In God's Country

Another chapter from CROSSING THATCHER'S CREEK adapted to short story

Meredith pushed her son in tire swing and got it to spinning.

Six-year-old Tony shrieked delight as he rose and fell at the end of the rope. “Higher, Mama. Spin me higher.”

“I think that’s high enough. I don’t want you falling.” She reached out to push again. April in Virginia felt a whole lot warmer than it ever did in Detroit, nice. And the people here in Guilford act so friendly. The Sunday afternoon felt good, like everything finally fit together.

“I won’t. I won’t fall.” The old tire pendulated from the ancient oak that shaded the back yard. Tony’s joyful smile caught Meredith aback.

He looks just like Dan. That smile, the bright eyes. The same ebony skin and kinky-unruly hair that’s best trimmed very short.

She and Dan had met in 1987, teaching third grade at the same Detroit elementary school, both fresh out of college. They had laughed over their families being so similar: schoolteacher mothers and fathers who worked the line building cars. Doug Walker, Dan’s dad at Chrysler and Anthony Washington, Meredith’s at GM. Dan’s people had left South Carolina in the 40s, and Meredith’s had left Virginia in the early 50s to take good jobs building cars.

Two years later, she and Dan married. That led to a lot of good-natured ribbing between in-laws Anthony Washington and Doug Walker over who made the better car, and both fathers teased Dan over buying a new Honda after the marriage.

After another two years, little Tony arrived, and she and Dan found a new, larger apartment to have space for the baby. The neighborhood looked nice enough in daylight with plenty of trees and a playground, but after dark, the animals came out. At least two crack houses did a steady business on the block, and many a good night’s sleep went spoiled by gunfire.

Her parents had seen the same transformation in their own neighborhood. What was once a solid blue-collar community had become a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes. More than once, Dad complained about chasing the hookers away from the corner, telling them to set up shop some place else. Families live here.

They always came back, and Dad stopped chasing the prostitutes away from the corner when their pimp confronted him with a pistol large enough to knock holes in a battleship. Meredith recalled when she first saw iron bars over the windows of her childhood home. Dad had put them on after coming home to find somebody had broken in. The place that nurtured her as a child and saw her off to college now looked like a jail.

Dan’s parents as well as Meredith’s talked about how Detroit had changed over the years into something they didn’t recognize any more. Once upon a time, the city was a place of opportunity, good jobs and good people. Now half the jobs had gone offshore and too many of the people left behind had taken to crime as a career choice.

Dad and Mom had looked at the suburbs but never moved. They said that those neighborhoods that were affordable came across as sterile places where people didn’t know their neighbors, didn’t talk with each other over back fences or across the front porches. It would take an hour or more just to travel to work each day in the factory or the schoolhouse.

She and Dan faced the same choices with a smaller budget and fewer choices. One morning, as they waited at the bus stop, Meredith realized that she had left a stack of graded papers on the breakfast table. Over Dan’s objections that he could watch the baby, she took little Tony with her back to the apartment. A young man sat slouched on the bus stop bench, a large boom box on his shoulder thumping obscene rap lyrics as he swayed his head in time to the rhythm, gold chains around his neck undulating like snakes. She reasoned that four-year-old Tony could use a break from music like that.

Meredith heard the gunshots from the apartment’s kitchen, and her stomach dropped to her feet. By the time she rushed back to street level sirens had begun to wail in the background, and she covered little Tony’s eyes. The young man with the boom box and gold chains must have had enemies. The drive-by shooters had blasted his body into a bloody puddle. Buckshot and bullets had also caught three others, bystanders. Dan had been standing behind the man on the bench. He never had a chance.

After the funeral, she and Tony moved in with her parents, the apartment holding too many bad memories and the neighborhood harboring too many criminals. Losing Dan had left her feeling adrift and incomplete, but she had to be strong for Tony. Dad and Mom held a kitchen table conference and determined that both of them had put in enough years at General Motors and the Detroit Public School system to qualify for retirement. They went over this with Meredith and the house went up for sale that week.

“Where are we going?” Meredith asked when her parents told her that all four would be moving away from Detroit.

“Home, child,” Dad replied.

