The Dry Grass of August

by Anna Jean Mayhew

  “Amen!” the congregation responded in many voices. The hum of the choir rose in pitch.

  “Welcome to Jesus!” the preacher shouted.

  “Jesus! Amen!” the people replied. I heard Mary’s voice.

  The humming got louder. The preacher lowered his face, closed his eyes. A woman began to sing, her voice strong and rich. “O my brother, do you know the Savior”—she stepped away from the pew, raised her arms and sang so loud the tent filled with her voice—“who is wondrous kind and true? He’s the rock of your salvation. There’s honey in the rock for you.” The choir echoed her last phrase. “Oh, there’s honey in the rock, my brother, there’s honey in the rock for you.”

  The singing made the air in the tent even hotter, and I could hardly breathe for the smell of the bodies around me. The woman singing solo raised her arms again, and loose skin swung in arcs to her elbows. Her face glowed.

  Stell Ann repeated the words. “There’s honey in the rock for you.”

  The hymn ended and a man behind us said,“Sister Roland, she got the call.”

  “A voice from God.”

  Nothing else broke the silence until the preacher shouted, “Repent!”

  Stell gasped. Mary sat still, her eyes closed.

  “Repent!” the preacher screamed again. “Is there honey in the rock for you? We got to ask ourself this question every day. Not just on Sunday, not just when we in trouble, but every day. Every minute of every day we got to live for Jesus. Elsewise Jesus can’t be waiting around for us.”

  “Can’t wait!” a man shouted.

  “Amen!” came from several places at once.

  “Has you got sin?” asked the preacher.

  “Yes, Lord,” screamed a woman.

  “Yes, yes!”

  “Repent!” the preacher shouted.

  “Amen! Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!”

  “Some of you thinks your sins is forgiven,” the preacher said. “You repent. God forgives you. But the Lord don’t work in advance. He don’t pardon sins you fixing to commit.”

  “That right, Lord don’t work in advance,” a woman behind me repeated. Sweat slid from my hair down my neck.

  The preacher stared first at one person, then another. “Let the one who has no sin throw a rock at me now.” The only sound was the rustling of Mary’s sleeve as she fanned herself. “If there’s somebody out there who repented last meeting and hasn’t sinned in the meantime, come on up here and take my place.”

  Voices rumbled, “Yes, Reverend. We all sinners. Amen. God’s love.” Nobody walked forward.

  He touched the Bible on the pulpit. “Read the Word, my people! The Good Book will keep you straight. Study on it till it’s in your mind, for those times when a Bible ain’t handy or you cain’t find your glasses.” He picked up the Bible, opened it, and recited:

  “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and unto his courts with praise: Be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”

  He snapped the book shut. “But none of us is ready to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Not you. Not me. We got to ask Jesus to forgive us. Get down on your knees. Pray till it hurts. Be ready when you’re called.”

  Stell’s face glowed. Her lips parted. “Jubie?” She fell against me, then hit the floor, wedged between me and the chairs in front of us.

  “Oh, no!” Mary screamed. The preacher paused. People turned to look at us. A big woman rose from her seat across the aisle. She shoved chairs out of her way and bent over Stell Ann, pushing me aside like a chair.

  “She be okay, just fell out.” The woman picked Stell up as if she weighed nothing and headed down the aisle toward the exit. Mary and I followed.

  The preacher started up again, and the congregation turned back to him.

  Outside the tent, the woman lowered Stell Ann to the ground and sat down beside her. She grabbed the fan from Mary, clutched it in her beefy hand, and began to fan Stell with a fury. I reached out to pat Stell, but the woman said, “Leave her be. She in the spirit.” Like Mary giving me an order. I sat back in the dust. The woman had BO so bad it made me choke. Mary kneeled beside us, her eyes closed, hands folded in prayer.

