Freshwater Road (22 page)

Again, Reverend Singleton moved closer to her, and she inched more to
the side, releasing the podium, giving him room to stand with her, realizing
that he was her ticket to acceptance.

"Amen." Came a voice from the other side of the church. Celeste didn't
know if that "amen" was the signal that they didn't want to hear anymore from
her or a validation. An "amen" could be a period as much as anything else.

Sister Mobley waved her hand, popped up again quickly. "I'm sho glad
you come here to Pineyville."

"Thank you, Sister Mobley." Celeste nodded to the frail woman. "And
please do send your children to the freedom school. We're moving along
in our work."

A white-haired man sitting by the window spoke up, fanning himself.
"If we come in here fa dat registering, de white man gon tell us not to come
to work no mo."

"Sho will." A youngish voice from the back.

That was followed by a few grunts and uh-huhs. Mrs. Owens's brooch
flashed in the sunlight. Celeste followed the flash to find her face, serious
and set with satisfaction. It made her feel she was doing okay up there in
the pulpit.

Reverend Singleton spoke. "Now Jesus is in here, moving around from
one to the other and when he stopped by me, he told me to tell you that
sometimes you got to walk through the darkness to get to the light." Reverend Singleton walked to the center of the pulpit area. Every face turned
to follow his movement. He hadn't warmed up to this thought, just dove
in at full emotional pitch, grabbing the attention of the church, waking
those who'd started to drowse with Celeste talking to them. "I said, you
got to walk through the darkness to get to the light." He cut through the
heat and lethargy like a lightning strike. "Think about that, now." He came
back to her.

"Go 'head now, Sister Celeste." He spoke under his breath. "You got to
break it down." Mrs. Singleton hit a minor chord on the organ, sending
goose bumps up her spine, then slowly and softly started playing "How I
Got Over." Celeste needed all the help she could get.

"The people in Jackson want to end this summer with voter registration
for all the Negro people in Mississippi." The thumping music got into her.
She reared back a bit and took a good deep breath. "If we do that, it will
make a great difference in your lives-these roads will get paved, the schools
will be improved, these children will be able to go into the library and read
the books or take them home." Mrs. Singleton wailed on that organ and
Celeste rode the rhythm like a ship on a wild sea, hanging on. "There's
churches being bombed, people being shot at, so this registering to vote is
causing a lot of trouble for everyone. That's how important it must be."

"Yes, it is, Lord."

"Amen."

"Speak on, chile."

They expected her to stir them as Reverend Singleton did. They wanted
to lift her up, but she had to help them.

"Don't feel mad at yourself if you can't do it." She pushed the queasiness down in her stomach and went on, feeling a kind of power. She still
clutched the podium, and her voice streamed on without breaks. "This
summer is the beginning. Your children can grow up feeling the vote is
their right." She nearly bit the "t" off the word "right." "We're learning that
today is not tomorrow." She was running out of things to say while rivers
of sweat ran down her neck.

Sissy inched forward in her seat. The only thing keeping Mr. Tucker
from snatching her backwards was the fact that he couldn't reach her
through the barricade of her brothers and mother.

"And it ain't yesterday neither." A heavyset man stood up fanning himself with his hat then sat down. Everyone was within the rhythm code of
the song. It was call and response, like a symphony.

"Thank you, sir." Celeste reached for the red farmer's bandana she'd
picked up in Jackson. It wasn't the thing for Sunday church, but it was in her
pocket, and it was all she had. She balled the bandana into her fist and wiped
her perspiring neck, not wanting to bring the red up near her face while she
was in the pulpit. Negro people put great significance in symbolism, and red
was the sign of the devil. For a brief moment, she didn't recognize her own
hand it was so dark. Reverend Singleton moved in again while the small
choir joined the organist humming the song. She was grateful he looked as
if he was about to take the reins.

"Yes, Jesus. I know we been walking through fire for a long, long time.
I know you praying the hard times coming to a end." Reverend Singleton
was going to finish it, put the parable to it, give the people an image to carry
them to the next point. "The hard times not going nowhere lessen you help
'em along. I can't pray you into registering, I can't shout you into it. You got
to think about all these young people come down here, like Sister Celeste,
Negro and white young people from all over this country down here to help
us do this, now, make something different happen here."

