Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands

by Susan Carol McCarthy

  Inside the showroom, the air hangs as limp and damp as a washrag. Daddy brings out the three big pedestal fans, normally in the back, and places them in opposite corners to create a cooling air flow. The fans are noisy. Ren and Mitchell, playing darts in the office, yell to us, “Hey, sounds like there was a wedding in Wellwood!”

  The familiar sounds of a squealing lead car followed by a flock of honking well-wishers pull Mother, Daddy and me outside and onto the walkway, peering north.

  What we expect to see is a pair of newlyweds, their car decorated with ribbons, cans, signs and all, followed by loudly celebrating family and friends.

  What appears instead stuns us.

  In the lead, a sleek black Chrysler New Yorker, speeding wildly, weaves in and out of the slow-moving traffic. No decorations, no signs, four Negro occupants, two in front, two in back, obviously in flight. The Hertz logo on the car’s front plate tells me it’s a rental, probably from the airport. The lockjawed concentration of the driver and the flat-out frantic movements of the others inside makes it clear—this is no party game. The four people flying past us in the Chrysler are terrified. When you see what’s behind them, you can’t blame them.

  The first of the three chase vehicles roaring down the Trail is a big black Ford pickup, oversize bumpers polished to blinding brightness. Two men inside wear the ghostly white of the Ku Klux Klan. Out one window, the rider brandishes a double-barreled shotgun. Out the other, the driver waves a high-powered rifle, using his inside forearm to press against the truck horn. Both men are hooded, but there’s no mistaking those bumpers and Confederate flag plate. Passing in front of us, pursuing the Chrysler, is J. D. Bowman, the man of my nightmares.

  Behind him, about a hundred yards, a red Dodge truck tears toward us. Three riders lean forward in the front. Two more stand in the back, clutching the cab and waving weapons. The sleeves of their robes flap in the wind, the crests of their hoods blow back, flat against their heads. One lets out an eerie, high-pitched cry, the unnerving howl of the Rebel Yell.

  In the last truck, a shiny blue Chevy, the white robes of three men glow against its dark interior. These figures brandish no weapons, honk no horns, make no battle cries. These men sit calmly, the driver coolly maneuvering in and around the traffic, the riders patient like observers or judges or law enforcement officials. A large Confederate flag draped and taped to the driver’s side covers the logo we all know is there: the golden script of Emmett Casselton’s Casbah Groves.

  As this terrible parade flies past us, Mother and Daddy look at each other in disbelief. The fearful faces of those in the front car, the hateful menace of their white-robed pursuers leaves me numb. I know the Klan is a group of white men capable of doing horrible things; what they did to Marvin is etched in my mind till I die. But to tell you the truth, I’d somehow imagined that adults dressed in sheets might look like a grown-up Halloween party. The sight of them in full pursuit, in broad daylight, sickens me.

  Mother pulls me close. Daddy, behind us, grips us both. Mercifully, the boys have remained inside, choosing dart play over the supposed “wedding party.” My parents and I stand stiffly together, listening to the horns race out of town. Then two carloads of customers pull into our driveway. We follow them, dazed, into the showroom.

  “You see that Big Chase?”

  “What was it all about?”

  “Was that the Ku Klux Klan?”

  “Where were the cops?”

  “Who was in the Chrysler?” the tourists want to know, peppering us with the very questions we have for each other. For the next few hours, we collect details like puzzle pieces.

  “That car flew past us, doing at least ninety outside Wellwood, nearly scared my wife and kids to death!”

  “I don’t know where it started. We stopped to get gas in Tangerine and that Chrysler nearly crashed into us when we were pulling out of the station. We stopped, tried to pull out again, and here come the trucks. My wife made me wait fifteen minutes, just to be sure it was safe to get back on the road.”

  “That black pickup ran the car ahead of us off the road outside Lockhart!”

  On Sunday, at church, the congregation is buzzing.

  “Did you see—?”

  “Where were you when those trucks went through?”

  “I recognized that big black truck, didn’t you? Blue one, too.”

  “Any idee who was in the car?”

  “Had to be folks from up north. Rented from the airport. Wonder what they did?”

