This is the story of a black man, Ras Beadie, born in 1940 in Deep South Mississippi to Lizzie Beadie. Ras was the seventh of Lizzie's nine children. There was no Mr. Beadie in the picture. When she was 17, Lizzie had took up with a man named Beadie and they lived together for a while and she had borne him two children. One day a woman shows up mad as h*ll, looking for her errant husband-- the man Lizzie called hers. The women got into a heated fight and Lizzie was slashed across her left cheek with a knife, leaving a scar she bore the rest of her life. Her "husband" took off, but Lizzie always went by the last name Beadie.

By the time Ras came along, his mother had lived rough for a long time, bearing children for different men, drinking heavily, bloated and foul and had let go of life. The children were farmed out to her mother to raise when her mother was able; in between the chillun were dropped off at kinfolk's houses, unwanted and seen as a burden. One son was in prison by age 15; and twins with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome died early with pneumonia.

Ras was a sensitive quiet little boy, never knowing when his mother might show up again and cause upheaval. He liked living with his granny and dreaded his mother's drunken appearances. He liked helping his granny plant flowers; petunias, larkspur, cockscombs, sweet williams, and watched her as she dipped snuff, putting it between her bottom gum and teeth. Sometimes it would dribble out the sides of her mouth un-noticed when she was busy in the yard.

Ras was teased by everyone for liking flowers and animals. His sensitive tender nature had to grow calluses so he could survive in this harsh environment. He got into trouble for helping his brother (out on parole) to steal a car and went to jail. Their crimes were always against other blacks--they didn't mess around with white folks' stuff. When he did go to school, it was an all black school; segregation was the norm. At 16, one teacher saw potential in Ras and tried to prevent him from falling down the foxhole of life he was heading for. He listened, but was already cynical--no one had ever told him the truth about anything.

Ras got a girl pregnant and the girl's father threatened him if he didn't marry her. He did, and they started having children. Ras worked every job he could find to support them, and was proud of taking care of them. Years passed, and where ever Ras was, there were flowers and animals. He got a fish tank and took good care of his flock. Animals and plants of all sorts thrived under his care, but there was no way to make a living out of it. He opened a gas station/ restaurant once the children were all grown, but two men came in drinking, had a fight outside and killed each other. The law hassled him, and he closed the business.

Though spitballs, curveballs, pitfalls of every kind have been thrown at him, Ras, now 70, stubbornly clings to what he loves, his flowers and his fish and wishes only for a little peace and quiet to enjoy it, as grandchildren have been dropped at his houise to raise. When I heard him talking, I could sense that little boy, hoping and wanting for the serenity he'll probably never find.

susil