No one came to pound on the door, and there was no sound of clanging bells or sirens, no trucks in motion racing to the scene of the inferno. The flame licks dimmed and died, leaving night in charge of the sky.
27
Celeste had dressed in a yellow cotton skirt, a white sleeveless blouse, and her tennis shoes, and gathered her jail-dirty hair into a slack ponytail by the time Reverend Singleton pulled in front of the house. Before she departed this town someone had to register to vote, no matter what burned to the ground, no matter if all her teeth lay at Sheriff Trotter's feet.
"There's nothing left." Reverend Singleton sat behind the wheel, his suit jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up. "I drove by there before I came here. Just to see."
She got into the car thinking that she, Celeste Tyree, had to win one small thing. Meanwhile, Wilamena's letter, like a ghost waving at the end of a long dark hall, beckoned her to reread it, to study it as if she'd missed something. Each night she'd put it off, praying for enough ballast to keep Wilamena from toppling her over the edge.
Mrs. Owens came out with her mouth set in a frown. Reverend Singleton took off down Freshwater Road toward Sister Mobley's house. It was their ritual ride now. A deep blue sky the color of Reverend Singleton's preaching robe gleamed above them, calling to mind tropical drinks with tiny umbrellas, not the destruction of the only Negro church in the environs of Pineyville.
Sister Mobley's whole face trembled when she climbed in, barely waving goodbye to Tony who stood on their rickety porch with his two younger sisters, all long-faced. "When I saw that light in the sky, I knew they done burned our church."
"Smell the smoke way over here." Mrs. Owens said. "Still smell it."
"There's little fires around here all the time. From the lightning strikes." Reverend Singleton glued his eyes to the road when they turned onto the two-lane. There was no evidence of what had happened anywhere. The narrow highway was nearly deserted, as usual. The long-needled pines stood tall against the blast of sun. The sandy orange earth lay like a spread of island beach. Here and there were some delinquent bursts of color, usually some long-suffering flower so tired of summer. "But last night was different," he continued. "Buildings burn differently. Longer. Etta and I saw the light in the sky."
Coming up the bumpy road, they all stared at the empty space on the land where the church used to be. They were struck dumb by the absence. To the rear sat the untouched outhouse, shrouded by tree overhang. The space might have been a hand with two missing fingers in the middle. The glorious trees still crowded the space around the clearing. Sister Mobley fell down to her knees in the white-hot gravel, as if the church had been a friend that she'd loved and cared for, and now that friend had died. Mr. Landau had been waiting for them in his truck. He walked over to the blight and stood there, his sculptured head swinging back and forth.
An intermittent crackle broke the quiet as if some hidden bit of fire gasped for breath beneath the ruins. Involuntary prayer mourns erupted, unconsciously and urgently whispered by Reverend Singleton and the others-"Oh, Lord," "What we going to do, now, Lord?"
They walked the nearly rectangular boundary of ash, stopping from time to time to notice some half-burned remnant. Charred pew backs and floorboards sent thin lines of smoke into the cumbrous morning air. There were stick and hinge remains of wooden folding chairs, and one or two metal folding chairs, their brown paint cooked off, standing straight. The iron church bell that had come from New Orleans leaned against a piece of crisp pulpit railing. Reverend Singleton's white flush toilet sat bare to the sun, drizzled in cinders and ash.
Dolly Johnson thundered up the potholed church road in her handme-down car and parked off under the trees. She came toward them, her hair swept back in an exact copy of Celeste's ponytail, gym shoes on her feet, no makeup, no nail polish, looking like a veteran of the civil rights movement in her simple skirt and blouse, all clean and pressed. Another sea change, but was it still only a matter of style? Would it carry over after the volunteers went home, after the excitement of Freedom Summer came to an end? Celeste wanted so much for this new Dolly to be real, was willing to forgive her petulance in the jail cell. Maybe Dolly had begun to toss whatever remained of her relationship with Percival Dale on the pyre the day she brought Labyrinth and Georgie to freedom school. She'd propelled herself toward a kind of freedom by going to the voter education classes. The consequences for her might be the loss of her job in Hattiesburg, as well as no more shopping bags of groceries with cash money under the food. Maybe that's why she'd backtracked in the jail cell. She'd had second thoughts about her own ability to make her life work, was probably torn about how she'd manage, if she'd keep her children in this town or leave taking them with her. Dolly had a lot of decisions to make for sure. Dolly said "hey" and Celeste grinned toward her weakly, her cut lip pulling against her smile.
