Freshwater Road (15 page)

"You're right. Etta won't let me out of the door without breakfast." He had the sated tone of a well-cared for man. Sweat creeks trickled from his
cropped sideburns, beaded on his forehead. He took a handkerchief from
the jacket hanging on the back of his chair and mopped his face. Every
man who sat at Momma Bessie's table in Detroit got that look and sound.
She took good care of them. Negro men triumphed in the kitchens of older
Negro women, if nowhere else. Celeste ate slowly. The coffee was too hot
and acrid-smelling to drink. She sipped more water with a thought to the
outhouse.

"That chicory might take some getting used to." Reverend Singleton
smiled and pointed to her steaming cup. His hairline receded slightly at
the temples, his hair cut close. Celeste figured him to be in his late thirties
or early forties. "I imagine this heat does, too."

Celeste nodded, wondering what chicory was. "I'm getting used to it,"
she lied.

"Been getting the church body ready for you. Telling them what I see for
all of us here in Pineyville." His eyes were set just a bit too far apart.

"You be comfortable starting up by say, Thursday?" He put his elbows
on the table and clasped his hands, his gold wedding ring a beacon on
his finger.

"Just want to see the church and figure out what we might need to get
going. I've got books for the children." Celeste felt the effects of the food
drugging her brain, a slow caving in of her energy. She'd have to learn to
eat differently or risk dozing the summer away. Here was the full meaning of porches and rocking chairs. Idle time after each meal. Mississippi
siestas. Whites only. Everybody else had to march back to work. Maybe
Mrs. Owens would allow them to eat on the screened porch, as far away
from that stove as possible.

"Good, good. We'll be all right. Today, I'm taking you sightseeing."
He had a city way about him, polished, a smile at the mouth corners and
thinking with his whole face, clear enough to grasp. "I told the church that
we'd start the classes come Thursday."

"I'm ready." Not sure she knew what ready meant anymore. She'd been
ready for her final exams, ready to get out ofAnn Arbor. But this place called
out for a new kind of ready. "They told me in Jackson-there was a lynching
here in '59?" She blurted it out, fear like a river undertow right beneath her
words. She hoped she sounded like a researcher, like Ramona. She couldn't
have stopped the question if she'd wanted to.

Mrs. Owens whisked her dirty plate off the table. "They do that all over
Mississippi. Always have." Mrs. Owens said it like she was playing a trump
card and the game was over.

"Don't fret. We'll be all right." Reverend Singleton sounded like a leader
man talking. He'd said, "We'll be all right. "He wasn't going to talk about
that lynching. Maybe, after they left the house, he'd tell her the story,
maybe he didn't want to ruin Mrs. Owens morning by going into the
details.

Just like home. Momma Bessie and Grandpa Ben, even Grandma Pauline, Wilamena's mother, all clammed up that way when it came to the
details of the old days. Now she was living in the old days. When she'd
asked questions about those times, the older ones paused as if gathering
enough air into their lungs, enough cushion to even think about the old
days. They'd packed those times away. It was too painful, too backwardfacing to go digging around unearthing whatever had been.

Celeste's last stop before getting into Reverend Singleton's car had to
be that outhouse. She collected her basin of scummy water and came back
through the kitchen, letting the screen door slam. She walked on the dirt
path beside the small vegetable garden toward the little shack near the tree
line. The garden segued into an expanse of pale-orange, sun-drenched,
sandy earth.

The daytime smell escaping into the morning air wasn't as rank as she
expected. She took a deep breath and went into the little outhouse, her
sandals and feet powdered with a film of dust. Sunlight shot through the
small window above the plank-board platform with its smooth round hole.
She poured the dirty basin water in just as she'd done the night before.
What lurked in that black abyss, and could it creep up? If Shuck found out
about the bathroom facilities in Mrs. Owens house, he'd be down there in
one snap of his well-manicured fingers. She did her business and rushed
out again.

