The Summer We Got Saved

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  Maudie liked walking home this time of the day, when she could take her leisure and watch the goings-on along the way. She waved to a passing car as she started out on the dirt road that sloped down all the way to the church driveway. Boys in the passing car whistled at her. It had happened the last time she had walked on the road. She had started wearing formfitting dresses, had taken them up to reveal more of her figure, and she had started styling her hair so that it fell down loose and soft around her face. For the first time, she had noticed the men in church watching her. Perhaps it had happened before, but she had not noticed it, and so for her, it had not happened. She was beginning to believe she might be pretty.

  When she got within seeing distance of the back of the church, she noticed Jessie’s car parked in the drive. Just as she turned off the main road onto the church path, she saw him standing there watching her as she found good footing on the gravel drive. He had a hammer in his hand and smiled as she came closer. He seemed more ready to do that now, to smile at her instead of fixing her with a blank stare.

  “What is it?”

  “Thought Aunt Laura was gonna keep you all afternoon. Told her to keep you, but not all day.”

  “Keep me for what?”

  Just then, she noticed Mr. Calvin and Roy Boy. Mr. Calvin’s car was parked over near the trees, out of the way. They stood at the back of the church building, waiting for her. “’Bout time.”

  “What are y’all doing here?” She came around to the backyard. They parted to let her see the wooden swing sitting at the edge of the clearing, in between the woods and her garden. It hung from chains attached to a two-by-four they had nailed high between two pines.

  “Where did that come from?”

  They didn’t say anything, just smiled at her, until they all began to talk at once and then all stopped at once. Jessie rubbed his hands on the sides of his jeans, looking to her like JD up to mischief. “Mr. Calvin bought the wood. I built it.”

  “What’s you mean, you built it? We built it,” Calvin said. He cocked his head toward Roy Boy. “Ain’t we been sitting here all afternoon handing him nails?”

  “Sho have.”

  “Is it for me?”

  “Well, it ain’t for Reverend Earl. He don’t stay put long enough to sit, much less swing.”

  “We knowed how you partial to swinging,” Mr. Calvin said. “Now you can sit out here looking at what you be calling a garden.”

  “All day, hoping something gonna grow,” Roy Boy said.

  They stood there shuffling feet in the dust, looking first at the swing and then back at her. Jessie said, “Well, go on, take a seat.” They watched as she slowly moved to the swing, stood in front of it, and pulled on the chains. “Told you it was steady.”

  “She ain’t no fool,” Mr. Calvin said. “She knowed who put it together.”

  Maudie turned around to look at them standing there grinning and she tried to say something, but nothing came, so she sat down and used her crutch to push off. “It’s lovely,” she finally managed to say.

  Mr. Calvin went to the car and brought back a Coke for her and a glass jar in a paper sack. “Now I guess we can get to celebrating. Been meaning to bring this out all afternoon, but old Jessie here afraid Brother Earl gonna show up.” He handed the Coke to Maudie and passed the paper sack around.

  “Brother Earl liable to be the one drink the most if he do show up,” Jessie said, taking a full swallow.

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Mr. Calvin winked at Roy Boy. “Reverend Earl show up and won’t be none left for us workers. You ain’t saying much, Miss Maudie.”

  “Did Miss Laura know all along what y’all were doing? Did she suggest it?”

  “What’s you talking? We done thought of it by ourselves.” Mr. Calvin got the bottle again and took a big drink. Roy Boy held out his hand for another. “Naw, you gotta drive. Gotta get me back in time for prayer meeting.” He handed the jar to Jessie and then took one more drink himself before he screwed the top back on and got up. “Come on, Roy Boy.”

  “I was thinking I might stay on,” Roy Boy said. “I ain’t got to be back for no prayer meeting.”

  Mr. Calvin was halfway to the car and didn’t even turn around. “Get on out here, boy. We late as it is.”

  Roy Boy moved a step toward Maudie. She looked up, waiting for him to say something, but he just stood there and then turned to follow Calvin to the car. “The name give to me is Roy, just Roy,” he called after Mr. Calvin. “And much obliged if you’d remember it now and again.”

