Gone South Read online

they had a teacher here?” he mused.

  He found two tattered quilts in a closet. They appeared to be somewhat clean, so he took them outside and shook them. He sneezed twice, hard.

  “Might as well get at it; tomorrow is the first day of school,” he said aloud. He found a straw broom in another closet and began to sweep the floor.

  He cleaned the place as best he could. He worked an hour before it began to get dark. When he noticed the sun had gone down, he flipped the light switch and looked hopefully at the single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The light didn’t come on. He walked outside and around the house, working his way through the vegetation. He finally found a rusted circuit breaker, and flipped the handle up. It snapped into place. He walked back around the house, briars groping at his pants, and looked through the single window. The light was on, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  Jerry lay down, exhausted, on the bed as the sound of the whippoorwills, katydids, and crickets set up for their nightly serenade. A lone owl hooted out in the woods, the first of many nights he was to hear that lonely sound. He closed his eyes, and he was asleep.

  The next morning he had nothing to eat, so he made coffee and drank it black. Then he walked to the peeled-paint schoolhouse a hundred yards up the dirt road, taking his coffee cup with him. He unlocked the door and shoved it open. It squawked on its rusted hinges. The same pall of dust lay over the entire room: on the students’ desks, the floors, and the teacher’s desk in the front. He found a rag and began dusting the desks off. He finished, sat down, sipped on his now-cold cup of coffee, and stared at the rat droppings.

  At about nine thirty, a woman peered through the door.

  “Hello,” Jerry called to her.

  “Hello, are you the new school teacher?”

  “Yes, I am. Won’t you come in?”

  She came in and looked around. She appeared to be about twenty years old, and she had a baby suckling at her breast. She wore an old brown dress that sagged, and her frizzy hair was tied back with a black cloth.

  “Where are the kids?” he asked.

  “They won’t come, Mistuh, unless Miss Ella tell them to come. Can you teach me some numbers? I want to be able to go to the sto’ without some bidy countin’ fo’ me.”

  “I suppose so. What will you do with the baby?”

  “I’ll take him outside when he cries. I make sho’ he don’t disturb you.”

  “Who is this Miss Ella?” Jerry asked her.

  “She the lady who live up to the next place up the road. She kind of crazy, but everybody look up to her ’cause she be they doctor, and she help us when we got babies to birth and such.”

  “How far up the road does she live?”

  “She live ’bout a quawta mile up the road an’ back off in the woods a piece. You just go till you see a mailbox and turn lef’ an’ you come to her house.”

  “What is your name?”

  “My name be Sarah Johnson. What be yo’ name?”

  “I’m Jerry Brooks,” he said, extending his hand.

  She touched his hand lightly then pulled her own back quickly.

  Jerry made a decision. “I’m going to see Miss Ella. I’ll be back in a while if you want to wait.”

  “Ok, I wait, Mistuh Cherrybooks. I wait right heah.”

  “Jerry Brooks. The name is Jerry Brooks.” He turned to go out the door of the school.

  “Ok, Mistuh Cherrybooks,” she called after him.

  He walked up the road, thinking about the strangeness of this place. He finally came to a mailbox that bore a single ‘E’ in crude lettering. He turned up the dirt path. The undergrowth and trees almost choked the road out, but the path was well traveled. He came to a clearing, and there sat an old unpainted house. Hounds started barking and baying as he walked up to the traditional screened-in porch.

  “Hello the house!” he called.

  “What you want, Whitey?” a voice called through the door.

  “Ma’am, my name is Jerry Brooks. I’ve been sent over here to teach school.”

  An old wrinkled woman, about five foot six, appeared from the shadow of the house, walked through the porch, and swung open the crudely made screen door.

  “An’ I ’spect you want my babies,” she said matter-of-factly.

  He looked at her wrinkled face. “Sarah Johnson said you had to tell the kids to come to school, and I am here to teach them.”

  “What you gone teach them?” she asked.

  “Well…English, math, geography, whatever they need I can teach. I have a Master’s degree.”

  “Whut a Master’s degree? Whut you talkin’ ’bout?”

  “Well, Ma’am, it means I am proficient in all subjects.”

