Flights of Angels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  Someral was thinking about telling Larkin about Lily but he didn’t. It was better if Larkin thought he never went to the meetings because he had to study.

  “Let’s go get some ice cream,” she said. “I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”

  “I better not,” he said. “I need to get on home. It’s sweet of you to come and see about me. I’m doing fine. I really am. You don’t have to come every week.”

  “I want to.” She took his hand and covered it with both of hers. It was cool. Charles’s hands were cool too. Thick cool skin made for the tropics, made for heat. She held on to Someral. “You’re all I have left now, Someral. I don’t talk to Charlotte anymore. She tried to take all the money, all the rent money and everything Granddaddy left me. She had her husband file a suit to say I was crazy because I work for Charles.”

  “You were the smartest one in the class, the valedictorian.” Someral laughed out loud, imagining prissy little Charlotte ever doing anything to Larkin. Imagine anyone ever doing anything to Larkin. It was not possible to imagine anyone cracking her iron will. “They didn’t really file the suit, did they?”

  “Yes, they did. At Christmas. I didn’t want to tell you until it was all over. The judge threw it out. The federal court threw it out. Mr. Childs fixed it up for me. But it was so . . . it made me so mad I wanted to shoot her in the face. I would have too. If she had taken one penny of my money I’d just have gone over and shot her with a shotgun. Granddaddy pitied her. He told me right before he died, ‘All I have for Charlotte is pity,’ he said, because she didn’t even come down to see him when he was sick. She came one time and didn’t even spend the night.”

  “Well, you were there and Momma.”

  “And Miss Greenlee and everyone around and the Wades. There were plenty to take care of him. Someral, you are all that’s left now. You’re the one, the one we’re counting on. Keep on doing well. It’s so important. As important as what Charles is doing. Right up there with it.”

  “I’m trying.” He wanted to get up and go home but he waited for her to initiate it.

  “We could round up some ice cream and cake.” She laughed and looked like herself at last.

  “Not this afternoon. I better get on back to my place.” She stood up then at last and let him go. He walked her to her car and stood watching as she pulled out of the parking place and drove out the winding drive to the gates on North State Street.

  That was April 1. On April 29 they had the demonstration about Jackson State and she called him up and told him to meet her at Charles’s office and go along and carry a sign or not carry a sign. “I just think you ought to be there with us if you can,” she had said. “I talked to Charles about it. He thinks so too. Later, when you’re running for office or in practice, they might ask if you were there. It’s not just another show, Someral. This is the big hit. All the television people from New York are in town. Two boys died on the campus last week. We know they were shot by rednecks. We just can’t prove it and the police aren’t doing anything. We have to march.”

  “I want to come. I read it in the paper. I was coming anyway. I want to bring a girl if she doesn’t have to work. A nurse I know. Is that okay?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if you should do that. Charles wants to meet you. He’s pretty careful about who he lets around him. Especially when it gets hot like this week. He gets nervous. He doesn’t like surprises. He wants to know who’s in the room before he gets there. It’s like Rome during Caligula’s rule, Someral. It isn’t easy. I can’t just spring this on him. We’re all pretty busy around here. Could she go with someone else and you meet her later?”

  “It’s okay. I’ll come alone. What time?”

  “Early. Be here by eight in the morning if you can. You know where the office is now?”

  “On that street behind the Coliseum?”

  “No, they moved it. I’ll come get you. Be ready at seven-thirty. Saturday morning at seven-thirty. I’ll be there. I’ll just honk.”

  “Okay. Come on. I’ll see you then.”

  He hung up the phone and lay down on his bed naked and thought about the class he had that morning about the new skulls in Africa. It was hot in the room. The curtains were still drawn. The bed smelled of Lily. He brought the pillow to his face and breathed it in and wondered if she would have a baby. She thought she was going to have one. He laid the pillow on his chest and began to feel his skull with his hands. He caressed his skull and then he fell asleep in a dream of heat and the sweet sweet smells of Lily’s hair and skirts.

  Larkin hung up her phone and tried to get back to addressing letters to people about the demonstration, begging for money to pay for the materials to make the signs. But she couldn’t keep her mind on it. Someral s voice took her back to the safe, warm world of the past, to summers when the cotton was higher than her waist and the rains came at the right time and her grandfather got the Buick with the wide running boards and they danced at the post office to raise money for the Red Cross.

  For the finale Larkin and Charlotte danced an Irish jig. Then they sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and then they got the gray blanket and carried it around the floor and all the men threw coins into it and her grandfather threw in a twenty-dollar bill which was a lot of money in 1952. They gathered up the money and took it to a table where Mrs. Alford was waiting with a box to count it. Then Larkin grabbed a piece of cake and went out on the porch and sat with the black people and Diddie was still clapping for her fifteen minutes after the songs were over and even Delicios was grinning from ear to ear and had been holding Someral up to the window to watch the show.

