Shock at the realization of what she had just done stiffened Zora’s limbs. The life temporarily went out of her eyes.
“Oh, my child,” Mr. Hurston said. “Child of my flesh, but not of my spirit. You’ve been raised up, not on my knee like the rest of my children, but on the front porch of a merchant. You have rejected the love and guidance of a Christian household and embraced, instead, the superstitious nonsense of gossips, busybodies, and witch doctors.”
Mr. Hurston now looked directly at Joe Clarke. “What’s this about you seeing Chester Cools rise from the grave like a zombie?”
Mr. Clarke took a breath, knowing that it would take all the oratorical skill and patience he had to undo the slander that Reverend Hurston spoke aloud. “I did not see Chester Cools rise from the grave. Chester Cools was not a zombie.”
Zora looked at Joe, wounded and betrayed. Joe avoided her eyes.
“I’ve known Chester since the beginnings of this town,” he said. “For as long as I’ve known him, Chester insisted that he was . . . that he wasn’t . . . that he was unnatural. He thought he had died once, a long time ago, hanging from a tree, but had been brought back to life. Of course, I knew that to be impossible but didn’t press the matter, concerned as I was with how Chester might be treated if that sort of thing were spread around.
“I believe that he must have said something about zombies to Zora recently. His ravings,” Joe Clarke continued sadly, “are now threatening to destroy his memory.”
John Hurston unleashed his scorn. “Why would you think for a moment that any of us would ever have believed this nonsense about Chester? You think we’re children in this town. Always have. Unlike my poor, ignorant daughter, your neighbors are children of God. We know of a greater power than Joe Clarke and put our faith in Him. We always have. We always will. I believe this town is through with you, Joe Clarke,” John Hurston delivered calmly.
“That’s for the people of Eatonville to decide,” Joe Clarke said quietly, but I could tell he knew that the outcome had already been decided.
All this time, Zora was still standing numb, her eyes distant, already an exile far from home.
The next morning, since I couldn’t use both of my hands to carry it, Mama loaded the small pot of broth I made for Teddy into a wagon Zora and I had used to gather sticks when we were little. From my house to the Baker place was either a twenty-minute walk through the woods or a fifteen-minute walk along the road. Having learned that every minute counted where Teddy was concerned, I took the road.
Beneath a gauzy sky speckled blue, the morning was cool and fine. Situated near the road, a brick-red sign with white lettering announced the Baker place: RUBY STRETCH.
In an offering to nature Herself, Mrs. Baker had named the farm for the color of their first successful crops: radishes and rutabagas. The name stuck, even once root vegetables were no longer the foundation of the family’s business. Ruby was also a nod to the truest treasure in the Baker household: the lifeblood in their veins, the family itself.
Mr. Baker was not only the most prosperous farmer in Eatonville, but probably one of the most successful farmers, black or white, in north Florida. Mr. Baker had cottoned to plants the same way his son Teddy had cottoned to animals. Mr. Baker first gardened outside his grandmother’s clapboard shack when he was a boy. Before long he worked as a hired farmhand. After years of saving, he became a farm owner himself. The independence allowed him to experiment with seed grafting. Eventually, his efforts paid off tenfold. Mr. Baker invented a new strain of wheat-rye, as hardy as it was tasty and filling. Livestock favored it. Mr. Baker supplied farmers from California to Iowa with seed. His business thrived.
Then the return-of-payment demands started arriving. Some of his seed packages had never been delivered to the purchasers; others had been delivered empty. Mr. Baker suspected the post office in Maitland of sabotage. Some white farmers, learning of his tremendous success, were jealous and had devised a plan to destroy Ruby Stretch without pulling a trigger or lighting a match. Mr. Baker doubted that the post offices in Orlando or Jacksonville would be any better. So he hatched an ingenious plan, one that would both improve Eatonville and secure his seed business. He asked Joe Clarke to petition the government for a post office of Eatonville’s own. Mr. Clarke filed the necessary paperwork and Eatonville got its very own federal building.
Mr. Baker came down the path to meet me. A tall, brown-skinned man with a handsome, cinnamon-freckled face, he wore denim overalls over a white shirt and sported a pair of silver spectacles.