Celeste stepped back from the podium, allowing Reverend Singleton
all the space he needed, feeling like his protegee. She had raised the stakes, broken through the barrier, and felt redeemed. Whatever happened from
this point forward, she now had become a part of them.

"You know, me and my wife, Etta, was ridin' through Alabama back
in April. We took a different road going to Montgomery and passed a sign
said, `Kill a Nigger Creek, Alabama.' Now, that's the God's honest truth.
Aplace called `Kill a Nigger Creek, Alabama,' and it was right there on the
road sign. You voting, that kind of thing won't be there. Whole lotta other
things won't be here either. It's not free. Somebody's gon' die. Somebody's
already died. A whole lotta somebodies already died."

The responses were flying around the church. There was "Sweet Jesus,"
"Lord, have mercy," "They done died," and "Save us, Lord," and little rapid
claps of hands.

Celeste moved farther away as Reverend Singleton flailed his arms, the
blue robe flapping. She picked up the rhythm of the choir's sway, feeling as if
she belonged right there with them, seeing the faces of Schwerner, Chaney,
and Goodman in her mind, wondering if Leroy Boyd James's people still
lived near Pineyville or had they run away from the horrid memory of how
he died. All the things she'd learned in orientation, the memories of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers, all of it came to a peak of clarity there in the
pulpit of the St. James A.M.E. Church. She believed that she could change
the world, and she believed these people would be with her every step of the
way. Tears ran down her face, mingling with the sweat.

"You know it, and I know it." Reverend Singleton wrapped the church
body in his hands, his face shining with passion. Mrs. Singleton seemed
to know his every inflection before he hit it and masterfully accompanied
him on her organ. The small choir hummed under him. Celeste felt like
she might swoon, she needed something to hold onto. The responses from
the church rang out, some sweet and calm, others filled with resonance
and even anger.

"I tell you, the life everlasting is a sweeter life anyway, and you can make
this life a whole lot sweeter, too. But, you got to stand up for it. Say, `Life,
you're mine, for as long as I'm here, you're mine, and I'm gonna live you
better than my ma and pa did, better than those sharecroppers, better than
those slaves, better than I been doing!"

By the time he got to the end of his sermonette, everyone was full of will
and desire. He could've led the churchgoers right out the door and down to the courthouse to register to vote. But it would have been for naught on a
Sunday morning. Lord, Celeste prayed, help me to do this with thesepeopleI
see in front of me. Shuck would chuckle at her calling on the Lord. He'd say
the Lord helps those who help themselves. Then he'd say God bless the child
who's got his own. He said that all the time. She wanted to shout it out to
the congregation, get them in the habit of thinking precisely that.

Celeste returned to her seat while the church hummed through another
verse of "How I Got Over," Mrs. Singleton laying on the downbeats until
the organ sounded like an entire combo. The people shifted, fanned a bit
faster, and took quick looks to Celeste and Mrs. Owens.

"That's that same song Mahalia Jackson sung out there in Washiton
with Martin Lutha King," Mrs. Owens announced in a low voice as Celeste sat down. There was a new intimacy in her tone as if they were now
compatriots locked in a dangerous mission that might end in catastrophe,
but might, too, end in triumph.

When Mrs. Singleton hit the opening chords for "We Shall Overcome,"
Reverend Singleton invited the congregation to stand and join hands.
Celeste took Mrs. Owens's hand on one side and on the other, the hand of
a man who appeared to be as old as the live oaks in front of Sophie Lewis's
big house. She hoped this song, this joining of hands would invigorate the
people, give them the courage for the long walk ahead.... Oh, oh, oh, deep
in my heart, I do believe.... She believed it or she wouldn't have come down
here. The church hummed another verse as Reverend Singleton walked
down the center aisle and opened the double doors, inviting the last row
out first, backslapping and shaking hands with the men, politely hugging
the women, and nodding in the direction of the church picnic.

