Freshwater Road (13 page)

The shed-like room was small and had one curtained window. She held
the lantern high at the door, stepped up the one step, and entered what
would be her toilet facility for the rest of the summer. There was a roll of
toilet paper and a stack of newspaper torn into uneven squares. She poured
out her dirty basin water then lined the wood platform around the black
hole with toilet paper and sat, the lantern in her hand like a weapon. She heard her urine fall into the pit. Thank God, she thought, it's too dark to
see. She hurried back to her room.

The slightest catch of a breeze whispered in the curtains as black night
leaned against the house. She pulled J.D.'s postcard out of her book-bag.
He chided her to be careful, wrote of the humidity in Paris, said to write
him, and ended with Wish you were here, JD. Not Love, JD. The love was
over. One year of love. The return addresss was c/o American Express, Paris,
France. The color picture on the other side showed a narrow winding street.
The designation read "Montmartre, Paris." He said there were streets so old
and narrow you had to walk sideways to get through. She could see him in
some window, large canvas on an easel, the light streaming in.

She put the postcard back and shoved her book-bag under the nightstand. What would she write him? Of how Matt was beaten at the hands of
state troopers on the way down from Jackson? Or of humidity so thick her
body felt clumsy when she stood perfectly still, heat so ferocious her internal
organs struggled to function? Of outhouses in the back, water spigots in
the front? He wouldn't be able to say a word about how Negro she was or
wasn't now. A calm settled over her that made her feel giddy. She had the
distinct feeling that she was knocking them dead all over the place. She'd
won Matt over, Mrs. Owens had softened, and now J.D. would know who
she really was. To say nothing of Wilamena.

Finally, Celeste pulled on a sleep shirt and settled on the bed, which felt
more broken-down than broken-in, lumps leading to a caved-in middle,
thinking that here, where bodies disappeared like lunary rainbows, containers of human waste sat around in plain sight all night long. The old photo
above the bed told her Mrs. Owens had vacated her own room. Such a private place, so much of the past wearying the corners, hanging on the walls,
dappling the well-worn bedspread. Old beds hid great secrets of the mind,
body, and spirit, prayers at night and in the morning, loving for pleasure and
for child-making, ceiling-staring thoughts that hung like crystals in a cave,
and Bible reading by the dim of old lamps.

Celeste felt sleep coming, her ears pressed against a quiet so profound
she thought she heard the stars twinkling in the sky. She focused on a
memory of cool weather, that last ride on J.D.'s motorcycle in a late spring
snow, the sideways skid near the apartment in Ann Arbor that had them
laughing and crying at the same time. Would these plank-board shacks
provide any protection from wind and rain? There were no basements, no fireplaces or furnaces, just kitchen stoves. The people must huddle around
them if the air blows cool. She imagined people hibernating like the exotic
koi at the botanical gardens on Belle Isle, sleeping at the bottom of a frozen
pond, their eyes closed, their senses curbed. A solemnity of need, a ritual
of denial.

A car turned onto Freshwater Road, gnashing the gravel. Celeste turned
out the light, her heart in a gallop. Matt wouldn't dare come back here from
Bogalusa in the dead of night. The car passed the house, tires pulverizing
small rocks and any shell-backed night creatures. She slid off the bed and
crawled to the window. No lights. It might be a truck with guns racked
across the back window. Maybe Sheriff Trotter himself. Not a streetlight
anywhere, but a sky of stars, a quilted sky, and a moon so clear and white
it seemed it really was a face. No competition from the haranguing neon
fractures of Detroit, advertising everything from White Castle hamburgers to laundry washing powder. She listened until her ears ached. The
sounds faded. It was the slow pace of the vehicle that riveted her mind,
as if the driver designed a return, scoping the darkness. Freshwater Road
went somewhere, though when you stood outside, it seemed to be a road
without end, or a road to nowhere, just narrowed into its own horizon. She
crept back across the linoleum and climbed onto the high bed. Perspiration
pooled and soaked her thin cotton nightshirt. This mattress smelled old,
though she had seen the sheets were clean.

Matt said Reverend Singleton would be in touch tomorrow, come to
take her to the church where she'd be working. There was no phone here.
Mail would be forwarded down from the Jackson office. What would the
Freedom School children think of her? Would she be able to get through
to them? Who were these people in this godforsaken place at the end of
the earth? The Freedom School books were stacked close by. If she read, it
would calm her down, help her sleep, but she didn't want to turn on the
light. She began counting backwards from one hundred, her ears keyed to
the sounds outside. The power lines crackled in a high pitched staccato.
She got lost dreaming of cool-edged winds on tree lined country roads, the
soft spread of new snow.

Shuck dressed in a pale yellow summer shirt, brown slacks, and a tan linen
jacket. He lowered the convertible top sitting in the driveway, cruised the
tree-lined streets to Woodward Avenue, and turned south. Early evening
was his afternoon. When he passed the old Fox Theatre, he slowed. There
were days when he avoided this stretch of Woodward Avenue altogether.
Too many memories. He and Wilamena used to dance in the aisles to
Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway, who wore a big white suit
and smiled across the whole damned stage while jamming the night away.
The palace had fallen on hard times. Shuck continued south on Woodward
to Jefferson and out East Jefferson, the radio music a monotone in the wind.
Nothing in the world as fine as the breeze on his face riding in that Cadillac
toward the water on a summer evening.