  A mass of gray hair surrounded the woman’s fat face. Her purple dress had a collar of white lace, ragged and dirty around her neck. She prayed, her face shining in the light from a nearby torch. “Lord, this white child have fainted for you.Your spirit come over her and she be fill with Jesus. Gentle her, so she come back to us.” She took Stell’s right hand in both of hers.

  Stell’s eyelids fluttered. The woman leaned over her and a drop of sweat landed on Stell’s forehead. Stell’s eyes opened. She looked up into that black perspiring face, inches from her own.

  “Hey, honey, you coming back?”

  Stell moaned and closed her eyes.

  “Oh, Lord, be in her now, give her cease from sorrow.”

  Mary said, “I believe this child has had about all the Lord she can take for one night.You go get some water.”

  “Yes’m, that probably do it.” The woman put her hand on my shoulder and pushed down hard as she got to her feet.

  “Stell Ann? You wake up now, it’s time to get on home.” Mary rubbed Stell’s hands. “Estelle Annette Watts, open your eyes.”

  Stell looked up at Mary. “What happened?”

  “You took off for a while.”

  The woman was back with a cup of water. Stell sat up and drank.

  Mary said, “Stell, can you stand?”

  Stell got to her feet. “I’m okay, really.”

  “You reckon you can walk back to the motel park? It’s a good ways.”

  “Honestly, I’m fine.”

  There was a clatter of voices inside the tent, and the woman said, “Reverend Cureton taking a break.” She reached into a pocket of her dress and took out a watch with a broken wristband. “Dint do but half a hour. He hungry. We always feeds ’em good.”

  “We be getting on,” said Mary. With Stell in the middle, we held hands walking back up Zion Church Creek Road as the moon began to rise.

  CHAPTER 21

  At the edge of town, Stell directed us down a tree-lined avenue with wide lawns, a shortcut to the motel.We left the rumble of the boulevard. Our footsteps clattered on the sidewalk in the warm night, and our shadows stretched ahead and disappeared in the glow of the next streetlamp.

  Mary asked Stell, “Is it okay, us going down this street?”

  “It’s the quickest way back.”

  “That’s good.”

  I remembered the curfew signs in Wickens.

  We walked a bit, then Stell said, “Reverend Cureton has fervor.”

  “Um-hum,” Mary said.

  I said, “He’s no Daddy Grace.”

  Stell snickered. “You’ve never heard Daddy Grace preach.”

  Mary chuckled, her gold tooth glinting. “They different, that’s for sure. Reverend Cureton preaches in a tent. Daddy Grace, he got a door mat woven from twenty-dollar bills for wiping the mud off his gator shoes.”

  A car came down the street, slowed as it got to us, sped away.

  A mosquito buzzed my ear. The air smelled like fresh-cut grass.

  There was a loud pop, the tinkling of breaking glass. A streetlight went out a block away. Everything was quiet, even the crickets. Mary said, “Some boy got a new BB gun.” She walked faster. “I was a member of the House of Prayer from a child, and Daddy Grace was Moses to me. But I saw the light. Now I’m at McDowell Street Baptist.”

  “Where Leesum is?”

  “Yes, with Reverend—”

  Another loud pop. A streetlamp near us shattered. Stell gasped.

  “Stell, Jubie—” Mary’s voice was shrill.

  A man spoke behind us. “We gonna get you, girl.”

  Across the street a porch light came on. A woman shouted, “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, ma’am,” the man called out. “We’re just cle
aring some niggers outen your neighborhood.”

  “Help!” I screamed.

  The light went out. A door slammed.

  “They’re after me,” Mary said. “Y’all run. Get the police—”

  Someone grabbed my hand and wrenched it behind my back, up between my shoulder blades. Another man shoved Stell against a tree, his hand over her mouth. I screamed again.

  “Shut up!” The man holding me had rotten cigarette breath and stank of liquor.

  A third man said, “What you doing walking in a white neighborhood after dark?”

  Mary said, “Going home from the meeting.”

