One More Highway Song It was the time of the year nudged by the orange landscape and a slight tinge of chill on the stirring wind that came off of the bay, the time to visit my grandpa and all of the stuff surrounding the venture. I remember how my father would take the VW bus in for servicing and mother brought sandwich meats. The refrigerator would be stalked up to the light with bologna and spicy sausages I recalled but memories can fade and merge into a mixture of phantoms like that of paint on a painter's palette. That funny feeling would settle in my stomach and I would dream of ways to keep from going but none of my ideas were practicable. My grandpa smelled like tobacco and cheap wine and his eyes were always red. His hands worn to leather and the skin pulled over his face so tightly I could see the outline of his skull. He loved his porkpie hat and green sweater that he seemed to wear in every photograph we had of him that weren't faded or yellow. My father used to tell us that the highway drove grandpa; he was born on a restless star and loved the smell of smoke and tar. I didn't know then but my father held a lot of anger in his heart towards my grandpa. I think it was because of grandpa being a traveling man pulled by the road. Funny how things worked out, my father never had the taste of the highway in his soul probably soured by his father. My other uncles all did and ran off leaving their families to forge alone. The highway to my grandpa's house was long and my brother would drool the entire five hours with his head back on the seat right in front of me. I remember the scenery that passed like wanderers outside the window of the VW. The deep forests and rolling hills, pastures and silos were unaware of me but I captured all of them even the lines of sunlight on the leaves of trees and patches of grass. Everything was so idyllic and ubiquitous. My father never said much during the drives and my mother was constantly telling us to be quiet or to sit down. I was hyper until after my first bologna sandwich and than I would have to fight the carsickness and that effectively kept me in check. Just about the time I was ready to vomit up the sandwich the landscape transformed back into a city with bridges and skyscrapers. My grandpa lived in the heart of Newark not far from a park where he owned a pool hall. The pool hall sat two buildings down from the house he lived. The neighborhood wasn't very safe during that time with racial tension so thick it burned one's nostrils. Not a child played outside and that too was why I hated visiting. I remember something had occurred recently and it hovered over the city like smog, choking people and getting them to brace for the worst. It had something to do with a white man down south shooting Martin Luther King to death. The neighborhood appeared gray to me then like melancholy and but for the occasional siren, silence defaced ecstasy like markings on a rare painting. The pool hall was filled with its regulars, the same people over a course of thirty years. It was a dark place stuffed with several pool tables, cues that lined the walls like prison bars. A small three-blade fan always operated in the corner above everything else and no one ever felt its breeze. The front door of the hall pretty much stayed opened to the street even into the late evening. A 13 inch black and white television with a snowy picture reported the daily sporting events. The hall smelled like beer and cigarette smoke. The soft smoke lingered in a thick haze that turned the walls yellow. All of the walls were covered with thin layers of nicotine. My father learned to play pool in that hall when he helped his mother run the place the times my grandpa was called away by the highway. My father, at the age of nine, would have to open the pool hall just before he walked to school. The snow numbed his feet and the cold hurt his hands. He was always tried as a child having to feed his brothers and sisters as his mother worked the pool hall. Now that he was a man he didn't like going to the hall and I could only guess because of the clutter and the memories surrounding the place. I didn't like the pool hall much but my older brother did. He was in conflict with my father most of my life it seemed so it was fitting. My older brother enjoyed the conversations between the people in the hall and the soft smoke that lingered like spider webs. I was just interested in the ambiance like I was in Donna's breasts when she turned twelve once I saw them I lost interest as I did with the pool hall once I saw it. I only went to the pool hall once in all the trips to my grandpa's house and I never stepped into the pool hall again. When I became older I wished I had spent more time shooting pool but I never thought I missed one thing outside of that. The talk was just as thick as the smoke inside the pool hall my brother told me that particular day. People were angry and scared there was talk a riot was brewing that night. I didn't know what a riot was and that gave my older brother sheer joy. He mentioned there had been riots all over the country the past few years because black people were tired of being second class. At the time I didn't know what he meant. I felt equal to my white schoolmates in Maryland but when living in Virginia one year while my father was in Vietnam I attended a segregated school and my cousins seemed afraid of white people. I was never allowed in the town and couldn't quite recall ever seeing one white person the entire time I was there. My brother said blacks drank from different water fountains (the water wasn't as good as the water whites received according to him. If he never got to drink from the white folks' fountain how could he had known that?) He said in the stores the white folks displayed Brazilian nuts calling them nigger toes! That was what it meant to be second-class. One group of people could belittle another and not be held responsible. My grandfather's house was a large silence thing in itself with a long stairway and huge foyer. The porch was an enclosed cluttered veranda that smelled like cigar smoke. The first rat I ever saw came out from beneath stacked aged newspapers in the veranda. There were boxes of stuff and broken marble figures, flowerpots filled with gray dirt. It gave me the feeling of some poor person's museum each thing held importance to someone, some valuable treasure or piece of art. I saw no muse in any of the stuff, the place made me uneasy. I could see the street from the veranda and the neon light of the bar across the street flashing on the rubble of demolished buildings outside the house. That year there were several burned out storefronts. They littered the street