Freshwater Road (29 page)

"You can do better." Matt chastised her gently.

"One would be enough in this town," Ed spoke quietly, defending her.
But she resented his speaking of Pineyville this way, even though she felt
the same. It was her town now and her project. They were ganging up on
her. She decided to ignore both of them and turned off the fans.

"Matt, I knowy'all are giving me a ride to Mrs. Owens's house so I don't
have to sit here waiting for Reverend Singleton." She sounded flagrant and
strong and liked it. "Couple of times I just walked it because I got tired of
sitting here."

"You not supposed to walk from here to Freshwater Road, chere, no
matter what. It's too dangerous," Ed chided. "You tryin' to get killed?"

"Not really." Celeste said it loud. What was that "chere" business?

"Big city impatience don't work down here." Matt harped. He sounded
the way he had when they first started driving down from Jackson, before
they were stopped on the road. Matt was supposed to be her ally. He was
showing off for Ed, being harder than he would've been alone.

The men's voices conquered the space, devoured it. Their long arms
dangled, their big hands gripped the pew backs and folding chairs. They
walked around the small church, their footsteps thudding on the boards.
She felt relegated to the side, part of the backdrop. Women only rented the
space when they sang on Sunday morning, rearing back, dropping their
jaws, pushing their music and their hearts toward Jesus. Then they sat
down and shut up. Men just spoke into the space any time of the day or
night and owned it.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" She started toward the door but
stopped and turned to Matt, the impulse to put her hands on her hips like
Labyrinth strong enough to make her clutch her book-bag instead. "I'm
sorry." She said it to the church more than to the men. "Must be the heat."

Matt and Ed had crystallized here as if they were characters out of a
Bible story, disciples winding through the land provoking a man here, a
woman there, goading all who'd listen to reexamine everything they'd
heard for the last one hundred years about the way life was supposed to be lived. She stood at the door, digging around for her place that seemed to
evaporate the longer she stayed in a space with Matt and Ed.

"Her daddy's a numbers man." Matt said nonchalantly, cocking his
head back to look at her.

"Is that true?" Ed nodded his approval, his accent sending a whistle of
air on the "t."

"He owns a bar. Numbers are a side thing." She slid it out there, claiming Shuck for all he was worth, proud.

"You been into Hattiesburg, yet? Yo daddy got the coin, you can take us
out." Matt put his hand out to Ed for the slapping five, something in his tone
putting her down. She couldn't have been more disappointed in Matt.

"Haven't been anywhere." She rolled her eyes at both of them as she
held the door open. "The last time Hattiesburg came up I was with you,
remember? I don't have a car, you know."

"Don't need one if you do what you supposed to do." Matt walked out
on a roll now, as if everything they'd been through together had created
no kind of bond at all. He swaggered around like he owned Pineyville. She
bit her tongue, not wanting to get into a verbal snarl with Matt in front of
Ed Jolivette.

As oppressive as the church was, when she stepped outside in the direct
sunlight she flinched like she'd been hit, and squinted so hard she lost
track of where she was until she got her big sunglasses on. The sun burned
the oxygen out of the air, scorched the lungs. Breathing became a cumbersome act.

"I better put a note on the door for Reverend Singleton so he won't be
worried." She was thinking she'd better tell Reverend Singleton to swing by
and tell Mrs. Owens, too, so she wouldn't be worried if they were really going
to Hattiesburg. She pulled paper and tape out of her book-bag and watched
Matt and Ed head for the dusty Dodge, noticing the back of Ed's tall body,
the balance of it and his easy gait as he strode over the white rock gravel.
Her cotton dress suddenly felt like burlap scraping the surface of her skin.
She unbuttoned another button, revealing the round of her modest cleavage.
If Reverend Singleton drove up before they got out of there, she'd have to
rebutton it. She knew better than to test those boundaries in this bible-toting
place where innocent gestures carried the weight of sin. If Mrs. Singleton
happened to be with him, she'd button the dress up to her neck.

"Mrs. Owens said you could cook ribs on the church steps this time of day." It was just about high noon when she joined them at the car, tossed
her book-bag into the back seat, climbed into the front in the middle. She
glanced back to see her note taped to the church door, clearly visible to
anyone coming up the church road. "Glad you got your windows fixed,
Matt." She tried to put some smart jokiness in her voice, remembered that
glass flying across the front seat of the car, wanting to remind him of their
history together. "Now, that was something else."

