How Morse McClary Found Love and Forgave America

He owed this to two women: his beloved wife Zelda and a hometown agoraphobic girl.  A ghost, hideous she was, and, intelligent. A cultured world traveler from reading, she went everywhere from nowhere tuck safely in her room above the family café. Young Morse worked as a boy of sixteen, washing dishes, feeding white folks including the ones who roamed the balmy southern nights hunting for incorrigible blacks, specifically males, who did not know their place.

Her parents were good white people, generous with the town black population, helping with what little they had.  Morse was grateful for the opportunity to escape the sharecropper’s doom and his stepfather, to work in a kitchen to help his impoverish family. That allowed his sad mother something to put in the collection plate on Sundays and his hateful stepfather for drink so his mother would be spared a tongue lashing.

He met his father once as a boy of eight and never saw him again.  Johnny McClary, a sharecropper’s son, was a legendary Harlem’s numbers runner who was gunned down a year after visiting Morse.  The summer before his death, Johnny paraded himself at church showing off, making his son the envy of school and the congregation.  He brought along his good friend business associate, Richard Cummings, who had family in the next town.  Morse did find it odd that his hyper-masculine father and the delicate man were friends. The church folks gossiped, tongues running wild, about Morse bringing home that pretty man. Mr. Cummings spent time with Morse, more so than his father, showering attention, playing games, showing him pictures of his newborn niece, Zelda.

When his father died, the stepfather cursed Johnny as the money died with him. Young Morse needed to become a man at nine years.  He immediately put him in the fields, tilling soil, towing, during   off time from school, sometimes forcing him to miss school altogether.  Despite the absence Morse excelled academics, determined not be a man of dubious distinction like his father, nor a bitter, illiterate sharecropper like his stepfather.  He had the good fortune to be present when the café owner stopped by asking for him.  He came looking for Morse recommended by his teacher, a blessing from the hardship of the land, abusive foreman and the unmerciful Alabama heat.

He had heard about the owner’s daughter from the workers; how ugly she was, how their eyes hurt from the site of her like the snakes in Medusa’s hair. Morse thought no one could be that ugly where it was painful to look at them.

And then out of nowhere she appeared.  Morse jumped at the sight of her, deformed and crooked.  She emerged one day from the dark corner of the café like a horrid troll from under the bridge in a children’s fable.

He was invisible to her as she dragged her uneven body, hunched over not caring a wit by his mortified face.  She was a cyclops. Her chin scraped the floor, beady blue eyes resistant to the slightest of light, an elongated jaw that made it difficult to fully close her mouth. The constant lip licking to moistened her lips, jutting and retrieving her tongue like a lizard catching a fly

She had no waistline just a stump of a body, and spindly legs and arms that could not hold a feather.  She was ten years older than Morse, but it was impossible to see any youthfulness in the woman of twenty-six years in her ugly form.

“Morning Ma’am,” Morse said mindful of his manners.

She grabbed a steaming hot buttermilk biscuit out of the tray with fingers without nerves as though snatching it from someone hand, then dragged her body back into the dark corner without a glimpse or acknowledgment of him.

From then on, each morning Morse came to work wash dishes and learn as much he could about the café business from her father.  First one in, last one out, he was determined to someday own his own café.  His hard work and commitment did not go unnoticed by her father, or her.

And each day Morse would smile and say “Good morning Ma’am” and “Good night Ma’am” to the troll under the bridge.  He was no longer startled by her face. 

“Beautiful morning, ain’t it Ma’am?” he smiled at her not knowing if she looked at him to see.  “Mister said you might want some freshly squeeze juice,” he said another time handing it her,” she recoiled in horror like a snake, then, head down pointed to place the juice on the table next to the bowl of grits left for her. Instinctively she knew all too well what others saw for their eyes indicted her, consigned to isolation and abandonment of human interaction apart from her parents, who she suspected their resentment to God for testing their faith.  

