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Night Bird Calling

Page 32

by Cathy Gohlke


  “Doc Vishy,” Celia’s mama began, “it’s the Klan. You—”

  “If not me, then who?” Doc Vishy slammed his medical bag closed. “Reverend Willard, we take my car. Fastest that way.” He stood. “Keep cold compresses against her forehead and that knot on the back of her head. Keep her warm, but mind you watch that fire. Pull her off the porch if the house catches.”

  Celia stepped back, slid off the porch, and slipped through the garden as men pulled up in trucks and wagons loaded with hoes and rakes and fire-slapping rugs and five-gallon jugs ready to take on water. She glimpsed Clay McHone appear from the dark, grab a rug, and run toward the barn, beating flames. Celia slipped through the cars and trucks as the men raced toward the barn and began dousing water on the back of the house. In the commotion of doors opening and slamming, she pulled open the back door of Doc Vishy’s car and slipped through to the floor, curling herself as small as possible into the darkened space.

  •••

  Doc Vishy’s car raced over time and space, stumbling through ruts and swooping over hills that slammed Celia’s stomach into the floorboards and up into her throat. If she grunted aloud, the two men in the front seats didn’t hear.

  “You are praying to your Jesus, yes?” Doc Vishy didn’t ask but ordered. “And I pray to Adonai that we are not too late, that we will be able to stop this madness.”

  “They didn’t rape or kill the women. I’m praying they’re just out to scare.”

  “Reverend Willard, you know better than that. They might not kill white women, but Marshall is vermin in their eyes—as Jews are to Germans. They will not hesitate. They will torture in their cruelty, and they have no consequences.”

  “Well, there should be con—”

  “But there are none! Go in, but go in with eyes open!”

  Celia had never heard Doc Vishy so angry, so full of fight.

  The car lurched to a stop and both front doors flew open. Celia pushed her head up from the floor and peered over the seat backs. Doc Vishy had left the headlamps burning, just as he’d done at Garden’s Gate. The lights shone onto the Tates’ porch, where Mercy Tate was kneeling over Olney, his head bashed so that blood oozed out onto the porch floorboards. Their children cowered in the doorway, but Marshall was nowhere in sight.

  “Reverend Willard! Dr. Vishnevsky! Thank God you’ve come! They’ve taken Marshall and liked to kill my Olney. Oh, dear God, save him—please save him, Dr. Vishnevsky!”

  “Which way?” Reverend Willard left Doc Vishnevsky to tend Olney and headed into the woods, the direction Mrs. Tate pointed.

  Celia crept from the car and followed Reverend Willard through the snakelike shadows cast by leafless trees and spindly pines, careful not to step on branches, careful to keep a distance. It wasn’t hard to find the night riders’ trail. Smoking torchlight flickered through the trees. Clawing fingers of flame licked the sky. The sickly-sweet stink of gasoline came on windless air and Celia’s stomach roiled.

  One man alone, what can he do? Will they even care that he’s the preacher?

  The clearing came up too soon. Torches had been thrust into the ground and a wooden cross burned in the center. Horses were tethered nearby—all but one that stood beneath a big old oak tree. A rope had been slung over the sturdy branch of that ancient oak, and Marshall, his face badly beaten and his clothes doused in gasoline, was being hoisted onto the saddle of the horse. One end of the rope was noosed around his neck.

  Dear God, what can we do? How can we stop it? Celia’s heart raced.

  In the moment that Reverend Willard stepped into the clearing, Celia wondered if he’d made his peace with God, if he was ready to go with Marshall into the beyond of what happened when a person’s heart stopped beating.

  Will they really kill Marshall? The preacher? Would they kill a girl? Could she dare them, shame them out of their meanness? She had to try.

  Celia, sweating and trembling from head to foot, was about to step into the fray when Doc Vishy bounded into their midst. “What do you think you’re doing? Have you all lost your minds?”

  “Stay out of this, Doc. You got no call—”

  “No call to what? To help a man? To save a man’s life? To keep you from doing the unthinkable? No more ‘call’ than I had to save your son, Hiram Lester!” Doc Vishy pointed to the man who’d spoken. “Oh yes! I recognize your voices—all of you!”