  “Thank you,” she called to them, “thanks.”

  Maudie sat swinging and watching Jessie gather up his tools. He placed them all in the metal box he had brought down for the job and then began cleaning up the surrounding area. Shadows from the church had stretched almost to the swing. The sun was down to the tops of the trees that lined the road above the church.

  “Used to call him Roy,” he said. “Worked in the pouring room, like everybody else. One of the best they was, ’til it happened.” He picked up stray wood chips left over from making the swing. “I seen it,” and pitched a handful of chips into the woods. “Didn’t turn in time. One of them casting molds caught him upside the head. Bleeding like a stuck pig, and then some melted iron splash out on his back.” Jessie’s body jerked in a shudder. “Still remember that yell he let out.” He stooped down to pick up more wood chips. “Just one wrong look, one minute looking the wrong way. I seen it coming. I was gonna yell, but it done caught him by that time.

  “I picked him up—didn’t want to—run out the door with him, me yelling to everybody. When I let loose of him to put him in the car for the hospital, skin from his back come off on my arm. Big pieces of it just stuck to my arm and come off.” He took the rest of the wood chips and sailed them out into the woods. Then he came to take a seat beside her. “He always saying someday he’s coming back to the pouring room, but we always say, ‘Roy Boy, you done done your time.’” He sat down with her as the light disappeared from over the hill and cricket sounds came up around them.

  She swung back and forth for several minutes before asking, “Did you ever build Carlie a swing?”

  “Carlie? What she want with a swing? Lord girl, you wanna make me out the fool? Carlie wouldn’t never stop dogging me if I did that.”

  There was silence again, only the creak of the swing.

  “Y’all go to the same high school? Is that how you met?”

  “Didn’t go to no high school. Been working in the fields ten years by high school. Carlie asked me to take her to the movies. Said I was more a man than them high school boys.” He turned to her. “You know how that make me feel, going with a high school girl and me not getting past first grade?”

  “I guess that was nice.” She looked down and watched the dust rise in little clumps as she pushed off with her crutch. “I guess it was.”

  “Hell yes it was, and when she say she want to get married, wasn’t nothing else to do.” He was still looking out at the garden. “I wasn’t no fool. Worked at the foundry by then. All them men coming round, slapping me on the back, saying how lucky I was, ’cause she so pretty.” His elbow rested on the arm of the swing and he rubbed his chin. “I wasn’t gonna be no fool,” he said again, almost to himself. “I didn’t marry Carlie, peoples gonna go to saying I got a little too much sugar in me.”

  In the coming dusk, the shadow of the church building stretched out over them. Tree frogs joined the cicadas’ whine and lightning bugs left tiny sparks in the air. She felt so relaxed, sitting there with him, almost sleepy, except for the touch of his shoulder against hers. Until now, she had never trusted her thoughts to anyone else.

  It was deep dark when she began telling him about the night she killed Yolanda.

  CHAPTER 30

  Yolanda

  EVEN AS SHE HAD USED HER CRUTCH to hold open the door of the Tuskegee library, she could feel it coming, had lived too long in north Alabama not to know the signs of a torn
ado.

  That day, she had made the trip to the library, pretending to get a book to read to Yolanda, but really it was to get away from her. The doctor had come again the night before. Each time, it would take longer for him to clear Yolanda’s breathing. There were horrible gurgling noises, as if she might be drowning. Maudie could hear her little body heaving in panic. She would sit on her own bed, trying to breathe for her, feeling as if she might be drowning with her.

  Each time, after the doctors and nurses had left, she would go to Yolanda. “We still off to California, ain’t we?” she’d ask, and Yolanda would try to smile. Her eyes had become dull black marks.