Meredith looked at her parents, then at the inside of the house in Detroit that had always been her home. She knew no other place. “Where?”

“Guilford.” Mom smoothed Meredith’s hair. “In Virginia. That’s where our people came from, and it’s time to go back.”

Meredith looked at her mother and father again. She didn’t know Guilford from the far side of the moon.

“We are leaving Detroit.” Mom took Meredith’s hands. “There’s nothing here for us.”

“Guilford’s a better place. Safe,” Dad said. “No crackheads. Just a nice, small town.”

“What about Dan’s parents? Dave and Tricia?” Meredith struggled to digest all this new information. The loss was just as bad for them, and now move so far away?

“They’re retiring and moving, too.”

“South Carolina.” Mom added. “That’s not too far from Virginia.”

“We are quitting Detroit.” Dad looked at the burglar bars over the window. “And we’ll never come back.”

A warm breeze rustled leaves in the oak tree and tugged at Meredith’s hair. She raised one hand to push it back in place as she spun Tony in the tire swing.

“Higher, Mama.” Tony giggled as the tire arced upward.

The screen door slapped shut on its spring and Dad’s voice called, “Meredith, phone for you.”

She stepped away from the swing to the back porch and opened the screen door to enter the kitchen and reach for the wall phone. Something last-minute for school tomorrow? She pressed the receiver to her ear. “Hello.”

“Hi, it’s Norm.” The familiar voice earlier that Sunday, and several Sundays before that triggered a warm feeling of attention and affection. A smile tugged at her cheeks.

“Instead of us taking coffee and cookies after church, how about I treat you to a real dinner at the Old Mill Restaurant this Friday?”

She paused and looked at her left hand, where once she wore a wedding band. It had been two years. Mom had told her it was time to start dating again, because Dan wanted her to be happy.

“I mean if you don’t like the Old Mill Restaurant, we can always try McDonalds or Dairy Queen.” Norm’s smile somehow transmitted over the telephone line.

“The Old Mill is perfect.” She smiled into the receiver. “You took me by surprise.” Norm Harris had taken over the family’s mortuary business from his father, Norman Sr, and he had been doing well, modernizing the funeral home and organizing celebrations of life as alternatives to old-school funerals. He wore a tailored charcoal suit to church like a second skin, where Dan felt like he was in a costume. Norm looked like was born wearing a silk necktie. “What time Friday?”

“I defer to the lady.” Norm had a voice for late night FM radio.

“Come by around six, and let’s eat at 6:30. Isn’t that when the rich people eat?” She coiled the phone cord around her finger.

“I don’t know. I’m not rich.” Again the smile coming over the line.

“Six lets me get Tony his supper before we go.”

“Makes sense. How’s your little man doing?”

Meredith looked out the kitchen window at the back yard. Dad had taken over pushing Tony, and her son was swinging and spinning almost as high as the old oak tree. “My dad’s pushing him on the swing, high enough to throw out his back.”

“It’s Grandpa’s job to spoil him. I’d like to take a turn soon myself.”

Meredith turned form the window. “I’ll introduce you two soon enough.” Maybe this Friday. Norm had been the perfect gentleman with her, but everything had been at church. She wanted to be careful about boyfriends, especially concerning Tony, who still cried occasionally about his late father.

“Fine, it’s your call, and I can wait. A 6:30 reservation might leave us enough time for dancing afterwards.” Again, the smile.

“Dancing? I haven’t gone dancing in ages.” Meredith smiled. The last time was with Dan at their last anniversary. She missed moving to the music.

“I guess you’re overdue.”

“Where are we going dancing in Guilford?” Guilford was a lot friendlier than Detroit, much safer, but also smaller, no nightclubs.

“I know a place just past the Wal-Mart. Some old friends like to jam there. You OK with live music?” Norm spoke differently from Dan, always confident. He knew things.

They wrapped up the conversation and Meredith left her hand on the receiver after hanging up, smiling. It had been such a long time, and she had forgotten how good it felt to have a man’s attention, a man who wanted to do nice things for her. She let go of the telephone and pushed open the screen door to the back porch.

Meredith stepped outside, still smiling. Her mother sat knitting on the porch in a lawn chair, bifocals perched on her nose. “Can you and Dad babysit Tony this Friday?”

