Dolly worked for a white family over in Hattiesburg, and was doing all right considering the situation of most Negroes in that part of Mississippi. Everyone suspected that Mr. Dale had secured her job for her. It was also rumored that he periodically sent bags of groceries to Dolly with cash money hidden under the potatoes. Mr. Dale was married and had white children. She asked Reverend Singleton about the child's name, and he told her the nuns at Charity Hospital in New Orleans had suggested it to Dolly after they saw her child with that head of blond curls crowning brown skin. Percival Dale had been there with Dolly for the birth, too, and of course the nuns took notice of that. Reverend Singleton went on to tell her that situations like that had always been quite common in New Orleans and there were many people with strange names there. He himself had baptized Labyrinth right there at the St. James A.M.E. Church.
10
If any pitiful drafts of night coolness lingered, Geneva Owens annihilated them by turning on the stove before daybreak. The aroma of collards with ham hocks wafted through the house, and something so sweet smelling that Celeste's stomach rumbled like rolling thunder before she even opened her eyes. On Sunday in Mississippi, church predominated. She hoped it would be another step forward in her work, a baptism in the fount of Pineyville.
Celeste washed herself as best she could before putting on one of her scoop-neck shirtdresses. She went straight to the kitchen and grabbed a cup of chicory-laced coffee, then stood at the back door trying to catch a breeze. Back home, on this kind of lazy summer Sunday, she would put on a strapped sundress and go to an air-conditioned movie. Or Shuck would take her and Momma Bessie on a ride over the Ambassador Bridge to Canada for lunch, the cool breezes off the river quelling the rages of summer.
Mrs. Owens moved around behind her curtain door off the kitchen. The steaming room pushed Celeste to the back steps, her brain struggling to stay alert. By midweek, the whole town knew who she was and why she was there. The local newspaper carried stories about the invasion of northern "rabble-rousers." She never thought of herself as a rabble-rouser, and she didn't think of Pineyville's Negroes as rabble. She saw the Freedom Summer volunteers as right up there with the great patriots, the idealistic founders, supporting the idea of one person, one vote, making America more true to itself. She felt good about being in Mississippi. Even her fear-lodged so deep inside, it had become a part of her being-had stopped interrupting her every thought. Her dreams were another story altogether.
Coffee acids churned her emptiness to a wrenching depth. She didn't mind being hungry because Mrs. Owens's cooking had a tendency to create hunger when there was none. Smothered chicken and gravy, red beans with pickled pork, stewed okra with shrimp, all of it over rice, fiery hot and pepper laced, bringing on eruptions of sweat. Oh, for a glass of ginger ale with mountains of ice cubes and a cold chicken sandwich with lettuce and snappy pickles. Yesterday they'd eaten bacon drippings over rice. Never had so much rice at home. Momma Bessie cooked southern, but this was a new level of southern. The only dish she'd never even heard of was red beans and pickled pork over rice. It all tasted like heaven, even though it sat high and hard in her stomach for hours after each meal. The iced tea was so sweet it made the sides of her mouth cave in. But it was cold.
Mrs. Owens came through her curtain door, a hint of plum rouge on her dark brown cheeks, a hint of a smile wrinkling the corners of her mouth. "We riding to church with them Tuckers from down the road in the best-looking and fastest car in Pearl River County. At least that's what everybody calls it."
The old woman grew more conversational as the days passed, as if she'd saved words to spend at a sale and now was on a spree. She lifted the lid from her collards, giving escape to a grand whoosh of the pork-infused aroma, then turned off the flame. The kitchen steamed.
"It's a pretty car." The pay phone Celeste had used to call Shuck stood just a few feet from the gas station where Mr. Tucker worked. She'd never walked there again in the night, but she had used it to check in with the Jackson office, let them know she was still alive just as Matt had told her to do. Mr. Tucker's maroon 1954 Hudson Hornet was parked behind the garage, a big chrome fender peeking around the corner. At night she saw it parked down the road next to the Tucker house, had watched the Tucker children play close to their front porch, never running up and down the road, never venturing close to this house.
"Some colored boys from over in Purvis stole that car in broad daylight." The old woman poured herself the last of the coffee.