  “Keep talking, Jew man, and what’s to keep us from swingin’ you next?”

  Celia recognized something in that man’s voice, but she couldn’t place it, muffled as it was through his hood.

  “It’s your kind brought us into this blamed war with Germany and—”

  “Doc—don’t—” Marshall’s cry could barely be heard.

  “What kind of talk is that?” Reverend Willard stepped forward. “Dr. Vishnevsky’s treated the families of No Creek for two years. If your wife had had to go to Asheville or Elkin or Winston-Salem to the hospital, Ned Jefferson, she and your son would have died in childbirth. Now you pay him back by threatening his life?”

  The man recoiled as if slapped by the preacher’s recognition. A couple more men stepped back, not so ready, Celia thought, to be called out from their hidey hoods.

  “We’re a community in need of one another,” Reverend Willard geared up. “No Creek is too small, too isolated to turn on our own. If you want to fight somebody, go fight the Japanese or the Germans where you’re needed! We’re at war, men. Your homes and families are at stake not from the Tates but from real enemies. We can’t spare one man to a noose!”

  Celia circled a copse of pines, keeping low to the ground and out of the light cast by the torches.

  “We’re not leaving our women for the likes of him. He’s not one of us. We mean to protect our own, Reverend. We got no quarrel with you. You go on home now and take the doc with you.”

  “I will not leave him.” Doc Vishy’s voice quavered in anger. He dropped his medical bag to the ground and stood tall. “Take this man down.”

  “You can cut him down all right—when we’re done.” The man hoisting Marshall set him steady in the saddle. Celia didn’t recognize his voice and figured he must be one of the men from the next county Troy’d talked about.

  Doc Vishy walked toward the horse. A man shot at the toe of the doc’s boot. The doc stopped short and Celia nearly jumped out of her skin. The horse beneath Marshall reared as the man on the ground caught his bridle to steady him. Marshall barely stayed seated.

  “Not another step.”

  “If you believe this man is guilty of a crime, charge him legally, but don’t take this vigilante law into your hands. You’ll all be guilty of first-degree murder!” Reverend Willard pleaded. “You’ll hang—each and every one of you. Then where will your families be without you?”

  “Ha! I don’t reckon we’ll hang for making the court’s job easier, will we, Sheriff?”

  “Shut up, you drunken fool!” Celia recognized Sheriff Wilkins’s voice.

  “How will you look your wives and children in the face tomorrow when they ask you how Marshall and Dr. Vishnevsky and your preacher died—and where you were when it happened?” Reverend Willard rolled on. “Because that’s what this will come to, you know . . . unless you cut Marshall down and let him go.”

  “He raped a white woman, Preacher, filled her with his seed. You don’t think that’s cause—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?”

  “And he’s been stealing food—and chickens—from near every farm and a long list of goods from the store.” Celia knew that was an exaggeration, for she was the thief, not Marshall, and she’d kept a list beneath her mattress of each and every item owed.

  “You have proof of neither, and yet you’re willing to kill a man on account of gossip—kill three men?” Reverend Willard’s challenge thrilled Celia’s heart, but his gamble that the men were better than that terrified her. She couldn’t let those good men take it alone, especially not when she was the thief.

&
nbsp; Celia stood to step out and say, “Four! Three men and a girl!” But a horse stepped forward, blocking her view before the words left her mouth.

  “What you reckon?” A man on the far side of the horse spoke. “I’m not gonna have killin’ the preacher and the doc on my hands. That’s not what I come out for. What he says is right. We got no proof. The girl won’t say.”

  “My word’s proof enough!” the man on the horse, the one blocking Celia’s view, hissed. It could have been one of the Wishons or even a half-dozen other men Celia could imagine.

  “No, it ain’t—not for all this. You come talk to me when that baby’s born black as coal.”

  The man on the horse swore aloud, then beneath his breath where others couldn’t hear said, “I’ll make half a dozen babies with that girl. Not a one will see the light of day.” But Celia heard.