Mom finished knitting the row she had started. “Of course.”

“Norm asked me out to dinner.” She sat in the lawn chair next to her mother, hands between her knees. “It’s been ages since I was out on a date.”

“He’s a nice enough man, and you’ve been on dates before.” Mom reached out to pat her hands. “You’ll have a fun time.”

Meredith looked at her feet. “It’s just that this is the first date since Dan.” Her smile faded and she looked again at her left hand, rubbing her ring finger.

“Dan would want you to be happy, so go and have a fun time. Norm Harris is a good man, and he comes from good people. I know his father.” Mom set her knitting in her lap.

Meredith’s smile returned. “It’s funny how you know all these people in Guilford after living in Detroit.” She wondered about this secret world of Guilford that her parents didn’t speak of much until now.

“Sugar, our people have lived here since the first English settlers. Those years in Detroit were just a detour. Your daddy and I have friends here that we’ve known since grade school. We’ve always been writing letters back and forth.”

“I remember you talking about the old days when I was little, but it wasn’t always happy.” Meredith leaned back into the chair and relaxed. She had faded memories of old, unhappy stories that didn’t match what she experienced so far in Guilford. “You had a reason for moving to Detroit.”

Mom picked up her knitting and examined a row. “Back in ‘53 Jim Crow ruled these parts and Detroit had good jobs for everybody. When your daddy got back from the war, he decided to make something of himself. We wanted better than sharecropping or the mill, so he went to the University of Chicago on the GI Bill. After that, we moved to Detroit, where the work was.” She adjusted her glasses and tugged at a stitch.

Meredith shook her head. “I can’t believe it was that way.” She tried to picture the situation, her parents living what the history books reported.

“I’ll show you where they had the separate drinking fountain for colored folk at the courthouse.” Mom resumed knitting the next row. “You know how we had separate colored schools, but none of that was in Detroit, and so we moved north.”

“The Great Migration.” Meredith nodded. She knew all about that history but never considered that her parents were part of it.

Mom smiled. “In Detroit, we had good neighbors and block parties, and we felt like family. It was a good place, and maybe you were too young to remember much of that. Somewhere in the 70s and 80s the city turned ugly. The jobs went away and people turned mean. Crime, gangs, drugs.” Mom looked at Meredith. “And don’t get me started on rap music.”

Meredith smiled. “Can’t stand it myself.” She liked music with melody, something to sing, not chant.

“Detroit got to be like living in a war zone. I wish we had thought to move back sooner, before – “ She cut herself off. “You know.”

“Yes.” Meredith looked down at her hands. Detroit looked too much like war torn Sarajevo.

“Living under Jim Crow was bad, but I never thought I’d see the day when black people would make careers out of hurting their brothers in Detroit.” Mom shook her head. “Gangs, prostitution, peddling dope, and crack is the worst.” She held a finger up. “You know, crack killed more black people than the Klan. It makes me mad.”

“Yes, Mama.” Meredith nodded. “Me, too.” She thought about that last day at the bus stop, then pushed it out of her mind, too sad. “I like it here.” she looked across the back yard and the neighboring houses. “I just can’t imagine how it was before you and Dad left.”

“Sometimes it’s hard for me, too.” Mom reached for a ball of yarn. “You can thank Dr King and those who came after him for that.” She leaned back in her chair and gathered her thoughts. “The schools down here finally integrated in ‘66, and by the 70s, things had changed a lot for the better. I think the bicentennial had something to do with it, putting attention on what makes America good.”

“Why did Detroit turn bad?” Meredith held her arms out as if to encompass the whole neighborhood. This side of Guilford looked and felt the opposite of what she lived in Detroit. “Here, I can walk down the street and feel safe. People smile and wave at me, complete strangers.” She brought her arms down to her lap. “That never happened in Detroit.” At first, the friendliness had freaked her out.

“I wish I knew.” Mom nodded. “But now you understand why we came back.”

“Dad’s always calling Guilford ‘God’s country,’ like it’s the promised land.” She remembered his first using the term when he installed the burglar bars after the break-in four years ago. She knew that some of her Guilford colleagues at the school where she taught second grade didn’t lock their doors at night. No need.

