by Lisa Wingate
“Hello?” I say. No one’s there.
I dial Nathan’s number before I can rethink it. Maybe that was him. I hope that was him. But he doesn’t answer. I blurt out an abbreviated version of the evening’s story, the thrill of victory, the agony of Redd Fontaine, then I finish with, “Well…anyway…I was hoping to catch you. I just…really wanted to talk.”
Wandering through the house, I turn on all the lights, then stand on the back porch, watching fireflies and listening as a pair of whip-poor-wills call to one another across the distance.
Headlight beams strafe the backyard. I lean over in time to see the city police car circle the cemetery, then pull back onto the highway. An uneasy, off-centered feeling simmers inside me, as if I’m coming down with something but it just hasn’t hit yet. I’m wondering how bad it will get before it’s over.
Resting my head against a dry, crackled porch post that’s seen better days, I look at the orchard and the star-spattered sky blanketing the trees. I ponder how we can put a man on the moon, fly shuttles back and forth to outer space, send probes to Mars, and yet we can’t traverse the boundaries in the human heart, fix what’s wrong.
How can things still be this way?
That’s the reason for Tales from the Underground, I tell myself. Stories change people. History, real history, helps people understand each other, see each other from the inside out.
I spend the remainder of the weekend watching an increasing number of cemetery visits, not just by the police. Apparently, ordinary citizens feel the need to stop by and make sure the local youth, or I, have not disturbed the place. Redd Fontaine wanders through in his cruiser from time to time as well. And more hang-up calls ring my phone, until finally I quit answering and start letting the machine get it. At bedtime I turn off the ringer, but I lie awake on the sofa, watching for light to skim through the blinds, and tracking the fact that the calls and Fontaine’s graveyard drive-bys never happen at the same time. Surely a grown man, a police officer, couldn’t be that juvenile.
By Sunday afternoon, my nerves are shot, and I’m pretty sure that if my brain drums up one more gloomy scenario, I’m going to walk out into the rice field and throw myself to the alligator. Even though I’ve told myself I won’t and shouldn’t, I pick up the phone to call Nathan’s number once more. Then I put it back down.
I think about going over to Sarge’s house to talk to her and Aunt Dicey, and maybe Granny T as well, but I don’t want to alarm anyone. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe the cop is just trying to make a point because I picked a fight with him. Maybe the uptick in graveyard visits this weekend is mere coincidence, or maybe the kids’ interest has sparked others’ curiosity.
In desperation, I wander the grounds at Goswood Grove, searching for unicorns and rainbows…and, perhaps, Nathan, whom I do not find, of course. I watch for LaJuna, as well. She doesn’t show up. She is probably focused on her new romantic relationship. Hopefully she and Lil’ Ray are off somewhere rehearsing their performance for the Underground pageant.
Hopefully, there will be an Underground pageant.
There will be, I tell myself. There will. We’re doing this. Positive thoughts.
Unfortunately, despite all my efforts at staying upbeat, Monday is a unicorn killer. By ten A.M., I’m in the principal’s office. The summons showed up in my second-hour class, and so now this is how I get to spend my conference period, receiving a grilling about my activities with the kids and a dressing-down from Principal Pevoto, with the aid and supervision of two school board members. They’re positioned in the corner of the office like storm troopers on a raid. One of them is the blonde from the next booth at the Cluck and Oink. Nathan’s aunt-in-law, the second or third trophy wife of Manford Gossett.
She doesn’t even have a kid in this school. Hers are—no surprise—enrolled out at the lake.
The only thing more annoying than her condescending demeanor is her high-pitched voice. “What in the world such a thing has to do with the district-approved curriculum, which the district pays good money to have developed by an experienced curriculum specialist, I can’t even begin to see.” Her southern accent makes the words sound tactful and sugary sweet, but they’re not. “Our prescribed curriculum is something for which an inexperienced first-year teacher, like yourself, should be grateful. You would do well to follow it to the letter.”
