things look fuzzy. And I can’t quite believe my brother, he’s gone.
    Most of the men here are members of the Reverend’s Brigade. They’ve been up all night, searching for my brother without luck. Now they rub their red eyes and set off for the day’s work.
    Uncle Bump stays on the porch with the reverend, while I lug myself back inside the house.
    If there’s anyone dead, it’s Mama. She’s lying on her bed, heavy as a sack of unshelled beans. Stale tears cling to her cheeks. I climb onto the mattress, lie down beside her, and fix one of her limp arms round my waist. Then I curl my body into the nook she makes when she rests on her side. “Don’t fret,” I tell her. “He’s still with us.”
    But Mama? She doesn’t find comfort in my words. She turns over and hugs the pillow, not me, in her arms.

CHAPTER 9

    July 17, 1963, Night
     
    Tonight at dinner, after we worry ourselves sick talking about Elias, we dish all about the Garden Club. Ever since Old Man Adams went and died last month, the Garden Club has held a bunch of meetings to figure out what to plant on his land. But Mama, Uncle Bump, and me agree: their meetings are nothing but a bunch of hooey.
    “This garden belongs to all Kuckachookians, Negro and white,” I say, and swallow my last bite of beans.
    “No matter how much they quibble ’bout what to plant, you can bet they agree on one thing,” Mama says.
    “What’s that?” Uncle Bump asks. He wipes his face with an old piece of towel.
    “Us Negroes won’t never share the land,” she says, and sips her water.
    Uncle Bump laughs, not because what Mama says is funny, but because it’s true.
    “Why don’t they know Old Man Adams left the land for
all
of us?” I ask. I walk over to the stove and scrape one last spoonful of beans off the bottom of the pot.
    “’Cause the mayor and the sheriff lied, Addie Ann. They told folks Old Man Adams wrote in his will the land is just for whites,” Uncle Bump says.
    “Course, there’s a couple rumors starting to spread, but you know white folk,” Mama says. “They believe whatever’s most easy.”
    “Well, we should tell ’em…,” I say, and sit back down.
    And that’s when Mama gives me one of her ain’t-you-got-no-manners, suck-in-her-breath expressions. I reckon it’s because I’m talking with