Freshwater Road (42 page)

"Where you at, Miss Tyree?" Tony stood on the sagging front porch
waving, the little man of the broke-down house, left at home to babysit his
two shoeless younger sisters while his mother went to register to vote. She'd
never heard "where you at?" until Ed Jolivette said it. Now, Tony used it
with a smile as if he knew something. It made her blush.

She waved. "All right now, Tony. You take care." She turned her eyes
away, pretended to do something on the car seat. At this distance, Tony
couldn't read the embarrassment she felt for the poverty the Mobleys lived
in. She faced the boy through the open car window again. "See you in
school tomorrow morning, Tony." She wanted to tell him what to do in
case she wasn't there, in case she was sitting in the Pearl River County jail,
but that might scare him.

"I be there." He helped the younger ones wave goodbye.

Sister Mobley leaned in front of Reverend Singleton and called out to
him. "Mind the girls, Tony."

"Yes, ma'am." Tony looked like a miniature man, arms around the
shoulders of his younger sisters.

The car pulled away. If they got arrested, who in God's name would
care for Tony and those little girls? Celeste stared at her hands in her lap,
helpless. What if they weren't allowed a phone call? Wilamena waved from
the wings, whispering I told you it was too much to bear. Shuck stood on the
other side, his best-of-Negro-life wallpaper lit up behind him.

"Etta's coming if we get arrested." Reverend Singleton must have seen
the forlorn look on Celeste's face in his rearview mirror, spoke as if he'd
been inside her head.

She nodded, relieved. "Will she meet the children for freedom school?"

The DeSoto crunched the gravel and sand road. "She'll be there for a
bit. Long enough to make sure they're all right."

"Good." Fear cartwheeled inside Celeste-for them, for the children,
for every Negro person in Mississippi. She watched the cypress wood shackhouses of Freshwater Road, one in slightly better repair than another, all
too small for families, too airy, too rundown to be anything but firewood.
It felt like they were going to a funeral.

The Tucker boys sat on their front porch staring with blank faces at the
passing car. No sign of Zenia Tucker. Celeste saw them turning into copies
of Mr. Tucker already, hoped they'd catch themselves before then. Zenia
wasn't much good to them now.

Mrs. Owens fidgeted with her bible. "What about our bail?" She glanced
out at her little house as they rolled by. Everything quiet.

Celeste disconnected her feelings from the house when they passed;
she needed to separate herself from everything. Just float. No memories
of Ed in the front seat of Matt's car, no day in New Orleans riding on the
St. Charles Avenue streetcar and kissing in the shady sunlight of Audubon
Park, no need to call Shuck, not even any anger at Wilamena. Just free float.
Nothing in her pocket but identification and payphone money. Kleenex.
Maybe she should've put in Band-Aids and disinfectant for any wounds.
Hard to carry a bottle of mercurochrome, though. They needed a good
first-aid kit for Reverend Singleton's car. She'd forgotten.

"What if someone gets hit or something? We might need a doctor." She realized instantly she shouldn't have asked that question in front of Mrs.
Owens and Sister Mobley.

"We just have to pray that doesn't happen, and if it does anyway, we'll
just have to run over to Hattiesburg. There's a doctor over there who'll treat
Negroes." Reverend Singleton put the prayer in it. Mrs. Owens and Sister
Mobley kept their eyes hard on the road ahead. Celeste, as embedded as
she was in this town and in this moment, shook her head, sinking inside
at the neglectful thing Reverend Singleton said. There's a doctor over there
who'll treat Negroes. How had this insanity lasted for so long? She'd believed
her entire life that doctors had a spiritual significance, right up there next
to ministers, that they would not traffic in prejudice and bigotry. Healers.
They were healers.

"Etta'll come and bail us out, if it comes to that. She's got the money
to get started. The Jackson office will send down more with a lawyer," he
reminded them. The church body had planned for this day by putting
nickels and dimes in a special basket all summer long. Sophie Lewis had
also contributed more, just for this. The One Man, One Vote office pitched
in money, too. Northern volunteers put in their own bail money. She knew
Shuck had followed her instructions. If they were arrested, they'd be in jail
for at least a few hours.

"I was sure hoping Mr. Landau would change his mind and come on."
Sister Mobley stared out the window.