I’m also realizing why she looked vaguely familiar to me in the Cluck and Oink. She was the one who passed right by me on the first day of school, when the pipe truck took the front bumper off my Bug. She looked straight at me, our gazes locked in shock and horror at what had almost happened. You don’t forget a moment like that. And then she drove on like she hadn’t seen a thing. The reason? That was a Gossett Industries truck. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, but I do now. It means people can come within inches of mowing you over, and nobody sees a thing, nobody says a thing. Nobody dares.
Sitting here now, I’m clutching the seat of a poorly padded office chair, so hard my fingernails are bending backward. I want to jump up and say, Your truck almost ran me down in the street and nearly hit a six-year-old kid, and it didn’t stop, and you didn’t stop. Now, all of a sudden, you care about this school? These kids?
I can’t even get the classroom materials I need. I have to schlep cookies to school, so my kids won’t sit there hungry while they’re trying to learn.
But you just keep wagging your pricey manicure and that horse-choking diamond bracelet at me. That helps make it all seem so much more right. I grit my teeth against the words. They’re right there behind the barricade. Right, right, right…
There.
Principal Pevoto knows it. He looks at me, shakes his head almost imperceptibly. It’s not his fault. He’s trying to save jobs here. Mine and his. “Miss Silva is inexperienced,” he offers in the sort of soothing tone a nanny would use to placate a spoiled brat. “She didn’t have any way of really understanding the sort of approvals that might be needed before taking on a project of this…” He glances apologetically at me. He’s on my side…except that he can’t be. He’s not allowed. “Scale. In her defense, she did mention it to me. I should have asked further questions.”
I cling to the chair, but it’s about to become an ejection seat. I can’t take anymore. I can’t.
What do you care, lady? Your kids are too good for this school.
In my mind, I’m standing in the middle of the office, screaming those words with righteous indignation. Most of the board members don’t have kids here. They’re business owners, lawyers, doctors in town. They serve on the board for prestige and for control. They want to regulate things like the district’s dividing lines and requests for property tax hikes and bond issues and student transfers to the district’s flagship school on the lake—things that might cost them money, because they own property and most of the businesses here.
“We do provide every new teacher with a copy of the employee manual, which contains all the school policies and procedures.” The lovely Mrs. Gossett, who has not deemed me worthy of permission to use a first name, pops a shiny silver alligator-skin pump off her heel, lets it dangle on her toe as she twitches her foot. “The new employees sign the paper saying they’ve read it, don’t they? It goes in their file, doesn’t it?”
Her little lickspittle, a trim brunette, nods along.
“Of course,” Principal Pevoto answers.
“Well, it’s very plain in the manual that any off-campus activity involving a student group or club requires board approval.”
“To walk two blocks to the city library?” I spit out. Principal Pevoto delivers an eye flash my way. I am not to speak unless spoken to. I’ve been warned already.
The blonde swivels her pointed chin with robotic precision, click, click, click. I am now directly in her crosshairs. “To promise these children that they will be holding some sort of…page
ant…off campus, after school hours, most certainly is flouting the rules. And flagrantly, I must say. And in the city graveyard, of all places. Good gracious. Really! It’s not only ridiculous, it’s obscene and disrespectful to the dearly departed.”
I’m losing it. Mayday. Mayday. “I’ve asked the cemetery’s residents. They don’t mind.”
Principal Pevoto draws a sharp breath.
Mrs. Gossett purses her lips. Her nostrils flare. She looks like a skinny Miss Piggy. “I wasn’t teasing; did you think I was? Though I am trying my very best to be nice about this. While that cemetery may not mean anything to you, being from…well, wherever you are from…it surely does matter to this community. For historic reasons, of course, but also because our family relations are laid there. Of course we don’t want them disturbed, their graves desecrated to…to entertain young miscreants. It’s hard enough to keep these kinds of kids from committing mischief out there, much less encouraging them to think of our cemetery as a playground. It’s careless and insensitive.”
