The Summer We Got Saved

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

Before being converted, the room must have been a place to store supplies. There was an old desk to one side and an American flag leaning against the wall in the corner. The ladies of the church had made curtains for the two windows that looked out on the backyard. A brightly colored quilt was on the single bed that had been brought in and placed in the far corner. At one end of the old oak desk there was a washbowl and pitcher. At the other end was a two-burner hot plate, which was plugged into the one outlet in the room. A small black floor fan took up the other socket. The ladies had placed a rag rug by the bed and a rocking chair on the edge of that. Someone had contributed an icebox. “Not cold enough to keep ice cream,” Miss Laura said, “but it do keep things cool, and the ice last four, sometimes five days when the weather ain’t too hot.”

  “And lookie here”—Reverend Earl pointed—“got you your own battery radio to keep up with what going on, and your own private entrance.” He walked over and opened a door that led out to the back of the church. They were all too happy, too effusive, making it too obvious that none of the welcoming committee had been willing to take her in.

  Maudie had imagined herself living with one of them, taking dinner with them every night, talking about the events of the day. She fixed a smile, tried to look as if she was pleased with what they had done. She could feel her eyes watering, betraying her, and then, just as quickly, what she was seeing and what she was feeling separated and saved her.

  She lay there now in her new room, remembering how she had gone along with them, telling them they had done a wonderful job with the quilt and the curtains, chitchatting about the other things they had made. She remembered Reverend Earl bringing in her suitcases. The next thing she knew, she was sitting by herself on the bed and wondering where the bathroom was. She had gotten up and gone to the window to search for what she had suspected was there, off in the woods, a small clapboard building probably just big enough for one seat. That had not been part of the show-and-tell. After she had negotiated the two back steps and the path to and from the outhouse, she sat on the bed and took off her brace, too tired to move, until she realized she needed to walk back over to the back door and bolt the brand-new sliding lock they had installed.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Water Boy

  SUN STREAMED IN through the back window and across her bed. There was food in the icebox: a cake, collards, and black-eyed peas cooked with a large piece of fatback. The ladies welcoming committee might not have wanted her to live with them, but they weren’t going to let her starve. She took out a piece of corn bread and went back to sit on her bed and click open one of her suitcases. It was full of books she had taken from the Tuskegee library. She meant to return them sometime, of course.

  It was early yet. The sun was just up. She picked a book the librarian had recommended. “I wouldn’t have given this one to you earlier, but now you’re seventeen, that’s old enough.” Maudie flipped to the first chapter and began to read: “‘Brrrrrriiiiinng An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room . . .’” She nestled in among her books. When it turned her way, the floor fan ruffled the pages. The breeze cooled her face. This was not half-bad. If they wanted to leave her down here, they could. She lay with her head at the foot of the bed, her weak leg propped up on some books. Maudie continued to read and was back in Chicago in the 1930s.

  Before Tuskegee, the only schooling she’d ever had was what her mother taught her, and the only subject they had studied was Hollywood. She and her mother would pore over old movie magazines her mother brought from other people’s houses. First, her mother would read them to her, with Maudie looking on. Very soon, Maudie began to see the words her mother was saying. Before long, she was reading to her mother every day when she got home from work. Her mother would take off her shoes, lie down on the couch, and hand Maudie the magazines she had collected. Maudie began reading all the articles and keeping track of all the stars. Her mother would fall asleep on the couch, listening. After a time, the brothers would come in off the front porch to sit and listen.

  At Tuskegee, she had watched out the window as students at the Institute carried books to and from classes. By that time, she was fairly skilled with two crutches. She began to pester the nurses to let her out. The library was not that far from the hospital. Nurse Betty had finally arranged for her to go.

  She drove the librarian to distraction, roaming the stacks, pulling books down for no rhyme or reason. The librarian decided it would be a good idea for Maudie to audit an American history course. The librarian told the dean of students. The dean of students felt sorry for Maudie, but more for the librarian. “Professor Tuffel wouldn’t mind having her. Old Tuffs can handle anything. We’ll stick her in there.”

  In that manner, she had been passed about the campus, bouncing from one professor to the other, learning first this thing and then that, listening closely to the way the professors talked, learning to adjust her speech patterns to sound more and more like someone else. When she wanted to, her grammar could be almost flawless.

