Back in the 1950’s, when Lawsonia, Maryland, was still segregated, there was a black man who defied the town’s customs. While his people barely survived, packing seafood for fifty cents an hour, Preacher Cain obtained a government loan, bought a rundown grocery near the waterfront, and paid off the loan. Then, business prospering, he moved his family into the white section, and enrolled two daughters in college. So when he urged the Blacks to strike against the rich packers, their only job source, the white people labeled him a troublemaker, bent on starting a race riot in their peace-ful little town.
One Saturday morning, while his wife fried bacon in the kitchen, he pondered the Whites’ unreasonable attitude. Recalling his struggle to escape the dilapidated shack on Paper Street, he scanned his cozy living room with its picture window, comfortable tufted sofa and matching wing chairs, and sighed in bewilderment. Why did the Whites resent his achievements? They called him an uppity Nigger pretending to be white, trying to make him feel guiltyÑas though a black man didn’t deserve success. Nigger! How that word cut into his guts: a sharp reminder that his great grandparents had been lowly slaves in that Virginia town near Lawsonia.
Angrily he rose and swept aside the lacy curtains. The hushed street was wrapped in soft autumn haze. Across Myrtle, slim Mr. Laird busily raked leaves; next door, old man Cullen clipped his hedge. The idyllic scene evoked affection for his birthplace. Maybe he shouldn’t demand changes, aggravate everybodyÉHe shook his head. Though his own people, frightened, had begged him to forget the strike, he couldn’t. Somehow, they must conquer their submissiveness, claim what was rightfully theirs.
After breakfast he walked to his grocery, passing neat clapboard houses and freshly-mowed lawns, and the church on Chesapeake Avenue where he preached on Sundays. Although not ordained, he’d felt called upon to offer his people hope by loving the Lord. He glanced along the quiet street, and marveled at the picture postcard tranquility that masked the town’s deeply-rooted antagonisms.
Busy all day in his store, he didn’t have time to debate the strike. That evening, as usual, he crossed Main Street to the Rosenbergs’ clothing store.
His people sat around a potbellied stove at the rear, and waited for Mr. Rosenberg, the wiry Jewish tailor they nicknamed, Cap’n Abe, to mend their shabby clothes; the tailor bent over his sewing machine whirring softly nearby. Miz Rosy, his chubby wife, and their young granddaughter, Jenny, nicknamed, Little Miz Rosy, waited on customers in the store’s narrow aisles of bulging counters.
Dreading further rebukes from their hotheaded preacher, the group around the stove stiffened as he approached. He grinned cheerfully until his surveying glance rested, frowning, on Maybelle Thomas, bearer of seven fatherless children. How often had he warned her against the evils of whoring! But, no, she persistedÑand had another baby.
Before he could utter a word, she said with a sassy grin, “Don’t you start with me, Preacher! There ain’t much joy for us in Lawsonia, so if you don’t like what I’m doing, then you’d better persuade yo’ God to make me white!”
“I just want to do the Lord’s work,” he said, fighting to keep his patience. “That means not letting you cripple yo’self.”
“We’re already crippled,” grumbled Big Juno. A husky fellow with pouting features, he wore a flat cap that he continually pulled down over his eyes, as though trying to shield himself from an unpleasant world. He was also drunk. “Huh! Seems like the Lord’s work is handing cake to the Whites and throwing us the crumbs!”
The others murmured their agreement. Henrietta, an elderly, big-bosomed woman, said with a deep sigh, “The City Councilmen what owns
the packing houses won’t let no fac’tries come to town, then pays us anything they please. We got no place to turnÉnone a’tall.”
“That’s why you got to strike!” Preacher Cain said, hopping up in excitement. “What them packers gonna do? They can’t let the crabs and oysters rot, and nobody else’ll work in them sweat boxes, so they got to raise yo’ wages!”
Shy, slender Mary said timidly, “Please, Preacher, don’t cause no more trouble. After you moved uptown, the Klan figured we wanted all the white neighborhoods. We’d come home, worn out from work, and not know if we’d see morning.”
“That’s right!” Henrietta said.
“Besides, ain’t no other jobs,” Big Juno added scornfully, “so what’s the use of striking?”