They neared the town center. Reverend Singleton gripped the steering
wheel with both hands. "Well, he's with us in spirit, you know that."

Celeste wished he'd been ready, too, but in truth, she wished he'd come
and brought along one of his guns. Be nice to have a man with a gun protecting them when they walked in that building. Maybe someone stationed in
the thick foliage of the trees. Maybe he'd bring his whole group of Deacons
for Defense and Justice to stand guard. That would change things. All-out
war. Celeste chastised herself for dwelling on self-defense with guns. It
was a flight of fancy, a protective urge, but it went against everything the
movement was about that summer. She'd already heard Matt and Ed speak
of the Deacons as if they were black angels, protector spirits. It wasn't just
her own terrified thinking. Everyone thought it. And it was natural to do
so, to think of protecting oneself, one's community from people who would
destroy it. The philosophy of nonviolence wouldn't help against the blows.
It might help in rebuilding the character of the south. Later.

The first phone call if they were arrested was to Mrs. Singleton. She'd
make the calls to the Jackson office and the FBI. The Jackson office would
do the rest. No guarantee they'd be allowed to make any phone calls at
all, though. They rode the rest of the way in silence with the breeze planting salty sweat splotches on their faces, their hearts pounding like furious
drumming signaling danger.

Then they were in Pineyville, so benign and seemingly unaware, a quaintly
painted village with verdant landscape all around. The magnolias stood so
still. Early morning walkers and greeters came out of the dollhouse of a
coffee shop. No Negroes allowed inside. A man bought a newspaper from
the vending machine. Celeste'd done that. A New Orleans Times-Picayune,
a Jackson Clarion-Ledger. Mr. Tucker quietly worked on a car at the gas
station, pretending to not see them go by on their way to the Pearl River
County Administration Building. Did he know this was their big day? Celeste tried to see in her mind the faces of everyone who'd been at the church
on Saturday, their final day of practicing for today. Was there one among
them who might have alerted the sheriff they were coming? No way to know.
Mrs. Owens stared into her lap, then drifted her eyes out the window. Quiet.
Sister Mobley's thin neck might crack if she moved.

Reverend Singleton made a smooth maneuver into a parking space on
the far end of the block. Nothing going on in front of the building. Magnolias. Two sheriffs' cars parked, empty. People walking in and out. This
was the county seat. People came from miles around to do their business,
but Negro people were forbidden to enter through the front door.

They sat in the car. At that moment, Celeste remembered a little detail
she'd heard in Jackson: "When we get to the registrar, don't be surprised
if they ask us how many bubbles there are in a bar of soap. That's what
they're doing up in the Delta." She smiled at them, not sure if they took it
as gospel or just thought she was making a joke. It fell flat. Nobody said a
word. Reverend Singleton opened his door.

Celeste stepped out of the back seat. This was the reason she'd come to
Mississippi. As it was, if every Negro person in Pearl River County voted,
they'd be even with the whites nearly head for head. The One Man, One
Vote office tallied their canvas of the previous year for every county in the
state. Freedom Summer came to Mississippi because of its high population
of Negro people. If you broke this bad-dream place down, the rest of the
south would be like a cushioned ride in a limousine.

The sidewalk to the building heaved with magnolia roots, and for much
of the way there was shade. The air was heavy with a sweet fragrance.
Cars were slowing as the drivers realized a small group of Negroes were
headed towards the front entrance of the Pearl River County Administration Building.

Reverend Singleton walked side by side with Sister Mobley. Celeste
stayed close to Mrs. Owens. Up the entry walk, white faces were shocked
beyond words. Heads turning, words trailing off. A woman stumbled while
looking one way at them but walking the other. Celeste was going deaf,
dumb, and nearly blind with fear. Keep walking. Remember those freedom
songs you've been singing all summer long, remember what Margo said, sing in
your mind, hold those words. "Keep on a'walkin, keep on a'talkin', on my way
to freedom's land. "Mrs. Owens knows these people. They know her. They know
Reverend Singleton and Sister Mobley, too. I'm the stranger. Celeste wanted
to hide behind Mrs. Owens's skirts, bring up the rear, get scolded, get some
relief from this responsibility of cracking open the stones of the past.

