She knew what it meant, how important it was. If she could just have one man, even if she did have to put up with Jessie, then maybe others would come. Maybe others would hear about it and want to come, wouldn’t be scared to come, if that was what it was, if it wasn’t that they just didn’t like her to begin with.
She spent hours in preparation, half-thinking he wouldn’t come, half-hoping he might not. She had let her gardening go, had temporarily given up her reading.
She sat at her teaching table long after starting time, listening for the sound of a car. She heard one on the road along about seven o’clock. It seemed to slow but then drove on by.
The first thing he said when he jerked open the front door and walked in thirty minutes late, “You know I gotta be here ’cause I give my word to Reverend.” He moved down the aisle toward her and her books. “But it ain’t but for three times.”
She gestured for him to sit on the front pew. He sat, legs sprawling, arms folded in front, eyes on the floor. She cleared her throat. He looked at his watch, then unfolded his arms and drummed fingers on his pant legs, fixing her with a steady gaze. She began straightening a stack of papers on the table, waiting for the tightness in her throat to ease. Suddenly, the papers seemed to have their own mind, becoming more and more uneven to her stacking and finally overflowing, several of them landing on the floor, others slipping out onto the table.
She didn’t look at him when he leaned forward to pick the pieces up, but she could feel the smirk. He stacked them neatly and put them on the table beside her. Then he returned to his seat, casually resting his arms over the back of the pew. “I done passed the first part. Leastways I can keep them papers in hand.”
She had known it was there all along, but once he spoke his contempt, it seemed to harden her. After a moment, she felt more even and picked up the cards she had made for their first lesson. They were large white cardboard signs made to replicate the Burma Shave-like signs at the drive-in movie.
His eyes narrowed as she stood them up on the table in a row, resting them against her books. WELCOME TO CROSSROADS DRIVE-IN. He sat up, his back stiffening. TURN OFF LIGHTS AFTER ENTERING. 50 CENTS PER PERSON. NO ALCOHOL ALLOWED. He glared at her with all the contempt he could muster, but it was not enough to hide in.
“Do you remember seeing signs like these?”
“Hell, course I do. What you think? I ain’t no idiot.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, then just as quickly drew them out and folded them in front of him. “I ain’t coming to no drive-in school. I’m coming to a voting school. You supposed to tell me how to vote. None of this.” He waved his hand.
His harshness had calmed her. “What do you think the words say?”
He uncrossed his legs, pulled them in, and glared at her, his arms still folded in front of him. “I don’t care what them words say. Hell, they just drive-in words.” The muscles in his jaw twitched, as if he might get up and hit her. “I’m a grown man. Got better things to do with my time than sitting here playing movies with you.” He got up and turned to walk away.
“Reverend Earl said for me to let him know if you didn’t stay.”
He stopped, mumbling something that she knew must be insulting. Finally, he turned and came back to sit down in front of her.
She put her elbows on the table, clasped her hands together, and rested her chin on them to continue. “Do you know what the words say?” She folded her hands down in front of her. “Do you know that one of them says you can’t drink beer at the drive-in and that one says you need to pay fifty cents per person for the movie?”
His hands reached for the top of his legs and he rubbed them against his jeans. “You think you such a . . . I know them signs. Seem ’em a million times.”
“Well?” she said. “I thought we would start with these, since they’re familiar.”
He bit his lower lip, looking at the signs, studying the squiggly lines on the pieces of cardboard that stood in front of him. Slowly, he pointed to the third sign. “That word, right yonder on that one, say, ‘fifty cents.’ I know that there is ‘fifty cents.’”
“Good. It says, ‘fifty cents per person,’” she said. “ It means—”
“Hell, I know what it means. What you think, I’m a fool?” He turned from her and studied the sign more intently now, seeming to forget she was there, almost talking to himself. “I knowed the ‘fifty cents,’ but not them others—‘per person.’” He repeated it again, sinking it into his memory, “‘per person,’ ‘per person.’”
He pointed to the sign that started with the word No. “‘No—I know that one, so what you say the next thing say?”
“‘No alcohol allowed.’” She pointed to each word as she pronounced it very slowly. “It means if they catch you drinking—”
“All right, all right,” he said, dismissing her, concentrating on the signs. “Don’t give me no sass, girl. What this here next one say?”
“‘Turn off lights after entering.’” He studied it and laughed. “One time, I left my lights on all the way to parking and the movie already going. Was them white boys having a yelling fit, screaming at me from over the fence.” He rubbed his chin. “It say that?” He looked at her for a moment. “Course I know you supposed to. I just done it to rile ’em. And this here one?”
“It says, ‘Welcome to the—’”
“I know the rest. I seen them same words outside on the big sign.” He looked at them, repeating them to himself in a whisper, his lips moving to form the sounds.
