A Merry Little Christmas (6 page)

“Anything wrong?” Charlie picked up his dishes from the table. “Didn’t look like good news.”

“It isn’t. I have something I need to do in town, if you want to help me.” Franny pulled off her apron and grabbed their coats off the hook.

“Sure. What is it?”

“I’ll explain on the way. We’ll need the tractor, so let’s head to the barn.”

Minutes later Franny started the engine as Charlie hopped onboard the farm vehicle. The old Case tractor started up without a cough. “Good girl.” She patted the wheel.

They took off with a slight jolt, and Charlie, who was standing right next to her, put one hand on the fender and one hand on the seat.

“Hold on.” Franny jammed on the throttle as she let out the clutch.

With the smell of diesel fuel perfuming the air and the wind whipping their hair, they bounced along the dirt road toward Hesterville. The tractor hit a rut, which caused another joggle, but considering the goodly number of ruts in the road, Charlie had already learned how to balance himself.

“We’ll be there soon,” Franny yelled over the roar of the engine.

Charlie hollered back, “Why are we headed to town? Did I eat up all your groceries?”

“We have plenty of food.”

“What is it, then? If I’m to be taken as a prisoner, I have a right to know where my kidnapper is taking me.”

Franny looked up at him. Then she fixed her gaze right back on the road. “Well, Hesterville is a good town—a peaceful little town, mostly. But I’m afraid there’s a dragon in their midst.”

Franny appeared to be many wonderful things—but she was also a jigsaw puzzle with lots of intricate pieces. He would, however, enjoy seeing the picture come together.

He bounced along, wondering what kind of human dragon could be hiding in a small town. Or maybe Franny was joking and she was really headed to an annual tractor race.

Charlie suddenly got a vision of the female socialites who frequented his city home. If they could see him now, bobbing along the road on a tractor and dressed in overalls, the laughter and jabbering gossip would never cease to spew from their rubypainted lips. Something about that sight thrilled him as much as it disgusted him.

He glanced around the countryside, taking in as many details as he could. The songwriter in him might say they were surrounded by autumn fields of russet soil plowed in endless arcs, but that was as much poetry as he could manage at the moment. Except for the green sprigs of winter wheat coming up—and except for Franny—there was little color all the way to the horizon. An early freeze and some good stiff winds had apparently taken all the pretty leaves.

Dreary or not, it was time to embrace the area as well as the town since this would be his new home for a while. He wasn’t all that anxious to move back home anyway. There, he had his own wing of the house, which helped, but that wing was still connected to the mansion owned and lived in by his father. With each passing year, his father had become more like a pebble in his shoe than a real father. Only, lately, the stone felt more like a razor blade.

He leaned down to ask Franny a question, but she veered the tractor off the road. “I thought we were going into town.”

“Hesterville is just ahead, but this is what we came for.” Franny reduced her speed but didn’t stop. She pushed a lever forward, and the bulldozer implement, which was hooked to the front of the tractor, slowly lowered. What was she going to do? Bulldoze the side of the road?

The tractor smacked into all sorts of tall, dead weeds until they approached something more immovable—a road sign. He felt certain Franny would turn to miss the sign, but instead she headed straight for it.

Charlie leaned down and hollered, “You’re going to hit it!”

“I know. That’s what we came for!”

Had Franny lost her mind? He steadied himself for the impact.

Within seconds, the tractor bashed into the wooden sign and then steamrollered over it without a struggle.

Franny cut the engine and hopped to the ground.

Charlie followed. “What’s going on?”

She yanked the sign out from under the tractor and turned it over so the words faced up.

The sign read:
N
O
N
EGROES
A
LLOWED IN
T
OWN AFTER
S
UNDOWN
.
A bit of life drained out of him. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his overalls. “Oh, I see.”

Franny’s breathing came hard and fast as she glared at the sign.

Over the years he had come across similar signs, but they were more about separating blacks from whites in cafés and theaters and hotels. He’d never seen a sign that banned a Negro from living or even sleeping overnight in a particular town. The longer he stared at the sign, the more disturbing it appeared. There was an ugliness to it, and no doubt it was planted there in a spirit of hostility. Maybe with a threat of violence. Had he ever been so close to such a warning? Why did it suddenly feel personal?

Without discussing the sign, Charlie helped Franny load it onto the tractor.

“I need a minute.” She strolled over to a nearby pond—the silvery kind one might read about in a poem by Keats—and sat down on the edge of the bank.

Charlie gave Franny a moment to unwind. After a minute or two he walked over to her and sat down.

Franny looked at him, her eyes pleading. “Please tell me. Does it make you crazy to see it too?”

“Yes. It’s cruel and should not be tolerated.” Charlie knew his answer was honest, and yet he couldn’t say why he hadn’t spent much time thinking about it before. Too wrapped up in his own world of trouble, he supposed, which now seemed minuscule compared to what some people endured. “Do you know who put it up? It doesn’t look like an official government sign.”

“Yes, I know who did it. Same person who always does it. Same person who runs this town, even though he’s not the mayor or the sheriff. It’s Payton Dunlap.”

“Why doesn’t somebody stop him?”

“Fear, I suppose…or apathy.”

