Four Spirits (21 page)

IN HELICON, ALABAMA, OLD AUNT CHARLOTTE TOLD HER
aged children Christopher Columbus Jones and Queen Victoria Jones, “He'p me up to the Methodist church. I want to sit there.”

“Let me get you a fresh head rag,” Victoria said.

Chris pulled a quilt off his mother's bed to line the wheelbarrow.

The barrow lay upside down to keep out the rain, right beside the worn steps. With difficulty, Chris righted it, but he had to take his time.

“Let me walk,” his mother was saying as she hesitated at the top of the three stairs. Her neck was bent down, but her body stood straight. She wore a clean, faded apron, and the clean head rag was a matching strip of fabric printed with now-faded red circles.

She over a hundred years old. She don't look it,
Chris thought. Dressed up, matching clothes.
I look older than my own mama.

“Church folks done be gone,” Victoria said, “time we get there 'less you let Chris push you.”

They already gone,
Charlotte mumbled too low for even Victoria (standing right beside her on the threshold with her hand under Charlotte's elbow) to hear. Charlotte had felt their passing. Good children. Good girls.
We come to say good-bye,
one of the spirits had whispered. With utmost respect,
because you the oldest living
.

'Cause you seen so much,
another girl-voice said. Words like distant cowbells.

We be waiting for you, when you come.
The third girl had a low, patient voice, like creek-flow.

Grannie, would you tie my sash a little better?

They'd wakened her from her doze with their wispy young voices. Four spirits passing. They troubled the air over where she lay snoozing in bed. No more than breath, they wafted past, talking among themselves. Detouring. Little city girls,
leaving Birmingham
. They sang a hymn, so high up in the air, each with her own note but all together. They sang so high as they disappeared, grew small as four specks, into infinity.

They sang like they were already angels. Voices like chimes.

Doctor and Mrs. Doctor and their children, been several years now, not too long ago, had given her wind chimes when they visited.
Sweet as church bells,
Doctor had said. Maybe it was the chimes had woke her, four metal tubes stirring in the Sunday breeze.

Well, Charlotte would know when she saw the white folks leaving their church.

“You come ride in the barrow, Mama,” Chris said. “I have you there in no time.”

“I scared you spill me, Chris.”

“Never have,” he answered, looking sullen.

“No, I'll just walk. Not but a mile. They church not even started yet. Y'all come get on each side.”

Chris felt his neck creak, his head bend a little lower—oh, just a tiny fraction of an inch closer to despair. When his chin touched his chest, he'd likely die. But not till then. Till then, his mama was the boss.

Slowly Charlotte crept down the steps. Victoria plucked the quilt from the barrow in case her mother needed to lie down beside the path and rest.

Tentatively, Charlotte sent one foot sliding forward through the raked red dust. Her shoe sole grated over the little stones under the dust. Then the other foot followed, sliding and scuffling.

“See,” Charlotte said proudly. “That's how walking's done. One foot at a time.”

“We'll get there,” Victoria said. Her voice strong as the steel spring in a mousetrap.

“Reckon I'll stay home,” Chris muttered.

His mother looked back at him and slowly smiled. “No, you come on, too, honey. Mama needs you to help her.”

So the three of them slowly progressed to the edge of the yard. Then Charlotte stopped. She looked back.

“ ‘Little house, little house,' ” she said. “ ‘Stay still as a mouse. Don't make a sound, and don't fall down,' ” but she was living in another time. She was a young woman, and Doctor, just a boy ten years old, had stopped on this very spot, at the edge of the yard. It was white family's dwelling then, and Doctor had a long burlap cotton sack slung over his shoulder. He held the belly of the long bag bunched up so it wouldn't drag through the woods, get caught on little sticks and briars. Straight, smart little boy, with blue-gray eyes. He was off to the fields to pick a hundred pounds of cotton. Little sister—Miss Krit—was just born, that morning, in the house, and they told Doctor-that-was-to-be if'n he picked a hundred pounds, he could hold the baby. Standing on this spot, he had looked back at the house, and made up a charm:
Little house, little house, stay still as a mouse. Don't make a sound, and don't fall down.

It had taken Charlotte a moment to rummage around in memory to find the words, but the charm had lasted all these years. The house still stood.

“Now we can speed up a little,” she told her children, stepping beyond the yard onto the path through the woods. “I remember how this walking's done.”

A small frail baby, Krit had been an easy birth for a woman who'd had five before. As soon as she came out, Charlotte had read her puckered face: this one would make trouble for somebody, later on in life. But so far, she hadn't. She'd never married, taken care of her mother in her old age, was taking care of Miss Pratt, stove up with the rheumatism. And Doctor's little orphan girl.

Today was a good day at Helicon in September, still warm enough for the pine trees to give out their piney smell. Their fallen needles, long and brown, were soft underfoot, but they could be slippery, and it was best to hold to somebody.

