I first met him when I was twenty-four. 

I remember it well—a quarter to eight in the morning, early September of the year nineteen-ninety-seven.  I was fresh off the summer break after getting my master’s, ready to start teaching English to sophomores at the high school in the rural Illinois town of Pearl Springs, just north Centralia. (There was an irony in this, as I told my parents, in that Pearl Springs possessed neither pearls nor springs.) 

I was nervous, I admit, hurrying down the hallway clutching an armload of books and papers on my way to the first class of the day. I rounded a corner near the cafeteria, sidestepped two girls walking together and nearly tripped over a wide dry mop he was easing across the floor.

“‘scuse me, sir,” he said, abruptly pulling the mop up short. I could do no better than to look annoyed before barreling ahead.

It took a couple of classes to get settled, but once I was, I began thinking about that brief hallway encounter. I felt badly about how I’d acted, so I made up my mind that I would find him later and apologize for my bad manners. 

The opportunity didn’t come until mid-afternoon, following the final bell of the day and all the students had made their clamorous exit from the building.

I found him outside the entrance to the gym polishing the glass of the school’s trophy case.

He was Black, and I guessed him to be about fifty, though I found out later he was ten years younger. I misjudged because his hair was prematurely gray and he moved with a slight stoop. And there was a quality to his face.  Careworn is perhaps the best way I could describe it. He looked as though life had not been an especially easy ride, yet I found his eyes were clear and inquisitive, reflecting a vitality that belied his outward appearance.

“I owe you an apology,” I said walking up to him and extending my hand.   “Matt Browning.” He seemed startled and somewhat wary of my proffer, as if at first he didn’t trust whether to accept it. But after a moment’s hesitation, he looked me in the eye and returned the handshake.

“Carver Thomas,” he replied. “What do you have to apologize for?”

“Well, I nearly ran over you this morning.  I’m sorry.  It’s—”

“—your first day,” he broke in with a slight chuckle.  “Know all about.  Seen it many times. It’s natural you’d be nervous. No need to say any more.”

That chance morning encounter began what deepened over twenty-five years into a friendship of mutual admiration and respect.   

Whenever I could, I’d arrive early enough to drop by the janitor’s room off the school’s lower hallway to catch up with Carver.  We’d make small talk about politics or sports. He always inquired about my family, never seeming to tire of hearing about the exploits of my young son and daughter. But about his own family and past, he was guarded. He was a Vietnam veteran and a widower. There was just one child, a daughter named Eula who lived in Atlanta with her husband and a son. “We don’t get together hardly at all,” he told me with regret in his voice. “I think she’s ashamed because of what I do.” But he revealed virtually nothing about his youth apart from saying he grew up in rural Mississippi. Whenever I raised a question about that part of his life, he gently deflected it, so I learned early on to leave it alone.

Our relationship didn’t begin and end with the school day. Since Carver lived by himself, my wife Patty and I had him join us for dinner from time to time, especially at Thanksgiving. Our kids seemed to revel in his company.  And he enjoyed it, too.  He was just as easygoing with them as he was with the students at school.  

It was three years ago that Carver retired.  That didn’t mean I lost touch with him.  The two of us continued regular get-togethers that had their genesis at the first of his Thanksgiving visits to our home when I offered him a drink while we sat in my study.

“Well, sir, I don’t know,” he hesitated, “the children and all…” I smiled at his concern. It was just like him.

“No need to worry. The kids have seen their parents drink. We don’t make a big deal about it, so to them it’s normal, just part of being an adult. So,” I continued, crossing to the liquor cabinet, “name your poison—scotch?” He winced slightly.

“Can’t say I ever took to the taste.”

“Can’t say that I blame you,” I laughed. “Bourbon, then?”

“Bourbon’ll be just fine.”