  Jacob Miley was drunk when he deliberately ran his car into Someral after the demonstration. They were marching to make the city of Jackson build a bridge over the four-lane highway so the students at Jackson State wouldn’t get run over on their way to school, also, to protest no one finding out who shot two students the week before. If Jacob hadn’t been drunk, maybe he wouldn’t have run over Someral. If he hadn’t been drunk, he might have seen Larkin there and known she would recognize him. But he wasn’t only drunk. He was in a blind rage over black people out on the streets carrying signs and the end of a system that had made his father a broke, struggling dentist in a small town in North Mississippi with a wife who was only five feet tall, which was why Jacob was so short no woman could take him seriously no matter what he did for her. He had been mad for years, and when he saw Someral standing on the side of the street in his little foreign-looking glasses and his nice blue jacket he just ran over him and knocked him into the post.

  He didn’t even recognize me, Larkin realized. He didn’t remember my face. She had met him at a party in New Orleans a year before and afterward let him take her to Commander’s Palace to eat dinner. They were drunk at the party and at dinner they got drunker. Jacob was working for a new member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. They were both in New Orleans for the convention of State Government Office Workers.

  “We have to integrate the lower schools,” she had told him, and he hadn’t flinched at first. “There’s no other way out. The feds will do it if we don’t. Besides, we can’t let black people live like they do. If we give them good schools it will work out. My grandfather had a school on the place where I was raised and everyone went on to have good jobs in other states. We have to build this together. We’re here together, in this state, we have to make it good.”

  “Bullshit,” Jacob said at last. “This is our state. It was built by white people. The drive and ambition and vision came from whites. We made it a cultured world of beauty and the blacks will ruin it if we let them. Get off your high horse, Larkin. You went to private schools all your life, didn’t you?”

  “Not always. When we were little we had a tutor and he taught the black kids too. He taught at the school. It was a good school, not some token thing. My uncle taught math and Granddaddy taught history and the tutors taught the rest. Everyone had to go until they were
twelve. They had to be able to read and write and do numbers and the ones that wanted to could keep on going.”

  “But you weren’t in the school with them. You were in the house with the tutor.”

  “So what? I didn’t say it was ideal. I just say it shows what can be done when people are well meaning and work from ideals and work together. I used to teach in the school when I was older. We had two big fans and Charlotte and I would teach French and Spanish and bring the record player down and have Music Appreciation.”

  “That’s why you’re working for Charles Evers? You better come on back to your own people, Larkin. Before it’s too late. You don’t know what you’re doing to yourself.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I know who I am. I know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Have another drink, for God’s sake. Let’s go down to Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop and get the bartender to make us something worth drinking.”

  They wandered around the Quarter for an hour and then ended up in a rented room in the Cornstalk Hotel and Jacob’s body was surprisingly strong and powerful and the way he made love was interesting because it was so completely selfish. As selfish as the world is when the world is not changed by love. As selfish as salmon swimming upstream or trees crowding out their saplings in search of sun. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Larkin was always fascinated by that kind of elemental power or force or will. Liked to get close to it and watch it.

  Afterward, Jacob washed his body at the sink and then dressed and offered to take her to her hotel. But she refused. She told him to leave. When he was gone she got up and walked around the room thinking about what she had done. Then she took a shower and put her clothes back on and wandered out into the French Quarter just at dawn and walked around wondering what had made her fuck a racist midget. I wish it had been a smarter day, she decided. A day when I didn’t drink anything or learned something or taught someone to change their mind about being crazy.

  So, when she saw Jacob’s face in the window of the car that hit Someral, Larkin thought it was her fault. He was aiming at me, she decided. Someral was killed for standing near me.

  It was after the march was over, when almost everyone had gone home and the police were standing around on the Millsaps golf course looking the other way and she and Someral were standing out on Woodrow Wilson Drive not talking about anything and Jacob got his car out of the parking place and came driving down past the barricades and past the old Girl Scout Headquarters and saw Someral leaning on his sign and turned the wheel and hit him.

  She saw the car and she leaped up on the sidewalk and she watched Someral bend and fall into the post and crumple like a rag doll onto the sparse, dandelion-covered grass. He was coming for me, she thought. What did I do to make him hate me?

  Charlotte walked by the cell again holding on to the Episcopal bishop. She looked in at Larkin, who would not return her look.

  “How dare you come to my house wearing those filthy clothes,” Charlotte had said to her the last time they had spoken before the accident and the revenge. It was a Wednesday after she had met Someral on the bench at Millsaps. Since Charlotte lived in the neighborhood, Larkin had gone by to say hello to her nieces. Charlotte opened the door when she rang the bell. “I’m afraid to hug you, Larkin. God knows where you’ve been. Have you bathed? Your hair is dirty, did you know that? My God, I can’t believe what you’re doing with your life.”

  “I’ve been helping at Head Start all day. I’m not dirty. I’m just sweaty. The kids are teaching me to dance. Let me take a shower. Lend me a dress.”

  Charlotte moved back and Larkin walked into the immaculate yellow-and-white living room with its overstuffed sofas and too much of everything everywhere. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time but instead she faced her sister. “No kidding. I’m in between apartments. I’m staying in a small place with a friend.”

