Freshwater Road (48 page)

"There's nothing left." Reverend Singleton sat behind the wheel, his
suit jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up. "I drove by there before I came here.
Just to see."

She got into the car thinking that she, Celeste Tyree, had to win one
small thing. Meanwhile, Wilamena's letter, like a ghost waving at the end
of a long dark hall, beckoned her to reread it, to study it as if she'd missed
something. Each night she'd put it off, praying for enough ballast to keep
Wilamena from toppling her over the edge.

Mrs. Owens came out with her mouth set in a frown. Reverend Singleton took off down Freshwater Road toward Sister Mobley's house. It was
their ritual ride now. A deep blue sky the color of Reverend Singleton's
preaching robe gleamed above them, calling to mind tropical drinks with
tiny umbrellas, not the destruction of the only Negro church in the environs of Pineyville.

Sister Mobley's whole face trembled when she climbed in, barely waving
goodbye to Tony who stood on their rickety porch with his two younger
sisters, all long-faced. "When I saw that light in the sky, I knew they done
burned our church."

"Smell the smoke way over here." Mrs. Owens said. "Still smell it."

"There's little fires around here all the time. From the lightning strikes."
Reverend Singleton glued his eyes to the road when they turned onto the
two-lane. There was no evidence of what had happened anywhere. The
narrow highway was nearly deserted, as usual. The long-needled pines stood
tall against the blast of sun. The sandy orange earth lay like a spread of
island beach. Here and there were some delinquent bursts of color, usually
some long-suffering flower so tired of summer. "But last night was different," he continued. "Buildings burn differently. Longer. Etta and I saw the
light in the sky."

Coming up the bumpy road, they all stared at the empty space on the
land where the church used to be. They were struck dumb by the absence.
To the rear sat the untouched outhouse, shrouded by tree overhang. The
space might have been a hand with two missing fingers in the middle.
The glorious trees still crowded the space around the clearing. Sister Mobley
fell down to her knees in the white-hot gravel, as if the church had been a
friend that she'd loved and cared for, and now that friend had died. Mr.
Landau had been waiting for them in his truck. He walked over to the
blight and stood there, his sculptured head swinging back and forth.

An intermittent crackle broke the quiet as if some hidden bit of fire
gasped for breath beneath the ruins. Involuntary prayer mourns erupted,
unconsciously and urgently whispered by Reverend Singleton and the
others-"Oh, Lord," "What we going to do, now, Lord?"

They walked the nearly rectangular boundary of ash, stopping from
time to time to notice some half-burned remnant. Charred pew backs and
floorboards sent thin lines of smoke into the cumbrous morning air. There
were stick and hinge remains of wooden folding chairs, and one or two
metal folding chairs, their brown paint cooked off, standing straight. The
iron church bell that had come from New Orleans leaned against a piece
of crisp pulpit railing. Reverend Singleton's white flush toilet sat bare to the
sun, drizzled in cinders and ash.

Dolly Johnson thundered up the potholed church road in her handme-down car and parked off under the trees. She came toward them, her
hair swept back in an exact copy of Celeste's ponytail, gym shoes on her
feet, no makeup, no nail polish, looking like a veteran of the civil rights
movement in her simple skirt and blouse, all clean and pressed. Another sea
change, but was it still only a matter of style? Would it carry over after the volunteers went home, after the excitement of Freedom Summer came to
an end? Celeste wanted so much for this new Dolly to be real, was willing
to forgive her petulance in the jail cell. Maybe Dolly had begun to toss
whatever remained of her relationship with Percival Dale on the pyre the
day she brought Labyrinth and Georgie to freedom school. She'd propelled
herself toward a kind of freedom by going to the voter education classes.
The consequences for her might be the loss of her job in Hattiesburg, as
well as no more shopping bags of groceries with cash money under the
food. Maybe that's why she'd backtracked in the jail cell. She'd had second thoughts about her own ability to make her life work, was probably
torn about how she'd manage, if she'd keep her children in this town or
leave taking them with her. Dolly had a lot of decisions to make for sure.
Dolly said "hey" and Celeste grinned toward her weakly, her cut lip pulling
against her smile.

