RETURN TO TAYLOR’S CROSSING

Fiction

A set of lies agreed upon

RETURN TO TAYLOR’S CROSSING

By Janie Dempsey Watts

277 pp. CreateSpace

Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo

I recall my Austrian-born mother being chastised by an elderly matron for innocently drinking from the “colored only” fountain at an Oklahoma bus station. In Return to Taylor’s Crossing, Janie Watts has penned a story that draws out memories like this from anyone living in America in the 1960s. It is clear she is drawing on personal experiences living in the Deep South; her character’s white bigotry rings all too true. Interestingly, she has also used colloquial dialogue in her characters, requiring some   familiarity with the phrases and idioms. Dropped conjunctions and disrupted tenses are characteristic.

“Care for some pie?” he said. 

“I’m putting away this slaw,” she said. 

Old Miss Lizzie, who wore red lipstick that matched her New Testament she carried in her pocket piped up. “Go ahead, Lola, I take care of it.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Go on now. You ain’t had no break all day,” she said.

Abednego Harris, nineteen, works like a dog on a local white-owned farm. The only black man in Taylor’s Crossing suffers the prods and bullying of almost all the white residents. He falls for Lola, housekeeper and nanny for a local well-off white family. The interplay is, again, characteristic of the period, as when a new stud bull is being delivered.

“How much this one weigh?” asked Sewell. 

“About twelve hundred,” answered Henry. 

“Think so, Sir?” said Abednego. Henry was near his own age, but was his boss and white. “Awful big for a yearling.” He was careful how he spoke so he would not appear smarter than Henry. 

“What you think he weighs, boy?” Sewell’s voice rose in a challenge.

The subliminal interaction of blacks and whites was the song and dance that pervaded the Jim Crow era. Blacks were “free” but were clearly the underclass and reminded of this via numerous covert and overt acts, statements, and rules, many remaining from the Reconstruction period. Not the least of these is the persistent, random, acts of violence. In Return to Taylor’s Crossing, the violence and bullying is carried out by the Klan, as well as by Sewell Buttrill and a dozen others in greater or lesser ways.

Suffice it to say, Abednego and Lola, in their own ways, survive and prosper outside of Taylor’s Crossing. Each is offered little choice but to leave. When they return, it has been fifty or more years. Many things are different – some traces linger. The loose ends get tied up, in a sense, by natural causes.

In poking about a local store fifty years later, Abednego watches a daily morning ritual whereby a pithy saying is drawn to put on the chalkboard.

“Xylia, I see you went and changed the der-gone sayin;’ without me. 

Wasn’t it my turn to draw the slip from the jar?” 

“Sorry, Mr. Hank. I thought I’d give someone else a shot for a change,” Xylia said. Hank moved in to better see the quote, Porter joined him. 

“History is a set of lies agreed upon,” said Porter. 

“Napoleon Bonaparte,” added Mr. Hank. “Heck, Xylia, your customers are gettin’ too fancy.” 

“And it don’t make no sense,” said Porter. 

To Abednego, sitting quietly at the school desk, it did.

Watts’s tale is designed to present ‘what was’ to the current generation. She succeeds to an extent, though composition and stylistic issues weaken her tale somewhat. There are numerous occasions when dialogue bleeds together with the narrative of the next character’s actions, making the reader stumble and jump. While the strength of the story carries us forward for more, the editing dilutes the effect.

Overall, Return to Taylor’s Crossing lives up to Watts’s intent. We are lifted from our comfortable living rooms into a world unknown today for many not living in Africa (or Southern Mississippi). Unlike most intellectual analyses of the period, Watts gives us real people in real situations. This is her follow-up book to Moon Over Taylor’s Ridge. She clearly speaks from experience and provides a personal view of the terror as well as the interracial comradeship that precariously co-existed in this period of transition for civil rights.

Hatred and bigotry remain bywords in our society, only today it is “ragheads” and “Muslims” or “wetbacks” and “border bunnies” who garner the focus of small-minded, ignorant people. We seem incapable of learning from the great tragedies of the past. We continue to viciously protect our little plot of ground from intruders while the real interlopers walk freely among us, often as revered social icons. The xenophobic anger of modern youth needs tempering with reminders of what happened here at home.

Cheers to Janie Dempsey Watts for taking on this topic. More “true life” exposure should inform the youth of today that what they have may seem tenuous and limiting, but it is a far cry from what was.