"In Pineyville?" With one slow swivel of the head, you could see everything going on in the town center. Celeste couldn't imagine something as big as a car theft taking place right there.
"He had the car up in Hattiesburg when it happened." She sipped, perspiration rising on her face like ground water swelling. "On business." There was a slight note of disdain audible in the word business. "They caught 'em. Those boys still in Parchment Prison for all I know."
When Mrs. Owens gossiped, Celeste wished they could sit there all day long and chew the fat about everybody. What kind of business had he been doing? Why did she sound like that? Mr. Tucker must be into something. And where did he get a car like that to begin with? And Sophie Lewis? She wanted to ask Mrs. Owens about the grand lady in the big house. Did she even know her? What if there was bad blood between them about the church? Jealousy? Did Reverend Singleton tell everybody about the money and where it came from? Maybe Sophie Lewis didn't want anyone to know about her involvement in the movement, maybe it was safer for her to be quiet and in the background.
"They once had some white boys take it, too. From the gas station where Mr. Tucker works. Right from under his nose. Newspaper say Sheriff Trotter put the white boys in the county jail. They were out before the sun went down." Mrs. Owens took two dishtowels, tied them together end to end, then tied them to the handles of the pot of greens, securing the lid. "Sheriff said they didn't have enough evidence to hold them. Probably never saw the inside of a jail."
"No witnesses?" Though the Tuckers lived right down the road, before this morning Mrs. Owens had barely mentioned their name.
"Oh, they had witnesses. Colored." She brought the sugar-brown bread pudding out of the oven. "Anyway, he got that car back."
"Do those white boys live around here?" The memory of the creeping car that grated down Freshwater Road on her first night rose like a specter in her mind. If the police never really arrested the white boys for taking Mr. Tucker's car, they were the ones to watch.She thought of the lessons from orientation. Keep your eye on thepolice, but notice, too, with whom they have coffee, whose backs they slap, what car windows they lean into with their hats pushed back, black billy clubs, cattle prods, chromium plated handcuffs and flashlights clanking and shining in the sunlight.
"Sure do. Mr. Tucker got to look at 'em every time they go in there to buy gas or a Coke Cola."
Celeste knew the red Coca-Cola machine standing beside the gas station wall, used it herself. She tried to remember the white men who'd come into the gas station while she stood there on the phone watching Mr. Tucker pumping gas or cleaning the "whites only" bathroom. Plenty of white men filling their tanks. Negro men, too. How to know who was friendly and who wasn't? And Mr. Tucker? What did he do in Hattiesburg?
Celeste had marked the distance from the church to the pay phone, about a mile. An easy run. She'd already walked the distance from Freshwater Road to the phone and knew she could run it easily. She'd memorized the phone numbers for the FBI offices in Hattiesburg and in Jackson. The numbers rolled through her mind. The problem wasn't the distance, it was the danger from some local hiding in the trees, or some truck that might drive by and run her down. She needed to know who those locals were, what they looked like, what kind of vehicle they drove. Keep an eye on them. She'd ask Reverend Singleton after church. No matter how fast she ran, she couldn't outrun a truck, let alone a bullet. She already had nightmares of being thrown into the Pearl River like a sack of trash, floating with the current d
own past Pearlington into Lake Borgne and on to the Gulf of Mexico.
When Geneva Owens turned from the stove again, the sun caught the crystal brooch pinned near the collar of her cotton print dress and sent shafts of light in all directions. It made her look very dressed up. "I guess he probably feel they always plottin' to take that car again. Maybe that's what makes him so hateful."
Celeste startled. What did that mean? Was Mr. Tucker hateful to everybody? He might be working for the police for all she knew, or even worse, for the Klan. Not every Negro in Mississippi was for the movement. During orientation in Jackson, this had been a touchy subject for Margo to discuss with Celeste and Ramona, but she said she had an obligation to tell them, alert them to keep an eye out for Negroes who might take information to whites who paid them to stand against the movement. Celeste remembered bristling, later whispering to Ramona that she didn't like hearing about that from a white girl. Ramona had told her to take it as gospel.
