“Mr. Cools died, Zora,” I said. “He died. What could there be at his house that would change that fact?”
“Some proof or some sign of the thing that keeps him alive!”
Zora was incomprehensible to me at that moment. She was hopeful, manically so. At first, profound frustration filled me, but that was quickly overtaken by a grief so strong it was physical.
This was really about her mother.
Since the grave robbery, an image had been flashing in my mind over and over: the body of Mr. Cools being thrown into the box of a cheap wagon with less care than a sack of potatoes or squash. Worse, his body always landed atop another body — my daddy’s.
So restarted my well-worn roll of questions: Had some drunken fool pushed my father into a ditch? Had he gotten into an accident in some remote field, and no one around knew who he was, let alone how to find his family? Or did he eat some food that had spoiled, tried to sleep it off, but never awoke? Thinking him lazy or drunk instead of worthy of a second look, the camp packed up, moved on, and left my father in desperate need of help or already dead.
Of course, I would have done anything to save my own father if I could. And, in my imagination, I did. No matter how many different versions of my father’s resurrection I told myself over the years, however, they inevitably led back to the most probable fact of all: death.
And suddenly I knew what was driving Zora, what this was really all about. And I could not let her face it alone.
“I’ll go with you to Mr. Cools’s house,” I said. “I’ll go.” In some form or another, Death and Zora were formally introducing themselves to each other.
The broken window on Mr. Cools’s cabin had been covered with a flimsy yellowing sheet. The turnip patch had withered. The split-rail yard that had seemed too big for one mule now appeared too small for any mules without Girly there to recommend it. And Mr. Cools’s famous peach tree hung so heavily with fruit that a few branches had snapped. Large fuzzy globes rotted, scattershot, on the ground.
“I thought that the tree would be picked clean,” I said. People and animals don’t agree on much in frontier country except for what’s safe to eat. Apparently, the fruit on Mr. Cools’s tree had gone from universally coveted to universally cursed.
Zora approached the door to the cabin, turned the knob, and pushed. It was open. I stepped in beside her, and we peered around the room. A cot was posted against one wall, and a cooking hearth and a makeshift sink stood against the other. Drab, commonplace. Right inside the door were the things that Mr. Cools had used to build his barricade: the chair, the table, the trunk.
“I don’t know what I thought we’d find here,” Zora said in self-reproach. The question was more for herself than for me, so I said nothing. “I’m sorry, Carrie,” she said, “let’s get out of here. I’m sorry.”
We turned to go. That’s when I saw the obvious. “What about this thing?” I asked, tapping the trunk with my foot.
It was as if we were seeing the trunk for the first time. “My, this thing is grand-looking,” said Zora. “Nicer than that toothpick coffin Mr. Cools was buried in.”
Tooled leather straps straddled the rich oak steamer like a harness. The brass corner bumps and the silver lock plate and the draw bolts looked fit for a suit of armor. Zora unhitched the lock plate and began to lift the lid, then abruptly let it drop closed with a bang.
“It’s too cramped and dark in here to see,” she said, grabbing one handle. I grabbed the other handle, and we dragged the trunk out over the cabin’s threshold. In the sunlight, the steamer’s metal accents gleamed and floral engravings were now visible on the lock plate. Zora lifted the domed lid all the way open this time. My mouth and nose were filled with the odors of metal and rust and ancient wood and blood. An ivory brocade cloth covered in tea stains was the first thing we saw. Zora lifted the fabric from its resting place. Dust plumed. I choked and coughed. Unaffected, Zora knelt before the trunk. It was a few moments before I could kneel beside her.
It was a few more before I figured out what we were looking at: a camera. A metal cylinder jutted out of a wooden box like a tentacle topped off with an eyeball. Mahogany and rectangular, the elegant machine practically stretched the entire length of the steamer. It was strange enough that Mr. Cools had owned such an ornate trunk. It was stranger yet for him to own a camera. Cameras were expensive, celebrated, rare objects. White photographers didn’t often allow Negroes into their studios. Negro photographers traveled to satisfy the demand. As a photographer in Eatonville, Mr. Cools could have been one of the most prosperous men in town. He chose not be. Why?
