The Ghost of Martin Luther King

suddenly, the huge white sow stood for something more than survival--it had become the enemy

The Ghost of Martin Luther King walks these country roads at night. I have seen him moving almost furtively through the hickory grove where trees arch over the road like a cathedral; and he walks with all the solemnity of the dead down the roads of Burnside, as though he is searching for something that he cannot yet find. I have told my mother about the ghost; but she is a large, light-skinned woman more tied to reality than my father; and I can see that something in her is afraid to believe that the dead can return. My father--who is thin, timid and black--is ready to believe; but something in him also resists the idea of ghosts.

My only ally is Roberta Green. Roberta is 16, a year younger than myself. So scrawny and black, she is almost ready to believe anything that will reconcile her to the fact that all things black are not beautiful. It is as if nature had played its worst joke on her--she is tall and angular, and the most beautiful thing about her is her eyes, if she would ever look up from the ground. When I told her about the ghost of Martin Luther King, she was eager to believe. But that is because she is lonely all the time, and a ghost is better than no companion at all.

"Will you go with me to see him?" I said.

She looked even harder at the ground. "Does he come late?"

"Very late."

"David, I can't go with you. Momma wouldn't let me."

My father's excuse also had to do with the fact that Martin Luther King walks late at night. My father works at the shoe factory in Dillwyn, and he has to get up at five o'clock in order to be to work by six. So he has not been able to stay up to see the ghost. Following his advice, I have told no one else in Burnside about the sight I have seen, although I did ask Uncle George if he believed in ghosts. Uncle George is my father's brother. "Ghosts?" he said, and he laughed in that robust way he has. "I suppose I do believe in them," he said. But he sounded very skeptical, indeed.

As for my mother, there was a time when she might have believed in ghosts. But she was operated on for cancer more than five years ago at the white hospital in Farmville; and the fact that she is still alive has converted her to the rationale of white men. The rest of us are not so ready to believe that white people have stopped being diabolical after three centuries of being devils. My father is always complaining about their arrogance and the injustices he suffers every day in Dillwyn, where he works alongside white people who have been forced from the fields to the factory. Farming is no longer a profitable way of life for the small farmer, white or black, in Virginia; and it is the hard fist of economic necessity more than anything else that has laid low the walls of segregation. The motels and restaurants at Alcanthia Courthouse need the dollars that black folk earn in Dillwyn. Now they cater regularly to black clientele, although there was a time when their doors were closed to all but whites. My mother sees this as a sign of progress and of a new benevolence on the part of white people. The doctors at Farmville cut off her left breast and reamed out her insides to stifle the cancer; and in her own way, I suppose she believes that her salvation from the dread disease has stemmed the cancer of America as well.

But my father is not so easily persuaded. "I work with white people every day," he tells my mother. "Nothing has changed at all." But she thinks that the fact of his working with white people is the biggest change of all.

Every second or third Sunday, she dressed us all up and herded us down the highway for dinner at the Alcanthia Inn, where the white waitresses called us sir and ma'am and served us with a cordiality that my father and I openly suspected. But what was an ordeal for my father and me was a delight for my mother. She seemed to swell up like a balloon in the white atmosphere. Looking at her as she ate, it was impossible to detect that she was a hollowed-out woman. She was very light-skinned; and her cheeks turned rosy red as she stuffed them with roast pig and applesauce. The artificial breast she wore was smaller than her right one; she readjusted it from time to time as it slipped out of place from the energy of her eating. "I do adore pig," she said between mouthfuls. She dabbed her greasy lips with the edge of a paper napkin. "Homer, it'll soon be time to kill our pig, won't it?" My father nodded, picking at his food.

We had a white sow ready for killing this year. Since the farmers had gone to work in the factories at Dillwyn, hardly anyone kept livestock anymore. But my mother had bought the white sow as a shoat and she had nursed it to a solid 200 pounds by feeding it dinner scraps and grass. My father wasn't too happy about killing the pig. Although he did not say so, I think he had become attached to it and wanted to keep it as a pet. "There's no need to kill that sow," he said. "Maybe we can find a male somewhere and mate her with it."