“Because the Lord helps them that helps themselves!” Preacher Cain shouted in exasperation. The group fell awkwardly silent. Embarrassed at his outburst, he sat down and listened to Miz Rosy clatter dishes at a card table while she heated supper on the hot plate, savory stuffed cabbage. In the musty store, shadows from the fluorescent flickered over the group staring dejectedly at the hot plate. Preacher Cain felt deep sympathy. Without Mayor Tilghman and Sheriff Byrd guaranteeing them equal rights under the law, their despair seemed endless, each coping as best he could. Henrietta prayed, Big Juno drank, Mary accepted, and MaybelleÑwell, Maybelle had babies. But they must look beyond mere survival and shed their brain-washing by the Whites, realize they could overcome obstacles, if they’d try.
“The Preacher’s made a good point!” Maybelle said suddenly. “If we don’t help ourselves, who’s gonna do it?”
He felt a peculiar queasiness at this unexpected allyÑlike partnering with the devil’s mistress. Repressing his qualms, he said impatiently, “Well, you gonna strike? Or keep complaining?”
There was a silence. Finally, Big Juno tilted up his cap. “For months you been throwing out bait, making us feel ashamed. Okay! Since you’re so almighty sure them packers need usÑthen Monday, we’ll strike!”
Preacher Cain had yearned for this moment; now, watching the group’s shock at the decision, he felt weighted by reality. Was he really helping, or increasing their burdens? He shook off doubts. When the strike ended, their victory would give them desperately-needed self-confidence.Bolstered by the preacher’s predictions of success, the Blacks struck enthusiastically in October; they scrimped along on meager savings, expect-ing the packers to yield. But the businessmen, although agreeable to a modest raise, reasoned that by yielding now, they’d face extravagant future demands. So the strike dragged on into November. On Myrtle Street, the trees had shed their crimson leaves, the neat lawns turned icy, and his people, barely holding on, considered quitting. Torn by their renewed pessimism, Preacher Cain promised free food, and argued with his practical wife about their savings under the mattressÑthat precious hoard for their children’s education.
“You know we can’t touch that money!” Laverne exclaimed over hash and collard greens. “What’ll we do when the children need it?”
“What did the Israelites do when they lacked bread? The Lord will provide. You got to have faith.”
“Faith! The Whites in this town have us so scared, we’re afraid to breathe, and you’re still gonna cause all this trouble?”
His muscles knotted in anger. “Woman, don’t you see that’s why I can’t let it go! There’s some things a man must do, if he wants to call himself a manÉ”
Checking her temper, she studied her fiercely-independent husband. Then, changing tactics, she said softly, “Cain, we got a good business, nice house, two daughters studying to be teachers. If the Whites burn us out, we got to start all over again. Is it fairÑrisking our children’s only chance at an education?”
Upset, he stared at his emptied plate. For his family’s sake, he shouldn’t disturb the town’s status quo. But how could he end the strike, when it meant ending his people’s first real attempt at improving their life? His lips pursed stubbornly. “We’ll get the money back; you’ll see.”
Sighing in resignation, his slender wife rose to wash dishes. “Well, you’ve done pretty good by us. I’ll just have to accept your decision.”After dinner, avoiding the subject, they listened to, “Life with Luigi,” on the big Zenith radio, chuckling at J. Carroll Naish with his foolish problems. But, later in bed, when Preacher Cain reached for his wife’s soft body, she wouldn’t budge, feigning sleep, and he knew she was angry.
The next day, despite her anxieties, Laverne helped him unfold card tables in the church basement; they doled out milk and flour, molasses, hominy, and pork scrapple. There were no Klan threats and no riots, just a stream of black people toting babies and baskets and dragging small childrenÑthe Whites hooting as they grimly paraded toward Chesapeake Avenue. As December neared, and still the packers stood firm, Preacher Cain worried how long the strike could last. His children’s money was draining away, and he grew fearful.
One evening, while locking up his grocery, he noticed two blond watermen in jacket and hip boots, lingering outside near the plate glass window’s Nehi Orange sign. The tall skinny one held a baseball bat at his side. Trembling, Preacher Cain slipped the store keys in his coat pocket. As he turned, the man with the bat, smiling pleasantly, said in his Eastern Shore twang, “You getting along all right?”
He nodded, his gaze skipping uneasily from one face to the other.“Then you listen! If your people keep striking, they’ll starve. Next thing you know, there’ll be looting and fires, and Lawsonia will burn to the ground.” He paused, face clouding in puzzlement. “I don’t understand it. We let you move in with the white folks, ‘cause you people are always yapping how we don’t treat you right. Now, you got to be better then us. Seems like it don’t pay to be niceÉ” The blue eyes hardened. “Well, we’ve always had a peaceful town here, and we don’t want no trouble. Get what I mean?”
