True Fires (10 page)

21

Daniel squats on the roof ridge, hammering the last batch of shingles into place. It’s hard work under the hot sun, but he likes the roiling scent of cedar rising off the shakes and the satisfaction of finishing up his uncle’s job.

In his head, he can hear Uncle Will’s voice telling him just what to do: “ ’Fore you get holt of a shingle, get yer nails ready.” Ready means put two nails in your mouth, clamp the warm metal tips ’twixt your teeth. “Then, lay yer shingle down flat, halfway up t’other. And line ’er up nice ’n’ straight.” Nice ’n’ straight means side by side, a finger’s width apart. “And don’t go switchin’ fingers on me; use the same one ever’time.” Now, “set up yer first nail, two fingers from the side, a hand’s width down from the top.”
The hammerin’ is the best part.
“Then set up t’other one same way, straight across.”

Roofin’s man’s work,
Daniel decides, hitting the second nail squarely into place,
and a heap more fun than any ol’ schoolwork.
It’s been turnin’ on three days since he, Pap, and ’Becca moved out here permanent and, to Daniel, it’s felt like heaven and halleloo.
Haven’t missed ol’ Miss Burch or any of them flinty-eyed
schoolkids one bit,
he thinks.
Nor ol’ Mr. Wexall, snorin’ up a storm
in the room next door at the boardin’house, nuther.
It was fine to sleep in a cabin again, nothing but the chime of field crickets, the chuckling of the hens, and the chitter and caw of wild birds from the pine woods yonder to break the peace.

Each morning, before Pap and Uncle Will lit out for work— Pap to Miss Lila’s groves, Uncle Will to the lumberyard— they’d given him his jobs to do. Then, while Aunt Lu, ’Becca, and baby June walked Minna and SaraFaye to the school bus stop at the crossroads, and later on, while the baby napped and ’Becca and Aunt Lu busied themselves in the kitchen, Daniel had hit it hard. Monday, he’d finished chinking the back wall of the cabin, inside and out, and cleaned out the chicken coop. Yesterday, he’d hoed the corn rows, then chopped and piled more stove wood than Aunt Lu said she could use in a month. And, this morning, after an evening’s worth of asking, Uncle Will had allowed that he could finish up the roof.

Daniel had surprised them, and himself, with the amount of work a boy bent on proving himself a man could get done in a day. But, try as he might, he hadn’t fooled Pap into thinking he was man enough to quit school altogether. Fact was, before Daniel had even got ’round to bringin’ it up, Pap had squashed it.

“I ’preciate the help ye been, boy. But I promised your mam you’d get your schoolin’. Soon as we get this meetin’ outer the way, you’ll be climbin’ on that school bus, same as your cousins.”

The school-board meeting was tonight, but Daniel had no notion of what to expect. Pap said they were to hook up with Miss Lila and that Yankee newspaper lady, Miz Barrows, outside the Courthouse at seven o’clock. Beyond that, it was a mystery and a misery so Daniel had let go thinking of it.

Hammering the last nail in the last shingle, he squats back on his heels to admire his work. And to scan the clear blue horizon, wishing for some rain clouds. Y’all come on now any time, he thinks with pride, this roof’s ready for ye.

As Daniel gathers the half dozen extra shingles, the hammer, and the tin of nails into Uncle Will’s work sack, stands, and steps downhill toward the place where the ladder leans against the side eaves, something—movement, a flicker of color—pulls his attention to the tree line.

Got hisself a trail,
Daniel thinks, seeing Ol’ Sampson emerge from the woods at the exact spot where he’d disappeared the other day.
And what’s that?
he wonders, squinting at the strange contraption the giant black man pulls behind him.

Looks like a cross ’twixt a wagon and a Roman chariot, like in the history books, but small enough for a man to pull with a wide diagonal leather strap across his chest. It has three wheels on it, one up front plus another on each side. A framed wood floor floats on braided green ropes, the color of palm leaves. And it is, Daniel sees, the perfect size for moving six big beehives from one place to another.

Daniel drops down the ladder quickly, stows Uncle Will’s tool sack on the porch, and runs out to meet him. Sampson is dressed in the same military britches, boots, and hat as the other day, but today he sports a shirt with colorful horizontal stripes and a red kerchief knotted at his neck, its long ends dangling down to his belt.

Daniel’s bursting with questions. “Them our bees? You live in them woods? You make that-air cart? Is it hard to pull? Kin I try it?”

The old man appears to eye Daniel sternly, as if he has no time for a lonely boy’s eager questions. But then the ancient face cracks, showing teeth as gray and pointy as an old picket fence.

“Bees off first, heh?” he tells Daniel in a deep voice that rumbles from his chest.

Daniel trails the old man and the strange cart across the flat and fragrant pea field to a spot some hundred yards from the cabins. Stepping out of the harness, Sampson circles to the back and eyes Daniel again. “Help me?”

“Sure.” Daniel steps forward, then, hearing the angry buzz from inside the hives, scoots backward, afraid of being stung.