Swallowing, my mother shook her head. "It's hard enough keeping one pig, much less a bunch of them. It's not like the old days, Homer. If we kill her now, we'll have pork for all winter and part of the spring. We've got to be realistic about this, honey. Do you know what pork chops cost in the supermarket?"

Glumly, my father shoved back his plate. "The price of meat is right high," he said.

"Indeed it is," my mother said. "You find out from George when he can kill the sow. Is he out there picketing at the factory today?" Her voice showed that she didn't approve of Uncle George's militancy. Although black and white men worked side by side at the factory in Dillwyn, blacks were denied equal opportunity and equal pay. Uncle George had called some of the black workers together to picket the factory that day.

"He's out there," my father said.

"Well, I'm glad you had sense enough not to go," my mother said. "That does nothing but destroy the balance of things." My father said nothing; and we went on with our dinner.

After peach cobbler and coffee for dessert, my mother paid the bill and left a large tip. The waitress thanked her and followed us to the door. "You all come back again, you hear? And tell your friends," she said.

"Indeed we will," my mother said. "I certainly did enjoy that pork." That same night. I saw the ghost of Martin Luther King for the first time.

I had gone to Roberta Green's house down the road to play dominoes. She lives with her family the old Willis place that her father rents for $15 a month. It is a shack, really, where all the Greens--there are nine of them--live together in three rooms in a kind of amiable disorder that I sometimes enjoyed being a part of. That night, one of the older girls was frying turnovers made from some apples that Mr. Green had brought home from Dillwyn. I played dominoes with him and Roberta. She kept her eyes downcast all through the game, her long lashes casting shadows on her thin cheeks. Mrs. Green, fat and lazy, sat in an armchair and ordered everyone around like some large black empress. When the turnovers were ready, we gulped them down sizzling hot and succulent with butter and cinnamon. It was a comfortable atmosphere and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, especially when Mr. Green put the dominoes away and started telling ghost stories that made my hair stand on end.

Then we heard a car screech to a stop outside and almost immediately afterward, Clay Green, the oldest boy, burst through the door. "Turn out the lights!" he cried. "I think I'm being followed!"

At first, no one moved. Then Mrs. Green repeated the order in a high, frightened voice. Someone clicked a switch, then another and a third; and the shack was plunged into darkness.

One of the children began whimpering and I heard Mrs. Green's chair creak as she moved to hush the child. The air was heavy with the odor of cinnamon; and the only light came through the grille of the kitchen stove. Roberta found my hand in the darkness and held it. None of us knew what was going on, which made the suspense almost unbearable. As for myself, I thought about movies I had seen on television of frightened Jews hiding from the Nazi terror; and I held Roberta's hand even harder.

Finally, Mr. Green cleared his throat. "Doggone it, Clay," he whispered, "what the hell's going on?"

"I thought the sheriff and some of his deputies might have followed me," Clay whispered back. "There's been trouble at the factory. The sheriff tried to break up the picket line. Some of the men started throwing stones." (continued on page 146) Ghost of Martin Luther King (continued from page 76)

"What happened then?" Mr. Green said impatiently.

"The sheriff started hitting us with his billy club," Clay went on. His voice was low and hoarse. "Some of the men ran. But I stayed and stood my ground with the rest. Then one of the deputies fired his gun. That's when I ran. I got in the car and took off. Just when I was leaving, I saw them drag Mr. George Stapleton to the sheriff's car. I think he was the only one they arrested."

Mr. Green got up and turned the light on. His face seemed drawn and gray. "I knew there was going to be trouble," he said. "That's why I didn't go when George asked me. Did your father go, David?"

"No, sir," I said. "We had dinner at the Alcanthia Inn."

Mr. Green nodded. "Well, you'd better go home and tell your daddy that George is in jail. Maybe he can do something about it tomorrow morning. It's probably too late tonight."

