The bus finally rolls out of the station, onto West Trade. Hawk grabs the bottom rail of the window. “We going!” he shouts.
He didn’t sleep much last night. I’m thinking he’ll nap on the bus, but he stays up on his knees, telling me what he’s seeing. “Look, Mama, cows!”
We not even to Monroe and already it’s farms, tobacco, cotton, beans, and corn, the land rolling on and on.
I open my purse, take out the map Uncle Ray got me. “See.” I point to the state line, show Hawk. “That’s where we are, and that’s where we going, Atlantic Beach.”
In a couple of hours we get to Cheraw, where we have to wait forty-five minutes for the next bus. I get Hawk some Lance crackers and a Coke, so he’s happy, runs all around the waiting room talking to folks. Then we board the bus to Conway, driver telling me it’ll be about three hours, with two stops, and we’ll transfer again to a local.
While we rolling along I’m thinking that South Carolina doesn’t look like North Carolina. All flat and washed-out, tan dirt instead of red clay, miles and miles of pine trees. About twenty minutes before we due to stop, Hawk finally falls asleep, and I let him be until most folks are off the bus and the driver yells at me, “Hey, girl, you going to transfer or not?” He’s gray-haired, got knuckles swoll from arthritis, like Bibi, but he can’t be as old as she is and still be driving.
“Yes, sir, let me get my boy here.” I wake him up and he starts fussing right away, not a thing I can do. I’m feeling fussy, too. We get inside with our suitcase and me mostly carrying Hawk till we can sit down on a bench, where he goes right back to sleep and I’m wondering if I should leave him be, knowing if he naps too much, he won’t go to bed when it’s time. It’s more than an hour till the bus to Windy Hill, where Auntie Violet gon meet us, and I sit with Hawk’s head in my lap, wondering how he can sleep with all the noise in the waiting room. My eyes get heavy, too, and I’m about to drop off myself when I hear them announcing our bus.
The driver say it’s three stops before we get to Windy Hill. He talks with Hawk, who is wide awake again.
“Mama, do I know Auntie Violet?”
“She saw you when you were a baby, is all.” Auntie Violet is Uncle Ray’s sister, my great-aunt. I remember her as friendly, a talker, at least around Bibi and Uncle Ray. Unless she has reduced, she’s fat.
“She lives at the ocean, right?”
“Yes, she does, has a house on the beach, but it’ll be just you and me. She’s going to be gone for a few days on business, letting us stay in her place.”
When we climb off the bus in Windy Hill I’m looking around for Auntie Violet when I hear my name, “Loraylee, Hawk, here I am.”
She walks toward us and she hasn’t reduced at all, is maybe even fatter. I’m so glad to see her I almost cry. Hawk runs ahead of me and puts his arms around her. She bends down, kisses his cheek, smothering him in her bosoms, then holds out an arm for me. “You must be tired, Loraylee. That’s a long trip, and I am so glad you’re here.”
After we get settled in her car, she say, “I’m leaving this evening for Columbia, sorry about that, but y’all will be okay. There’s groceries in the kitchen. I’ve got electricity, of course, not always dependable, so I’ve put out candles in case you need them. My house is a duplex, but nobody’s in the other side right now. Renters are coming in next Sunday.” She talks almost all the way to her place.
As soon as we pull up, Hawk jumps out of the car. “I can see the ocean. Look!” His small voice is lost in the roar of the waves. The ocean goes on forever. Hard to believe there’s something like Africa on the other side that we can’t see. Hawk runs up and down the sand yelling, “Hey, ocean!”
When we get inside Auntie Violet lets me call Uncle Ray. “A collect call, station to station,” I tell the operator, wanting Auntie Violet to know we won’t be adding to her phone bill. She ask to speak to Uncle Ray when I’m through.
“Hey, Ray. Yeah, they’re tired but they got here.” A pause. “No, it’s an NAACP training session. I promised to attend, can’t miss it. I’ll be gone all week, but they’ve got everything they need, don’t you worry. I love having Hawk here, what a boy. Say hey to Livvie for me.”
She leaves right after supper. I’m so tired I want to crawl in bed even if it is still light outside. I put the candles and matches on the nightstand in case we need them, get out our pajamas, but Hawk won’t let up about the ocean. Got to see it again. “Okay,” I say, “one more time. We not staying long this evening.”
