Freshwater Road (26 page)

The young woman behind the counter smiled. "Morning, sir. May I
help you?" She had a crispness in her voice. Her Western Union uniform
fit, yellow shirt tucked into dark slacks, her hair pulled back away from
her pretty brown face. He was relieved, not up for any double negatives,
any slack-jawed southernisms. Not that he considered himself a man
of words.

"Good morning to you. I want to send this to Jackson, Mississippi, as
fast as you can get it there. Here's the address."

"You want to send a message with it?" The woman slid him a pad for
writing out messages. Her nails were neat and clean. She must be a college
student at Wayne. Very professional, he was thinking. The kind of young
person he'd hire to work in the Royal Gardens, part-time. He figured he
could pay more than Western Union.

"I do." Shuck wrote Celeste's name on the message next to the amount
he was sending and what it was for. Then he wrote, "Come on outta there,
now. Love, Shuck." Then he remembered she'd probably never see the note.
He didn't care. He left it.

The woman totaled his costs and gave him a receipt. "Have a nice
day, sir."

Shuck made a snap decision, tore off a piece of paper from the pad and
wrote his name and phone number, the name of the bar and the address. "You
need any part-time work, give me a call. It's a nice place. You in school?

The girl blushed, eyes tracking quickly down the row of patrons behind
Shuck. "Yes, sir. I'm studying at Wayne."

Shuck lowered his voice. "Call the place. My name's Shuck Tyree. I'm
the owner." He felt so proud to say that to that young woman, knew his
eyes twinkled when he said it.

She took the piece of paper, slid it into her pants pocket, eyes nervous,
darting, as if she wanted Shuck to get going. "Thank you, sir."

Shuck nodded to the mangy man in line behind him and walked out to
his car. He had choices. To live out the next few years grabbing all the joy
he could from the life he'd built, or make some big changes, not knowing
what might be on the other end. He knew he'd take care of Momma Bessie
and the old house for as long as she wanted to live in it. Alma would stay
in his life whether she moved to Outer Drive with that jungle of plants or
not. Leave those plastic covers behind.

Shuck drove around Grand Circus Park to Woodward and went toward
the river, passing Hudson's department store, the traffic slowing him to an
easy summer crawl, his Cadillac gleaming in the afternoon sun. One worry
left. Every time Momma Bessie asked him about Celeste, he told her she
was doing fine. If he told her where Celeste was, there'd be a long thick
pause as if Momma Bessie expected him to announce he was getting on
a plane and flying to Mississippi. Celeste wouldn't leave Mississippi until
she finished what she went there to do, whether he went down there or not.
And how would he get to that god-forgotten town anyway? A flight to New
Orleans or to Jackson, then a car ride to Pineyville. What car? Would he be
able to rent a car in either city? Better to close the Royal Gardens and drive
down, take Posey and all the guns and bullets they could find on the west
side of Detroit. Put a sign on the door, "Mississippi or bust."

The regulars were already inside when he pulled up in front of the Royal
Gardens. They knew not to park in his space just outside the door. Rodney's
old Cadillac and Chink's new Mustang were parked front to back just beyond Shuck's space. Iris parked her old hunk of junk Studebaker more than
half a block away. Shuck never told her, but he didn't want that car near the
front of his place, attracting the wrong kind of customers. She must have
guessed it after looking at his best-of-Negro-life wallpaper. Millicent's sleek
Chrysler was parked back of Shuck's spot. He didn't mind that at all. Posey
always parked his Oldsmobile across the street from Shuck's Cadillac, said
he liked to park in the direction he was heading when he left, didn't want
to be out there U-turning like Shuck did every night.

He walked in with a smile on his face for the first time in weeks. The
money was on its way to Celeste. For now, that's all he could do. The rest
of the summer would be a waiting game. As soon as he walked in the
door, he heard the new music on the jukebox and began to shake his head. "Posey, that music's for children. Nobody in here right now qualifies." He
went to his seat at the back of the bar, newspapers and mail in his hands
as usual.

"We just tryin' to keep you from getting too old, too fast, that's all."
Posey prepped the bar for the evening. "Isn't that right, y'all?"

"Sure is, Shuck." Iris jumped in. "We been worried about you. You
walking slower, head all down, look like you lost your best friend. These
kids' music put a skip back in your step."

Iris had on her work clothes, a man-looking shirt with the sleeves rolled
up over something he couldn't see. Compared to the women in the wallpaper, Iris looked like she was on work detail as janitor. Shuck didn't like
it. With her teenaged children, this new music was right up Iris's alley.
She couldn't get away from it if she tried. She wasn't the type to teach her
children about Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, take them places so
they knew where they came from.

The voice in his head told Iris she'd better be worrying about herself. He
wouldn't say it, didn't want to hurt her feelings. "I'm all right."

"Celeste doing okay?" Millicent sat quietly smoking, twirling that luscious pearl-plated cigarette lighter, sipping a Tom Collins, looking good in
a low-cut summer print dress, gold bangles on her brown arms, matching
gold hoop earrings, hair pulled back and up against the heat. "I know it's
on your mind." Shuck could see in a minute how she made supervisor at
the main post office. She carried herself very well.

"Thanks for asking, Millicent. So far, so good. Be glad when it's over."

Chink nodded down to Shuck. "I know that's right."

The thumping bumping new music from the jukebox swelled between
them. For a moment, Shuck saw them all as foreign, as if he'd entered a
world unknown to him, incomprehensible. He didn't want to be old yet,
didn't want to be thought of as out of it, but things were slipping. How did
these people fit into the new sounds, the new thinking, when he did not?
Why now after all these years was he feeling out of step? He picked up his
newspaper and thumbed through as much to hide as to read.

"Posey."

Posey walked down to him, white shirt agleam against his night black
skin.

