Freshwater Road (20 page)

Celeste washed herself as best she could before putting on one of her
scoop-neck shirtdresses. She went straight to the kitchen and grabbed a
cup of chicory-laced coffee, then stood at the back door trying to catch a
breeze. Back home, on this kind of lazy summer Sunday, she would put on
a strapped sundress and go to an air-conditioned movie. Or Shuck would
take her and Momma Bessie on a ride over the Ambassador Bridge to Canada for lunch, the cool breezes off the river quelling the rages of summer.

Mrs. Owens moved around behind her curtain door off the kitchen. The
steaming room pushed Celeste to the back steps, her brain struggling to
stay alert. By midweek, the whole town knew who she was and why she was
there. The local newspaper carried stories about the invasion of northern
"rabble-rousers." She never thought of herself as a rabble-rouser, and she
didn't think of Pineyville's Negroes as rabble. She saw the Freedom Summer
volunteers as right up there with the great patriots, the idealistic founders,
supporting the idea of one person, one vote, making America more true to
itself. She felt good about being in Mississippi. Even her fear-lodged so deep inside, it had become a part of her being-had stopped interrupting
her every thought. Her dreams were another story altogether.

Coffee acids churned her emptiness to a wrenching depth. She didn't
mind being hungry because Mrs. Owens's cooking had a tendency to create hunger when there was none. Smothered chicken and gravy, red beans
with pickled pork, stewed okra with shrimp, all of it over rice, fiery hot and
pepper laced, bringing on eruptions of sweat. Oh, for a glass of ginger ale
with mountains of ice cubes and a cold chicken sandwich with lettuce and
snappy pickles. Yesterday they'd eaten bacon drippings over rice. Never had
so much rice at home. Momma Bessie cooked southern, but this was a new
level of southern. The only dish she'd never even heard of was red beans and
pickled pork over rice. It all tasted like heaven, even though it sat high and
hard in her stomach for hours after each meal. The iced tea was so sweet it
made the sides of her mouth cave in. But it was cold.

Mrs. Owens came through her curtain door, a hint of plum rouge
on her dark brown cheeks, a hint of a smile wrinkling the corners of her
mouth. "We riding to church with them Tuckers from down the road in
the best-looking and fastest car in Pearl River County. At least that's what
everybody calls it."

The old woman grew more conversational as the days passed, as if she'd
saved words to spend at a sale and now was on a spree. She lifted the lid from
her collards, giving escape to a grand whoosh of the pork-infused aroma,
then turned off the flame. The kitchen steamed.

"It's a pretty car." The pay phone Celeste had used to call Shuck stood
just a few feet from the gas station where Mr. Tucker worked. She'd never
walked there again in the night, but she had used it to check in with the
Jackson office, let them know she was still alive just as Matt had told her
to do. Mr. Tucker's maroon 1954 Hudson Hornet was parked behind the
garage, a big chrome fender peeking around the corner. At night she saw it
parked down the road next to the Tucker house, had watched the Tucker
children play close to their front porch, never running up and down the
road, never venturing close to this house.

"Some colored boys from over in Purvis stole that car in broad daylight."
The old woman poured herself the last of the coffee.

"In Pineyville?" With one slow swivel of the head, you could see everything going on in the town center. Celeste couldn't imagine something as
big as a car theft taking place right there.

"He had the car up in Hattiesburg when it happened." She sipped, perspiration rising on her face like ground water swelling. "On business." There
was a slight note of disdain audible in the word business. "They caught 'em.
Those boys still in Parchment Prison for all I know."

When Mrs. Owens gossiped, Celeste wished they could sit there all day
long and chew the fat about everybody. What kind of business had he been
doing? Why did she sound like that? Mr. Tucker must be into something.
And where did he get a car like that to begin with? And Sophie Lewis?
She wanted to ask Mrs. Owens about the grand lady in the big house. Did
she even know her? What if there was bad blood between them about the
church? Jealousy? Did Reverend Singleton tell everybody about the money
and where it came from? Maybe Sophie Lewis didn't want anyone to know
about her involvement in the movement, maybe it was safer for her to be
quiet and in the background.

