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Show page 85 moved like two huge millstones x?hen he pushed Flam's lavTnmower. Perspiration wuld shine upon Fad's expansive face and glisten a l l the way up into his short curly hair white at t h e edges. Fad's face was worldly knowledgable, as though he knew secrets of living that no one else knew, but the secrets he seemed to know he never revealed, at least to the whites. Flam spoke often of t h i s to his wife. Mrs. F a r r e l l would reply, "Charles's face is a face of struggle, of a race wrenching i t s e l f from poverty." Flam and h i s wife always addressed or referred to Fad by his given name of Charles, and did so in a dignified way that many folks of our town did not employ. Flam F a r r e l l had a picture of a man's worth that was hard to challenge, especially in court before a jury. Fad's regular job had been night watchman for the Whipple m i l l . He had lived across the railroad tracks in an area known as the Bottom, on an unpaved s t r e e t , at the Bel Aire Hotel, a rundown rooming house with a false Spanish front and rickety back s t a i r s . Seven evenings a week Fad would walk the sparsely lighted, unpaved s t r e e t s from the Bel Aire to the m i l l , passing Durango Jackson's funeral parlor where preparations for either a funeral or a poker game seemed always to be in progress, and on past Ruby Chain's Mullet Heaven, a place of good food, a place of good p o l i t i c a l t a l k when the Freedom of Choice committee was In session. Fad was a charter member of t h e committee, but his work had seldom allowed h i s attendance. Ruby's f i s h diner, an ancient s t r e e t c a r from Atlanta once |