“And we going to the ocean in the morning, too.” He pulls me toward the door.
“Hold on . . . we need something to sit on.” I get the beach towel Auntie Violet gave me. “Okay, boy, let’s go say good night to the ocean.”
Soon as we get over the dunes, Hawk squats and picks up something from the sand. “Look, Mama!”
It’s smooth and pink, like a piece of a china plate. “Part of a seashell,” I tell him. “They get broke crashing on the beach, I reckon.” He picks up more and more, some curved, some flat. Pretty. “My, my, aren’t they something.” I spread the towel on the sand, sit and watch him.
The next morning I wake in Auntie Violet’s house, unsure where I am. Hawk’s not in a bed across the room, the sun’s coming in through a window that’s in the wrong place. Then I remember. We are on vacation, what a wonderful thing that is. I laugh out loud.
“That you, Mama? You awake?” Hawk runs in, jumps up on the bed. “Let’s go to the ocean!”
CHAPTER 16
Eben walked over to the church, a staccato of raindrops on his umbrella, going through a mental list for the Fourth of July celebration. Firecrackers. Ben would get them on his trip to Gaffney where he went to buy the first peaches of the season. In early July Ben set crates of ripe freestones on the sidewalk in front of Stone’s Grocery, and even whites showed up to buy them.
At St. Tim’s, he had to force the door, which always stuck in humid weather. He climbed the stairs to his office slowly. He’d never paid much mind to the old saw about wet weather aggravating achy joints, but these days he knew it to be true.
The phone rang as he propped his dripping umbrella outside his office. Gideon Rhyne, now Brother Rhyne, calling. Eben hadn’t seen him since the first commission meeting, but gossip had it that Rhyne had become a member of the House of Prayer. The man’s voice boomed through the phone, telling Eben about plans for an Independence Day parade. “Sweet Daddy McCollough will be in town, an enormous tribute to us, and the Brooklyn churches will join in honoring him. We’re calling to tell you where your church is in the lineup, and your people—”
He interrupted. “Brother Rhyne, we’re planning a parade of our own that day.”
Rhyne said, “The bishop won’t be happy about this.”
“Ours is a bit more of a neighborhood thing. Perhaps we could stagger the times.”
“We’ll consult with Bishop McCollough and call you.” The phone went dead.
Eben let go of a long breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He’d do everything he could to avoid a disagreement among the Brooklyn churches, but he didn’t want to kowtow to the House of Prayer, as he so often felt he had to do.
He stood slowly, feeling a need for fresh air, and pulled down the top half of the window behind his desk. As cool damp air blew in, he remembered a visit last week from Loraylee Hawkins and her son, when they’d come to see him about the parade. He’d watched them from this same window as they skipped toward the church, Hawk shouting “Whiz! Bang!” and whistling a long note that started high and ended low, “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Boom!”
A few minutes later they had burst through his office door. “Pastor,” Loraylee said, “we here to help with the Fourth of July.”
He motioned to the chairs across from his desk. “Please, please, have a seat.”
Hawk jumped into the straight chair and sat, his legs swinging, fingers snapping.
Eben looked at Hawk. A happy, healthy boy. Reddish curly hair on
a round skull, startling gray eyes. “Ben Stone’s going to get firecrackers for us in South Carolina, when he goes to buy peaches.”
“Yippee!” the boy said. “See, Mama, I told you!”
Loraylee laughed. “Hawk’s been a firecracker himself for days.” Loraylee’s brown eyes were almond shaped. Her high cheekbones, her dusky skin—Maybe a streak of Cherokee in her blood. She asked, “How can we help with the parade?”
“You could distribute fliers around the neighborhood.”
“That’ll be easy,” Loraylee said. “Hawk wants to carry the American flag when we march, and Uncle Ray’s gon be Frederick Douglass if he can find him a wig. He’ll help me be Sojourney Truth.”
“Sojourner,” Eben said.
“Oh, is that right?” Loraylee stood to leave. “Just wanted to let you know because we leaving tomorrow to visit my auntie Violet for a week at the beach.”
“Gon see the ocean,” Hawk said, jumping from his chair.
“We’ll get in touch again when we get home,” Loraylee said. “G’bye!”