like dead soldiers. I still can recall the way the sunlight touched those buildings, it wasn't the same fashion it touched trees it appeared as if the light shunned the buildings. I couldn't stand the veranda nor could my mother, a southern black woman raised on a farm in Virginia. The city enclosed my mother, almost damper her energy like encasing a red rose beneath a glass container. She had other reasons as to why she hated my grandpa's house. My youngest aunt was one of the most beautiful dark skin women I have ever envisioned then or since. She had long ebony hair and legs and spoke with the elegance of a queen. I used to dream about her all the time but grew out of it. She lost her baby in childbirth a year ago and it had damaged her mentally but not to the point she couldn't function or live a productive life as a schoolteacher. I heard once babies died more in that city than anywhere else in the country. I think it was because of the tension and hatred bottled up in the place. It seeped into the bowels of infants and choked the very life out of them! The city would either take their lives then or later in crime or poverty. When did it matter? Then there was my grandmother; second generation Jamaican whose personality was forged by difficulty and tinged with hate. She was dark like a moon less night and bitter as limes. I can't recall her ever smiling but she really never had anything to smile about outside of her children whom she loved a great deal. She was the matriarch of the family treated like a Nubian Queen by her children especially my father. But he had committed an unforgivable sin in my grandmother's dark eyes by marrying my light skin mother. My mother was the color of cream in coffee and built strong by the work she did on a farm all of her young life before venturing off. She was a beautiful woman but she was somehow corrupted in my grandmother's view. It was obvious a white person's blood flowed in her veins and with all that was going on in the city my mother's presence in my grandmother's house created tension. White people were the reason for all of the wrong in my grandmother's life. They had enslaved her grandmother to pick the sugar canes for the plantations and forced her and her family to live in a city festering with poverty. So my grandmother stayed in her bedroom, the room downstairs adjacent the dinning room simmering in hate. I could hear the television just outside the closed door as I walked to the kitchen but she never would emerge from that room. Her hate made seeing my mother and older sister too painful. I wonder how broken was my grandmother from the pain she carried? She never held any of her grandchildren, what sort of impact had that had on her? The house was never prepared for our arrival, I recall my uncle in a fanatic trying to find places for all of us to sleep and blankets, clean beds and even food. My mother would argue with my father inside the VW Bus over how his mother purposely ignored our visit because of her light skin. One breakfast my brother and I came downstairs and located a box of cereal only to discover small roaches had somehow crawled into the box. My grandmother overheard us complaining and shouted for us to eat the cereal and be grateful. My mother had to be removed from the house by my father because she was ready to verbally and if needed physically attack my grandmother. As always, my grandpa said nothing but stuffed his pipe with tobacco. He moved through the events of that house like a ghost. His eyes always fixed on the street outside as if something called to him! On long evenings my grandpa would stare out at the street as he smoked his pipe. I liked watching the smoke dance its way into the ceiling. The urge of the highway had gone out of my grandpa like a flame blown from a candle. He was too old to travel he assured himself and a man had to plant his feet eventually if he was ever going to be a man. His joints and heart ached his eyes grew bad all indicating the passage of his dreams. It as dusk grew near the red ran out of the sky towards the horizon as if God leaned on the globe and the growing dark crept in like a thief to rob the day of its life. It was painful watching a dream die out of a person. It was like a cigarette being smashed in an ashtray. The night it happened I wouldn't forget because it was burned into my mind with the heat and pain of a red-hot poker. It was sudden after what sounded like a war outside and the night was lit by hundreds of fires burning throughout the neighborhood. There were whites running through the stores taking things as black tried stopping them and then the police arrived in riot gear launching teargas and beating on blacks. Gunshots were everywhere and my brother and I watched from the window of my uncle's bedroom. I read some years later concerning that night of events and nothing I every read got it completely right. It was a night of madness but it wasn't just sparked by the assassination, the explosives were constructed years before and just lingered beneath the surface. No one ever mentioned the insanity of whites that night and the crimes they committed. It was always an issue of racial tensions between blacks and the police! In the final analysis it was an economic issue pure and simple. When the M-1 tanks rolled in the macabre followed in procession by the bayonets of the New Jersey Nation Guard that shimmered off the flames of burning storefronts reality slapped all of us watching. Something was happening not just to the city but also to the very essence of the nation outside the window of my grandpa's house. The strange hovering of lights and sounds of thumping helicopter rotors mingled with the mayhem occurring on the street. The shouts of despair and rising tension of complete utter futility circulated around city blocks and then a moment of incredible silence. There came a shattering sound like a large firecracker that rattled the windows of my grandfather's house. The figurines quivered nearly dropping from their anointed places. The blast abated the sounds of shouts and sirens just during its reverberation. I stared at my father who slowly moved towards the foyer. He was afraid and unsure as to what had happened. The white police officer's car was in flames and he wounded in the head probably from what my father euphemistically called a city pineapple. The blood flowing from his wound covered the right side of his face as if someone slapped him with blackish red paint. I never had seen a person bleed so much. He was near unconsciousness and in extreme pain. My grandpa pulled him off the street into the enclosed veranda after he collapsed from lost of blood. He was being chased but no one saw what