  The other man had already stalked off through the woods, back toward the Tate cabin, hollering, “Boys, come with me!” Celia recognized the limping gait of Farmer Drew. Her breath caught with the realization that there were more ways than voices to identify a man. Two more men backed from the group, leaving quietly.

  The man on the horse swore again, louder this time. “Cowards! Fools!” He cocked his gun.

  Celia grabbed a stone from the ground and threw it hard against the horse’s haunches. The horse whinnied, reared, and kicked, causing its rider to slip in the saddle as he grasped his gun in one hand and fumbled for the reins with the other. The gun shot wild and the knees of the Klansman danced before Celia’s face. She fell backward to the ground, catching sight of the contrasting dark-and-light toe of the rider’s shoe in the torchlight.

  Klansmen dove to the ground with the gunfire. The horse Marshall sat on reared again, unseating him. Doc Vishy rushed forward, lifting Marshall to his shoulders. Reverend Willard grabbed the horse and climbed up, loosening the noose from Marshall’s neck. Doc Vishy released him and pulled him to the ground.

  “Now go!” Reverend Willard shouted in waves of rolling thunder Celia didn’t know he possessed. “Get out of here! Go home! And may God forgive you!”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  THE KNOT ON MY HEAD Sunday morning was nothing compared to the pain in my heart.

  Reverend Willard said that Olney Tate lay in a stupor from the Klan’s beating. Marshall’s skin burned in open wounds from the beating and lacerations he’d received before being doused, head to toe, in gasoline. Mercy Tate was frantic with good cause, she and their children terrified the Klan would return to finish the job on both men.

  Reverend Willard and Dr. Vishnevsky had carried Marshall back to the doctor’s car, where they found Celia hiding on the floor of the backseat. What could that child have been thinking? At least she was all right, but what she must have seen and heard! Last night she wouldn’t talk about it, but nightmares would surely haunt her for months.

  The barn was gone—nothing but ashes. Thank You, Lord, that the house wasn’t touched—nothing but a few burned shingles that can be replaced. It appeared our cow had been turned loose, but we’d no idea where she was now. At least those arsonists had the decency not to let her burn alive.

  Over breakfast Gladys tried to explain to me how most of the men in the county saw joining the Klan as a civic duty. “They say it supports family life and values and keeps outsiders from taking over.”

  “Outsiders? Like poor, young Marshall or his faithful, hardworking uncle, or Dr. Vishnevsky, the only doctor this county has? I’m not feeling charitable toward those views.”

  “I’m not asking you to be charitable, Lilliana. I’m trying to help you understand that snubbing your nose at an entire community of men will not change them. They believe in what they’re doing—at their core. And that’s what’s so dangerous.”

  “Not all of them, Mama.” Celia stood in the kitchen doorway, still in her pajamas. “Mr. Drew walked out—him and his sons. Said he wouldn’t be part of killing Doc Vishy or the preacher. Said the only proof he’d take is seeing if Ruby Lynne’s baby comes out black as coal.”

  I closed my eyes and buried my forehead in my hands. And then they’ll lynch Marshall—even if the baby is just a shade dark, no matter whose it is. “That only means they’re not done.”

  “How do you know it was Mr. Drew walked out? Did they take off their hoods?” Gladys wanted to know. I wanted to know, too.

  “No, ma’am. I saw his limp—the one he’s had ever since Joe Earl’s mule kicked him last fall.” Celia swallowed and stepped forward. “I recognized somebody else, too—or at least I know how I will.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Gladys challenged. “No—don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. You understand this, and you understand it well: I don’t want you stepping in more trouble, Celia Percy. You stay out of it—all of it.”

  “But, Mama—”

  “Not another word! Now I’m going to get Chester up and you’re both going to eat breakfast and dress for church. We’ll go on as if this was any other day.” She jerked off her apron and dumped it in the dry sink. “Can’t have them thinking they’ve scared us into oblivion. Can’t have that.”

  “No, ma’am,” Celia whispered, slipping into her chair.