  The man facing Mary wore a white T-shirt that glowed in the moonlight. He slapped her. “Use your manners, girl.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  He socked her. Mary cried out, put her hand to the side of her face. “Please, mister, leave us be.”

  I yelled for help. The man behind me jerked my hand higher and coughed against my neck. “I said shut up.” His foul breath washed across my face and I clamped my teeth so hard my jaw hurt.

  The man in the T-shirt hit Mary in the stomach. She doubled over with a horrible groan.

  “Go on,” the man behind me said. “Hit her again.”

  “I got a idea about this girl.”

  “Same idea I got about these li’l white gals?”

  Mary struggled to speak. “Dey don’t know ’bout pleasin’ a man. I can show you boys a good time. All you.”

  “Nigger gals are born wanting it,” said the one holding me.

  “Yessuh,” Mary said. “Yessuh, yessuh, you right.” Talking colored again.

  A car came down the street. Brakes squealed and a woman hollered from the car, “Let’s get outta here.”

  The men who held Stell and me shoved us on the sidewalk together, facedown. One of them said, “Put the darkie in the backseat.”

  Car doors slammed and they pulled away from the curb, tires squealing. The motor grew faint.

  The pavement hurt my cheek. Crickets sounded loud again. A screen door banged shut. Stell prayed in a fast whisper, “Jesus, we offer ourselves for your care. Please be with us. Shelter us from our enemies.”

  “Mary,” I said. “Ask God to protect Mary.”

  “God, please”—she stammered—“what’s that?”

  I listened, trying to separate the sound from the crickets and tree frogs. Metal clinking, a clicking. “A dog, coming down the sidewalk.” I smelled it, felt it snuffling around our legs.

  Stell jerked. “It’s in my face.”

  The dog licked my arm and I pushed against its hairy belly. “Shoo!”

  Claws clicked on the sidewalk; the dog’s collar jangled as it ran away. I sat up.

  Stell tugged at my sleeve. “They’ll come back.” She began to shiver.

  I pulled her to me. She was my big sister and I wanted her to be strong. “You’re scaring me.”

  We sat there, Stell shaking and crying in my arms, making me crazy. I touched my elbow where the dog had licked me and my hand came away wet and sticky. “Ugh,” I said, wiping my hand on my skirt.

  “What?” Stell’s voice shook.

  “Dog gunk.” I touched the spot again. “And I skinned my elbow.”

  She got to her feet and took my hand, pulling me up. I caught my hem under my shoe and felt the skirt tear away from the bodice.

  Stell said, “Mary’s dress was caught in the car door. Flapping in the wind.”

  I put my cheek against her hair and sobbed. “What will they do to her?”

  A door opened in a house across the street and a woman stepped out on her porch. “Who are you girls?”

  “Help us!” Stell ran toward the woman, pulling me behind her.

  A block away a car roared around a corner, came straight at us. Stell froze in the headlights. I pushed her up on the curb as the car stopped and two men jumped out.

  “Somebody called the sheriff,” a tall man said.

  “Thank goodness,” Stell said.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” we said together.

  The lady came down her front walk. “Sheriff Higgins.”

  “Mrs. Rainey.” The tall man was in slacks and a golf shirt, not a uniform.

  “These girls’ve been making a racket.”

  “They took Mary,” I said.

  “She was hurt,” said Stell.

  Mrs. Rainey looked at my dress. “You should cover yourself.”

  My stomach showed where I’d ripped my dress. “Go after them,” I said to the sheriff, “before they kill Mary.”

  “Who’s this Mary?”

  “Our maid,” Stell Ann said.

  “She colored?” asked the skinny man who was with the sheriff.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Some men beat her up.They put her in their car and took her away. They were talking about—”

  “About what?” the sheriff asked.

  “Tell him,” I said to Stell.

  “He, the biggest man, he said he wanted to—that he was going to—attack her.”

  “Sounds like they already did that,” the second man said. He was shorter than the sheriff, with a scratchy voice.

  “Assault her,” Stell murmured.