Stomach heaving, Preacher Cain carefully observed the clean side-walk. “Yes, suh,” he said softly. He hoped they wouldn’t notice his shaking, and worried that he might throw up. But much worse was the shame that he determinedly fought, lest it scorch his soulÑa shame encouraged by the Whites to drain him of self-respect.
“C’mon, Brit, let’s go, the husky one said.
His skinny companion nodded. “You mind us, Preacher, for your own good!” They turned and clumped past Clyde Riggin’s Taxi office, and headed toward the nearby harbor, the smell of seafood searing the air.
Still shaky, Preacher Cain sank on the curb to recover his composure. He felt like a gasping fish that a waterman had plucked from the Massape-quot River, and tossed back in the nick of time before the fish died. As he sat there, collecting his thoughts, he scanned Main Street glimmering in the sunset. His gaze swept past Aunt Ada’s Seafood Kitchen to the wharf, where seagulls wheeled gracefully above the gently-bobbing boats. How could the world be so beautiful, when there was so much hatred? He shook his head in sadness at the incongruity. Then, brushing off his coat, he forced a cheerful grin, and hurried across the street.
Though they had no more money for clothes’ mending, the group still gathered, out of habit, at the Rosenbergs’ and reluctantly accepted Miz Rosy’s kind offer of chicken sandwiches. “Eat, eat,” the tailor’s chubby wife had insisted in her strange foreign accent. She adjusted her huge wrap-around apron. “I cook enough for an army!”
“Cap’n Abe, how come you and Miz Rosy take a chance feeding us?” Big Juno had asked today. “Ain’t y’all scared, being the only Hebrews in Lawsonia?”
The tailor, bent over his whirring machine, shrugged. “Lawsonia needs a good tailor, so they respect us and leave us alone.”
“Land sakes,” Henrietta had sighed, “I wish they respected us, too, and just let us live like decent folks. Times was bad enough when we struggled to pay bills. But the strike has forced us to depend on other people, begging fo’ food.”
The group nodded glumly. When the preacher entered now, they
greeted him with reproachful frowns, as though accusing him of their present misery, their silence weighing heavily on his heart.
Finally, Big Juno tilted up his cap. “Preacher, we gotta quit. Ain’t no way we can lick them rich packers.”
“What does he care ‘bout the packers?” Maybelle said traitorously. “He’s got a nice store, and that house with the Whites. He ain’t living on rations and going hungry.”
“Yeah!” Big Juno responded. “And who asked him to butt into our business? Our money’s gone, and the Whites are laughing at us. We’re just suffering for nothing.”
Preacher Cain bit his lip to control his temper. “Please, just hold on awhile longer. They gotta give in soon. I seen the rotten seafood they throwed away and I’m sure thatÑ“
“Man, you act like somebody blind, waiting for a miracle!” Big Juno cried out in anguish. “Can’t you see what’s happening? Why go on, when everything’s against us?”
“Because you can’t let a town run yo’ life. A man has to keep trying.”
“Being a man don’t mean being a fool.”
“Let’s step outside and we’ll see who’s the fool! boomed Preacher Cain, his eyes glittering with anger. The men jumped up eagerly with raised fists, the group shivering with fear and excitement. In the tense atmosphere, Henrietta glared at Big Juno.
“You ought to be ashamed, insulting our preacher that way! You apologize right now, you hear?”
Leveled by her sharp reprimand, he paused in confusion, and wilted into a sheepish child. He slunk in his chair, the cap pulled over his forehead.
Watching his disintegration, Maybelle said bitterly, “Preacher, you probably think we ain’t got the backbone to stay on strike. We’ll hold out ‘till hell freezes over!”
“Preacher is using his own money to help us!” exclaimed shy Mary, surprising them with her outspokenness. “‘Stead of complaining, we should be thankful!”
They quieted then, torn between gratitude and inexpressible grief. In the shadowy store, the anxious faces turned toward Preacher Cain, their unacknowledged leader. They waited expectantly, as if, by their very silence, he’d understand, offer reassurance. He hesitated, emptied for once of words. Drained by his terrifying encounter with the watermen, and then the group’s desperate accusations, he needed reassurance himself. Though he knew he was failing them, he left, feeling their crestfallen gaze follow him past men’s coveralls and ladies’ blouses, and out the squeaky screen door.