"It's been worse." Matt said, backing the car around, heading down the
bumpy church road.

Celeste knew he was stifling her allusion to their camaraderie in the
trenches. She'd kept her wits about her while he got a real Mississippi beating. "Well, that may be true, but that trip ranks up there at the top of my bad
list. I was scared they were going kill you, and God only knows what they
might've done to me." Just in case Matt hadn't told Ed about it, she wanted
to be sure he knew she'd earned her stripes. She sat up straight, holding her
own, feeling good that she hadn't let him roll over her life's experience for
the sake of making her look wimpy in Ed's eyes or even in her own.

"By the end of the summer, that ride down from Jackson will look like
child's play." Matt couldn't resist, she thought, letting her know he was
the one with the notches on his belt in Mississippi. She was still green and
underneath, he seemed to be saying that no matter what she did, she'd
never measure up.

"Somebody shot through Mrs. Owens's house the other night." She
one-upped him right back. "We sleeping on the floor now."

"You and damned near every volunteer in Mississippi." Matt swatted
her back down hard.

Celeste's blood rushed up to her neck and face. Why was he being so
hard on her? He was tearing her down in front of a stranger. Was it Ed
Jolivette? It clicked in. He didn't want Ed Jolivette to like her because she
might like him back. She couldn't tell if Ed understood what was going on
between them or not.

"How many you got in voter registration?" Ed brought them back to
business.

"It keeps changing. I'm teaching remedial reading and civics at the
same time. My core group is about four or five." She didn't finish before
Ed broke in.

"What'd you expect?" It stung even though he said it quietly.

She ignored him. "Half the time, they can't get to the church for the
class. I don't know." She'd had about enough of both of them. At the same
time, she felt Ed's naked arm touching hers, so smooth she didn't want to
say anything to make him move.

"Goes with the territory." Ed sounded like he'd seen it all, and there was
no burden to it. He sounded almost apologetic.

Celeste didn't want him to see her face for fear it would reveal the charge
she felt in being close to him, even though they'd been dueling since he
walked in the church door. He was the movement; she knew he'd been
arrested and beaten more than once. Like Matt, he lived in the frontline
trenches long before Freedom Summer ever started. They exuded the same
manliness, the same new root meaning of Negro man, but Matt had an
edgy, street-wise side to him. Ed came off like a quiet bookworm, but
maybe that was just the wire-rimmed glasses leading her off on a dead-end
tangent. He'd taken them off. She glared at him. Clear boundaries, sweet
eyes, but dread hiding way back in his heart. No compromising here. He'd
walk away or die first.

"Trust what you're doing." Matt drove slowly north on Highway ii. "We
need to see one of your voter registration classes." Matt backed down a bit.
More than likely, he was following Ed Jolivette's lead.

She rested her head on the back of the seat. "Fine by me." The whip of
the breeze patted her face dry. She spied the bend of Ed's long legs, the shape
of his knee and his thighs beneath the denim overalls. His dark brown arms
slendered into elegant wrists. No watch. No rings. He seemed older.

The air thickened like a pot of stew with too much flour. The sky opened
and a hammering rain fell. They rolled up the windows of the Dodge, locking in the plump air. Lightning snapped at the crabby trees. Dry branches
ignited, and when the quick fires died, the trees were leafless black embers,
still standing upright.

The last time she was locked in a car with Matt, he'd assumed everything about who she was and what kind of family she came from because of
the way she looked. I been to Detroit, baby, I know. Yo momma'd shit a brick
ifshe knew somebody as black as me was this close to you. You a red-bone. By
the end of that trip, she believed they'd gotten past all that. He'd accepted
her. But now she wasn't so sure. Why did she have to prove how Negro
she was to the Marts of the world? Shuck would say that was his problem,
not hers. She wanted to ask them if there was anything new in the search for Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. She'd read in the local newspaper
that their burned-out car had been found, containing Mickey Schwerner's
wristwatch stopped at 12:45. Dead time. These deaths, these unfound bodies, made gargoyles of men who turned their eyes away, pretending this
thing made a man truer to himself and to his God. The women who slept
with the men who did the killing knew what happened to those boys. If you
listened to men, they told you everything. Who were these women, who
slept with death on their lips and woke up silent?

