Last Season as a Boy
(Photo: American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist and civil rights activist James Baldwin poses at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, southern France, on November 6, 1979. RALPH GATTI/AFP via Getty Images)
Author’s Note:
The fictional short story and two poems within are the framework for a play about a young writer, Andrew “Drew” Fraizer, befriended by James Baldwin and Richard Wright during the 1960s in France. The first act is told through the eyes of “Junior,” the young grandson of Drew’s church pastor.
i. Charleston, South Carolina, 1958
My summer is ending, and I start to pack for school. Carolina’s sun has turned my skin from pecan to blueberry jam, and everything I now say ends with “Sir” or “Ma’am.”
Pine cones and Spanish moss will be replaced by monkey bars and the asphalt of Grant’s projects. I’ll miss my grandfather’s “coffee” voice singing gospel first thing in the morning, young and old roosters his chorus.
Two nights before I’m to leave, my grandfather calls me to the kitchen. Moonlight guides me through the cloaked house, and I can see him loading his pistol. His shotgun and shells lie on the breakfast table. He tells me there’s going to be a parade and for now we need only watch. The parade is on the other side of the fence, the side I’m not allowed on, even to chase down a fly ball. I see them march by. Dunce caps made bright by their torches and the moonlight.
I stop counting after twenty-two because my grandfather warns me not to define evil and bring the beasts into our home.
Granddad’s a Sunday school teacher, and he says he fears I have too much gumption in me at times instead of God’s word.
He starts reading scripture, his shotgun in his lap. His voice, not the words, soothes me. When we hear nothing but crickets again, he tells me come daylight he’s gonna teach me to shoot the way he did all his boys.
“I mean it, Junior. Wit men like Mr. Rex, their secrets rest in the lies their eyes can’t tell. Listen with your skin. You understand?”
Come true morning, I wake again to my grandmother’s kitchen offerings—warm buttery grits, fat succulent bacon, strong black coffee and cornbread.
“Junior,” my grandmother hums as if my name is gospel.
“Yes ma’am.”
“I need you to go to Mr. Rex’s gas station and get me ten cents worth of kerosene fo’ our lamps. And be smart about it, you understand? Don't let that ol’ man cheat you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I mean it, Junior. Wit men like Mr. Rex, their secrets rest in the lies their eyes can’t tell. Listen with your skin. You understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
I’d never walked to Mr. Rex's gas station by myself before, but with all my cousins back in school, the chore fell to me.
When I got to the gas station, I could see friends of ol’ man Rex under the shade of an oak tree dripping Spanish moss. They were playing checkers and sipping pop. They were no longer ghosts of the night, just old fat men laughin’ and cussin’.
I went inside the station house store, careful not to let the screen door announce me.
“Morning Mr. Rex, suh. My grandmama done send me to fetch ten cents worth of lamp oil.”
He was busy taking inventory and barely looked up. He just shooed me off like he was brushing away a gnat or mosquita’, so I left the ten cents on the counter and went to pump the oil myself.
Outside, I could still hear the men under the tree, though they paid me no mind. But I remembered my grandmother's words as I pumped the kerosene.
As I tightened the spout on the canister I had carried, I heard faint whispers passing over me.
I followed the echoes past the pumps towards the back of the gas station.
I could still feel the whispers but couldn’t quite tell from where they came.
The outhouse.
The path was covered with knee high grass, trampled and speckled with blood.
As I pulled open the wooden door of the outhouse, there he was. He’d been beaten, bad. One eye was the size and color of a ripe plum, and teeth were missing. He was charcoal in complexion, though his was his own, not borrowed for the summer like mine. His body was long, lean, and hard from working on the docks, but I knew him from granddaddy's Sunday school class. His name was Andrew, but folks just called him Drew.
He was hogtied with anchor rope and gagged with a filthy piece of cloth. His skin reeked with the stench of the outhouse mixed with his blood and sweat.
I tried to untie him, but the binding on the rope was too tight.
I looked at him and told him, “Shhhh. This is gonna hurt, bad.”
With that warning, I poured some of the kerosene over his wrists to loosen the knots. The sting of the oil into his open wounds musta cut like razors, because he teared up like a baby, pleading for me to stop with his eyes and moans. But he knew it had to be done.
No sooner had I set him free than I looked up to see the men from the tree and Mr. Rex casting their shadows over us.
“Boy, whatcha think ya doin’ there?” growled Mr. Rex, a tire chain swinging freely in his hand. One man held a wrench, the other a wooden axe handle.
“Smart ass negra’ like you gots to be taught is all,” snickered one.
I looked hard at Drew and guided his eyes with mine to my waist. Strapped to my beanpole frame with my grandfather’s belt, just under my shirt, was his pistol.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
The three ghosts of the night were down.