  I wouldn’t go against Gladys, but I needed to know. The moment she left the room, I asked Celia, “What did you mean, you’d know how to recognize somebody?”

  Celia whispered, “I heard one of the men good as say he fathered Ruby Lynne’s baby—and that he’d make more—and that not one would ‘see the light of day.’”

  My stomach fell through my feet. “Who was it? Did you see his face? Recognize his voice?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  I looked away. The threat remained but hope was lost.

  “But I can tell him by his shoes. Nobody around here wears such fancy shoes—nobody I ever seen. They were new—anyways, looked new in the near dark. But if I was to see them again, I’d recognize them sure.”

  “Could it have been Ruby Lynne’s father?”

  “I couldn’t tell, Miss Lill. Might have been, but talking through those hoods makes things sound different—at least the way this one was talking. Mad, clean through, when Mr. Drew walked out and took his sons along, swearing like anything. That part’s not so unusual, but those shoes—they were uncommon. I saw some like them in Pearl Mae’s catalog at the store. I forget what they’re called, but I could find the picture again—I’m sure of it.”

  “You’re positive he didn’t see you?”

  “Not a chance. Too much going on, and I was careful.”

  “Ruby Lynne’s got to tell who the father is. Reverend Willard doesn’t believe Marshall can sustain another beating.”

  “Unless I can prove who it is I overheard.”

  “Oh, Celia. That won’t be enough. They’ll never take your word for it unless Ruby Lynne backs you up.”

  “Then you’d best talk to her again, Miss Lill. Make her see they’ll kill Marshall if she don’t tell.”

  Celia was right. I’d already tried to convince Ruby Lynne to speak out, but that was before Marshall was nearly hanged. “I’ll speak to her this morning, before church if she’s there. If I can’t get her alone at church, I’ll go out to their house this afternoon.”

  “Don’t go alone.” Celia’s eyes looked so much older than her years.

  “No. No, I won’t go there alone.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  CELIA DIDN’T NEED TO BE TOLD TWICE to brush her teeth or dress for church. She even volunteered to take the Christmas cactus down to the church early—“to decorate the Communion table, it being near Christmas and all.”

  Celia knew her mama was too tired and worried to be suspicious, but she also seemed glad, tempted to believe that Celia was onto a new project, especially when Miss Lill offered to walk along with her.

  “Chester and I will be down directly. Mind you stay clean before church, Celia, and don’t give Lilliana trouble.”

  Celia rolled her eyes, as eve
ry near twelve-year-old worth her salt would at such a reminder. “Mama.”

  “I’m just saying.” Her mama hesitated, then stroked Celia’s chin. “You’re growing up, you know. You look real pretty.”

  “Thank you, Mama.” She wouldn’t call her mama a liar, just “mother-blind.”

  Celia believed in Providence, evidenced by the fact that Ruby Lynne met them on the road, as nervous and eager to find out what had happened the night before as Celia was to tell her. But Miss Lill halted the graphic details with a stern warning. “Ruby Lynne, you’ve got to say who the father of your baby is. They all believe it’s Marshall and they won’t stop just because last night didn’t go as planned.”

  Ruby Lynne turned away. “They won’t believe me. They’ll say I’m lying. Daddy’ll beat me raw—and then what about the baby? What if he kills it—and me?”

  “It’s not Marshall’s, is it?” Celia asked, determined to cut to the chase.

  Ruby Lynne looked at Celia, unable to look Miss Lill in the eye, and shook her head.

  “But if you don’t say whose, they’ll kill Marshall.”

  Miss Lill took Ruby Lynne by the shoulders to face her. “Celia’s right, Ruby Lynne. They’ll kill him. Do you understand? They’ll kill him!”

  “Daddy’ll kill me!”

  “We can protect you from him—take you away—”

  Ruby Lynne pulled away.

  “You’ve got to be brave, Ruby Lynne, and trust—”

  But Ruby Lynne fled into the church, away from Miss Lill and Celia and all their demands.

  Folks started coming into the church, whispers of last night’s doings on every furrowed brow and gossiping lip.

  “Celia, you need to get that flowerpot to the altar.”

 

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