The Return of Buddy Bush Read Free Page A

like he went to Chapel Hill Baptist Church and he was married twice. Grandma was his only child and all that. But no mention of a momma and daddy.
    According to Uncle Buddy Great-Granddaddy Lewis did not know his folks. They were slaves and sold away from each other when GreatGranddaddy Lewis was a baby. He was raised right here in Rich Square all his days. I don’t know how he got to Rehobeth Road, or to Rich Square for that matter. I do know that when I am old enough I am going to go up to the county courthouse in Jackson and see what I can find out. My biology teacher, Miss Frances Clark, said that there is all kind of stuff about land and mommas and daddies up there. Maybe while I’m there I will look up something about my no-good daddy Silas Sheals’s folks. He left Ma for another woman. On second thought, I don’t care nothing about him or his folks. I’m a Jones to my bones and that’s all to that. Mama said the man who loves you is your daddy.So Grandpa and Uncle Buddy are my daddies and that’s that. End of story.
    But it would be something nice to find out more about Great-Granddaddy Lewis’s folks. Well, maybe I don’t want to know too much. See, Uncle Buddy said that a lot of folks around here got half-white great-grandparents. “Look at these people.” he said one day when I ask him why Miss Doleebuck is so light skinned. “Some of these folks are just as yellow as a cake of butter.”
    He is right about that and I ain’t that dark myself. Not like my best friend Chick-A-Boo. Surely she can’t have no white blood. That is one black pretty child. Ain’t no white folks able to be related to nobody that dark.
    I believe if I look in this chest long enough I will find out who all my folks was. I believe I can even find out who Uncle Buddy’s folks was. Don’t nobody talk about Uncle Buddy’s folks no more. Grandma and Grandpa raised him up after they died over in Rocky Mount in a tobacco barn accident. But if I find out something good, I amgoing to tell Uncle Buddy. If I find their obituaries, I am going to give them to him, because he did tell me that he didn’t have much memory of them. Maybe there is something in the dead folks’ paper that will help him to remember. Lord, I can’t wait to get to Harlem to find him. Fixing on that Uncle Buddy is there, like folks is saying in the fields. They might be right. Might not!
    After the funeral Ma said that I would be going back to Harlem with BarJean for a while. I am going to start packing come morning and I ain’t telling nobody what I am putting in my suitcase. I’m taking short pants, two dresses, and the makeup that Miss Nora gave me last week. And I am going to take some of these obituaries and read them on the train while BarJean is sleeping. I know she is going to fall asleep before we leave Rocky Mount. Rocky Mount is where the train is leaving from. The train don’t come through this little one-horse town.
    Don’t nothing come through here but the cotton man to buy all the cotton that we pick and the tobacco man come and buy all the tobaccowe pick. Of course the big old milk truck come every day to pick up the milk from Mr. Bay’s dairy that’s across the road from Jones Property. I want to go over there so bad and see how Mr. Bay get the milk out of them big cans into that even bigger can on the back of the milkman’s truck. But I can’t go over there because Mr. Bay ain’t that crazy about colored folks. Now he was nice to us when Uncle Buddy had to run away and he came to Grandpa’s funeral. But he still don’t want us on his land. When the white milkman comes, I run to the end of the path and put my thumb up and pull my arm down. That mean “hello” around here, and then he pulls this string in the roof of his truck and makes the horn blow real loud. Lord, that is so much fun to me. I think it’s just knowing that