Freshwater Road (52 page)

Mrs. Owens was preparing for her goodbye. The thought of it-of
leaving-made her stomach tighten unexpectedly.

In the bright morning light, Freshwater Road was so quiet you could hear
the clouds whooshing by. She stood by the spigot with the big Mississippi sky
unfurled like a vast blue drape. The clouds would come later in the afternoon.
Morning birds on the power lines and in the trees chattered in soft whistles.
No traffic, no sirens, no students yelling across the Quad, no Detroit Negroes
with robust voices calling out of back doors. All summer long she'd ached to
be out of this place and now she could barely entertain the thought of leaving. Time had dragged and flown by simultaneously. She filled the pitcher, the
wild spray of good water splashing her pants and arms, deposited the full
pitcher in her room, then rejoined Mrs. Owens in the kitchen.

"Who all's coming?"

"Reverend Singleton stopped by this morning, brought these greens from
Etta. Already cleaned. Thank the good Lord. And he brought the chickens
for frying. I'm making some potato salad, too, and maybe some shrimp
and okra. He's gonna tell the others." She paused. "And those children, too.
Lord, help me." She chopped onions now and dipped them in ice water,
tears running down her plum brown cheeks. "Reverend Singleton puts his
best foot forward no matter how hard life gets. We're blessed to have him
in this town."

The words sank into Celeste. "Yes, he does." Had she slipped into her
room and read her letter? This appraisal of Reverend Singleton rang bells in
Celeste's head. Was she telling her to do that, too? Maybe she'd stood staring at the photo of Shuck and Billy and put it all together. Celeste shook the
possibilities from her mind. Heartbroken that he wouldn't be voting come
November, Reverend Singleton planned a celebration for the ones who
would. There was nothing else in it. Mrs. Owens had just been duly noting
his generosity of spirit. She had to learn to stop reading her own meaning
into everyone else's. She remembered Shuck saying that some blues let you
hold on to the belief that no matter how hard life got, sweetness lay like a
lost charm in the moonlight.

"Now, I know you want to go to that phone and call your boys up in
Chicago. Tell them you're a registered voter." Celeste diced celery, working
to pick up the older woman's air of celebration.

Geneva Owens released the lid on her greens, then pulled a pot of
cooked potatoes out of the refrigerator. "Well, I do. I will tell them. Do so
wish my Horation had lived to see this day."

Horation Owens had fought in the Great War and been injured, came
home and never could vote. "He knows." Celeste nearly diced off the tip
of one of her fingers thinking about it. The knowing. Who had snuggled
Wilamena's lie to their bosom? And, what exactly was the lie? She heard
Momma Bessie and Grandpa Ben talking in the kitchen a long time ago.

When Grandpa Ben said they walked the horses from Lexington to Louisville, Celeste asked why. Momma Bessie gave her the question look. `Girl, they
didn't have trucks in them days. "

"Oh. "

Grandpa Ben said he remembered when jimmy Lee won the Derby. "He
won all six races on the card. That was before they stopped letting us ride. "

"We used to ride?"

"Girl, the first Derby they ever had was won by a Negro jockey. Oliver
Lewis, and his horse was Aristides. Wasplenty Negroes riding back then. Riding
and winning. "

"Where'd the name Tyree come from, Grandpa Ben?"

His mouth tightened and a brick-hard look came into his eyes. "You don't
know nothin'about no Tyree."

Momma Bessie's eyes flashed him a warning as Shuck came into the kitchen
grinning with Billy right behind him.

"Tyree's a name tapped out rhythms in speakeasys and buckets of blood
from Harrodsburg to Detroit. From the bluegrass to the black tar. " Grandpa
Ben looked right at Celeste. "You got people in the country and people in the
town and never been no slaves, either. "Shuck came over and kissed her on her
forehead and she and Billy ran out the back door to the yard.

When they'd piled fried chicken in a roaster pan, refrigerated the potato
salad, rested the greens, and covered the shrimp and okra side dish, Celeste
went in to wash herself and dress for the celebration. Mrs. Owens whipped
up a batch of cornbread so fast Celeste thought someone had left it on the
front steps. They poured tall glasses of iced tea loaded with sugar and sat on
the screened porch, Mrs. Owens rocking in her chair, work-sweat pooling
at her hair line, puffs of kinky hair poking through her hair net. Celeste,
dressed now in clean slacks and a fresh sleeveless blouse, sat on a straightbacked chair and prayed as usual for a cool breeze.