“Hello,” he said. “Micah came back on home after the gathering at the post office yesterday evening and said that we should expect you today. I see he wasn’t wrong.”
“I was the wrong one, sir,” I readily admitted. “I should have looked in on Teddy sooner, much sooner.”
Mr. Baker touched my arm. “You were right to stay away. You wouldn’t have been settled by what you saw and it wouldn’t have done Teddy any good. The last thing in the world he wants to do is upset you. How’s your hand?” he asked, pointing to the black fingerless glove I wore.
“It’s better,” I said. “I am, too, now, on account of your kind words.”
“They’re true.” Mr. Baker removed his glasses, gently folded the stems, and slipped them into the front pocket of his overalls. In another time and place, Mr. Baker would have stared through microscopes at tiny cells shaped like landmasses on a secret, invisible map of life. In another time and place, he might even have accepted prizes for his discoveries. In Eatonville, Florida, in 1905, we had a different name for scientists and businessmen, especially colored ones. Back then, we called them farmers.
Mr. Baker accompanied me all the way up to the house. Mrs. Baker appeared behind the screen door. “Why, hello, Carrie,” she said, holding the door open for me. “I think you’re just the sight for sore groggy eyes someone’s been yearning for.”
“I have broth here,” I said, retrieving the pot from the wagon.
Mrs. Baker smiled nostalgically. “Oh, I remember that old thing. You and Zora would come around here, taking turns pulling each other in that wagon. Before I know a thing, I look out the window and what I see?” She beamed at the thought of her little boy’s chivalry and selflessness: “Teddy pulling both you girls in the wagon. I never saw him sit in that thing. Not once.”
“Zora and I would play with our corn-husk dolls in here, too,” I added. “Teddy wore himself out pulling us and our dolls around the house, through the poplars, over to the fig trees, down to the road, and back.”
“Not many of us ever really outgrow the necessity of pulling the wagon, do we, of pulling others along that need it. That’s what we’re all gonna have to do for Teddy to get him better.” She looked at me with a sad, shepherding smile. “We’re gonna have to pull him along for a bit.”
I couldn’t answer, knowing that if I tried to say anything, I would probably start bawling.
“Head on in, Carrie. Teddy was awake when I left him a moment ago. I’ll take care of the broth.”
The Bakers were the only family I knew with a two-story house. The stairs faced the front door and along the staircase hung pictures of the family. A wedding photograph of Micah and Daisy reminded me of my manners. “Congratulations on the grandbaby,” I said, turning around. “You must be so happy.”
“We are. Now, go on,” she said, waving me toward the stairs. All along the wall of the staircase leading up to Teddy’s bedroom, tintypes of the Baker family hung. Suddenly I couldn’t bear to look at them, afraid that I might see some horrible black ink. I was most afraid that I would see it in pictures of Teddy, see it swallowing him up. I kept my eyes on my feet and silently chanted, Teddy is better! Teddy is better! Teddy is better! until I arrived at the top of the landing. At the end of the hallway, Teddy’s door was ajar and light spilled from his room into a little flickering puddle on the floor. I knocked.
“Come in,” he answered hoarsely.
I pushed the door. T
eddy smiled, but his appearance took my breath away. His lips were chapped from the effects of fever. His neck sparkled with the salt left over from his sweats. The coiled hair on his arms looked like it had been scorched. The fever had burned away the final remnants of Teddy’s boyishness.
“Hi there,” I managed to say. How long could I refrain from confessing that the breath in his body was the one thing keeping me alive? Ten minutes, ten seconds? “How you feeling?” I asked.
“Pretty bad. But I guess I must be better than I was. I heard I’ve been asleep for more than a week.”
I sat in the rocker at his bedside. On his nightstand, a Bible was open to Psalms. “Yes,” I said. “I’m happy that you’re awake now. Everybody is.”