  After Sunday’s midday dinner, we drive to Opalakee for ice cream. Mother and Daddy buy an Orlando paper and search it for clues. We listen to the car radio. We ask a few Opalakee people (not many out in this heat) what they know.

  “Oh, it went right past here, smack-dab through the middle of town! Chief of Police was parked over there, front of the bank building. Leaned against his car and watched it with the rest of us. Didn’t do a thing.”

  Of course not, but who were they? Are they okay?

  It’s not until Luther stops by, after that night’s supper, that the pieces tumble into place. He comes in carrying a bulging brown paper sack.

  “Evenin’, y’all!” he beams. “Mah cousin Sylbie was visitin’ from Valdosta this weekend, brought us a case of sweet Georgia peaches. They won’t last the week in this heat, thought y’all might take some off our hands.”

  “Luther, there’s nothing in the world better than a ripe Georgia peach,” Mother says, brightening. “Thank you! You kids want one?”

  Ren, Mitchell and I sit at the table smacking through our peaches, catching the sweet juice running down our chins with pink paper napkins, when Daddy asks Luther, “You hear anything about the Big Chase?”

  “Well, actually, Ah did.” Luther leans back in his chair, his gold dog tooth glinting in a grin.

  Daddy leans forward, hanging on his every word.

  “Y’see, Mistuh Thurgood Marshall was s’posed to be in Tavares yesterday, filin’ for the hearin’ on the big re-trial. The Opalakee Klan got wind of it, thought they might kidnap Mistuh Marshall, or at least give ’im a scare on his way to the a’port. They was waitin’ for him to cross the county line. Chased his car all the way down the Trail to O’landah. Lost ’im in the a’port traffic.”

  “Luther, how in the world do you know this?”

  “Mist’Warren, half mah choir works in the homes of the Klanners ’round here, have since most of these young bucks were chil’ren. Those folks so use to havin’ they colored women in the kitchen or workin’ ’round the house, they forgit to watch what they say.”

  “You mean to tell me, you heard all this from your sopranos ?” Daddy’s flabbergasted.

  “Well, some of ’em are altos,” Luther says, “but, yes, Ah did.”

  “Why, Luther, you’re head of a spy ring,” Daddy says, impressed.

  “Ah s’pose Ah am,” Luther nods.

  “You know . . .” The corner of Daddy’s mouth twitches.

  “You could call it the Choir Intelligence Agency, your own private C.I.A.”

  “Oh, that’s good, that’s real good!” Luther’s booming laugh bounces off the kitchen walls. Then he turns serious. “Ah’ll tell you somethin’ else . . .”

  “What?” I ask.

  “What those Klanners don’t know is that Mistuh Thurgood Marshall wudn’t even in that car.”

  “What do you mean?” Mother asks. “Mistuh Marshall had to cancel and send his assistants. The people in that car were his staff, plus a couple Yankee reporters hitchin’ a ride to the O’landah airport!”

  “You’re kiddin’ me!” “Really?” “Can you believe it!” we exclaim as the implications of this news race around the table.

  “But wait a minute . . .” Daddy’s tone cuts off our delight. “Luther, if the Klan lost the car in the airport traffic, how do you know who was in that car?”

  “You a quick one, Mist’Warren.” Luther narrows his eyes at Daddy, dropping his voice. “Ah got that information fr
om Mistuh Harry T. Moore, who sends y’all his regards, by the way. Mistuh Moore says those redneck Klanners have no idee how much they helped the cause of the Florida Negro yesterday.”

  In the wake of Luther’s revelations, I’m relieved that the people in the black car got safely away. Maybe the involvement of two Northern reporters will call attention to a bad situation that’s clearly grown worse. “Evil is contagious,” Doto told me once. Like some Biblical plague, the Klan’s particular kind of evil has taken over Miami and headed north, back up the Trail, parading past our very doorstep.

  That night, as my parents enter their bedroom across the hall from mine, I hear Mother echo my worry.

  “I thought Marvin’s murder was a mistake, the show-off act of a madman,” she tells Daddy, “but this was organized, Warren! If the Klan’s grown brazen enough to attempt a kidnapping in broad daylight, what’s next?”

  I can’t hear, I can only imagine my father’s stone-faced reply.

