did. He was in the Army for three years and went two years to N.C. State to study soil science, which doesn’t quite sound like nuclear physics, and he’s trying to get his degree one course at a time at the local college. He doesn’t teach agriculture in the summer, though. How the hell could you fail agriculture? He’s a driver’s ed teacher in summer school. Good. Maybe I can somehow manage to get a driver’s license. I’m sixteen in August, but it’ll be fall semester before I can take the classes in Montclair. I’m a little leery, though, of a guy who teaches ag but doesn’t own any land and who teaches driver’s ed but has a car that’s older than he is.
Granddaddy walks out with me, being careful to step across the rusty pipe sticking out of the ground that carries the sink water down to the grease trap by the chicken yard. He has to think about every step, it seems like. He speaks to Kenny, who doesn’t get out or cut the engine, and I walk around to the other side to get in. The car’s a beauty, must be about twenty-five years old, I guess, and I’m not too far off. He tells me it’s a 1965 Impala. It’s like white witha red stripe, new red upholstery on the inside, neat as a pin.
“Your granddaddy is a good old man,” he says to me as we’re heading back out the rut road.
“He speaks well of you,” I say, not sure how this guy and I are going to get along. He’s a funny-looking dude. He’s got this dark skin, but he’s not black. Mom said the people who worked as sharecroppers for her family were Lumbees, some kind of Indians. Whatever that is, Kenny must be one. His hair is kind of curly and cut real short. He’s wearing a blue shirt and tie, but the shirt’s short-sleeve, and I can see the tip of a snake that’s tattooed below his right shoulder. He’s got some hillbilly music on the radio, and there’s a pack of Lucky Strikes on the dash, less the one he’s smoking like they’re about to repeal them.
We don’t talk much. When we get to the high school, I see that someone has stolen the last “h” off Sandy Heath so that the name is Sandy Heat High School. Seems more appropriate. Kenny takes me to the principal’s office, where I give them the general details, my version, of how I came to be taking summer school English in Geddie, North Carolina. They tell me they’ll have to have my records from Montclair, which I promise I’ll have sent, but they’re willing to let me start the English course since Granddaddy is my guardian for the summer. Things seem to be a little looser down here. I just hope I can get somebody to send my records.
I’ve got my textbook, which is more like the one I had in the ninth grade in Montclair. And, praise Jesus, we are going to have
Lord Jim
for required reading. Piece of cake. I read it two years ago.
My classmates, though, are something else. There are eighteen of us in the class, and fifteen of the others are black.Three of them are named Geddie. I try to start a conversation with the guy right across from me, guy named Winfrey Geddie who’s blacker than the black people ever get up where we live. I tell him I’m from Virginia and he says, “I’m from Old Geddie,” which, apparently, passes for high humor around here. I told him my great-grandmother’s name was Geddie. “Maybe you and me is related, then,” he says, smiling out of one corner of his mouth. “Maybe I’m the black sheep of the family.”
I want to tell him I’m not used to living places where all the white people used to own all the black people, but somehow I sense that this would not be appropriate. He does a low five with one of the other Geddies sitting in front of him, and I shut up.
The class itself is a bad joke. Most of these kids apparently have just landed here from Pluto and are being exposed to English for the first time. Mrs. Sessoms, who must be like a year out of college, is basically happy if nobody walks out in the middle of class or calls her
Granddaddy walks out with me, being careful to step across the rusty pipe sticking out of the ground that carries the sink water down to the grease trap by the chicken yard. He has to think about every step, it seems like. He speaks to Kenny, who doesn’t get out or cut the engine, and I walk around to the other side to get in. The car’s a beauty, must be about twenty-five years old, I guess, and I’m not too far off. He tells me it’s a 1965 Impala. It’s like white witha red stripe, new red upholstery on the inside, neat as a pin.
“Your granddaddy is a good old man,” he says to me as we’re heading back out the rut road.
“He speaks well of you,” I say, not sure how this guy and I are going to get along. He’s a funny-looking dude. He’s got this dark skin, but he’s not black. Mom said the people who worked as sharecroppers for her family were Lumbees, some kind of Indians. Whatever that is, Kenny must be one. His hair is kind of curly and cut real short. He’s wearing a blue shirt and tie, but the shirt’s short-sleeve, and I can see the tip of a snake that’s tattooed below his right shoulder. He’s got some hillbilly music on the radio, and there’s a pack of Lucky Strikes on the dash, less the one he’s smoking like they’re about to repeal them.
We don’t talk much. When we get to the high school, I see that someone has stolen the last “h” off Sandy Heath so that the name is Sandy Heat High School. Seems more appropriate. Kenny takes me to the principal’s office, where I give them the general details, my version, of how I came to be taking summer school English in Geddie, North Carolina. They tell me they’ll have to have my records from Montclair, which I promise I’ll have sent, but they’re willing to let me start the English course since Granddaddy is my guardian for the summer. Things seem to be a little looser down here. I just hope I can get somebody to send my records.
I’ve got my textbook, which is more like the one I had in the ninth grade in Montclair. And, praise Jesus, we are going to have
Lord Jim
for required reading. Piece of cake. I read it two years ago.
My classmates, though, are something else. There are eighteen of us in the class, and fifteen of the others are black.Three of them are named Geddie. I try to start a conversation with the guy right across from me, guy named Winfrey Geddie who’s blacker than the black people ever get up where we live. I tell him I’m from Virginia and he says, “I’m from Old Geddie,” which, apparently, passes for high humor around here. I told him my great-grandmother’s name was Geddie. “Maybe you and me is related, then,” he says, smiling out of one corner of his mouth. “Maybe I’m the black sheep of the family.”
I want to tell him I’m not used to living places where all the white people used to own all the black people, but somehow I sense that this would not be appropriate. He does a low five with one of the other Geddies sitting in front of him, and I shut up.
The class itself is a bad joke. Most of these kids apparently have just landed here from Pluto and are being exposed to English for the first time. Mrs. Sessoms, who must be like a year out of college, is basically happy if nobody walks out in the middle of class or calls her
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