  A shaft of sunlight eased its way onto the page, and Maudie realized she had dozed off. She wouldn’t want someone coming on her first day—surely someone would come—and finding her still in bed. She got up, using her crutch to get over to the washbasin and wash her face while she looked out the window situated over the desk. She realized the well she saw in the distance must be her source of water. She cut herself a piece of cake, poured a glass of water, and, without putting on her brace, used her crutch to take the few steps to the outside back stoop. She sat down, leaned back, and closed her eyes, enjoying the sun on her face. This might not be what she had imagined, but she was back out in the world. When she opened her eyes, Maudie noticed a boy of eight or ten walking in her direction from the field back of the church. In an effortless movement he must have mastered about the time he learned to walk, he lifted one of the barbed wires and slithered through, untouched by the waiting barbs. He walked over to the well to lower its bucket. When it was filled, he brought it up and began walking toward her, bucket in hand, indifferent to what he was bringing. Water sloshed out on his jeans and down into the worn black canvas of his high-top Keds. He came to stand in front of her, shifting the bucket from one hand to the other and looking over to the back door, which she had left ajar. “She told me, ‘Find the one with leg irons on and get her fresh water.’ You ain’t the one. Somebody else inside?”

  She glared at the boy, deciding that she was happy not to be teaching children. “What do you want?”

  “I’m the one gonna bring you water every morning—for as long as you here.”

  “What do you mean, for as long as I’m here? Is this only temporary?”

  “If you don’t get run off. That’s what I mean.”

  He stepped past her and opened the back door. She could hear him setting the heavy bucket on the floor. He came out to the door again, holding the washbasin full of soapy water.

  “I can do that.”

  He splashed water out on the ground and went back inside. She heard him filling the basin with clean water and then filling the pitcher.

  As he passed her on his way back out the door with his empty bucket, “You the one. I seen the leg iron on the floor.” He walked on off toward the well.

  Along about noon—she had been inside dressing—Reverend Earl drove up in his ancient car, red dust coating the back fenders, whitewalls obscured by caked clay. “I knowed you was gonna need some teaching supplies, and this the day I can find time to take you to town.” He sat down on the porch and talked to her through the back door while she finished dressing. “You know I done told you I got three churches in all. Pleasant Valley, over near Twelve Mile Creek, and Harvest Moon, out past Crossroads.”

  “I remember,” she said, wondering why he hadn’t chosen to put her in one of those churches.

  “Gonna have to let you do for yourself a lot of the time.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I can do it.” She had forgotten that she mig
ht need teaching supplies.

  They rode quietly for the first few miles into town. She could tell Reverend Earl had something on his mind, as he was glancing at her and back at the road. He slowed to a stop at the Twelve Mile Creek Bridge to get in line behind two other cars.

  “Trouble on the bridge?”

  “A cotton-picking machine using up both lanes coming across. Probably headed to the Rutland place.” He peered through the dirty windshield. “Now like I was saying, after figuring on it, I was just as glad you was coming, but”—he stuck his head out the window to watch the big farm machine inching its way across the bridge, with little room to spare—“but now some of the others wasn’t that glad.” He pulled his head back inside. “Fact is, we took a vote and they was several didn’t care ’bout you coming a’tall.”

  She had suspected it. “What others? You mean like some one of the men?”

  “Well, don’t matter who. Wouldn’t be right of me to say, but I just don’t know how many you gonna have coming to your voting classes. What I’m saying is, when we get to the Woolworth’s, don’t go spending all you got on paper and things, ’cause ain’t no telling who might show up”—he hesitated—“if any.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if any’? I thought you said, when we were up at Highlander, that y’all needed—wanted—somebody to start trying to get people registered.”

  “Well now, the county folks do—Miss Laura and her ladies all for it—but now the folks got jobs in town ain’t so sure. They saying as how they got the jobs in town and they getting along and you gonna come in here and mess with things.” He reached over and patted her shoulder. Maudie glanced at him, beginning to wonder what he really thought. “But you didn’t feel that way?” she said.