  “It do? Whut a whitey like you doin’ down heah?”

  “Ma’am, please don’t call me Whitey. My name is Jerry Brooks, and Mr. Farnsworth, in Mound, sent me here to teach school.”

  “Well, Mistuh Whitey, that old goat ain’t got nothin’ to say fo’ us, ’cept he be part of the no good gov’ment!” She said the word gov’ment in a guttural voice that sounded like a rock hitting the bottom of a well.

  Jerry began to see that this was not going to be easy. “God, please help me,” he prayed silently.

  “Ma’am, will you tell the kids to come to school tomorrow?”

  “I think about it, Whitey. Now you go on wit’ you. I will see what the bones say in my voodoo.”

  He felt cold shivers go through him as he realized the seriousness of this place. God, help me. They need you more than teaching, but I guess they need both, he thought to himself as he walked away.

  He arrived back at the school, and was surprised as he walked through the door to find that the floors had been scrubbed and mopped, and the desks cleaned of all dust and straightened. There was not a rat dropping to be seen, and even his desk was clean and neat. Sarah sat there with her sleeping baby in her arms.

  “Thank you for cleaning, Sarah,” he smiled at her. She smiled a little shyly.

  “Miss Ella gone let the kids come to school?”

  “She said she would think about it. Say, Sarah, do you think you could come down and cook a meal for me each day, or at least every other day, and clean a little bit? I could pay you ten dollars a week.”

  Her eyes lit up. “I be glad to, Mistuh Cherrybooks.”

  I’m doomed. I have been doomed to hell for my sins, he thought.

  “Tell you what, if you can spend the rest of the day cleaning for me, I’ll pay you an extra two dollars, and I’ll go buy some groceries. Then we’ll have school tomorrow.”

  If there is anyone to teach besides this woman.

  “Ok, Mistuh Cherrybooks, I do dat.”

  “How do I get to the store from here?” he asked, as she prepared to head to his little house and resume cleaning.

  “You jus’ walk around the road back toward the docks, take a right on the first road you comes to, and you walk till you finds it. That be the other side of The Island.”

  Jerry walked the way Sarah had directed him, following the narrow dirt road about two miles, until he finally came to a little store with a Coca Cola® sign nailed to the front. It was actually a house, with the front room serving as a store. An old-fashioned water chiller hummed quietly in the corner.

  “How do, Suh?” An old gray haired man came through a curtain from the living quarters.

  Jerry smiled at him, “My name is Jerry Brooks. I’m the new schoolteacher. Could I have a Coke?”

  “You don’t say? Sho’, he’p yo’self,” he said, waving at the chiller in the corner.

  Jerry opened the lid and withdrew a bottle of Coca Cola and found the opener on the corner of the box. The Coke was ice-cold, and he took three long swallows. He wiped his brow with his kerchief, and looked around the little store. There was not much on the shelves, but the place was spotless. There was a small meat counter with some meat that looked fairly fresh. An overhead fan stirred the breeze in the small room.

  “Is t
hat bologna fresh?”

  “Pretty fresh. I keeps all my meat pretty fresh. It git too old I th’o it out de do’.”

  “I’d like a pound of that sliced, and a loaf of bread.”

  Jerry began to fill a sack with canned goods off the shelf, as the old grocer began slicing the meat.

  “Is there a church on the island?” he asked as he put the sack on the counter.

  “Well, Suh, they used to be one, but the preacher he up and died, somebody set fire to the church, an’ we ain’t nevuh had one since. Let’s see, dat be about nine year ago.”

  “Do the people go to church in Mound?”

  “Oh no, Suh, most the people on dis island ain’t got the money fo’ the ferry, she don’t run on Sunday anyways.”

  “Don’t they have boats?”

  “Laws yes, Suh, dey do, but dey ain’t got no motuhs. Cain’t afo’d ’em.”

  Jerry paid for the groceries. The kind old man smiled at him. “You come back any time now, Mr. Books, an’ you be most welcome by me.”

  Jerry decided it would do no good to correct the pronunciation of his name.

  “Thank you, Sir, I will.”

  He walked the long walk back to the house. Sarah had gone by the time he got back, but the place was spotless. He made