The youth who lay dead on the track was Babe Cole, the youngest of Tom
Cole's four sons.
Three years before Paul Judson left Jackson, in answer to that wordless
message of the mountain that he interpreted as promising all success to
him, Tom Cole had received a call to Shiloh African Baptist Church, the
tall white church at the corner of Pine and Gammon streets, at one end
of Atlanta's sprawling negro section. He had not succeeded in making
farming in Fulton County pay.
"Nigguh caint make money grow nohow," he would complain to neighbors who
had come to the crossroads church to hear his sermon, and stayed for the
inevitable discussion of crops and stock and any other topic wandering
minds might bring up. "Ah kin make cawn grow, an' peas grow, an'
string-beans grow, wid de good Lawd's blessin'; Ah kin make pigs grow,
an' chickens grow----"
"You eats 'em anyhow, Brudder Cole; ain't sayin' whar you gits 'em,"
chuckled Peter Bibb, the oldest elder.
The pastor joined in the laugh against himself. "Sounds lak you'se
tryin' to establish an allerbi, Uncle Peter. Mebbe you ain't never heard
dat our hens, de Plymouth Rocks Aunt Stella tends herse'f, is de fattes'
in fo'teen miles." He grinned easily, bringing out the mesh of bronzed
wrinkles beneath the knotty kinks of wire-black hair, powdered with
uneven gray around the edges. "But Ah gotter go, breddren. Caint make no
money here nohow; Ah's done preached de gospel six years now in dis
chu'ch, an Ah reckons Ah done 'zausted mah message."
The urban congregation was proud of "Brudder Tom" from the start. "Ah
wuz bawn in slavery," was his favorite beginning, "in bodily slavery; de
good Lawd done riz me to freedom. Ah wuz bawn in slavery, in spir'chual
slavery; de good Lawd done riz me to freedom. De Lawd sont me to bring
grace erboundin' an' everlastin' to you sinnuhs; come unto de fol', oh
brudders, let de Lawd's baptizin' wash you free f'um sin an' de ol'
Debble's tracks on yo' soul----" They rose to his eloquent appeal; his
open air "baptizin's" up Peachtree Creek were scenes of pervasive
religious ecstasy.
Preaching was pleasant, but not profitable. Tom gradually secured a
number of customers who called him in for day work, keeping lawns in
order, hedge-clipping, and some regular gardening. The house he got at
two dollars a week, from a white land-owner interested in the church;
and there was a succession of invitations to dinner from the members of
his congregation, whether well-to-do or not; "feeding the minister" was
an acknowledged duty of all good African Baptists. But there were Stella
Cole and the five hungry little Coles to be considered; these were not
included in the invitation.
Stella finally, through the aid of her sister Caroline, maid to a family
on Washington Street, got work as cook in one of the big houses on Pryor
Avenue. It was much the most "hifalutin'" section of the city, she
assured Tom, and Judge Land certainly looked the most important jurist
in all Atlanta, when he walked stiffly down the front steps, beneath the
lofty ante-bellum pillars, and let "Miss' Kate" deftly badge him with a
lilac spray, before opening the low-swung gate and passing into the
changing world without.
Stella figured that the two dollars a week, added to the panful of
cornpone and scraps of left-over meat and dessert, which she was
expected to take home every evening, raised the family to a position of
positive prosperity.
One afternoon Tom Cole sat lounging upon a bed in his back room, talking
over with a committee the "chitterling supper" to raise organ money--an
entertainment in which the church members gave the food, then bought it
back, the money going to the church. He was rounding up an easy third
year at Shiloh Church, and looked forward to many more.
The front door snapped open with a peculiar sharpness. The committeemen
sat up, surprised and puzzled. Stella's voice came to them, high-strung,
weeping. "Tom! Lawd hab mercy! Tom----"
From behind her, through the closing door, they heard an unusual hubbub
in the street.
"Stella--here Ah is----"
She stood before them, leaning against the door jamb, one hand behind
her back. "Oh, Tom! They'se killed Cah'line--they'se killin' all the
nigguhs----"
Tom drew nearer, his eyes open in alarmed fascination, his face washed
with a dusky pallor. "Killed Cah'line----"
"Get mah babies, Tom. We gonter leave dis place, now."
"What's all dis, Miss' Cole?" one of the men hurled at her, jumping to
his feet.
