Part 27 (1/2)

”Dey's burnin' de Meth'dis' chu'ch down de street.”

”Police?”

”Won't he'p none.”

One of the men spoke up. ”Mah boss, Mistus Rylan, he tole me ef trouble ever come, to git in his cellar an' he'd pertec' me. We kin go 'cross lot. You all go on; I'm gwine to go by for Mamie an' de folks upstairs.”

Stella rounded up the four larger children, took ”Babe” on her arm, and steered Tom and two others of the committee across back fences, and obliquely through hot July fields of st.u.r.dy smartweed and brown-dusted gra.s.s. As they came out of an alley, just a block away from the Rylan back gate, they saw a moving flood of figures down the street two blocks away. The thinned tumult reached them. They sneaked across, running; Stella waved her bruised hand spasmodically. ”Lawd, Lawd!”

Mrs. Rylan came at once in answer to her cook's excited message. ”Gracie will show you the way to the cellar. I hope you'll be safe there. My husband phoned me that the rioting was serious.”

In the underground dimness Stella appropriated for her sobered flock a garden bench, its back broken, standing on end in one corner. Tom's coat, spread in a barred chicken crate, made a pallet for ”Babe.”

”Keep mah place fuh me, Diany,” she whispered fiercely. She helped the new arrivals get fixed on barrel tops, soap boxes, a rickety wheelbarrow, even an old set of bed springs tucked away in the darkest corner.

”Maw, will dey git us heah?” the children repeated in panicky insistence.

Stella smelled again the acrid liniment which had come through the crude bandage. ”Ain' yo' pappy heah? Ain' he said de Lawd gwineter pertec' us?

An' ain' de white man sont us heah? You shet up 'n' go ter sleep.”

There were more than twenty in the big cellar finally; but the bacon and greens held out, and the ominous rioting only once howled through the street just outside.

Long after the uproar had quieted, Tom rose reverently from his cramped knees, stained by the lime on the floor. ”Dar now! Ain't de Lawd done shelter' his own?”

”Amen, brudder! Amen!”

The third morning, Gracie came down with a lamp, followed by Mr. Rylan.

”It's safe now,” he announced. ”The police are at last keeping order....

You can go home.”

”De Lawd bless you, suh, an' yo' chillun an' all yo' folkses. De Lawd pertec' you----”

He brushed aside their tearful grat.i.tude. ”I was only too glad I had the chance,” he said simply.

They stumbled into the sunlight, squinting with weakened eyes.

”I thought I'd die in dat place,” one young woman chattered.

”You'd a died ef you wuzn't dar,” an older one corrected her.

They started back across the parched fields. One by one they separated, until only the Coles and another family were left. When they came to their block, a hopeless depression gripped them. The packed row of houses across the street was a gray patch of ashes, where an occasional smoke-mist still climbed. Their own house was half-wrecked: panes broken, furniture hacked wantonly, the house torn and trampled as if a cyclone had driven through it. Tom's favorite new Bible, given by his congregation, his few gift books, were wrenched apart and scattered about the yard. The china and pans had been smashed. On the sidewalk was a charred pile of clothes; Ed's new suit, Babe's little pink shoes, one end of a sheet Miss' Land had given Stella last Christmas.... Nothing was as it had been.

On the top kitchen shelf, hidden in h.o.a.rded newspapers, Tom discovered the tattered old family Bible he had bought from an agent just after the marriage. G.o.d had protected His word....

There were no negroes to be seen on the street. Babe gooed uncertainly, Diana, who was only ten, cried her tears into the gingham slip of the baby she was holding. The boys looked on in simple wonder, unable to comprehend how things could change so.

An old negro hobbled by on a stick. ”Whar's everybody, Brudder Jinkins?”

”Mos'ly driv' away. Some done lef' town fer good. Reckon Ah'se goin'

back to Memphis. Dey doan' have no riots dar.”