The August sun blanched the gravel stones. Everything but the church seemed lifted up, as if the soft grayness of the ashy shroud and the broken bits of stone were an artfully arranged backdrop. The long-needled pines, live oaks, and stands of poplars all exploded in profusions of green, while the church's remains receded into a black scorch on the earth. Even Reverend Singleton's DeSoto stood out in a shimmer of blue and tan. The corners of his red bumper sticker reading Register Now-Vote in November curled away from the chrome fender. Mr. Landau's truck, rust-brown and chrome, sat to the side. Celeste wondered if he had a rifle under the seat, if seeing his burned-down church would be more than he could tolerate.
Celeste started digging through the burned rubble with a long branch of tree searching for some evidence that the freedom school ever existed. One summer of freedom school, then regular segregated school all year long, all life long. State schools propped up the status quo, left too many children dull and thirsty or worse, uninterested in learning at all. Children were taught that chattering bruised the air by teachers who told them to shut up. Parents said the same thing for fear their chattering would ignite some simmering hatred. It was the end of the summer project. It was a double-shame, with the church burned, that the children who'd come to freedom school over the summer would no longer be able to see and touch the place where a different idea about learning first took hold. They should be able to walk in there every Sunday morning for church with their portable blackboard off to the side, the Negro history books stacked neat on the shelves, newspapers from other places, their art work on the walls. But it was all burned with the St. James A.M.E. Church.
Celeste poked around with her tree branch and murmured, "Sophie Lewis will not be happy with this."
"She knows Mississippi as well as anyone. But it will break her heart. She has such high hopes." Reverend Singleton, his Kodak camera in hand, took photos of the burned-down church. Then he directed Celeste to smile and to point to her cut lip and cracked tooth. Celeste did as he asked, knowing full well no Kodak photo could show the full damage to her lip and tooth.
"I thought at the end of the summer, I might have divided the books among the children." Celeste held herself to keep from crying, from railing against the south.
"Books or no books, they're not going to forget that freedom school." Reverend Singleton insisted she stand there as he photographed her injuries up closer. "I'ma send these on to Jackson for the FBI and let them decide about what to do with Sheriff Trotter and his deputy."
"FBI ain't going to do nothing. Once they found those three boys, they wasn't going to stay in Mississippi." Mr. Landau walked toward his truck and sat down on the running board, his elbows on his thighs, big hands dangling. "You smell the kerosene?"
"Sure you right, Landau. But I gotta send the photos on anyway." Reverend Singleton sniffed the air for kerosene. "Yeah. I smell it."
"We be all right, Reverend Singleton. Ain't nothing new." Mrs. Owens stood there by him patting his arm. "It's just a building."
Dolly sniffed the air and Sister Mobley walked the perimeter of the church, stopping and staring from time to time, no doubt placing
this thing and that in her memory. Celeste headed towards the shadowy cool trees of the sacred ground. The man who gave the church the bell was buried there. Little did he know. Things really did get worse. The smell of burned pine resin and the filigrees of smoke teared her eyes, and then the tears became a steady stream running down her face. Today her mouth was just an irritation rather than a forward-lurching pain. Sissy Tucker's small grave and simple cross lay just at the boundary between the sacred ground and the ordinary cemetery. Zenia Tucker's red geraniums were dulled by their layer of ash.
Celeste rejoined Reverend Singleton and the group in the crystalline light of mid-morning. "Everything's all right in there." She smiled a minimal smile to lessen the tug on her lip, knowing her cracked front tooth changed everything on her face. The thought of how she looked in the mirror trying to brush that tooth brought a shiver of giggles. She'd ended up washing the tooth with her finger. She ate a breakfast of eggs and the center of her butter-soft biscuit, taking it in small side bites and chewing gingerly. That tooth had to last until she got back to Jackson, or better, home to Detroit.