One stop in the kitchen for breakfast, one trip to the outhouse, and she
was already in a full sweat. At the spigot, she scrubbed her hands with soap,
patted her face with cool water, and washed her basin. Mrs. Owens had
placed a clean towel on a tin plate. The morning air smelled of old wood,
mold, and mangy dogs. But when you turned in the other direction, it
smelled of a sandy beach, like shells and kelp. The freshest air, with that
faint aroma of pine, whiffs of magnolia and jasmine at the edges, would tumble into a moving car with all the windows down. She couldn't wait
to get going.

After Reverend Singleton cleared the DeSoto's front passenger seat of
his papers and bible, putting them in the back along with his suit jacket,
he held the door while she climbed in. His starched white shirt was brilliant in the harsh sunlight. Her pale green blouse and tan skirt gave in
to the humidity, wrinkles softening into damp furrows, and the day just
beginning. They rolled away, pulverizing the gravel as they made a left turn
onto the blacktop leading into Pineyville. She'd listened for that sound all
night, even in her sleep. She hugged the passenger side window, arm on the
opening, air already breathing up into her armpit.

The tall thin pines decorated the nearly barren landscape on the road,
throwing a few delicate shadows here and there. That tropical breeze swept
in. Such a relief to have moving air on her face. She sat buttoned and
demure beside this man of the cloth with his wedding ring on. She was a
stranger in town walking a thin line toward what she hoped would be acceptance. She wanted to release the rubber band holding her tight ponytail,
pull her skirt up to her thighs, unbutton her blouse down to her cleavage,
and let the fresh air blow over her clammy skin. But in the south, you kept
your buttons buttoned up to your neck and your skirt down below your
knees. They'd been told in Jackson that the women in the south kept to
a rigid standard of comportment. The female volunteers, especially the
ones from the north, had been warned not to bring their college campus
freedoms down here because they wouldn't sit well at all with the locals,
Negro or white.

They drove through the center of Pineyville, a one-stoplight affair.
Reverend Singleton pointed out the Pearl River County Administration
building, which housed the office of the registrar of voters, Mr. Heywood.
By the end of the summer, she imagined she'd know that future-denying
fortress well enough. A sheriff's car parked as they floated by, an officer
stretching his neck to see inside their car.

"That's Sheriff Trotter." Reverend Singleton didn't turn his head. "He's
rock hard and full of hate."

"I heard." She nodded to the uniformed man, felt momentarily powerful sitting there beside the reverend and watching the sheriff's face freeze
over. He knew she'd arrived. The Jackson office informed the FBI of the
whereabouts of every volunteer. At least then there was a starting point if a volunteer turned up missing. Some FBI men hated the movement as much
as the local whites and passed information on to local law enforcement. It
traveled from there to the White Citizens Councils and the Klan. She was
marked, set to be watched for the entire summer. The Reverend and his
car, too. They'd both be under scrutiny, targets for any backward-thinking
person in the area. A bullet might fly from the black hole of a gun and
shoot one or both of them dead. She saw Matt's body going limp beside his
car yesterday on the highway from Jackson. What good had it done? The
troopers beat him anyway.

"Story goes that his daddy had a Negro worker on his place who he
abused unmercifully for years. Seemed he couldn't get it through his head
that slavery was over. Never wanted to pay the man a decent wage, called
him out of his name. One day, the worker ran him through with a pitchfork.
The son blames the entire Negro race, never given so much as a mumbling
thought to how mean-spirited his daddy was. He's a chip off the old block."
Reverend Singleton drove slowly on, Celeste twisting to get another glare
at Sheriff Trotter, who'd gotten out of his car and was walking up the front
walk of the County building.

They passed a cluster of small storefronts, a grocery, a drugstore. Awnings
and nicely spaced magnolias shaded the storefronts with slashes of sunlight
baking the curb-less pavement between. You might run from tree to tree or
awning to awning escaping the sun, much like ducking the rain. White people
in shade hats went in and out of the few stores and the county building.

"Now, Celeste, the phone company removes our request to the bottom
of the list for phone lines at the church. That means you have to use that
phone there by the gas station to check in with Jackson and make your calls
to home." He drove by the gas station and the pay phone. "We have a phone
at our house, but it's too far for you."

