Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands (18 page)

Chapter 35

Doto stands on the back porch, inhaling the warm May air.

“What a beautiful day!” she calls into the kitchen. “Why not have Sunday dinner out here?”

“Why not?” Mother calls back. “Reesa, will you set the picnic table, please?”

Doto and I wipe down the backyard table and chairs. She helps me spread the cloth and place the plates, glasses, napkins and flatware. While Mother calls Daddy and the boys to dinner, Doto and I carry the platters and bowls outside to the shaded backyard: pork chops fragrant with rosemary, mashed potatoes and brown gravy, fresh green beans and applesauce.

“It’s dinner-on-the-grounds just for us!” Mitchell crows, his blond buzzed head aglow in the sunlight.

We gobble up our food, gab about the Sunday service. Ren reports that the Dodgers’ best pitcher, big Don Newcombe, has been drafted into the army and is on his way to Korea. Doto praises Mitchell for his much-improved table manners. As we sit sipping the last of our tea, we hear, then see, Luther’s old Dodge at the head of the driveway.

He and Armetta get out of the car, still in their church clothes.

“Well, ain’t y’all a picture?” he calls, smiling. “Enjoyin’ this pretty Sunday?”

“Sure are,” Daddy calls back. “Ren, pull those lawn chairs over here for Luther and Armetta. You two eaten?”

“Jus’ finished.” Luther patts his belt buckle.

“Had a potluck with the choir,” Armetta says, sitting down in the shade. “Lord, was it good!”

“The choir?” Daddy asks, looking curious. “Any gossip from the good ladies of the C.I.A.?”

“Actually, that’s why we’ve come.” Luther accepts the glass of tea that Mother’s poured for him. “Somethin’ pretty important,” he says, leaning forward. “Y’all know the Gran’ Jury’s out on recess, which means the Klanners have come home for a few days. There’s been a bunch of little parties and barbecues for ’em which, of course, the ladies have prepared.”

Armetta looks around and tugs her chair closer to the table. “Mist’Warren, the question everyone’s been chewin’ on is ‘Who stole the record books with the clippin’s and the floor plan and gave ’em to the F.B.I.?’ They’ve been ’round and ’round, tryin’ to figure it out. Middle of last week, one of the men remembered somethin’. Somethin’ about the men shootin’ at some chil’ren and the fathers bein’ fit to be tied about it. The talk’s been all over Mistuh Emmett about who that was and could they be the one?”

Daddy leans forward, elbows on the table, resting his chin on his upright, folded hands. His jaw’s gone concrete.

“The Klan’s been chewin’ on it all weekend, talkin’ amongst theyselves. They’ve ruled out the other boy’s father; Mistuh Emmett says Mistuh Smitty’d never have the
nerve
. They’ve decided, well, what they’re
sayin
’ is, since you’re a Yankee, and mad and smart enough to pull it off, they thinkin’ it was
you
. . . .”

“What’s that mean?” The sun glints off Doto’s cat-eye glasses.

“Well, not much, we thought,” Luther says. “With as much trouble as they in already, we figured they wouldn’t dare try anythin’ else . . .”

“But?” Daddy, his face still expressionless, eyes Armetta.

Inside, I feel a trapdoor open and my stomach fall through it.

“But,” she says, “last night, Polly—she works for Miz Hannah Garnet, Mistuh Reed’s mamma—Polly heard Mistuh Reed talkin’ to Mistuh Emmett about ‘callin’ out the Klavaliers.’ ”

“What are the Klavaliers?” Mother’s hand reaches over to curl under Daddy’s arm.

“That’s a Klan term for the men who jump you with axe handles and ball bats,” Luther says quietly. Daddy draws a breath.

“Mistuh Emmett said
no
, it was time to
lay low
, but Mistuh Reed said he’d already called ‘a couple of the O’landah boys, just a little walk and talk.’ ”

“Which
means
,” Luther says, “a little rough stuff but no killing.”

“Are you saying the Klan’s coming after Warren?” Doto blazes.

“I’m sayin’ there’s
talk
,” Luther tells her.

“What can we do?” Mother’s face is drained of color.

“You can pack up and leave
right now
,” Doto replies firmly. “Take a vacation, a
long
one. You said you had a pretty good winter, you can afford it. If you can’t,
I’ll
pay!”

