The hoots softened. The music wound down. To all those in the water and on the embankment, Mr. Hurston boomed, “John the Baptist, at the river Jordan, told the crowds that ‘even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’ The ax was at our roots here in Eatonville for longer than we knew. We are now in the fire, the purifying fire of change. For as John the Baptist prophesied, a mightier one is coming. He is already here and ‘his winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor.’ May we prove that we are not chaff. May we avoid, with the water of baptism, the ‘unquenchable fire’ that threatens to destroy us.”
Bo Wilson, knee-deep in water, stepped out from the crowd. He stretched his arms at his sides and flung back his head. His Adam’s apple quivered. Folks linked hands.
In a beautiful falsetto, Bo Wilson sang out the benediction:
“Deep river,
My home is over Jordan.
Deep river,
I want to cross over into campground.
Oh, don’t you want to go
To the Gospel feast;
That Promised Land
Where all is peace?
Oh, deep river, Lord,
I want to cross over into campground.
Deep river, Lord,
Help John Hurston protect our home.”
The next morning, I found Zora sitting at the foot of the Loving Pine. The crate lid she used as a writing desk was in her lap, but she wasn’t writing.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” I said.
“Do I look like I’m doing anything besides waiting for you?” Zora stood and opened her arms. “Come over here.” We hugged, hard. I broke down sobbing on account of Teddy. “Carrie, Carrie, Carrie,” Zora said, with such tenderness and understanding that I felt my personhood to be real and alive again for the first time in days.
We released each other. All I could say was, “It was good to see you and your mother yesterday. I’ve missed you.”
“I doubt Mama will be able to get out of bed today.” Zora shook her head in helpless anger. “She shouldn’t have gone to the vigil, but she pretended to be able to do it for my father’s sake.” Her bitterness was palpable. “Pretending isn’t helping her get well. It’s not helping anyone, in fact, except my father and his bid for mayor. There’s going to be a meeting at the post office about the mayoral race. My father and Joe Clarke have agreed to it.”
I said, “You think your father will win, don’t you?”
“I do,” she answered, and the idea of her father’s triumph troubled her.
Those two words again. I do. The future happiness that I had cavalierly assumed was mine to share with Teddy, like so many things, might never come to pass. Over the past few days, Teddy had been too ill to receive visitors and, of all things, I regretted not being able to tell him about Mr. Cools’s trunk. But I could tell Zora what Teddy had said about Mr. Cools’s body.
“Right before Teddy fell sick, he told me something about Chester.”
“What did he tell you?”
“When he helped Doc Brazzle prepare Chester for burial, he saw that Chester’s body was riddled with wounds and scars. He said there was an old bullet still in him and that there were burn marks on his throat. It looked like . . .”
“Yes?” Zora egged me on.
“It looked like people had tried to kill Mr. Cools a long time ago, even that, by rights, he should have died years earlier.”
A flame of recognition blazed in Zora’s eyes. “My God, Carrie!” she blurted out. “My God!” The thing that surprised me most was that I had already thought, before her, the very thing she was thinking. Only, unlike Zora, I didn’t actually believe it.
Zora pieced the incredible details of the strange life and death of Chester Cools together. “I think the man that got lynched in that picture was Chester Cools. That would explain the burn scars on his neck. That was the first time he died. . . .
“And that explains his empty grave,” Zora then answered her own follow-up question. “Mr. Cools has survived death twice now! I think I know something about how he did it, too.”
My jaw dropped to my ankles. “You do?”
“Remember how ink from that picture in Mr. Cools’ trunk got on my hand? If everything in Mr. Cools’s trunk was decades old, going back to before the war, how could there have been wet ink in there? I don’t think that stuff was regular ink. I think that dark sticky stuff has something to do with how Mr. Cools survived! In fact, I’m sure it does!”
My God, I thought, my nightmare. The roving darkness that had presented itself to me in sleep — the same darkness I had seen stare out at me from the picture — had actually reached out to touch Zora in life. Zora must have seen the loathsome revelation wash over me, because she winced. “What is it, Carrie?”