"Hey.

"You up for going to Mississippi? If it gets necessary?"

Posey rubbed two fingers down on both sides of his mouth as if he were
smoothing a moustache. "I'm in."

"Keep it to yourself. May not be. Just checking."

"All right, man." Posey slapped a flat hand on the bar, nodded and went
back to his work.

They could do some real damage in Pineyville. Posey was mad enough
at the world about losing his house to a scheming ex-girlfriend, he'd be
perfect for the job. Shuck sensed Posey was humoring him, but he didn't
care. He knew this idea of going to Mississippi was a flight of fancy, but one
he needed to scope out. He was too old to be fooling around down there,
but if push came to shove, he'd go. They'd go. Celeste was nobody's wimp,
had taken the bit between her teeth in a way he never dreamed she would.
But not like that, not in that place. You had to be young to do something
like that.

In the hottest hour of the afternoon, flies, crickets, birds, and even the dogday cicadas all stopped, leaving only phantom movements, elusive echoes.
Celeste sat on a stiff chair in the kitchen with the back door open, the
long-needled pines like a fortress wall less than a city block to the rear. Her
voter registration study materials lay helter-skelter on Mrs. Owens's table.

By now Dolly Johnson was attending the voter registration class regularly, Mr. Landau, too, and Sister Mobley and Mrs. Owens. Others, more
tentative, more afraid, ventured in, too. Each evening, one, sometimes two
new people appeared in the back of the St. James A.M.E. Church, knotting
their bodies into self-effacement, heads hanging low as if to be there and not
be at the same time. Celeste beckoned, cajoled, even begged them to join
the small group down front, those few who'd decided to risk life and limb
for the right to vote. They moved up when they felt comfortable moving
and not a second before. They remained wary of Celeste and of the work
she was doing, unsettled by the air of threat that hung over Mississippi like
an iron veil. Celeste couldn't separate the ongoing historical fears from new
ones the movement brought with it.

Her daily routine leaned toward the grueling. Teach the children at
freedom school in the mornings, home to eat, wash the sweat off her body,
put on fresh clothes, rinse her morning clothes in the tin tub and hang them
out back, then prepare for voter registration classes in the evenings. Some
days, she swept the sandy dirt out of the house. On others, she walked into
town to help Mrs. Owens carry groceries back to Freshwater Road, relieved to change her routine in any small way. No movie theater to slink into,
no television, no radio (not in this house anyway), no cool library or lofty
museum to amble through-just a front porch with a hard-seated chair
waiting at the end of each long day.

Celeste stood from the table to stretch, the pale blue mimeograph ink
and small print of her copy of the Mississippi State Constitution a burr in
her brain. In Jackson, during her orientation week, the idea of the freedom
school had baffled her most. How would she teach children from different
grades at the same time? What would she teach? Now, she found the hardest
task was preparing the beaten-down older people for voter registration. She
walked to the door praying for a breeze from beyond those fragrant pines,
her hand smoothing the cypress wood repairs over the bullet holes in the
door frame. No breeze came, but Sissy Tucker sped through the heavy air
creating a zephyr that bounced her tight braids up and down, almond eyes
wide, running across the orange sandy earth out of the trees and heading
right for Mrs. Owens's back door. Celeste remembered the hateful fire in
Mr. Tucker's eyes the day of the church picnic, the warning he cut her in
the rearview mirror of his big Hudson after she told Sissy she'd take her to
see a movie. "Sissy! How are you, come in, come in." She quickly unhooked
the screen, and Sissy darted in like a panicked bird.

Celeste sat the panting child at the table and gave her a glass of ice water,
remembering the tears that welled in Sissy's eyes after her father crushed her
dream of going to see a movie. Sissy was throwing down her gauntlet by even
coming to this house. Celeste had to buck up. She glanced down the short
hall to the porch where Mrs. Owens dozed in her rocking chair. Sometimes
there came an easing of the day's heat, arriving like an unexpected check
in the mail late in the afternoon. The sun's rays somehow shifted to a less
abusive angle; the temperature didn't change one degree, but it seemed the
full fire of the sun had inched farther away. Sissy had a patina of sweat on
her oval face. Her hibiscus-yellow summer dress had broad straps across
her dark little-girl shoulders. Her yellow socks looked purposely dyed with
orange splotches, and her black Mary Janes were scuffed and scratched but
not a bit run over at the heels.

"Thanks again for warning me about the sacred ground." Celeste stood
opposite her in the tight kitchen. What if the big Hudson with the blastedout windshield pulled up? She glanced out the small window. What would
she do with Sissy? "You can sure holler."

"You welcome, Miss Celeste." She sipped her water carefully. Although
Sissy's eyes were anxious, there was a soft belligerence in them, too. She
was proud that she'd warned Celeste with her big voice at the church picnic
and maybe even prouder that she was doing what she wanted to in spite of
her father.

"Reverend Singleton said he was going to speak to your father about you
coming to the freedom school." Celeste listened for the sound of wheels on
gravel. Now that the house had been shot into, Mr. Tucker would never
allow his daughter to participate in anything that had the word "freedom"
attached to it. No doubt she'd been told that this house, with its boarder
and her freedom songs, was completely off-limits to her.

Sissy stared over the papers on the table. "You a real teacher?"

"I'm a student. College." Celeste imagined Sissy seeing Ann Arbor, the
green of it, the richness, too, with a library bigger than any building in
Pineyville and students everywhere with their easy familiarity.

"Cause you too young." The girl nodded. "I sure liked you talking in the
church that time." She wagged her head like an old woman for emphasis,
as if thinking, I want to do that, too.

A car crunched by on Freshwater Road, grating over the gravel and sand,
and Sissy's eyes grew wide as she jumped towards the door.