Drew was on his knees, crying. I brushed his tears away the way my grandmother did after granddad had given me a good switchin’.
“Drew, you gotta go, get away from here. Go far,” I whispered to him. “I gotta go, too. My grandparents are waiting.”
Before I left, I went back into the gas station store. I took my grandmother’s ten cents back and a honey bun for myself. I’d probably get switched for teefin’, but then again, who was gonna tell?
“I stood there for a moment as a gargoyle over the nest of my own death. ”
When I got back to my grandparents’ house, I walked along the porch, letting my fingers trace the shotgun holes that peppered the front of the house. My pinky got stuck in one for a moment, but then it slid through the wood like it was cotton candy. Inside, the charred walls cast shadows of gray and black that looked like the boogey man. Broken glass bottles still cradling droplets of gasoline were scattered about. Inside my grandparents’ bedroom, I could still see the outline of my grandmother’s body under her bed where she had suffocated.
In the kitchen, I could see my granddad’s blood and my own splattered over the walls and floors, streaks of brown and crimson ribbons. I stood there for a moment as a gargoyle over the nest of my own death.
And just when I thought I’d break down and cry, I heard my grandfather’s voice singing to me. I walked through the deathbed that was once our kitchen and out the backdoor, and there they stood. My grandparents were waiting for me.
“Come on Junior, let’s take you home,” my grandmother hummed. I hesitated.
Walking towards my grandfather, my steps were heavy, like when he’d make me bring back a switch to him for what he called “a lessen.”
“Granddad,” I spoke with my head bowed, “I … I took your pistol, and …”
He simply raised his forefinger to his lips, which meant I aught listen.
He placed a hand on my bowed head and said, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Romans, 8:16.”
“Amen,” my grandmother said, smiling joyfully. “Let’s go Junior, because this here place was never ever our home. Ours is a kingdom.”
“Granddad?”
“Yes son?”
“Can I sing for you this time, as we go?”
“I'd like that.”
And so I did, as a boy no more, walking between them hand in hand, to a place called glory.
ii. grey conversations with Jimmy at Les Deux Maggots (Paris, 1961 – by Drew Frazier)
We slipped into each other’s skin
the way a friend lends you his Burberry
on a rainy day
There are
And were no judgements
on roads we’ve slogged
Knee-deep in agony
Inflicted
And endured
He’s a runaway
Same as me
Uncle Sam can’t stand Negroes
like us on his plantation
He tries to work us
Don’t dare breed us
Cause the disease that’s an abomination
before God
Might run through
deep in the blood
We talk about those who marry lies
Just so they might live
To have nights in the arms
of their true lovers
Get it beat out
Cut out
Or cut off
Massa don’t care
Good is good
Bad is bad
For the Bible tells us so
but I do miss
The voices of the choir
They soothed me so
So did Brother Paterson
a good deacon no less
Trapped in his lie
Amen
A man
I Am
A Man
iii. breakfast with Jimmy after too much wine (Paris, 1962 – by Drew Fraizer)
brown sugar
sweet as molasses
but never used for coffee
Not even here
It’s a simple thing
White grains are poured in
To change the tongue
The taste
The soul
Of the dark Colombian brew
The bark says Afrikaner
Cream
Soften the complexion
Cool the temperament
Long white cylinder
Chokes and holds
Beaten embers of
Carolina
And Virginia plantations
Set a torch to it
To keep them all in place
Blowing out white whispers
From the pulpit
This is breakfast
Dinner
Life
Served in porcelain saucers and cups
His eyes
Remind me of the bullfrogs
Under mama’s porch
They’ve seen the night riders too
Carrying clubs and pistols
Coffee and cigarettes
At Mr. Charlie’s store
After the lesson has been taught
Jimmy says I overthink it
Drinking it the way I do
Unpolluted
Like the Turks
Smoke my smoke like they do too
He doesn’t like my cigars though
I tease and say
I like the twirl on my lips
And between my fingers
He laughs at that
I forget my headache
Until the waiter reminds me
We’re not home
That’s why I got drunk
Last night
Thinking about mama’s porch
Those torches
And me hiding with the bullfrogs
Buckshot flying overhead
And towards the stars
C. Z. Heyward is a poet, writer, spoken word artist, and playwright whose sociopolitical work has found platforms in France, Greece, and the United Kingdom. The Harlem (NYC)-born educator is currently pursuing his doctorate in educational leadership at St. John’s University in New York. Learning to skateboard, surf, and one day swim with whale sharks are a few of his bucket list pursuits.
You can reach him at czh.alwayswrite@gmail.com.
