Chapter 1: The Color Of Compassion

Saturdays were "going to town days." Many farm families couldn't afford to go into town every week because times were so hard and money was scarce. Even though gasoline was only eight cents a gallon back then there were times when eight cents was all some people had. Even before the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 parts of Oklahoma suffered through bad droughts and farmers saw a whole year's labor lie dying in the fields for lack of rain.

Still it was necessary to make the trip at least once a month if only to obtain the "necessaries" and to see other people to talk to. Our farmhouse was a little over twenty miles from town near the North Canadian River so Pa and Ma went in three or four times a month. Pa was a great one for planning things out in advance so we could nearly always take off on a Saturday and spend most of the day shopping and visiting with friends and neighbors.

One Saturday when I was about ten or so years old, I saw a colored boy knocked down and badly beaten by two much larger white boys. They taunted him and called him "dirty Nigger" and other names equally degrading. He was close to my own age, but much smaller of build. "I ain't done nuffin to youse, why you do dis? No mo! No mo! Please, no mo!"

Several adults saw what was happening and either grinned or looked away. I noticed how the ones who turned away acted kind of ashamed, yet they did nothing to stop it. The ones who watched looked like they thought it was great sport to hurt a black boy. It puzzled me, I wondered why anyone would delight in hurting others.

Right now I wish I could say I jumped in, knocked the two white bullies to the ground and saved the colored boy from getting a further beating. To my shame I didn't though. I watched and felt what they were doing was very wrong, but I was afraid to act because I did not know what I should do. I knew it was wrong to beat up on any living creature. Even dogs and horses had feelings and Pa always taught me to be kind to animals, and I knew a colored boy was more than just an animal.

I stood there and debated with myself about whether I should come to the aid of this much smaller boy so close to my own age instead of acting. I was also fearful to act and do the wrong thing. I had no fear of either of the two bullies. They both challenged me at school and picked themselves up off the ground as a result. I was worried about what other people would think if they saw me come to the aid of the colored boy. I was afraid of being branded a Nigger lover. There was my problem in a nutshell I was afraid of what people would think.

I'm sad to admit, I turned away and went back to where Pa was waiting outside the blacksmith shop for a set of heavy hinges to put on the granary door. The old ones were pretty much rusted out. I stood by him and thought about what I had just witnessed. It bothered me more than I realized. I was also ashamed of myself for not acting to help the smaller colored boy.

"What's the matter, Son?" Pa asked me. He was very sensitive about the way I felt. Sometimes it almost seemed he knew what I was thinking before I did.

"Pa," I began and stopped for a moment to collect my thoughts. "Pa, do Niggers go to heaven?" I blurted out the question and waited for an answer. Inside me, I somehow knew this was a very important question, which went far beyond asking why water boils or how high is up before it becomes down. This was a very basic human question and I was afraid I had overstepped some invisible boundary in asking it. Pa looked at me in astonishment as I waited for an answer.

Finally, just when I thought he wasn't going to answer me, Pa said, "I want to ask you a question, do colored people talk the same language we do? I don't want you to answer me right now. You think about the question and I'll ask you again for an answer when we get home.

I tried to be very "grown up" in my thinking. I was pleased at how Pa was tasking me to think up an answer all by myself. He had been doing this for well over a year, at the time all this came up about the colored boy. It always seemed as if Pa was asking my opinion and really wanted to know what I thought. "Okay, Pa, when we get home," answered him.

Virgil Watkins, a helper to the Blacksmith, interrupted and asked, "Aw hell. Just tell the boy outright as how Niggers is two legged animals not much smarter than monkeys. Why make it all so complicated? Niggers is Niggers and people is people."

"Virgil, I don't need any help in explaining things to my son, thank you." Virgil was a big, large bellied man with a big mouth. His mouth continually got him in trouble. His son, Cletus, had been one of the two bullies beating up on the colored boy. Virgil shut up, though. He didn't shut up because my Pa had a reputation as a brawler, but Pa had something called presence.

People were just naturally polite to him. Like with Virgil, even he recognized Pa was a man not to rile. Pa was living proof of the old saying, "Still waters run deep." He spoke when he had something he felt was worth saying and shut up the rest of the time and listened to what others had to say. Pa paid for the hinges and we left to go get Ma and make the trip home.

The old Model T Ford truck was too noisy for much talking on the way home, so I waited and tried to "think grown up thoughts." Ma sat placidly as she always did when we were driving. She seemed to be ever content to look out at the fields and prairie dog villages and enjoy the quiet pleasure of the moment. As soon as we arrived home I was out of the truck and carrying an armload of the foodstuffs we bought in town.

I said, "Pa, as soon as the truck is unloaded, I sure want to ask you again. I think this is real important."

"What is you want to ask your father, Davy?" Ma asked.

"It's about Niggers, Ma."

She sighed and said, "Perhaps we should all talk." Nothing else was said until we took the hundred pound bag of flour, the last item, off the truck and into the house. Ma opened the firebox on the old Monarch Range and started a blaze going. Then she put the battered black porcelain covered tin coffee pot on the stove to warm up the morning's left over coffee. She sat at the kitchen table and motioned for me to sit, also. Pa took his place at the head of the table and, as he sat down, asked me, "Well, Davy what's your answer?"

"Pa, what you asked me just don't make sense."