But Negre did not wave. He spoke to her like he could not see her face, like he did not see her deformed body.  He spoke to her like a human being, not an oddity, a freak to stare and pity. What she simply long for was, someone to see her as just that–a human being.  She longed to be wanted, apart from the unconditional love she received from her parents.  

Still, Negre could not be trusted, no one could.

Another time he left her flowers freshly picked from the field behind the café thinking something so ugly would appreciate the wild flowers beauty.  “Good night Ma’am.” Why he was drawn to her, Morse did not have any answer, only knowing if God created her then she was worthy of kindness.  He knew what it was to be mistreated simply by appearance.  It was all too familiar living in Alabama, one knowing their place to survive. He witnessed black bodies burdening massive oaks, choking the river.  

“That’s a fine-looking book you got there Ma’am” Morse said his forearms immersed in water washing dishes then resume singing a hymnal, prepping for his First Sunday performance at the Baptist church. She did not respond. His soft low voice was salve for her soul. She often watched him from the dark shadows to hear his voice, eyes closed tightly and her body relaxed.  She emerged from the shadows, shielding her eyes with her hand.   

And his smile, it was wide and unending with pearl white teeth perfectly aligned in his handsome coal face.   He was happy, like the slaves pictured in caricature.  How, she studied him when he turned his back after ignoring him, can he be so happy in his circumstances?  He’s colored; they’re always happy she answered staring at his broad back. She did not bow her head when he turned around again and their eyes met for the first time.  Beautiful smile, beautiful eyes, beautiful black arms and strong.  “Everything all right Ma’am?” he waited a moment, still smiling, and then resume washing pots and pans when she did not answer him.  The girl allowed her beady eyes to stare at his broad shoulders again, now his backside, big legs straining the overalls he had on.  Her stump body released moisture between her legs as the lust seeped out of her pores.

But it would never be.  She could never seduce him, too hideous, repulsive, to be a seductress.  She moved over to the stove near him not looking at him and gently lifted a biscuit out the pan, very lady like, and disappeared into darkness.

Slowly she began to faintly acknowledge him with a nod of her massive head still incapable of looking him in the eyes after the first time.  

He was working on his off day in the kitchen washing and cleaning when she startled him. “Sorry, Ma’am I didn’t think anybody be here.”

She was at first, paralyzed, unable to push words out of her crooked mouth.

“Can I get you something to eat?” Morse offered, “I was about to make some grits and eggs.”

And finally, she let out, “grits, Negre if you please.”

Morse leaned forward “Beg pardon, Ma’am?”

“I’m studying French,” she explained, “You’re Negre that is how the French says Negro.”

“Well, I guess that’s a heap better than some of the worse things I’ve been called.” He was puzzled by her words and more so that she finally spoke to him. “And what is your name in French?”

“Same in English, Pauline,” she tried to make her crooked face form semblance of a smile.

“Well, Miss. Pauline, it’s a nice name in any language.”

Their friendship was cultivated from there on.  She gave him the book he admired; it was basic French which he learned quickly with her as a well versed and patient teacher.  They spoke only French and made it their official secret language both disdainful of America and the wrongs she has done to them both.  Pauline revealed she secreted all her money and meager earnings to set her plan in motion: to run away to France and make it her home.  She dreamed of languid days on the Left bank and in the cafes amongst intellectuals, social and rebel degenerates. Misfits like her, immersion in all things French.  There, she told Morse one evening after work, Coloreds are equal with Whites and are free to live and love whomever.  The lure of a multi-cultural society without Jim Crow segregation laws, without lynching, without injustice, was food to a starving young Morse McClary.  She told of famous Negroes living a harmonious life in France.  It made Morse hungry for her tales of life in Europe where he could live his life without fear. He practiced his French with vigor, determined to leave America and go to the real promise land, not the North but Europe. And it made perfect sense to choose Paris as his French was getting better.  

