The Ace of Green Eagles: Chapter 4: Section 13.
“I told him, ‘Ethan, I think it’s a great idea! I know that you are as wise and as smart as anyone around this dumb school. I think your colored background will be interesting to learn more about. After all, a school is all about learning, isn’t it?’”
“Ethan looked at me for a time, blinking his normally clear eyes. Finally, he said in his low raspy voice, ‘I don’t know, this could be the start of mo’ trouble.’”
“I knew better, I just wouldn’t listen, not to Ethan, not to anyone. I told Ethan, in my most austere tone of voice, ‘Be down in the boiler room, at lunchtime, for your interview.” I planned to submit the feature article bright and early Monday morning. I was excited and happy. I was going to be a popular feature writer on the school newspaper. Everyone, students, staff, and even the teachers, were going to want me to write about them! After all, I was a good writer, all of my English teachers had said so, even mean old Mrs. Strickland.”
“As planned, I went down to the boiler room and I interviewed Ethan. He seemed reluctant. He didn’t want to tell me about his life. He started slowly and carefully by telling me about his enslaved grandparents. His grandfather worked all his life as a field hand. He died in a cotton field. He fell over and died dropping the hoe he had in his hands. His grandmother worked as a plantation house cleaner and cook. Eventually she was set free. Then she worked as a sharecropper, she worked on the same plantation where she was born. Both of Ethan’s grandparents died in poverty. They both died from hard work. They had only one child, Harold Smith, Ethan’s father.”
“Harold Smith was not allowed to go to school as a child due to having had a bout of tuberculosis. Harold became a sharecropper; he married and had four children. Ethan was born inMississippi, near the Gulf of Mexico. When Ethan was young, his parents moved to theIndiana area where his father worked on a farm. His father, Harold, was especially good at caring for dairy cattle. Ethan’s mother worked at the local hospital as a nurse’s aid. Ethan had a lot of respect for his father and mother. He said that they were good Southern Baptists, they worked hard, and they provided for their family.”
“Ethan was an honor student in high school and joined the Navy. He wanted to become a pilot. He had a dream of landing a Navy fighter plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. After four weeks of basic training, Ethan got into an altercation with a white officer who hated colored people. Ethan was unfairly accused of malfeasance. He then made a big mistake and got into a fight with his accuser. Ethan was arrested, charged, court marshaled, found guilty, and kicked out of the Navy, with a dishonorable discharge. Ethan found it almost impossible to find work. Finally, being desperate, Ethan found work as a janitor for the Bloomfield School District. He came to the school as the laundry man janitor over 26 years ago.”
“Ethan never married, he didn’t have any children. He lived by himself in a small one-room flat across town, where the color-folks lived. His favorite hobbies were doing crossword puzzles, playing poker, and watching sports on TV.”
“Ethan loves his family. He visits with them every year at Christmas. At his family reunions his mother cooks Ethan favorite foods, smoked ham hocks and pecan pie.”
“That’s what I wrote down from my interview with Ethan. I asked Ethan some personal questions, but he declined to answer. I think he had a girl friend, a white girl, and he didn’t want to talk about her. I thought my interview went well, I was pleased, I went home and worked long-and-hard on my feature article. I thought I had written a solid piece of journalism.”
“Bright and early on Monday morning I turned in my 300-word perfectly typed report. I was feeling proud of what I had written. Mrs. Montag, the journalism teacher, took one look at the subject of my report and was troubled.”
“She asked, looking at me with narrowing eyes, ‘You decided to write an article about Ethan Smith, our school janitor? He’s the janitor!’”
“The teacher looked long and hard at me, just as Ethan had, saying, ‘This article will cause trouble. You’ll have to write a new article about one of our teachers.’”
“I didn’t understand. Ethan had told me the same thing. Maybe, I should have listened. But, no, I had to assert myself. I had to know why she didn’t want to run my excellent story. Mrs. Montag said she wouldn’t publish my article because Ethan wasn’t a teacher and besides he’s colored. I looked at Mrs. Montag, I looked deeply into her eyes, and she wasn’t bluffing. I could see she was a bad person. For the first time in my life, I could see prejudice by looking into a person’s eyes. ‘Evil prejudiced eyes’ are not pretty, they have no depth, they’re shallow, falsely reflective, and empty. They herald stupidity. I slammed my article down on to the table with a loud thump, I yelled, ‘I quit this crap newspaper.’ I was as mad as when I attacked Wilson Tipster. But, I had promised my Daddy — no violence. It was hard, it was a struggle, but I kept my control, I kept my word.”
“In a deck of cards there are red cards and black cards, all of the cards are treated the same. I suddenly found out that real life was not a deck of playing cards. Being black did matter, and not in a good way.”
“The journalism teacher looked at me with increasingly narrowing eyes, ‘Your true nature is out, you’re nasty and aggressive, your behavior is unacceptable! You need to do something other than work for this newspaper. Do you understand? Do I have to call the POLICE, again?’”
“I left the room immediately; that was the end of my attempt at journalism.
I’d learned that seemingly decent people have base natures, even those you wouldn’t expect. I learned by reading ‘eyes.’ Eyes separate good folks from bad. Eyes separate kind smart folks like Ethan, from killer Mafia scum, like Craig the Keg. Eyes come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, features don’t matter; it’s the depth of the eyes that counts. I learned to read eyes to determine the strength of a person’s character. It proved to be a valuable tool at the poker table and in my life. I never made a mistake playing a poker hand, selecting business partners, or in making friends. I did it all ‘EYE-TO-EYE’.”
… to be continued …
.