They bunched together in the cool foyer with its gold-framed paintings
of the Confederate sons of Mississippi. Celeste focused on the paintings to
calm herself, like a dancer spotting during a pirouette. Two-time governor
and former U.S. Senator T.G. Bilbo; Confederate President Jefferson Davis;
James Vardaman, governor when the Jim Crow laws passed, and night riders galloped on thin-legged horses with kiting white sheets and guns that
crackled through rural silences. Pink-faced men in full Confederate regalia.
A framed larger-than-life Confederate flag. The foyer was a museum of
oppression. No sign of President Lyndon B. Johnson, or even John F. Kennedy, and he'd been dead less than a year. No American flag anywhere to
be seen. Where they even in America?

Reverend Singleton ushered them toward the wide stairway leading up
to the registrar's office. Polished wood balustrades. Muted sunlight coming
in the tall high windows as if they'd entered the nave of a cathedral. People
with papers, clicking heels on the hardwood floors, fast-walking, whispering, heading for cover. White men in shirtsleeves, white women in summer
dresses, hair up in the heat. The men standing back, folding their arms, fire
smoldering in their eyes.

"Y'all ain't supposed to be coming in the front door." Mr. Heywood's
clear curt voice echoed off the hard walls and floor, his accent all Mississippi drawl as he descended so fast he seemed to be sliding over the tops of the steps, his flat straight hair rising, his suit jacket catching the breeze,
billowing out to the sides under his flapping elbows.

His speed stunned Celeste. He seemed to be flying toward them. He
must have been daydreaming out the front windows, seen them coming up
the walk, disbelieving his own eyes as they strolled under his calm, thick
magnolias, blackening his view of the pearl white flowers. Negroes coming
with their Bibles and their reverends and these new-age carpetbaggers.

"Morning, Mr. Heywood. We coming up to see you about registering
to vote." Reverend Singleton spoke crisply, all dignified in his gray preacher
suit, a pale pink shirt giving him a rakish, big-city air.

Mr. Heywood stood panting in the center of the foyer, using a white
handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. "Is that right?" His tone
circled the words with a suppressed, condescending anger.

Celeste inched closer to Mrs. Owens. Sister Mobley clutched her bible,
stiff, erect, lips clenched together. She stepped closer to Celeste and Mrs.
Owens, let Reverend Singleton lead. Celeste marveled again at how the
white people stayed so white even in the magnified sun of southern Mississippi. It was as if they weren't really there, or really lived someplace else out
of the sunshine, some place cool.

"Geneva, I told you to get that gal out of your house. Didn't I tell you
thatjust little more than a week ago?" His anxious sincerity caught Celeste.
"That school she's operating is wholly illegal, and she's living in your house
while she does it." He pleaded as if talking to a recalcitrant child, as he
waved a dismissive hand towards Celeste. Gal.

Reverend Singleton stepped back to be closer to the rest of them. Mrs.
Owens looked at the floor. Celeste followed her eyes down to her runover shoes, the leather worn thin, her old-style cotton stockings puckering
around the shoe rims and breaking through the leather near the big toe.
Mrs. Owens had better. These were her fighting shoes, just as the tennis
shoes were Celeste's. She glanced over at Sister Mobley's white, in-service
shoes, the shoes she wore to clean houses; they were soft-bottomed, wouldn't
slip. Good.

Mrs. Owens lifted her face to Mr. Heywood. They locked eyes. "You
did."

From that moment, Celeste knew that they were in for it. She doubted
any Negro person had ever looked him so deeply in the eye and lived to
tell about it.

Mr. Heywood sneaked glances in all directions. "Do I need to call the
sheriff in here?" He scanned the hallways. He didn't need to call very far. Just
the sight of them standing there was prompting alarms. Celeste wondered
if, in all the years that Pineyville had been a town, had any group of Negro
people ever walked into the foyer through the front door? The news was sure
to fly all over town.

"We are ready to register to vote." Reverend Singleton persisted. "Now,
we've mastered the Mississippi State Constitution, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights."

Mr. Heywood's head jerked in the direction of Reverend Singleton. "I
don't care if you mastered the Magna Carta. Niggers don't belong in here.
Voting ain't got nothing to do with you."