What began that Thanksgiving quickly developed into a weekly ritual.  Thursday nights, sometimes at my place, sometimes at his apartment. When the weather was good, you might find us a couple of blocks off Main where there was a small park next to a brook that meandered past. Wherever we were we found each other easy company. Our conversations ranged far and wide.  Beneath his quiet, relaxed demeanor Carver had an incisive, inquisitive mind.  It impressed and attracted me. For his part, I believe he found it refreshing to have found someone he could relax with and allow his natural intelligence to show.

I well recall my first visit to his place. He lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment over Meyer’s Grocery on the north end of Main. It was as tidy as you please, reflecting the man. (Carver himself dressed each day in a crisp khaki work uniform with a bow tie in the school colors of burgundy and gold.) There were few furnishings, but I was struck that one corner of the living room was occupied by three painted shelves filled with books. Most were hardbound and had wear on them. And while I didn’t want to be a snoop, I couldn’t resist taking a closer look at what he liked to read when he’d stepped out of the room. 

I was dumbstruck. There were books on an array of subjects, particularly histories and science—from Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul to Gray’s Anatomy.  And there was serious fiction—Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Richard Wright.

Well, he caught me looking. I stammered an apology, but he waved it away with a smile.   

“This is quite a collection, Carver. I am impressed.”  

“I picked them up over a lot of years—used bookstores, a garage sale here and there,” he said. “Even libraries. Sometimes they just want to throw them away when they get too worn.”

“I had no idea you were such a reader.”

“I don’t make much of it,” he replied, quietly. I looked at him intently for a moment.

“These aren’t just any books,” I began. “Did you ever think about going to college when you were young?” 

“Me? Well—” He looked away. It was clear the subject made him uncomfortable, so I let it drop. But I often wondered about his unfinished sentence.

This went on for years, the routine always the same—Thursday nights, 7:30. Then, a month ago, Carver called to say he had to go out of town for a few days and wouldn’t be back in time for our regular sit-down. It had happened only once before, but I attached no special significance to it. He called me when he returned to town.

“I know it’s not our usual day, but would it be all right if you came over to my place tonight?”

“Something important?”  

“Well…yes,” he replied.  We rang off and though I tried to avoid getting ahead of myself, worry crept in.

It had begun raining during the last part of the afternoon and continued into the evening.  We settled  into the two easy chairs in his living room while the raindrops sprayed scattershot across the window panes. 

“Bought us a fresh bottle, just for the occasion,” Carver said, producing a fifth of Maker’s Mark Private Selection. He poured mine over ice and an equal amount into his own glass.

“Neat tonight,” I noted.

“Neat.” There was a reticence about him, but it was clear he had something on his mind. After we drank in silence for a long moment, I pressed, gently.

“So, what’s the occasion, my friend?” He took one more pull from his glass before replying.

“I want to talk about race…racism.” There was an edge in his voice I hadn’t heard before.

“Of course.” I was puzzled by his request and the directness of it. It’s not as if these subjects hadn’t come up before. There was the obvious—he was Black and I was white. There was also the town—small, located  far enough downstate in Illinois to feel the pull of the South. The few dark faces to be seen were treated with benign tolerance, or so it had always seemed to me.  Our conversations dealt with general history mostly—slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement. And Carver seemed comfortable enough in those discussions unless they touched too close to his own life. Then he became more circumspect. He cleared his throat and turned toward me. In the low light of the room, I thought he looked thinner, more tired since our last visit.

“A long many years ago you asked me about my reading and college, why I never went.”

“You didn’t seem too keen to discuss it.”

“Well, I wasn’t then, but now I’m going to tell you why because we’ve gotten to know each other man to man, and I believe I can trust you.” He rose from his chair. “You won’t mind if I add another taste?” he asked, indicating his glass. 

“Not as long as you hit me again, too,” I replied, draining what remained of my whiskey. Once he’d poured our refills, Carver sat down and leaned my way.

