"Reggie looked forward to 10:05am with great anticipation. Morning snack time was fifteen minutes before recess, an hour and fifty-five minutes before lunch, and five hours and twenty-five minutes before the end of the school day. Each of these moments gave Reggie reason for excitement. Lunch was his second favorite time of day. There was always the element of surprise with the opening of his lunch box at noon. What would be in there today? he wondered. Peanut butter and jelly? Fried bologna and cheese with mayonnaise? A honey bun or a cupcake? Apple juice or a dime to buy chocolate milk? During Mrs. Byrd’s morning lessons, Reggie would stare out the window and ponder these things. Although his mother’s low-paying job at the dry cleaners limited the possible combinations, Reggie liked to pretend to be surprised. When 10:05am rolled around, however, he dismissed such matters for the much awaited morning highlight: the distribution of milk and cookies.
Reggie patiently stood in line in front of the classroom with the other kids in his first grade class. He saw the black milk crate on Mrs. Byrd’s desk filled with blue, half pint cartons with pictures of cows on them. He could tell by the beads of sweat on the outside that the milk was cold. Reggie loved ice cold milk. He also liked to watch Mrs. Byrd hand out the oatmeal cookies in the slow, deliberate way she had, wrapping each one in a napkin the way they do for customers in the bakery. Mrs. Byrd made it an event.
Reggie watched as Joyce Woods stepped to the front of the line and accepted the delicious offering Mrs. Byrd extended to her. Joyce Woods was the only other colored kid in his class. She was coffee complected with eyes like ink and hair twisted into two braids. Reggie studied Joyce Woods every day with acute fascination, in part because he felt unspoken kinship with her as the only other beneficiary of Brown v. Board in the first grade, and in part because whenever she sat down, he could see under her dress.
Reggie knew he was colored, but wasn’t quite sure what that meant exactly. All he knew was that colored wasn’t white, and what wasn’t white, wasn’t wanted. Unlike Joyce Woods, whose African ancestry was obvious to the world in the concentration of her color, Reggie was light-eyed and light skinned, a testimony to the postbellum admixture of poor whites and the Saponi thread of the eastern Sioux with freedmen. He was of no single pure line, but rather the product of mixed folk taking up with mixed folk until all racial specifics were diluted to various shades of yellow.
The colored folks in the community kept secrets concerning the past to themselves. Folks just didn’t talk. “Boy, that’s none a yo’ business,” they said. There was a lot of shame surrounding the silence; it was commonly known that high-colored folk, particularly the “blue veins,” would pass for white whenever they could. Although people in the community knew, they never brought it up. A few folk were ashamed to be called Indian after all the white man had done to kill the Indian spirit of the Old World. Most others wanted no association with the likes of Negroes and actively sought, in marriage, to bleach the very histories that would condemned them. On the one hand, Reggie was told, “Boy, you’s got Injun and Massa in yo veins, you ain’t no Negro. You’s high society.” On the other hand, folks said, “Well, boy, you’s got Negro blood in you, so you’s jus’ that, a Negro. Don’t no amount a nothin’ else gone make no diff’rence..”
The people to whom it seemed to matter most were those whose features overtly betrayed them, offering no opportunity for choice; in the mind of a seven year old, however, it was a conundrum.
Reggie glanced again at the front of the line. He watched in disgust as Elizabeth Watkins assaulted Mrs. Byrd for her snack.
Elizabeth Watkins was a fat white girl who breathed loudly and had tight skin that shared the same flushed hue as the pink dress she wore daily. She was the nastiest person he had ever laid eyes on in his entire life. She sat in front of Reggie in class and sweat profusely. Initially, Reggie didn’t have anything against her other than the fact that she smelled so bad, he had to breath through his mouth. Last Thursday, however, when Reggie wasn’t looking, Elizabeth Watkins stole his cookie. One moment it was there on his desk, right next to his milk. The next moment, it was gone. Reggie was angrier then than he had ever been before, because it was the first time he had ever been robbed by a white person. Colored country boys never had much to begin with, and to have that little bit taken away, and by a mountain hick on top of it, was a personal offense. Reggie had to spend that snack time empty-handed while the other white kids in class ate their cookies, and all he got from Elizabeth Watkins was a heinously gapped, crumb-smeared grin. After that moment, Elizabeth Watkins was nothing more to him than a thieving, treacherous, redneck pig.