I trembled. “That dark stuff from the tintype. I’ve seen it before.”
“You have?” Dread made Zora’s voice sound hoarse.
“In a nightmare. It was coming after me. That’s what I thought, anyways. Now I’m not so sure. . . .”
I knew that what I had to say next would hurt Zora, but she would have gotten it out of me, one way or another. “I think,” I continued, “that the darkness was looking for you.”
Zora was quiet for a moment. “Since the ink touched me,” she said, “I’ve felt a cold numbness inside. Not all the time, but it’s there, inside of me. Growing.” Zora shivered contritely. I took her hand.
I wanted to say, There’s nothing inside of you truly dark. You’re a seeker, Zora, a finder. But because answers are often found in the dark, in the cold, that’s what you’ll feel. I wanted to say that. And I wanted to say, We all have dark, cold places inside of us. Instead, I closed my eyes, welling with tears, and shook my head.
“Deep down, I don’t know if I’m blessed or cursed,” she said, sad and weary. “My daddy says this place is for the elect, the chosen. Is that why I don’t want to stay here? Because I don’t belong?”
“You’re a blessing,” I assured Zora, “a blessing.” Tears rolled down Zora’s face now. I touched my forehead to hers, and we cried together. “I’m not sure the world out there deserves you,” I declared. “If the town chooses your father to be mayor, I’m not sure Eatonville deserves you, either.”
In appearance and utility, Eatonville’s white clapboard post office was a cross between a church and a store. Folks posted letters there, which very often felt like sending up a prayer: the letter disappeared, and responses were never guaranteed. People didn’t purchase goods at the post office, but they picked up their Sears and Roebuck catalogs and parcels there, which could feel almost like an answered prayer.
Well trafficked and neutral, the post office was the perfect site for a town meeting. It didn’t belong to one man, like the church seemed to belong to John Hurston or like Joe Clarke’s store belonged to Joe Clarke. The post office belonged to the town.
Mr. Johnson, as the postmaster general, accepted the duty of putting on an event where information about the upcoming election would be shared and folks could hear a few words from each of the candidates. Chairs were set up outside in front of the post office, and drums of lemonade set out on the porch to make the event a proper assembly. Two podiums were placed facing the rows of chairs. Between the podiums, a small table held a sweaty pitcher of water and two glasses.
When Micah and Daisy Baker arrived, Daisy hugged and kissed me and Mama, just like we were family. Micah looked exhausted but at ease, happy.
“I have good news, Carrie,” he said. “Teddy ate a little today and is sitting up. I don’t think it will be long before you can go by and see for yourself how he’s doing.”
“Really?” My eyes welled with tears of relief.
“Yes. And that’s not all. Teddy’s gonna be an uncle.” Micah patted Daisy’s belly then, and his obvious glee made a pun irresistible. “My wife and I have a little Baker in the oven!”
Dai
sy placed her hand on top of Micah’s. “Oh, I love you,” she cooed.
“That’s wonderful!” Mama exclaimed, grasping a hand with each of hers. The gesture was as much a way of congratulating the pair as it was an attempt to touch their happiness, to claim even a small measure of it. For the first time since Teddy had taken ill, I felt like I could truly breathe again.
The news of a baby generated a sudden makeshift receiving line, folks eager to latch on to something uncontroversial, something they could all easily agree on.
Joe Clarke joined in, shaking Micah’s hand and embracing Daisy.
“I hear your little brother’s much better,” Mr. Clarke said to Micah.
“Yes,” Micah said warmly. “My parents are more grateful to you than their worry has allowed them to say. Thank you so much for the steady stream of supplies.”
“I’m glad that Teddy’s improved.” Mr. Clarke barely paused to glance at me before saying, “He’s mighty important to some very special people in this town.”