He trudged home slowly through the beginning snowfall, his mind wrestling with a dilemma. Was he playing God: pushing his own brand of justice at his people’s expense? They suffered worse than before, the Whites living in terror of riots, and everyone blamed him. He felt intense loneliness, isolated from the town that housed all his memoriesÉ Paper Street, where his gentle parents had poured out their love for their only childÉ And around the corner, the aggressive young girl who’d grown up to be Laverne, his love and comfort during those anxious years when he, like Big Juno, sometimes wondered what was the use of going onÉ
Passing his church on Chesapeake Avenue, he chided himself for self-pity. The Whites tried to convince his people they were worthless savages, incapable of resolving problems; he mustn’t yield to these pressures. At home, he reached for his Bible on the sofa to search for a soothing passage, and heard a pounding at the door that prickled his skin. He hesitated.“Cain, please get the door!” Laverne called from the kitchen.
“Just a minute, I’m going!”
To his astonishment, it was corpulent Mayor Tilghman, and Sheriff Byrd, both in heavy sheepskin jackets, their teeth chattering in the sparkling cold air. Preacher Cain stared in surprise while Laverne, who’d entered to greet the visitors, huddled behind him.
Finally, the Mayor said, joking, “Cain, you gonna invite us in, or we got to stand here catching pneumonia?”
Recovering from the shock, Laverne rushed forward and motioned them toward the wing chairs. “We’re just a bit surprised, is all. Why don’t you make yo’selves comfortable?”
The Mayor sat down heavily and cleared his throat. “Preacher, I’ll get right to the point. Don’t you realize the suffering you’ve caused? This town
is my responsibility, not yours! So why don’t you help your people by calling off the strike? If notÑ“He stared dramatically at the picture window. “Well, I’m sorry, but we can’t let ‘em walk around near naked and starving. We’ll have to take drastic measures.”
Terrified, Laverne whispered at her husband’s shoulder, “Tell ‘em you’ll call it off.”
He hesitated, his will weakening under their arguments. Did he have the right to decide his people’s fate? The children’s money was vanishing, and now the mayor’s implied threatsÉ Maybe he was like a false prophet blinded by pride, not seeing the situation clearly. His brows furrowed in thought. There were two choices: security or freedom. Though a man prizes his possessions, however meager, they’re not really his without freedom. “Mayor, I ‘preciates yo’ concern, but we can’t be stopped from accomplishingÑ“
“No, no, tell ‘em you’ll call off the strike!” Laverne shrieked in anxiety.
“May not seem right, me accepting the responsibility,” Preacher Cain continued calmly, patting his wife’s arm, “but I know my people can hold out fo’ better wages.”
“Cain!” Frustrated by his obstinacy, she burst into tears.
Mayor Tilghman scowled at her immovable husband. “You still refuse to send ‘em back?”
“That’s right.”
“Then the packers’ll pay ‘em seventy-five cents an hour,” the mayor said, and glanced away in embarrassment.
Stunned by this sudden victory, Preacher Cain stared in anger at his fat guest. “You threatened me and my wife, when all along you knew thatÑ“Now, now, be reasonable.” Mayor Tilghman focused on the rose-patterned carpet. “You know we wouldn’t give up that easily. Anyways, we thought you’d back downÉ” His voice trailed off. Feeling discomfited, as though his black host had somehow proven him unethical, he nervously shifted in his chair. “Well, Cain, you gonna accept the offer, or go on causing trouble?”
Preacher Cain waited, watching his guest fidget with his open shirt collar, savoring the white man’s chagrin. His face crinkled in a slow smile. “We’ll accept it.”
“Then it’s settled,” the mayor said, relieved, and turned to the husky sheriff, gawking at the unexpected turn of events. “Let’s go, William.”
After they left, Laverne whooped in joy, and exclaimed admiringly, “Cain, you’re the stubbornest man I ever seen, but you got principles, and nobody can take ‘em from you!”
Monday, his people returned to the packing houses. When Preacher Cain dropped by the Rosenbergs’ that evening, the group greeted him with jubilant grins.
“Preacher, you showed us we can fight fo’ our rights same as anybody!” Henrietta said proudly.
“That ain’t all!” blurted Big Juno, sober for a change. “We let the Whites push us into the ground ‘cause we figured there was nothin’ we
could do. Well, you finally got us off our backsides, and we’re gonna get things we eedÉlike a decent schoolhouse and good teachers. Some of ‘em can’t hardly read or write! And we’re gonna get a better place to live and decent jobsÉ It’s still a hard road, but we ain’t giving upÑnot anymore!”
They began chattering among themselves, enthusiastically planning their future. Beaming, Preacher Cain stood apart in the darkened store, his heart swelling with pride. His people had gained their dignity. Sometimes, he thought, a man’s got to be a troublemaker.
