Too Black for Heaven

by Keene, Day

  Two cars passed the cottage at intervals but neither one stopped. At midnight she decided Blair wasn’t coming. Either he felt his day had been too strenuous for him to do justice to his libido or because of the rebuff the night before, he was playing a waiting game.

  She closed the table drawer in which she’d put the revolver. There was nothing she could do about the metal hook of the screen door she’d wrenched free from the wood to substantiate the story she’d hoped to tell Sheriff Early. Tomorrow night she would tell him. Or the night after tomorrow night. The rent on the cottage was paid for a month.

  She closed and locked the glass louver door, then looked in the refrigerator. She should have eaten in town or accepted Jack Ames’ invitation. Her thinking was confused. It had been confused ever since Estrella had told her. The evening needn’t have ended as she’d pictured it. Apparently, Jack regretted what had happened as much as she did.

  She made toast, then fixed a bowl of shredded wheat. The butter was rancid. The unpasteurized milk had a raw, animal taste. The shredded wheat biscuit was stale. Through the venetian blind the lake looked cool and inviting but slightly ominous. The thought of christening her new bathing suit flitted through her mind and died. There might be anything in the lake from snags to alligators. With no particular fear of death, as she felt that death would solve her problem, she wanted to get even with Blair Sterling before she died.

  “Why didn’t you kill him?” she’d asked Estrella.

  “I tried to,” Estrella had told her. “I cut him. I cut him bad the next day. That’s why I had to leave Blairville. Then you came along and I had my hands full taking care of you and scrambling for a living, too busy to worry about how I got you.”

  Vaguely disappointed, Dona took the cover off the studio bed, then remembered the two bills Sterling had given her. She found them in her purse next to the gun permit Jack had gotten for her. Both were ten dollar bills, bills she’d missed when she’d picked up Beau’s money.

  Sterling had been mildly amused when he’d given them to her. She wondered if he knew about Beau or Jack’s visits the night before. If he did, it explained the way he’d acted at the scene of the accident. It also opened a new avenue of thought.

  A bellboy from the hotel had gentled Sterling’s horse. The boy, obviously, at one time or another, had been in Sterling’s employ. Men were as loose-tongued as women. During his drunk, Beau could have talked. He could have passed on the information that there was a high-priced white girl in two-fourteen and that shortly after Jack Ames had left he’d walked in and found her half-nude and drunk, with money on her night stand. If the talk had gotten back to Blair Sterling, it could be the reason her father hadn’t walked into the trap she’d set. His jaded senses wouldn’t allow him to be aroused by a professional.

  Dona put the bills into her change purse. She’d return them to Beau in the morning, then see what she could do about Sterling. Then she read the gun permit, then read it a second time. When Jack had pushed it across the table he’d said:

  “Now, if you’ll sign your name attesting you’re white and of legal age and have never been convicted of a criminal breach of the law.”

  But there was nothing concerning color in the wording of the permit.

  She threw her negligee over a chair and started to return to the bed and stopped in the middle of the floor, halted by an uneasy impression that someone was watching her. It was an effort to walk to the table and open the drawer to get the gun. With the gun in her hand, she called, “Whoever’s there, go away or I’ll shoot.”

  The only answer was the rustling of the furred things searching for food and a small splash far out in the water. She spread two slats of the blind and looked out. There was no one on the lake side of the cottage. She didn’t dare to look on the porch. After switching out the light she sat on the bed in the dark, gripping the butt of the gun with sweat-slippery fingers. There was no sound from the porch. She sat in the dark a long time, then slid the revolver under the pillow and lay down.

  It seemed hotter in the dark than it had been with the lamp lighted. She lay for a while, unable to sleep, then slept restlessly, with wild dreams about Jack Ames and Blair Sterling and Charles and Beau threshing through the night.

  The sun was hot in her eyes and her body was beaded with perspiration when the knocking on the door awakened her. Subconsciously, she made certain she was decent and sat up.

  “Who is it?”