Simply it was a friendship; sympathy for the defective woman that tugged at his heart the way a wounded animal would—at first.  

Her parents did not object to Morse keeping company with Pauline.  They were grateful she was able to connect; amazed the she was capable of interaction outside the house.  

“Moi je t’aime Negre,” she whistled through her crooked lips.

They ingested all but a drop of her father’s brandy.  Pauline’s blue eyes were no longer pressed and beady, they relaxed as the muscles in her face did and her eyes smiled.

“Morse, moi je t’aime.”

The dim room with a crackling fire and warmth the brandy raced through his veins rushed to his head. It made his body limp.

“You call me by my name, Ma’am.”

He focused, a little, uncertain if the brandy made her moved an inch closer to him. Close enough to smell her perfume, sweet and sticky; he pressed eyes tightly for a second and smelled the brandy on her lopped sided lips.

“Morse, moi je t’aime, Mon Cheri,” she dragged her body next his, allowing her soft hand to touch him.  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she said contradicting the pangs in her heart, and the heat between uneven legs.

He put the glass down.  “Moi aussi, je t’aime,” he whispered.  His sturdy brown fingers traced the lines of Pauline’s pink face, then droopy lips, and small nose, his thumb pressed into her dragging chin leaving an imprint. He kissed her without reservation or repulsion.  He pulled away, looked at her waiting, then pushed his tongue into her receptive, famish mouth.  

His hand navigated to her small firm breasts, with his thumb and index finger he squeezed gently until she moaned out of pleasure of his touch or what was to come. She guided his hand further down into a tuft of soft hair, panting as he went further and inside.  He pushed her down carefully against the rug with one hand, the other deep in her rubbing in a circular moment as she wiggled about then arched her back deliriously.  

She peeled off her clothes giving him her nakedness, ready.  Never naked before a man black or white, without shame, only an inferno below with the desire she longed to satisfy.  

He was not frightened by her deformity of her ugly body, only the desire to fulfill what they both wanted at that very moment.  He plunged into Pauline’s sheer delight and as she clawed his black granite body, he pulled back to the end of her then lounge forward, deep, until the shrill climax made her limp with pleasure dripped down inside of her thighs. 

“Ma Cherie.” Morse held her face for a moment, then gently kissed her, leaving his lips on her a second too long when her mother screamed. 

“Oh my God!” she shrieked, “You ungrateful black bastard.” 

Pauline cried “No Mama, I love him.”

“I’m sorry Ma’am”

“After all we’ve done for you, your people; this is how you repay our kindness violating a child, an innocent, mentally....”

“Shut up Mama...”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am”

“This town ain’t big enough for us to handle a scandal, you understand boy?”

And there it was.  Her ugly racism that lay dormant surfaced with the mention of boy.  She was just like the rest, no different.  And Morse knew this was the end of his life in this sleepy southern town and it was all the motivation he needed to leave.  If he stays, there will be a cypress tree on a humid moonless night waiting for him or choking the river with no witness but God.  

Ma’am held the door as Morse, nude, gathered his clothes, her eyes followed him stabbing daggers in at his back.  She jumped in front of him poking his naked chest with a boney finger, “I won’t have no scandal about Pauline. I’ll shoot you myself.  You need to leave, go up north like the rest of the free-thinking niggers.”

The door slammed shut to his life in the south and Pauline.  He heard the wailing, noise strange to his ears, like that of a dying animal.  It was her, she could not cry, just push her anguish out anyway possible away from her heart, her deformed stump had reach it capacity and burst from combustion.  Her noise was heard as Morse was fifty yards away from the house.  Lights from the neighbors flick on like dominoes bedeviled by the noise from the café owner’s house. A noise inaudible to human ears and the black moonless sky.