She’d whisked Hawk out the door and the air in his office had seemed to settle as in the wake of a whirlwind.
* * *
After the upsetting call from Brother Rhyne, he spent an hour on the phone, lining up a meeting with other churches to discuss the holiday. His objection to the House of Prayer once again trying to take the focus off smaller congregations went deeper than he could have explained. Thus far, ministers and minions alike agreed to meet.
The rain had stopped when he left the church, greeted by a glorious June afternoon. He headed for Stone’s, counting on Ben to understand that the festivities must not be centered around Bishop McCollough. He entered the grocery to the ringing of the bell on the door, the pleasant creak of the floorboards beneath his feet. The store always smelled the same, sweetness from the produce; a rusty scent from the meat case, where a cured ham hung above pale plucked chickens nestled side by side. “Ben?” he called out. His friend came through a door in the back, wiping his hands on the bib of his long white apron. In his middle years Ben had gotten a potbelly Eben hadn’t noticed before but was otherwise as fit as ever.
“Hey, Eben. You want a Coke?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He sat down on a crate beside the drink cooler.
Ben pried open two bottles and settled on the floor, knees bent, his back against a box of canned beans. “How’re the festivities shaping up?”
“Fine, until early this afternoon. That’s why I’m here.”
Ben drank, swallowed, and belched.
Eben shook his head. “We can dress you up but we can’t take you out.”
Ben tipped his bottle in a mock toast. “So what’s going on?”
“Gideon Rhyne, who fancies himself an emissary of the esteemed Bishop McCollough, has importuned me to join our Fourth of July parade with theirs.”
“Importuned by an emissary? My, my.”
Eben laughed so hard he had to hold his nose to keep from spraying Ben with Coke. He touched his handkerchief to his eyes. “They’ve got the AMEs, McDowell Baptist, the Church of God, a couple of others. We were low on their list, right above Mount Sinai Holy.”
“Could have been at the bottom.”
Eben said, “What gets me is someone like Bishop McCollough, with no connection to Brooklyn, sweeps in here a couple of times a year and takes over. Makes things all about him. Riles me, Benjy. He doesn’t understand we’re fighting for our lives here, those with tarpaper on the roof and those with asphalt shingles.”
“United we fall?”
“You got it.” He held the cold bottle against his arthritic knee. “The House of Prayer here in Charlotte, they’re with us, but when the mighty Sweet Daddy comes to town, they forget their local pride. They truly worship the man.”
“And not his God?”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
Ben said, “Follow me, brethren. I’mon teach y’all to fish.”
“Yowsa, yowsa, I’m wit you, Daddy.”
The front door opened, the bell tinkling. Ben looked at his watch and spoke to the rectangle of afternoon sun. “That you, Bertha?”
A young voice called back, “Hey, Mr. Stone, yes, it’s me.”
“Get set up. The cash drawer’s ready. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ben said, “My new girl. I think this one’s going to do well, though I never have these kids for more than a year. They get a better job and move on.”
“But you get them started.”
“I do, yes, I do.”
“Can you meet with us on Thursday evening?”
“I’ll be there, but I want you to be thinking about something.”
The tone in Ben’s voice told Eben he’d better pay attention. “What’s that?”
Ben held up his Coke, looked at the bottom of the bottle like there was a message on it. “When I said ‘united we fall’ I was joking, right?”
“Right.”
“Not a joke. Brooklyn’s on the way out, Eben. We both know it. And I’m going to say something to you that I won’t be saying Thursday night. We’ve got a mess here and there’s only one way to clean it up, which is to wipe it out.”
“Brooklyn, wipe out Brooklyn?” Eben straightened, studied his old friend’s face.
“Yes.” Ben tightened his lips, ran a forefinger down the wet Coke bottle. “Of course what I wish the city would do is rebuild, but that’s never going to happen. The land’s too valuable, close as we are to the Square.”
“You’re right about that. Georgeanne Wilkins has been doing research about this urban renewal thing, the redevelopment, and she came on a story that was in the Observer in 1912.” He pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and put on his reading glasses. “Almost forgot to show it to you. Remember, this is fifty years ago, and when they say ‘this section, ’ they mean Brooklyn.” He read aloud, “‘. . . farsighted men believe that eventually this section, because of its proximity to the center of the city, must sooner or later be utilized by the white population.’ ”
“Good Lord,” said Ben. “Only surprise there is that they’d say it in the paper. Couldn’t get by with talk like that today.”