I wish you Birmingham gals could all just stay here with me,
Charlotte thought.
Where had those specks gone? Enjoy this Alabama sunshine. These good smells. This soft path.
She breathed it all in, could feel her nostrils spread.
Reckon y'all's feet don't need no earthly path.
She had her faith, but it was a sad thought.
Y'all mighty sweet. Coming by my bed like that, tell old Grannie good-bye.

Then Charlotte took such a mighty breath—life, life—it resounded like a snore, and Victoria said, “You all right, Mama?”

“Sure am,” Charlotte answered and quickened her steps.
They've flown on.
Hardly stayed a second, just long enough for Charlotte to get her eyes open, see the place where they'd hovered in the empty air.

She glanced to her left, saw the pond below the spring all covered with green. She wished Victoria and Chris wouldn't let the water scum up that way. She swung her gaze to the right. Yes, there was her big rock. Even in the winter, when she sat down there, her boulder had stored-up sunshine to offer. She'd rather be buried under that rock than anywhere else on earth. Lie close to home. But that was a wish she'd never tell; she knew it was her duty to go into the church graveyard—colored side—when her time come.

Oh, she remembered now: she'd decided against dying. She was staying here.
Y'all come back to visit.
She sent the message out to all who had gone before.
Anytime.

To her own children, she thought,
Now if you waiting for me to die fore you light out for the city, you barking up the wrong tree. You be here forever, you waiting for that event. I ain't making you leave, but I was you, I'd go while I still had some gumption.

Here was the patch of oak trees to pass. Acorns still clung in clusters up among the green leaves. Charlotte thought an oak leaf was the prettiest shape in the world—the kind with lobes, not the red oak leaf. Too pointy. When she was just a girl, long long ago, she'd seen a woman with an oak leaf branded into her cheek.

And there was a dogwood with one red leaf on it already. Always the first sign of earliest fall when the dogwood started to turn red. Now they were onto the road leading to the church.

“One foot in front of the other,” she encouraged her children.
Y'all ought to just keep walking. I want you to be free.

She could hear a cardinal sing, and she sang back to it out loud, “Pretty bird, pretty bird.” Birds always sang prettiest on a Sunday morning. “I love to hear the bird choir,” Charlotte said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Victoria said with a snap in that spring steel voice.

“I do too, Mama,” Chris said, muted, and his mother pinched his arm a little so as he would know her thought:
You such a good boy
.

One foot in front of the other. Charlotte wished folks pent up in the cities could look down on them from one of their high buildings, see how peaceful and good things were here in the woods. Here everything just grew as it would, no matter who lived here or who didn't. They had the prettiest woods in the world. She saw goldenrod beside the road.

In the country, they didn't have much, but they didn't need much.

In the country, folks got along with one another. Acted right.

She wondered sadly about the four girls and why they'd passed on so young. Good girls. Dressed so nice. They needed to be here.

Ought to have been with her, in the country. They ought to have been four real girls come to visit their grannie in the country for the summer. Well, she guessed this
was
autumn coming on. She remembered the dark red leaf on the dogwood. School time.

The girls needed to be here, whenever it was, enjoying the birds and the green trees.

By the time Charlotte and Victoria and Chris reached the church, those inside were saying the benediction, in unison: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you. And give you peace. Amen.” It was as though the building itself had a voice.

The sun glinted on the chrome of the cars parked all around the church. The cars were like a herd of little piglets snouting up to a sow.

“Quick, quick,” Charlotte told her children. “Let me sit here on the stump. I got to see'em come out. You all hurry on, then come back and get me. Hide now.”

Charlotte settled herself on the stump. Yes, they were coming out now, first a few men—Charlotte eagerly looked at their faces, their arms—then the women—Charlotte held her breath, appalled—then couples emerged from the door under the steeple. Every white face, their hands and arms were marked.

Covered with blood, they were. Every one of them. Stained with guilt. She could see.

Smiling and pleasant, as though nothing had happened.

No, to them nothing bad had happened for the last hundred years.

“WE COULD GO TO THE FUNERAL,” CAT SAID.

“We don't know them,” Stella answered. “We didn't know the girls.” Stella stroked the arm of the sofa. She could hardly bring herself to look at her friends.

“We don't know their families,” Don said.

They sat in the Cartwrights' living room.

“Did this really happen?” Don asked. He jumped up and paced back and forth over the bare wooden floor, Goliath at his heels. “I find it so hard to believe.” Don pressed the palms of his hands together, and they trembled with the force of his pressing. “That someone would do this.”

Stella had no trouble believing in disaster. She remembered the rolling of the family car, how they had all tumbled, like clothes in a washing machine, the wash of blood. She stroked the sofa arm as though it were a cat.
But to bomb a church! Not a chance accident, but someone's plan. Someone who called himself human.

“It's important for some white faces to be seen at the funeral,” Cat said firmly. She looked at her brother, at her friend.