She almost smiled. She almost laughed out loud, she was so relieved, but he wouldn’t have noticed if she had. After years of wondering and watching and never knowing that it colored every other part of his being, he had, on this night, when he thought only to fulfill his obligation, been forced to take the key he’d never dared ask for. He didn’t take his eyes from the signs, pointing as he got up off the church pew and pulled a straight chair up to the table. “This one, what’s this here one say again?”
Now she was watching him through swimming eyes. He and the signs and the room were blending into hazy shapes and colors, and she was so surprised. There hadn’t been tears for a long time. She knew her voice would sound scratchy. “It says, ‘Turn off lights after entering.’” She had to excuse herself, saying that she wanted to get a drink from the back room. He never noticed her voice or her tears. He was too busy reading the words.
CHAPTER 25
Mr. Calvin K. Jerome
AFTER THE SECOND LESSON, Jessie knew every written word that might ever have been seen at a drive-in. They had gone over all the words that appeared on the screen during, before, and after intermission. They had taken up what might be on the wall menu at the concession stand. He had brought old candy wrappers for them to read, matchbook covers that he wanted to know about, notices he had gotten at work, advertisements he had received in the mail.
He came every Thursday night, promptly at 7:00 P.M., and never mentioned his three-time limit.
Sometime after the third or fourth lesson, he had appeared in the church door, a sheepish grin. “You say you a regular citizenship school, don’t you, or voting school, whatever. Well, I brung you more students.”
She had been sitting at the table in front of the church, listing all the names of movies and movie stars she could think of. She watched him disappear and then appear again in a few minutes with two other men. “This here Mr. Calvin. Mr. Calvin K. Jerome and Roy Boy.” Two men, one older than Jessie and one who looked about her age, stepped from the church stoop into the sanctuary. They were so far away and the light was so bad, she couldn’t see them clearly.
“Evening,” she said, and tried to get a better look by shading her hand to block the bulb that hung down halfway between the door and her place at the table. They lingered back in the shadows, but Jessie would have none of it.
“Y’all come on up here.” He walked in front of them, assuming they would follow, and when they didn’t. “Come on now. She ain’t gonna
mess with you.”
They took off their hats and walked slowly forward, looking around the sanctuary. “Calvin and Roy Boy here work down at the foundry where I work at. Been there twenty years or more.”
“Forty-two years.” The one called Calvin stepped forward. “Got a job sweeping floors when I was a boy. Been there ever since.” He sat down on the front pew and placed his hat beside him on the bench. He wore a coat and tie; gray hair curled around his ears. “Went straight from picking cotton to foundry work. Never had no time for nothing else.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Jerome,” she said, holding on to the table and half standing. She felt his age required it. “You live around these parts?”
“Live in Bainbridge.” He looked over to Jessie. “But Jessie say the voting school free to everybody.”
“Sure is, free to everybody,” Jessie said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Just sorry you have to come so far.”
“That’s all right.” He stretched his legs out and white socks showed from under trousers that were too short. He picked up his hat and began to finger the brim. “Come to find out ’bout banking. Course I could learn me some other things, too, but need to know ’bout banking more’n anything. Jessie here says you can learn me.”
“Banking?” She looked at Jessie.
“Yeah, yeah, you know, banking.” Jessie seemed perturbed at her hesitation. “Calvin here want to know all about it. Want to open up a banking account, and he ain’t sure of how to read about it. He take it to his preacher, he gonna be getting all Mr. Calvin’s savings for his church . . . or for hisself.”
The other one, Roy Boy, had taken a seat in the row behind Mr. Calvin. “That’s sure enough the truth. Brother Simmons knowed for that—get all your money ’fore you can turn round.”
“Show her the papers, Calvin. She help you.” Jessie said it as casually as if he were offering up his own secretary.
Mr. Calvin stood up and began taking papers out of every pocket in his suit coat and placing them on the table in front of Maudie.
“I don’t know much about banking. I never—” She stopped short when she saw the expression on Jessie’s face. “Course all there is to it is to read the papers and figure it out.”
“That’s all they is to it.” Jessie rocked back on his heels. “All they is to it.”
They spent the rest of the lesson learning words that had to do with banking—reading the various papers that came out of Mr. Calvin K. Jerome’s pockets.
After that first session, Mr. Calvin didn’t seem interested in discussing banking anymore; in fact, he would avoid the subject if she brought it up. All the same, he and Roy Boy began coming to the voting school on a regular basis.
From the very beginning, she had called him Mr. Jerome or, later on, Mr. Calvin. He had given her permission to call him Calvin, but she felt the name by itself, Calvin, seemed incongruous for a man of his age and dignity—and Mr. Calvin K. Jerome was a man she judged to be in his late sixties, maybe early seventies, a man of natural dignity. He always stood when she came into the room. He always wore a suit and hat and immediately removed the hat when he entered the church.