I said good night to everybody and started for home. It was late October and the road that led to the highway was covered with leaves. There was a blob of a moon in the sky, bright and misshapen, like a lopsided pearl. A blanket of stars winked and glittered in a dome of dark blue. The air was unusually chilly for that time of year and I pulled my jacket collar up around my ears and walked on to the highway. When I was a child, this had been harvest weather, the time of pumpkins and corn, of tobacco to be cut and cured and sold, of walnuts, hazelnuts and chinquapins to be hunted out in the golden woods. But now the land went to waste while farmers became factory hands and bought their food at the supermarket in Dillwyn. The fields were stark under the hunched moon's glare, as though the earth begged forgiveness for the evil that man was doing to himself.

I was thinking about that and about what Clay had said about the pickets. It made me feel strange, knowing that Uncle George was spending the night in jail in Alcanthia Courthouse. He was bigger and bolder than my own father; and I felt that he would be all right until we could bail him out the next morning. This was not his first time in jail. He had been locked up during the early voterregistration drives and the agitation for civil rights. And each time he had been freed, he had gone home angrier than before and more determined, as he put it, to get his rightful share of things. I admired Uncle George, although the violence in him frightened me sometimes, as I was sure it frightened my father and mother.

From far away, I could hear the yelping of dogs; and once again I thought about those movies I had seen of Nazi Germany and the hounds of fear. It was true, too, that in these same woods and fields, black slaves had once made their desperate bid for freedom in the years before the Civil War. There had been hounds then, too, slavering at the heels of frightened men.

Had so much changed since then? Was it true that America's Negroes had become the successors to Hitler's Jews? I walked on. The wind slid around my ankles and through the leaves, rustling and hissing like the angry sound of autumn snakes. I had come to the hickory grove where it forms a kind of arch over the road where it joins at right angles with the highway. And then I saw the ghost.

He was walking toward me, on the other side of the road. It was dark in the grove, with only a trace of moonlight falling through the trees; and at first I thought that the ghost was some neighbor carrying a lantern that illuminated him in a kind of ethereal light. But as he drew closer, I saw that it was Martin Luther King--the solid, almost portly build, the round head, thick lips, eyes cast down, with an expression of infinite sorrow on his face, as though he was looking for something on the way and not finding it. He was dressed in a black suit and white shirt and he came down the road at a solemn pace. Walking with almost military precision, surrounded by unearthly light, he was as real as anything I had ever seen.

My first impulse was to run. But the apparition did not seem to mean me any harm. It was deathly quiet in the hickory grove, as though all sound had been suspended inside a vacuum contained by the towering trees. But from the fields around me, tree frogs and crickets raised a cacophony of song that accompanied the specter in his ghostly walk.

Just as he neared me, my legs came to life and I dived off the road into some bushes. But the ghost paid no attention to me at all. Looking neither left nor right, he proceeded down the road to the end of the grove. And where the moonlight fell there in the open space beyond the last tree, he disappeared as completely as though he had not existed at all.

I walked the rest of the way home in a daze. All my life I had heard stories about ghosts, but this was my first time actually seeing one. The apparition had not frightened me; in fact, it thrilled me with a sense of excitement and expectation that I had never experienced before. And I wondered what had called forth the ghost of Martin Luther King from his grave. What ominous events did his appearance foretell?

When I got home, I told my mother and father about Uncle George's being arrested. My father sat down and wrung his hands. "I knew it," he said. "I knew it would wind up like this."

My mother agreed with him. "I think you showed great sense in not going yourself," she said. "It never pays to rock the boat." Her artificial breast was hanging at a grotesque angle in her dress.

I did not tell them about the ghost that night, because they were too excited about Uncle George's being in jail. Next day, I went to school with Roberta. All the black students were abuzz about the events at the factory; and I did not tell any of them about the ghost, either.

When I got home from school, Uncle George was there drinking coffee with my mother. She had gone to Alcanthia Courthouse to bail him out, so that my father would not have to miss a day's work.

Uncle George winked at me when I went in. He was big and burly and very, very black. "Hi, David," he said. I told him hello. My mother told me to go change my clothes, which was her way of letting me know that she'd prefer me not to talk to Uncle George about yesterday. When I went back to the kitchen, Uncle George was ready to go. He thanked my mother for bailing him out. Before he left, she asked him if he'd kill the white sow for us come hog-killing time. "I'd be glad to," Uncle George said. He went down the road whistling.