“There'll be an enormous press of people,” Don replied, and Cat knew he was saying it would be too hard to get her chair through.

“There's quite a bank of steps,” Stella added.

“We could just be in the crowd. Outside,” Cat answered.

His toenails clicking, her little dog ran across the bare floor. He leapt into Cat's lap, and automatically, she smoothed his head, as soon as he had turned
and settled himself. He was part Chihuahua, and he cocked his head, flared his big ears, and looked inquisitively from face to face.

“Goliath's puzzled,” Don said, with dignified irony. “He's never heard us talk about this before.”

“I don't want to stand outside,” Stella said. “We'd be like spectators. It would be offensive to them.”

“The one family wanted their privacy. A small gathering,” Don said. “I'd certainly prefer that.”

“The TV cameras will be there,” Stella said. She imagined the coffins—three dead girls inside. No, the cameras could not look inside, see the little girls in their dark containers. She imagined their ruined bodies lying in their boxes. Stella felt herself there in the church, though the funeral had not yet happened.

No one else was there, just the empty sanctuary, gloomy, in twilight and silence. Tranced, Stella walked alone down the aisle. Three matching coffins were at the front, the fourth already in the ground. Stella pictured herself walking down the aisle of the church, hesitating beside a front pew, close to the coffins. Like three little boats at a dock, the coffins almost bumped the altar rail. Stella lay down on a pew, on her back. She closed her eyes. She folded one hand over the other, placed both over her heart.

“What do you think, Miss Silver?” Don asked her, and the spell was broken.

“I'd feel strange, pretentious going to the funeral of people I didn't know.”

“The world knows them now,” Cat answered. “At least their faces.”

They heard the postman stuffing letters into the metal mailbox.

“Bombingham,” Cat said, and they all were suffused with shame.

Goliath leapt from Cat's lap to run barking toward the closed front door.

“Goliath!” Cat called once, sharply, but she did not persist.

Except for the yapping of the dog, they listened in silence to the postman's steps resounding on the wooden wheelchair ramp, and he was gone.

After another volley of barks, Goliath turned, wagged his tail with satisfaction.

“It's too awful,” Stella said. It was a stupid thing to say, but she wanted them to keep talking. She wanted somebody to find the right words. She stopped petting the sofa arm.

“Birmingham will never be the same,” Cat said. Her sentence launched itself into the air above the bare boards of the living room and sank.

“King's coming back to speak,” Don said hopefully.

Stella did not know how a person could be so brave as Martin Luther King.
So calm. She wished his words would inspire her. She always listened respectfully. She admired him. Yet he seemed masked to her. She didn't know him; his message remained impersonal for her.

“I want us to go,” Cat repeated.

Stella thought of those households where parents must be dressing to attend their daughter's funeral. No matter what their pain, no matter how wrung with grief, now the families must put on their socks or their hose. They must cover their naked feet appropriately. They must slip their arms through the sleeves of a shirt or dress; they must tighten a belt, glance in a mirror. Other family members, friends would be there to help them, finding things, touching their shoulders, fighting their own tears. Glasses of water would be urged on the distraught. Sometimes lovingly, sometimes with a gruffness to hide inadequacy: “Here.”

“I've brought you a glass of water,” Aunt Krit had said to her, when she herself—only a child of five—had sat in the front row at the funeral parlor.

Aunt Pratt had sat in her wheelchair beside her. Stella remembered how small and young she'd been when her family was crushed. She was just a little girl, and at the funeral parlor Aunt Pratt, parked in the aisle, had reached over the rim of her wheel to hold Stella's hand.

Nancy sat on the other side, small as Stella, and held her other hand. Nancy's mother sat just beyond, with her arm around Nancy.

Stella studied Aunt Pratt's hand, which was sheathed in a flesh-colored nylon glove. Pratt wore such gloves to hide the ugly veins in the back of her hand and to conceal her thin fingers, twisted with arthritis.

Aunt Krit sat across the aisle, on the end of the row, so she could get in and out easily.

People were crying among the four closed coffins.

“Now he's dead,” Stella had whispered to Nancy, but Stella felt even her lips were numb, almost too stiff to form words. “No,” Stella managed to add. “Now they're all dead.”

Nancy's beautiful eyes were full of sadness, but she kept her promise. She didn't cry. Stella had made Nancy promise they wouldn't cry.

“When they all go by,” Aunt Krit had said, thrusting a glass of water at her, “we'll follow down the aisle. I'll hold your hand.”

 

STELLA WONDERED WHERE
Darl was this September morning, where was her betrothed, why had he not telephoned her nor she him? Why was she at the Cartwrights' with Cat and Don and not Darl?

Suddenly Don said, “How can anybody ever paint or dance or put on a play again in this city?” He jumped up and left the room.

“He's been crying all morning,” Cat said.

“Have you?”

“Some.”

“I can't. I feel numb.”

From his seat in Cat's lap, Goliath cocked his head at Stella.