"I didn't want Sister Mobley to feel bad about not having anything to
bring." Mrs. Owens stared at the rutty road through the screen. "That's why
I went ahead and did the rest. Etta Singleton's bringing a sweet something.
Nobody else bringing nothing." She said proudly. "I'm glad to do the cooking, glad you been here to help me."

"I like being a sous-chef." She heard the past tense in Mrs. Owens's
words. The thought came to her clearly: why not just stay? Continue the
work, rebuild her freedom school. Hide, pretend she never got Wilamena's
letter, throw it down the outhouse hole.

"Now, what's that?" Mrs. Owens stopped rocking.

"Cook's helper. I read it in a book."

"Well, cookin' comes from Join', not from readin'." Mrs. Owens rocked
her chair, coughed a grunty sound.

"I know." She didn't know, but she understood that she needed to. It had
been a summer of doing, of stepping into the fray, not being on any sideline
of life. Celeste leaned her chair against the plank wall of the porch, rested her
head back, dreaming of her golden day in New Orleans with Ed. The downshifting light softened and banks of clouds ballooned up from the south. She
visualized Wilamena, voluptuous dark wavy hair resting on her shoulders
and framing her beautiful face, standing in the rust-orange beach-like soil of
Freshwater Road. The image slipped through her mind like a river eel. What
was it like for her in New Mexico? No big cities, no black people. She'd
spirited herself to a hiding place to be something else, someone else. She'd
unhistoried Detroit. And who was Cyril Atwood, anyway? Maybe a border
man whose history branched out into a jumbled lineage like Wilamena's.
Wilamena might well have been searching for a truer home. Celeste realized
she didn't even know where Wilamena'd met him.

"First thing I'm going to do is get this tooth fixed." Running her tongue
over the crack in her tooth had already become a quirky habit. She followed
it with a lick of her lip to feel the thin scar.

"Yes, indeedy. They got a dentist up there in Jackson who'll do it." Mrs.
Owens rested her head on the chair back. "His name is Dr. Fields."

"Negro?" Celeste would be damned if some Southern white dentist
would see the inside of her mouth. She sipped the iced tea, feeling the shot
of pain as the cold hit that damaged tooth, held the glass in her lap and felt
the cool of it at the base of her stomach.

"Yes, he is. Folks travel a good distance to see him." Pride in her voice.
"I don't know if there's another one in the state. Must be. I just never heard
of him."

They sat there like two codgers, Mrs. Owens slow-rocking her antiquated chair and Celeste balancing hers on its hind legs and leaning into
the wall, the late afternoon heat shushing the birds on the power lines,
paralyzing the flies, clamping down everything that moved. The calmness
of it slowed her heartbeat. Every day at this time, the place settled its dusty
veil. The sky rested. A hot tiny town to live in while the clattering world
rushed off. Celeste thought on it. She could run a year-round freedom
school for the children, give them what they'd never get in that public
school. Have runaway weekends with Ed Jolivette in New Orleans, take drives to see Sophie Lewis. She'd help Reverend Singleton get the rest of
the Negro population registered to vote, organize them to fight for a paved
road, indoor plumbing. Plenty to do here.

"Can't hardly wait till November, to walk in there and know my name
is in that big book." Geneva Owens stared off across the road. "Sure is cause
for a celebration."

"It is." Celeste wanted to be there to see Mrs. Owens walk in there and
vote, too.

She followed the woman's gaze to the landscape, wondered what she
saw beyond the low mounds of sand where wild grasses and weedy flowers
stammered to life.

"Used to be a house across there. Hurricane come through and flattened
it." Mrs. Owens sat still looking at the few cinderblocks and washed-out
cypress planks disarrayed on the ground. Had it been more than a hurricane? By the end of summer, the locals pined for the big cooling storms
to cleanse the land and shake Mr. Heywood's magnolias senseless. But they
also prayed the Pearl River wouldn't override its banks and that their clapboard houses would stand through another hurricane season and another
cold rainy winter.

The older woman put her hands on her knees, then to the chair arms and
rose from her chair. "I'ma get myself cleaned up before the others get here."