“I was hardly—”
She doesn’t even let me finish before she stabs a pointy little finger toward the window. “Some years ago, several expensive grave markers were tipped over in that cemetery. Vandalized.”
My eyes go so indignantly wide, they feel like they’re about to pop out of my head. “Maybe if people understood the history, knew about the lives those stones represent, things like that wouldn’t happen. Maybe they’d even be preventing things like that from happening. Some of my kids have ancestors buried there. Most of them do—”
“They are not your kids.”
Principal Pevoto hooks a finger in his collar, tugs at his tie. He is as red as the volunteer fire truck he mans on weekends. “Miss Silva…”
I blaze forward. I can’t stop myself now that I’ve started. I feel everything, all our plans slipping away. I can’t let it happen. “Or they have ancestors buried next door. Under graves that were left unmarked. In a graveyard that my students are painstakingly working to enter into the computer, so the library can have records of those who lived their lives on that land. As slaves.”
That does it. I have tripped her trigger now. This is the real issue. Goswood Grove. The house. Its contents. The parts of its history that are hard. That are embarrassing. That carry a stigma no one quite knows how to talk about, and tell of an inconvenient heritage that still plays out in Augustine today.
“That is none of your business!” she snorts. “How dare you!”
The sidekick shoots from her chair and stands with her fists balled as if she’s going to take me down.
Principal Pevoto rises, leans halfway across his desk with his fingers braced like spider legs. “All right. That is enough.”
“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Gossett agrees. “I don’t know who you think you are. You have lived here for…what…two months? Three? If the students at this school are ever to rise above their upbringing, become productive members of society, they must do it by leaving the past behind. By being practical. By gaining vocational training in some sort of work they are capable of. Most of them are lucky if they can achieve the functional literacy skills needed to fill out a job application. And how dare you insinuate that our family is uncaring in this regard! We pay more taxes to this school district than anyone. We are the ones who employ these people, who make life in this town possible. Who work with the prisons to give them jobs when they’re released. You were hired to teach English. According to the curriculum. There will be no graveyard program. Mark my words. That graveyard is run by a board, and they will in no way allow this. I will make certain of that.”
She pushes past me, the foot soldier following in her wake. At the door, she pauses to fire off one more volley. “Do your job, Miss Silva. And mind who you’re talking to here, or you’ll be lucky if you still have a job to worry over.”
Principal Pevoto follows with a quick calm-down lecture, telling me everyone stumbles in their first year of teaching. He appreciates my passion, and he can see that I’m building a rapport with the kids. “That’ll pay off,” he promises wearily. “If they like you, they’ll work for you. Just, in the future, stick to the curriculum. Go home, Miss Silva. Take a few days off and come back with your head clear. I’ve called in a sub for your classes.”
I mumble something, the bell rings in the hall, and I wander from the office. Halfway back to my classroom, I stop and stand, shell-shocked. I realize I’m not supposed to go back to my classroom. I’m being sent home in the middle of the school day.
Kids flow past, parting around me in a strange, raucous tide, but I feel as if they’re far away, as if they don’t even touch me, as if I’ve disappeared from the world.
The halls have cleared and the tardy bell sounds before I come to myself and continue toward my classroom. Outside the door, I gather my wits before slipping in to grab my things.
There’s an aide watching my kids, I guess until the sub can arrive. Even so, they fire off questions. Where am I going? What’s wrong with me? Who will take them over to the library?
We’ll see you tomorrow. Right? Right, Miss Pooh?
The aide gives me a sympathetic look and finally starts yelling at them to shut up. I slip away and arrive home and don’t even remember how I got there. The house looks forlorn and empty, and when I open the car door, I hear the phone ring four times, then stop.
I want to run inside, rip it from the cradle, choke it with both hands, and scream into it, “What is wrong with you? Leave me alone!”