"They don't change much." Reverend Singleton relaxed his tie even more, then opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a hammer and a freshly made paint-on-wood sign that he nailed to a tree closest to the rubble of the church. Help Make Mississippi Part of the USA, Register to VoteNow. "We can pitch a tent right here if need be." The hammer blows cracked like gunshots through the clearing. He gathered his little group in front of the sign and photographed them. Mr. Landau stood in the back near Celeste, looking like a long lean Sitting Bull. His plum janitor job at Crown-Zellerbach made men jealous, while the women sidled up to him like he had gold in his pockets. She'd seen them at the church picnics over the summer, the younger women batting their eyes and smiling at him, pushing their breasts forward, before sitting primly on the picnic chairs. The men shook his hand quickly and walked away. She figured he must be Reverend Singleton's age-well past the usual age of marriage in the south.
The building had been a symbol. Not just for the movement to help register these backwater Negroes to vote. The church was more than that. It was theirs, their future, a proof of life. Celeste felt a sudden urge now to see where Sissy's body had been found. It would never be all right with her, never rest easy inside her the way Sissy's death had been handled, even by the Negro people of Pineyville. Sissy was a small damage in their minds.
Celeste walked close to Reverend Singleton. "You think you might be able to take me over to the place where you found Sissy?"
"We can do that." He went on about his work, walking around the clearing, taking snapshots.
"Reverend Singleton, are you sure it's all right?"
"Sure, I'm sure. We'll go over there later. I understand." He was digging in the ruins of everything he'd worked for.
Celeste wondered if he, too, had another understanding of Sissy's death that he kept private for fear of cleaving his congregation at a time when he needed them to be united. He'd followed their lead on that when he led them in all other respects. There was no hue and cry about Sissy's death-not against the whites of the town and not to question some other possibility. Her funeral had been a personal and private affair, as if she'd died of natural causes.
Mrs. Owens shoved her hands into the pockets of her dark print cotton church dress. "We must go today to see Mr. Heywood." Sister Mobley and Dolly nodded in agreement, their backs turned to the smoking remains. It was the thought on everyone's mind. And coming just after it was the thought of what new violence they'd have to endure before the day ended. Reverend Singleton would have to get the word out that more volunteers were needed, that they'd meet at the burned-down church every evening until they didn't need to meet anymore.
Reverend Singleton grabbed Geneva Owens's hand and put his other hand out for anyone to take. They formed a tight little circle and he led them in a prayer of deliverance from evil, then put the Kodak instant camera in his car, motioned them all in, and off they went. No time to sit around mourning. They bumped over the church road, no one looking back at the scorch, though Celeste could see Reverend Singleton glancing in his rearview mirror at the remains of the church he helped to build, tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. She stared out the window; she didn't want him to know she saw him crying.
In town, they drove slowly past the pay phone near the gas station, gazed at Mr. Tucker as he turned his head away. Celeste chastised him in her mind, saying pointedly that it was his church, too, that no matter what else, he needed to mourn that loss. The citizens on the street by now recognized the reason for their ride through town. They glared in hatred or turned their heads away. The woman who sat behind the counter in the small drugstore with the dusty shelves and scant stock stood on the sidewalk. Celeste locked eyes with her as they rolled by, taking all the blame and anger from her look. The woman spat into the air. They rolled on by. Celeste felt them drawing the thread of history through the tidy landscape of this miniature town dressed in magnolia and pine.
Sheriff Trotter's car was parked in its normal spot in front of the Pearl River County Administration Building. Celeste realized in an instant that no one had expected their group to show up again today. You could see it in the jerked-head responses as they parked and walked up that walkway and in that front door. Celeste wanted to protect her mouth; she feared they'd attack the weak ones this time, Mrs. Owens and Sister Mobley. In the foyer, people ducked into offices or hugged the walls.