“I was born in Mississippi—you already know that. Small town in the Delta by the name of Mattson. Smaller than Pearl Falls. In those days, right after the Second War, probably about seven hundred, maybe eight hundred people, I’d guess. We lived just outside of town on a patch of farm my daddy bought right after he got out of the service. Scraped together every dime he could get his hands on, including a few hundred dollars he’d made shooting craps in the Navy. There was Pop, Mama, me and my sister. 

“Well, Pop was a good farmer and got lucky with the ground he had so that right off, with the cotton he raised, he was able to make a decent living.  I’m not talking about big money, but it kept the family comfortable. And there was enough left over after a while to buy a little more land, enough so that Pop had to hire on a man to help out.” Carver paused, swirled the bourbon in his glass and took another drink. “Like I said, Pop was a good farmer. On top of that, he was a pretty shrewd businessman. Long about 1950, he decided that the town needed a feed store so the local farmers wouldn’t have to go all the way to Clarksdale—which was about nine miles north—or nine miles south to Tutwiler. There was an abandoned building on the west edge of town, out in the direction of our place, so Pop put a down payment on it and set up shop.” 

“This didn’t cause any problems because he was Black?” I interrupted.

“Well, now, you might have thought so, rural Mississippi and all, but Pop was left alone. He dealt mostly with other Black farmers at first, but after a time white folks started doing business with him, too. People knew him. He was easygoing, not hard to like, and he treated everybody fair and square.”  Carver paused again as he studied a distant corner of the room. “That started to change in ’52.” He had grown quieter. “The store was doing a good trade,  and Pop managed to buy up some more land. Through his hard work and head for business, he’d made a success of himself. He’d done it in spite of not having much formal education himself. But he never underestimated the value of schooling, so he and Mother decided to pay extra to send my older sister up to Clarksdale. Bigger town, better schools. You could do that in those days. I was too young—only four in 1952—but when the time came, as my mother told me, I would have been sent to Clarksdale, too.

“I said Pop made a success of himself. Well, in the process he also made himself into a target. You see, there were some white men in the area, real crackers, who decided two things—first, that Otis Thomas had choice farmland they wanted to get their hands on; and second, that because he had built a thriving business, he’d become too big for his britches. In other words, an uppity nigger. So, they began harassing him, showing up at the feed store, intimidating customers. Some of them got scared or fed up and stopped doing business with Pop. Then there was the local bank. The people there began finding all kinds of excuses to make it harder for him to get loans. They even started raising questions about the titles on his property.

“Now, Pop hadn’t got as far as he had by backing down when he was challenged, so he dug in his heels and fought back as best he could. The more he did, the harder they leaned on him. Got to the point where he was worried about his safety. He wasn’t much for the gun, but he had an axe handle—a real stout length of hickory—that he took to carrying. Well, things just kept getting worse—remember, this is my mother telling me all this years later because I was too young to understand what was going on.” He paused once more and drank what remained in his glass. It was clear his agitation was growing.

“Listen, Carver,” I said, “if this is too difficult for you—2” His hand shot up to silence me.