“It’s not that, Doto,” Daddy says calmly. He squeezes Mother’s hand. “If we turn tail and run, the Klan’ll make sure we have nothing to come back for. We can’t afford to lose
everything
.”

I hold my breath.

After a moment, Mother straightens, squaring her shoulders. “Luther, Armetta, you know these men better than we do. What do you suggest?”

Luther leans in, hands on his thighs. “Well, Ah’ll
tell
you: Ah know you have a scatter gun,” he says to Daddy. “Load it and take it with you wherever you go. Take the dog, too,” he says, pointing at Buddy. “These things tend to happen at night, so don’t go out unless you absolutely have to. If you do go out, go as a fam’ly, never alone. The Klanners think of theyselves as Southern gentlemen. They don’t usually attack a white man in front of his wife or chil’ren.”

“This is
abominable
!” Doto fumes, fire in her eyes. “I’m hiring some security guards. If we can’t find them local, I’ll get some Pinkertons down here from Chicago, armed to the
teeth
!”

“No, Doto, no,” Daddy tells her quietly. “It’s probably just talk. And, if it isn’t, we’ll deal with it ourselves.”

“Mist’Warren, MizLizbeth, Ah’m sorry to spoil your Sunday dinner like this,” Luther says gently, “but Ah told Armetta you’d want to know right away.”

“You were absolutely right,” Daddy tells them both. “Thank you, and
please
thank the ladies for their help.”

So begins my family’s final nightmare.

Chapter 36

Since the first of the year, my friend Vaylie’s postcards reveal that her father’s “spells” have gotten more frequent. She’s been “on tour” more often than not—to Savannah, Plymouth Rock and Cape Cod, Charleston, South Carolina, and last month, Quebec, Canada. I’m delighted when, at last, an envelope containing a real letter arrives:

Dear Reesa,

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I wrote
you. As you can tell from my postcards,
Mamma and I have been away, a lot!
The bad news is, no matter how hard
I’ve tried to keep up, I’ve already
flunked seventh grade and will have
to repeat it. The good news is Daddy’s
gone to live in a sanatorium and we get
to stay home.

How this came about is a very long
story. I’ll give you the short version: With Mamma and me out
of town so much, Daddy’s mamma had to deal with him a
whole lot more than usual. After he wrecked her car, stumbled
into church drunk, and got mad enough one day to shoot my
horse, his mamma decided he might have a problem after all.
She got the best doctors in Richmond and Washington, D.C., to
examine him. All of them said the same thing: Daddy’s a
“manic depressive,” which means when he has a bad spell, he’s
completely out of control. (Somehow, my daddy’s mamma
believed the doctors over what Mamma and me have been trying
to tell her for years.)

The sanatorium is just as nice as can be. You’d never know
it was a nut house for rich people. Mamma and I visit him
every Saturday, and Whit and Claudette go three times a
week. With his medicine and the “treatments” (I think they
shoot electricity into his head, but nobody will tell me for sure),
Daddy seems to be pretty happy. Once a week, on Sundays, if
the doctors say he’s been good, his mamma takes him out to her
horse farm. He loves to watch the horses run, seems to have
forgotten what he did to mine.

Mamma seems much happier, too. She’s stopped taking her
nerve pills and is starting to look and act like her old self
again.

As for me, I have to thank you for that letter you wrote me,
sitting in your tree. I carry it with me wherever we go, and
read it whenever I feel really bad. Thanks to you, I never gave
up hope. Because you believed in me, I figured I was
honor-bound to believe in myself. My new tutor, Mrs. Brad-ford, says that if I work extra hard, there’s a slight chance I
might catch up with my old classmates. I KNOW I can do it,
Reesa. My luck, like the tide, has turned!

Love
,
VAYLIE

Dear Vaylie,

I was so glad to get your letter and to hear you’re home for
good! I’m sorry about your daddy, though, and about what he
did to your horse. It must have been awful for you.

Do you like your surprise? It’s a rattler skin, of course. One
of your “cousins” shed it in the scrub behind the old sinkhole. It
means he’s grown a brand new skin, with one more rattle on his
tail to boot. When I found it, it reminded me of you, of all
you’ve been through, and how you’ve made it through without
losing your way.

Oh, Vaylie, I wish I could say the same for me.

Things are as bad as they can be here, and getting worse.
And, I can’t begin to see a way to wiggle our way out.