  “You’re living like white trash,” Charlotte said. “You don’t look right, Larkin. Well, come on. You can use the guest room. I’ll get you a sundress. Do you want to wear a sundress?”

  “A sundress would be great. And a drink. Make us a Bloody Mary, will you? While I bathe.”

  Charlotte came back with the sundress on a hanger. It was pale yellow piqué with white daisies and little spaghetti straps at the shoulder. She left and returned with the drinks. Larkin was out of the shower and drying herself with a pink towel. Charlotte sat on the bed looking at the pile of dirty clothes on the floor.

  “They aren’t full of lice,” Larkin said. “I’ll throw them in your washer if you’re worried.”

  “Heddy will do them. Finish drying yourself.” Charlotte went out into the hall and called the maid and asked her to get the clothes and wash them. Heddy slipped into the room and gathered them from the floor and left without a word. “She’s a treasure,” Charlotte said. “Floyd’s mother gave her to me. Just gave her to me. Can you believe that? She wanted to be sure his shirts were ironed.”

  “Bobby Kennedy’s coming Wednesday,” Larkin began. She was standing naked before a framed mirror combing her hair. “I don’t want him to come. I think it’s too dangerous but Charles thinks it’s okay.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” Charlotte said. “You’re going to be killed, Larkin. Everyone talks about you. Annie heard about you at school.”

  “Good. I’m glad they’re talking. That’s what activism is about, Charlotte. To shake people up. To make people think.”

  “Let me get you some underwear. I forgot about underwear.” Charlotte put her untouched Bloody Mary on the table and left the room and returned with a pile of underpants and bras. “I think these will fit. We always wore the same size, didn’t we?”

  “I may get fat.” Larkin turned and faced her. “It’s a political statement to be thin. Poor people can’t afford the kind of food you need to eat to stay thin.”

  “The black people on Esperanza were thin. None of them were fat. Not a single one.”

  “And one year they got rickets and Uncle Bob and Grand-daddy had to go to Greenville and bring back a boatload of oranges and canned tomatoes for them. It was not an idyll, Charlotte, no matter how much you want to make it one.”

  “How’s Someral doing? Is he doing okay?”

  “He’s doing fine. He was scared at first but I think he’s out of the woods now. He’s got a good teacher, an anthropologist from Harvard they brought here to start a department. They want to go to Esperanza and dig in the mounds.”

  “No. No one can dig in the mounds. We promised Grandmother. She made me promise to protect them. The government won’t let you anyway. They are a sacred burial place. No one from Millsaps can go there and touch them. Is that why you came over here, to tell me that?”

  “No, I came over to take a shower and get a drink. And see my nieces when they get home from school.”

  “Are you going to stay?”

  “Only until I see them. Don’t worry, Charlotte. I won’t hang around to pollute your life.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You don’t have to. We don’t have to agree on things. And thanks for the drink. I needed it. I haven’t had a thing to eat all day.”

  “Stay for dinner. Let me make you something. Is there anything you want?” Charlotte stood in the door of the room, so uptight, so anxious, so alarmed that it made Larkin’s day just to watch her twitter.

  “A sandwich will be nice. Anything that’s easy.”

  Charlotte set off down the hall in her little canvas platform shoes, in her little silk dress from Francis Pepper, with the hips and belt just an inch too tight and a tiny little run in her hose in the back where she couldn’t see it and go crazy.

  Later, just at dark, when Larkin was leaving, when they were standing on Charlotte’s wide concrete porch with the Greek urns full of azaleas, looking down the lawn to the other mansions and the fine sleek cars and the perfect flower beds and the absurdity and waste and pride, just as Larkin thought she
was going to get away without any more discussions, Charlotte started again. “Why are you doing this? You are going to be killed. There are people wanting to kill people like you. You don’t know how deep this goes, how mad people are.”

  “I was coming out of a church in Montgomery when a man tried to kill Charles with a knife. He stabbed Jonas Hill in the arm and lunged at me. He thought Jonas was Charles, that’s how crazy they are. You don’t need to tell me about that.”

  “Then why are you doing it? Why don’t you care what happens to the rest of us?”

  “You want to know why? You want the real answer?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Because of the music. Because being with them is like music. Because the music is so damn good and when you’re with them you hear it in a different way. This is the truth, Charlotte. You can believe me when I say this.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t get much, Sister. Because you’re dumb.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “You know what else? They don’t spend their lives on crappy anal-retentive chores they think up and then go hear some music for an hour to make up for it. They have music all day. Okay, maybe it’s cultural, maybe it will end when we finish turning them into us, but anyway, there’s no way you can understand this, is there?”

  “So does Someral listen to music all day? While he’s going to school?”

  “No. Someral is white. Lots of things are already ruined for Someral. And Millsaps will ruin some more. But maybe it will be all right, now that he has this anthropology guy from Harvard. I was depressed when I saw him today but now I’m better.”

  “I am not dumb.”

  “I’m sorry I said that. Thanks for the shower, Sister, and the loan of the dress. I’ll pick up the other clothes when I bring it back.”