The first phone call if they were arrested was to Mrs. Singleton. She'd make the calls to the Jackson office and the FBI. The Jackson office would do the rest. No guarantee they'd be allowed to make any phone calls at all, though. They rode the rest of the way in silence with the breeze planting salty sweat splotches on their faces, their hearts pounding like furious drumming signaling danger.
Then they were in Pineyville, so benign and seemingly unaware, a quaintly painted village with verdant landscape all around. The magnolias stood so still. Early morning walkers and greeters came out of the dollhouse of a coffee shop. No Negroes allowed inside. A man bought a newspaper from the vending machine. Celeste'd done that. A New Orleans Times-Picayune, a Jackson Clarion-Ledger. Mr. Tucker quietly worked on a car at the gas station, pretending to not see them go by on their way to the Pearl River County Administration Building. Did he know this was their big day? Celeste tried to see in her mind the faces of everyone who'd been at the church on Saturday, their final day of practicing for today. Was there one among them who might have alerted the sheriff they were coming? No way to know. Mrs. Owens stared into her lap, then drifted her eyes out the window. Quiet. Sister Mobley's thin neck might crack if she moved.
Reverend Singleton made a smooth maneuver into a parking space on the far end of the block. Nothing going on in front of the building. Magnolias. Two sheriffs' cars parked, empty. People walking in and out. This was the county seat. People came from miles around to do their business, but Negro people were forbidden to enter through the front door.
They sat in the car. At that moment, Celeste remembered a little detail she'd heard in Jackson: "When we get to the registrar, don't be surprised if they ask us how many bubbles there are in a bar of soap. That's what they're doing up in the Delta." She smiled at them, not sure if they took it as gospel or just thought she was making a joke. It fell flat. Nobody said a word. Reverend Singleton opened his door.
Celeste stepped out of the back seat. This was the reason she'd come to Mississippi. As it was, if every Negro person in Pearl River County voted, they'd be even with the whites nearly head for head. The One Man, One Vote office tallied their canvas of the previous year for every county in the state. Freedom Summer came to Mississippi because of its high population of Negro people. If you broke this bad-dream place down, the rest of the south would be like a cushioned ride in a limousine.
The sidewalk to the building heaved with magnolia roots, and for much of the way there was shade. The air was heavy with a sweet fragrance. Cars were slowing as the drivers realized a small group of Negroes were headed towards the front entrance of the Pearl River County Administration Building.
Reverend Singleton walked side by side with Sister Mobley. Celeste stayed close to Mrs. Owens. Up the entry walk, white faces were shocked beyond words. Heads turning, words trailing off. A woman stumbled while looking one way at them but walking the other. Celeste was going deaf, dumb, and nearly blind with fear. Keep walking. Remember those freedom songs you've been singing all summer long, remember what Margo said, sing in your mind, hold those words. "Keep on a'walkin, keep on a'talkin', on my way to freedom's land. "Mrs. Owens knows these people. They know her. They know Reverend Singleton and Sister Mobley, too. I'm the stranger. Celeste wanted to hide behind Mrs. Owens's skirts, bring up the rear, get scolded, get some relief from this responsibility of cracking open the stones of the past.
They bunched together in the cool foyer with its gold-framed paintings of the Confederate sons of Mississippi. Celeste focused on the paintings to calm herself, like a dancer spotting during a pirouette. Two-time governor and former U.S. Senator T.G. Bilbo; Confederate President Jefferson Davis; James Vardaman, governor when the Jim Crow laws passed, and night riders galloped on thin-legged horses with kiting white sheets and guns that crackled through rural silences. Pink-faced men in full Confederate regalia. A framed larger-than-life Confederate flag. The foyer was a museum of oppression. No sign of President Lyndon B. Johnson, or even John F. Kennedy, and he'd been dead less than a year. No American flag anywhere to be seen. Where they even in America?
Reverend Singleton ushered them toward the wide stairway leading up to the registrar's office. Polished wood balustrades. Muted sunlight coming in the tall high windows as if they'd entered the nave of a cathedral. People with papers, clicking heels on the hardwood floors, fast-walking, whispering, heading for cover. White men in shirtsleeves, white women in summer dresses, hair up in the heat. The men standing back, folding their arms, fire smoldering in their eyes.
"Y'all ain't supposed to be coming in the front door." Mr. Heywood's clear curt voice echoed off the hard walls and floor, his accent all Mississippi drawl as he descended so fast he seemed to be sliding over the tops of the steps, his flat straight hair rising, his suit jacket catching the breeze, billowing out to the sides under his flapping elbows.
His speed stunned Celeste. He seemed to be flying toward them. He must have been daydreaming out the front windows, seen them coming up the walk, disbelieving his own eyes as they strolled under his calm, thick magnolias, blackening his view of the pearl white flowers. Negroes coming with their Bibles and their reverends and these new-age carpetbaggers.
"Morning, Mr. Heywood. We coming up to see you about registering to vote." Reverend Singleton spoke crisply, all dignified in his gray preacher suit, a pale pink shirt giving him a rakish, big-city air.
