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Commentary
*Clarence Von Carter is Susie’s
middle son.
**Susie May Parham was a neighbor and very elderly when she
died. Men in Jarratt die early, so the town was becoming a town
of widows. With the state prison moving to Jarratt, this pattern
has been curtailed. Many young people have moved up from
Carolina for jobs at the prison. A modern apartment building was
constructed in Jarratt to accommodate this new influx of
residents. This is a great change from the sixties for most
people were not then hooked to a water or sewage line. There are
also a great number of Hispanics moving into the region which
will be the source of future misunderstandings and conflicts.
For if people don’t know your parents they don’t know you. I
suspect that in twenty years land values will begin to
skyrocket. The swamp land that was once reserved for Negroes
will be attractive to a greater number of whites and Hispanics.
*** Clarence C.L. Carter was the husband of Susie Lewis, one
of Mama’s daughters. In 1956, he died from bullet wounds as a
result of a gunfight with local cops in a nearby town, Emporia.
He killed one cop, wounded the other. He was my childhood hero.
Spiritually, I felt I had more in common with him than I had
with Edler. With his dreamy eyes and curvaceous lips, I thought
Clarence was beautiful and noble, willing to die in defense of
honor and integrity. That was the sort of man I wanted to be
related to. At times, I even felt that I loved him more than his
own sons. The oldest of his sons, Norman, was eight at his death
and so was I.
****Though in my thirties, at the writing of this letter, I
was still having doubts about who was my biological father.
Edler ("Etler") Wyche was said to be my father. We got
to know each other in the late sixties and early seventies. No
one thought I looked like him and his family did not really
accept me as a Wyche.
Edler spent most of his adult life in Baltimore working at
Sparrows Point. As a result of a skin infection from the
asbestos, he was forced into retirement. With his pension, he
moved back to Jarratt and lived with his mother Cary Wyche. They
found him dead in his truck which was sitting astride the
railroad tracks. I visited him several times while he lived with
his mother and I went to his funeral, though I felt a bit
apprehensive about doing that, for none of the Wyches had
contacted me. I had heard about the death through my mother
Lucinda. I suppose Ruth, Edler’s sister had called Lucinda. Or
maybe Mama called me and told me about his death.
Even with such apprehensions, I left Baltimore for Jarratt.
That year, 1990, both Edler and his sister Pat died near the
same time and the Wyche family decided to have a double funeral.
Both were buried side by side in Jerusalem cemetery. Their
sister Ruth, I believe, was responsible for the funeral
preparations. I was not invited to participate in the mourning
line. In the funeral notice, they proclaimed Edler died without
issue. That silence, however, may have been done for legal
reasons so as to curtail claims on his property.
When my mother Lucinda questioned Ruth, Edler’s oldest
sister, about the absence of my name in the funeral notice, she
told Lucinda that she had forgotten about me. How that was
possible I do not have the faintest, for I stayed at her house
during the late 1960s and I was at her mother’s wake only a
few years before. But that is a matter the Wyches have to live
with to their shame. Edler, called "Whitey" by his
friends, was a good man, as men go who have no spiritual life. I
was very fond of him and when I lived with him I found him
amusing. But he was too tied to the material and he cared too
much what others thought of him. He retired as a country
gentleman, drinking and hunting deer.
*****William Lee Carter was Clarence’s brother and Lucinda’s
first husband. That is, Susie and Lucinda, two of Mama's five
daughters, married two brothers. William Lee was in the
car and present at the gunfight in Emporia in which his brother
Clarence was killed.. William Lee is the father of Celestine and
Deborah, the older two of Lucinda’s daughters. Both of them
were raised in Baltimore, mostly in Cherry Hill but also in
Edmondson Village. They both went to and graduated from
Edmondson High. Lucinda’s other two daughters have a different
father. Thus Celestine and Deborah are cousins to Norman, Von,
and Mack through bother their mother and their father. Their
sister Theresa became familiar with her father only after she
had married twice and had her own son, Maurice. Her father is a
member of the Stith family of Jarratt. Theresa cared little
whether the Stiths accepted her or not. In such situations,
acceptance of estranged members of families in rural areas are
always difficult; for it is more than blood, it is the sharing
of a history of sentiments, of a tradition. |
