Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County (23 page)

She said it was hard to tell if that were really true.

W
hile Mr. Yonce scoured the arrest records up in Hillsborough County, we tried to keep our minds occupied. We tried various things to distract us, including a picnic on the beach, an excursion to the library, and then a cookout where we got a little tipsy on account of Mrs. Bailey White making Jell-O wine.

Then Plain Jane got this idea that we should revive our book club, just for the time being. I was eager to participate. Working at the library in Jackson meant I'd been reading all the latest books as they came in. I read anything and everything. I was impatiently awaiting Hemingway's latest,
A Moveable Feast
, which was coming in December, and I'd just finished an unusual autobiographical novel by a young woman with schizophrenia called
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.

“What books have you read lately?” I asked breathlessly.

“Ha! Funny you should ask,” Plain Jane replied. I noticed everyone turned to look at Jackie.

“What?” Jackie asked. “Oh, I know what you mean. That
book,
Tropic of Cancer
. Are you familiar with it, Dora? A novel, written by Henry Miller and published in France in the '30s. Apparently, considered too vulgar for Americans.”

“That's because it
is
vulgar!” Mrs. Bailey White almost shouted.

“Well, let's just say that some of it is not in good taste,” Plain Jane said. By way of explanation to me, she added, “It was finally published in the U.S. a few years ago and then the courts said it was obscene. I think it's available again now. Anyway, Jackie got her hands on a copy. Jackie, how did you get it, anyway?”

Jackie lit a cigarette. “I didn't buy it at the Book Nook, that's for sure.”

“We read passages of it aloud, and it was shocking!” Mrs. Bailey White howled.

“Oh, I was just trying to get us out of the rut we were in.”

“What rut was that?” Plain Jane asked.

“Reading books that were too safe.”

“What else did you read?” I asked.

“Well, just before you came home we'd been discussing
Cross Creek
by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,” Plain Jane said.

“Oh, I read that in high school and liked it very much,” I said, thrilled that we were now on safer ground. If only Priscilla, Robbie-Lee, and the librarian, Miss Lansbury, were here, it might feel like old times.

“I don't know why we read that,” Jackie grumbled. “I really didn't care for it that much.”

“She's the same author who wrote
The Yearling
,” Plain Jane replied testily, “and we all loved that.”

“I liked that it was by a
woman
author and it's about Florida,” said Mrs. Bailey White.

“I remember it as a pioneer story,” I said, “except that instead
of out west it was set in north-central Florida. It's a memoir, right? And she's very independent and endures all kinds of hardships—”

“Hardships?! She was out of her mind!” Jackie interrupted. “Poison ivy? Snakes? I could hardly read it. Why put yourself through something like that?”

“Oh, Jackie, you're missing the point!” Plain Jane said crossly, having stood and retrieved the book from Mrs. Bailey White's shelf. “Listen to this passage: ‘It is more important to live the life one wishes to live, and to go down with it if necessary, quite contentedly, than to live more profitably but less happily.' ”

“I agree, that is a beautiful sentiment,” Jackie said snippily, “but I have never really understood this type of adventure memoir—you know, where some naïve person goes out into the wilderness and goes through all kinds of hell of their own making and somehow supposedly emerges as a better, fuller human being.
Ugh
!”

“Jackie, you have no spirit of adventure!” cried Plain Jane.

“How can you say that?” Jackie blew a stream of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling. “I live here, don't I? I came all the way from Boston to Collier County, doesn't that count for something? Why do we always end up talking about me, anyway? Let's talk about something else.” She turned to me and, without blinking an eye, said, “Dora, speaking of
adventure,
when are you going to tell us what happened in Mississippi?”

Now if there is one thing I hate, it's being ambushed. I had been planning on telling them in my own good time.

“Jackie, must you always put Dora on the spot?” Plain Jane scolded.

“Oh, it's all right,” I said, sighing. “I guess now's as good a time as any. Especially since—as I keep telling y'all—I have to go back soon.”