He arrived in New York first; staying a moment too long anchored by guilt, doubt, dogged thoughts of indecision, whether to risk the return to Alabama, return to his Pauline. He found himself at Charles DeGaulle airport a year later, first time on an aircraft and away from home. The flight nearly cost him to abandon France but thoughts of Pauline and the life he escaped from fortified this determination to reach the promise land to fulfill their dreams. And as he dreamed, France received him with a welcome never extended to him in America.  He immersed himself in the life of an expatriate and the Parisian culture, vomiting the American mind set. The inborn fear abandoned him the moment he touched French soil, and he pursued his freedom with abandonment and engaging his hedonism, fucking as many white women until he was full.

By his twenty fifth birthday, Morse had his own café entertaining the French palate with foods from home; fried chicken with gravy, spoon bread, sweet potato pie, collard greens, chitterlings, peach cobbler, macaroni and cheese, and his number one hit with the French, barbeque ribs.  On Sundays, he entertained the Parisians and Europeans alike with gospel music, his connections to home. 

His stepfather had since forgiven him for putting the family in danger for the attempted rape of the café owner’s daughter; a lie his father believed told by the sheriff and the town white men who came looking for him that night he left Alabama.   He thanked the owner for saving his son’s “black hide from a tree,” and agreed to move to a neighboring town.  His father stopped cursing him as the money wired in from France gave him a new home and money for drink.  His mother died of a broken heart knowing she would never see her son again, unable to leave the south and her husband.

His Pauline. 

His stepfather told him she allowed her stump body to weight her down the river.  “That ugly gal caused a whole heap of trouble son,” he had a family member write the letter for him, “she got some young buck nearly whipped to death done fooling around with her.  Thank God you had the sense to get away from that beast.  She the one always craving colored boys.  The Devil can show his face in something as pitiful as her.”

When extracted from the river, tangled around her neck, her deformed water-logged body, was her knapsack and in it, her French books, a flight ticket to France and stones to keep her in the water.  

He met Zelda Keane one warm afternoon with a group of college coeds in country on a field trip from the states.  He had lived in France for almost a decade, with a French woman and her young son.  Zelda’s warm face and inviting brown skin made him approach her and introduce himself in flawless French, so flawless she was surprised when revealed he was an American from Alabama; the same state as her parents.   Her parents had left Dixie years shortly after her birth joining her Uncle Richard Cummings in New York City.  He loved her New York accent, girlish sophistication, and kind eyes. She was not scarred by the ugliness of Jim Crow, a blessing her parents had given her.   He knew nothing about her, but fell in love instantly and followed her back to America, leaving his lover, and his business.  With a heavy heart, he left his adopted country that loved him more than his motherland.  He vowed never to forget the love France had shown him for the rest of his life.

They engaged in a transatlantic relationship until Morse was able to sell his café and joined her in Los Angeles a eighteen months later, settling in Watts where Zelda had set up shop for her fledgling veterinary practice rescuing animals abandoned in the Watt’s riot of 1965.  Morse opened a rib shack that was a hit the moment he threw a slab in the pits.  He allowed people of all ethnicity and political alliances, including radicals to meet in his restaurant garnering the unwelcome attention of FBI surveillance for Black Panthers, and other perceived enemies of the state.

The FBI continued to stalk the McClary’s now with three small children into the 1980's as they returned to Zelda hometown of upstate New York making it their home to raise their children.  Again, Morse opened a rib shack and it became a success and it was then he decided to pay homage to France by opening McClary’s a French infusion soul food restaurant.  Zelda’s practice flourished in the beginning, but with Morse connections to his patrons, they brought their pets to her.

Their children were raised different from Morse who vowed never to hit, or curse his children as his stepfather had done to him.  He vowed never to abandon his children as his father had done him.  He kept his promise to love Zelda, treated her as a gift from God as Pauline was given and taken away from him. 

He was thankful to be home in a country that once treated him as a second-class citizen without rights. 

America welcomed him home.  

He was grateful to God for a forgiving heart.

But most of all, Morse was forever indebted to Pauline who made it all happen one moonless Alabama night in 1956.