The Book of Harlan - Bernice L. McFadden

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Akashic Books

       For the Ancestors

      I am the man, I suffered, I was there. —Walt Whitman

       PART I

      Macon, Georgia

      Chapter 1

      No matter what you may have heard about Macon, Georgia—the majestic magnolias, gracious antebellum homes, the bright stars it produced that went on to dazzle the world—if you were Emma Robinson, bubbling with teenage angst and lucid dreaming about silver-winged sparrows gliding over a perfumed ocean, well then, Macon felt less like the promised land and more like a noose.

      Emma, the lone girl, the last child behind three brothers, was born on June 19. Juneteenth—one of the most revered days on the Negro calendar. Triply blessed with a straight nose, milky-brown complexion, and soft hair that would never have to endure the smoldering teeth of a hot comb.

      Emma Robinson lived with her family in a mint-green and white L-shaped Victorian cottage located in the highfalutin colored section of Macon known as Pleasant Hill—a district peopled with doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. Not a maid or ditch digger amongst them.

      In her home, she had many pets: a brown mutt called Peter, a calico named Samantha, and Adam and Eve, a pair of lovebirds that lived in a cage so ornate, it resembled a crown.

      The Robinson family traveled the city in a shiny black buggy, pulled by not one but two horses.

      Emma should have been christened Riley because that’s whose life she was living. Not only that, she was a natural-born pianist who took to the classics as easily as flame to paper. Emma could listen to a piece of music once and replicate it perfectly. She was so skilled that at the age of seven her minister father installed her as the lead organist in his church.

      Reverend Tenant M. Robinson was a dark-skinned, rotund man whose spirited sermons at the Cotton Way Baptist Church attracted a large and dedicated following. On Sunday mornings, those parishioners who did not have the good sense to arrive early enough to claim a seat found themselves standing in the vestibule or shoulder to shoulder against a wall.

      Emma’s mother, Louisa Robinson, was a beautiful, soft-spoken woman who had come to God late in life, but now walked in his light with grace and humility.

      On the outside, Emma didn’t seem to want for anything, but let’s be clear—she was starving on the inside. Not the coal-burning-belly type of hunger of the destitute, but the agonizing longing of a free spirit, caged.

      Emma’s best friend was Lucille Nelson, who’d been singing in the church choir for as long as Emma had been playing the organ. Their renditions of “Steal Away to Jesus,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Go Down Moses” rattled the wood-slated church and brought the congregation to their feet.

      While they loved singing about the Lord, whenever the girls could escape their parents’ watchful eyes, they headed down to the juke joint on Ocmulgee River. There, hidden in the tall grass, they spied on those shaking, shimmying sinners who raised glasses of gut liquor to the very music Emma’s father vehemently railed against.

      “The blues promotes the devil’s glee,” he growled from the pulpit, “encouraging infidelity and lawlessness!”

      Sometimes, when Lucille was washing dishes and passing them off to her mother Minnie to dry, those sinful songs found there way onto her tongue.

      Minnie would cock her head and ask, “Where’d you hear that from?”

      And Lucille would just laugh, grab Minnie’s soapy hands, and dance her around the kitchen.

      Chapter 2

      In 1915, when the girls were still just teenagers, Lucille went out for and won a bit part in a local musical. On opening night, she walked onto the stage of the Douglass Theatre, barely whispered her one line—“I see a rainbow”—and then belted out a song that brought the house down.

      Leonard Harper, the founder of the Leonard Harper Minstrel Stock Company, happened to be there that night. By the time Lucille joined the other actors onstage for a final bow, Harper had already located her parents. When the curtain fell, the ink on the contract he had them sign was still damp.

      Weeks later, Harper whisked Lucille off on a seven-month tour of the American South. When she returned home to Macon, the old year was dead, and Lucille was a brand-new woman.

      When Emma heard that Lucille was back in town, she immediately rushed over to see her, sweeping into the parlor like a gale. But Emma lost all her bluster when her eyes collided with Lucille’s rouged cheeks, shiny marcelled hair, and painted lips.

      “Lu-Lucille?”

      “Hey, Em.” Lucille strolled toward her with newly unshackled hips swaying like the screen door of a whorehouse.

      “Lucille?” Emma muttered again as she took a cautious backward step.

      Lucille wrapped her arms around Emma’s shoulders, smothering her in cinnamon-and-rose-scented perfume. “I missed you so much.”

      “Me . . . me too,” Emma stammered in response, as she broke the embrace. “You look different.”

      “Yeah, I guess.” Lucille shrugged. “How you been?”

      Emma couldn’t stop staring. “Okay.”

      “That’s good.” Lucille sauntered over to the piano, sat down, and skipped her fingers over the black and white keys. “You still go down to the river on Saturday afternoons?”

      “Nah. They closed that juke joint down.”

      Lucille’s eyebrows arched. “Was that your daddy’s doing?”

      Now it was Emma’s turn to shrug her shoulders.

      “Oh, that’s awful,” Lucille huffed. “That place was the one good thing about this town.”

      The statement stabbed at Emma’s heart. They were best friends so shouldn’t she be the one good thing about this town?

      Lucille scratched her cheek. “So you just gonna stand there gawking at me?”

      “Oh, please,” Emma smirked, “like you something to look at.” She plopped down onto the bench beside Lucille. With her ponytail and plain cotton frock, Emma felt dull and dreary next to the shiny new Lucille. “I swear,” she started out of nowhere, “if I have to listen to one more rag, I’m going to lose my mind.”

      Lucille chuckled. “Ragtime ain’t so bad.”

      “It is when that’s all there is.”

      “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

      Emma’s fingers joined Lucille’s, and together they tapped out a tune.

      “Well, what are you waiting for?” Emma said coolly. “Tell me all about it.”

      Lucille happily shared about the hypnotic roll of the bus, the mystery of falling asleep under a moon in one town and waking to the sun in another, and the thrill of standing before an audience of strangers shouting her name, begging her to sing just one more song.

      She told Emma about Bill Hegamin, the man who wouldn’t have given her the time of day had their paths converged in Macon. But luckily for her, their destinies collided in Jacksonville, Florida, when most of the old Lucille had flaked away along the highways and byways that crisscrossed the Southern states.

      “Now,” she concluded with a blushing smile, “he say he wanna give me all the time of day and night.”

      Emma nearly choked on the bile of jealousy rising in her throat.

      Chapter 3

      In 1916, Sam Elliott arrived

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