What’s happened is this: My father got involved with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, helping them find out who
killed the colored couple, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Moore. It was
the Klan, of course. Everybody knew it. But not a single white
person was willing to do anything about it—except Daddy.
What he did was a good thing, the absolute right thing to do.
But now the Klan’s found out about it. And we hear they’re
sending some men after him to get even.

Vaylie, there’s not another person in the world I can tell this
to: I’m as scared as I can be. My parents try to act as if
everything’s okay, but I know it’s not. I can see in their eyes
that they’re scared, too. Worse yet, so’s my grandmother, Doto,
and she’s never been afraid of anything in her life!

The worst thing, Vaylie, is the upside-downness, the
inside-outness of things. Like the crazy people rule the world
and they’re after us because we’re not nuts. For the first time, I
understand why your mother took you on tour so much. I wish
somebody would take us out of here until everything’s over.

But that’s not my parents’ way. “We’ll get through this,”
they say, and I wish I could believe them. But the truth is, I’m
not sure who, or what, to believe right now.

I don’t know if you’re a praying person, Vaylie. We’ve never
really talked about it. But if you are, please, please, please, put
an extra word in for my family, and for me.

Your tried and true friend, Reesa

Chapter 37

There’s just no describing the infinite difference between everyday life lived unawares and the agony of keeping watch for strange men who want to hunt and hurt your father.

It’s the little things that loom largest: the lock on the back door that hasn’t worked for years and
who knows
where the key is anyway; the after-dark carton of milk that normally Daddy would run and get, turned into an awkward family outing; the two-minute drive between church and home, after Wednesday night’s choir practice, now too risky to be taken alone; the swishing sound outside, maybe not the wind rustling the palmettos.

Nights especially last an eternity. Somehow, my family gets through them, avoiding the obvious with small, coded conversations and polite I-don’t-mind alterations in long-established routines:

Doto, the queen of hot fudge sundaes, gives up her favorite dessert rather than have Daddy risk an after-supper run to Mr. Voight’s freezer section. And she seems to have a huge amount of paperwork which keeps her at her post on the front porch whenever we’re home.

Mother, who hasn’t sung in the choir for years, rejoins the sopranos in the second row. She rides to and from practice with Daddy, and Buddy stands sentry, tied to the choir loft door.

Buddy, who’s spent most of his life sleeping in my room, moves, at my suggestion, to the rug at the foot of my parents’ bed.

Ren and I keep an eye out for anything, everything the least bit out of the ordinary. And Mitchell wears his cowboy six-shooters everywhere, “in case,” he tells us, “the bad guys come.”

Just before Memorial Day, the Grand Jury, having reconvened its proceedings in Miami, hands down its indictments.

Seven men from our area are ordered to surrender on June nineteenth for arraignment before the Federal District Court. Starved for resolution, I gobble up the details of the
Miami
Herald
story:

They were charged with lying under oath when they denied to the grand jury that they were members of the Ku Klux Klan, or that they took part in a series of violent acts in Central Florida from 1949 to 1952.

J. D. Bowman leads the list of those indicted! The charges against them range from denying membership in the Klan to denying involvement in a number of incidents, including the attempted abduction of two N.A.A.C.P. lawyers and two Negro reporters, the beating of a local Negro for union activities, the flogging of another and the burning of a shack occupied by a man accused of molesting small girls.

When Daddy reads the article, he tells me, “It’s important to note that they’re
not
being charged for actually
committing
the crimes, but for
lying
about them to the Grand Jury, Reesa. There’s your lesson in the difference between state and federal jurisdiction.”

Justice, by a thin thread called perjury, has been served. Even though the indictments carry no direct mention of Marvin or the Moores, it seems that, at least,
right
has won out. After weeks of self-enforced confinement, the need to celebrate pushes my family out of the house.

We pile into Mother’s station wagon, Buddy in the back, and drive to Orlando and the new Ronnie’s Restaurant for hamburgers and ice-cream sodas all around. The evening floats, light, optimistic, party-like, until Doto suggests that “now that this is over, I can think about heading home.” The boys and I howl in protest.

On our way home, my brothers fall asleep against Doto in the back seat; Mother and I remain alert, out of habit, in the front. We enjoy the night, the familiar sights, as Daddy wheels north up the Trail, onto Old Dixie and into our driveway.

Halfway in, however, Mother hisses, “Warren,
stop the car
!”