Guardian by Julius Lester Page B

been talking about how she wondered if Davis was a good place to raise a boy, if Ansel might get a better education in a school up north.
    She had to know that he would never let Ansel leave Davis, but if he did, it wouldn’t be to go up north where niggers thought they were as good as white people.
    Deep down, Bert knows different, but that doesn’t mean he could give up the good feeling it gave him to be a white man.
    It was a feeling he had somehow failed to passon to his son. The boy was too close to his mother. That was the problem.
    Bert knew he had to do something before the boy grew up to be unfit to live in a place like Davis, unfit to be a member of the white race.

Tuesday—Late Afternoon
    1.
    At the back of the store is an area of gravel where delivery trucks come. Beyond this is a large field overgrown with weeds, wildflowers, and Queen Anne’s lace. A hobbled mule grazes idly.
    Ansel and Willie make their way along the path through the field, Willie carrying a fishing pole in each hand, Ansel carrying a can of worms. The path continues through a small stand of tulip poplar trees and emerges in a clearing at the bank of a wide creek of clear water.
    â€œLook at that one!” Ansel exclaims, pointing to a huge catfish on the bottom, swishing its tail languidly. The two boys sit down on the bank, bait their hooks, and throw the lines into the water.
    For a while neither says a word. There is something special about the silence this afternoon. It isn’t the first time the two have gone fishing together here. But this afternoon it is as if they are outside time, free of the definitions that constrict their lives inside time. On this afternoon they are merely two boys doing what boys have always done when it is summer and there’s a creek nearby and fish lolling on the bottom.
    Ansel is the one who finally breaks the silence, but not because the silence is too much to bear. It is the intimate quality of the silence that encourages him to speak.
    â€œI saw your papa Friday evening.”
    Big Willie. That’s the only name Ansel knows for him, but he doesn’t use it. He knows it is all right for him to call colored people by their first names. Indeed, it is expected of him. But Willie can’t call Ansel’s father “Bert”; Ansel doesn’t think he should call Willie’s father “Big Willie.”
    Ansel also doesn’t think Willie should address him as “Mister Ansel,” especially when they are by themselves.
    But no matter how many times Ansel has asked Willie to call him “Ansel,” all Willie says is “Can’t.”
    Ansel is ashamed to admit that a part of him likes it when Willie calls him “Mister Ansel.” It makes him feel important.
    â€œMe and my papa had just closed up the store,” Ansel continues quietly, “and were walking to our car, which was parked next to the church. We saw your papa coming out the back door of the church. Does he like working there?”
    Little Willie’s mother and father think Bert Anderson is the best white man in the world, because Big Willie was shell-shocked when he came back from the war over in Germany and wasn’t fit to do much of anything.
    Esther Davis knew the church needed a new roof, and she asked Bert to speak with Reverend Dennis and tell him that she would pay for the roof if he hired Big Willie to do little jobs around the church—clean up, set out chairs in the social hall for meetings, and be the general handyman. And she would pay Willie’s salary, but he was to think it came from the church.
    â€œHe likes it real good,” Little Willie responds. “He say when he’s in the church, he don’t see things.”
    â€œWhat kind of things?” Ansel wants to know. He knew Big Willie wasn’t quite right in the head becausehe wandered around talking to himself, sometimes very loudly.
    â€œAlmost every night my papa wakes up