Freshwater Road (10 page)

New Mexico, the wild land of the southwest with little water and fewer
Negroes, was an impossible concept to grasp. Wilamena might as well have gone to the moon. On the postcard, the place looked all dark pink
and white hot, but the color of the sky, the dense blue of it, was new, had
a light behind it that didn't diminish the depth of color. No skyline at all.
He pictured a long, low-slung house with sand right up to the doors and
windows, cactus plants everywhere. Albuquerque.

Shuck put his dirty dishes in the sink, then splashed a generous jigger of
Crown Royal over ice cubes and carried it to the foyer, where he sat in the
upholstered chair by the window. After Wilamena remarried and settled
out there, Shuck made sure she knew that everyone in Detroit was doing
fine without her. Cyril Atwood. He rolled the name around in his mind.
He was the quiet type, an engineer, tall and lean with deep-set eyes. Not
a smile in sight. He wondered how Wilamena, who he knew had a need
for grandness and flash, could stand to live with a man who barely spoke
and didn't like music. He'd never met a Negro man who didn't like music,
but Cyril was as close to white as Wilamena could get. She had to be going
crazy with boredom out there.

the occasional car leisured by out on Outer Drive, the driver no doubt
admiring the thick, deep, shadowed grass, the height and fullness of the
grand elm trees up and down the street. He slowly dialed Wilamena's number in New Mexico, one number at a time, each one making him feel like he
was slipping on ice, smooth but cold. He left his finger in the rotary dial, let
the machine take his finger all the way back to the metal stop. What if Cyril
answered the phone? So what? He had every right to call Wilamena. She
was the mother of his children. But something in his voice might reveal his
morning dream. He sipped his Crown Royal for cool and courage, the ice
cubes cooling down the sting of a day's first drink. The ringing echoed on
the other end of the line. Shuck focused on the lush music rolling through
his house, the memories that came with the sounds.

"Hello?" Wilamena's voice pitched forward, startled.

"It's me." Shuck held his breath, flutters winging in his stomach. He didn't
want to stumble over his words like a tongue-tied kid. It had been months
since he'd heard her voice, close to a year. Even her "hello" was like no other.
Strong, present and turning in on itself at the same time. Like a girl.

"Well, I'm glad you returned the call, finally. I was beginning to think
you never got my message." Wilamena paused.

Not an iota of Negro in Wilamena's voice. Nothing of Detroit lingered. The music twisted a breath out of him. "No, no. Posey gave it to me." He sipped his drink. His foot tapped on the plush carpet to the
beat of the music, the husky voicing of saxophones, the graceful piano
licks. "I'm a working man." Wilamena thought that outsmarting the
police who pursued gamblers like they were murderers and outrunning
the Italians who coveted his lucrative numbers business didn't constitute
real work.

"And, how's Posey doing?" She made an effort to be mannerly. Posey
knew them both in the old days, but she'd never asked about him before. It
was her way of apologizing for bringing Posey up short on the phone. Shuck
knew that asking about Posey wasn't necessarily about Posey. She wanted
something specific. He didn't know if he wanted her to get to the point
quickly or if he just wanted to linger there with her voice and the music.

"Fine. Everybody's fine, Wilamena." Shuck sat back in the chair, settled
in, and let the memory of her body smooth out inside him.

"Are you at home?" Wilamena sounded doubtful. "You were never one
for hanging around a house."

She nailed him. But that was all in the past. These days, he searched for
reasons to stay home. He just couldn't find any. Behind her clipped speech,
he saw the smile of even teeth and how her eyes sparkled when she danced
the jitterbug in the aisle of the Fox Theatre. When Duke Ellington eased
into "Mood Indigo," she closed her eyes and leaned into him. They were
slow dancing in the blue-speckled light of a spinning globe. Now, he hoped
she could hear the soulful recording of Coleman Hawkins's mellow horn
all the way to the desert.

"Shuck?" A softness in her voice.

