Morning Is a Long Time Coming Read Online Free Page A

little voice of hers, ‘I couldn’t even park my own car in front of my own house. All those niggers and rednecks just a-choking up the streets.’ ”
    “I didn’t care about that bitch!” said my father. “It wasn’t her. It was the big cotton planter, George C. Henkins, who killed Wednesday. At the dinner meeting of the Rotary Club, he read out a resolution asking the merchants to dispense with Wednesdays. He talked about how it’s only patriotic keeping the sharecroppers working in the fields where they belong. Cotton is needed for the war effort. And we all have to make sacrifices in wartime.
    “Well, sir, no sooner did George get his speech out than the other five merchants practically wet their pants agreeing.
    “But I stood up to him and I mean to tell you that I was the only one to do it. Looking him right in the eye, I told him: ‘I want you all to know right here and now that I’m as patriotic as the next man. And maybe more so! But I’d like George to answer me, why in God’s name do I have to ruin my business to see that your fields get picked? More money in your pockets!’
    “Well, old George lifted his hands for quiet just like he was fixing to sermonize. ‘Now, Harry, I’m surprised to hear you say that, really I am.’ He was talking softly as if to say that he didn’t know cotton prices was going straight throughthe roof. “ ’Cause I thought you, of all people, appreciated what this war is all about. We Americans, trying to save your people from the Nazis.’ ”
    When my father turned off Highway 64 at the First Baptist Church of Jenkinsville corner, I knew that the car, if not the passengers, was considered sufficiently cooled.
    We cruised down Main Street past the Rice County Bank, the post office, the picture show where the marquee announced Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger in King Solomon’s Mines.
    In front of the largest store in town, the car rolled to a stop. Because I sensed that some sort of recognition was needed by my father, I found myself reading aloud the big, bold, black sign that was touched for emphasis with a dash of red. “Bergen’s Department Store,” I sang out like a radio announcer thrilled by the opportunity to deliver a hard sell. “Quality Goods for the Whole Family. Shoes, clothing, hardware, and variety.”
    After my recitation, my father drove back to our six-room white frame house with the screened-in side porch. We all lunched on the lean corned beef, kosher dills, potato salad, and fresh pumpernickel that my grandparents had brought all the way from Rosen’s Delicatessen in Memphis.
    And shortly after that Grandma reached into Grandpa’s inside suitcoat pocket to bring out a long white envelope for me with the printed return address:
S. Fried & Sons, Realty Co.
240 N. Main St.
Memphis, Tenn.
    As I took the envelope, I noticed that both of them were smiling proud smiles. Why are they doing that? If I was something to be proud of, wouldn’t my own parents know that too? Wouldn’t they be the first to see it? Maybe, no credit to me, grandparents are practically genetically compelled to love their grandchildren. What else could it be?
    Still I don’t understand them. They were about the only people who always acted as though I had nothing in this world to be ashamed of. When people from all over this country exploded over the fact that a Jewish girl would actually hide an escaped German prisoner, my grandparents considered it not much more than a mishegoss.
    I wish that Yiddish word was in my big Webster’s International Dictionary because I’d like to know precisely what it means. But I’m pretty sure that it means making a fuss over nonsense. Like when my mother cries to Grandma about some slight from Uncle Irv, then Grandma usually says something like: “Pearl, you’re being silly. It’s all a mishegoss.”
    At any rate, my grandparents were convinced that my being sent to reform school was more of a disgrace for the people of Arkansas