Gloryland by Shelton Johnson Page A

at the person walking toward me, about to brush past me. He didn’t smile back but looked at me the way you look at a stray dog.
    “Crazy nigger,” someone else said, “probably drunk.”
    This voice was older, grayer. If I didn’t act like I noticed, maybe it would be all right. Just keep walking. If I could tell someone was coming right at me, I moved out of the way. Sometimes I couldn’t tell till it was too late and I got shoved aside, violently one time, but I kept going, hands tight as stones in my pockets, sweat slipping down my back like a cold river.
    And then something happened in me, and my head, which had been pulled down for so long, was no longer stone, no longer iron. It became so light it began to pull on the rest of me, until my whole self was straight like I’d never bent over before, or ever used my knees to reach down. With my head up, I looked straight ahead and side to side, at everything there was to be seen.
    The fear didn’t matter anymore. I felt a strength in my blood, and every part of me drank it in like a plant that had gone months without water and suddenly received rain. Something in my body
was remembering the reason for blood, the river that joins the living to the dead. All the ancestors in my blood had given me the strength to raise my head and make me smile. It was they who put laughter on my lips, told me to mind my manners and walk like it was the most natural thing on earth.
    I remembered to smile, tip my hat, mind my manners as the white folks passed me by. But I couldn’t help noticing all the cracks in the wooden planks. Pretty soon, I thought, some colored man will have to fix all those cracks. He’ll seal up each one, trapping his own blackness inside with the rot, and when he’s done, he won’t be allowed back to feel his own work under his feet. Can’t use what you make, can’t touch what you hold.
    How long could this sidewalk be? I didn’t know I was breathing hard, but I started to notice how hard it was to breathe, how hot it had become even under those magnolias, the air thick and sweet like the trees were sweating molasses.
    Finally the sidewalk ran out. My knee twinged as I stepped off the whiteness into the soft give of ground, and I was all right, but I could hear people whispering even louder than the magnolias. I still had to walk back through town, but now I was afraid, really afraid. I turned and started walking along the sidewalk in the dirt, feeling my shoulders slump, my back begin to ache. Then I remembered why I was there and looked up again, into all of those faces looking down at me, those cold white faces. I looked right back and smiled up at them. It wasn’t funny, nothing was funny, but I smiled anyway.
    I got back up on the sidewalk like I had every right to, and I didn’t even say “pardon” or “excuse me.” I walked back through town and people talked, well, it was more like yelling without being loud, but I didn’t care what they were saying, cause now I was going home. I was leaving this town, their looks, their words, leaving everything behind me, and when I made it off that sidewalk again, stepping onto dirt was such a relief. It was as close to a blessing as I’ve ever felt, the feel and give of the dirt on this Sunday. It seemed to welcome me home. The same ground that held those magnolias high above me
kept me standing and walking high above the world too. I’d never felt so alive before, and all it took was stepping up just a few inches onto that sidewalk.
     
    As I went out of town on the same road, I could feel people still watching me, so I kept walking where I should. As soon as I thought I was out of sight, I headed off the road and into the shade of trees. I was still breathing hard, but my heart was slowing down. I found a place that looked like someone’s old garden, but abandoned. A few bees were droning round roses, lilacs, strawberries. It felt so peaceful and safe that I lay down in the grass and went to sleep