  “Tell—me,” Yolanda would say, and Maudie would begin to talk, telling her about California, about what they would do when they lived there; about how they would go to the Piggly Wiggly, because Yolanda would be out of the iron lung for an hour or two each day by then. They would load their cart with milk and Snickers and Life Savers, because Yolanda would have to drink milk to regain her strength, but she could always have a candy bar with it. They would pass John Wayne shopping in the meat department, because men liked to get the best cut of meat, and Susan Hayward’s housekeeper would be in front of them in the checkout line, because lady stars didn’t go shopping in person, not like the men. And they would go to the beach. There must be a beach out there someplace. She had seen photographs of the stars standing on the sand, holding beach balls. Rock Hudson might throw them a ball, if they happened to be out there at the same time he was, if he didn’t have anybody else to throw it to. Maudie had talked on and on, spinning tales until her head ached, and still Yolanda would be looking up at her asking for more. “Tell—me.” Only one word at a time now. “We’ll—go—together?”

  “What’s you think, Yolanda? I’m gonna let you get out there ’fore I do? You crazy, girl.” And that would elicit a faint smile.

  The night before the storm it had been the same thing. But afterward, Yolanda had stared dull-eyed at Maudie and said to her, “No—more.” And Maudie had first thought she meant she wanted no more stories about California.

  A delightful breeze, way too perfect to be up to any good, had drifted past her into the library’s front hall. That was when she took a long look out over the library grounds and noticed the birds were silent in the trees and no squirrels darted about on the lawn.

  She rushed back, her crutch chafing under her arm, and hurried over to take the elevator to the second floor. She saw the nurses laughing if she tried to warn them.

  Wind blew in through the elevator door as it closed. When she walked into their room, she could see the dark cloud out the window, off at a distance, around the western edge of the campus. “Think we gonna have some rain maybe.”

  Doreen had glanced up and then turned a page of the magazine she was reading. “Well, don’t say nothing. You get Yolanda and Macy all het up.”

  Maudie watched the children in the yard below being ushered inside, some in wheelchairs, most on crutches, a slow procession. She could hear the attendants beginning to call to them to hurry before the rain came.

  Yolanda looked out from her mirror. “Rain?”

  Maudie didn’t answer. She could hear it now, a faint, steady sound in the distance, barely discernible, a background to all the other noises around her. If she hadn’t heard it before, she wouldn’t have known.

  Minutes later, it was there in full rage, coming front and center, blocking out everything else. The wind picked up to a tearing force. Small hail began to ping the windows. A massive flash of lightning swept away all the shadows in the room. Seconds later, the matching crash of thunder shook the building and knocked out all the electricity. The iron lungs sputtered to a standstill.

  Doreen had put down her magazine and stared at Maudie.

  The wind was banging to be let in. The hail had grown huge and was threatening to shatter the window glass. A branch on the pine tree just outside broke off and came crashing through their window, sending glass and splintered wood across the room. Maudie watched the funnel cloud dipping down, then back up into its body, then back down for good, a whirling, churning drill, gouging out a path on the ground, headed straight for them. She didn’t remember hearing anything else. Maybe Yolanda was calling her. Maybe Doreen and Macy. She was too taken with what was happening. She couldn’t do both at the same time—watch and realize.

  She felt her bed roll over toward Yolanda and crash into her iron lung. She saw Doreen’s bed slide past hers. A large piece of rusted tin roofing swept through the open window and knocked her back across the room, and then everything went black.

  When she regained her senses, the roar was drifting away, but rain still poured in the windows, dumping out what was left. She came to, sitting on the floor. She could hear large pieces of what sounded like board being carried or dragged. Beds were being pushed around. Nurse Betty’s voice and other nurses’ voices could be heard from downstairs as they shouted to one another.

  She looked down at her hand. There was blood and a long gash running the length of her forearm. From where she lay on the floor, metal bed legs and the frames of iron lungs loomed quietly above her. No one else seemed to be in the room. Pillows were scattered on the floor; sheets were hanging off mattresses. She began inching toward the lung she thought was Yolanda’s. Still the shouts came from downstairs as she crawled over to lift herself up, holding on to Yolanda’s frame. She pulled up near her head. Yolanda was still there, her eyes closed, one blue ribbon left in her hair. “Yolanda?” she whispered. “You hear me, Yolanda?” Her eyes fluttered but didn’t open.