• • •

In the weeks that followed, I saw the ghost of Martin Luther King several more times. After the second occasion, I told my mother and father and found my mother afraid to believe that the dead can return and my father wanting to believe but fearing some danger if he did. So I confided in Roberta; but she, like everyone else in Burnside, was stirred by the continual agitation at the factory in Dillwyn. Every day, it seemed, there was new trouble there--name-calling, fist-fights, long-simmering hostilities finally brought into the open as blacks tried to tear down the old barriers while whites did their utmost to maintain them. Then, near the middle of November, the blacks--who made up the majority of the work force at the factory--walked out in a general strike. The factory limped along for a few days, trying to stay open with a minority of white workers on the job; but finally it was forced to close down altogether.

Uncle George was elated. My own father, more through necessity than conviction, had joined the strikers; and he was somber and apprehensive, as was my mother. But it was clear that something more solid than Uncle George's rhetoric had fired the men and moved them to that drastic step. I went with my father to their meeting at May's, the black tavern; and underneath all their grumblings and protestations, as they bought beer with the last of their dwindling funds, it became apparent that their main complaint had to do with the fact (continued on page 182) Ghost of Martin luther king (continued from page 146) that, at the factory, they were treated as less than men. Uncle George and other speakers warned them of the rough days ahead but exhorted them to stick to their guns. That day, the union representative, who was white, came to explain to the men that their strike was illegal and to plead with them to go back to work. Jeering, shouting, stamping their feet, they drowned him out. "What's going on at that factory is illegal, too!" some of them cried. "We won't go back there until things change!" At last, the union man left, red in the face and looking disgruntled by their surprising show of solidarity.

But after the first heady days of excitement wore off, the hard reality of providing for ourselves set in. My mother had a few stores that she shared--somewhat begrudgingly, I must admit--with some of the other women. And there were a few gardens where collards and turnips grew in the November cold; these, too, were shared. We foraged in the woods for nuts and berries to keep going on. When some of the men went hunting and came back with an occasional wild turkey or quail or a brace of partridge, as many as possible shared in the meager supplies. We cleaned the fields and forest of all there was to eat. Our hunters stopped going to the woods for game because there was no money with which to buy ammunition. Yet the strike lingered on. The earlier boisterous acceptance was replaced by a kind of surly pride that worked as well to keep the men away from their jobs; and it was evident that hardship had only served to bring all of us together in a hard core of resistance to the injustices that had been practiced for so long at the factory. "Look at it this way," Uncle George told the men. "If we're suffering, it means that the white man is suffering more. Because there are fewer of them and they are less willing to share than we are."

One night near the end of November, I was going home from May's with my father and Uncle George. We were walking because there was no money to buy gas for the cars. Uncle George had made a peppery speech to the men at the tavern and he was still in a buoyant mood, bouncing along on the balls of his feet, waving his arms about. My father was hunched over, as though a pain had hit him in the gut. "Something's got to happen soon," he told Uncle George. It was clear that he was ready to go back to work. "We can't go on like this much longer."

"Would you go crawling back to the factory on your belly?" Uncle George said. "Would you have the white man laugh in your face? As for me, I'd rather die of starvation than take less than we deserve."

He kept trying to cheer up my father as we walked along the lonely road. From time to time, a car whizzed past us in the night. Then a car pulled up behind us and four hooded men jumped out. "Run, David!" my father cried at once. But the suddenness of the attack left me paralyzed. Uncle George stepped back, ready to fight; but two of the men grabbed him while a third went to work on him with his fists. The fourth man scrambled for my father, who turned to run and fell into a ditch. The fourth man laughted and came for me. I fought him as best I could, but it was no use. He clobbered me in the face with a hard fist and my head felt like it was coming off. When I hit the ground, he went to join his partners in the attack on Uncle George.

