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BACK THEN by BETTY WITHERS PETERSON Betty W. Peterson lives in Somerset, Kentucky. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Heritage several times. Why is it people won't let peace alone? Why is it they always come along and try to make causes out of it? I mean, before prejudice got to be such a heavy word and people started sweating to lighten it, things were different. Back" then you could look at a black person without feeling guilty about being white, and without feeling he hated you inside for it. You could meet him on the street without worrying about whether or not you should give him extra room to pass, or whether or not you should speak or just pretend to be in some far away thought. You plain didn't think about it one way or another, and there was a coolness about it all—a comfortable coolness. I'll tell you what got me started thinking on this thing. I ran across an old news clipping my dad had sent me not long after I left home. It was about a big black man in the little town where I grew up. When I say big, I mean he was 6—6 or 6—7, somewhere in there, and weighed close to 300 pounds. Thhjking back, I can't remember a time when he wasn't there. Just like a piece of paper moving aimlessly along a curb, you don't see it come in and you don't see it leave, it's just there. Well, it was that way with him. And necessary somehow. They called him Nigger Jargo. Now you could do that back then, and if he minded, he didn't let on. He did oddjobs mostly, like hauling coal or grubbing stumps for people. Of course his size dictated the kind of work he did, and anytime people had a big, tough job that needed doing, they thought of him right off. And he would just smile and fall to it. Good-natured. "Man, would you look at that big nigger sweat!" they'd say. Yes sir, you could always count on Nigger Jargo. He was like a shiny black stallion to look at, but he wasn't swift and fluid in his movements, and even though you knew, you were always a little disappointed to see the way he just kind of 21 hunched forward and forced his way through air particles and through doors and out again laboriously. When he had finished with his work, he liked to hang around Jim Dandy's store. He seemed loyal to Jim, you know, and didn't bother with any other store except Wilson's Hardware and Supplies , where he bought little penny nails in a brown paper bag. At Jim's, sweaty men would gather around him, and you could hear his laughter, big and black like he was, forcing its way through the air ahead of the other men's with the telling of a good joke. And the men, they would slap their legs and say: "Lemme have that bag, Nigger Jargo!" or "Tell us another one, Nigger Jargo, tell us the one about the ". Then when night strained their conversations with its thoughts of food and waiting \vi\f-s, the men would break up and move in different directions, leaving all the blackness there in the store with Jim. Nigger Jargo loved pickle balogna and cheese and crackers, and he would struggle to get his hand in his pocket and pull out a quarter, and Jim would give him a nice generous portion of each and a soft drink, fíe would smile a wide, strawberry smile and sweep it all up from the counter with one motion of his hand. The young boys were a little afraid of those hands, because they had been known to bat Jim's store clean of little touseled heads trying to steal, and with no more effort than a jade fly would require . There was a big gray rock out in back of the store, and he would take his supper out there and sit on the ground, using the...

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