"Where did he get it in the first place?" There were plenty of panel trucks with gun racks, and rusted-out wrecks on thin tires, but there were no other big shiny cars on Freshwater Road.
"His brother died up in Memphis." Mrs. Owens picked up the pot of collards and went to the front of the house. "It was his." Celeste heard her rest the pot on the screened porch, heard her say, "...and Lord only knows where he got it."
Celeste imagined that Mr. Tucker's brother made his money running numbers or even drugs, or maybe he owned a nightclub, lived on the edge like Shuck used to. Who was the brother? Maybe he'd been a musician. Memphis had music, blues, rhythm and blues.
"Now, Celeste, I want you to handle that bread pudding." Mrs. Owens went into her room and came out with a small black straw hat with a piece of netting hanging off the back. "It'll be cooled enough by the time them Tuckers pull up. Take that dishtowel and lay it over the top. There's another towel over there for underneath it. Mrs. Tucker gon' have to hold it in her lap. I put that pot of greens on the floor by me. As shiny as that car is outside is how dirty that trunk is inside." She put the hat on without a mirror, tightening the net under her unpressed hair and anchoring it with a pin. "If you take that bread pudding into the back seat with those Tucker boys, won't be none left for the church picnic."
"Yes, ma'am." Celeste's mind went on whirling with the possibilities of the life going on in Pineyville, with the things she needed to learn. She went to her room to muscle her swollen feet into her white pumps, happy they weren't walking the nearly three miles to church. Her light blue dress already had large perspiration patches under the arms. She stood in the middle of her bedroom and fanned the skirt to dry her thighs, then changed her sweaty underpants. In Mississippi, she changed her panties at least twice a day, rinsing and hanging them on one of the nails on the wall of her bedroom.
The Hudson Hornet roared to a stop in front of the house. Mr. Tucker blew the horn hard and long. Celeste wondered why he hadn't sent one of his sons up to knock on the door for them.
"Ain't no need for all that." Mrs. Owens went out with her purse and her bible, hoisting the pot of collards on her way, Celeste right behind her.
She helped Mrs. Tucker get the bread pudding situated on her lap, then climbed into the back seat with the Tucker children, Sissy, Darby, and Henry. The big Hudson turned onto the two-lane leading into town. Not a puddle anywhere though it rained everyday. Southern pines flashed their green in the sunlight. Pink and white crepe myrtle burst out from the ground all the more brilliant against the green and the orange tint of the soil. In great stretches, there were no trees at all, just sandy earth and stunted plants as if the desert crept in then retreated, then came in by another door.
The Tucker children hadn't come near her in the brief time she'd been living with Mrs. Owens. Now they sat beside her, the boys flipping through the pages of a half-rolled comic book they hid on the seat between them, the girl sitting with her head leaning back, quiet. Celeste was wedged into the corner, with no room to spread her legs or smooth out the skirt of her dress. Her big sunglasses perpetually slid down her sweaty nose. She wondered how the locals managed without sunglasses at all.
The little girl, Sissy, reached across her to roll down the window. A hot sandy breeze roiled into the car, pumicing the sweat-salt on her face. The swirling air brought the food and body aromas together as if they were tumbling in a mixer. When the boys lowered their window, the cross-breeze blustered into a full-fledged wind, though Mr. Tucker drove slowly. After his impatient horn blaring outside Mrs. Owens's house, Celeste expected him to take off like a spooked stallion. Maybe with her in the car, he figured he better not do anything to provoke any attention from the sheriff.
Out of the corner of her eye, Celeste caught Sissy staring at her. She placed her big sunglasses on the girl's face, and Sissy gazed up to the aquamarine spread of sky.
"Now you look like a movie star, Sissy." The wind whipped Celeste's everyday ponytail into a scattered catastrophe.
"What's a movin' star?" Sissy sat up, leaned towards the window, searching the shapely clouds lolling atop one another.
Celeste didn't know if the child's accent was getting in the way of her saying movie instead of moving. "A beautiful lady on a big screen in the dark. Dorothy Dandridge or Marpessa Dawn." In truth, Sissy's face reminded her of a Modigliani portrait, only one with smooth chocolate-dark skin. Her slanted eyes carved ovals above high cheekbones. Her hair was braided so tightly it looked vengeful, made her all face and eyes.