"What doesn't make sense, son?" Ma asked.

"Pa asked me if Niggers talked the same language as us." I was getting a little impatient at such an obvious question.

"Tell me why it don't make sense, Son." He placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. "Think before you answer."

"Pa, of course they talk the same as you and me. I heard them."

"Well, then how about monkeys? Do they talk people talk?" Pa was thinking back to what the loud mouthed Virgil Watkins said about colored people being barely smarter than monkeys.

"Of course not. Pa, you know monkeys can't talk; they just make noises." I thought a moment and said, "But parrots can talk."

Ma smiled and asked, "Davy, can you hold a conversation with a parrot?"

"No, Ma, of course not because they're animals."

"Well then," she asked, "Can you hold a conversation with a colored person?"

"Yes, I heard Pa talk to Jimbo White at the lumber yard while he was loading lumber on the truck. But what does it have to do with Niggers going to heaven?"

"Davy, the reason I and your father are letting you work this out for yourself is because you have asked a very important question. We are hoping you are old enough to work your way through it and come up with a good answer." Ma was still smiling gently as she waited, troubled look about her face.

"Well, they never come to our church, so I guess they don't go to heaven," I nodded at the logic of my reasoning.

"Davy, You remember the time we drove to Shattuck to visit Grandpa in the hospital?"

"Yes, Pa, I remember," I answered him. It had been a long, cold drive. It was also the last time I saw Grandpa Hansen alive.

"Well, you remember the white church on the edge of town where all those colored folks were outside on the lawn having a picnic?" He waited.

"Uh, well, I guess I do." I wanted to wiggle out of where this was going. "But they don't go to our church."

"Why?" Ma asked. "Why don't they go to our church, Davy?"

I thought a moment, then answered, "Because nobody will let them in?" I was starting to see where they were going with their questions. "That's why, isn't it? 'Cause nobody will let them in." I took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.

"Pa, thinking grownup thoughts is hard work." I complained to him.

"And it is also why too few grownups do it. It's just too much hard work and bother for all too many people." Ma's voice had a tart sound to it. For some reason she was getting all worked up over this.

I thought about what had been discussed. I frowned and thought some more. "Does this mean they go to heaven, too?"

"Yes, Son, as much as anybody else." Pa laughed and said, "Either all people will get a shot at goin' to heaven, or none of us will."

Suddenly it hit me, "I shouldn't say 'Nigger' any more, should I?"

"No you shouldn't. Where did you pick up using such a horrible word, anyway?" Ma looked at me curiously and waited.

"From my teacher at school, Mister Clark."

"Well, there's your second lesson for the day," Pa said. I looked at him and he continued, "I guess just because a teacher says it doesn't really make it so. You have to learn to do your own thinking and not rely on somebody else to do it for you."

I went outside and began my chores, the egg gathering first. I was also deep in thought. This time I did not try to "think grownup thoughts," but rather attempted to reason something through on my own because I felt the need to. This was what Pa and Ma were doing their best to have me do in the first place. As I realized this simple fact I felt obliged to continue my attempts figure things out. Ma was right; it is hard work to think.

I decided then and there if I ever saw them pound on a colored boy again, I would have to step in and try to stop it. I would do it, not because it was the brave thing to do, but because it would be the right thing to do, a matter of conscience. I was proud of me for making such an important decision on my own; and suddenly I felt better about myself.

We went to town the following Saturday. Sometimes it seemed we went when we didn't really need anything. Pa and I usually went over to the Backus Drug Store and sit and sip a Coke. (In those days we called them "dopes" because at one time there were small amounts of cocaine put in them.

Years earlier, about 1903, putting cocaine in soft drinks became illegal so the bottlers switched to "safer" caffeine. But the nickname "dope" lingered on. Pa would get himself a "dime dope" and me a nickel one, about half the size of his. We would sit and watch the people go by out on the sidewalk and talk about "things." There was a fair sized magazine rack and we might "look through" a magazine or two.

Comic books were not what they are today yet, but there were a couple of children's pulp publications costing a nickel. Now as long as you bought something at the soda fountain you weren't necessarily expected to buy a magazine just because you were reading it. (Want to try it today?)

Ma would leave her "men folk" and go shopping and never buy a thing. She would finger every bolt of cloth in the J C Penny's store, look at all the latest Vogue and Mc Call's dress patterns and wander around a bit and meet and talk with friends and neighbors and have the greatest time. Yet she would never spend one red cent and she would go home as happy as if she had bought a whole new wardrobe. I learned early I would never ever understand women.

We made perhaps two or three such Saturday shopping trips before I saw the two bullies beating up on the very same colored boy again. There were four grownups standing around watching and laughing at the show. It took me almost a full minute to get my resolve up and run over and yell at them, "Hey. Stop that right now." Cletus Watkins and Elmer Davis were taking turns kicking him while he was down on the ground.

Cletus looked at me and sneered, "You want some of what we're givin' this Nigger?" He figured the two of them could gang up on me.

I didn't answer. I just walked up and shoved hard on his chest and he stumbled backwards, colliding with Elmer and the two fell in a heap. I reached down, grabbed a wrist and brought the colored boy to his feet and said, "Come on." He got up with my help and we walked away. There was silence behind us. I have always hoped it meant the silence was caused by feelings of shame on the part of some of the bystanders. But I doubt it.