my grandpa did. Quickly my grandpa turned off the light of the veranda and watched in silence as a mob of blacks ran pass holding bats, bricks, sticks and tire-irons. There was such rage in their visages because hungry and despair were great conductors for hate! My grandpa called to my father for assistance and both carried the white man into the dinning room area. My mother raced upstairs to the bathroom bringing water and towels. My siblings were all in shock at the blood and what was going on outside. In what seemed like hours but were only minutes they had stopped the bleeding and bandaged the white man's forehead. My uncle reported that the policeman's car still burned and no other officers had arrived. The telephones didn't work so no one could call the police. It was strange how everything was done so quietly but it was because no one wanted my grandmother to emerge from her self-imposed exile I believed. A heavy knock at the front door froze all of us in fear. I could hear several voices outside the door and knew it was the mob now checking the houses in the area they lost sight of the white policeman. Another knock filled with determination and frenzy smashed against the front door. Shouts and accusing voice demanded for the door to open. They were our neighbors during the day transformed into insane zombies. Another knock and curses followed with threats they would kick in the door. My grandpa, a man whom the highway called, calmly walked to the front door and opened it. I couldn't fight my inquisitive nature and peeked corner the corner to see my small grandpa standing defiantly because a mob and one white man. They demanded entrance to see if the white policeman was inside. My grandpa told them they weren't welcome and it was his house. He decided who could come in and who couldn't enter. The flex of their hate pulsed against the walls and my face. My grandpa was nothing more than a thin sheet of paper before a freight train. But in himself linked steel coils tangled and strengthened spread out like the wings of an eagle. He knew his strength because he knew his weaknesses. The mob backed down slinking away like the serpent in the garden. Silence came again washing in around all of us and easing our troubled minds. The soft breathing of the policeman was the only sound. Grandpa walked back into the living room again his mild mannered self. His hands lodged in his pockets and his disconcerted visage crooked and black. He rubbed my head as he walked passed and I thought he was superman. But my grandmother zapped all the strength early exhibited from him. She stood in the center of the living room staring angrily at the white policeman. What's that white man doing in my house, were words that iced my soul because of how they were said. My grandmother had emerged from the isolation chamber to stand in the center of the living room pointing at the white man. Her eyes were wet and red like blood and her veins poked from her black skin giving them the likeness of ropes! My father tried to explain that the man would be killed if placed back on the street. She didn't care and demanded the removal of the white man. The white man was the devil placed on the earth to torment black people she rambled on. He had no right being in her house! Madness swirled everywhere mingling with the molecules of air and smoke rising from the burning storefronts. Insanity loomed over the city like the night seeping into the corners of the minds of white and black people. I never experienced anything like it and never have since. I remember how I held to my brother's hand and the feeling in my chest. What was wrong with my grandmother? What had the man done to her to create such hate? The mob would surely kill the policeman if he were placed out on the street. Was I the only one who knew it? My mother ignored my grandmother and continued to aid the policeman's wounds. Grandmother had accused my mother of sleeping around with white men when my eldest sister was born. My sister was as light as my mother with mainly white features from her long black hair to the shape of her nose. The hell with you, you black fool my mother calmly answered my grandmother. Confrontation loomed inside like the smoke and violence outside the house. My mother would fight her if necessary. My grandmother screamed like a woman possessed and flapped her arms about demanding both the white policeman and my half white mother thrown from her house! The foundations began to shake I could feel them in my legs. My mother slowly stood and balled her hands into fists. My mother was a tall woman with long black hair. She was athlete and strong. She readied herself against any attempt to remove her or the policeman. Lights from a helicopter spilled into the living room briefly highlighting the pieces of furniture and the skin color of both women standing only two feet from each other. When I was sure blows would be thrown my grandpa stepped in between them. No, he said more defiantly than when he faced the mob. I will not be the end to my family! The policeman stays! My grandmother laid into him. He was worthless as a father and a husband. She was unmerciful with her tongue slicing him to pieces pointing out how he was nothing more than a drunk and abandoned his family like a coward! He stood against it even though at times he appeared to bend. She finished because of exhaustion. I'm unsure of what the atmosphere was like after she finished. Then it was his turn. You don't see! He was screaming, tears in his eyes! You don't see what your hate is doing! You don't see because you'll so blind by it but it's so thick around you that I choke from it! I keeping hoping things would get better but you don't see or hear anymore! You're so clogged up from hate and isolated by rage! I can't stay here! This time it's my way! This time I make the decision! When he finished the residue of his words filtered like soot. I think at that moment my father understood why his father needed the highway. My father had left home at seventeen to join the army perhaps he too longed the highway to escape the affects of so much hate eating his mother alive? How painful that would me to see happen each day to someone you loved! When I left my grandpa's house that next day standing in the shadows of the veranda I thought it a pity that the highway had gone out of him and he would never be able to escape the walls of his life that was destine to be the pool hall and clustered house. He would listen to the sounds of a television emitting from her bedroom as dusk dropped and the days dragged aguishly into weeks and worst years; the highway losing its appeal and promise at each passing.
Copyright © 2003 E Rocco Caldwell |