Austin Johnson walked among the gathering folk like a nervous host. His glasses kept slipping down his sweaty nose. The sound of an approaching engine got everyone’s attention. John Hurston had arrived, chauffeured by his eldest son in a shell-white horseless, open-roofed and gleaming. Mr. Hurston exited the grand vehicle jauntily, knocked on its shiny hood with a friendly fist, and then surveyed the scene.
Where had such a fine horseless come from? Was John Hurston suddenly rich? With a proud, wide-legged stance, he let the grand machine transform him from the Eatonville man we thought we knew into the type of worldly man men aspire to be.
Joe Clarke ambled up the center aisle to stand behind one of the two podiums. John Hurston’s gaze met him there. An uncommonly decent man, Joe Clarke showed common courtesy.
“Hello, John,” he said.
“Why, hello to you, Joe.” John Hurston strutted up to the other podium, knocked on it like he had the gleaming horseless, then gazed skyward, as if he were delivering up a prayer. Then he slowly promenaded around the makeshift arena. We surveilled John Hurston surveilling us.
Lucy Hurston broke the spell by leading her children to the seats Austin Johnson had reserved for them in the front row. John Hurston finally took his place behind his podium. Mr. Johnson adjusted his glasses again before calling, “Take your seats, folks. Please, take your seats. We’re going to begin.”
Folks shuffled about and parked their behinds. Others settled silently where they were situated. Before long, an assembly of upright backs and attentive eyes had composed itself. The town’s entire civic body seemed to be holding its breath.
Mr. Johnson exhaled, perhaps on behalf of us all, and began: “Friends and fellow citizens, because we have only had one mayor in the eighteen years since our dear town was founded, the election on Saturday will be Eatonville’s first. I also reckon this will be the first time many of you, including me, have voted in any election, let alone one of such consequence. Voting will take place here at the post office from sunrise through sundown. You’ll be required to have your name recorded in a log in order to cast your vote, but your vote itself will be private. We flipped a coin when the candidates agreed to this presentation. John Hurston won the toss and chose to let Joe Clarke open the floor. Joe, whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you, Austin,” Mr. Clarke said. “And thank you, everyone, for being here. It has been an honor to be the mayor and marshal of Eatonville for eighteen years. I’d like to share with you how Eatonville came to be, and my place in its founding.
“I grew up here in Florida, with Seminole and former slaves. We were taking care of each other, as we always had, when a white man who had fought for Lincoln’s army came here and decided to make his life. That man bought the land for this place from the United States government. Our town is named for that man, Josiah Eaton.
“After the war, in the terrible aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination, Mr. Eaton fought on behalf of Reconstruction, Lincoln’s unfulfilled dream. We would never get the forty acres and a mule we were promised from the United States government, but Mr. Eaton set out to do right by the freedmen the only way he knew how: by giving us an opportunity to truly shape our own destinies.
“Distrustful of white men and their money, the Seminoles that were here departed for the safety and isolation of the hard-going Everglades. Mr. Eaton shocked us remaining colored folks by rejecting the proposition that he should run the place. If he had become mayor, or hadn’t put the papers through to incorporate the town, this land, in the event of Mr. Eaton’s death, would have been inherited by his heirs. Aware that his days were numbered, Mr. Eaton, in the spirit of Reconstruction and his radical Republican roots, committed his legacy to the public good, not private gains. Mr. Eaton passed on before Eatonville celebrated its first birthday. And in the eighteen years that I’ve led this town since, like Eatonville itself, I’ve belonged to you, the people.”
If there were any sort of rules to this public encounter, John Hurston had no intention of following them. He pounced.
“Wouldn’t you agree that eighteen years is a long time, Joe, to heap praise on a white man?”
“Before Eatonville was a place on a map, or a place in all of our hearts,” Mr. Clarke countered, “it was the precious idea of a noble man committed to justice.”