“Well, maybe you could start by telling us what Jackson, Mississippi, is like,” Jackie prompted. “They certainly have been in the national news, lately—”

“Yes,” I said, “that poor man, Medgar Evers! That was two months before I arrived in Jackson. The Klan is crazy there. I mean, killing a leader of the NAACP! In his own front yard. Right out in the open!”

“Did you see any protests, or altercations, or anything of that sort?” Plain Jane asked.

“You can't help but encounter some of it,” I replied.

“But what's it like to be there—in the city, I mean?” Jackie persisted.

“Well, it's hard to describe, but there's a feeling like there's not enough air to breathe,” I said, struggling to find the right words. “I guess it's like—well, like when a big summer storm is rolling in from the Gulf and you can see the lightning strikes on the horizon. The air is so ripe with electricity and humidity that it makes you shiver even though it's hot. Well, that's what Jackson feels like to me these days. Especially since those three civil rights workers were murdered in June in that little city over in Neshoba County.”

“You mean the city they call Philadelphia, of all things,” Jackie said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, I guess that's the difference between Mississippi and here,” Plain Jane said. “Florida is still waking up.”

“Actually, I think we are in the land of
Rip Van Winkle
,” Jackie said sarcastically. “In twenty years' time we'll wake up and discover that the civil rights movement has arrived here.”

“Maybe not!” I said. “I mean, maybe sooner than that. I can't believe I forgot to tell you about the speaker I heard over at the
Methodist church. I wish you all had been there. She was from some place in Ohio. An activist, I guess. She said we were ten years behind Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.”

“No surprise there,” Jackie said.

“But don't you see?” I asked. “A year ago that lady activist from Ohio wouldn't have been invited to speak here.
She was right here in Naples at one of the Methodist churches.
Isn't that progress?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Jackie. I must have looked skeptical because she added, “I mean it seriously. I agree with you, Dora.”

“I think Florida is more genteel,” Mrs. Bailey White said. “Yes, we have the Klan, but they're just a bunch of idiots running around in the bushes setting churches on fire. Things like the Medgar Evers assassination—that doesn't happen in Florida.”

“Oh, yes it does!” Jackie said. “What about that man, Harry Moore, and his wife? The Klan put dynamite under their house and killed them on Christmas Day back in 1951 in some little town in Brevard County.”

“Why, Jackie, you've been doing your homework,” Plain Jane said admiringly.

“Well, there is some information at the library,” Jackie said. “But Ted's been doing research when he's been traveling around the state. He even went to the NAACP office in Tampa and picked up some pamphlets there.”

“Y'all are going to get yourselves shot!” Mrs. Bailey White said. “Mercy!”

“Well, Ted and I feel that we should try to understand what is happening, and the only way you can know that is to study the situation,” Jackie said.

“Oh boy,” Plain Jane remarked under her breath.

“What is that supposed to mean, Jane?” Jackie seemed surprised.

“It means that you're a typical Yankee,” Mrs. Bailey White said. “You think you can solve every problem by studying it to death and asking questions.
Ha, ha, ha.
”

“Let's get back to Dora and her stay in Mississippi,” Jackie snapped. “Did you ever feel like you were in danger?”

“In danger of what?” I asked, taken aback. “It's the black people who are in danger. Plus, the few white people who are trying to help them.”

“So you didn't try to help the black people?” Jackie asked. She seemed disappointed.

“How?” I asked. “I'm from Florida. I don't understand Mississippi. I don't think I should presume to tell them how to fix their problems. I might have made things worse.”

“But you might have made things
better,
” Jackie said softly.

Mrs. Bailey White spoke up again. “Now, don't admonish Dora. That's not why she went to Mississippi. She is still grieving her mama's death and went there to look for her people. She did her part. Besides, it ain't Dora's job to fix the world!”

“Well!” Jackie said furiously. “That's so . . .
Southern
! Mind your own business, pass the buck . . .”

