Freshwater Road (34 page)

"Say I should get you out my house or else." She marched on, her empty
plastic shopping bag swinging, her black purse hugged into her body.

They left the little town center and turned into a block of houses where
the air itself had taken on a greenish hue, grass that went from forest green
to nearly black in deep shade held by the orange-tinted soil. It was a shortcut to the two-lane.

Celeste spoke under her breath. "You hear about the three boys?" Reverend Singleton brought the news when he came to pick her up after freedom
school. She let the children go without mentioning it, sat in the church with
the Reverend for a few minutes.

"After all this time." Mrs. Owens huffed.

Celeste didn't know if Mrs. Owens was talking about the civil rights
workers' bodies being found or Mr. Heywood. After all this time. Every thing in Mississippi was a crisis of after all this time. Mrs. Owens walked
her down a block of houses at a good clip, sweat streaming down her body.
The houses here were wood framed with screened porches, painted white
with green trim. Rain gutters, plots of impatiens, giant yellow hibiscus
exploding through the green lawns. She imagined eyes peeking out from
behind curtains and blinds peering at the two Negroes hurrying over the
pavement. They weren't going to work anywhere, so they shouldn't have
been on this street. Mrs. Owens marched like she was in a demonstration,
telling all that she had a right to walk the sidewalks of a town where she'd
lived and worked for more than forty years.

"He can't tell me who I can have in my own house." Mrs. Owens turned
the last corner, a street lined with a sheltering of live oaks. Sunlight slanted
through the contorted branches. Celeste had an urge to sit on the grass in
the shade, lie down under the grand canopy of trees. Then she wondered
which of the town's old trees had suspended the dancing apoplectic feet of a
bug-eyed Negro man who had laughed walking down the street, or turned
his head to a white woman whose sweat-wet dress clung to her body, or
simply didn't step off the pavement when a white person walked by. And
the boys. What had been the last thing they heard or saw or thought? All
of life ahead of them, all the good in the world in them to give.

They turned onto the two-lane and walked down the gravel shoulder,
the sun like a blowtorch playing hide and seek with the darkening rain
clouds moving up from the Gulf. She watched for traffic, let Mrs. Owens
walk out her anger. The humidity thickened like wet wool. The village
crickets agitated. As she always did, Celeste checked each passing truck
and car for gun-toting white men. Small gusts lifted her dress then died,
releasing the fabric. Rain started falling in fat isolated drops, warm as a
shower. The two women made it to Freshwater Road as the downpour began
in earnest.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Owens rested from the walk, her usual glass of iced
tea nearby. "I'm 'bout ready to go on down there and register." She didn't
look at Celeste, instead stared out the back door as the water pelted the thin
roof and ran off in sheets. "You ready? You think the others ready?" Her
agitation fanned her courage to fight back in the only way she could. By
going to see the registrar, the man who'd insulted her dignity.

Celeste counted up her voter registration students. Sister Mobley and Mrs. Owens. Dolly Johnson and of course Reverend Singleton, and maybe
Mr. Landau. But Mr. Landau didn't believe in nonviolence. No way he
could go yet. She would be there herself for moral support and any lastminute instruction. Should have more people, though. "We all have to go
together. Reverend Singleton will have to okay us making our first trip."
The memos coming from the Jackson office over the last two weeks had
encouraged projects to go on to the registrar. Nobody registered on the first
try, and there might be arrests. It would take time to get people out of jail,
then back to the registrar. Get moving, they'd said. That was before the
bodies were found.

Mrs. Owens swirled her iced tea and said, as if to herself, "Told me to
go on home and take care of it."

Celeste poured herself a glass of tea, wishing she had a tall gin and
tonic. The whole town might erupt. No riots here. People would be arrested
before any riots had a chance to erupt. Mass arrests. Ed talked about the
special prison in the swamps for civil rights workers. Plaquemines. Did
Sheriff Trotter have some Plaquemines hidden out in the bayous near the
Pearl River? As the outsider, she'd be the number-one target when they
went to the registrar. She and one local person would take the brunt of any
physical attack. That's what orientation taught. "We can make our first trip
on Monday morning, depending on Reverend Singleton. Start the week.
It's going to take more than one try." She stopped before she said what she
thought-that it might not happen at all.