The August sun blanched the gravel stones. Everything but the church
seemed lifted up, as if the soft grayness of the ashy shroud and the broken
bits of stone were an artfully arranged backdrop. The long-needled pines,
live oaks, and stands of poplars all exploded in profusions of green, while
the church's remains receded into a black scorch on the earth. Even Reverend Singleton's DeSoto stood out in a shimmer of blue and tan. The corners
of his red bumper sticker reading Register Now-Vote in November curled
away from the chrome fender. Mr. Landau's truck, rust-brown and chrome,
sat to the side. Celeste wondered if he had a rifle under the seat, if seeing his
burned-down church would be more than he could tolerate.

Celeste started digging through the burned rubble with a long branch of
tree searching for some evidence that the freedom school ever existed. One
summer of freedom school, then regular segregated school all year long, all
life long. State schools propped up the status quo, left too many children
dull and thirsty or worse, uninterested in learning at all. Children were
taught that chattering bruised the air by teachers who told them to shut up.
Parents said the same thing for fear their chattering would ignite some simmering hatred. It was the end of the summer project. It was a double-shame,
with the church burned, that the children who'd come to freedom school
over the summer would no longer be able to see and touch the place where a
different idea about learning first took hold. They should be able to walk in
there every Sunday morning for church with their portable blackboard off
to the side, the Negro history books stacked neat on the shelves, newspapers from other places, their art work on the walls. But it was all burned with
the St. James A.M.E. Church.

Celeste poked around with her tree branch and murmured, "Sophie
Lewis will not be happy with this."

"She knows Mississippi as well as anyone. But it will break her heart.
She has such high hopes." Reverend Singleton, his Kodak camera in hand,
took photos of the burned-down church. Then he directed Celeste to smile
and to point to her cut lip and cracked tooth. Celeste did as he asked,
knowing full well no Kodak photo could show the full damage to her lip
and tooth.

"I thought at the end of the summer, I might have divided the books
among the children." Celeste held herself to keep from crying, from railing
against the south.

"Books or no books, they're not going to forget that freedom school."
Reverend Singleton insisted she stand there as he photographed her injuries
up closer. "I'ma send these on to Jackson for the FBI and let them decide
about what to do with Sheriff Trotter and his deputy."

"FBI ain't going to do nothing. Once they found those three boys, they
wasn't going to stay in Mississippi." Mr. Landau walked toward his truck
and sat down on the running board, his elbows on his thighs, big hands
dangling. "You smell the kerosene?"

"Sure you right, Landau. But I gotta send the photos on anyway." Reverend Singleton sniffed the air for kerosene. "Yeah. I smell it."

"We be all right, Reverend Singleton. Ain't nothing new." Mrs. Owens
stood there by him patting his arm. "It's just a building."

Dolly sniffed the air and Sister Mobley walked the perimeter of the
church, stopping and staring from time to time, no doubt placing this
thing and that in her memory. Celeste headed towards the shadowy cool
trees of the sacred ground. The man who gave the church the bell was
buried there. Little did he know. Things really did get worse. The smell of
burned pine resin and the filigrees of smoke teared her eyes, and then the
tears became a steady stream running down her face. Today her mouth was
just an irritation rather than a forward-lurching pain. Sissy Tucker's small
grave and simple cross lay just at the boundary between the sacred ground
and the ordinary cemetery. Zenia Tucker's red geraniums were dulled by
their layer of ash.

Celeste rejoined Reverend Singleton and the group in the crystalline light of mid-morning. "Everything's all right in there." She smiled a minimal smile to lessen the tug on her lip, knowing her cracked front tooth
changed everything on her face. The thought of how she looked in the
mirror trying to brush that tooth brought a shiver of giggles. She'd ended
up washing the tooth with her finger. She ate a breakfast of eggs and the
center of her butter-soft biscuit, taking it in small side bites and chewing
gingerly. That tooth had to last until she got back to Jackson, or better,
home to Detroit.

"They don't change much." Reverend Singleton relaxed his tie even more,
then opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a hammer and a freshly
made paint-on-wood sign that he nailed to a tree closest to the rubble of the
church. Help Make Mississippi Part of the USA, Register to VoteNow. "We can
pitch a tent right here if need be." The hammer blows cracked like gunshots
through the clearing. He gathered his little group in front of the sign and
photographed them. Mr. Landau stood in the back near Celeste, looking
like a long lean Sitting Bull. His plum janitor job at Crown-Zellerbach
made men jealous, while the women sidled up to him like he had gold in his
pockets. She'd seen them at the church picnics over the summer, the younger
women batting their eyes and smiling at him, pushing their breasts forward,
before sitting primly on the picnic chairs. The men shook his hand quickly
and walked away. She figured he must be Reverend Singleton's age-well
past the usual age of marriage in the south.

