Little Sacrifices

by Scott, Jamie

  The beach was crowned by a marvelous pavilion, built in the early part of the century as the Central of Georgia Railway’s Dancing and Bathing Pavilion, and later named the Tybrisa Pavilion after the company that bought it. Adults drank and danced away many a night in the forties to the melodies of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Cab Callaway, and many hangovers were nursed through the day in the rocking chairs set invitingly along the porch.

  On the sand, the breeze was strong and hot. It was remarkably bright, like walking in snow on a sunny day. I eventually spotted Minty and waved. She beckoned me, us, over. When Fie dragged her feet, I bullied her, and Jim too when he hemmed and hawed. I didn’t blame them for being reluctant, though, to be fair, the girls generally ignored what they viewed as my unfortunate choice in friends. They’d only mentioned it once, not long after we started palling around. ‘It’s not that we don’t like her, exactly.’

  ‘No, not at all. It’s just–’

  ‘Just that, well, we think you can do better in choosing your friends,’ one of them had said. It didn’t matter which one. They spoke with one voice. What, I inquired, did they mean by better?

  ‘Well, prettier for one thing.’ I conceded that Fie was on the plain side, but I wasn’t going to win any beauty pageants either.

  ‘She thinks she knows everything, always raising her hand with an answer for the teacher. She makes the rest of us look stupid.’ Granted, she was a teacher’s pet. If I had half her brains I’d be an insufferable know–it–all, just for the sake of it. I kept these defenses to myself, muttering something feeble and changing the subject. I felt like a louse for not sticking up for Fie, but I sorely wanted to stay on the sunny side of the girls’ dispositions.

  When we arrived at the group, I caught Charlene puckering her face, but it was too late to turn back. She welcomed Lottie when I introduced her around, and eventually made room for Jim and Fie to sit on the blankets as well. For girls yearning to be socialites, hospitality trumped cruelty almost every time. I threw myself down and tipped my face to the sun. I heard the teachers behind us stocking ice buckets with sodas and setting up the barbeques. A charred assortment of livestock was in the cards for lunchtime. It took only a few minutes for Jim and Fie to make their excuses, and their escape to join the teachers. With my eyes closed, all sound tumbled into the distance. Every few minutes, kids stopped to pay homage to the girls, who gracefully accepted their due.

  Tybee was lovely. Sea oats rustled behind us and the wind kicked up a bit of surf. The boys were already in the water, hollering and splashing in their bid to get our attention. They succeeded. We watched them until they threw their waterlogged bodies on the beach in glistening, suntanned clumps.

  ‘Hi, girls, got room for us?’ Clay beamed. He was like a bad penny. He and his friend threw their blankets on the other side of Minty. I glanced toward the ice buckets, where Jim and Fie fished for sodas. Disdain polluted Jim’s features. When he nodded something to Fie, she put her hand on his arm.

  Clay smirked when Jim handed Lottie and me cold, sweating bottles, and sat down again. ‘Hey Rumer, didn’t you get any for us?’

  Jim got to his feet. ‘What do you want?’ He looked more than happy for the excuse to leave again.

  Clay nudged his friend and winked. ‘Coke’ll be just fine.’

  Jim’s expression slowly settled into one of bored dismissal. He brushed invisible lint from his shorts and settled back down. ‘Well, you’re in luck. They have Coke over there.’ He took a swallow from his glistening bottle, smacked his lips and smiled at Clay. I choked on my drink. Jim had bided his time for years to stand up to Clay. He looked like it was worth the wait. Clay didn’t speak to him again.

  I hated that he sat feet away from me. Far from the lovesick torment of the early days, all I felt was revulsion. It was as much at him as at what I’d done, how I’d let him manipulate me, and the consequences. I didn’t regret the termination, or mourn the baby–that–never–was. I only regretted that my parents had found out, and that it changed how they felt about me. And I regretted getting Dora Lee involved. She could have lost her job. She could have gone to jail, just for helping me. Actually, that was a lot of regret to live with. I’d made a right royal mess of things. I was lucky to have gotten off as lightly as I had. It was probably too much to hope for that Clay would move away, or get swallowed up in the sand.