"Yes." Mrs. Owens went into her bedroom and closed the curtain behind her. Celeste could hear her mumbling scripture.

The rain slowed to dribbles interspersed with a few last thick, thumping
drops, washing the gravel path to the outhouse. The dust was quelled for a
while. A slight breeze, a small tailwind of the storm passed through. Celeste
sat in the kitchen, relieved that all the power lines still hung from the poles.
When the last of the rain stopped, she went to the front porch and sat in
Mrs. Owens's rocking chair. The darker rain clouds moved out, leaving
snow white dumplings lolling across the sky. She stood at the screen door
to see Dolly Johnson stepping out of her old car wearing jeans, a blouse,
and gym shoes, her hair parted in the middle and pulled behind her ears,
and carrying a small purse.

"You got time to visit?" Dolly came up the porch steps and Celeste saw that her overdone make-up and painted fingernails didn't quite fit in with
the new Dolly. She had something, a kind of style that made her stand out
in Pineyville. The way she presented herself showed courage, bucking the
eyes-down mentality of Mississippi.

Celeste unhooked the screen and held the door for her. "Come in. You
want a cold drink?"

"Thank you." Dolly didn't move beyond the screened door.

"Sit down, Dolly." Celeste brought her a glass of iced tea and resumed
her seat in the rocking chair.

Dolly sat and held on to the arms of the straight-backed chair like it
might fly off the porch with her in it. "The rain makes it nice, for a few
minutes anyway." Her face was slightly round and nicely shaped.

The heat began to build up, but the late afternoon shower and the small
breezes that followed it prevented the day from being a scorcher. Across the
road, the sunlight glazed the pile of cinderblocks and wood slats. A wild
crepe myrtle grew like a precious gift springing up out of the despair of a
vacant lot. The Hudson wasn't parked at the Tucker house down the road.
Three children lived in that house, yet it always seemed deserted.

"You hear about them finding the boys?" It had been more than a month
since they'd gone missing. Hard to hide three men. But it had been done,
and they'd still be under the dirt but for a purchased tip to the FBI.

"Where'd they think they were? On the moon?" Dolly shook her head
from side to side.

"Might as well have been. Supposed to be a memorial service over
in Meridian." Celeste had already decided she'd go with the Reverend
and his wife.

On the narrow blacktop, the meager trickle of cars seemed to be moving
too slowly. It was an illusion created by the sunlight.

"Things don't get better around here, I'm sending my children awayjust
as soon as I'm able," Dolly said.

Celeste wondered if that meant she'd leave, taking them with her, or
if she'd stay and send them to relatives somewhere. She longed to tell her
she would do the same thing, too, though the point wasn't to leave, but
rather to pound this place into livability. Even so, Celeste knew as well as
she knew her own name that she'd never let a son-especially a son-of
her own grow up in a place called Mississippi.

"Did you know Leroy Boyd James?" She hadn't thought about him
for some time but now that the bodies of the boys had been unearthed, it
brought the earlier death to mind.

"Sure, I did. Wasn't that long ago. Dirty shame the way they treated him."
Dolly's eyes searched the air for reasons.

"Does he have family around here?" She wanted to ask Dolly if she
thought he'd raped the woman he was accused of raping. Nobody'd said
a word about it since she arrived in Pineyville. What did it mean for so
many dreadful things to happen and not be discussed? How could you
keep doing that, year in and year out, sweeping nightmares under the rug?
But those things lived on in hearts and minds whether they ever crossed
the lips or not.

"Oh, no. They left town soon after." Dolly sipped her iced tea.

Not only did the Negro people in Mississippi live surrounded by hatred,
endlessly fearing all manner of reprisal, they had to do it without a legal
drink. Just based on the discovery of the three bodies, every Negro in the
state should be having a shot of something a whole lot stronger than iced
tea. At Momma Bessie's dining room table, the stories and tales of the dead
were interspersed with the splashing of hard liquor drinks over ice cubes. A
community of storytelling eased the pain of the church ritual, buoyed the
release. Not in Mississippi. Celeste sucked her teeth and wagged her head
like an old person.