"They once had some white boys take it, too. From the gas station
where Mr. Tucker works. Right from under his nose. Newspaper say Sheriff
Trotter put the white boys in the county jail. They were out before the sun
went down." Mrs. Owens took two dishtowels, tied them together end to
end, then tied them to the handles of the pot of greens, securing the lid.
"Sheriff said they didn't have enough evidence to hold them. Probably never
saw the inside of a jail."

"No witnesses?" Though the Tuckers lived right down the road, before
this morning Mrs. Owens had barely mentioned their name.

"Oh, they had witnesses. Colored." She brought the sugar-brown bread
pudding out of the oven. "Anyway, he got that car back."

"Do those white boys live around here?" The memory of the creeping
car that grated down Freshwater Road on her first night rose like a specter
in her mind. If the police never really arrested the white boys for taking
Mr. Tucker's car, they were the ones to watch.She thought of the lessons
from orientation. Keep your eye on thepolice, but notice, too, with whom they
have coffee, whose backs they slap, what car windows they lean into with their
hats pushed back, black billy clubs, cattle prods, chromium plated handcuffs
and flashlights clanking and shining in the sunlight.

"Sure do. Mr. Tucker got to look at 'em every time they go in there to
buy gas or a Coke Cola."

Celeste knew the red Coca-Cola machine standing beside the gas station wall, used it herself. She tried to remember the white men who'd come into the gas station while she stood there on the phone watching Mr. Tucker
pumping gas or cleaning the "whites only" bathroom. Plenty of white men
filling their tanks. Negro men, too. How to know who was friendly and
who wasn't? And Mr. Tucker? What did he do in Hattiesburg?

Celeste had marked the distance from the church to the pay phone,
about a mile. An easy run. She'd already walked the distance from Freshwater Road to the phone and knew she could run it easily. She'd memorized
the phone numbers for the FBI offices in Hattiesburg and in Jackson. The
numbers rolled through her mind. The problem wasn't the distance, it was
the danger from some local hiding in the trees, or some truck that might
drive by and run her down. She needed to know who those locals were, what
they looked like, what kind of vehicle they drove. Keep an eye on them.
She'd ask Reverend Singleton after church. No matter how fast she ran, she
couldn't outrun a truck, let alone a bullet. She already had nightmares of being thrown into the Pearl River like a sack of trash, floating with the current
down past Pearlington into Lake Borgne and on to the Gulf of Mexico.

When Geneva Owens turned from the stove again, the sun caught the
crystal brooch pinned near the collar of her cotton print dress and sent
shafts of light in all directions. It made her look very dressed up. "I guess
he probably feel they always plottin' to take that car again. Maybe that's
what makes him so hateful."

Celeste startled. What did that mean? Was Mr. Tucker hateful to everybody? He might be working for the police for all she knew, or even worse,
for the Klan. Not every Negro in Mississippi was for the movement. During
orientation in Jackson, this had been a touchy subject for Margo to discuss
with Celeste and Ramona, but she said she had an obligation to tell them,
alert them to keep an eye out for Negroes who might take information to
whites who paid them to stand against the movement. Celeste remembered
bristling, later whispering to Ramona that she didn't like hearing about that
from a white girl. Ramona had told her to take it as gospel.

"Where did he get it in the first place?" There were plenty of panel trucks
with gun racks, and rusted-out wrecks on thin tires, but there were no other
big shiny cars on Freshwater Road.

"His brother died up in Memphis." Mrs. Owens picked up the pot of
collards and went to the front of the house. "It was his." Celeste heard her
rest the pot on the screened porch, heard her say, "...and Lord only knows
where he got it."

Celeste imagined that Mr. Tucker's brother made his money running
numbers or even drugs, or maybe he owned a nightclub, lived on the edge
like Shuck used to. Who was the brother? Maybe he'd been a musician.
Memphis had music, blues, rhythm and blues.

"Now, Celeste, I want you to handle that bread pudding." Mrs. Owens
went into her room and came out with a small black straw hat with a
piece of netting hanging off the back. "It'll be cooled enough by the time
them Tuckers pull up. Take that dishtowel and lay it over the top. There's
another towel over there for underneath it. Mrs. Tucker gon' have to hold
it in her lap. I put that pot of greens on the floor by me. As shiny as that car
is outside is how dirty that trunk is inside." She put the hat on without a
mirror, tightening the net under her unpressed hair and anchoring it with
a pin. "If you take that bread pudding into the back seat with those Tucker
boys, won't be none left for the church picnic."

