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This is the first chapter to an unpublished novel I wrote called Blues Lessons and Ben Tillman. Ben Tillman was a notorious, racist, hateful, murderous politician from the late 1800s and early 1900s. He was governor of South Carolina for a while and then US senator. He spent most of his political career trying to disenfranchise Blacks. He was directly involved in the murder of some. He earned the name "Pitchfork Ben" after threatening to kill one of his rivals with a pitchfork on the senate floor. It's a love story, a story about social justice, a story of a young teacher who learns best how to teach from his students and his new friend and mentor, Roosevelt Jackson, a retired widower, peach farmer, and amazing blues musician. Still working on finding an agent/publisher. Maybe. One of these days...
I hope you enjoy the first chapter.
Blues Lessons and Ben Tillman
Roosevelt
Sunday, June 18, 1978
Roosevelt Jackson put on his reading glasses, knelt gingerly, knees popping softly, and opened the peach wood, cedar-lined chest he’d built for her well over a half century earlier. The hinges chirped from disuse.
The chest had been left closed at the foot of his bed, at the foot of their bed, for five years. The lid was not dusty. Roosevelt was fastidious; sixty years with Bea made him so.
It had been five years to the day since he’d last seen her. She’d worn her prettiest pink dress. She loved that particular shade of pink. She told him many times during their long lives together that her favorite color was that of a newly ripened peach. While Roosevelt was not a man who dwelt on the anniversaries of death, he figured five years was just about right for him to wake up the memories.
He plucked a leather-bound photo album from the chest, and placed his wrinkled brown hand on the cover, his heart jumping a beat. He sighed and opened it. There was Bea, beautiful, and shiny, and slim, not smiling, but pretty. Her hair in braids, her white church hat tilted, she leaned on the porch railing of their first house. She wasn’t posing for the camera—she looked into his eyes, so a little above the lens of the box camera he held. He remembered that day. They had just returned from the doctor. She’d lost another child and had gotten the news that there would be no children. A tear spilled down his stubbly cheek, dripped off his sharp chin and formed a damp circle on his chinos. He set the album aside.
He picked up a blacksmith hammer; its maple handle worn smooth, the striking surface pitted, the wedged pein battered. It weighed three-and-a-half pounds and felt heavier than it had the last time he hefted it. Born into slavery, his father had used the hammer almost every day of his life that Roosevelt remembered. He recalled his father’s sweat shined face, and his toothy grin with near perfect teeth.
Roosevelt’s tears had stopped, but memories flooded in as he held each item in turn. His mother’s small cast iron skillet and her Bible, which she’d used to teach him and his brothers to read. His brother’s Samuel’s buck knife with the broken tip. There was a tarnished silver spoon from Tennessee, the farthest he and Bea had ever traveled from Cayce, South Carolina. There were prized books inscribed by people he’d loved who had passed on.
He held a small wooden box with the South Carolina seal on it. He’d always thought the seal quite beautiful; two ellipses linked by the branches of a palmetto. The left held the image of a palmetto tree standing over a fallen broken oak. The right image was the Roman goddess Spes under the Latin words Dum spiro spero. “While I breathe, I hope,” Roosevelt said. Inside the box was a simple pocket watch his father had given to his uncle Simon when Simon became a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1874. Simon was murdered in 1876. Roosevelt wound the watch three times and held it to his ear. One hundred four years later, Simon Coker’s watch still ticked daintily.
There was a folder with a sheaf of printed pages titled The Race Problem, The Brownsville Raid. Underneath the title it read, “Shall white men share his inheritance with colored races? Lynching for rape justified. South Carolina under reconstruction. Her second declaration of independence. SPEECH OF HON. BENJAMIN R. TILLMAN OF SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, Saturday, January 12, 1907.” Behind the pages lay a black and white portrait photograph of a portly White man, with large ears, a cleft chin, and a bulbous nose. His graying hair swept back from his forehead; he wore a sullen expression. The man had only one eye.
Roosevelt whispered, “If you wanna fight hate, you need to look it in the face.”
Next, he pulled a delicate silk scarf from a narrow box, the first gift he’d given to Bea. The scarf was still in perfect condition. He’d paid $23.60 for it in 1919, a preposterous amount of money. She’d worn his proudly on their wedding day. It was peach, of course, and she’d tied it loosely around her smooth elegant neck. Roosevelt touched it gently to his cheek and tucked it back in its box. He placed the sacred items back in the chest.
Roosevelt pulled a small tin of household oil from the tool drawer in the kitchen and placed a drop on the hinges and latch and worked in the lubricant by opening and closing the lid several times.
He sat in his reading chair and dialed a number from memory. After a moment he said, “Hello, this is Roosevelt Jackson. May I please speak with Mr. Charles Bagsworth? Yes, I’ll wait. Thank you, ma’am.”
After a few moments he smiled and said, “Charles! Thank you for taking my call… Yes, I’d love to play guitar with you again… I do still play with those gentlemen. Have for more than fifty years… Thank you, Charles. I surely miss her too. It’s kind of you to remember her… Yes, she was that. How is your missus doing?”
After a few moments of listening, Roosevelt leaned forward in his easy chair. “Charles, do you remember when you said there may be a young teacher from up north coming down? You said he wouldn’t know anyone but that he just might teach some children at Benjamin Tillman Elementary?”
Pause.
“He hasn’t interviewed yet? What’s he look like on paper?”
Pause.
“He was a good student, huh? Do you think he’s a decent fellow?”
Pause.
“Remember asking if he could stay with me until he landed on his feet?”
Pause.
“Yes. I think it’s time for this old man to do something besides sell peaches and pick lonely blues on the guitar… Thank you, Charles. Use your judgement, of course. But if you think he might be interested in staying here for a while, I might could just use the company.”
Roosevelt hung up the phone, walked over to his window, and looked down on his peach orchard.
