{"id":29270,"date":"2015-11-23T16:17:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T21:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=29270"},"modified":"2015-11-23T19:53:13","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T00:53:13","slug":"turkey-necks-a-tutwiler-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/turkey-necks-a-tutwiler-thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Necks: A Tutwiler Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c \u2026we didn\u2019t have no place to go, so we just walked around and lived in them woods\u2026 we were lost then\u2026<\/em>\u201d Morrison, Song of Solomon<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The woods are the woods and what kid doesn\u2019t believe in spooks?<\/span><\/p>\n

But the woods of West Baltimore are not the fields of Mississippi and Junie Bug found this out on his first visit to Deep South relatives he had heard about but never met.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most black folks from Crabtown trace their heritage to the Carolinas. Somehow Junie\u2019s ancestors from the Magnolia State took a wrong turn on their way to Chicago during the Depression (somebody was following something they shouldn\u2019t have been chasing) and landed not on the shores of Lake Michigan with Big Walter and Muddy but along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay.<\/span><\/p>\n

The work was just as hard, the dollars about the same (shipyards instead of slaughterhouses) with large swaths of Baltimore as mean toward colored people as any part of Mississippi. Or so Junie\u2019s great-grandmother used to tell him as she peeled potatoes at the kitchen sink.<\/span><\/p>\n

Junie Bug lived alone, sunk in voluntary exile far inside the 1,200 acres of Leakin Park on the western edge of Baltimore. He got his mail at the nearest post office, regularly walking off of the trails and onto the asphalt to send letters on the pages of school notebooks some kid had thrown away.<\/span><\/p>\n

In early November of 1990, Junie received a five dollar bill from his Great Aunt Bossie in Tutwiler\u2014FIVE DOLLARS!\u2014along with her annual invitation to come home \u201cwhere you\u2019ve got family\u201d for Thanksgiving.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a place for you at the table as always,\u201d wrote Bossie, his great-grandmother\u2019s last living sibling. \u201cPlease join us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And for some reason\u2014with old man Bush about to carve the bird for U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia as the Gulf War paved the way for a darker one to come\u2014Junie at last agreed to the request of his presence, leaving the thickets to do more than work the Farmers\u2019 Market for the first time since disappearing in the third grade after his father\u2019s murder.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe would be so happy to see you,\u201d wrote Bossie. \u201cThere\u2019s family here who don\u2019t know the first thing about our Maryland relatives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI<\/em>f the minutest privilege could be imagined, the ruling class claimed it \u2026\u201d <\/em>Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Junie had lived in the woods digging in vain for the body of his father since he was nine-years-old. He was 24 now. He\u2019d enjoyed some proper Thanksgiving dinners in the past\u2014church suppers for the homeless, one or two with vendors from the Market\u2014but none with kin since his father was killed over an outside woman and, according to hearsay, buried somewhere along Leakin\u2019s Dead Run Valley.<\/span><\/p>\n

He took a seat in the bus station the Tuesday before the holiday, a 20-hour ride with a dozen stops to go\u2014and spent Aunt Bossie\u2019s five dollars on an awful ham and cheese sandwich, a bag of chips, and a can of Squirt, paying for the bus ticket with cash from selling honey he cultivated in the park.<\/span><\/p>\n

The waiting room was crowded with just one empty seat in the station; it was next to Junie as everyone else decided another spot was preferable to the one alongside the handsome, unkempt man with dirt embedded in the creases of his knuckles.<\/span><\/p>\n

The seat was soon taken by an electrical engineer who worked in a suburban bomb factory and greeted Junie with a friendly nod and hello.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMay I?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Black and white; leg and breast; one leaving for relatives in the south, the other waiting for a loved one to return from the north. The man was chatty and after a few moments of small talk it was revealed that they both gardened, though Junie thought of himself (with pride) as more of a farmer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDamn shame what\u2019s happened to this city,\u201d said the man, allowing that he\u2019d been an art student in his youth\u2014\u201csteered my kids away from that,\u201d he chuckled\u2014had switched to engineering to be more useful and was partial to roses: white, yellow, pink, and red.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo make the world more beautiful,\u201d he said, smacking his knee with a rolled-up newspaper.<\/span><\/p>\n

Junie knew that his world was as perfectly beautiful as God had made it, despite the three hundred or so holes he had dug without finding his father\u2019s body. The man kept talking, saying he was waiting for his daughter to come home from college and he was eager to show her the miniature roses he had grown to decorate the table on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The man spoke as though he and Junie were intimates and returned to the heartbreaking ruins of Baltimore\u2014\u201ceverywhere you look,\u201d he said\u2014as though he could say anything he wanted in the spirit of ain\u2019t it a shame.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever thought of teaching kids in the city how to grow roses?\u201d asked Junie.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNope,\u201d said the man, hopping up when his freshman daughter came through the gate with a bag of laundry and a smile as big as pumpkin pie. \u201cNever thought about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI never let myself think of that before\u2026\u201d <\/em>– Baldwin, Blues for Mister Charlie <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Inside, the women were basting the bird and tending to the trimmings, bean pies cooling on the sill. Out back, behind ancient stables with trees growing through the roof, boys goofed around with a football, not quite a game, just tackling whoever wasn\u2019t fast enough to keep the others running in circles. Two young girls played jacks on the back porch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the stables, the autumn brown fields of Mississippi stretched as far as Junie could see; a tree here and one there but little else to block the horizon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s Bossie whippin\u2019 up this year?\u201d asked a gray-haired man standing at a 500-gallon oil tank cut in half and turned into a grill across which lay the crooked gray flesh of three dozen turkey necks crackling black around the edges, dripping fat into the fire, the necks from just about every turkey roasting in town that day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHogs ass and hominy,\u201d laughed the matriarch\u2019s son-in-law, turning the necks with a long fork carved from the branch of a chestnut tree. And with that, Bossie\u2019s brood welcomed Junie into the fold, passing him a beer from a bucket with thanks for making the trip down.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNever seen her so happy,\u201d said the son-in-law.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the younger men at the grill, a community college student not much younger than Junie, a history major who read the letters from Baltimore when Bossie left them on the table, asked: \u201cIs it true you live in the woods?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Junie paused to get a proper fix on the question, deciding to answer sincerely and wondering if, perhaps after pie and coffee, someone might drive him to see the ruins of the Tutwiler Funeral Home where morticians mightily tried and hopelessly failed to make the body of Emmett Till presentable for his mother, who then presented the horror to the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right, I do,\u201d said Junie. \u201cSame as you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo sir,\u201d declared the man with the fork, plucking a neck from the grate and extending it to Junie for the first taste.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in the country.\u201d\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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