The countryside whizzed by though of course they drove well under the
speed limit. Crows jostled on the telephone lines and cross poles, breaking
for chatter before another sally into someone else's nest.

"Fish crows," Ed said. "Up from the Gulf."

"Really?" She took her eyes away from the crows. He'd seen her looking
at them. Relieved to hear his voice, take her out of her own mind.

"Crows the most intelligent birds God made." He said it as if all the
world should know it, and the sound of his words was round, open.

"How so?" He had her interest, easy to do now but she still tried to
sound nonchalant, thinking how in the world did he know that. And, did
he really know it or was he just talking?

"Trainable." That was all he said. She wanted to hear more, like did he
have some hobby learning about birds? Trainable? Were these crows some
metaphor for women? She already knew she wasn't trainable. And what
did intelligence really have to do with being trainable? Some brilliance was
wild and not trainable.

"Trainable, huh?" He sounded like he meant more than the words coming out of his mouth. Maybe it was the stillness around him that she was
reading into. Crows. Black like Negroes. Black as a crow. Blackbird. Ugly as
a crow. Lazy as a crow. Now, they're smart. Wouldn't you know.

Trying to be distant with Ed wasn't working. She had an urge to run
her finger down his forearm, it was so even, the muscle against the slight
indentation of bone. She wanted to stare into his face and not talk at all.
She'd been isolated for too long.

"Y'all leave them birds alone. They not bothering nobody." Matt left the
wipers going though the rain had slowed to a sprinkle. "Mrs. Owens doing
okay?" With each wipe, another insect scrap smeared across the windshield.
The rain and the wipers didn't clean them off, just smudged them around
until there were bug remains and road dust wiped all across the windshield. Matt and Ed had been driving around Mississippi checking on the various
projects for more than a week. The car looked it.

"She joined my class." Celeste rolled a little with the car movement, her
thigh shifting to touch Ed's leg.

"She read?" Ed rubbed the ridge of his nose. He was more serious than
any professor she'd ever seen at school, like a scientist who lives in a basement lab. His calm made her jumpy.

"Reads that Bible every night. She's teaching me the Bible. I know she
thinks I'm a candidate for hell 'cause I can't quote chapter and verse. She's
saving me." She knew that kind of thing would impress Ed. Valuing the
gifts of the local people was part of the mission. "I guess I need saving."
She stared off into the distance chastising herself for saying that she needed
saving when in truth she needed far less. What would he think of that?

They drove along, knowing their license plate numbers were on lists
owned by the White Citizens Councils and passed to the police and the
Klan. Three pairs of eyes scouring the air straight ahead, listening, watching
out for panel trucks with shot guns loaded in the racks and too many men.
They were outnumbered, maybe not by souls, but certainly by power, by
guns, and most of all, by the sheer intensity of the hatred against them.

A sign read, "Hattiesburg, 5 miles." The rain stopped. The gray slipped
off to the east leaving a cloudless, aquamarine sky and a freshly reignited
sun. Within minutes, the clean post-rain air had siphoned moisture from
the Gulf and the creeks, rivers, and ponds and spread itself heavily over
everything again like quilts.

They rolled down the windows. She wished she was sitting in the
back seat with Ed, closing her eyes, the air blowing her dress farther and
farther up her thighs. She saw herself in a French movie with Ed Jolivette
as her lover.

They were in Hattiesburg before the last raindrops dried off the hood of
the car, creeping to the far side of town. Wood framed houses set back from
the curbs, some with full wraparound porches, wicker furniture, porch
swings. Squares of lawns with forest-green hedges. Splashes of color from
dipladenias and geraniums. Sidewalks. Real pavement, not just dirt and
gravel. Vast umbrella-like trees. Willows, live oaks, magnolias. They rode
through the Negro section of town and they might well have been in another
country. The poverty shocked Celeste to silence. She felt as if she was on
parade driving through, not wanting to stare at the shanty houses built side by side, the barefooted children playing in the dirt. The picture of neglect
was overwhelming and she realized that in Pineyville that same poverty was
spread out over the countryside. In Hattiesburg, it was bunched together
so that nothing of nature might soften the blow. The trees did nothing to
assuage the picture, nor did the near-tropical sky.