Excerpt
At the first crack of dawn, streams of light from the rising sun outlined a dilapidated three-room frame house that sat a hundred yards from the road in a cornfield. First, the suns magnificent rays traveled over the house, then to the cluster of ramshackle barns to the north of it, then on to the neat rows of corn and finally melted into the row of trees at the edge of the cornfield.
In the chicken house, which sat close to the back door of the home, a big red rooster was sleeping quietly with his harem of hens. He stretched his legs and moved from among them, and after standing in the doorway for a moment, walked down the ramp. As his feet touched the ground, he ran a few feet then flew up on an old farm cart and crowed loudly. A dog barked in the distance.
A black couple named John and Mattie Askew lived with their five children in the old farmhouse in Colby, North Carolina. Their children were John Jr., the eldest, age twelve; William, age ten; Thomas, age eight; Roosevelt, age five; and the one girl, Sally, age three months. John and Mattie called each other Papa and Mamma and had started this shortly after John, Jr. was born. The family cooked, ate and sat in one room, using the other two rooms for bedrooms. Their beds consisted of large piles of corn shucks covered over with gunnysacks that had been sewn together and spread over the shucks. Additional gunnysacks sewn together were used for covers. In winter they had to sleep very close together in order to stay warm.
As the rooster crowed, Papa stirred and sat up, for a moment not knowing where he was. The pressure from his bladder brought him to his feet, and as he had done for years he headed quietly for the front door to relieve himself off the end of the small porch that ran across the front of the house. As he reached to open the door, he heard horses hooves and the sound of buggy wheels on the road. Only minutes before someone had laid a small bundle tight against his front door then darted back to the waiting horse and buggy and whipped the horse to a fast trot. The clip-clop of the horses hooves was fading away in the distance as Papa stepped onto the porch and took a gulp of fresh air.
His foot came up against the bundle and caused it to roll across the porch. A loud, unmistakable cry escaped from within. Jesus Christ!" Papa yelled and jumped back, wetting his pants a trifle. He picked up the bundle and took it into the house, momentarily forgetting about his full bladder.
Mamma, now awake, had already reached for a match and come from the bedroom, hardly able to calm herself enough to lift the globe from the lamp and touch the lighted match to the wick. She lit the lamp and gently parted the blanket exposing the tiny face and hands of a white child that appeared to be about a week old.
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