The river air whose glory lay in Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair struggled
between the buildings and warehouses before succumbing to the unforgiving concrete, black tar, and car fumes. By the time that air got to Grand
Circus Park, not an iota of coolness or freshness was left in it. To penetrate
the city, it needed a cold rush from Canada or some ghost-blast from the
Upper Peninsula. In summer, you had to get up close to the water to know
it was real.

Belle Isle was a good place to find some relief. Relief from the heat of
summer and from the twist of old memories and new worries that crowded
his mind. He was in a perpetual state of distraction, and he didn't like it.
Before he turned to go over the Belle Isle Bridge, the signal light changed to red and caught him. A rabbly group of boys, their loud voices sounding in
eruptions of profanity as they dip-walked in circles in the street, oblivious
to the summer evening traffic, stopped in front of Shuck's Cadillac. They
evil-eyed him, licking their lips at the brilliantly white car. High on "boy,"
Shuck figured, arms loping up and down, dancing in place like marionettes
whose strings had too much play, carrying on their pitched conversation as
if they were alone in the world. Shuck clutched the steering wheel, the quiet
idle of the sleek car's horses ready to blast ahead, run over their drug-wired
bodies. In that moment, he hated their listless, undefined existences, their
shirts slopped out of their pants, their pants drooping down like they might
fall off, their conked hair with do-rags askew and congolene dripping. He
wondered why these boys burned their own brains with drugs, ground
their parents down to powder, dishonoring their lives with not a thought to
history or tomorrow. They probably couldn't identify one person in his bestof-Negro-life wallpaper at the Royal Gardens Bar. Wouldn't know Lester
Young from Earl "Fatha" Hines and forget Thurgood Marshall. Probably
couldn't even say it. When the light changed to green, the boys stayed in
front of his car like they were on stage about to break into some rag-tag
dancing doo-wop song. Shuck watched them, his breath lifting up to a
shallower place, heart beginning to pump harder. He put the car in park,
revved the engine, foot solidly on the brake. "Get the fuck out of the street.
You don't own it. You don't own a goddamned thing including yourselves."
Shuck stared at them with ice in his eyes. It was as if they were the reason
for his summer anxiety, as if it was all their fault. He could blame them for
the plight of the city, for the spiraling downward of the good things he'd
hoped for. He could step on them like they were roaches. But in one of
their young faces, he saw himself as a boy who had a choice to make, who
knew that something in the air meant him no good, that too much stood
to break him down. Shuck lowered his head.

Cars lined up behind him waiting to make the same turn, horns honking, people hot and impatient, wanting a breath of relief from the humid
stifle of the city. This new breed of unused young men drifted and turned
rancid before they reached eighteen. "Bad pennies," Momma Bessie called
them. "Too many boys coming up under women." They'd kill their own
mothers for drugs. It was all he could do to not get out of the car, drag them
by their shirttails to the curb, and beat the shit out of them. He locked his
doors and wished he'd put the top up on the car. Beating them would make no difference at all. The world as he knew it was stacked against them, and
there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

The boys jerked around, faces frozen in a sneer, seemed to float for a
moment. "Old man, what you looking at?" one boy yelled. "You better watch
who you talking to."

Shuck wished he'd brought his gun. He would've shot into the air, tried
to scare them sober. He caught himself thinking like a young man, a man
ready for a fight. Reality hit him like a thunder clap. He was old, certainly
too old to fight five young men whether they were high or not. He tightened
his hold on the steering wheel, his foot ready to accelerate. "I may be old,
but I can run your asses over with this car." He didn't yell it this time, said
it out loud to himself.

With all the traffic, no telling who would get out of a car and join in
and whose side they'd be on. They might side with him, they might not.
The boys doubled over laughing, fell against each other then moved to the
curb. The streetlights flared on. Their faces stretched like reflections in a
funhouse mirror.

Shuck turned onto the bridge. In his rearview mirror, he saw the boys
climb onto the bridge railing and fake throwing one of their group into
the river. He wished they'd all jump. He had an urge to go back and help
them, and in the same heartbeat, he wanted to take them all over to Momma
Bessie's, clean them up, and set them straight. Shuck's heart beat like he'd just
played a Miles Davis high note for one long breathless year. He wanted a cigarette but his hands were glued to the steering wheel. His fingers cramped from
the pressure. If he didn't loosen his grip he'd break something. Wondered if he
could break the steering wheel. He remembered when he and Posey had been
offered a so-called opportunity to sell drugs and had turned it down. Praised
the day they turned it down. Back in the forties and fifties, when musicians
nodded out on stage or found themselves soaked in urine in Harlem doorways,
in the alley leading to Manfred's After Hours Joint, in back bedrooms all over
town, he knew then that he didn't want to have anything to do with selling
something to Negro people that killed them. He wanted to sell them dreams,
numbers, at least a chance for a good time, not this-this sinking down to
the pavement with drool at the corners of their lips and eyes hooded in an
odd sleep that might leave a man with one foot just hanging in the air. He lit
a cigarette, the smoke curling down his throat. What difference did it make
now? He didn't sell the stuff, but somebody else sure did.