She spotted a red Coca-Cola machine against the side wall of the gas
station and wondered if they could get a cold drink. But that might necessitate a bathroom stop somewhere, and God only knew what that might
mean. She had a thought that one of the distinct pains of the south was the
constant necessity to plot your way from one accepting place to the next,
for bathroom facilities, for lodging, for travel, even for shopping. You had
to have it on your mind at all times.

"Where are the Negro people?" She hadn't seen one since they got
into town.

"They come into the grocery and the gas station when they have to.
Town's not too friendly to its Negro citizens."

At orientation, they told her that in Pineyville, Negroes stepped off the
sidewalk to let whites go by. No wonder they didn't come to town. What
would she do if she passed a white person on the street? Margo said it was
a decision you had to make at that moment, careful of everything going on
around you. No matter what you decided, she said, remain respectful. If
you stepped off the sidewalk, keep your head up and say a "good morning"
or a "good afternoon." If you decided to cross the street, say your greeting
and keep going as if you'd planned to cross the street anyway. She saw
herself zigzagging back and forth at a dizzying pace to somehow avoid the
obeisance but keep the peace. She almost laughed out loud at the ludicrousness of it all, but underneath, another layer of fear crept into place.

Reverend Singleton circled a block of neatly painted wood houses with
shaded porches, deep green lawns, magnolias and dogwood. "This is where
the white folks live," Reverend Singleton said. A woman working in her
flower beds stood to watch the Negro man and the young woman driving
by. No smile, no greeting. Celeste knew that look, called it the Grosse
Pointe stare. Nigger, what are you doing in this part of town? She hoped the
woman wouldn't call the police, accuse them of casing the neighborhood
for a robbery.

"Do any Negro people live in town?" She stared at the set-back houses,
the neatness and calm beauty of it all compared to the drab, rundown look
of Freshwater Road.

"Not in the town limits."

Reverend Singleton came back by the Pearl River County Administration Building. The sheriff's car sat in front of it. "Can't go in that front door,
either. But that's exactly where we're going when we're ready." People glided
slowly in and out in their light-colored dresses, white sandals, summer suits,
straw hats. Celeste wanted to walk in with them, stop the insanity of some
people trooping around to some other inconvenient door. Not yet. Probably
cool and dark inside there, clean and with echoes like City Hall or the Court
Building in Detroit.

"I'ma pick you up every morning at nine and take you over to the church
for freedom school, then take you back to Mrs. Owens in the afternoon."

"You sure I can't walk there from Mrs. Owens's house?" Celeste was
hoping he'd say that during the daylight hours, it would probably be fine.

"Not here. My wife, Etta, will fetch you for the voter registration classes
in the evening or I will, and we'll both be driving you home after that." He
was back at the traffic light. "Most important to stick to the routine. If you
break it, that means something's gone wrong."

"I understand." Gone wrong meant gone missing. It was the breaking
of the routine that alerted the Jackson office that Schwerner, Chaney, and
Goodman were in trouble. No phone call. No check-in. Three gone in one
heartbeat.

They passed a road sign: Bogalusa, East, 25 miles, New Orleans, South, 65
miles. Reverend Singleton headed south. Matt had passed this way yesterday,
taken the road to Bogalusa. She wanted to tell the reverend to keep going all
the way to New Orleans, take her to the airport, and send her home.

In what seemed like a mile or so, he made another turn into a rough
sand and gravel road leading to the St. James African Methodist Episcopal
Church. He told her they wouldn't stop, but he wanted her to see it. He
had pride in his voice. The whitewashed church with a stocky bell tower in
the center of its roof sat in a clearing with spurts of weedy grass and gravel,
surrounded on three sides by dense stands of long-needled pines, live oaks,
and a magnolia or two. The trees stood as shelter from the badgering sun.
They offered dark passages of seeming coolness where not a ray of light
shone through. She searched the grounds for the outhouse but saw only a
water spigot on the side of the building. "The church has a real toilet?" She
couldn't contain her excitement at the prospect of working every day in a
place with a real toilet, then chastised herself for making such a big deal
out of indoor plumbing.