  The girl on the porch said, “Hattie.”

  Dona walked bare-foot across the floor and opened the louver door. “I thought the breakfast arrangement was only for one morning.”

  “I ain’t got no basket,” Hattie said. “I just come to rid up the place.”

  Dona stepped aside to allow her to enter. “I see.”

  “My,” Hattie breathed, “you’re purty even when you jist wake up. Even with your hair touseled like that an’ your eyes sleep-puffed. But you suah mus’ have slept oneasy. Your bed look like you bin tossin’ all night.”

  Dona walked into the bathroom to shower, then changed her mind and put on the black-and-white bathing suit she’d bought at the Bon Ton.

  She felt physically and emotionally depleted. Her dreams of the night embarrassed her. None of them had been pleasant. She’d never dreamed such dreams before. She wondered if she was mentally ill. Maybe, instead of driving south, she should have gone to a good psychiatrist.

  The swimsuit fit her perfectly. She put water and coffee in the percolator and placed it over a low flame. “Watch it, will you, Hattie? Let it perk a few minutes, then turn it off.”

  Hattie stretched like a tawny cat. “Yes, ma’am.” She laid a newspaper on the table. “Mister Sterlin’ say you might like to see this.”

  Dona unfolded the Courier. The paper had printed the picture of her standing on the beach, looking out over the lake. The caption read:

  Dona Santos, daughter of famous singer, picks Loon Lake as ideal vacation spot.

  Kelly had been hard put for something to write about her. The bulk of the story was concerned with the known facts pertaining to Estrella’s climb to fame. All he was able to say about her was that she was on a vacation, that she liked the South very much, that she thought Blairville was charming.

  “What’s it say ‘bout you?” Hattie asked.

  Dona gave her the paper. “Read it.”

  Hattie shook her head. “I kin make out the pictures fine but I doan read too good. I only git to the fifth grade when Mister Sterlin’ hire me fo’ to work in his house.” The sly smile returned to her lips. Her silver earrings jingled as she lifted her head. “Since then I bin too busy with one thin’ an’ another fo’ any mo’ book larnin’.”

  “I see,” Dona said. “Oh. And thank you for returning the money you found yesterday. But why didn’t you give it to me instead of Mr. Sterling?”

  Hattie tossed her head. “It’s his cottage. Long as you git it back why should you care?”

  Dona shrugged. “I don’t. I just wondered.”

  She walked down the stairs and around the path leading to the beach and tested the water. It was as cold as it looked. She waded in up to her waist, then plunged in a shallow dive. If she had to go through many more nights like the one she’d just spent, her mind would leave her completely. She was saying and thinking and doing things entirely foreign to her nature. She smiled as she remembered last night’s fears of the lake. If she was so panicky now, what would it be like after she had killed Blair Sterling?

  She swam a few hundred feet and turned on her back and floated. She wished she could stay where she was forever. Unfortunately, she couldn’t. After swimming to the pier and diving from the board several times, she sat sunning herself until hunger drove her back to the cottage. The thought of stale shredded wheat and dry toast spread with rancid butter nauseated her. She toweled quickly in the bathroom, did up her hair as best she could, then slipped into a green sun-back dress and drank a cup of black coffee before she put on her shoes a
nd stockings.

  “You swim good,” Hattie said. “I was watching you from the window.”

  “You like to swim?”

  A slight trace of the sullen look of the day before returned to Hattie’s eyes. “I like it fine. But they’s no place ‘round heah, ‘ceptin’ down in a ol’ muddy slough, where us colored folks is allowed to swim.”

  Hattie brightened. “We kin fish, though. So mostly we gits us a ol’ cane pole an’ wades in up to our waists an’ pretends to be fishin’ whiles we enjoyin’ the water.”

  Dona spooned more sugar into her coffee. It didn’t make sense. Blair Sterling was willing to wallow all night in Hattie’s bed, but she couldn’t swim in his lake.

