When I Left Home Read Free

of screens for our windows, I saw my chance. The screens were a blessing. They protected us from those Louisiana skeeters that were big enough to carry us out the room. Studying them closely, though, seemed like the screens were made from guitar strings. At least that’s how I saw it. When my folks were gone I’d take down a screen and pull out a couple of wires from the top. Then I’d string ’em between two tin cans and pretend it was a guitar. I saw how different degrees of tightness gave different sounds. But come morning, Mama and Daddy saw how we was eaten up by the skeeters.
    “Who been fooling with the screens?” asked Daddy.
    I kept quiet as his eyes darted from child to child before settling on me.
    “Why don’t you fix these, Buddy, and make sure it don’t happen again.”
    I fixed the screen, but the next day I was fixing up a new contraption—rubber bands stretched out and tacked to the wall. I kept plucking them just like I’d plucked the strings, looking to make the kind of melody that I heard from Coot. Late at night, under the light of a full moon, you’d find me out back sawing off chunks of wood, hoping to put together something that resembled a guitar. Every time, though, I made a mess of it.
    But those ringing sounds that Coot made, together with the sweet songs of the birds, never left my head. My head was filled up with music I couldn’t play.
     
    After doing our farm work, we walked many miles over gravel roads to school at the True Vine. On the way, a yellow school bus crowded with white kids passed us by. They was on their way to a regular schoolhouse. Sometimes those kids leaned out the window and threw rocks at us. All we could do was jump out the way. I wanted to throw rocks back at them: if a snake bites you, your natural reaction is to crush it dead. But in this case we were outnumbered twenty to one, and there wasn’t a chance in hell to retaliate. I didn’t think that much about it. I was taught that some white folks were decent and some were downright nasty—just like colored folks. I was taught to avoid the nasty folks of both races.
    In our part of Louisiana I never heard stories about the Ku Klux Klan. My father instructed me to address white men as “mister,” but he gave me the same instructions about black men. No color deserved more respect than any other.
    The most respect I earned came from taming horses. As a youngster, I got me a reputation as someone who could tame a wild animal. Neighbors would bring me their spirited horses. Can’t exactly explain how I did it, but it came natural. I could talk to a horse. I could even reason with a horse. I’d say, “I feel that you’re wild. I like that you’re wild. But listen here, boy. I’m gonna let you take me on one last ride, and then I’m gonna make you behave.” I felt a kinship with wild horses—something I understood a little better when I got older and started playing guitar. At a young age, I could see wildness in horses, but I couldn’t see it in myself—at least not yet.
     
    I loved baseball, but in the backwoods of Louisiana we didn’t have no Little League. We didn’t even have a regular hardball. We mashed up cans to hit with a broomstick. We put down rocks for bases. And when it came to listening to games, we went with our dads where we stood in the backyard of the white man who put his radio on his windowsill so we could hear the broadcast. From faraway Brooklyn, we heard how the Dodgers had signed Jackie Robinson, the first black to play in the majors. I could feel the pride in my daddy’s heart. I could feel my own heart beating fast when Jackie slapped a double against Warren Spahn of the Boston Braves or stole home against the Phils. When Jackie won Rookie of the Year in 1947, I was only eleven, but you’d think that it was me, along with every black boy in America, who had won the award. I guess the award was for all of us who didn’t have the money to buy a mitt or the means to ever