Loodie Mae Jenkins sat down and turned on the TV set. It was just about time for “Soul Train” to come on and, like every other Saturday morning before 11 a.m. she made sure to take care of all her chores in time to watch it, that way she knew her mother would leave her alone while it was on. So far, 1969 was proving to be a great year for music. “But I wish they “hadn’t taken ‘Milt Grant’ off the air, I liked Milt Grant”, she thought to herself. Loodie Mae had this crazy idea that she might see somebody she knew on the show, even though it went off the air way back in 1961. She didn’t even know anybody from D.C. or couldn’t remember ever seeing a single black dancer on the show. Still, it was something she thought about and watched with anticipation back then anyway… Soul Train was different, she still wouldn’t have known the dancers personally, but at least she could relate.

 

“What the heck was that”, a streak went by the front window and startled Loodie Mae back to reality. She jumped up and ran out to the road to see who it was. All she could see was the back of someone running down the dirt road as fast as he could, a strong stench of English Leather Lime cologne hung in the air, she hated English Leather cologne. He was beating feet a mile a minute, “What has he done this time?”, every now and then Parlo would look back over his shoulder, but never slowed his pace. “I guess I’ll find out Monday at school”, Loodie Mae went back in, sat down and continued watching the show.

About ten minutes later Loodie Mae watched as a car crept slowly up the road, it went past the house and on up the hill. In less than a minute, the car came back down the hill, it pulled into her driveway, stopping short of coming all the way to the house. It looked like a cab, it had “Ballentine’s Cab Co.” written on the side. What the heck was a cab doing way out here? Loodie Mae had never heard of anyone catching a cab to Remington, from anywhere! A man got out of the taxi and looked around, he looked upset. He walked over to Mr. Jenkins, Loodie Mae’s father, who was busy working under his old ’58 Chevy Impala. Loodie walked through the kitchen, to the back porch and stood by the screen door to listen in, she stayed quiet and out of sight. The white man began speaking, “How ya doing?”, Loodie Mae’s father returned the greeting and waited to hear what was coming next. The man spat out a big wad of tobacco on the graveled driveway and continued,
“You didn’t see a colored boy run past hear did you?”.
-“No, why, what happened?”
“Boy stopped me in Warrenton on second street and asked me to bring him to that house just over that hill there (he pointed up the road). I told him it would be $5 and he said ok. But when he got to the house and got out, he said he was going inside to get the money. ‘Cept he took off running down the hill in this direction without paying his fare.”
– “I never heard of such a thing!”, her father said, “That’s old Mrs. Gaskin’s house, she ain’t got no kids. What’d he look like?”
“Colored boy, ’bout yea tall, dark, wearing jeans, a striped tee shirt and tennis shoes, I guess”.
Loodie Mae knew exactly who it was, she kept quiet.
– “Well that could be just about anybody, no I wish I could help, but I don’t know who that is”, Loodie Mae’s dad looked back at his Impala, impatient to get back under it, that muffler wasn’t gon’na patch itself, “Wish you luck”.

The man looked past him and checked around the property before heading back to his cab, Loodie Mae stayed out of sight on the porch.
Fussing to herself, “Parlo Silby, did he really need a ride that bad? He could have thumbed back home”, Loodie Mae had thumbed a ride herself once. Parlo was just lazy, as far as she was concerned. She went back and finished watching Soul Train.

That Monday morning Loodie Mae was sitting in Black History class listening to Parlo brag about his weekend escapades. He claims he’d gone on a shoplifting spree all over Warrenton. He’d stolen a Peter’s sports jacket from H.B. Carter’s, a pair of Chuck Taylor’s from Rankin’s Hardware store and a bottle of English Leather from Rhode’s Drug store, which was now stinking the entire room up as he spoke. Loodie Mae had heard enough, she was tired of Parlo, he’d been a trouble maker ever since he moved here from Washington, D.C. She recalled the first time she’d seen him at Taylor, he was wearing a canary yellow silk suit, with canary yellow silk socks and a pair of canary yellow Stacey Adams alligator shoes. He made a point of letting everyone know that his outfit wasn’t just yellow, it was canary yellow. He said he’d gotten a five-finger discount on everything he had on that day. The next day he showed up all in purple, the nerve of some people. Parlo didn’t make himself easy to like, as far as Loodie was concerned he made everybody and every thing look bad. She didn’t have time for this, she’d be leaving for Howard University in the fall, after she graduated from Fauquier. She was going to be a school teacher and she was going to get to and save all the Parlo Silbys before they turned bad like this one.

 

Warrenton, Virginia was a quiet little, sleepy town in the center of Fauquier County. People from there didn’t particularly like outsiders and Parlo was an outsider. Loodie Mae was just like everybody else from that county, she didn’t like outsiders coming in messing things up, bringing in their outside ideas. She especially did not like Parlo Silby.

Just as Mr. Wilson was getting class started, the classroom door opened and the principal walked in with two town police officers and the cab driver who’d been by Loodie’s house the other day. Mr. Campbell pulled Mr. Wilson outside into the hallway and they talked for about a minute. The cab driver came back in and moved slowly up and down the aisles looking at each boy, then moving on. He went back to the front of the class and shook his head no. “Oh my goodness”, Loodie Mae thought to herself, “I know we can’t all look that much alike”.