  What will the local Klan do next? I wonder, curled tight in my sheets. There aren’t any Negro housing projects or Jewish synagogues around Mayflower. They wouldn’t dare dynamite The Quarters or Opalakee’s Colored Town, would they? But if they tried, who’d stop them? Not the local law, of course. We learned that last March. Then who? And I find myself praying for the first time in months. Oh, God, if You’re up there, could You arrange a little help down here?

  Chapter 17

  The answer is no. God doesn’t care what’s happening in Florida. And, apparently, Mr. J. Edgar Hoover doesn’t either. (Of course, in little Mitchell’s mind, God and Mr. Hoover have become one and the same.)

  Without Anyone’s intervention, the Miami Klan continues to terrorize that city’s non-white and non-Protestant neighborhoods. You can read all about it in the newspaper; though, since the big blast last June, the stories are buried in a back section . . . as if it’s perfectly normal to have dynamite blow up another Catholic church, or a Jewish synagogue, or Negro housing project.

  Everyone says it’s a miracle nobody’s been killed. Yet.

  Last Saturday, the Orlando Klan jumped in, blowing up a perfectly good ice-cream stand called the Creamette. We drove over the next day and I could not believe my eyes. What was once a nice little drive-up business is now a heap of rubble, as if a nasty-tempered giant monster stepped on just that place and flattened it to nothing.

  Daddy talked to the owner and his wife, who were picking through the piles, shaking their heads. “Somebody called us,” they told him, “a man’s voice telling us we better stop serving white people and Negroes from the same window. We only had the one window to hand out the ice-cream cones. What were we supposed to do?”

  The Orlando paper says the blast hurled concrete blocks two hundred fifty feet in the air. The lady across the street said she spent the entire day picking up rocks, pieces of metal, paper napkins and the little white wrappers they put ice-cream cones in, scattered all over her yard.

  Everybody’s talking about it: the people at church, the customers at Voight’s, the last of the summer tourists heading home for Labor Day and, of course, the ladies at Miz Lillian’s Beauty Parlor.

  Miz Maggie Brass, wife of Deacon Aldo, is on the same Labor Day–Christmas–Easter perm schedule I am. (Nobody gets a summer perm. The weather’s so hot and heavy that everybody’s hair frizzes, perm or not, so why bother?)

  “It’s hurricane season,” Miz Maggie says. “Got everybody on edge, doin’ crazy things with dynamite.”

  “No, no, it’s the Nigras gettin’ uppity, movin’ into their fancy housing projects,” says Miz Opal Taylor, in for her weekly shampoo-and-set. “The Klan’s just keepin’ ’em in their place. I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Eugene Cox, that Georgia Congressman, y’all know him? He says it’s the hand of Stalin behind these Nigra uprisings.”

  “Uprisings?” Miz Lillian laughs, coaxing Miz Opal’s top curls into place with a red rat-tail comb. “Far as I can see, the Negroes haven’t done a thing! It’s the Klan that’s doin’ it all.”

  “And why’d they bomb the Jewish synagogues and the Catholic church? None of ’em have a single Negro member,” Miss Iris, Miz Lillian’s assistant, wants to know.

  “Because, Iris,” Miss Opal, sounding aggravated, says,

  “those left-wing liberals are agitators, givin’ the Nigras ideas about livin’ next to whites. Next thing y’know, they’ll wanta be eatin’ in our restaurants, usin’ our toilets,” Miz Opal says.

  “Maybe even comin’ to our beauty parlors.” Miz Lillian winks at me in the mirror, aggravating Miss Opal right back.

  “Lillian! You’re not about to let a Nigra woman in here!” Miz Maggie barks, her voice rising out of the rinsing sink.

  “I don’t know, Maggie. I never had the chance to work with that kind of hair. Might be interestin’,” Miz Lillian says, stifling herself.

  At supper, I relate Miz Opal’s “hand of Stalin” comments to my family.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mother says, Miz Opal being one of the church ladies she regularly avoids.

  “Devil’s trick, my dear,” Daddy says, shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?” Ren asks, making a face at the spoonful of succotash Mother’s placed on his plate.

  “If you’re the bad guy, people are against you, right?” Daddy asks, pointing a fork full of limas in Ren’s direction.

