and holding his coat tightly to his chest. He was soaked to the bone. He called out to Great-Grandmama Laura Mae and drawled his news, “I reckon we may be movin’ up the valley a piece to higher ground if this rain keep comin’ up. My ol’ missus up the road’s been gatherin’ everything to move first thing in the mornin’ with this water not stoppin’. Y’all best be packin’ and gettin’ ready. Just don’t know what this water’s goin’ to do.”
Great-Grandmama Laura Mae let him know that we all intended to stay—if the house held up. Elijah said he’d be leaving in the morning and bid her goodbye.
Despite the best efforts of Great-Grandmama Laura Mae, her sons and daughters, their sons and daughters, and Mr. Slim Hawkins, the Old Homestead couldn’t withstand the heavy downpour. The rains kept coming and the water got higher. By morning, the brick-and-stone supports began to sink and lean. Everybody began to feel unsafe. We gathered all the dry things we could, wrapped food in old sacks and quilts, pulled out small precious things we could carry (like Laura Mae’s Bible), and began the long, muddy trek to higher ground. As we walked, we kept looking back at the sagging Old Homestead and wondered when, if ever, we might return. Would the house still be there? Great-Grandmama Laura Mae looked longingly at the knoll where Noah Leon Pinman was buried and tried to hide her tears. Those closest to her knew her anguish at leaving Noah Leon’s body behind.
Our progress was slow and slippery. Everybody was soon soaked and muddy. Snakes and mosquitoes were everywhere, and most of the paths had been washed out. Sagging trees and heavy, hanging branches were strewn along the way. All conversations slowed and finally stopped as we all moved farther and farther away from home, from stability, from our roots. By midday we had covered several miles, but nobody knew where we were. We were lost and confused.
Time and time again, Great-Grandmama Laura Mae would refer to that torturous journey as The New Flood Days, and everybody who heard would nod, look at one another, and sigh knowingly. That journey tested us all. The torrential rains kept coming. The clouds of circling, biting mosquitoes; the slithering snakes; and sodden, fallen branches were everywhere.
All through those first awful days, Granddaddy Saul wandered off the path and couldn’t keep pace with the group. At first, my cousin Lemiel was told to watch over him. He had to go fetch him from his wandering. But after a time, with all the mosquitoes, snakes, and panicked stray animals, and with more people joining our trek north, it got harder to keep track of Granddaddy Saul. Twice my cousin went looking for him through the crowd, which grew ever bigger, more raggedy, and disorganized. Luckily, my cousin found a local farmer who allowed Granddaddy Saul to ride on the back of his mule-drawn wagon.
But then someone noticed that Saul wasn’t riding anymore. What had happened to him? Where had he gone? Nobody knew. We all searched frantically, but there was no trace of him. Later, someone found his cane alongside a gulch. No one was surprised that there was no trace of him in this torrential rain. No footprints, no clothes, no body—nothing. Only his cane, lying there by itself on the stream bank.
When I saw the cane, I knew that something bad had happened to my granddaddy, but nobody told me anything. I cried and screamed until they gave me the cane for comfort. For days I lugged it along with me, urging it to talk, fluctuating between asking it to tell me where my granddaddy was and imploring it to tell me more stories of Afrique and the warrior Shakti Binga. I didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. I was lonely and listless, watching, listening, and waiting.
One night while I was asleep on the march to Alabama, the women in my family banded together and took the cane away from me. “For your own good,” they said.
I grew silent. I withdrew. It just wasn’t worth trying to talk about it. The loss of my beloved Granddaddy Saul and the magical cane was simply too much for me. Even though I was only four years old, I grieved deeply. I was inconsolable.
Then one day, I began to sing. No one had heard me sing before except my granddaddy. Great-Grandmama Laura Mae, Grandmama Minnie Green, and my mother all looked at me and at each other. I sang the songs I had sung with Granddaddy Saul and the magical cane. I didn’t really know what I was singing about or whether my songs made sense to anyone. I sang because it eased my pain. Singing, I found my Little Buttercup self, my center, my home. It was Granddaddy’s legacy: I was singing the music he taught me, the music of the cane.
WHILE I WAS GRIEVING FOR MY LOST GRANDDADDY, our group traveled a long way. I had heard the talk. People said Alabama enough times that I wondered if it was a new world. Where and what was Alabama? They said I was born in Alabama; we had left when I was too little to know.
I heard my daddy say that he knew people and had a few relatives in the area. He felt that our family could make a fresh start working in the factories and that he could give up farming. Willie Son had a plan for himself and his family.
Some members of the clan knew they weren’t going back to Meridian, Mississippi, again anytime soon. There was talk about how bad it had gotten. They’d heard news from the area. The floods were worse than anyone had seen. It seemed we had all been lucky to leave the Old Homestead when we did, lucky to get out with our lives and what few belongings we had. Word among the clan was that the Old Homestead was no longer even there. The relentless rains had washed it from its moorings. They said it seemed like it just floated away. No reason to go back—no love, no land, no house, no loss.
For days the motley, undisciplined caravan continued east until it eventually came to rest at a village called Aliceville. Some wanted to settle there. Others were still eager to move on, maybe north. The Sanders-Scarborough clan decided to meet and talk it over. The rain had stopped. The sun had come out. People hung their wet clothes on dry branches and sat down. The old folks smoked, and everybody relaxed. Everyone knew that we couldn’t continue to travel and live a nomadic life much longer. It was beginning to wear all of us down.
My daddy finally spoke up. He had some people in Tuscaloosa who had come up from Mobile and Baton Rouge, and they were now doing very well working in the sawmill and furniture factories of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. Daddy had been itching to go back there and work and live. He and Mama had lived there when they were first married, but Mama had made him bring her, my brother, and me to Mississippi, to her own people. He wanted to go back to Tuscaloosa. He was sure they could all find work there. He didn’t see a future for himself and our family in sharecropping. He wanted to explore something else.
As the family sat around the low, gently snapping campfire every night, everyone was uneasy with the uncertainty they faced. They wrestled for days with the thorny issue of what to do next and how best to do it. Ideas were thrown back and forth for quite some time before they reluctantly consented to give my daddy’s idea number one priority. Without exception, they had misgivings about moving to another strange city and attempting to make it home. Some said out loud that they just might be better off staying exactly where they were. However, that idea was soon dismissed. It was finally decided one evening that my daddy, accompanied by Cousin Lemiel and Uncle Josiah, would go to Tuscaloosa.
OUR HOUSE WAS NOISY. I HATED THE NOISE. I USED TO go outside and sing to myself. At first, I sang quietly, but the farther I got from the house, the louder I sang. I sang all the way to Big Mama’s, Minnie Green’s, house and then she sang with me. In no time, I forgot about the noise in my house and my parents’ frequent arguments. I never told Big Mama they were arguing. I knew she wouldn’t like it, so I sang and pretended I was happy.
In those days in Tuscaloosa, Big Mama would ask me to sing for anybody who came by the house. When she would take me back home, nobody was arguing, and I could pretend I was happy again. It was during