The message light is blinking on the answering machine. I touch the button like it’s the sharp end of a knife. Maybe this thing is escalating and now…whoever…is issuing anonymous threats on tape. Why would they bother when they can do their work right out in the open via the school board and Principal Pevoto?
But when the message starts, it’s Nathan. His voice is somber. He apologizes for the delay in getting the messages I left on his machine—he’s at his mother’s in Asheville. The last few days have been both his sister’s birthday and the anniversary of her death. Robin would’ve been thirty-three this year. It’s a tough time for his mom; she ended up in the hospital with blood pressure problems, but everything’s all right now. She’s back home, and a friend has come to spend some time with her.
I dial the phone number and he answers. “Nathan, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” I blurt out. I don’t want to heap an additional worry on his shoulders. My job catastrophe and the school board hatchet job seem less consequential when I think of Nathan and his mother, mourning the loss of Robin. The last thing he needs right now is a Gossett fight. I’ll muster other forces. Sarge, the New Century ladies, the parents of my kids. I’ll call the newspaper, start a picket line. What’s happening is wrong.
“You okay?” he asks tentatively. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Tears grip my throat, tighten it like a vise. I’m frustrated. I’m sad. I swallow hard, pummel my forehead with the palm of my hand, thinking, Stop. “I’m fine.”
“Benny…” An undercurrent says, Come on. I know you.
It breaks me open and I pour out the story, then end with the morning’s heartbreaking conclusion, “They want to shut down the Underground project. If I don’t cooperate, I’m out of a job.”
“Listen,” he says, and I hear thumping noises in the background, like he’s in the middle of something. “I’m heading to the airport to try catching a standby flight. I’ve got to run, but Mom told me Robin was working on some kind of project before she passed away. She didn’t want my uncles there to find out about it. Don’t do anything until I get back.”
CHAPTER 25
HANNIE GOSSETT—FORT MCKAVETT, TEXAS, 1875
It’s hard to know the man sunk down in the mattress as being Mister William Gossett. Plain white sheets rumple round his body, sweated down and wrinkled in tight bunches where his hands b
een grabbing on and trying to wring out his pain like dirty wash water. His eyes, once blue as my grandmama’s glass beads, are closed and sunk down in sallow pits of skin. The man I remember bears no resembling to this one in the bed. Even the big voice that’d call out our names, now it just moans and moans.
The memories come back on me when the soldiers leave us with him in the long hospital building at Fort McKavett. Back before the freedom, there was always a big Christmastime party where Marse had gifts wrapped for each one of us—new shoes made there on the place and two new sack dresses for work, two new shimmies, six yards of fabric per child, eight for women and men, and a white cotton dress with a ribbon sash so’s the Gossett slaves would look finer than all the others, going off to the white people’s church. That party, all us together, every one of my brothers and sisters, and mama and Aunt Jenny Angel and my cousins, and Grandmama and Grandpapa. Tables of ham and apples and Irish potatoes and real wheat bread, peppermint candy for the children, and corn liquor for the grown folk. Those were better times in a bad time.
That man in the bed loved the parties. It pleasured him to believe that we were happy, that all us stayed with him because we wanted to, not because we had to, that we didn’t want to be free. I imagine that’s what he told hisself to make it right.
I stand back from the bed now and remember all that, and I don’t know what way to feel. I want to think, This ain’t none of your affairs, Hannie. Only thing you need from this man is to know, where’s the cropper contract that’ll make sure Tati and Jason and John get treated fair? He’s took up enough of your life, him and old Missus.
But that wall won’t stay built up in me. It’s set on sand, and it shifts with his every ragged breath, trembles along with his thin, blue-white body. I can’t work up the tabby I need to mortar it solid. Dying is a hard thing to get done, sometimes. This man is having a tough time with it. The leg wound from back in Mason festered while he sat in the jail. The doctor here took off the leg, but the poison’s gone into his blood.