“Oh, don’t you worry none about that!” the man cried, warmly reassuring. “I can help you, Easter, I most certainly can. But”—he turned up a long forefinger, in gentle warning—”not for free.”
Easter opened her mouth.
“Ot!” The man interrupted, waving the finger. “Easter, Easter, Easter…” He shook his head sadly. “Now why you wanna hurt my feelings and say you ain’t got no money? Girl, you know I don’t want no trifling little money. You know just what I want.”
Easter closed her mouth. He wanted blood. He wanted life. And not a little drop or two, either—or the life of some chicken, mule, or cow. She glanced at the field of hovering angels. They were owed the precious life of one man, woman, or child. How much would he want to stop them?
The man held up two fingers. “That’s all. And you get to pick the two. It don’t have to be your Pa and Señor at all. It could be any old body.” He waved a hand outwards to the world at large. “Couple folk you ain’t even met, Easter, somewhere far away. That’d be just fine with me.”
Easter hardly fixed her mouth to answer before that still small voice spoke up. You can’t do that. Everybody is somebody’s friend, somebody’s Pa, somebody’s baby. It’d be plain dead wrong, Easter. This voice never said one word she didn’t already know, and never said anything but the God’s honest truth. No matter what, Easter wasn’t going against it, ever again.
The man made a sour little face to himself. “Tell you what then,” he said. “Here’s what we’ll do. Right now, today, I’ll call off the angels, how about that? And then you can pay me what you owe by-and-by. Do you know what the word ‘currency’ means, Easter?”
Easter shook her head.
“It means the way you pay. Now, the amount, which is the worth of two lives, stays exactly the same. But you don’t have to pay in blood, in life, if you just change the currency, see? There’s a lot you don’t know right now, Easter, but with some time, you might could learn something useful. So let me help out Señor and your Pa today, and then me and you, we’ll settle up later on after while. Now when you wanna do the settling up?”
Mostly, Easter had understood the word “later”—a sweet word! She really wouldn’t have minded some advice concerning the rest of what he’d said, but the little voice inside couldn’t tell her things she didn’t already know. Easter was six years old, and double that would make twelve. Surely that was an eternal postponement, nearabout. So far away it could hardly be expected to arrive. “When I’m twelve,” Easter said, feeling tricky and sly.
“All right,” the man said. He nodded once, sharply, as folks do when the deal is hard but fair. “Let’s shake on it.”
Though she was just a little girl, and the man all grown up, they shook hands. And the angels mellowed in the field, becoming like those she’d always known, mild and toothless, needing permission even to sweep a dusty floor, much less eat a man alive.
“I’ll be going now, Easter.” The man waved toward the field, where time stood still. “They’ll all wake up just as soon as I’m gone.” He began to get up.
Easter grabbed the man’s sleeve. “Wait!” She pointed at the ruins of two families’ livelihood. “What about the tabacky? We need it to live on!”
The man looked where Easter gestured, the field with no green whatsoever, and thoughtfully pursed his lips. “Well, as you can see, this year’s tabacky is all dead and gone now. ’Tain’t nothing to do about that. But I reckon I could set the angels back where they was, so as next year—and on after that—the tabacky will grow up fine. Want me to do that, Easter?”
“Yes!”
The man cocked his head and widened his eyes, taking an attitude of the greatest concern. “Now you show, Easter?” he asked. “Cause that’s extry on what you already owe.”
So cautioning was his tone, even a wildly desperate little girl must think twice. Easter chewed on her bottom lip. “How much extra?” she said at last.
The man’s expression went flat and mean. “Triple,” he said. “And triple that again, and might as well take that whole thing right there, and triple it about ten more times.” Now the very nice face came back. “But what you gon’ do, baby girl? You messed up your Pa’s tabacky field. Gotta fix it.” He shrugged in deepest sympathy. “You know how to do that?”
Easter had to shake her head.
“Want me to then?”
Easter hesitated… and then nodded. They shook on it.
The man snapped his fingers. From all directions came the sounds and sensations of angels flocking back to their old positions. The man stood and brushed off the seat of his gray wool trousers.
Easter looked up at him. “Who are you, Mister? Your name, I mean.”
The man smiled down. “How ’bout you just call me the banker,” he said. “Cause—whew, baby girl—you owe me a lot! Now I’ll be seeing you after while, you hear?” The man became his own shadow, and in just the way that a lamp turned up bright makes the darkness sharpen and flee, his shadow thinned out along the ground, raced away, and vanished.
“¡Madre de Díos!” Señor said, looking around at the field that had been all lush and full-grown a moment ago. He and Pa awakened to a desolation, without one remnant of the season’s crop. With winces, they felt at their heads, all cut and bruised from hailstones. Pa spun around then, to look at Easter, and she burst into tears.
These tears lasted a while.
Pa gathered her up in his arms and rushed her back to the house, but neither could Ma’am get any sense from Easter. After many hours she fell asleep, still crying, and woke after nightfall on her mother’s lap. In darkness, Ma’am sat on the porch, rocking in her chair. When she felt Easter move, Ma’am helped her sit up, and said, “Won’t you tell me what happened, baby child?” Easter tried to answer, but horror filled up her mouth and came pouring out as sobs. Just to speak about meeting that strange man was to cry with all the strength in her body. God’s grace had surely kept her safe in that man’s presence, but the power and the glory no longer stood between her and the revelation of something unspeakable. Even the memory was too terrible. Easter had a kind of fit and threw up what little was in her belly. Once more she wept to passing out.
Ma’am didn’t ask again. She and Pa left the matter alone. A hard, scuffling year followed, without the money from the cigars, and only the very last few coins from the St. Louis gold to get them through.
He was the Devil, Easter decided, and swallowed the wild tears. She decided to grow wise in her way as Pa was about tobacco, though there was nobody to teach her. The Devil wouldn’t face a fool next time.
1908
The mob went up and down Washington Street, breaking storefront windows, ransacking and setting all the black-owned business on fire. Bunch of white men shot up a barbershop and then dragged out the body of the owner, Scott Burton, to string up from a nearby tree. After that, they headed over to the residential neighborhood called the Badlands, where black folks paid high rent for slum housing. Some 12,000 whites gathered to watch the houses burn.