“Harry Corbett was an old Shawnee chief,” he says. “This is Shawnee hair.”
Shawnee? The Harry Corbett that Ruth told me about yesterday was Cherokee. She was gushing about her being a Cherokee princess since she was a descendant of Cherokee blue blood in the form of the same Mr. Corbett. Her eyes were shining with pride and her ample body was gently rocking Mahlon Quigley’s swing on which we were both relaxing. Although I don’t know if I can accurately call it relaxing on her part since her hands were quite busy. She was crocheting what she called a Navajo blanket, the bulk of which was resting on her knees in its deep blue, light blue, white and cream colors.
Obed had remarked before he left for Stewart that I had done wonders for his mama because he had never seen her so relaxed. She was always working herself to death and yelling at everybody and didn’t have time for anybody. Yet there she was…sitting with me on the porch sipping root beer and occasionally forgetting about the heavy blanket to focus on giving me an education about her world and its politics.
From time to time she reached for red pieces of some delicacy from the pocket of her sweat shirt and threw them into her mouth. She closed her eyes as the pieces melted in her mouth. Her teeth were red as a result. She told me she wouldn’t share the delicacy with me because I would not like it. It was an acquired taste, I presumed. It was fired shale — she referred to it as red slate rock — that they used to eat as kids and pretended that they were bleeding because their tongues were red. She had been addicted to it from childhood. It was her only vice. It was a habit her people learned from slavery. Slaves ate mud to keep the hunger pangs away. They fired or baked it.
“It’s a tradition now of some folks. When I came from Alabama in a bus a woman and her little daughter were chewing on little pieces of baked mud.”
Down the narrow blacktop a number of men and women were all walking in the same direction. Big mothers in sweat suits and lean willowy fathers in faded jeans and colorful check shirts. Young men and women who were fast approaching the heaviness of the mothers. They walked unhurriedly, some in couples and others singly.
“This is a neighborhood of color,” said Ruth, her arms making a grand sweep in the direction of her passing neighbors. I marveled at the fact that people here all had similar features, as if they belonged to one family.
“They’re all related, that’s why,” she said. “There’s very few people who ain’t my relations.”
“And you all have strong Native American features,” I observed.
“Ain’t no pure Indians no more. Them pure Indians was all bred out. Like whites will all be bred out. That’s what scares them most. They gonna be bred out and everyone in the world will look like us.”
The people of Kilvert were going to vote at the firehouse in Stewart, she told me. Democratic Party sympathizers had organized a bus to ferry those who did not have cars to the polling station because they were scraping around for every little vote they could get for John Kerry, their presidential candidate. She herself had voted quite early in the morning, which was why she could now relax with me and enjoy a well-earned drink. It was Election Day and she was not going to desecrate it by working, except of course cooking dinner for her family. Just like Sunday. Although on Sundays she did sneak in some quilting in the afternoons when she thought God was not looking. Even as she was saying all this she continued with her crocheting. Perhaps she does not consider it work.
Unlike her neighbors, who were surely going to vote for the Democrats, she voted for George W. Bush. And did I know why she voted for George W. Bush? Because George W. Bush was a man of God. He got his messages direct from God. God’s truth was revealed only through him. And did I know again why she voted for George W. Bush?
“Because the GOP freed them slaves!” she said with a triumphant flourish.
And none of the people of Kilvert knew that. They had all bought into the lies propagated every day by the liberal media. That was why they were out in droves voting for the Democratic Party candidate. The “old-timers” knew the truth, which was why the Republican Party was the party of “them colored folks.” The phrase jolted me a bit because I had only seen it in old books and didn’t know that it was still in use…like the old-time “high-yella-nigger” that was dropped at the dinner table that first evening. The “old-timers” knew what the Kilvert folks didn’t know, that the Democrats fought a whole Civil War in order to keep “them colored folks” as slaves and then committed lots of atrocities during that war. They captured and tortured and slew the revered Harry Corbett to boot. They raped and pillaged and killed indiscriminately. The Civil War hero certainly did not sacrifice his life so that today his descendants should vote for people who were responsible for his murder.
“I tell them every day, if it was not for the GOP you’d all be slaves today,” she said, looking at them pityingly as their numbers increased toward the three-way stop where they would catch the bus.
Ruth looked at me as if she expected me to say something, or perhaps ask a question. She saw my befuddled look and decided to ask the question herself: did I know why “them colored folks” turned their backs on the GOP even though it had freed them from slavery?
“Franklin D. Roosevelt!” she provided the instant answer. “He was a cripple in a wheelchair. He gave them poor people programs. Colored folks got lotsa programs ’cause they was poor. Roosevelt bought them colored folks with food from them Republicans.”
She was fuming as if she was talking of some treachery that happened only yesterday against her own children.
Ruth was a lone voice because everyone else in the village, including members of her own family, was on the opposite side. She saw a political virgin in me, someone who could be groomed and won over to the side of sanity. A prospective ally in the political battlefields of her dinner table and living room.
“You being from Africa and all,” she said, “you gotta love George W. Bush. He give lotsa money to Africa. You know why he give lotsa money to Africa? ’Cause America owes Africa plenty for slavery.”
It was interesting to see how animated she got when she talked about these matters. I was affording her a captive audience, a luxury she never has because no one in her family seems to share her obsession with politics, let alone her political perspective. I was also a receptive audience and did not disagree on any issue as Obed often did — if only to annoy her. Of course, even if I disagreed on any point I would not have the heart to say so. I would not want to hurt her feelings by being a disagreeable guest. She certainly has welcomed me with open arms into her family. Hers is the generosity of the poor. Nowhere in the well-to-do sectors of society would a stranger be welcomed so warmly…without even knowing anything about him.
On my second day here she allocated me the root cellar under the wrap-around porch to sleep in — a big room with the door opening to the outside on the brick portion of the building. This is where she keeps her preserved food. My single bed is surrounded by walls of shelves laden with bottles of sauces and relishes that she has made herself. A salted and smoked side of a hog hangs from sharp hooks on the ceiling. She actually prepared the room herself, sweeping and dusting everything in sight, including the carcass. At the same time she kept on apologizing for putting me up in a cellar: it was not the most comfortable room in the world because of its generous ventilation so that her meat would not spoil. People did not normally keep meat in their cellars, she explained — cured or not cured it would spoil because of the heat and humidity. But her cellar was different. It stayed cool because of the gaps between some rows of bricks which allowed free circulation of air. It was all due to Mr. Quigley’s inventive mind, she beamed proudly. It was a brilliant feat to have a dry cellar in Kilvert, which is low-lying and wet. Of course in winter no one can sleep here. If the smell of smoke from the meat was too overpowering at night I must not hesitate to tell her in the morning. She would transfer either me or the meat to the attic. She could be preparing the attic for me right away but it would take a lot of work and time since it was crammed with Obed’s and Mahlon’s junk and there was hardly room to breathe there.