“That’s the problem.” Mr. Hurston did more than sharpen his knife; he thrust it. “People are what matter, not ideas! How does your plan to expand the town of Eatonville expand the people of Eatonville? I don’t see it. I do see how it might expand you! I’ll give it to you, Joe — your ambition helped this town get its start. But that same ambition could be what’s now threatening it. . . . Terrace Side was lured here by Eatonville’s promise of invincibility, but he was followed here by lynch men who want to punish Eatonville for daring to exist and now to grow. Your ambition also couldn’t protect sacred ground from grave robbers or bring those resurrection men to justice. What is it your ambition can do for us today? Tell me. What is your ambition doing now besides wreaking havoc?”
An uncomfortable silence followed this condemnation, but I saw contempt bloom on my own mother’s face. She despised the reverend. He offended her Christian sense of right and wrong, of conscience. Mama had said she would have taken Terrace Side in if he had come to our door. Her expression announced that, given the chance, she would just as readily run John Hurston out of town.
Joe Clarke thundered, “You give strife a helping hand when you refuse to help people! I thought you were a reverend, open and generous. In reality, you’re a wrongheaded guard, amoral and mean!” At that line, my mother spontaneously clapped and called out, “Get ’im, Joe!”
Willie Mosely responded, “All right, Joe! All right!” John Hurston tensed.
Joe Clarke kept up his battle cry: “I believe that what happened with Terrace Side has only deepened my resolve on the soundness of expansion. Why would we shut our doors when the best way to protect ourselves is to grow, bigger and stronger, when how we ensure our survival as a place of promise and hope is to open our doors wider, to fortify ourselves by union and communion?”
Looking around at the faces of the crowd gathered, I didn’t see clear signs that Mr. Clarke was winning anyone over.
“What makes Eatonville great,” Joe Clarke continued, “is that, here, black people in a black town treat black people as we should be treated everywhere: as human beings! I want to expand this town so we can give more black women, more black men, more black children, more black babies, the opportunity to live as human beings — and the right to succeed or fail according to the quality of their efforts, not the color of the skin they were born in.
“You all know too well that no colored man in America can pursue and arrest a white man. You all know that the crime of the grave robbery, if I had pushed it, would have given whites a reason to murder me. Not that they needed another one, since running this town for eighteen years has been reason enough, I’m sure.”
Jo
hn Hurston flashed a barbarous smile. “But you’re still here, aren’t you? You’ve survived.”
“Yes, I’ve survived,” Mr. Clarke conceded, “but more importantly, this town has survived precisely because I have conducted Eatonville’s business under the rule of law. As flawed as it may be, the law is why Eatonville can and does exist. As far as I can figure it, the only way forward is to continue to use the law to argue for and achieve equality under it.”
The laws of white folks as being the only way is what frustrated, frightened folk chafed at. John Hurston capitalized on this. “And just where is God’s law in all of this, Joe? Not once have I heard you mention God’s holy protection, God’s law. Through this town’s recent misfortunes, I believe God has made clear to us that obedience to the ways and laws of white men — I daresay, your cowardice — will be our undoing. Your faith in the white man’s law is a curse, Joe — a curse we can finally throw off by voting you out of office. It’s time for a new leader. It’s time to abandon the destructive path of ambition and to reacquaint ourselves with the path of humility!”
Zora jumped from her seat. She had lived in her father’s house. She would not live in her father’s Eatonville. “Mr. Clarke is not a coward!” she objected. “And what do you even know about fear and courage, Daddy? You weren’t even here!” she reprimanded him. “Your own family had to fend for themselves! We did, too, with Joe Clarke’s help. He was there when a fugitive was on the loose. He was there when a bloodthirsty mob came through our town and into our houses. He was there when poor Chester Cools disappeared from his grave, a zombie unable to rest.”
There was an audible gasp from the assembly, murmurings of puzzled confusion. John Hurston, maybe not sure he had heard correctly, shot Joe Clarke a look. Joe Clarke hung his head. Zora, instead of taking her father down a notch, had served him, at last, the perfect ammunition to publicly denounce her and Joe Clarke.
Zora and Me: The Summoner Page 8