Shuck stared out the foyer window, lost in the deepening shade.

"Are you there? Shuck?" By the second time she said his name, the old
Wilamena had seeped in, demanding, self-important.

"Yeah. I'm here." He wasn't yet ready to let go of the fantasy he'd created
in his mind about his ex-wife. "You oughta see the club, Wilamena." He'd
said too much. Wilamena was a married woman. Better that she stay out
there in New Mexico, stay out of trouble. Nothing out there for her to do.
Shuck thought of her dressed in a light blouse that revealed her perfect
shoulders, a skirt that rounded her hips and thighs. She had a real woman's
figure. Where was she sitting or standing? Where was Cyril? In the pause,
he put his dream words into her mouth and answered in his own head.

I'd love to see the Royal Gardens, Shuck.

It was supposed to be us, Wilamena. Walking down Seventh Avenue, hanging out in Harlem.

"I tried to call Celeste but her phone's disconnected." Wilamena's actual words broke through his reverie. "I thought she was going to summer
school."

One thing Shuck knew for sure: Wilamena didn't like unearthing their
daughter through him. He stopped himself from saying she'd gone on a trip
to Europe, or even Africa, somewhere far away where Wilamena couldn't
reach her. He settled for the truth. "She's in Mississippi. Doing voter work
for the summer." He sipped the smooth liquor, and hoped the sound of ice
cubes clinking on glass made it through the wires to New Mexico.

"Why would she do that?" A true wonderment arose in her voice.

"They call it Freedom Summer, Wilamena." Shuck knew well that she
didn't own up to being connected in any way to any Negro in Mississippi.
To any Negro anywhere.

"Who calls it? Who's they?" Wilamena's voice seized like a shallow pond
freezing over in a blizzard. "She needs to see a psychiatrist. What's she trying
to prove? How Negro she is?"

Shuck laughed. "Celeste is fine." Without giving her credit for it, he
accepted Wilamena's appraisal as at least partly true. But no matter. Celeste
needed to be in the real world. Just maybe not the Mississippi real world.

"It's not funny, Shuck. Mississippi, of all places in the world? Voter
work? You both need to see a doctor." Wilamena didn't get it. Never did.
Something missing in her view of things. Like she saw herself in a Hollywood movie playing the white girl. It was the thing Shuck disliked about
her, what he'd always wanted to protect Celeste from becoming.

"It was her decision to make, Wilamena. College kids from all over the
country are down there. White and Negro. Lot going on in Mississippi." The
trees on Outer Drive formed swaying shapes against a tilting gray-blue sky.

"I don't care about them." Her tone arched into a point, a blade.

"Tell me something I don't know." He nearly said, you don't care about
anyone but yourself, but he pushed it down his throat, and it nearly gagged
him, that little truth he'd been dying to report for all those years. He'd
spent years trying to protect Celeste from the ravages of her own mother,
knowing all the while that Wilamena didn't intend to hurt, she just couldn't
help it. The music lay back against the walls and carpet. He tried to find the
beat again, the sleekness in the sounds, but had lost it.

"Well, did you even try to talk her out of it? What if she gets killed?
Negroes die down there for looking the wrong way. Are you crazy? She
doesn't owe those people anything. You let her go?" Wilamena hissed in a
whisper.

Shuck wondered if someone had come into the room where she was. He
listened for footsteps, doors. "She was already in Mississippi when I found
out." He wanted to shake her through the phone, tell her it was way too
late for all this caring.

"What a stupid idea." Wilamena dismissed the entire meaning of Freedom Summer in one short phrase. Shuck recognized the throwaway. She
banished the notions and feelings. Freedom Summer withered and fell away
in her disdain.

"She's fine. Leave it alone." He wasn't going to let on as to how frightened
he was for Celeste-how he scoured the papers and television broadcasts to
keep up on Mississippi news, the shootings and burnings and bombings. It
was a small war. If Celeste died in Mississippi, it would be on him.