Sampson points a patient finger to the hive’s opening, wrapped with a tight wire mesh. “Bees in, air out,” the old man tells him and, grasping one side of the hive, waits for Daniel to take the other.

The wooden hive is three boxes high and heavy, but together, the old man and the boy shoulder it off the cart— “Easy, easy now,” Sampson says—and gently onto the ground. A vent hole in the upper back, Daniel sees, has been stuffed closed with a wad of cotton cloth.

Like the first, the other five hives vibrate with the thrum of angry wings. “What’re they so het up about?” Daniel wonders, helping set the last of the hives into what has become an outward-facing circle.

“Don’t like moving,” Sampson replies, then, eyeing Daniel, “any more’n you.”

How does he know that?
Daniel feels a sudden, bewildering exposure, like a rabbit caught out of its hole. He steps back as the beekeeper pushes a pair of boards under each hive to raise it up and off the ground. He watches Sampson return to the cart, pick up a thing that looks like a big watering can with small bellows attached. The old man lights a match, drops it into the can, and, using the bellows, pumps a smoke stream out the spout and in Daniel’s direction. The sweet scent of burning pine needles curls through the air.

“Smoker,” Sampson explains. “Bees can’t hear. Use their eyes ’n’ noses instead. Smoker tells ’em everythin’s all right, th’ chil’ren are safe.”

“Children?”

“Hive’s just a big bee family, doin’ for their chil’ren.” He holds the smoker’s spout to the bottom hole of the nearest stack. Gradually, the hive’s angry thrum shifts to a more peaceable hum. Gently, he removes the wire mesh. In the back, he pulls out the wad of cloth blocking the vent hole and smokes that as well.

“Happy now,” Sampson reports, moving on to the next one.

“Ain’t they got a queen in there?” Daniel asks.

“Queen’s every bee’s mamma.”

“Who’s their pap?”

“Think I am.”

“How you know what bees think?”

Sampson shrugs. “Do.”

That’s it,
Daniel decides, watching the beekeeper smoke his way around the circle of hives. It’s not only that this Sampson’s more ancient than th’ Ol’ Cher’kee. It’s that other thing, too. The feeling that, somehow, he knows more than any ord’nary human ort to.

“You part Indian?” Daniel asks.

“Yat’siminoli.”

“What?”

“In English—Seminole. Means free people, unconquered.”

“But, you’re . . .”

“Part African? Part Slave-For-A-Day.”

“You were a slave?”

“Oh, ho! No!” The old man’s howling laugh erupts from somewhere deep in his belly. “Slave ship brought grandfather from Africa to St. Augustine. Escaped from boat docks next day. Seminole name meant Slave-For-A-Day.”

“Indians took your granpap in?”

“Yes.” Sampson looks up from the last hive.

Daniel stands in the hives’ center, surrounded by the hum of a hundred thousand reassuring wings.

“Indians took in my ancestors, too,” Daniel tells the old man quietly.

“Yes,” Sampson says.

He knows that, too,
Daniel thinks.

The Seminole—
a black Indian older than th’ Ol’ Cher’kee!
— nods, floats a small cloud of pine-sweet smoke into the heart of the humming circle. Daniel sniffs. The perfumey smell works its way up his nose and down into his chest.

Like medicine, or magic, it salves the pinky-white, prickly tight scars that hang, like scabs, upon his heart. For the first time since Mam got sick and died, since Pap packed up everything and left their home hill, since that big bear of a Sheriff made ’Becca feel bad about her nose, for reasons he can’t begin to understand, Daniel, encircled by six beehives, feels— somehow—safe.

22

Principal Ed Cantrell checks his watch. Again.
Seven twenty-
three! Where the hell’s that goddamn Kyle DeLuth? he fumes, as the school-board members drone on about the cost of putting a new asbestos roof on the high-school auditorium.

Normally, he’s excused from attending these things, gets everything he needs from the minutes published the week after. Well, truth is, he has his secretary, May, read the minutes and tell him whatever he needs to know. But this business about the Dare children demands his personal attention.

Seven-thirty! Lila’s gotta be fit to be tied,
he thinks. When she’d called to insist on coming (“I’m not about to let Kyle DeLuth railroad these kids outta their schooling,” she’d declared), he’d assured her they’d be first up on the agenda. And when, at the board’s request, he’d asked her and the Dares and that newspaperwoman, Ruth Cooper Barrows, to wait in the hall, outside the courtroom where the meetings take place, he’d promised them entry “just as soon as the Sheriff shows up.”

So where the hell is he?
Cantrell wonders, putting a hand inside his coat pocket, feeling the two Bufferin his wife, Alice, slipped in “just in case.” But, of course, the water fountain is out in the hallway where, no doubt, Lila sits, jiggling her Capezio-clad foot in angry impatience.

You’d think with all the time they’d spent together in high
school—Kyle and her brother were best friends, hardly ever saw one
without the other—they’d have figured out how to get along. But,
Lord! The fire in her eyes at the mere mention of his name is enough to
singe your eyebrows.
Cantrell chuckles.
These board members have
no idea what they’re in for.