From the way they concentrated on him, it was obvious that he was their central target. They held him in the glare of the headlights while they beat him. Two men held his arms pinned behind his body, but still he fought with his feet, kicking at the other men as they circled him cautiously and tried to connect. When they did hit him, they smashed blows on his head, chest and belly. Finally, Uncle George sagged in their arms like a rag doll and they let him fall to the ground. They kicked him one after another, then they piled into their car and pulled away. I thought at first they had run over Uncle George, but they had barely avoided him. The moon was shining brightly and I could see the blood on his face and clothes. "Uncle George! Uncle George!" He was breathing heavily and his body felt almost broken as I wrapped my arms around him and dragged him to the edge of the road.

"Is he all right?" It was my father, panting at my elbow. I was filled with disgust for him, the way he'd run like a coward and dived into that ditch.

"He's unconscious," I said. "I think they hurt him bad."

Suddenly, my father started to cry. "I think I sprained my ankle," he said. I had never heard him cry before. He sounded so weak and miserable that I had to bite my lips to keep from screaming at him.

"We've got to get Uncle George home,"

I told him. "Then we can worry about your leg."

We eventually got Uncle George revived. And somehow we got him home, half carrying him, dragging him sometimes. My father moaned and whined like a woman; and I think it was his weakness that gave me strength. We must have made a strange sight, the three of us stumbling along the road, Uncle George reeling between me and my father in the white moonlight. There was no doubt in my mind that the hooded men had beaten Uncle George so terribly because he was the leader of the strike. That thought was in my father's mind, too. "I knew something like this would happen," he complained. "I just knew it."

Uncle George was almost completely revived by then. "Homer, why don't you shut your damned mouth?" he said thickly. "If you ... if those men ... think this beating's going to drive me back to work, you've all got another thought coming."

"We can't go on like this!" my father said, limping along.

"We've got to go on," Uncle George said. He shook his broad shoulders. "Let me alone. I can walk by myself." Although he freed himself from my father, he still walked with his arm around me. "Did they hurt you, David?"

"Not much," I said. I was proud now that I hadn't run, even though that man had hit me.

"I think I sprained my ankle," my father said. He had stopped crying, but he was still limping badly.

"You'll live," Uncle George said. "We're all going to live."

Still my father complained. "I'm hungry," he said. It sounded so irrelevant that I almost laughed in his face. "I haven't had a good meal in days."

Uncle George did laugh. And I loved him then for the fact that he could laugh, beaten and broken as he was. "I think it's time we killed that hog of yours, Homer. She's about the only thing left in Burnside for us to eat."

Hungry as he was, my father didn't seem too happy at the idea. "There must be another way, George. I've grown kind of fond of that sow."

"Homer, you're a damned fool," Uncle George said with heavy contempt. "The whole community's starving and you're worried about saving a sow's life. If we kill that hog, that'll give us a little more time. If they sent those men out to beat me up, it means they're getting more desperate than we are. I'll kill that sow tomorrow."

We were nearing the house. "You think you'll be able to?" my father said.

"I'll be able to. It'll take more than a beating to stop me."

My mother almost fainted when she saw us. After she collected herself, she worked on Uncle George first, because he was our worst casualty. She gave me a cold rag to hold against my jaw. While she worked on my father, I went outside and sat on the porch with Uncle George. "Don't think too hard of your father," he told me. "Sometimes a man can't help being the way he is."

The night air was cold, but I sat on the porch with Uncle George in a warm glow of contentment. We had both been beaten by the hooded men and this made me feel closer to him than ever before. So I was sorry when he stood up to go. "You sure you well enough to go home, Uncle George? Why don't you spend the night?"

"I feel fine," he said. "Just a little bit sore. Come on and walk with me a way."

I walked with him to the highway. "Suppose those men come back?" I said.

But he said they wouldn't come back. "They've done enough damage for one night. Now they'll wait to see what we're going to do." I asked him what we would do. "Tomorrow we're going to butcher that hog of your daddy's, so everybody can have a good meal. You want to help me?"

I had never helped butcher a hog before, and I felt very excited. "Sure. I'd like that." I tried to keep my voice calm, because he was treating me like we were equal men. He even clapped me on the shoulder when we got to the highway.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he said. I told him good night and watched him walk down the highway until he became a part of the moon mist and then disappeared.