“Jackie,” I said grimly, “I'm doing my part in my own way. For instance, every Tuesday my landlady Mrs. Conroy and I cook dinner for the black leaders.”

“What?” Jackie said. “What do you mean?”

I wondered how much I should share with them, even though they were my closest friends. I remembered that old World War Two saying “Loose lips sink ships
.
”
“Well,” I began slowly, “y'all have to promise me that this doesn't go beyond this room. But there is concern that someone may try to, er, harm
the leaders, like the Rev. Martin Luther King when he comes to town.”

Jackie quickly put two and two together. “You mean
poison
?” she asked, aghast.

“Sure,” I said, “among other ways. I don't know what they have in place to protect him from being shot or anything like that. I'm sure there must be bodyguards. But somebody figured out that the food he and the other leaders eat could be tampered with. So the way it works is there's a very small group of people like me and Mrs. Conroy who volunteer to cook at home using ingredients we buy or grow. This is all very hush-hush, of course. We prepare the food and pretend we're taking it to Mrs. Conroy's church for potluck night. But instead the food is picked up by a Negro janitor at Mrs. Conroy's church. He gives it that same day to his colored preacher, who takes it directly to the colored side of town himself.”

“My goodness!” Jackie said, “who dreamed this up?”

“I have no idea,” I replied.

“Wait—Mrs. Conroy is involved? Isn't that the same lady you said was nervous as a rat terrier?” Plain Jane asked.

“Well, she is,” I said, blushing a little at my unkind characterization. “She also has a heart of gold. And she belongs to one of the white churches that is trying to help the Negroes.”

“Never mind all that, have you actually met Dr. King?” Jackie asked, wide-eyed.

“No,” I said. “But I know I helped feed him whenever he was in Jackson.”

“Oh, Dora, I am so proud of you,” Mrs. Bailey White gushed.

“What else did you do?” Plain Jane asked.

I paused and thought about it. “I noticed in Jackson that I hadn't seen any groups like our book club—you know, white
people who welcomed a black person to join,” I said. “I don't see that kind of socializing go on between the races there at all. So every time I meet a new person in Jackson, I find a way to tell them all about our Priscilla and how smart she is, that we were in a book club together and now she's studying at Bethune-Cookman College.”

“How is that supposed to change things?” Jackie asked.

“Are you kidding? That's the best way to make change happen!” Plain Jane cried. “By pointing out that she is friends with a black person, and that the black person is someone she likes and admires!”

“Oh, brother,” Jackie said. “If that's progress, it'll only take a hundred years.”

•  •  •

THERE WAS ENOUGH TENSION IN
the air to fry a rabbit so we went to our separate corners. Mrs. Bailey White made some kind of excuse and disappeared into her kitchen, where she puttered about doing this and that; Plain Jane attended to the baby (we could hear her cooing, her voice echoing in high pitches down the staircase); Jackie went outside to clean the windshield of her car and have a smoke; and I went into Mrs. Bailey White's paneled library. Studying her books, taking them down one by one, was soothing. What is it about books? They are like old friends.

About an hour later, Mrs. Bailey White rounded us up like she was Mother Goose and we, her little goslings. She asked that we return to the parlor. Once there, she announced, “Now, girls, let's focus on Dora, and what she learned about her family, if anything, on her trip.” To me, she said kindly, “Take your time, dear.”

I cleared my throat. “Well,” I began slowly, “as you know, I
always wondered why I was named after a well-known writer from Mississippi, and figured Mama may have been friends with Eudora Welty, or maybe even kinfolk. Or maybe Mama had just been an admirer. But I realized that the first thing I should do is read all of her books. Miss Welty's, I mean. I read
The Robber Bridegroom
on the bus on the way to Mississippi. Once I got settled I read everything I could get my hands on. And frankly it made me a little uneasy. Because Miss Welty's writing is a little off-putting at times. Intimidating.”

“Well, that one is especially eerie,” Plain Jane interjected. “Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.”