“Do you think it was his?” I asked. “Do you think he knew how to use it?”
“Maybe.” Zora reached inside the steamer. “There’s a lot more stuff in here besides.” She pulled out a handful of tintypes and separated them into a few random piles on the ground.
The picture leading the first set was of a wedding party posed before a stone church. Under that was a portrait of the newlyweds at the altar. The groom stood with one hand possessively placed on his seated bride’s shoulder. A portrait of the bride alone followed. Her face was dead center, and the white frilly collar sprouting around her chin gave her an air of frivolity her eyes didn’t brook.
“Goodness,” I said, “we worked ourselves up over an old camera and some pictures. Over nothing.”
“Look at this one.” Zora held up the next picture in the series, a landscape. A grassy expanse dried and hardened into a rocky sea cliff. The sepia sky, at the horizon, seemed to drown in a black sea. And on the cliff, which drew to a sharp edge, the lines and the placing of the rocks formed something that resembled a contorted face. Zora laid the portrait of the bride beside the sea cliff. “Do you see that?” she asked, pointing to the rock and then back to the bride. “It looks like her. You think someone carved her face there?”
“It’s possible,” I answered. “It could also be an optical illusion.” I liked the way those words sounded and was surprised to find they were mine. So was Zora.
“You sound just like Teddy,” she said, and picked up another group of pictures. Initially anyway, she was disappointed by one of a large brick house with lovely wide eaves and ornamental brackets. The climate pictured looked cooler than anywhere in Florida. Groves of mature, bare trees stood in the spacious front and side yards. A coal-black lawn jockey stood beside the gate of a white picket fence.
The next picture was of a white family at the house. It must have been spring or summer; leaves cloaked the trees. A heavyset woman and a bearded man sat in chairs while a girl and boy who looked a flutter younger than us stood behind them. The woman’s eyes were set close, and her mouth was a bow. The man’s heavy brows and beard veiled much of his face. The boy was looking far off at something beyond the camera. The girl was staring deep into the camera’s mechanical eye. On the porch, several yards behind the family grouping, two black people lingered: a woman with a broom and a boy about Teddy’s height.
In the next one, the bearded man was gone and the lady of the house posed on the steps with the girl and boy. The rippling force of the woman’s sorrow swept her face up into her wide sunken eye sockets. The son’s unfocused gaze hardened to match the flat, iron gray of his Confederate uniform. All the while, the girl had ripened. Undertones brightened her now-plump face. More than healthy, she looked beautiful. The black people remained in the background, on the porch. The kerchiefed woman’s shoulders were gathered up into her neck as if from the chill of a prolonged fright. The boy was a man now, and his gaze bore into the family’s backs. He ached to express something.
In the next picture, that same young man hung from a sycamore in that same yard, his body streaked with blood, tattered clothes clinging to his body. The straightest, most horrible line I ever saw in my life was that hangman’s rope stretching from a thick branch of the tree all the way down to the back of the man’s head, where it neatly coiled around his neck like a rattler. Below the effigy, six men we
aring Confederate uniforms stood in a half ring, smiling. My imagination colored their eyes tidewater green.
The next image, for a few seconds, offered respite. A small butter-skinned black boy in a striped shirt stood holding a large book to his chest. Behind him a pair of large doors, partially open, could be seen. Through the gap, one could spot a white square of tablecloth and the dark head of someone sitting at the table. I focused on that head and gasped when I recognized it, the black in the breach. The faceless, living darkness from my nightmare was seated at that table. Spellbound, Zora touched the blot, then quickly pulled her fingers away. Her fingertips were stained with a blue-black stickiness, like the slime of a dark worm. Zora flung the photo away. It landed, soundlessly, amid the rotting fruit on the ground.
We fled, but in our bones, we felt that those scenes stamped on tin still had business with us.
The front door was open. Mrs. Hurston stood at the mirror in the hazy foyer, pinning a silver comb in her hair. Suddenly she bent over and had a coughing fit. Her head jerked and the silver comb glinted like a shooting star. Zora hurried in to her mother’s side. Sarah rushed from the kitchen. “Mama, let us help you. Mama, sit. What are you doing up? Mama, Mama, Mama . . .”