“No. It’s got to be told, and you’ve got to hear.” After a long moment:  “August sixth, 1953,” he said with deliberation. “It had been hot all that week, real Mississippi-hot. Even though I was only five I remember that, the heat.  Middle of the night, we were all asleep when there came a loud banging on our front door and shouts from our neighbor, Clem Tyler. ‘Otis!’ he was screaming. ‘Otis, come quick!’  My sister Marva and I shared a bedroom just down the hall from where our parents slept, and I remember waking up to a commotion in their room and Pop running past and downstairs to the front door. ‘Clem, what the hell?’ or something like that, Pop said. Clem shouted, ‘Fire, Otis, the store’s on fire!’ By this time, Mama was out of bed and so were Marva and me. We all ran to the front door and onto the porch. We looked toward the feed store and we could see flames shooting out of the front windows and roof. Our house was less than a mile away, so there was no mistaking it. Mama cried out, ‘Lord, Jesus!’ while Pop and Clem opened the gate that separated the sidewalk from the road into town. Pop had his axe handle and was cursing. Poor, old Clem—he must have been eighty or so—was waving his arms and babbling. Well, Pop, who was madder than hell started up the street towards town. But he didn’t get more than ten or twenty steps before out of the shadows came four men on horseback, all decked out in white, with hoods—Klan, you know. And while we watched, they got down off their horses and surrounded Pop, cussing and shouting, calling him a ‘dirty goddamned nigger’ and all other kind of vile names. Pop started giving as good as he got, swinging his axe handle, yelling at the men to leave him be. But one of them jumped him from behind and another one wrestled the axe handle away and started beating Pop with it. He threw up his hands to protect himself, but he was outmatched. The men were too big and there were too many.” The memory of it started to overwhelm Carver. I could see tears begin to well up. It took him a long moment before he could go on. “So they beat Pop until he dropped to his knees there in the middle of the road, right where a street light shone down. Pop was in the center of that pool of light, I remember it. Right in the middle. And that’s when one of the others who had a long gun stepped forward, shouted “burn in Hell, nigger,” and put a bullet between Pop’s eyes.”

“Oh, Jesus!” I whispered.

“He fell straight back. Then another of the men bent over Pop’s body and did something—I couldnn’t see what. Well, old Clem starts in ‘LawdLawdLawd a-mercy!’  Mama goes to shrieking and turned her head away. Marva was terrified and ran back into the house. I couldn’t stop watching…I couldn’t turn my eyes away. After they’d done what they did, the men got back on their horses and rode off into the night the way they came. I just kept staring at Pop.  To my young eyes, he looked kind of like a crumpled-up doll there in the road.  Don’t know how else to put it. But it came over me at that moment that I had to go to him. I don’t know why, only that I had to do it, so I tore away from Mama’s side, ran down the sidewalk and through the gate out into the street to where Pop’s body was. And as soon as I stood over him, I saw what that other Klansman had done after Pop was shot.” Carver paused again and looked directly at me. “He’d cut out his eyes.”

My stomach recoiled and I dropped my head. My God in heaven! It was hard to speak.

“Carver…I don’t know what to say….”  

“What can you say to such as that?” he answered softly. “What can possibly be said, man?” He stood, retrieved the whiskey bottle and tipped it into our glasses. Outside, the wind had picked up, spraying more rain in bursts against the windows.

“What happened after that?” I asked at length. “How could you go on living in that town?”   

“We didn’t. Got the hell out as soon as we could. We only had but what little money Mama had put under the mattress. The store was gone and the men who wanted Pop’s land found a way to steal it on paper with the help of their cronies at the bank and the courthouse. So, with whatever cash there was, Mama moved us up to Tennessee where she had some people—aunts and cousins. That’s where we settled and Mama lived out the rest of her life.”

“And you and your sister?”

“As soon as Marva graduated high school, she moved up north, to Detroit. She said she couldn’t take living in the South any more. She ended up working as a seamstress in a factory that made military uniforms. Forty years at the job before she had a stroke and died. I saw her but once in all that time.  We never spoke about what had happened.” He paused, cradling his glass and studying its contents.

“So now we come to you.”

“Yes, now we come to me.” He gathered his thoughts. “When I was going to school in Tennessee, I was always drawn to science. Maybe my parents knew something because they named me after George Washington Carver. Are you familiar with him?” I shook my head. “I’m not surprised,” he replied with resignation, “and no disrespect to you. George Washington Carver was an African-American botanist, for many years a professor and researcher at the Tuskegee Institute in the early nineteen hundreds. His main interest was how to rejuvenate soil worn out by too much cotton. Did pioneering work in crop rotation. He was an important scientist—of any color. Well, as a boy my interest turned to science. For a while I even harbored the dream of studying medicine one day. But I kept it a secret, pushed it away, never pursued it.  Instead, after school, I took to the road, worked my way over into Indiana, got a job in a parts factory in Evansville, married a local girl, had a child, got divorced and moved on. Kept my head down and kept moving. Finally stopped when I landed here.” He looked up at me. “That’s the story.” I thought for a moment.