  “I’m sorry to ask you this, missy, but do you mean rape her?”

  Stell looked down. “Yes, sir, that’s what they meant.”

  “Oh, my,” said Mrs. Rainey. “If y’all don’t need me, I believe I’ll go back inside.” Her front door closed and the porch light went off.

  “How old’s this darkie?” the short man asked.

  “Her name is Mary Luther and she’s forty-seven,” I said.

  The sheriff looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “Did she provoke them? Did she talk back?”

  I said, “She’s too smart for that.”

  “A smart nigger?”The short man snorted.

  “Mary is smart, and she’s not—” Stell said.

  “Don’t pay any mind to Ray there,” Sheriff Higgins said. “Where you girls from?”

  “Charlotte, North Carolina.”

  “What y’all doing in Georgia?”

  “We’re on vacation.”

  “Y’all the ones had that wreck yesterday at Grady and Main?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “At Sally’s Motel Park,” I said, “with our family.”

  “We’ll let you call your parents from the station. It’s late for y’all to be out alone.”

  “We weren’t alone.” I couldn’t swallow around the rock in the back of my throat. “We were with Mary.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The sheriff ’s office was in a building smaller than our garage. A man in uniform behind the front desk looked up as we walked in.

  “These girls need to call their parents,” Sheriff Higgins said.

  “Yes, sir.” The man scrambled to move the phone to the front edge of the desk. “You need the book?” Stell nodded. He handed her a flimsy directory.

  The sheriff went to a coffeepot in the corner and poured himself a cup. “Could I get you some water?” he asked me. “Too late to send out for Co-Cola.”

  I shook my head. I kept taking deep breaths, tried to stop trembling. Where was Mary now? What were they doing to her?

  Stell hung up. “Daddy’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “Come on in my office,” said the sheriff. “We’ll be done by the time he gets here.”

  He sat behind his desk, pointing Stell and me to two metal chairs.The one window was open, but the room was too warm. “Give me a second.” The sheriff pulled out several desk drawers, looking for something. “Here it is; knew I had one.” He handed me a safety pin. “You ripped your . . .”

  He looked out the window while I pinned the skirt of my dress to the bodice. “Everything’ll be okay, sooner or later.”

  How could he know that?

  A jittery fluor
escent light buzzed overhead. He wrote something on a pad, then swiveled his chair and picked up three sheets of paper, sandwiched carbon paper between them, and rolled them into the typewriter beside his desk. “August 13, 1954, ten-oh-five p.m.,” he said, typing. “Lillington Avenue at Cameron.” Plick-plick-pling, using two fingers, looking down at the keys, then over his glasses at what he’d typed. He glanced back at Stell. “I need your full name and age.”

  “Estelle Annette Watts. Sixteen and a half.”

  “One six.” He typed the numbers. “Birth date?”

  “February 11, 1938.”

  “And you?”

  “June Bentley Watts. Thirteen. October 4, 1940.”

  He typed again. “And your girl’s name? What’d you say it is?”

  Stell said, “Mary Luther,” and I said, “Mary Constance Culpepper Luther.”

  The sheriff typed some more and I added, “She’ll be forty-eight next month.” I wished I could remember her exact birthday.

  “The men who took your maid, how many were there?”

  “Three,” I said.

  “Plus the girl driving the car,” Stell said.

  “Did you get a good look at them?”

  Stell said, “The one who—he shoved me against a tree. I couldn’t see Jubie and Mary.” Tears welled in her eyes, rolled down her face. “And they shot out the streetlights. A BB gun or something.”

  He made notes on the pad, then looked at me. “How about you? Anything that sticks in your mind.”

  I thought of rotten breath, the smell of liquor, cigarettes, and BO. “Tall,” I said. “The one who held me was taller than I am, skinny and strong.”

  “How tall are you?”

  “Five-nine. He’d been drinking.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know the smell.”

  His lips pushed into a thin line. He looked at Stell Ann. “The fella who had you, what can you tell me?”