“It’s just the smoke from the solarium,” Mrs. Hurston managed, trembling. “Your father’s in there with Mr. Calhoun and East. Really, I’m all right,” she said. “I am.” She wasn’t all right. Nothing was. Then Lucy Hurston spotted the black stain on Zora’s hand.
“What’s that?” Her eyes jumped from Zora’s hand to Zora’s face. She took in Zora’s unkempt hair, her sweaty dress, and crooked socks — one up at her knee, the other bunched down around her ankle. Mrs. Hurston looked to my equally disheveled appearance for confirmation that something was amiss.
“What’s that on your hand?” she asked again. “Whatever happened?”
Zora told the truth and lied at the same time: “This is just some smudged ink,” she said, holding up her hand. “We’ve been running and it’s hot, so the sweat must have made it run. That’s all.”
Sarah, probably sensing that her little sister was holding something back and wanting her to keep it that way, interrupted: “The both of you go wash up for supper, please.”
The interruption worked. “Yes,” Mrs. Hurston said. “Go clean up. We have guests.”
In the washroom, Zora cleaned the ink off her hand and we put ourselves together as best we could.
Back in the kitchen, we found Sarah glancing from platter to platter on the sideboard, making sure the meal was ready to put on. She was wearing an ivory frock fitted at the waist, and her rum-colored face glowed. Her dark eyes — intelligent, attentive, steady — were also sweet. Her spiraled braid, piled high and neat, resembled a black blossom. Sarah might have been in her own home, but she had appointed herself with style and grace enough for a fine dining room, in Savannah, in Charleston, in New Orleans.
She handed me a platter of okra. “Carrie, please take this out to the table. I’m going to get everyone. We’re ready.”
Reverend Hurston delivered a short prayer. We took our seats and he served himself first. East sat beside Sarah. Everett glared at East. At the other end of the table, Mrs. Hurston passed the okra without serving herself any. Zora spooned some off her plate onto her mother’s.
“Try and eat something, Mama. Please,” Zora begged.
John Hurston derided his daughter. “I don’t know why you think you can tell anyone anything. Not with the way you bought yourself a month’s worth of detention on the first day of school. I’d like to put my foot in your behind when I think of the way I’m gonna have to grovel at Brazzle’s feet tomorrow when he pays your mother a house call.”
Mr. Calhoun flashed a look at Zora, then spoke up, clearly disapproving of John Hurston’s tone: “I took no pleasure in punishing you today,” Mr. Calhoun said to Zora. “However, I do want to impress upon you that it’s never in your best interest to act beneath your character. In fact, I would say striking someone and groveling are two types of behavior that are beneath anyone’s character. Anyone’s.”
East smiled goofily. “Not mine. Some days I strike my horse.” No one thought his joke was funny. Sarah looked a little embarrassed. “Other days I grovel at her nose, feeding her handful after handful of oats. I’ve saved enough money though that I could purchase two motor carriages if I sent her to the glue factory.” East’s eyes landed on Mr. Hurston. “My business has been going so well that I can now afford to buy an automobile.”
“Oh, has it?” Mr. Hurston asked, genuinely interested — not in East, but in money.
East’s gray-and-white-striped shirt narrowed his chest into a washboard, straight and strong. “Sir, it has,” he declared proudly.
East’s bland talk had helped to settle Zora. Respect for her schoolmaster, if not remorse for her actions, had likely weakened the wall of defenses she had erected against her father. I watched Mr. Hurston observe this. Any consolation Zora felt encouraged him to keep picking at her.
“You didn’t make Stella feel bad about what she said,” he sneered. “You made Stella Brazzle dislike you more. I can’t say that I blame the poor girl.”
“Stella said that Mr. Cools should have shot me, Daddy!” Zora snapped back. “I’m in no competition for her affection!”
“You will be tomorrow. When Doc Brazzle comes by here, you’re going to say you’re sorry.”
Fury lowered Zora’s voice: “I’m not apologizing for anything. Stella deserved what she got. What I don’t deserve is you taking her side over mine.”