Just then, the door behind the dais opens and DeLuth strides in, having let himself in the back way, through the Judge’s chambers.

“Sorry, boys, got caught up in a call from the Governor,” he says, grinning, pretending he’s oblivious to the fact that he’s stopped them, midvote, in their approval of the new roof expenditure.

The seven men seated at the long table facing the empty courtroom nod their hellos and finish their vote quickly.

Rather than take a seat next to Cantrell, DeLuth continues to stand, holding a book and a newspaper relaxed at his side. At the sound of the gavel—“Motion passed!”—Cantrell stands, too.

“Mr. Chairman, if you don’t mind, I’ll get the Dares now. They’re waiting in the hall.”

“Now, Ed, that ain’t necessary.” DeLuth’s tone is like the indulgent mother of a spoiled child. “Mr. Chairman, this whole thing’ll be over in two shakes.” He rocks back on his boot heels to address the entire panel. “All y’all know I removed those kids from Lake Esther Elementary, on account of they don’t belong. Now, maybe y’all saw the Saturday paper, same as me? Exhibit number one is their picture. Is that a Nigger nose or what?” DeLuth shows off the photo and shoots Cantrell a reproachful look.

It’s best,
Cantrell realizes,
the children don’t hear this.

“Right here,” DeLuth points to the text, “is the father’s own admission that the family’s Croatan.” He tosses the paper onto the table in front of Zeke Roberts, School Board Chairman. “Now, what the hell, you might ask—I certainly did— is a goddamn Croatan? I don’t know what you did, but I pulled out my Webster’s dictionary and looked it up! In exhibit number two, Mr. Noah Webster says . . .” He opens the blue-bound book to his marker—
A blank parking ticket,
Cantrell notes. DeLuth holds the dictionary like a hymnal, and glances up, as if to make sure all present are suitably impressed by the eloquent simplicity of his presentation. “Mr. Webster defines Croatan as ‘a mixture of white, Indian, and Negro blood’!” He snaps the book shut and grins. “As plain as the nose on that pickaninny’s face. Case closed?” he asks, softly.

Without hesitation—
Prearranged?
Cantrell thinks—Chairman Roberts says, “All in favor of barring these kids from Ed’s school, say aye!”

The chorus of ayes tells Cantrell it’s unanimous. His heart sinks. And the expectant eyes all around make it clear that he’s dismissed to deliver the bad news to the people waiting in the hall.

Pain beats against his temples like a drum. “But, they’ve got two cousins in school, too. Redheaded with blue eyes,” he protests.

“Also Croatan?” DeLuth asks.

“Also barred!” Roberts decrees, pounding his gavel.

Cantrell is speechless. One by one, he eyes the men at the table to make sure he’s not mistaken. One by one, he sees their icy, unspoken message—
Get on outta here and get rid of ’em.
He turns, awkwardly, and carts the big bellowing bass drum that is his brain away from their unfeeling faces, past the empty chairs, and out the door into the hall.

“ WELL, IT’S ABOUT GODDAMN TIME!” Lila says, rising, then turns quickly to the youngest Dares. “ ’Scuse me, children.”

Most of the Dares—brothers Franklin and Will and the boy, Daniel; Will’s solemn-eyed wife, Lu, with the baby girl on her hip—stand anxiously to greet him. The three girls in flowered pastel dresses—dark-eyed ’Becca, freckle-faced Minna, and little SaraFaye, missing both front teeth—flank newspaperwoman Ruth Barrows, who’s got them involved in some kind of word game using her notepad.

“It’s over,” Cantrell tells them.

“Over?” Lila repeats. Between the drumbeats of his headache, Cantrell can feel the heat of her disbelief. “But Kyle—” She falters.

“Slipped in through the back and rigged the vote,” Cantrell tells her.

“Without seeing any of the evidence? Without any sort of hearing at all?” Ruth Barrows is dumbfounded.

Cantrell squeezes the top of his nose ridge between his eyebrows, hard, hoping to block the pain’s advance. “The vote was unanimous. Mr. Dare, your children are barred from attending our school.” ’Becca stands, moves toward her aunt, who slides a comforting arm around her shoulders without taking her eyes off Ed. “And, yours, too, I’m sorry to say,” Cantrell tells Will Dare and his wife. Their girls sit back, stunned.

“This is ridiculous!” Ruth Barrows is up, wrenching the doorknob into the courtroom, finding it locked.

“And goddamn illegal!” Lila blazes.

The beginning of a major migraine marches up and over Cantrell’s skull. “The Sheriff ’s the law around here.”

Lila bursts into full flame. “The Sheriff ’s become a goddamn Nazi and this is
not,
by God, the Rhine!”

“In this country, the law is the law. People are entitled to due process.” Ruth Barrows nods vigorously.

“And, by God, these kids are going to get it!” Lila vows.

Ed Cantrell surveys the two of them—tall, fiery Lila Hightower beside the short, smoldering Ruth Barrows—surrounded by a semicircle of Dares, young and old. His head’s become a pounding parade ground of pain, but somehow he hears it, the whispered echo of his earlier thought:
They have no idea what
they’re in for.