"Lawsy, you po' chile! What's de matter wid yu' han'?"
She brought it out from behind her, bleeding, crushed, pulpy. "Rock hit
me," she said, straightly. "Git de babies, Tom. We gotter go."
"Whar we gwine?"
"Gawd knows. Dey's all over town by now. Hung two nigguhs on Capitol
Avernoo; a man he hit Cah'line wid a rock, an' dey stomped all over
her. Listen to 'em!" She shrieked this, half turning to the front.
"Whar's Ed 'n' Will? Whar's de baby?"
Tom snatched at his hat; the committeemen reached for theirs. "Let's go
out de back way. Diana's mindin' de babies, all de boys 'cep' Ed's dar;
he's out in de alley. Can we go to de chu'ch?"
"Dey's burnin' de Meth'dis' chu'ch down de street."
"Police?"
"Won't he'p none."
One of the men spoke up. "Mah boss, Mistus Rylan, he tole me ef trouble
ever come, to git in his cellar an' he'd pertec' me. We kin go 'cross
lot. You all go on; I'm gwine to go by for Mamie an' de folks upstairs."
Stella rounded up the four larger children, took "Babe" on her arm, and
steered Tom and two others of the committee across back fences, and
obliquely through hot July fields of sturdy smartweed and brown-dusted
grass. As they came out of an alley, just a block away from the Rylan
back gate, they saw a moving flood of figures down the street two blocks
away. The thinned tumult reached them. They sneaked across, running;
Stella waved her bruised hand spasmodically. "Lawd, Lawd!"
Mrs. Rylan came at once in answer to her cook's excited message. "Gracie
will show you the way to the cellar. I hope you'll be safe there. My
husband phoned me that the rioting was serious."
In the underground dimness Stella appropriated for her sobered flock a
garden bench, its back broken, standing on end in one corner. Tom's
coat, spread in a barred chicken crate, made a pallet for "Babe."
"Keep mah place fuh me, Diany," she whispered fiercely. She helped the
new arrivals get fixed on barrel tops, soap boxes, a rickety
wheelbarrow, even an old set of bed springs tucked away in the darkest
corner.
"Maw, will dey git us heah?" the children repeated in panicky
insistence.
Stella smelled again the acrid liniment which had come through the crude
bandage. "Ain' yo' pappy heah? Ain' he said de Lawd gwineter pertec' us?
An' ain' de white man sont us heah? You shet up 'n' go ter sleep."
There were more than twenty in the big cellar finally; but the bacon and
greens held out, and the ominous rioting only once howled through the
street just outside.
Long after the uproar had quieted, Tom rose reverently from his cramped
knees, stained by the lime on the floor. "Dar now! Ain't de Lawd done
shelter' his own?"
"Amen, brudder! Amen!"
The third morning, Gracie came down with a lamp, followed by Mr. Rylan.
"It's safe now," he announced. "The police are at last keeping order....
You can go home."
"De Lawd bless you, suh, an' yo' chillun an' all yo' folkses. De Lawd
pertec' you----"
He brushed aside their tearful gratitude. "I was only too glad I had the
chance," he said simply.
They stumbled into the sunlight, squinting with weakened eyes.
"I thought I'd die in dat place," one young woman chattered.
"You'd a died ef you wuzn't dar," an older one corrected her.
They started back across the parched fields. One by one they separated,
until only the Coles and another family were left. When they came to
their block, a hopeless depression gripped them. The packed row of
houses across the street was a gray patch of ashes, where an occasional
smoke-mist still climbed. Their own house was half-wrecked: panes
broken, furniture hacked wantonly, the house torn and trampled as if a
cyclone had driven through it. Tom's favorite new Bible, given by his
congregation, his few gift books, were wrenched apart and scattered
about the yard. The china and pans had been smashed. On the sidewalk was
a charred pile of clothes; Ed's new suit, Babe's little pink shoes, one
end of a sheet Miss' Land had given Stella last Christmas.... Nothing
was as it had been.
On the top kitchen shelf, hidden in hoarded newspapers, Tom discovered
the tattered old family Bible he had bought from an agent just after the
marriage. God had protected His word....
There were no negroes to be seen on the street. Babe gooed uncertainly,
Diana, who was only ten, cried her tears into the gingham slip of the
baby she was holding. The boys looked on in simple wonder, unable to
comprehend how things could change so.