“So how come you’re not scared of him?”

Franny looked at him as if assessing something important about his character. “It’s a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

He wrapped his arms around his legs and looked at her. “I have nowhere else to go.”

She crossed her legs and turned back to face the water. A bird that had just steadied itself on a log seemed to change its mind and took off as if pursued. The water in front of them swirled with a turtle or fish or some such water beast. Their presence had no doubt stirred up the social life of the pond.

Franny hugged her arms around her middle.

“Are you cold?”

“No. Actually, it’s almost warm for early November.” Franny plucked a dried sunflower. “You know that family photo on the wall, the one with the man I called Uncle George?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s a story there.”

“I thought there might be.”

Franny twirled the lifeless blossom in her fingers. “As you know, George was our farmhand. He was a good Christian man. Worked hard.
And
he had a sense of humor like no one else.” She chuckled. “Oh, he could really make me laugh sometimes. He could do magic tricks and create little homemade toys out of scraps my daddy had around the farm. Uncle George was so ingenious I always thought his cleverness was wasted on us. But he never thought so. Or never let on. I grew to love him like family. We all did. Anyway, one of my momma’s friends, Lorene, came out to help us can a mess of beans we’d picked, and Lorene happened to see that family photo on the wall.”

“The one with George in it.” Charlie cringed, knowing the story was about to take a painful turn.

“Yes. Lorene asked about the photograph, since she’d never seen a white family posing with a Negro before, and Momma told her plainly how we all felt about George. Then Momma regretted telling her—not because she didn’t mean it, but because she knew that Lorene was loose and sweeping with her tongue, like a frog going after a cricket. Anyway, Momma had been right. Lorene made a beeline into town and told all the ladies at the beauty shop. I can just hear her now: ‘My stars and purple garters, you can’t imagine what I saw out at the Martin farm.’ Then those women from the shop blabbed the news to every living soul in town.”

“So what came of all the gossip?”

Franny said nothing for a moment. “One week later, George died. The doctor who pronounced him dead said he’d passed away in his sleep from heart failure. But I knew what had happened.” She crushed the dried sunflower in her hand. “He was murdered in his sleep…by Payton Dunlap.”

“That’s dreadful.” Charlie could hardly believe what Franny had just said. “How do you know Payton did it?”

“I just know.” Franny tore at clumps of grass beneath her fingers. “You see, Payton always had a peculiar smile when I saw him. Like he was trying to tell me something with that curl of his lip. I knew what he’d done, and he seemed glad for me to know. He was also certain that no one would believe me if I told people what he’d done. He meant it as a sick kind of torture. You know, that he’d gotten away with it and there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“I told the doctor my suspicions about Payton, but he disagreed. Besides, I was a kid, and no one would listen to me. He claimed there was no evidence.”

“What about your parents?” He touched her arm. “Did they believe you?”

“They thought George’s sudden death looked awfully suspicious, and they demanded that the sheriff look into it. He did—or I should say, he pretended to—because my parents were so respected in the community. But nothing came of it. And now a lot of years have gone by since that happened.” She sighed. “Payton’s much older, but he still goes on breathing and eating and living with that sin going unconfessed…the evil that went unpunished. But my father always believed it would be like the walls of Jericho.”

“How do you mean?”

“That life and time and the silent burden of sin would march around Payton Dunlap until his walls, his facade, his deeds would come tumbling down.”

“Have you seen any progress?”

Franny shook her head. “I’ve only seen defiance, but then I shouldn’t disregard the methods of the Almighty. He can bring down empires with one sweep of his hand. One word. It’s just a matter of timing.” She smiled. “I’d like to see it happen in my lifetime…justice for Uncle George.”

Charlie longed to reassure Franny in some way, so he took a chance by reaching out and enfolding her hand in his. “People can be so wicked. I’m sorry for George and for your loss.”

“For a long time I hated Payton. It took all of my Christian will and God’s grace to help me forgive that man. I finally did, but it’s impossible for me to forget.”

“I’m sure it is. By the way, I want you to know…
I
believe you.” Charlie gave her hand a squeeze and released it, even though he hated letting go of the warmth—the nearness. “And I hope you see justice served in your lifetime.”

“Thanks, Charlie.” She took in a deep breath. “Integrity and decency seem to be draining out of this country like rainwater through a sieve, and the holes just keep getting bigger. We’ve entered a new decade, and I do feel some hope. Yet I believe sometimes a lot must happen before things are made right.”

Charlie looked at her. “You have my vote if you decide to run for office.”

Franny chuckled. “Do I sound that canned?”

“No, you sound that
sincere
.”

They sat for a moment with a comfortable silence between them. The quiet gave him time to ponder his own view of civil rights. Racism was abomination in the sight of God—and yet he’d never done anything about it. Did he live a lie, since he loved justice in word but was deficient in deeds? He felt like less of a citizen next to Franny, less of a Christian, and it bothered him. He wanted to be more, a man of integrity in his heart
and
his actions.

“I miss them all so much,” Franny whispered as if to the wind. As if he were no longer there. “I miss my parents and Uncle George, even after all these years. Perhaps it is a sign of a weak character.”