“But wipe us out, you’re in favor of that?”
“I’m in favor of cleaning up the god-awful chaos we’ve got here. Too many people are living on the edge, in shacks, in filth, and something’s got to be done about that. But when we go down—and go down we will—I want them to see us shoulder to shoulder, not fighting amongst ourselves. The strongest thing we have is unity or, as Reverend King said, when he spoke in Raleigh, ‘. . . the creation of the beloved community.’ Remember that?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Ben rubbed his chin, looked toward the front of the store. “You and I see through the Sweet Daddy pomp and circumstance, but one thing he does well is get the beloved community together behind him. Doesn’t matter who’s out in front. What matters is the enormous crowd we’ll show the city.”
“Hmph,” Eben chuckled. “So what you’re saying is we should join the other churches, parade with the House of Prayer.”
“Yep.”
They finished their Cokes in silence.
* * *
Eben returned to St. Tim’s to find the Charlotte News on his desk with an article circled, and a note paper-clipped to it, “See, Preacher, this queer got his due.” The hatred stunned him. ANOTHER MURDER CORNER DEATH:
Jonathan Steadman, 39, died at Good Samaritan Hospital early Tuesday, from a brutal assault at the intersection of East First Street and South McDowell in the Brooklyn Neighborhood. Steadman, a.k.a. Jonny No Age, owned Steadman’s Flowers. No immediate family has been identified.
The term “a.k.a.” made Jonny sound like a criminal instead of what he was, a gentle man who’d been donating flowers for St. Tim’s Sunday services as long as Eben could remember. Nothing elaborate, vases of jonquils or daisies nestled in ferns, but always
there by late Saturday afternoon. A brutal assault. He shuddered at the idea of anyone beating Jonny, a decent man whose only crime was loving another man. Jonny had lived openly with his friend Joseph—Eben couldn’t remember the man’s last name—for several years, and many in the community could not abide that. But to beat a man to death?
The police had come by St. Tim’s to question Eben about Jonny, but apparently were never able to connect him with anything illegal. There’d been rumors of Jonny’s store being a front for the sale of marijuana, even that he’d grown it in the garden behind the shop. No plants were found, no evidence Jonny had ever been other than exactly what he was, a florist.
He swiveled in his chair to look at the wall calendar, setting aside the following Sunday for Jonny’s service. He picked up the phone. Joseph answered on the first ring.
“Why, Preacher? Who hated us so much?”
Us. Had Joseph been threatened, too? “There’s no understanding such people, Joseph. All we can do is remember Jonny with love.”
The man on the other end of the phone sobbed. “The police aren’t even trying to find out who did it, a few questions, then they dropped it. One more dead queer, that’s Jonny’s epitaph.”
* * *
After Jonny’s funeral, Eben sat at his desk, pondering something that was bothering him. He’d gotten some solace from the service. Among the dozen or so people in the pews of St. Tim’s were the Hawkins family. Livinia Hawkins made no attempt to hide her disdain for Jonny’s lifestyle, but she was also outspoken in her fondness. What was it she’d said? “Jonny No Age, good in his heart. Odd one, though. Odd.” With Livvie’s increasing senility had come a directness Eben admired.
He struggled to accept what he knew for a certainty: His congregation believed homosexuality to be a sin—right up there with murder, infidelity. And doubt. He could preach love from the pulpit but he couldn’t change the age-old prejudice. If he tried, it was a battle he’d lose. His people, so long targets themselves, needed someone to shun.
CHAPTER 17
Wind scalloped the beach under a cloudless sky that promised a fair day. Gulls congregated at the end of the groin, making Persy want to startle them into the sky. Beyond it a woman and boy walked in the sand at the ocean’s edge. The boy jumped over ripples of incoming waves, shouting, laughing. The woman, much darker than the boy, had black hair; his gleamed like copper wire in the sun. He ran back and forth, squatted, picked up something, threw it into the water; the woman spread a towel in the sand, sat and stretched her legs toward the ocean. She must be the boy’s mother. The woman propped herself on her elbows while the boy circled her, never still.
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