"Yes, ma'am." Celeste's mind went on whirling with the possibilities
of the life going on in Pineyville, with the things she needed to learn.
She went to her room to muscle her swollen feet into her white pumps,
happy they weren't walking the nearly three miles to church. Her light blue
dress already had large perspiration patches under the arms. She stood in
the middle of her bedroom and fanned the skirt to dry her thighs, then
changed her sweaty underpants. In Mississippi, she changed her panties at
least twice a day, rinsing and hanging them on one of the nails on the wall
of her bedroom.

The Hudson Hornet roared to a stop in front of the house. Mr. Tucker
blew the horn hard and long. Celeste wondered why he hadn't sent one of
his sons up to knock on the door for them.

"Ain't no need for all that." Mrs. Owens went out with her purse and her
bible, hoisting the pot of collards on her way, Celeste right behind her.

She helped Mrs. Tucker get the bread pudding situated on her lap, then
climbed into the back seat with the Tucker children, Sissy, Darby, and Henry.
The big Hudson turned onto the two-lane leading into town. Not a puddle
anywhere though it rained everyday. Southern pines flashed their green in
the sunlight. Pink and white crepe myrtle burst out from the ground all
the more brilliant against the green and the orange tint of the soil. In great
stretches, there were no trees at all, just sandy earth and stunted plants as if
the desert crept in then retreated, then came in by another door.

The Tucker children hadn't come near her in the brief time she'd been living with Mrs. Owens. Now they sat beside her, the boys flipping through
the pages of a half-rolled comic book they hid on the seat between them, the
girl sitting with her head leaning back, quiet. Celeste was wedged into the
corner, with no room to spread her legs or smooth out the skirt of her dress.
Her big sunglasses perpetually slid down her sweaty nose. She wondered
how the locals managed without sunglasses at all.

The little girl, Sissy, reached across her to roll down the window. A hot
sandy breeze roiled into the car, pumicing the sweat-salt on her face. The
swirling air brought the food and body aromas together as if they were
tumbling in a mixer. When the boys lowered their window, the cross-breeze
blustered into a full-fledged wind, though Mr. Tucker drove slowly. After
his impatient horn blaring outside Mrs. Owens's house, Celeste expected
him to take off like a spooked stallion. Maybe with her in the car, he figured
he better not do anything to provoke any attention from the sheriff.

Out of the corner of her eye, Celeste caught Sissy staring at her. She
placed her big sunglasses on the girl's face, and Sissy gazed up to the aquamarine spread of sky.

"Now you look like a movie star, Sissy." The wind whipped Celeste's
everyday ponytail into a scattered catastrophe.

"What's a movin' star?" Sissy sat up, leaned towards the window, searching the shapely clouds lolling atop one another.

Celeste didn't know if the child's accent was getting in the way of her
saying movie instead of moving. "A beautiful lady on a big screen in the dark.
Dorothy Dandridge or Marpessa Dawn." In truth, Sissy's face reminded
her of a Modigliani portrait, only one with smooth chocolate-dark skin.
Her slanted eyes carved ovals above high cheekbones. Her hair was braided
so tightly it looked vengeful, made her all face and eyes.

"They ain't got no movies round here, Miss Celeste." Mrs. Tucker's flowerencrusted felt hat bobbed, making the silky flowers rustle like leaves.

Celeste wished the local people would drop the "Miss" business. It
separated her from them, the very thing she was trying to get past. They
spoke to white people that way. She'd heard it in Jackson and in Pineyville
on the street with Mrs. Owens, who mumbled her greetings to white
people, swallowing the ends of their names after getting out the "Mr."
or "Miss." She eked out enough of what passed for respect to keep retribution at bay.

Sissy stared away then up to the heavens with an eight-year-old's imita tion of adult seriousness. "Where do they live in the daytime? Do they
movin' fast or slow? Where'd you see them? I wanna be there." Her intense
voice swelled in breathiness as if Celeste had confirmed a dream of something imagined that she'd never seen.