Celeste listened for the sound of heavy police shoes on the hard floors. They were on the steps going up and still no sheriff came down that hallway. Hands on the smooth banister, as smooth as that porcelain drinking fountain yesterday. Up they walked, afraid to open their mouths, afraid to look in any other direction. They reached the top of the stairs and turned toward Mr. Heywood's office, stunned by their own progress, white people backing away, running in the other direction even. Office doors closing hard. Another drinking fountain-Celeste looked at it, passed it by. Today was not the day for drinking cold water from white porcelain fountains, signs or no signs. Negro people had become so beaten down and broken, they didn't need any Whites Only signs. Only outsiders needed that instruction. The press of history and habit did all the work in Pineyville, until this summer.
Mr. Landau took the lead and opened the door marked Registrar of Voters, held it for the rest, Reverend Singleton coming in last. They were in and it was just as he'd described back at the church mock-up. A long dark wooden counter, waxed and old. Windows across the back wall that would look over the entrance to the building. Mr. Heywood must've seen them coming up that walkway on the first day and every day. To the side, another door with Mr. Heywood's name in gold letters. Three white women at desks with small table fans fluttering, acting as if no one had entered the office.
They stood there, the six of them. Celeste waited to hear, "May I help you?" She heard nothing but the slight flip of paper caught in the breezes of the fans. Ledger books on the counter, pens, a small chrome press bell, and hard chairs along the wall for waiting. A large painting of a Confederate soldier full of board-back pride, medals on his chest. And always, a large Confederate flag on full display.
Reverend Singleton and Celeste stepped to the counter just as they'd rehearsed at the church. He coughed. "We're here to register to vote."
Sister Mobley, Geneva Owens, Mr. Landau, and Dolly huddled over to the side out of the way of the door, which might blast open at any moment, full of badges and billy clubs. Celeste's knees turned to rubber; she felt she might drop down, crawl under something to get out of the way of whatever came in that door. She steadied herself by gripping the edge of the counter. It had the polished sheen of Shuck's bar.
Finally, one of the white women walked to the counter, her Peter Pan collared blouse buttoned nearly up to her neck, a gold chain and cross shining at her throat. Her raven hair was combed as neat as Momma Bessie's backyard grass, not a hair out of place, as if it had been roller-s
et, air-dried, and saved under glass. She didn't say a word, just glared at them as if they were beasts behind the bars of a zoo, then shoved a few stapled papers toward Reverend Singleton, her small wedding diamond and ring glimmering up from her peachy nails. She walked back to her desk, her pump heels clacking on the oak floor. One application. Sister Mobley took it as a victory and breathed out a "Thank you, Jesus."
Reverend Singleton and Celeste stood at the counter studying the voter registration test, which included five pages of multiple-choice questions on the Mississippi State Constitution and a page of requests for personal information about the applicant-specifically, whether you knew if your antecedents had voted before the Civil War, and whether or not they paid taxes. There was no way to tell if the next person would receive entirely different questions or not. The Jackson office had sent copies of the different applications given to Negro and white people. They'd prepared for the worst-that's what the whole summer had been about. Celeste had her best readers, her best test-takers in this first group. If they couldn't get past this application, no one else she'd worked with over the summer would.
Mrs. Owens stepped to the counter, severity and age intermingling on her face, her gray hair bundled back and sweat glistening her forehead. "I would like to registe' to vote, too."
That really launched it. Mr. Landau, Sister Mobley, and Dolly each stepped to the counter and repeated what Mrs. Owens had said. A second white woman, tan and healthy, came forward and delicately slid five more applications across the counter. She wore a jacketed sundress, pearls around her neck, and a slender gold wristwatch. "Y'all go ahead and fill those out. If you can write." Nothing mean in her tone, though. She pursed her lips and went to the desk of the first woman. The two turned their backs to the counter, whispering. The dark-haired woman pushed a button on her phone and spoke quietly. Celeste strained to hear what the woman was saying, but the other woman spoke over her.
Freshwater Road Page 34