“Including me,” Teddy said, chuckling wryly. Then he turned serious. “There’s so much still that I want to do in my life,” he said. “So much that I want to do with you, so much that I want to experience and be a part of. But I’m also not afraid to die.” Overnight, the young man had turned seasoned sage. “People are afraid to die, I think, because they’re scared to find out that, in the end, they’re just like everyone else. Everyone dies. In that, we are all exactly equal. Instead of pulling us together, that knowledge seems to rip us apart. It doesn’t make any sense.”
I moved over quickly to sit on the edge of the bed. “Oh, Teddy,” I blurted out, “I love you so. I never want to be parted from you. Ever.”
Teddy shifted over in the bed so I could lie down beside him. When he caught sight of my gloved hand, he gently took it in his hands, trying to detect broken bones without making me flinch.
“Don’t you remember?” I asked. “On the morning you fell ill, my hand started to crack and blister from dragging a load of linens home. The lye drying out my skin set me up for it, I guess. After you fainted, I went to fetch water for you but had trouble getting the well cap off. That hurt it worse. It’s better now. Ugly and tender, but better.”
“Can I see it?” Teddy asked.
I carefully removed the glove and turned my hand so it was palm up. A thick red gash crossed it, like a primitive insignia. I wondered if it would ever heal.
“Lord.” Teddy cradled my hand. “What you been putting on it?”
“Alder tree butter, like Old Lady Bronson said. It closed the wound and it don’t hurt none unless I press on it hard.”
“Then don’t,” Teddy begged. “Aloe should help with the scarring, so will letting air get to it. Why you wearing a glove?”
“’Cause I can’t bear the sight of it.”
“How ’bout tomorrow I look at it again for you and rub some aloe on it?”
I smiled without taking my hand from him. “You’re the patient today, not the doctor.”
“Helping somebody is the best medicine of all,” Teddy said, and I couldn’t disagree.
“Tell me about Joe Clarke and John Hurston,” he said. “What happened last night? Mama and Daddy stayed home with me, but Micah said he’d come by here afterward to give us a report. I was already asleep by the time he arrived, and this morning, my parents wouldn’t say a word. No, that’s not entirely true. Mama said, It’s not for you to worry about right now, Teddy. Daddy said, Listen to your mother.”
I giggled, then said more seriously, “Well, truth is, it was awful, Teddy, especially for Mr. Clarke and Zora. Trying to defend Mr. Clarke against her father, Zora let slip that she believed Chester Cools was a zombie.”
“Wait a second,” Teddy said, his disbelief solidifying into mortification. “You’re telling me that, last night, Zora told the whole town that she and Joe Clarke believe in zombies?”
“No, not Joe Clarke,” I said, “but it came out that Mr. Clarke has known Chester thought he was a zombie for as long as he’s run the town. Mr. Hurston had a way of making it sound like Mr. Clarke believed in zombies, on account of Joe thinking he needed to keep it a secret from everyone.”
“You mean that, for eighteen years, Joe Clarke knew that Chester imagined he was a zombie?” Teddy was flabbergasted.
“Yes.”
Teddy seemed to admire the willpower it must have taken to keep a secret like that.
“Besides that, Mr. Hurston practically disowned Zora, right there in front of everybody. Lucy Hurston’s been real bad off. I’m going to the Hurstons’ after I leave here.”
Teddy was stunned. “Mr. Clarke keeps a person’s confidence — for their own good, really — and now the town’s decided to lose all confidence in Mr. Clarke.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” I concurred.
“Well, I can tell you how my parents see the character of the two mayoral candidates. Joe Clarke has been out here quite a bit to check on me and bring things. I don’t think Mr. Hurston has been by once.”
“That might be because Lucy Hurston is not doing well.” I sighed. “Even before last night at the post office, Zora herself wasn’t doing so hot. Right before you got sick, she and I went back to Mr. Cools’s house, and I think that may have made everything worse.”
“Why did you go back there?”
“Do you remember seeing a trunk when you were there with Doc Brazzle to get Mr. Cools’s body?” I asked.
Teddy squinted through a persistent mental fog. “I can’t remember for sure. Why?”
“Do you remember the day at school when Zora and Stella got into a fight?”
“That’s a pretty hard thing to forget, Carrie.”