The building had been a symbol. Not just for the movement to help
register these backwater Negroes to vote. The church was more than that.
It was theirs, their future, a proof of life. Celeste felt a sudden urge now to
see where Sissy's body had been found. It would never be all right with her,
never rest easy inside her the way Sissy's death had been handled, even by the
Negro people of Pineyville. Sissy was a small damage in their minds.

Celeste walked close to Reverend Singleton. "You think you might be
able to take me over to the place where you found Sissy?"

"We can do that." He went on about his work, walking around the
clearing, taking snapshots.

"Reverend Singleton, are you sure it's all right?"

"Sure, I'm sure. We'll go over there later. I understand." He was digging
in the ruins of everything he'd worked for.

Celeste wondered if he, too, had another understanding of Sissy's death
that he kept private for fear of cleaving his congregation at a time when he needed them to be united. He'd followed their lead on that when he led them
in all other respects. There was no hue and cry about Sissy's death-not
against the whites of the town and not to question some other possibility.
Her funeral had been a personal and private affair, as if she'd died of natural
causes.

Mrs. Owens shoved her hands into the pockets of her dark print cotton
church dress. "We must go today to see Mr. Heywood." Sister Mobley and
Dolly nodded in agreement, their backs turned to the smoking remains.
It was the thought on everyone's mind. And coming just after it was the
thought of what new violence they'd have to endure before the day ended.
Reverend Singleton would have to get the word out that more volunteers
were needed, that they'd meet at the burned-down church every evening
until they didn't need to meet anymore.

Reverend Singleton grabbed Geneva Owens's hand and put his other
hand out for anyone to take. They formed a tight little circle and he led
them in a prayer of deliverance from evil, then put the Kodak instant
camera in his car, motioned them all in, and off they went. No time to
sit around mourning. They bumped over the church road, no one looking
back at the scorch, though Celeste could see Reverend Singleton glancing
in his rearview mirror at the remains of the church he helped to build, tears
squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. She stared out the window; she
didn't want him to know she saw him crying.

In town, they drove slowly past the pay phone near the gas station, gazed
at Mr. Tucker as he turned his head away. Celeste chastised him in her
mind, saying pointedly that it was his church, too, that no matter what else,
he needed to mourn that loss. The citizens on the street by now recognized
the reason for their ride through town. They glared in hatred or turned their
heads away. The woman who sat behind the counter in the small drugstore
with the dusty shelves and scant stock stood on the sidewalk. Celeste locked
eyes with her as they rolled by, taking all the blame and anger from her look.
The woman spat into the air. They rolled on by. Celeste felt them drawing
the thread of history through the tidy landscape of this miniature town
dressed in magnolia and pine.

Sheriff Trotter's car was parked in its normal spot in front of the Pearl
River County Administration Building. Celeste realized in an instant that
no one had expected their group to show up again today. You could see it in
the jerked-head responses as they parked and walked up that walkway and in that front door. Celeste wanted to protect her mouth; she feared they'd
attack the weak ones this time, Mrs. Owens and Sister Mobley. In the foyer,
people ducked into offices or hugged the walls.

Celeste listened for the sound of heavy police shoes on the hard floors.
They were on the steps going up and still no sheriff came down that hallway.
Hands on the smooth banister, as smooth as that porcelain drinking fountain yesterday. Up they walked, afraid to open their mouths, afraid to look
in any other direction. They reached the top of the stairs and turned toward
Mr. Heywood's office, stunned by their own progress, white people backing away, running in the other direction even. Office doors closing hard.
Another drinking fountain-Celeste looked at it, passed it by. Today was
not the day for drinking cold water from white porcelain fountains, signs or
no signs. Negro people had become so beaten down and broken, they didn't
need any Whites Only signs. Only outsiders needed that instruction. The
press of history and habit did all the work in Pineyville, until this summer.