She gave them each a notebook and they began to copy things in it: their names and addresses, the name of the foundry where they worked, the names of their family members. Mr. Calvin and Jessie picked it up immediately. In fact, Mr. Calvin knew quite a few words and phrases. He would wait patiently as the others would learn things he already knew. She began to wonder why he kept coming. He was obviously familiar with all the vocabulary he would need to work in the foundry.
Roy Boy was not. He was younger and stronger than both of the others, but he couldn’t seem to form the letters on the paper as well as they could and he didn’t seem to remember from time to time what he had learned before. Maudie suggested that they all start coming on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They all said they thought they could do that.
As time went on, Jessie, and certainly Mr. Calvin, came to feel some familiarity with the pencils in their hands, with the problem of bending large calloused fingers around a small yellow piece of wood. This was not the case with Roy Boy. There was a constant bead of perspiration on his forehead. Each time, his fingers seemed to have to learn anew how to grip the pencil.
The first time she put her hand on his shoulder to look over his writing, she felt nothing but solid muscle on a frame that she thought must be six three or four. She was tempted to touch the hair that grew down his neck in soft brown curls. He would look up for her approval each time he completed a word that had taken him twice as long as the others and required three times the effort. She had been glad to take the time to compliment him and to have a chance to look at him without seeming obvious. He reminded her of the pictures she had seen of the new boxer, Cassius Clay.
This night, Jessie and Maudie were waiting for the others to show up. It was fifteen past the hour, and they were usually here by now. They were the ones who were always early, sometimes getting there before Maudie was ready. At twenty-five past, they heard Mr. Calvin’s truck, an old Ford with a loose flatbed that rattled as he drove down the steep grade of dirt road that led to the church. He came in all smiles, dressed in his coat and tie, a large cardboard shoe box under one arm. He greeted each one individually, took off his hat, and laid it on the front pew, still smiling.
Jessie had been writing in his notebook, but looked up to watch the way Mr. Calvin couldn’t seem to keep from grinning. “Look like the cat done swallowed the canary.” Roy Boy couldn’t keep a straight face, either. “What y’all been up to?”
Mr. Calvin sat down on one of the chairs, the box still in his hand. “Decided it’s ’bout time for me to go on and take my money to the bank, like I was talking ’bout.”
“That? Thought you done done that long time ago.”
“No, I ain’t done it long time ago. Take some figuring, knowing who I’m dealing with.”
“Who to do what?” Jessie was watching them carefully now.
Maudie had settled herself in one of the other chairs at the teaching table. “You need some help filling out the forms, Mr. Calvin?”
He put the cardboard box on the table and flipped off the top. “Need some help counting,” he said. Twenty-dollar bills that had been crammed in the box scattered out on the table.
“The Lord.” Jessie dropped his pencil. “What you been—robbing a bank?”
“Ain’t been robbing, been saving.”
They all stared at the box overflowing with bills. Mr. Calvin put his big hand on top of the pile. “Got me some fifties down there in the bottom, too.”
“How’d you come by all that money?”
“Same place you get money from. Working. Only I ain’t no big spender like you young’uns. Always have some left over and all these years been saving. Me and Claudell used to take it out and count it ’bout every Friday, that being payday. Since she passed, ain’t done that no more. Been thinking ever since Jeremiah Brown’s house burned down, been thinking it’s time to do something with this here, but I didn’t have no notion what to do with it, so I started coming to the voting class.” He looked over to Maudie. “Figured you could help me count it proper. Then I’ll put it in the bank, the big one down by the courthouse.”
“You mean you had all that at home, all this time? Weren’t you afraid somebody would take it?”
“Didn’t nobody know it was there. Thought I was poor, like everybody else round here. Figured I used up my money on drinking and foolishness, like everybody else.” He grinned, showing teeth worn down from years of the pipe. “But I been saving it. Gonna put it in the bank, now I know how to sign for it. Figure Maudie here can go on down to the bank with me, make sure everything done right.” His big hand ran over the money. “Figure I’ll give her one or two of these here for her time.”
“Oh now Mr. Calvin, I couldn’t do that, but I’ll gladly go with you.”
“Wouldn’t have it no other way—that you was to go with me,
” he said.
They counted and recounted for the next hour—Maudie counting and Jessie restacking. Mr. Calvin K. Jerome stood off to the side, his hands in his pockets, shaking his head each time Maudie completed a stack and wrote the total down on the inside of the shoe box’s lid. Roy Boy grinned and rubbed his hands together, reaching over to touch each counted stack.
As they were counting the last few bills, lights flashed by the church window.
A car pulled around back and the motor cut off. Before any of them could move, they heard the car door slam.
“Who’s coming? Didn’t know nobody was coming—don’t nobody come round here.” Calvin looked to Jessie and began grabbing for the money on the table.
He was stuffing it back in the shoe box as fast as he could when the door to the back of the church opened. “Anybody in there learning how to vote?” he called from his back-room office.
“It’s Reverend Earl.” Maudie sighed, letting the money she had picked up drop to the table.
The Summer We Got Saved Page 17