  “Right,” Ren nods.

  “Best way to get people rooting for you is to accuse your enemy of being something worse than you are.”

  Ren frowns. “You mean if people think that Negroes are turning Communist . . . that’s supposed to make it okay for the Klan to blow up their houses?”

  “Exactly,” Daddy tells him.

  “Mother’s right. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Ren mutters, turning his attention to his meat loaf.

  “But will it work?” I want to know.

  “I certainly hope not,” Mother says.

  “Depends.” Daddy leans forward, both elbows on the table. All of sudden, he’s very serious. “Sometimes, this kind of thing starts out small, like a new plant, a vine like kudzu, for instance. If nobody pays attention to it, it grows and grows, and before you know it, it’s taken over a whole hill-side, choked the life out of every other plant around it.”

  “Warren,” Mother says, in a way that means quit scaring the children.

  “Forewarned is forearmed,” Daddy shoots back at her. “These are devilish times we’re living in, Lizbeth. There’s no hiding that from anybody, especially these children.”

  At Daddy’s stinging tone, Mother retreats behind her Poker Face, gets up and clears the table. It’s their last exchange of the evening.

  To tell you the truth, I’m worried about my mother. Ever since we went to visit the Creamette, or rather the place where the Creamette used to be, ever since we toed our way through the rubble of what’s left of that other family’s business, she’s not been herself. Fact is, none of us are.

  Chapter 18

  The number eighty-six school bus lumbers to a squeaking stop in front of the post office. The bill of Taddy Carver’s green John Deere cap turns profile, nodding toward the steps. Taddy’s big hand cuffs and thrusts the handle. The doors split open and the boys—Ren plus Roy and Dwayne Samson—tumble out ahead of me, barking and romping like bloodhounds released from their cages, eager for the woods.

  Over the din of their cries for weekend adventure, Taddy’s cap dips a silent “See you Monday” to me. The doors swish closed and the bus, clutch complaining mightily, heaves itself back onto the road. The Samson boys cut left toward their house, but I amble right, behind the bolting bird dog that is my brother. It’s a relief to be back in school, I decide, feeling the first-week jitters crowd out this summer’s insanity.

  As the front porch door slams behind us, the phone is ringing in that jingle-jangle way that means it’s a party-line call. Ren, knowing it could only be Miss Maybelle at the Post Office or Miz Sooky across t
he street, tears into the bathroom.

  “Reesa! Where’s your daddy? I need him, quick.” The voice is Miss Maybelle’s and it’s urgent.

  “He’s not here, ma’am, probably at the packinghouse.”

  “You’ve got to find him. I need his help now! Understand?”

  “Y-Yes, ma’am.” Something is very wrong. There’s no doubt about that.

  “He must come right away!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, sensing no time for questions. “I’ll find him.”

  Mother answers on the first ring.

  “Where’s Daddy . . . something’s wrong at the post office . . . Miss Maybelle needs him,” I tell her in a rush.

  “He’s gone over to Winter Garden to pick up a tractor part. Reesa, what is it?”

  “She didn’t say. Just that he needed to come quick!”

  “Weren’t you just there, Reesa? Did you see anything wrong?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.” What could it be?

  “Robert’s due any minute,” Mother tells me. “I’ll send him along as soon as he gets here.”

  As I hang up the phone, Ren demands an explanation. Getting it, he turns without a word and heads out the door.

  “Where are you going?” I yell, running after him, then, realizing his intent, race to catch him.

  The front of the post office is as dead as usual this time of day, at least two hours before the mail is sorted and available for pickup. There are no cars or trucks, front or back, no sign of anything or anyone outside. Carefully cracking the door, we peer inside, then back at each other. One whiff of that musky-sweet scent and we know, without asking, what’s wrong.

  “Damn, need my fork stick!” Ren whispers, tiptoeing in with a hunter’s grace. The lobby’s empty, but over the counter, in the shaft of sunlight slashing across the backroom floor, I see the diamondback rattler, coiled and spitting at a frozen Miss Maybelle. The rattler whorls in the dusty light, dead center between Miss Maybelle, who’s trapped at the front counter, and the room’s only exit at the back.