The sunlight was staggering after the shady respite of the church. The
daily quick rain had left a glisten on the trees and grass. Celeste eyed the
food. No one in the food line seemed bothered by the fat flies and silkwinged vagrants flitting over the fried chicken, greens, red beans, cakes,
cobblers, and pies. They filled their plates, swatting, fanning, talking quietly, nodding at her shyly as they meandered onto the grass to sit on a variety
of chairs, at tables or on the ground, which the sun dried in moments. She'd
have to eat something soon or risk offending Mrs. Owens and the women
of the church who'd gone to so much trouble.

"What you think?" Celeste kneeled down to Sissy's size when the girl
approached, at ease as if they already knew each other well.

"I think I wish you was my cousin." Sissy searched her face. "Then I
could come to yo' school."

"Did your momma say you couldn't come?" They'd barely begun. How
could a parent deny a child freedom school when regular school was nothing but denial?

They walked to a small square table and sat on wobbly wood folding
chairs, side by side, facing out. To the east, she could see the backs of the
shady rain clouds hastened away by lazy breezes from the Gulf. Nothing
now but a clear sapphire sky.

"My daddy say it." Sissy swung her legs, the toes of her shoes surfing the
grass. "Say don't want you teaching me nothing."

Celeste tried to fathom his fear or whatever it was, remembered his face
in the rearview mirror of the big Hudson. "Is that all he said?"

"Yes, ma'am." Sissy didn't seem to mind the sun, looked straight up to
the heavens again, like she'd done in the car with her sunglasses. She seemed
on the verge of flight.

"We'll try to get him to change his mind. Don't say anything else. Promise?" Something tugging at Celeste in her eyes as if she expected her to give
her wings, a way out of Pineyville, a way from a father who already was bearing down on her in a dream-smashing crusade. Surely Sissy didn't understand all those things yet. "Go ahead now and sit with your momma."

She pushed her gently in the direction of the Tucker table just as Mr.
Tucker came out the side door of the church, anger flashing in his eyes,
Reverend Singleton right behind him. He spotted her and paused for a quick
second, face tight and hard. She watched him until he sat with his family,
returning his anger with her own defiance. All that from the car, she thought?
No. Sissy must have been bristling under his clamped-down rearing for a
while. Asking too many questions, gazing too far off. Now here came Celeste,
the freedom loving rabble-rouser in town to put the finishing touches on
Sissy's rebellion. Freedom School. In his mind, it had to mean liberation in a
visceral sense. He was right. He had reached his limit. Celeste closed her eyes,
dropping her head. She wasn't supposed to look at anyone like that, Negro or
white. Too much violence in the tone of her eyes behind those sunglasses, but
she knew her body said the same thing. Reflecting that kind of uppitiness to
a white person in Mississippi might mean a hit or hot spit in her face.

"Mr. Tucker says his children won't be coming to the freedom school." Reverend Singleton sat where Sissy had been, his church fan pumping,
reaching for his necktie, pulling it away from his sweating neck.

"She told me. Sissy." The shade trees just beyond the clearing drew
Celeste like a magnet. "Did he say why?" Her tone all flat and dry.

"Well, now, Sister Celeste, some of these people got some old-timey
notions about all that's going on. I'ma keep working on him." Reverend
Singleton got up. "But in the meantime, you need to be patient. These
people been living in this place a long time. They know it better than you
can ever have learned it in a week-long orientation."

Celeste felt the chide. "I'm sorry." She was thinking maybe she could
teach Sissy at Mrs. Owens's house after freedom school, when Mr. Tucker
was stuck at the gas station working. How had this animosity grown up so
quickly? She didn't understand.

"I don't see Labyrinth and Georgie." She searched the crowd for Labyrinth's hair, a standout in this sea of dark-haired, dark-eyed people.

"It's hard for Dolly Johnson to mix out here in the open. She comes
to church every Sunday but she leaves right after. People swear she's still
having to do with that white man fathered Labyrinth. Course, they don't
have a thing to say about the Negro man who fathered Georgie. They are
afflicted with a double standard and it's easy to see why, I guess."

Celeste let go of a long deep sigh, shook her head from side to side. "Is
their coming to freedom school keeping the others away?"