Stella by Starlight (11 page)

Stella glanced around. More than a few men were
looking down at the floor, shifting in their seats, her father included.

Pastor Patton continued, “All of us have heard about the recent possible threats from the Klan. Are you afraid?” He waited. Nothing. He raised his voice. “I'm asking again—ARE YOU AFRAID?”

Still, nobody spoke up. Mothers looked away to tend to children, and fathers cleared their throats and picked dirt from their fingernails. The same people who, just a few hours before, had been laughing and joking now looked taut and strained.

The pastor then said, his voice gentle, “If you are afraid, then those who foster hatred will win. Is that what you want?”

Stella could feel the tension in the room.

“People of Bumblebee, we have a presidential election coming up next month. This is the year 1932, children. The modern world is upon us. Telephones! Airplanes! Radios! Who knows what will be invented next? I, for one, am excited to be a part of whatever is comin' around the corner.” The preacher narrowed his eyes. “How many of us are registered to vote? How many are brave enough to try?”

Old ladies began to fan themselves as if it were the middle of summer. Feet shuffled in place. Pastor Patton, arms raised so his robe looked like wings, reminded Stella of Spoon Man's eagle—perched and waiting.

“I shall be going into Spindale tomorrow morning,” he told them. “And I'm fixin' to register to vote. I will be at the voter registration office at nine a.m. when it opens. Anybody who wants to come with me is welcome. I am a man. Amen. Amen.”

With that, he sat down. The entire congregation sat stock-still, stunned. Then Sister Hawkins jumped up, called the choir forward, and led them quickly into the old spiritual, “Go Down, Moses.” After a shaky start, the altos started harmonizing mellow and deep.

“Go down, Moses

Way down in Egypt's land

Tell old Pharaoh to

Let my people go!”

After one last short prayer, church was quickly dismissed. Usually there was a lot of handshaking and
friendly conversation after service, but today everyone hurried out, grabbing their children and rushing to their own homes.

As her family climbed into the wagon, Stella dared to ask, “What are
you
gonna do, Papa?”

“I'm not sure yet, Stella girl,” he replied. “What do you think, Georgia?”

“I think I trust every inch of you, Jonah Mills. So I trust you'll make the right decision.” Stella's mother sat up tall on the wagon seat, her gaze focused straight ahead.

“What's the sense of living if you're ashamed of yourself?” Stella's father said almost to himself. Then he gave the mule's reins a slap, and they were off.

18

Later that afternoon Stella could hear the raw sounds of chopping and hacking, the pounding of ax against wood. She glanced out of the window in time to see her father cleave a log into three separate pieces, which he then heaved onto a growing woodpile.

“What you doin', Papa?” she asked, coming out to the porch.

“What's it look like?” he answered gruffly, never losing his rhythm.

“You angry, Papa?” she asked hesitantly.

“Anger never fixed nothin',” her father replied, picking up another fat log.

Thwop! Crack! Brack! Thunk!
He attacked the wood relentlessly. Sweat stained the back of his work shirt.

“Know what I think?” Stella said after a few minutes of watching him hack at the wood.

“What?”

“I think it's really hard to be a tree.”

“Huh?” Her father paused to wipe his forehead. “Girl, you always got some strange way of talkin' about stuff. What do you mean?”

“A tree starts out thin and small, sort of like . . .” She thought for a moment, then said triumphantly, “Like Jojo. Then it gets tall and strong and green, like
you
, Papa.”

He scratched his head. “And?”

“And then, then it's old and gets chopped up for firewood. That's pretty sad.” She picked up a split log and walked it over to the stacked wood.

“Maybe,” Papa said, leaning on the ax. “But that woodpile over there is now home to mice and bugs and snakes. And it's just waitin' to keep
us
warm. Everything's got its place and time. You gotta look at the big picture, girl.”

Stella felt a little befuddled. “Seems like I can
never
find the big picture, Papa.”

“If it makes you feel any better, grown-ups often
ain't got the slightest idea what they're doing either!” her father said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “We just figure it out one day at a time. C'mon, let's get ready for supper.”

At dinner her parents were oddly quiet, and Stella could tell that tensions were swelling. As soon as he finished his apple pie, Papa grabbed his newspapers, sat down in his favorite chair, and began reading intently.

Jojo headed out to the front yard with the dog, a couple of horseshoes in hand. The familiar ping of steel against steel soon echoed back to the silent house. A look from her mother let Stella know she needed to disappear for a bit as well, and she was glad to do so.

She made for the back door, but spun around and quickly grabbed the notebook and a pencil from under her pillow, glancing briefly at a faded story about the cotton crop on the wall. She sat on the stoop, listening to the voices of her parents rising and falling like stormy winds. Their disagreements were so rare that the world felt a little tilted. But how to write that down and explain it? She had no clue. How do the people who write the newspaper articles find the right words to print?

Stella opened her notebook reluctantly. She thought
about Papa's tree cutting, and the trees from the forest that had stood there probably for centuries. Her thoughts skittered between eagles that learned to fly, and men who were scared to jump off that stump, and Moses who said, “Let my people go.” She leaned over and wrote just one word.
Trees
.

She wrote a few sentences. Scribbled them out. Wrote one more. Bit her pencil. Wrote three more—scratched out two.
Dust becomes words.
Hey, that was not so bad. Scrawled out a whole paragraph. Erased half of the next one. What was left was not so bad at all, she decided.

The sun grew golden, then rusty as it slipped slowly toward the horizon. Then, out of the blue, a gaggle of silvery geese erupted from the reeds at the pond's edge, honking and swirling in circular disorder. Stella went instantly alert. What had them all riled up? A fox? It wasn't more of those men, was it? Then she heard a crackling of underbrush—or was it just the random movement of the fallen leaves? There was no way to be sure, but Stella decided not to take any chances. She hurried back into her house, pulled the back door shut, and locked it.

19

TREES

At the lumber mill they chop up trees that end up getting turned into furniture and houses.

Pine trees.

Walnut trees.

Oak and hickory.

Willow is my favorite.

There must be dozens of different kinds of trees in the woods in the back of our house. Each kind is different—some with fat leaves, some with leaves that bloom, some with spikes or needles.

I wonder what kind of tree I would need
if I wanted to build a boat. Or what tree would be best for a bow and an arrow. And how do you figure that out?

How do you know which trees have fruit that is good for you and which fruit will
pioson
poison you? I would hate to be the first person to try.

At the mill, Papa says they take the sawdust and turn that into paper. Those big old trees become books and notebooks and newspapers.

Dust becomes words. I like that.

20

Two nights later Stella woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Jojo screaming. “Not again!” she cried, scrambling out of bed.

“Help!” Jojo shouted, flinging the back door open, racing into the house. “Help!”

Mama, her hair wrapped in paper-bag curlers, and Papa, grabbing his shotgun from above the mantel, reached Jojo just as Stella did.