Sweetness Read Online Free Page B

Mississippi, for reportedly whistling at a white woman. In 1964, three political activists—one black, two Jewish—were lynched during a drive to Longdale, Mississippi. In Columbia, there was certainly intimidation and modest violence, but little more. If you were black, and you followed the societal script, you were largely left alone.
    Alyne and Peter raised their children well, and took no chances. As the kids aged, their nonscholastic hours were filled with activities. Board games like Monopoly, Pokeno, and Chinese Checkers were rainy-day household staples. Walter enjoyed two years as a Boy Scout—especially the camping outings along the Pearl River, when the boys would bring along their rifles and shoot water moccasins before leaping into the water. He took numerous fishing trips with his father and brother, spent several years developing into a credible schoolyard marbles player, and also had a brief passion for painting and spinning wood tops.
    A brown upright piano stood in the corner of the den, and Eddie and Pam learned to play. Walter showed minimal interest in the instrument, opting instead for the drums. “He was a great drummer from a young age,” said Eddie. “We didn’t actually have a drum set in our house when he was very little, but he beat on anything you could make sound from. Books, tables, cans. Anything.”
    In the summertime, as other neighborhood kids ran from yard to yard seeking adventure, the Payton boys were put to work. Miss Alyne was not about to have her sons find trouble, so she made sure they were always occupied. An avid gardener, Alyne celebrated the end of each school year by having a local farmer deliver a mountain of dirt and dump it in the driveway. For the ensuing two months, Eddie and Walter were responsible for shoveling and pushing the topsoil over the entire yard, as well as applying fertilizer. Alyne’s goal was to win the Columbian-Progress’ Yard of the Week award (she eventually did). “It rains like you wouldn’t believe during the summer in Mississippi, and the whole yard would get wet,” Walter once said. “That caused the wheelbarrow to sink in the wet soil. We’d have to put boards throughout the yard and push the wheelbarrow to the end of them. I’d fill it, Eddie would pick it up and take it out and dump it, and Mama or Pam would spread it. At the time we thought it was good for the yard. We, or at least I, didn’t know until much later that Mom had the topsoil delivered to keep us out of trouble in the summer. If you want my opinion, there was no reason to spread all that topsoil except to keep us occupied and around the house.
    “[My mother is] probably the reason I’m so muscular. I was the one who did the shoveling. You can tell that by looking at my arms. [Eddie] pushed the wheelbarrow. You ought to see the muscles in his legs.”
    Though he gravitated toward his mother, much of Walter’s demeanor came from his father. He was the rare child who was content to be left alone; who didn’t need playmates or toys to keep him entertained. Often without company, Walter would dash through the woods, imagining himself as Robin Hood or Spider-Man or Zorro. “I rode pretend horses, swung on pretend vines, wore pretend outfits, shot pretend bandits,” he wrote. “A woods could be anything I wanted it to be. I loved to climb trees . . . I liked to be up there, above everything, looking down, in control, having done the impossible, saved the kingdom, loved for the right, for justice and for truth.”
    Unlike his soft-spoken younger brother, Eddie always had a flock. His nickname was “Chief,” appropriately coined because other kids followed his lead. If Eddie decided to hold an impromptu baseball game in the street, he was never alone. Walter often proved to be a perfect sidekick. When both boys were still young, one of their cousins, a pretty woman named Evelyn Carter, was dating Brady Lewis. If Eddie and Walter knew in advance the couple would be