Mr. Heywood stood panting in the center of the foyer, using a white handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. "Is that right?" His tone circled the words with a suppressed, condescending anger.
Celeste inched closer to Mrs. Owens. Sister Mobley clutched her bible, stiff, erect, lips clenched together. She stepped closer to Celeste and Mrs. Owens, let Reverend Singleton lead. Celeste marveled again at how the white people stayed so white even in the magnified sun of southern Mississippi. It was as if they weren't really there, or really lived someplace else out of the sunshine, some place cool.
"Geneva, I told you to get that gal out of your house. Didn't I tell you thatjust little more than a week ago?" His anxious sincerity caught Celeste. "That school she's operating is wholly illegal, and she's living in your house while she does it." He pleaded as if talking to a recalcitrant child, as he waved a dismissive hand towards Celeste. Gal.
Reverend Singleton stepped back to be closer to the rest of them. Mrs. Owens looked at the floor. Celeste followed her eyes down to her runover shoes, the leather worn thin, her old-style cotton stockings puckering around the shoe rims and breaking through the leather near the big toe. Mrs. Owens had better. These were her fighting shoes, just as the tennis shoes were Celeste's. She glanced over at Sister Mobley's white, in-service shoes, the shoes she wore to clean houses; they were soft-bottomed, wouldn't slip. Good.
Mrs. Owens lifted her face to Mr. Heywood. They locked eyes. "You did."
From that moment, Celeste knew that they were in for it. She doubted any Negro person had ever looked him so deeply in the eye and lived to tell about it.
Mr. Heywood sneaked glances in all directions. "Do I need to call the sheriff in here?" He scanned the hallways. He didn't need to call very far. Just the sight of them standing there was prompting alarms. Celeste wondered if, in all the years that Pineyville had been a town, had any group of Negro people ever walked into the foyer through the front door? The news was sure to fly all over town.
"We are ready to register to vote." Reverend Singleton persisted. "Now, we've mastered the Mississippi State Constitution, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights."
Mr. Heywood's head jerked in the direction of Reverend Singleton. "I don't care if you mastered the Magna Carta. Niggers don't belong in here. Voting ain't got nothing to do with you."
Celeste heard the words Magna Carta, and niggers, too, as she saw the bloodshot hatred rise in Mr. Heywood's eyes, his face in full flush now. How could he even speak the words Magna Carta in this place? Did he know the Magna Carta? Of course he must. This wa
s a man of poetry, of books, of flowers and trees. She felt Mrs. Owens tremble and put her hand on the woman's arm to steady her. He'd called them niggers.
"We been studying all summer. We ready." Mrs. Owens never said his name. "Ain't no need for name-callin'."
"If y'all don't get the hell out this building, you going be looking at the inside of a jail cell. Now, study that. Go on, now, get out that side door." Mr. Heywood took in a huge amount of air, exhaled. "We forget this ever happened. Now, go on. You hear?"
How generous, Celeste thought. The side door rather than the back door. Progress. Didn't want them contaminating the front of the building again. Something was telling her it was time to go. They'd made their first try. Time to rethink and regroup. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man who must be the sheriff fast-walking down the hallway toward them, passing under the white glass shades of the lights that lined the ceiling. A blur of brownish pants and shirt, a silver badge, belt buckle, and shining buttons, a gun handle, a flushed white face, young and hearty. Grandma Pauline would say, "He come from good white stock, strong as dirt." Nothing to play with. No movie star cop with a fat cigar. Young enough, she realized, to be with the movement.
Celeste thought it was time to leave, but Sister Mobley spoke. "Mr. Heywood, peoples got a right to registe' and they got a right to vote. We want to take that test like everybody else. Today. We don't take it today, we gon be back tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Gonna be more of us next time." She pursed her lips as if fully expecting her words to be the final push to their success.
Celeste hadn't expected thin Sister Mobley, with her hair pressed to stick-straightness, to say anything at all. She turned to look at the woman, not knowing whether to encourage her on or to whisper to her to be quiet, let Reverend Singleton lead. Celeste was proud of her, and confused by her courage.
Mr. Heywood saw it all coming first and backed up a few steps. By the time Celeste caught up with Mr. Heywood's eyes, Sheriff Trotter had spun Reverend Singleton out from the group, picked him up by the lapels of his nice summer gray suit so that his feet dangled above the floor, and thrown him across the foyer. She felt out of step, unable to catch the moment. Reverend Singleton stayed in the air for the longest time, it seemed, his face contorted in surprise, his impeccable clothes bunched up under his chin, the pink of his shirt in a gnarl next to the shock on his brown face. Nothing in their practice sessions at the church had prepared them for this.
Celeste watched not sure of what she was seeing, feeling heat in her ears that muffled the sound until a passing child screamed "mommy," and the child tried to run toward Reverend Singleton as if to catch him. Her mother snatched the girl up, her Shirley Temple curls shaking and shining in the cathedral light. Reverend Singleton's feet came down on the hardwood, and he slalomed backwards unable to regain his balance before finally hitting the far wall and crumpling to the floor. The sound echoed in the cold hard foyer. Celeste wanted to move toward him to help him, not sure if she should drag Mrs. Owens and Sister Mobley with her. Stay together. She saw the sheriff to her side, retucking his shirt, and she decided to go for Reverend Singleton, who hadn't budged. His eyes were closed. She moved one foot toward him and before she'd completed the step, she felt the cold metal on her temple, just a circle of coolness, then heard the cocking of a gun.