“Right. I’m on her side.” Mr. Hurston laughed balefully. “I just provide the clothes on your back and the food in your stomach. Attacking the doc’s daughter while your mama is sick is a new low, even for you.”
Mrs. Hurston looked far from well. She looked like she could cut somebody, namely her husband. “There’s no need for Brazzle tomorrow or anytime,” she said. “I trust Old Lady Bronson. She’s the one with my confidence.”
“Why?” His wife’s bias, more than her animosity toward him, wounded Mr. Hurston’s pride. “Brazzle attended medical school. Where’d Old Lady Bronson learn? In the slave quarters?” He mocked the very ancestors that helped to make his prosperous life possible.
“I’ve attended college.” Mr. Calhoun wasn’t boasting. Rather, he was presenting facts. “Yet Lucia Bronson has the only complete set of natural science encyclopedias I’ve ever seen in my life, including alchemical texts. There are many ways to acquire an education, a meaningful education, outside of formal schooling.”
The schoolmaster had scored one on the man of God: Mr. Hurston had never spent one hour in a schoolhouse as a student. He’d grown up the illegitimate, illiterate, half-white stepson of a coal-black, jealous sharecropper, who paradoxically whipped John Hurston out of his own self-loathing. Since his stepfather wanted him beat down so badly, John Hurston figured he had it within himself to stand tall and reach high. And he was loved tenderly by his mother. John’s confidence propelled him to seek life outside the town his white father owned and beyond the patch of dusty rocks his stepfather rented.
In the next county, across the creek, colored folks thrived. There, John Hurston began his search for prosperity, at Notasulga Baptist. Colored with some means and valid insurance policies worshipped there, including the Potts family, who owned ten acres outright. A man earns credibility when a smart, pretty girl with plenty of choices casts her lot with him. So it went with John Hurston.
Smaller than the other girls, Lucy Potts strutted and sang in the choir. Brighter than the other girls, she taught Sunday school. John Hurston dutifully courted the thirteen-year-old with candy, dolls, and ribbons. In return, Lucy Potts did much more for John Hurston than hail from a successful family. At Sunday school, she taught him how to read. Her instruction had made the man he would become possible.
“Every town and every village is its own school,” John Hurston said defensively. “The lessons I get fro
m them educates me on what matters most: what’s in people’s hearts. Otherwise I don’t know what I’d have to say on Sundays. Lord God knows I miss the road.”
“When we got married,” Lucy reminisced, calling up for her husband a picture of their youth, “I told you, John — and I know you remember it, too — You cross the creek, that’s good and all. But what you gonna do after that?”
In answer, Mr. Hurston counted the feathers in his cap. “Honey, I moved us to Eatonville. I became a carpenter, then a reverend. I’ve gained the respect of believers across three states. I have hundreds, maybe thousands, of parishioners. What more,” he asked, “is there left for me to do besides stay black and die?”
“A vigil for Terrace Side,” Lucy Hurston said. “That one’s for you and only you.”
“Yes. It’s a shame that it has to be done at all,” he said.
“But there’s more than that that needs doing,” she said.
“But I’m only one man,” John Hurston answered, smiling.
“That might be,” his wife replied, “but you’re the right man.”
“The right man for what?”
“Joe Clarke’s third six-year term is up in a month,” Lucy Hurston answered. “He’s been mayor since the incorporation of Eatonville eighteen years ago. In those eighteen years, Eatonville has never had an election because no one has ever run against Joe. I think the town is ready for a change. You’re ready. Run for mayor, John.”
Lucy Hurston rightly suspected her husband would do for the town what she could not depend on him to do for the family. Stay put. He leaned back, giddy at the possibility of a new triumph. Everett looked on blankly as if fair weather were being discussed. Sarah’s smile stretched from her mother’s end of the table to her father’s. East’s face mirrored Sarah’s. The effort made the young handsome man look alien. Zora alone scowled, stunned. She had never much cottoned to living in her father’s house. How could she bear to live in her father’s town? Mr. Calhoun, our teacher, understood that, and more.
Zora and Me: The Summoner Page 6