“You said you ‘pushed it away,’ your dream. Why? Why not pursue it, try to get into college, go on to med school? Wouldn’t that have been the best way to stick it to those racist bastards? Wouldn’t that have been what your Pop wanted?”

“Fair questions,” he acknowledged, “and the answers go back to the shock of that night when I was five years old. I never got over what I saw, Pop lying in the street the way he was, what those men had done to him for no other reason than the color of his skin. And by the way, not one of them was ever arrested.   

“So I didn’t forget what happened to my father because he’d done what this country is so goddamned proud to brag about…how hard work and determination and playing by the rules will let a man get ahead, make something of himself.” His tone was turning more bitter by the word. “The American Dream? Bull-shit! A hollow promise, man, that’s the lesson that night taught me. If you’re white and you catch a break or two along the way, you’ve got a shot at a decent life. But born with black skin? Hell, you’re just as likely to end up like Pop. And so, as best as I could, I’ve lived my life out of the white man’s line of fire. No need to stand out from the crowd. The last thing you’d ever call Carver Thomas is an ‘uppity nigger’.” He spit out the last with real venom.  We sat silently, with only the sound of the rain sheeting down. Finally, he spoke, his voice soft and calm again. “You’re probably wondering why after all these years I’m telling you this now. Well, life has a way of forcing the issue.  The trip I took? It was to Chicago. I had been feeling off my game for a while, not as much energy, appetite slacked off, too. The doctor I see in Centralia ordered some tests. When he got the results, he referred me to one of his colleagues at the cancer center up at Northwestern University. I had more tests there and, well, the bottom line is late-stage pancreatic cancer.”

“Oh, Christ, Carver.” After the harrowing story of his father, this news was just about more than I could handle.

“They told me I have three, maybe four months—”

“Jesus!”

“—so I wanted you to know because I have a mission for you.

“On the long bus ride back from Chicago, I decided I shouldn’t take what happened to Pop with me to my grave. The world should know just how Black folks were treated in those days, how some whites just couldn’t stand the idea of a Black man succeeding, so they kept the boot on the back of his neck and the gun to his head. Pop was killed that night, but he wasn’t the only one who died.

“So, my time on this earth has run out, but you’ve told me you want to write a book one of these days. I thought maybe somewhere along the way you could tell my story.”

“I need another drink,” I said. A dull throbbing had begun at the base of my neck and my mouth felt dry as dust. “You ready?”

“More than.” This time, I did the honors and I didn’t stint on the pour.

“What are you going to do…” My voice caught in the back of my throat.

“With the rest of my time? I’ve reconnected with my daughter. She wants me to come and live out my days with her and her husband, so I bought myself a Greyhound ticket to Atlanta. Leave day after tomorrow. I’d like to ask a favor.  You’re the only one I know with an appreciation for my books. I don’t have that many, and I haven’t got it in me to throw them away. I’ll box them up, but would you try and find a home for them?”

“Of course.”  He smiled, and I knew his mind was at ease.

We spent the rest of the evening doing what you would expect—we reminisced.  By the time we had exhausted the whiskey, there had been a great deal of laughter and a measure of tears.

The rain had eased to a heavy drizzle around midnight. It was time to go.   As I stood, my friend crossed to his book shelves, drew out a slender volume and handed it to me. It was a biography of George Washington Carver.

“I want you to have this. It will tell you more about the man and why I’ve always taken pride in bearing his name.” He walked me to the door. “You’re a good man, Matt Browning.”  We shook hands a final time. 

“You’re a better one, Carver Thomas.” I turned away and stepped out into the night.

Carver first appeared in Isele Magazine