  The day was hot. The benefits of her swim quickly evaporated. She found a pair of clean stockings in her bag, then decided to go bare-legged and had to powder her feet before she could get her shoes on.

  “Is it always this hot?”

  “Only in summer,” Hattie said. “In the winter it gits real col’. Some days you have to wear a sweater and build a fire.”

  Dona pinned a flowered halo hat to her damp hair and picked up her purse. “When you finish, snap the lock on the door, please, Hattie.”

  “You ain’ goin’ to eat heah?”

  “No. I’m going into town.”

  “It mus’ be nice to be white.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Hattie’s eyes were veiled. “I doan mean nothin’. I jist makin’ talk.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  MAIZIE WAS pleased to see Dona. “I missed you,” the black-haired waitress said, “I watched for you to come in for supper. Then, when you didn’t come in all day yesterday, I asked the desk clerk and he said you’d moved to a cottage on one of the lakes.”

  Dona ordered the Number 4 Club breakfast. “That’s right.”

  Maizie called the order through the kitchen slot and brought Dona a cup of coffee. “It just goes to show that in this racket, you never can tell who you’re waiting on. Come to think of it, though, you’re fairer, but you do look a lot like Estrella. She’s one of my favorites.”

  “I’m glad you like her.”

  “No wonder you can drive the boat you do. Which lake did you move to?”

  “Loon Lake.”

  “Not into Blair Sterling’s place?”

  “Yes.”

  “After all I told you about the guy? Honey, with your looks, you’re asking for trouble.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “That’s what the deep sea diver said before he met the female octopus.”

  The food was as good as it had been the first morning. Dona ate, conscious that Maizie was eyeing her from time to time, undoubtedly wondering if she concurred with Sterling’s idea of ‘fun.’ When she’d finished her breakfast, she walked out into the lobby. Two bellboys were standing by one of the potted palms. Neither of them was Beau. She asked one of the boys if Beau was on duty. When the boy told her he wasn’t, she located a writing desk in an alcove and wrote Beau’s name on a hotel envelope. Folding the bills Sterling had given her between a sheet of stationery, she put it into the envelope, sealed it and walked over to the desk.

  Dona wondered when the clerk slept. He’d been on duty every time she’d stopped at the desk. He greeted her cordially. “Nice to see you, Miss Santos. How’s the cottage on the lake working out?”

  “Fine. I had a swim this morning before I drove into town.”

  “Nice picture of you in this morning’s paper. I didn’t have the least idea we had such a celebrity staying with us.”

  “It’s my mother who’s the celebrity.”

  “Even so.”

  Dona handed him the envelope she’d addressed. “Will you please see that the big bellboy, the one who limps, gets this? I believe I have the name correct.”

  The clerk looked at the envelope. “Beau Jackson. That’s his name.”

  “I forgot to tip him when I left.”

  The clerk laughed as he put the envelope into one of the bottom rows of slots in the key rack. “I’ll see that Beau gets it as soon as he comes in. He probably can use it. Beau got himself into a little trouble yesterday and it may be a day or two before he can come back to work.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Served him right. I mean, getting clipped a time or two. We’ve never had any trouble with him. He’s always done his work fine. But even if he was a captain in the army and did lose a leg in Korea, he’s got no right to sass a white man. Why he practically called Mr. Sterling a liar.”

  Dona didn’t trust herself to speak. She nodded and walked through the lobby to the street. The scene was a duplicate of the previous day. The faces were different but similar. The carousel organ was playing a Strauss waltz. All that remained of the accident was a smear of grease, sanded over, in the exact center of the four-way intersection.

  On impulse, she walked counter-clockwise around the courthouse square, studying the faces of the men and women she passed, thinking of what Jack Ames had said when she’d asked him what he thought of intermarriage. He’d said: “This thing’s too big for me.