  “NURSE BETTY, GET ON UP HERE.” She worked her way back to the other end of the iron lung, pulling along the sides until she reached the back, and then began to engage the hand pump, trying to imitate what she had seen the nurses do before whenever the electricity had gone off. She hadn’t thought of anything then except to save Yolanda.

  “NURSE BETTY,” she screamed again. “Old Nurse Betty be here soon enough. Don’t you worry none, Yolanda.” She screamed again and peered to the other end of the lung, trying to see Yolanda’s head, looking for any sign. There was only silence and muffled shouts from below. She pumped furiously, trying to imitate the compressions the iron lung would give if there were electricity. A curtain rod on one of the front windows gave way at one end and swung down, creaking as it dangled back and forth on its remaining brace before the whole thing fell to the floor, clanging itself to a standstill. Maudie stopped pumping and edged back up to the other end. “Yolanda? You hear me?” Yolanda opened her eyes. It wasn’t a frightened look. She was staring at Maudie as if she was trying to say something. It was then that Maudie thought maybe God was trying to tell her what to do. Maybe He had sent down this great storm as a sign of what she should do. All that was left for Yolanda were nights of suffering, days of hanging on.

  She bent down, brushed back the black curls, and kissed Yolanda’s forehead. “Yolanda girl, you gonna go on to California without me. You gonna beat me getting there.” She patted her head. “But don’t go bragging about it, you hear me?” She thought she saw the slightest smile on Yolanda’s face. She wasn’t sure what she saw, but after that, there was no thought of ever going back to pump.

  Nurse Betty finally did come. She and the maintenance man had found a ladder, braced it against the window frame, and Nurse Betty had crawled up to the second floor through the rain and what was left of the wind and come into the room, stepping over the jagged rain-dripping pieces of glass left in the windowsill, a stethoscope around her neck.

  Maudie remembered now what a fool she must have looked like screaming at Nurse Betty, swearing at her for taking so long, using the scattered beds and chairs to lean on, sometimes crawling, as she made her way over to get the gold braid out from under her mattress, yelling for Nurse Betty to do something and yet knowing there was nothing to do—Maudie had made sure of that—and then coming back to put the braids in Yolanda’s hair. And all the while, Nurse Betty not saying a wor
d, just watching as she wrapped the black tubing of her stethoscope around its metal earpieces, stuck it in her pocket, and moved on to the next person.

  She had said all this to him as they sat there in the swing, the dark all around them and so making it easier to see what had happened. She wasn’t sorry, she said. Yolanda was breathing easy now. It was the first time she had remembered she had done that with the drapery braids. Did he think she did that because she felt guilty for killing Yolanda or did she do that because she loved Yolanda?

  He had been leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees, looking out at the night and listening to her story. He had felt so much love for her that he had wanted to stand up and pull her to him, but he knew it wasn’t about his love. Instead, he leaned back against the swing, letting his shoulder touch hers. “It was ’cause you loved her. You do for the ones you love,” he said.

  CHAPTER 31

  The Cross Thing

  THE BAINBRIDGE DAILYhad endorsed Brad La Forte for governor. Several volunteers who had been working for A.W. dropped by La Forte headquarters and said they were switching sides. James Mitchell, president of the bank, said he was voting for La Forte. It was about time the business community took note of the economic impact of the segregation thing, he said. People weren’t aware of it, but there was money in the black community. Recently, he said, he had been made aware of that.

  Most noticeably, Sunday dinners were beginning to fray at the edges. There was silence at the table, only the clicking of silverware, the tinkling of ice in tea glasses. Ora Lee cracked the swinging door from the kitchen to peek out and then let it ease back shut without bringing more biscuits.

  Mary felt some small obligation to converse before she and Charles had to leave. As soon as they could get away, they were going to head down to the campaign office. There would be a group stuffing envelopes this afternoon, mostly Episcopalians and Presbyterians, a few Methodists. On a Sunday, they had not asked Baptists or Church of Christ members. Time was running short. Every hour, every minute seemed to count now. At least that’s how they were beginning to feel—an urgency that hadn’t been there when there hadn’t been a chance. A paper over in Huntsville had endorsed La Forte on Friday. Each time something like that happened, it sent Charles into a panic.