On the way home, I saw the ghost again. It seemed to me that he was crying. While I did not see his tears, it was something that I felt intensely--a sense of his sorrow and his weeping. "What do you want?" I whispered. "Why are you crying?"

And then it came to me that I was special among all the people of Bernice, for the ghost of Martin Luther King apparently walked only for me. Whatever his message was, whatever the reason for his prowling these roads, it was meant only for me.

At the same time that I was gladdened, I also felt sad. The burden of being the only one to see the ghost was almost too much to bear. And it seemed to me then that all there was for me in life was to live a little, perhaps to love, and then to die as shamefully as that sow would die. shot in the head, her throat slit, then parceled out among the community to be eaten and soon forgotten.

Was that the message of Martin Luther King to me--how desperate and violent and fragile life is? I did not know. My jaw still hurt from where the white man had hit me. But my shoulder still felt warm from the memory of Uncle George's hand when he'd told me good night. Apparently unaware of all this, the ghost walked steadily on. Then the light around him seemed to flicker for a moment, like a candle flame that is about to go out. And then he disappeared.

When I got home, my mother announced that my father's ankle was, indeed, sprained. She had wrapped it in bandages and he was sitting before the fire with his injured leg stretched across a chair. "Good God," my mother said. "There's no money, there's no food. What are we going to do?"

My father looked like he might break out in tears again. "Don't worry. George is going to kill the sow tomorrow."

That seemed to calm my mother some. Still she wrung her hands. "What are we going to do after that?" she cried. I went to bed and left them both staring into the fire, as though they might find there the answers to our problem.

• • •

The next morning, nearly everyone in our community gathered for the killing of the white sow. Most of them were dressed in rags and they milled around my mother like hungry animals waiting to be fed. She had on one of my father's old jackets and she was trying, without much success, to make a list of the people there and the parts of the sow that they would get after the killing. "Just be calm, now," my mother said. "Please. There's going to be enough for everybody." But the neighbors pressed in excitedly around her, some of them reminding her of past favors in order to get a preferred spot on her list.

"Let's get on with the killing," somebody said. "It looks like it might snow before long." The sky did look threatening and full. Crows were screaming down in the field where the corn used to be.

The crowd moved away from my mother and over to the grindstone where Uncle George and I were whetting the butcher knife. I was turning the wheel for him and he was concentrating on getting the blade honed to just the right point. In daylight, his bruises from the night before were blue-black and ugly, scabbing over on his cheeks. "We'll get going in a minute," he told the crowd. My father nodded. He was checking out the rifle that we were going to shoot the sow with before cutting her throat. "That seems to be a waste of good ammunition," Uncle George told my father. "As scarce as shot is."

"It's the law, George," my father said. "We've got to shoot that sow in the head before we cut her throat. S. P. C. A. regulations say so."

Uncle George gave a nasty laugh. "I know that. Somebody ought to start a society for the prevention of cruelty to us niggers. That'll be the day."

Everybody laughed except my father. "George, please don't start that kind of talk right now. My ankle's hurting me and I'm not in the mood for that kind of talk."

Uncle George was through sharpening the knife. Expectant now, the crowd moved in closer around us. But Uncle George waved them back. "Give me room," he said. "There're only two bullets here and I don't want to miss."

"Lawd, don't miss," somebody said. "As hungry as I am."

Now everybody laughed, but it was apparent that they were all thinking the same thing. You could see the hunger stamped on their faces.

Uncle George cocked the rifle almost disdainfully. "A waste of good lead, if you ask me."

"Maybe I'd better do the shooting, George," my father said. "This ankle ain't as bad as all that. Or let David do it. He's a good shot."

"If the white man says shoot her," Uncle George said, "then I'll shoot her. I always do what the white man says." He gave me the butcher knife. "David, you better hold this. Now go along and open the pen."

"Be sure to shoot her square in the head," my father said. "I don't want her to suffer."

The sow stood sniffing the boards of the pen with her pink snout. "Open the pen, David," Uncle George said.