With the exception of Mrs. Byrd’s class, Reggie didn’t like Richard Anthony Elementary School. He didn’t care for school in general because it was a waste of good days. He would have much preferred to be running through the woods playing cowboys and Indians with Carl and Andre, starting fires with leaves and matches and shooting birds out of their nests with his bb gun. Richard Anthony was a worse school than usual, though, because it was mostly white - not northern white, as he had been accustomed to in New York, but Southern White, a whole different breed of man. Alamance County had undergone visible changes since his father’s recent return to North Carolina from military assignment at Fort Totten, then in Vietnam. 1966 had brought increased efforts to formally rid the South of the remnants of Jim Crow since the upset of the spring of 1954; it was an opportunity for the United States to expunge its record of all evidence of complicity in the division of “the Land of the Free” through the eighty-nine year sanctioning of de jure segregation.
Reggie was still a new kid, new to the strange thing called “integration” that made black kids get on buses with poor whites kids who took every opportunity to “remind them of their place,” and new to this place where his mother and father had their roots, a temperamental land west of the Blue Ridge Mountains comprised of country vastness and community smallness. It was different from the home he had known at Fort Totten, and it was also the same. Reggie had been born into a country at war on two fronts; in the East with the Vietcong against anti-communist forces in North Vietnam, and within itself, across a color line.
When Reggie reached the front of the line, he accepted his milk and cookie and returned to his seat, keeping a wary eye on the roaming sausages that were Elizabeth’s fingers. Moments later, Mrs. Byrd dismissed the class to recess. Reggie made his way to the playground and sat on a bench, content to mind his business and count the minutes to lunch. The sun suddenly disappeared as something cast a shadow over Reggie’s seat. He looked up at the white cloud that had settled over him.
“Hey nigger.”
Reggie found himself staring at the hard faces of Dick Reed and Dennis Sykes.
Dick and Dennis - “Double D,” as they were called - were rednecks who took pleasure in proving their quality by beating up on the weak. Dick was the ringleader, a first grader who had been held back twice; Dennis was his crony. The boys were homegrown, hateful and hardheaded, without an ounce of knowledge or sense about things in the world except what they heard at home. And what they hear at home was mostly about niggers.
“You’s that new nigger ain’t you,” Dick said. “You’s a funny lookin’ nigger as I ain’t never seed one as yeller as you, but my daddy said its happened because big black niggers gone and done the unspeak’ble with white ladies that didn’t know no better.”
Dennis, taking his cue from Dick, nodded.
“I don’t want no trouble,” Reggie said.
“He don’t want no trouble!” Dick exclaimed, revealing an eroded grin. Dennis laughed. “Aw, but you is trouble, lil’ nigger,” Dick said, instantly growing serious. “You’s at a white school where’s no niggers allowed. So you’s gotta do what I says or Dennis and I is gonna beat yo’ yeller hide into the ground.”
Reggie didn’t say anything. Dick jabbed him in the shoulder with his index finger. “You listenin’ to me, nigger? If you don’t do what I says we gonna beat you up.”
“Yeah,” Dennis chimed.
“You can’t beat me up,” Reggie answered, “because if you do I can’t bring you a present on Monday.”
Dick paused. “What kinda present?” he asked.
“A Tonka Toy,” Reggie lied. “A Mighty Yellow Dump Truck, as a matter of fact.”
“This nigger’s lying, Dennis,” said Dick suspiciously, wanting to hear more about the dump truck.
“He ain’t got no such thing.”
“Yeah I do,” Reggie said with exaggerated confidence. “It’s a brand new one I got for my birthday. Remote control for easy steering and everything.”
Dick thought for a moment. “Well then, you just mighta saved yo’ hide,” he replied. “You got till Monday to bring me that toy or else you’s dead.” Dick didn’t mind waiting a few more days before pounding his newest victim. As he saw things, it was the opportunity to get something for nothing and still beat somebody up. Either way, circumstances were on his side. He gave Reggie one last hard jab in the shoulder before walking away. “Monday!” he yelled.