  I lazed in the sunshine until I was too sweaty to stand myself. When I suggested a swim, Minty made no move to get up. ‘Aren’t you boiling?’ I asked her. Perspiration ran down my scalp.

  She turned her fresh–as–a–daisy face to me. ‘No, not really. But you all go ahead.’

  ‘But you must be hot. It’s a hundred degrees out here!’

  ‘I don’t let myself sweat.’ She gave a shrug. ‘It’s mind over matter. If you think about being cool, then you stay cool.’ Ceecee and Charlene nodded in tandem.

  Those of us with less obedient glands ran for the shore, where I dipped my toe into salt water for the first time. In Williamstown, I was geographically unsuited to the ocean, which was hours away at the other end of the state. We cooled off in murky ponds and lakes instead. In Savannah, the sea was mine for the taking, though Duncan told us on the ride over that the same courtesy wasn’t extended to Georgia’s Negroes. The ocean was as Jim Crow as the restaurants and railroad cars. Black beachgoers risked a fifty dollar fine just for setting foot in it. Duncan mentioned three girls who challenged the system a couple years earlier, not far from where the Spanish landed in Jenkins’ War. They didn’t get any farther than the Spanish had.

  Lottie and I bobbed along with our feet on the sand, deciding how we liked the experience, while Fie and Jim struck off for a point in the distance. Lottie watched them swim.

  ‘She has a real thing for him doesn’t she?’

  I dashed the water out of my stinging eyes. ‘Fie? For Jim?’ They were swimming like they planned to be in Africa by dinnertime.

  ‘Well of course. It’s obvious. She hangs on every word he says.’

  ‘For Jim?’

  She shrugged. ‘That’s what she told me.’ She dove underwater with a kick, surfacing nearer the shore. I managed a passable doggy–paddle until I caught up with her.

  ‘What do you mean, she told you?’

  ‘Told me. You know. Words came out of her mouth in my direction... Actually I asked.’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’

  ‘She doesn’t want you to laugh at her. You wouldn’t, though, would you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Probably not. Fie and Jim. Jim and Fie. I let the idea settle down in my mind. I suppose it made sense. They were similar in many ways, and clearly got along famously. I searched my heart for any jealousy that my two best friends in Savannah had a connection that excluded me. Nope, not a whiff of jealousy. Only a curiosity, which wouldn’t be satisfied until I got the full story.

  When the smell of grilling meat tempted us from our watery amusements, we tucked into lunch, dripping salt water from pruned fingers. My teeth chattered despite the sun. Pots of potato salad and plates of barbeque churned us into a ravenous horde. Everyone except Clay settled back into their usual places on the blankets. He sat very close to Lottie.

  ‘Lottie, you said your name was, right?’ At least he’d had the good manners to ignore us all morning. His words stank of bourbon. He was still handsome as ever. What a pity he was such a jerk. She stopped chewing and nodded. ‘Well, Lottie, my friends and I were wondering something. Are all the dolls up North stacked like you?’ He raised his voice. ‘I mean, first May, now you. What do they feed you all up there? To make you grow like that? And in your case would you say you live up to your, ah, attributes?’ The boys laughed.

  She raised half a smile. Clay deserved whatever was coming next. She wasn’t one hundred percent Sicilian stock for nothing. ‘First May, and now me?’ She sneered, staring at him until he giggled and pitched a nervous look backwards at his friends. ‘Well, Clay, I don’t know about t
hat. After the treatment you gave May, it doesn’t sound like much of a proposition to me.’

  Charlene’s ears were drawn to my friend’s enigmatic comment. ‘What do you mean by that, Lottie?’

  ‘Maybe Clay would like to explain?’ Lottie crooned. I’d have given my left arm to stamp such unease on his expression. ‘No, Clay? Shall I explain to everyone what I meant?’

  His blush showed through his sunburn. ‘I don’t know what May told you, but she’s lying.’

