Free Knee-Deep in Wonder by April Reynolds Page B

and her child gurgled in her arms. Maybe ma’am should be shamed, cause here we is still in the water; she sing all the time, sometimes for no money, he thought, his mouth already opening, shaping sounds with his tongue. I got to get atop this levee, if for nothing else but to see that baby up close. Desire pushed itself before dignity and hunkered at the base of his throat. Before he could stop himself, Chess sang. A high crackled sound quickly followed by a warbled baritone.
    â€œLook like your boy know what’s what,” Withers said, smiling. And then Chess saw every face around him clap shut. With his singing, Chess had slashed away their sense of decorum and decency. Don’t get into grown folks’ business; don’t speak unless spoke to; don’t be nasty; and, most importantly, don’t mess with the white folks were rules that southern Negro parents drummed into their children from birth. Chess had forgotten all his home training. The general extended his plump soft hand to Chess’s mother. “All right. We got to get you up here.” Afterward, with cold cornmeal coffee in everyone’s hand, Chess realized he had made a mistake. His neighbors’ silence fell around him; Mrs. Hubbert didn’t even slap away his gaping curiosity, and when he asked to go and find the pretty white lady who had stood cooing (singing?) with her child in her arms, no one took him by the chin and shook hard. Why bother? their closed faces said. If you don’t know enough by now to keep quiet when some white man trying to disgrace you and yours, you won’t ever know. Then he knew. His hum full of longing had shamed them all, a shame so sharp he could not be punished.
    The bunch of singing niggers who except for one did not sing were quickly put to work. The women and children fed the surviving livestock and helped prepare food for more than fifty thousand people, the smell of steaming vats of porridge seeping into their dreams. Mr. Hubbert and the four men in the wagon with him drove pilings, filled sandbags, and loaded supplies. Sixteen hours of work a day made a dollar, and that money moved from the county government to the Red Cross, never touched by a black hand. For twenty nights, Mr. Hubbert whispered his complaints to his wife. “Never should of left Sillers from the get-go. Colored folks ain’t been this bad off since Granny was alive. And Chess, he just don’t seem to know nothing. Caught him twice looking right up in the mouth of some white man. Still asking me bout that baby we saw tossed up to the levee. Gone get killed. They got guns on us. You hear me? Guns. Heard they shot some boy up near the top of the levee cause he was trying to leave to get back to his ma’am.” One humiliation after another, till Mrs. Hubbert hushed her husband with her hand, not telling him that, as sure as she was black, that house of theirs had washed away, leaving behind not a stick of kindling.
    For twenty days, Mrs. Hubbert’s calming hand over her husband’s mouth was enough. But then he saw the canned peaches. Coddled in their own syrup. The Red Cross delivered five hundred White Rose cans of peaches right before lunch. Guns slipped into holsters and rifles slid onto backs as people surrounded the shipment. Men brought out their pocket knives, spearing open the cans. White women licked their fingers, giddy from the pleasure. Standing next to Chess, Mr. Hubbert dropped the sandbag he was holding and walked over to where the men congregated, still wearing his hat. “A taste,” he said, his voice low but not hesitant. A man nearby heard him and stepped a pace away from the crate full of fruit.
    â€œSay what, now?” His face was pleasant, puzzled. Chess, farther away but close enough to see his father’s clenched hands, knew the man who had stepped away from the crowd; he was the last man from the boat.
    â€œI said, a taste.”
    â€œOf