One day shortly after Mom told me we should start school in Byler, I biked over to the Wyatts’. When I walked into the kitchen, Aunt Al was sitting at the table reading a letter. It was from Ruth, she said. Aunt Al’s sister had recovered from meningitis, Ruth hoped to be home in a few days, and she was looking forward to meeting Liz and me. Then Aunt Al opened a shoe box on the kitchen counter and pulled out a bundle of thin blue aerograms wrapped with a rubber band. “Truman’s letters,” she said. “He writes me every week, without fail.”
In Truman’s most recent letter, he’d told her that he’d become sweet on a nice Vietnamese girl. He was thinking of asking her to marry him and bringing her back to Virginia, and he wanted Aunt Al to write back with her thoughts on it all. “If you’d asked me a couple of years ago, I might have said I don’t rightly know if Byler is ready for that, but a lot’s been changing around here these days, so I told him to pray on it, and if that’s what the Lord tells him to do, I’ll welcome that girl with open arms.”
Aunt Al carefully replaced the bundle of aerograms in the shoe box, along with Ruth’s letter.
“I’ve got news, too,” I said. “It looks like Liz and I are going to Byler High this fall.”
“Honey!” Aunt Al gave me one of her big hugs. “I’m so glad you’re staying with us instead of going off to the big city.”
“Mom said life in New York was more challenging than she’d expected.”
“That’s one word for it.” Aunt Al laughed. “Speaking of challenges, you’re in for quite a time. This is the year that, like it or not, we’re integrating.”
Back in the fifties, she went on, the Supreme Court had ruled that black kids were allowed to attend white schools. In almost all Southern towns, however, black kids kept going to the black school, and white kids kept going to the white school.
As Aunt Al was talking, Uncle Clarence came in from the garden. Pulling off his straw hat and wiping his forehead, he filled a water glass at the sink and took a gulp. “Everyone was free to attend whatever school they wanted, and people chose to go to school with their own kind,” he said. “That’s natural. White ducks flock with white ducks, and mallards flock with mallards. It’s called freedom of choice. What’s more American than that?”
“The Supreme Court disagreed,” Aunt Al said. Last year the court ordered the forced integration of all Southern schools. So the Byler superintendent was closing down Nelson High, which had been the black school for fifty years, and turning it into the vocational school. Beginning this year, the kids from Nelson would be going to Byler High.
“It’s the doing of those damned Harvards,” Uncle Clarence said. “They started this war and told our boys to fight it, then they changed their minds about the war and went around spitting on our boys for serving their country. And now the Harvards want to come down here and tell us how to run our schools.” He coughed and tossed the rest of his water in the sink. “Now I’m all riled up, so I best get the hell back to my tomatoes.” He picked up his straw hat and muttered on his way out, “Ducks got more sense than that Supreme my-ass Court.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Later that week, on a morning when Mr. Maddox didn’t have any work for either of us, Liz and I rode over to the mill hill. While we were parking our bikes in the Wyatts’ front yard, a tall young woman around Liz’s age came running out the door. She had a wide smile just like Aunt Al’s and long dark hair held back by barrettes, and she wore those plastic cat’s-eye glasses that you saw on old ladies.
“You must be Liz and Bean,” she cried out, wiping her hands on her apron and giving us both a bone-crushing Wyatt hug. “I’m Ruth, and I been just dying to meet you all for the longest time.”
Ruth led us into the house, explaining that the harvest season was under way and she and her mom were in the middle of canning. The kitchen table was piled with red, green, orange, and yellow tomatoes. Earl was lining up rows of mason jars on the counter while Aunt Al stirred a big steaming pot.
“Uncle Clarence grew all these tomatoes?” I asked.
“Everything Daddy grows, we eat fresh,” Ruth said.
“With all these mouths to feed, it don’t go far,” Aunt Al said. “Joe brings me my canning tomatoes.” She started spooning stewed tomatoes into the jars. “I know some people may wag their finger at what my boy does,” she said, “but the food he brings home helps keep this family fed, and those darned farmers are always growing more than they can sell anyway.”