I yanked up the slats over the opening of the pen. Then I prodded the sow with the knife handle until she came lumbering into the yard. She weighed over 200 pounds by now, but she was still light and easy on her feet. Uncle George shouted as the rifle cracked and jerked in his hands. I closed my eyes then, because I didn't want to see the sow squealing and kicking about on the ground.

"Damn!" my father cried; and the crowd shouted in unison. I opened my eyes. Uncle George had missed the sow. She was loping down the hill where the pea patch used to be.

I took off after the sow, and so did everybody else. They went screaming like savages into the woods. But Uncle George and I were far ahead of them. And the white sow was a good 100 yards ahead of us. Uncle George ran beside me, holding the rifle up over his head. He was grinning.

As for the other people, they fanned out through the woods, shrieking, beating every bush as though they were looking for a fugitive slave. From time to time, someone caught sight of the sow and the crowd scrambled in that direction. But the sow was as fleet and as elusive as a ghost, moving through the woods like a fat wraith.

Finally, Uncle George put his hands to his mouth and hollered. "Everybody go back to the house!" he cried. "We'll never catch her this way!" He yelled and cursed until the people turned and went back up the hill in small disappointed groups.

When the woods were clear, he and I walked on. The trees around us were barren; the ground was covered with leaves. We tried to walk quietly, but the leaves kept up a constant crackling under our feet. High over the naked trees, the sun glimmered whitely.

Then I spotted the sow in a thicket in front of us. Uncle George was looking the other way and I tugged at his belt to get his attention. "There she is," I whispered. I still had the butcher knife. I rammed it into the ground and closed my eyes as Uncle George brought the rifle to his shoulder. I waited a long time for the rifle to go off, but when it didn't, I opened my eyes.

Uncle George just stood there, squinting down the length of the rifle barrel. Ahead of us, the sow was munching acorns, rooting about with her wet snout and grunting. "Aren't you going to shoot her?" I said.

Uncle George handed me the gun. "Gimme that goddamned knife," he said. I gave him the knife, hilt first. His face was so black and ugly now, I wondered that I had ever liked him.

Crouching, he crept through the woods toward the sow. When she raised her head and looked at him, Uncle George stopped. The sow inspected Uncle George; then she took a step away and went on nuzzling the ground. Uncle George glided toward her like a big black snake, holding the butcher knife in his right fist. But before he could get to her, she wheeled and crashed off deeper into the woods.

"What you looking at me like that for?" Uncle George said. "What the hell you looking at me like that for?"

"Nothing." He seemed like a complete stranger now, his bruised face angry and streaked with sweat.

"Go find that sow! Goddamn you, go find her!"

Her trail was easy to follow. She had cut through the grove of pines near the old watering branch. There was a fresh pile of dung on the path and Uncle George laughed when he saw it. But I didn't laugh or say anything, because he seemed just mad enough to hit me.

The sky had been white before, but it turned very gray now, with heavy clouds hiding the sun. And there was a sharp chill in the air, like it really was going to snow. As quietly as we could, Uncle George and I followed the white sow.

We saw her as we rounded the bend in the creek. She was on the other side of the creek, her short legs and underbelly dripping wet. She was standing in a cone-shaped area where the skeletons of touch-me-nots and honeysuckle grew. In front of her, where we stood, was the creek. Behind her was a barbed-wire fence that curved around to the water's edge on both sides. She was trapped and she didn't seem to know it. She was sniffing at dead vines that grew all around her.

When Uncle George splashed into the creek and started across, the sow raised her head and looked am him. Uncle George stepped up onto the bank and slid the knife out of his belt. The sow just looked at him.

Uncle George beckoned to the sow with his left arm. "Come on, white baby." He held the butcher knife in his right fist. "You come on to your black daddy." The sow took a step toward him. "Come on, baby," he coaxed. The sow took another step toward him and he smiled.

Something in me exploded then like an angry balloon. Uncle George was an expert shot--he had taught me how to use the rifle--and he had deliberately missed that sow back at the house. For some cruel reason, he wanted to cut her throat without shooting her first. At the same time I realized that, I also knew that I had to stop him somehow. "Uncle George!" I splashed across the creek. "Uncle George, I'm going to tell Daddy on you!"