"Is there a phone number where I can reach her?" She sounded officious
now, like she and only she had the capacity to correct a situation that had
spun out of control. Of course, he'd been waiting on a phone call himself.

"You can call the Jackson office of One Man, One Vote. They'll pass a
message on to her." A delight the thickness of a blade of grass in his voice.
He knew the conversation was over, but he refused to let go. "She's doing
what she believes in. Can't fault her for that, can we?"

"Passing messages along. How absurd in this day and age." Her exasperation singed the air. "Well, where is she living? You're telling me there's
no phone?"

"Some people don't have phones, Wilamena. Pure and simple." In truth,
he didn't know if Celeste had a phone or not, but assumed she didn't since
he hadn't heard from her. Now he wanted to let Wilamena go. He told her
again to go ahead and call One Man, One Vote in Jackson, and then told
her goodbye.

He drank the rest of his Crown Royal in a gulp, then walked a circle
through the house, laughing to himself that he was still in love with that
wrong-headed woman. He turned off the record player, poured himself another drink, then bore down on his scalawag memories, forced them back
behind their gates. Some were still running in place no matter how many
years went by, no matter how many fine women smiled his way. Alma was a good-looking woman, an educated woman, steady and straight, but she
paled beside Wilamena. He'd be late getting to the Royal Gardens tonight.
Something must be going on out there in New Mexico. She's lonely again,
miserable, trying to stake a life in the unknownness of the southwest, in
that dryness. Shuck liked to think of her pacing around like a caged pet,
thirsty for music, for dancing, for an edge to her life. He could have her
back, he told himself. She always ached for what she didn't have, never
satisfied. Nothing had changed.

Bony dogs ran up and down barking at their arrival, then skulked off into
the woods that stopped some yards from the back of the plank board house.
White paint peeled off the boards. Those great long-needled pines, a thickness of them, stood arrow straight and seemed to grow out of nothing more
than the peachy barren sand of a tropical island. The house with a downleaning screened-in porch balanced on stacks of cinderblocks, with a good
two feet of unprotected crawl space underneath. Off to the back and to
the side, well beyond a vegetable garden, was a lopsided playhouse-looking
structure, like a way station before the start of the forest. A rusted-out tiller
lay crippled in the sandy earth a few yards down Freshwater Road. The next
house, slightly larger, was a good half of a city block away. A pile of wood
planks and cinderblocks on the ground across the road appeared to be the
remains of another house.

Matt climbed out of the car and walked to the spigot, dropped his
coverall straps, and took off his shirt. He bent over, flinching in pain, and
stuck his head under the water, which first splashed its yellowish spray in
all directions, then settled into a clear steady stream. He washed his upper
body using a piece of soap from a small metal plate beside the spigot, gulping water between scrubs.

Celeste stayed in the car, her wind-whipped hair standing in spikes and
corkscrews around her head, sweat caking on her skin, the little glass cuts
like so many pinpricks on her arms and face. There'd been no mention of
outdoor baths. How could she do this? She saw herself spooning beans from a tin plate and drinking muddy coffee from a dented cup. The only thing
missing was a wood-wheeled wagon and an old mare. She eyed the patches
of flaccid vegetables interspersed with drooping flowers. She remembered
Margo cautioning the new volunteers against acting as if the things they
were accustomed to at home might be better than what was offered here.

Matt replaced the soap and rinsed the sudsy residue from his upper
body until soap scum floated on a moat surrounding the platform. Celeste
searched Matt's body for signs of the beating he'd taken. His chest and arms
were hairless and smooth, dark and muscular. He was shining wet. When
he turned to the side, she saw a swelling near his waist.

Celeste stepped out of the car, feeling creaky from clenching with fear
for so long. She joined Matt at the spigot, hiking up her dress to keep it dry.
She too gulped the mineral-tasting water, felt its cool splash on her legs and
arms, and finally put her whole face under the faucet before grabbing the
soap bar and lathering up her face and arms.