While Celeste balanced on her tilting chair staring at the rubble pile
across the road, Dolly drove up in a swirl of pastel dust with Labyrinth and
Georgie and their pink vinyl record player, toting a shopping bag of 45s.
They set up the music on the porch and ran a line into the house, Celeste
thinking all the while that Dolly wasn't going to register to vote in this
town even if she never laid eyes on Percival Dale again. Dolly had taken
herself to the place that Shuck warned Celeste against. A Negro woman with
a white man will always be lonely. Celeste hugged Labyrinth and Georgie,
something she'd never done before, and they hugged her back. Freedom
Summer was over and in their own small way, they'd won.

"What kinda music you listen to up there in Detroit?" Dolly's skeptical
expression made Celeste laugh.

"Same kind you listen to down here in Mississippi." Celeste put her
hands on her hips. "Why?"

"Just wanted to know is all." Dolly rummaged through the 45s, arranged
a stack on the little record player, and turned it on. Little Richard blasted out, "The Girl Can't Help It," and the crows jumped off the wires, flapping
their wings, cawing, and flying around and away. Dolly went in to help
Mrs. Owens with the food. Labyrinth danced by herself in the small space,
and Georgie sat watching his big sister shake her hips. They'd be lucky if
the porch survived. The music rode on the thick air, all the more vibrant
because there wasn't anything to interfere with it. The Tucker boys, Darby
and Henry, came out of their newly painted house half a city block away.

Celeste walked out in the middle of Freshwater Road in the late afternoon sunlight, beckoning to them to come on over. The now dusty Hudson,
parked in a lean towards the gully, stood like a grand maroon and chrome
sculpture. Mr. Tucker was in there being his evil self, probably seething
because somebody might be having a good time. But Zenia Tucker, who'd
barely shown her face since Sissy's funeral, stood half in and half out of their
front door.

With Martha and the Vandellas launching into "Quicksand" behind
her, Celeste shoved aside all the warnings to stay clear of Mr. Tucker and
walked toward the Tucker house under a cornflower blue sky. She kept
to the middle of the road, dipping a little in time to the music. The next
house down Freshwater Road was Sister Mobley's and well after that other
small houses were scattered, built as temporary places for the workers in the
lumber mills that used to line the banks of the Pearl River. Pineyville's thin
soil didn't support plantations; it had always drawn craggy loners, black
and white, who couldn't make it anywhere else. They hid out in the piney
woods, floated lumber down the Pearl River until its pristine waters turned
black from wasted cargoes and wood oils. A deliriously worn-out river. It
was a miracle that a drop of that water ever got to Lake Borgne. Pine forests
covered everything right down to the last plain before the Gulf of Mexico,
the scent of pine woven into the air. Celeste imagined herself hiding away
her life in the piney woods.

"Your house looks pretty." Celeste started talking before she arrived.
The white shiny finish arced out against the tangerine soil.

Zenia Tucker seemed caught in the front door just like Sissy had at the
church, living in a shadow, hugging a secret that she couldn't even speak
herself. "Thank you, Miss Celeste."

"Don't you want to come over to celebrate with us?" She spoke to the
boys who stood on the bottom step of their porch eyeing her, pebbles of
reticence in their eyes. "We got three people registered to vote."

"That's real nice, Miss Celeste. Wait a minute." Zenia Tucker disappeared, the screen door closing right behind her.

Celeste eased closer, praying Mr. Tucker stayed in his house. Beads of
sweat bubbled into streams down her face and body, more from fear than
heat. "What you been doing all summer? Haven't seen you around." They'd
receded like their parents. She smiled, hoping to break through Mr. Tucker's
hateful barricade. "Now, which one's Darby and who's Henry?"

"Nothing. I'm Henry." The Tucker boys had sad eyes, too, but not like
Sissy's almond ones, full as they were of questions and reveries of flight. The
bigger one, Henry, spoke again. "What happened to your tooth?"

"I ran into a drinking fountain." She gave them a big silly grin.

They didn't believe her, she knew, by the way they glanced at the ground
as if embarrassed to be in the presence of a lie. Their father probably told
them about the goings on at the county building, fashioning the story to
suit his own ends.

"My daddy told me you went to jail." Henry had accusations in his face.
"Bad people go to jail."