  She felt, suddenly, the same way about her own problem, like a mental pigmy in a world of giants. Killing Blair Sterling wouldn’t change anything. What was done was done. By killing her father, all she would accomplish would be to descend to the same low level on which he existed. Her thinking was confused, had been confused since this knowledge had been thrust upon her. Otherwise, she couldn’t have done the things she did, acted as she had acted. This wasn’t the end of the world. It was merely the end of the world she’d known. Everyone had a cross.

  She could see it in the lined faces and stooped backs of the men and women in the square, trying to forget for one day by gathering with their kind, in the small pleasures they could give their children, in popcorn and peanuts and ice cream bars and soda-pop, in rides on a pink horse bobbing on a battered carousel, the different weights and problems that constantly sought to press them into the soil they tilled.

  If the South was peopled with Blair Sterlings and beady-eyed little men whittling, spitting, sitting in the square, it was also peopled with men like Jack Ames and Judge Harris and Father Miller and dedicated men of all faiths who believed that ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself was not merely a phrase in a book but a firm and solid foundation on which to build a new and better understanding.

  She passed Judge Harris’s office and impelled by something stronger than she was, turned down the shabby side street that led past St. Jude’s.

  The door of the frame church was open. The same invisible hand drew her in. She was alone in the church. She made the sign of her faith, then knelt for a long time at the feet of the Holy Mother. When she left the altar she was crying. Her sins were still with her, but she felt spiritually refreshed and more like herself than she had since her talk with Estrella. Her mother had been so casual.

  “Staying with a man is one thing. Marrying him is another. When a woman marries, she wants babies. That’s why it’s only fair you know. You might have — different — babies.”

  Dona crossed the lawn to the rectory and knocked on the wood of the screen door. A pleasant-faced middle-aged white woman came to the door with flour on her hands.

  “Is Father Miller in?” Dona asked her.

  The housekeeper shook her head. “No, he isn’t. He’s out in the parish somewhere. Would you care to come in and wait?”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then I’ll come back,” Dona said. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  She walked on up the street, the same way she’d strolled on her first morning in Blairville. She could come back and confess to Father Miller or wait until she returned to Chicago and let Father Ryan decide her penance. She knew now that she could never go through with the plan. She’d been out of her mind to think of killing Blair Sterling. She’d been mad to drive south. Two wrongs didn’t make
one right. A greater sin neither obviated nor condoned a lesser one.

  As soon as she was completely certain of herself, of her emotional control, she would drive back to the cottage and pack. There was nothing she could do about Charles. But Estrella need never know she’d even left Chicago.

  When she reached her car she decided to drive out of town on the far side. The soil was more fertile here, rich with cotton, huge magnolia and gum trees and an occasional tall pine, dripping moss. Rutted white sand roads led back to single farms and combination cross-road stores and filling stations.

  From time to time she passed entire families, some white, some colored, most of them in cars or pickup trucks, a few in buggies and wagons. They were all scrubbed and wearing their best, bound for court day in Blairville.

  Where the road wound closest to the river, Negro children waved cans of bait they were trying to sell. Occasionally, far back off the road, at the end of winding tree-lined lanes, large plantation houses stood. One room Negro shacks were common. Some were painted. Some were covered with rolls of composition siding stamped to resemble bricks. Some had never been painted. A few of them had windows but most of the cabins boasted only gaping holes protected by wooden shutters. All of them had open porches, small outhouses and weathered, sagging barns.

  Whole families worked in the fields, the women and children chopping weeds, picking corn, thinning sweet potato vines, the men following mule-drawn plows. It was easy to understand what motivated the collarless, tieless, little man and his fellow loafers in the courthouse square. It was fear. They were expendables. They had no special skills or talent of their own and the colored population of Blairville County outnumbered the white by almost three to one.

  Dona drove for hours, then turned around shortly before sunset and ate in one of the combination filling station and restaurant places that appeared at frequent intervals along the road. The coffee was hot and strong. The chicken fried in a batter was tasty. She took a chance on ordering hush puppies and found that they were fluffy balls of corn meal mixed with egg and buttermilk and minced onion and quick-fried in deep fat.