  Lottie leaned in real close. I only heard because I was right next to them. ‘How do you know that, if you don’t know what she told me?’

  ‘Whatever she said, she’s lying. That’s all I’m saying.’ His voice was a couple octaves higher than usual.

  ‘What’s the matter, Clay?’ One of his friends asked. ‘Your voice has gone all squeaky. Was that water too cold for you or something?’ Jeers drowned out Lottie’s next words, limiting them to our unhappy little circle.

  ‘She’s not the liar, Clay, and you know that,’ she said quietly, prompting his retreat to other side of the blankets. We doubled up laughing, joining the others. At last, the idea of Clay only had the power to make me laugh.

  By late afternoon we were sun crisped and tired. Little groups broke off to explore a bit inland. It was a small place, three miles long, and narrow enough at its southern end for a short walk from the beach to the marsh. Over its centuries–old human history, Tybee saw a lot of traffic. Yamacraw Indians pitched up on its shore for oystering, fishing and collecting salt, and South Carolinians sailed down to settle their grudges away from their own state’s anti–dueling laws. Expeditions from across Europe anchored in its narrow harbor, and Loyalists congregated there during the American Revolution, waiting for the ships that would carry them to the more British–minded Caribbean islands. It hosted more than one fort for coastal defense and, most recently, we white folks liked to lounge on its beaches.

  With Lottie sound asleep, I stepped into my sandals and headed for the dunes, with a mind for a walk. I didn’t get more than a couple hundred yards before the day’s indulgence in Coca–Cola made me anxious to find a bathroom. The public facilities near the parking lot were a welcome sight, and I managed a little dance to shed my bathing suit in the cramped space. While I was wrenching on my suit again, I heard someone leaning against the outside wall. The urgency with which she muttered to herself kept me in the sweltering outhouse, listening. She was crying. I recognized my friend.

  ‘Hey, Fie, what’s wrong?’

  She spun around, gripping her chest. ‘Holy God, May, don’t sneak up on a person like that!’

  ‘Sorry. What’s happened?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Is it about Jim?’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Uh huh, Lottie spilled the beans. What happened?’

  ‘I just made the biggest sap of myself.’ She watched the clouds, trying to bring her voice under control. They were walking between the dunes, she said, talking about nothing in particular. Most of the beach was flanked by a double row of sand dunes. Getting down in between them encouraged all manner of clandestine activity. Fie worked up her courage, stopped Jim and kissed him, just like we’d practiced on our arms. When I asked her what he did, she started sniffling again. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t say anything. He just blinked at her.

  ‘He was probably just surprised,’ I offered.

  She didn’t think so. He acted, she said, like she’d never puckered up on him at all. That did seem a little discourteous, not even to thank her. I said so, and told her he was a jerk.

  ‘Well, I like the jerk.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Her tear ducts exploded once again.

  ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Fie! I just meant that, of course you do.’

  ‘And now he probably won’t even want to be friends with me!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know that once Jim’s decided to be someone’s friend, he doesn’t go back on that. Right?’

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do anything.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Absolutely not. You’ll only make it worse.’

  ‘I feel like an idiot.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  I gave her the best advice I could. As if I was in any position to counsel on matters of the heart. We walked around, and talked around Jim until it was time to go. She was mortified well beyond my comforting. Time alone had the medicine to take the sting out of the day.

  Chapter 39

  When Ma woke me, there were no cricket sounds. She needed to talk to me, she said. ‘Now?’ I squinted at the hall light coming through the doorway.

  ‘Yes, now. Come on. Downstairs.’ Grabbing my bathrobe, I shuffled down the stairs behind her.

  Duncan stooped in his favorite chair with his forehead in his hands. Blood covered his shirt. When he looked at me through his fingers, I plainly saw stains on his hands.

  We talked all at once, me asking what was going on and them assuring me that the blood was not my father’s. Well then, whose? Duncan was disinclined to rush his answer.

  ‘May, something has happened that you need to know about. Out at the schoolhouse tonight. A man was shot.’