The sow sprang into action then. She skittered past Uncle George and was halfway across the creek before he grabbed her by the ear. The sow squealed and Uncle George laughed. "Easy, baby. You take it easy, now."

"I'm going to tell Daddy," I said. I felt like crying, watching him as he yanked the sow's head up and back, throwing his thick legs around her at the same time. She floundered in the water, squealing to high heaven, her white body sliding up and down between Uncle George's legs. Then she reared out of the water on her hind legs, slashing the air with her front feet. Uncle George tightened his legs around her sides. I could see the terror in her eyes as she fought for her life.

Then a strange thing happened. Thunder rolled in over our heads, shattering the air like a turmoil of kettledrums gone wild. There is often thunder here before a storm, because of the mountains around us. But this was deep-throated, primeval, heavier than any I had ever heard before. It startled Uncle George, too. He was looking up; his hand with the knife stopped a few inches from the sow's throat. And while we stood there, frozen in an incredible tableau, the ghost of Martin Luther King appeared beside me and walked across the creek.

I almost threw the rifle away and ran. The thunder rolled again and the sky grew nearly as dark as night. Uncle George could not see the ghost, for he readied himself again to cut the sow's throat. But I saw the ghost very clearly. He knelt beside the sow and laid his hand against her throat.

He was saying something to me so clearly, even as I heard the first snow filtering softly down through the trees. "Uncle George!" I called to warn him as I lifted the rifle to my shoulder. The ghost was pointing now at the sow's head, leaning in an attitude of near supplication over the struggling animal.

"Uncle George!" He was steadily pulling the sow's head back, about to cut her throat. The ghost pointed. I aimed very carefully. And fired. And caught the sow squarely in the head, where the ghost was pointing. The sow leaped once and died. The ghost disappeared.

Blood splashed on Uncle George. He dropped the sow and started for me. But I held the riffle on him. "Don't come any closer," I said. The riffle was empty, but he didn't seem to realize that.

"You goddamn fool," he said harshly. "You could've shot me."

"I know," I said. I could hardly talk. My throat felt pinched together and my mouth was sour. The snow was falling hard around us now, whispering through the trees like cold secrets. "You wanted to kill her because she was white," I said. It seemed a strange thing to accuse him of. Yet I knew it was true. "You hated her because she was white."

"Well, didn't you?" Uncle George said. He seemed angry and bewildered at the same time. The sow formed an obscene white lump behind him. I didn't know what to say, so I turned and went back toward home.

Some of the men went down to help Uncle George bring the sow to the house. They had built a fire in the yard and were boiling water in a large steel barrel. First, they hung the sow by her heels from a low tree. My father cut her throat and some of the neighbors caught the blood in pots. They would use that to make blood pudding.

Then they took the sow down and dipped her into the barrel of boiling water to loosen her hair. When they pulled her out, she was steaming; and they went to work on her with knives and pieces of tin can, scraping off the hair.

The snow was falling steadily and heavily now; and the people beat their arms and blew into their hands to keep warm. I went inside and watched through the window while they butchered the sow and portioned her out. When Roberta got her piece of meat, she came in and stood beside me at the window.

There was snow everywhere, choking the woods, the roads, beating down on the black people as they trudged home with their portion of the white sow. Uncle George was the last one to leave. I watched him through the window as he went up the road, bent over under the oppression of snow swirling around him. My mother and father came inside, beating the snow out of their clothes. "I'm glad that's over," my mother said. She invited Roberta to stay and share what we had for dinner.

The strike at the factory ended several days after that, with management making a few token concessions that' the black men were eager to accept. It snowed off and on for a week and when it ended, the world around us was almost completely white, ugly in some places, beautiful in others.

I have not seen the ghost of Martin Luther King since that day in the woods, although I have looked for him from time to time. But I have not seen him; and all there is to do now is to look at the snow and to wait, with whatever patience I am capable of, until the sun comes again to hammer it into the ground.