His stuttering kept folks-both his own and others-from planting seeds of intelligence in him, having concluded already that he would make a marvelous field hand one day. At eight, his self-esteem, like rain on a rooftop, was falling in more directions than he could catch. Silence was his usual mode, but the notion that Negroes somewhere didn’t submit their labor to whites unleashed an otherwise restrained tongue. Clement was the teacher who, with feigned exasperation, shared stories about Chicago Negroes who owned houses and never worked for white folks. “Whwhwhwhat d-d-d-dey d-do thththen?” Chop stammered incredulously. The brand-new twenty-dollar bill he excavated from his front pocket elicited praise and envy from sharecropping children who had never seen anything beyond a five. He spoke of prostitutes, pimps, and kids who roamed the streets long after the night-light appeared. Indeed, the day Jeremiah Johnson retrieved him from the Greenwood train station, Clement boasted of insight beyond anything his cousins could imagine. Chicago had groomed him for fourteen years prior to his arrival in Money, Mississippi, and left him believing that a resident of the Windy City could survive anywhere. After all, he was new to the place and didn’t understand the rules of Black Southern life. They think they know everything.” Hoping not to witness a tragedy, the three walked home in the ninety-degree heat and mumbled silent prayers that Granddaddy wouldn’t beat Clement too badly.

The boys, Ray Ray and Chop, simply shook their heads, and murmured, “City boys.

Only her tears expressed her fear that he was making a fatal mistake. Stories of Black kids who disappeared after being last seen with whites was enough to keep her at least fifty feet from any of them, so Clement’s audacity frightened her and rendered her mute. At twelve, she knew never to be found alone with white folk because her grandmother’s threat to whip her good was not to be taken lightly. Sarah Jane’s tears were more than her mouth could speak. That’s what white folks did when they wanted something why should he be afraid to do the same? “Clement!” the others screamed more vehemently as he approached the old wooden screen door.

All he wanted was a soda pop, and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t simply waltz into the General Store and get one. Of course a whoopin’ would hurt, he considered, but the pain was always temporal. “you ain’t got no business in dat store! Granddaddy kill you if he find out you went in there all by yo’self!” Clement smiled at the thought of his own defiance, trying to imagine what eighty-year-old Jeremiah Johnson could possibly do to him, with one bad leg and two failing eyes.

Chapter One Come on, clement!” his cousins demanded.

The sacred place a novel daniel black