  ‘And you were–’

  ‘And I was there, yes.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Duncan’s mysterious operations started in September, just about the same time that Ma set out to give Eliza an education. I should have known he wouldn’t leave all the social work up to her. There were fifteen men, he said, give or take, who he was teaching. Everyone met at the schoolhouse, the one he made me visit when we first arrived. Black men or white men, I wanted to know. Black men, he said. There’s no reason to have to teach white men to read. No, he wasn’t being secretive, only expedient. The men worked all day long just like he did and after dinner was as good a time as any for learning. The schoolhouse was close to the plantation where most of the men lived, so it was an easy walk for them.

  ‘Then it was a Negro who got shot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘By a white kid.’ At the same second Duncan heard the explosion he saw Walter Johnson’s body implode, yanked off his feet as if by strings from his shoulders. Blood spattered the homemade chalkboard behind them, making tracks through Duncan’s neat handwriting. He struck the floor with a squelch. Silence moved into the wake of the blast, then sucking sounds were heard, as Walter tried to breath despite the holes in his chest. ‘Noooooo!’ screamed his son, scrambling to grab Walter. Walter looked confused by the sudden turn of events. Blood trickled from his nose.

  Duncan heard a truck’s tires spin, throwing sand and rocks and accusations about dirty Negroes. He ran to the door, clambering over the men trying to get to Walter.

  ‘And you saw him?’

  ‘Yes.’ One boy sat on the truck’s windowsill with his hand on the roof, while his buddy did his best to drive fast and straight. He held his shotgun with the ease of a country boy. He looked surprised to see Duncan, and he smiled as they drove from sight.

  ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘It’s a miracle, but yes, so far. We drove him to the hospital where they operated.’

  I began to shiver despite the September heat wave. Ma put her arm around me. ‘May. We need to make a decision.’

  I didn’t have to ask about what. ‘You know who did it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was a student, Jimmy Seibert’s brother, the kid Duncan told off in his class when we first arrived. To say I was surprised was about as under as an understatement got. I didn’t think rednecks went to college. I still had a lot to learn about the face of hatred.

  ‘Are you sure you saw?’

  ‘As clear as I’m looking at you now.’

  ‘Did you see who was driving?’

  ‘Uh uh.’

  ‘Did anyone else see them?’

  ‘I expect so.’


  ‘So they can tell the police what they saw, right?’

  ‘They won’t, though.’

  I knew why not. The Black Code operated throughout the Southern United States. They started as laws made up after the Civil War, aimed at keeping the status quo. Many of those laws dictated what Negroes could and couldn’t do when it came to legal matters. Though the laws were struck down one by one over the years, the mindset lingered. Testifying against white men just wasn’t done. Everyone knew what happened when blacks dared to stand up for themselves. As often as not, they ended up at the business end of a noose. Even if the other men did literally risk their necks and tell what they saw, their testimony went about as long as a temper in the heat with a Southern jury.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  He was hoarse. ‘I don’t know.’ I suspected the consequences for us of bringing the shooter’s name to Minty’s father. We were weighing up just how to live with the consequences of not speaking up.

  The next day Mister Johnson was still alive, but his spine was broken. He was paralyzed. Duncan went to pay his respects to the family. Missus Johnson didn’t speak for a long few minutes after he grasped her hands and said how sorry he was. She asked quietly whether he was going along to the police station. She said no one else had volunteered so far. He didn’t give her an answer.

  It was the uncommon sound that woke me a week later. Not the noise of suspicious men whispering, or of feet running away, but the exhalation of air rushing to flame like strong wind through a loose sail. The wood popped and crackled as moisture made its way to steam and blew itself free. Leafy shadows flickered on the walls. I knew what it was. You couldn’t live in the South in those days and not know.

  A ten foot high cross burned on our front lawn. Living room lights started to flare along the street as our neighbors realized one after another that the Klan was exercising its right to free expression on our grass. They lingered in their doorways, our one–time friends, stretching their necks for a good look. Shadows hopped in the road as the pyre threw umber light into the flowerbeds. Once I saw it, I realized I’d lived with its expectation since the shooting. But the sight still knocked me breathless.