"How my kids doing in your class? They learning anything new?" Dolly
rested her glass on the porch floor.

The subject of their conversation was effectively changed. Was this the
reason Dolly had come over? Had her children complained about Celeste?
Labyrinth didn't like standing to say her name before she spoke each time.
That was baby stuff to her. "Oh, they're doing fine. Reading the newspapers,
talking about current events." Georgie stayed quiet but he read well, too.

"Good." Dolly stared through the puckering screen at the orange sand
road. The puddles had shriveled to spoonfuls of rainwater on their way to
disappearing.

Celeste rocked the chair, grinding the floorboards of the porch. Maybe
she and Dolly could just sit there and girl talk, forget Freedom Summer,
forget all that still had to be done, all that had already happened. Pretend
they were out for lunch with not a care in the world. She wanted to tell
Dolly she didn't need to wear so much makeup.

Dolly took a handkerchief out of her purse and gently patted her moist
face, blotting the rouge on her cheeks and the oil from her nose. "I don't
make no difference between them, you know, and I don't let nobody else
make a difference, either." She put the handkerchief back in her purse and
fiddled with the clasp.

Dolly rightfully assumed that someone had told Celeste her story.
"Surely that's the best thing." Celeste stumbled around to find a calming
word to say to Dolly. She hadn't as far as she knew made any difference
between them, but Labyrinth was such a stand-out, it was hard not to focus
on her. "They're fine children, Dolly. Labyrinth takes good care of Georgie,
too. She's protective."

"That's what she's supposed to do. He's the baby." They talked for a
while longer about the children, what they were studying, how they got
along with the other kids. Dolly seemed to have some other notions in her
mind that played across her face, but they didn't come out of her mouth.
She was subdued, thoughtful.

"I better be getting on home." Dolly stood. "Thank you for the tea."

There was more she might have said to Dolly, so much she wanted to ask.
But Reverend Singleton admonished her to keep a distance between herself
and the adults who came to voter education class. She was the teacher first,
though all the class members were older. "Come by anytime."

"I'll do that." Dolly got into her car and U-turned on Freshwater Road
then turned on the two-lane going toward Pineyville.

In her bedroom, the after-storm evening light slanted through the lacy
curtains. The end of Freedom Summer was approaching. The race was on
now to see if the work of the summer would net out to something that
could change this place forever. A new tension would settle in over the
exhausted one that had hovered around the missing civil rights workers.
It was time to go see Mr. Heywood. She'd alert the One Man, One Vote
office that they were shifting into gear for the final showdown. If they
attacked her or any of her little group, she'd need a doctor they could call
on. Who? Where? Maybe someone in Hattiesburg. She'd ask Reverend
Singleton. She grabbed at straws, trying to gird herself against faceless
eventualities.

Celeste opened her dresser drawer and touched Wilamena's unopened
letter. It was there. She held, it anticipating distance, afraid she'd never
make it through the coolness. She sat on the side of her bed and slowly, carefully opened it, its two pages folded once. Wilamena had written on
both sides of each sheet.

A landscape in pale colors hinted across the top of the paper. Mountains
and pine trees. Pinon. Her mother always liked good stationery, kept boxes
of cards with painted birds, flowers, and landscapes. She'd taught Celeste
from the time she was a child to send formal thank-you notes as gratitude
for the smallest gestures. Wilamena's handwriting etched on the page, the
lines perfectly even like she'd used a ruler.

Dear Celeste:

I hope you're managing to stay out of harm's way though I don t see
how that's possible considering where you are. You should be running
as far and as fast away from that place as possible. I can't imagine a
reason to even pass through there. Of course, ifI hadn't called Shuck
looking for you, I wouldn't even have known you'd gone to Mississippi. Imagine that?

Now that you're adult enough to run about the world doing what
you please, putting yourself in harm's way willingly and knowingly,
there are some things I need to share with you. I'm weary of carrying
this burden alone.