* * *
Reggie was at an impasse. He had told Dick and Dennis that he would bring them something he knew he didn’t have. His family didn’t have money for things like Tonka Toys. When Monday came and Dick and Dennis saw that he didn’t have it, they would surely beat him senseless.
Reggie had only ever been in one fight in his entire life. It had happened in New York, with one of the other military kids on the army base. An older kid had walked up to Reggie and punched him. Reggie had tried to run home, but his father, who had been standing at the window observing what had happened, stopped him. “Boy,” he bellowed, “How dare you disgrace yourself like that. You musta forgot what your last name is. You don’t let yourself get slapped around and just take it. You fight or your fall, and if you fall, you sho’ as hell better be fightin’ on your way down. Now get back out there and defend yourself.”
More fearful of his father than anyone else, Reggie went back outside, found the kid and punched him back. He and the boy had it out, fighting until they were tired. To this day Reggie wasn’t sure who won. He fought hard and had been lucky. But he couldn’t count on beginner’s luck this time...
* * *
Monday morning came all too quickly. Reggie found the cloudlessness of the sky and the cheerfulness of the sunshine offensive. He went to the bathroom and found a thermometer. He ran it under the hot faucet for five minutes, then took some water and sprinkled it on his face. He went to his mother and told her he wasn’t feeling well and should stay home from school. He handed her the thermometer as proof.“Boy,” she said, feeling his forehead, “if your temperature really was a hundred and forty three degrees you would not only be dead, you’d be well done and ready to serve for Christmas Dinner. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with you. You goin’ to school.”
* * *
Sure enough, just as Reggie had predicted, Dick and Dennis found him as soon as he got off the bus.
“Where’s my toy, nigger,” Dick said.
“I don’t have it,” Reggie said, squinting.
“What do you mean you don’t have it?” Dick barked.
“I don’t have a Mighty Yellow Dump Truck.”
Dick looked violated. “You’s gonna regret that,” he hissed. “At play period, you’s dead, nigger.”
“Dead.” Dennis echoed.
* * *
Reggie spent all morning making his soul right with God. For the first time, he didn’t care about milk or cookies or Elizabeth Watkins’s sausage fingers. Those things no longer mattered, as he was about to die. Reggie wondered if this was how Jesus felt before he was crucified...naked.
At recess, Dick spotted him from across the yard, and with Dennis trailing, he made a beeline for where Reggie was standing. Reggie prayed the only prayer he remembered from Sunday school. Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. He wished he had paid more attention, but it didn’t matter now. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Reggie asked the Lord to forgive him for stealing his mother’s cigarettes and for blowing up that garden snake with gasoline. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. As Dick approached, Reggie closed his eyes and prepared for the impact. Amen.
As soon as Dick was within arm’s reach, Reggie reared back and let it fly. BAM! He landed a perfect right hook, socking Dick square in the nose.
Dick didn’t know what hit him. The impact caused him to reel backwards into Dennis, his nose gushing blood like a faucet. He fell to the ground, stunned. He looked down. Seeing his hands slippery and red, he screamed. Dennis ran for cover.
Dick began to cry hysterically. Reggie stared at him quietly, flexing his fingers.
Mrs. Byrd ran to the site of the commotion. She tried to make out what Dick was saying amidst his blubbering. He told her that Reggie had punched him for no reason.
“Did you punch Dick?” Mrs. Byrd asked Reggie.
“Yep,” Reggie answered, "With all my might."
“Say you’re sorry, Reggie,” Mrs. Byrd ordered. “What you did was wrong.”
“But I’m not sorry,” Reggie replied, “And I ain’t sayin’ it. Let him come near me again. I’m am'dextrous.”
Mrs. Byrd frowned at Reggie. She took a piece of white chalk, walked over to the blacktop, and drew a big circle. She told Reggie to stand in the middle of it for the rest of playtime. She told him that she would be contacting his mother and father immediately.
Reggie went and stood in the circle. He didn’t mind. After all, Mrs. Byrd wasn’t the only person who could draw the line."
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