“Well, once Zora got out of detention, that was the same day she and I went back to Chester Cools’s place. I think being called a curse by Stella really got under her skin. I think she was determined to find proof that she wasn’t. Cursed, I mean. I think she expected we’d find proof that Chester Cools was, in fact, a zombie.”
“And did you find any?”
“Well, in a big fancy trunk, we found a camera and a lot of tintypes. One of them was of a lynched man.” My stomach turned at the memory of the gruesome image. “Zora is convinced that the lynched man in the picture is Chester.”
Teddy frowned. “I am, too,” I admitted. “It looks so much like him. And it would explain the scars you saw while preparing his body for burial.”
Teddy was quiet for a minute, thinking less about what he was going to say, I think, than about how he was going to say it. “Even if that picture is of Chester Cools,” he said gently, “and I’m not saying it is or it isn’t — people come close to death all the time and survive. Look at me. That’s basically what I just did from the sounds of it. Chester could have done the same. Chester could have been cut down from that tree. He could have been spared.”
I picked up the Bible and fingered it nervously.
“What is it, Carrie? There’s something else you’re not saying. I can tell.”
“On those tintypes,” I began. “Ink, but not ink. Something black and gooey, feeding on the images, the people. Some of it got on Zora’s hand. She told me that, since that day, she feels different, cold and filled with dread.”
“Did any of it get on you?” Teddy asked.
“No.”
“Sounds more to me like Zora is coming down with something,” he said, sounding practical, like a doctor, blaming the natural instead of the supernatural world. “And that it just happened to hit her on that day. Coincidence, Carrie.”
I said nothing.
“I hope it’s not whatever I’ve had,” Teddy added with false cheer.
“I hope not,” I said, to placate him and, maybe, myself. “Would you like me to read aloud to you?” I asked, indicating the Bible, changing the subject.
“That would be nice.”
Before I had settled on a passage, let alone read a single word, Teddy’s eyes shuttered closed. I was thankful beyond words that Teddy Baker had come through the flames of his illness intact. I hoped and prayed that Zora and Eatonville could survive their crucibles, too.
Along the road, out front the Hurston house, a fleet of automobiles, including John Hurston’s beautiful chariot, stood s
uspended like a petrified parade.
I opened and closed the gate and headed for the house. On the front porch, East was offering Sarah preemptive congratulations. “You’re going to be the daughter of the mayor! It’ll probably be a first for a colored girl, a first! Y’all Hurstons are like royalty.”
Under the weight of flattery, Sarah’s modesty crumbled. “You think so?” she asked.
Zora stepped out onto the porch. “Well, it is a title you’d share with me,” she said. Zora’s eyes were puffy. She had been crying. “Hi, Carrie.”
“Hey,” I responded. “Where did all the horselesses come from?”
“That gray one —” East pointed to a storm cloud of a Ford. “That’s mine and brand spanking new!”
“It’s real nice,” I said politely.
Zora rolled her eyes. “They all are nice,” she said, “even my father’s, which he made sure the whole town got a look at yesterday. But they’re just cars. It’s the people who rode up in them from Alabama and Georgia to kiss my father’s behind that are questionable.”
“Given how tender you’ve been with Mama, and given how hard last night must have been on you, I’m gonna act like I didn’t hear that, Zora,” Sarah chided.
“Your little sister ain’t very proud of your pappy,” East butted in. “She ain’t very respectful of him either, and she certainly isn’t grateful. I don’t think she appreciates that being the colored children of a colored mayor is something to shout from the treetops!”
Zora lobbed a long contemptuous look at East. Sarah blushed. “Oh, East,” she managed. “Zora’s more like Daddy than anyone else in this house. That’s why she’s so full of pride.” Sarah juggled her loyalties. “Ain’t that the truth, Zora?”
Rather than answer the question, Zora had questions to turn on East. “Do you really want to take care of my sister?” she asked him. “Or do you want my father’s name to take care of you?”
“Zora!” Sarah admonished, horrified. “Apologize! Now! On account of your presumptuousness! Apologize!”
Zora and Me: The Summoner Page 9