"Take one more step, nigger, and I'll blow your brains all over this lobby." The sheriff spoke quietly, calmly, with complete authority, his voice thick with accent but somehow smooth, even, not dipping too far, like he might be from someplace else. Celeste doubted one other person in the lobby heard his words-she wasn't even sure she heard those words herself.
The stillness in the foyer deafened thought. Then the sniffle of the child echoed off the polished wood, the beginning of a cry. She remembered her own helpless crying when a blind man had come to the door begging for money, how she'd pulled on Shuck to give the man some money. Reverend Singleton opened his eyes and nodded "no," his body still splayed out like a drunk on a no-name corner. In that flaring moment, Celeste saw black, then lost her breath as it searched around for a way out. Shuck, I'm dying in Pineyville. She imagined her face broken into pieces, her eyes hanging by nerve-wires, her nose falling away on the floor. She dried up inside, feeling only the cold metal on her temple. Where was Mrs. Owens? Sister Mobley? Head not turning, breath held, she felt urine on the verge of seeping out and clenched herself tightly closed, her body floating above all need except the need to live. Please don't kill me in this coldplace.
Sheriff Trotter lowered the gun, the silver barrel whisking through the air at the corner of her eye. "Now, y'all get the hell out of here like Mr. Heywood said." The sheriff spoke again. "Get on." He pushed Celeste forward.
Celeste's spine creaked to life, blood-heat replacing the metallic cold on her temple. She glanced at the sheriff's bright blue eyes and saw that they sank to near-black, saw the badge that read Trotter. She knew his name, had heard it first from Matt and then from Negro people all summer long, had seen him in his car staring hot and mad at her. Eyes as dead as marbles, as hot as a branding iron. Reverend Singleton gathered himself from the floor. Mrs. Owens took Celeste by the arm.
Sister Mobley raised her bible like a shield. "Depart from evil and do good, so you will abide forever." She waved it at the sheriff, who stood there looking at her. Her bony arm shook. "For the Lord loves justice, and does not forsake His godly ones." Sheriff Trotter ignored her though she spoke directly into his face.
The child across the lobby let out a bawling cry that first caught in her throat and then just kept coming. Celeste turned to see the woman pick up the child, curls bouncing. They raced out the front door, the sobs and whines of the little girl echoing in the lobby.
Mr. Heywood wedged himself between Sister Mobley and Mrs. Owens while Celeste helped Reverend Singleton to his feet. The sheriff shoved them along, the minister's gray suit seams pulling apart under the force of the sheriff's hands. Celeste blessed her tennis shoes, the only things between her and the hard floor. Mr. Heywood tugged the two older women, Mrs. Owens's hat shifting forward on her head, ushering them energetically down the never-ending hallway toward the side door. The compromise door.
Whites lined the hallway, all hard eyes and gaping mouths. Celeste fully expected them to applaud, but they didn't. She thought about the little girl wanting to help Reverend Singleton when he fell backwards. What would her mother tell her when they got home? Would she say, you are never to help a person whose skin is not white, ever in your life, no matter what? What she told that child would make all the difference in the world, Celeste knew.
"I have seen a violent wicked man, spreading himself like a luxuriant tree in its native soil." Sister Mobley talked to the paintings as if she knew them all. Her voice rang out. "I be back to register. You can't stop me forever."
The somnambulism of Pineyville came to an abrupt end.
When Reverend Singleton stood in the pulpit that evening, the church half-full, his sleeves rolled up, his eyes set in a no-nonsense glare, he told the assembled that no man, white, black, or green, had the right to treat him and the rest as they'd been treated that morning at the Pearl River County Administration Building. He knew, as the word spread through the hinterlands that he'd been assaulted by the sheriff while asking for his constitutional right to vote, that the people would come and they'd be ready. Some people needed more encouragement, more motivation than others. He announced that there would be a pep rally every night until they broke through the wall of resistance at the registrar's office. Negro people would be voting in Pineyville or his name wasn't Reverend Bernard Singleton.
Celeste sat with Mrs. Owens and Sister Mobley in the front row as he'd asked them to do.
"Some of us think the burden for change should fall on just a few. If we don't have more than a few, we might as well have nobody at all." He paced. "You must bring the slow ones along." His anger stewed like the compressed heat in the church.
The church moaned. They fanned against the heat and humidity, called on God and rustled around in their seats. The sun faded into dust and there would be the ride home with no protection. From this day forward, Celeste knew, they would be like ducks in a shooting gallery, like renegades, dreadful pariahs to the white community. The whites' hatred of them was no longer beneath the surface but in full bloom, right out there in the light of day and in the darkness of night. They knew that these Negroes had to be stopped or the entire south would change. It was war, and the whites had all the guns. Now their nonviolence would be tested down to its bone marrow, to its core.
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