“In its own way it is.” Mom pressed her finger to her lower lip. “Our roots run very deep here. Remind me to take you to the cemetery some time and introduce you to your ancestors.” A sad smile spread her lips, and she touched her daughter’s hand. “There’s more than four generations of our people there in the graveyard behind the church.”

“Four?” Meredith tried to calculate how many years that represented.

Mom peered over her glasses at Meredith. “There’s more if we can find the slave cemeteries that belonged to the MacKenzie and Hensley plantations.”

This was the first Meredith heard of ancestors buried in slave cemeteries.

“I told you that our roots run deep here.” Mom looked up at the columns supporting the porch roof. “Didn’t I tell you that I used to play on this porch when I was Tony’s age?
“No.” Meredith looked around, and she wanted to know what other surprises Mom had.

“This house used to belong to my great aunt.” She waved a hand at the wall behind them. “Before the two additions and expansions. My sister and I played jacks in the dirt right there.” She pointed at an area near the wooden steps to the back door, now covered by the slab of concrete that made up the porch floor.

Meredith’s eyes followed her mother’s finger to gaze at the porch floor. Her mind tried to rewind time, going back sixty years. “Wow.”

“That’s why I hounded your daddy to buy this house. He grew up two blocks over that way.” She pointed to her right. “I’ll walk you around to show you the house they bought when your father was about eleven.” She paused to smile. “They sure were proud to own a piece of land after sharecropping.”

“Sharecroppers?” Meredith’s eyes widened. Sharecropping belonged to the 1880s, and it persisted to the 30s? And affected her grandparents?

Mom picked up her knitting and resumed working the needles. “But not for long. Your Grandpa Washington took a job at the mill and moved to town. That was long before your dad was born. Both he and your grandma worked there, and they kept their jobs through the Great Depression, so you know they must have worked hard.”

Meredith looked across the yard at her father as he pushed Tony on the tire swing. She turned her head to Mom. “And Grandpa and Grandma MacKenzie?”

“My father also worked at the mill, but he lost his job in 1930. He scraped by with selling vegetables at the market until things got better. My mother took in laundry for white people in town.”

Meredith stared at the oak tree in the yard, absorbing and digesting all this new information.

“Our people have lived in this part of Virginia for over three hundred years.” She worked yarn around her extended finger and pulled it taut. “Longer than a lot of the white families.”

“Three hundred years?” Meredith drew out each syllable, a number that high took time to absorb.

“You think only Alex Haley took the time to look up his ancestors?” Mom peered over her glasses at Meredith. “I did a little looking up myself. Our people started out as slaves on the MacKenzie plantation, back before Williamsburg was the capital, planting tobacco and wheat.”

“How did you find that out?” Meredith asked. Mom must have been doing a lot of detective work, and how did she know so much?

“At the library for starters.” Mom smiled. “Amazing what I found there.” She smiled again and looped another length of yarn around her finger, then worked it with the needles. “I turned up a lot of material on the Internet, university sites and places like that.” She glanced at her daughter. “University of Virginia, and UNC Chapel Hill have whole schools dedicated to genealogy.”

Meredith rested her chin on her hand. She had no idea Mom was doing research like that during her many trips to the library, doing a lot more than reading picture books to kindergartners. “I didn’t know you were doing that.”

Mom nodded and met Meredith’s eyes. “Like I’ve been telling you, our roots run deep in these parts, and I wanted to know how deep.”

“Higher, Grandpa. Swing me higher.” Tony’s voice carried across the yard. Meredith and her mother looked up to see Anthony pushing the tire swing so high that he had to stretch both arms over his head to grab it as the rope rose to a near horizontal position. The boy giggled with pure joy as the tire swing rose.

“I think that’s high enough, Dad.” Meredith rose to her feet.

Dad caught the swing and lowered it halfway before pushing.

“Higher, Grandpa, higher.”

He shook his head. “We better mind your mother, or we’ll both be in big trouble.” He turned to the porch. “Isn’t that right?”

“Right.” Meredith settled back into her chair.

Mom tipped her head toward Dad. “Took me years to train him to mind me like that.”

More Guilford stories. . .