"They ain't got no movies round here, Miss Celeste." Mrs. Tucker's flowerencrusted felt hat bobbed, making the silky flowers rustle like leaves.
Celeste wished the local people would drop the "Miss" business. It separated her from them, the very thing she was trying to get past. They spoke to white people that way. She'd heard it in Jackson and in Pineyville on the street with Mrs. Owens, who mumbled her greetings to white people, swallowing the ends of their names after getting out the "Mr." or "Miss." She eked out enough of what passed for respect to keep retribution at bay.
Sissy stared away then up to the heavens with an eight-year-old's imita tion of adult seriousness. "Where do they live in the daytime? Do they movin' fast or slow? Where'd you see them? I wanna be there." Her intense voice swelled in breathiness as if Celeste had confirmed a dream of something imagined that she'd never seen.
"I'll find a picture show with movie stars, and I'll take you." She said movie slowly so the child could hear the word, the letters.
"Give those glasses to Miss Celeste, Sissy." Mr. Tucker glanced in his mirror. "Aint no movin' picture round here. No movie stars neither."
Celeste stopped herself from telling Sissy to keep the glasses, then took them and put them back on to hide the narrowing of her eyes as she glared into Mr. Tucker's tight, kinky hair nobbling down his head to his stiff, starched shirt collar. He needed a shape-up.
"They got a picture show over in Gulfport." Mrs. Owens invaded the parched silence.
"They got one in Hattiesburg, too. Don't mean Sissy's goin' to it." Mr. Tucker's hard eyes in the mirror warned Celeste.
She held Sissy's hand; the girl's high smooth forehead slowly tilted down, her eyes glassy with tears. Celeste had an urge to wrap her hands around Mr. Tucker's neck and squeeze. He took the air right out of the car. Mrs. Tucker's hat looked clownish now, its autumn-colored flowers jiggling in the hellish heat.
They rode silently through the town center, the big Hudson engine humming, the tires rumbling over seams in the concrete and black top. Mr. Tucker made a left and within minutes turned into the rutty road leading to the St. James A.M.E. Church. She'd been coming here every day with Reverend Singleton, but this was Sunday. They joined a near-parade of people walking or jostling over the bumps in old trucks, dilapidated cars, even a horse and wagon. Women carried large lidded pots and bowls covered with white cloths and waxed paper. More than one balanced containers on their heads. It was the day of the church picnic, a celebration. The maroon Hudson stood out like
a slickly dressed visitor from the big city come to lord it over a bunch of country kin.
Women wore hats over braided kinky hair. Others wore their hair straightened and flattened on their heads with a spike sticking out here or there, no fancy curls like the Detroit Sunday-go-to-church women. Some wore lacy white handkerchiefs on their heads, others makeshift straw hats with flowers dangling off the brims. A few carried umbrellas against the sun. Parasols in Pineyville. Their pastel dresses were bright against the mahogany tones of their skins. Only when you drew closer did you see that some of the dresses were threadbare and patched. The men's suits were too large or too small, wrist bones poking out. The older ones walked slowly, some bent, others proud and upright. They grubbed an existence in the weather-beaten, no-industry towns of Southern Mississippi all week long. This church was theirs and they came to it for rest and reprieve. All Celeste could think was God bless Sophie Lewis.
She reminded herself that it was 1964, that she wasn't watching a film based on a history often distorted and mostly forgotten. This obsolete place lived, and it was like a movie. What might have been quaint looked dispossessed up close with living, breathing people. This wasn't some anonymous village in Africa or South America where people washed their clothes in a stream, emptied their bowels just yards away, and drank the water from the same stream a few yards in the other direction. It was too close. She remembered Wilamena years ago fussing against the way Negro people were portrayed in films. She refused to go see them, said she would not support some "catfish row" rendition of Negro life. Maybe the realities and the images became too overwhelming, too close to the truth for her. This is what Wilamena ran from and once she got going, she couldn't stop. Jettison the whole thing. Too much lacking, run. But Detroit had scores of well-off Negroes. Celeste knew what drove Wilamena was deeper than money.
Freshwater Road Page 14