  “Course I don’t feel that way. Wouldn’t had you come all this way if I did. Just feel like you got a right to know, you buying supplies and all.”

  The big cotton picker finally made it across the bridge and the cars in front of them began to move forward. She sat there pretending what he had said had not fazed her. “They’ll listen to me,” she said, not thinking for one minute that was true.

  CHAPTER 13

  Mon Amie

  EUGENIA HAD STOPPED THE CAR at a roadside park built by CCC workers during the Depression. Tab and Tina got out and carried their lunch over to one of the concrete picnic tables. Aunt Eugenia sat opposite, unfolding the map. She wasn’t sure exactly where she was going. She had raised money for Highlander Folk School but had never been there. As they all searched, pickle juice from the girls’ bologna sandwiches dripped down on parts of Kentucky.

  “There it is”—Tab pointed—“just an inch or two away from Cousin John Lester’s place.” Eugenia pulled the map to her, fingers tracing along the roads. “Why didn’t you tell him about it, Aunt Eugenia?” Tab took a drink of Coke and a bite of potato chip to mix in with the bologna and pickle. “Uncle Val—about Cousin John Lester being kin. You coulda, you know.”

  Aunt Eugenia didn’t answer.

  “We could take him to see the plaque next time he comes to visit, it being so close to home and all.”

  Eugenia looked up from the map. “Your uncle Val will never see that plaque, if I have anything to say about it.” She looked down again and began measuring the distance between Highlander and Pulaski with her fingers. “At times,” she muttered as she measured, “I have thought seriously about going up there and lodging some kind of nonviolent protest in front of that plaque.”

  Even Tina was put off by that notion, elbowing Tab. “Ha-ha, Aunt Eugenia, you’re such a joker. Granddaddy wouldn’t let us back in the house if we did something like that.”

  “He may not let us back in the house anyway, once he finds out where we’re going,” Tab said.

  “Remember, Aunt Eugenia”—Tina had grabbed the back of Tab’s neck to shut her up—“we need to have our horizons broadened at this other place, at this Highlander place.”

  Eugenia began slowly folding the map, smiling at them. She seemed so pleased to do this for them. She was taking a chance, risking family censure to have them see whatever it was she wanted them to see. Tab knew she would never have risked the same. There was beginning to build a grudging respect for old Aunt Eugenia.

  “You’re absolutely right, Tina,” Aunt Eugenia said. “First things first.” She stuffed the map back in the picnic basket and they were off.

  The hills got higher, the roads more winding. When they were at the top of a rise, they could see tiers of jagged blue lines off in the distance. They finally reached the mountain crest and turned onto an ordinary-looking country road. Farmhouses were set off in the trees and in weedy fields scattered with scrub pines. Quite suddenly, they came upon Highlander Folk School. A turn in the road and it spread out before them, this place everyone talked about in the newspapers and on the billboards but which nobody had seen. There were no guards or even a fence. Several buildings were scattered haphazardly around a small lake. It all looked so familiar, like a thousand little communities the girls had seen beside a thousand county roads. “This is it?”

  “See, I told you. Isn’t it lovely?” Eugenia flung her arms out. “This is where it’s all happening, girls, the makings of a new day in the South, across the nation really. It’s all right here. Look at that lovely old house.” She pulled the car up to what looked like the main building—a large two-story clapboard. Split-oak rocking chairs filled the length of the porch running across the front. It reminded Tab of Girl Scout camp. The air smelled of pine. Shouts came from the lake. This was nothing like she had imagined from the pictures on the billboard, from hearing Uncle Tom talk, from reading about it in the paper.

  Two people came out to meet Eugenia, as if they knew she was coming all along. They greeted one another like old friends, a white man and a colored woman. The girls stayed put in the car, unnoticed. Off to the left, there was a building with a sign that read LIBRARY. In the shadow of the front entrance, a colored girl stood holding a book and watching them. Other buildings around the lake looked like they might be bunkhouses.

  “Oh gad.” Tina squinted her eyes to get a closer look, but it was not close enough to really see, so she reached down in her purse and got out the prescription glasses she wore in dire circumstances. “Oh gad, do you see, over there, that colored man and the white woman getting ready to jump off the float in the middle of the lake? What is this place—them swimming together like that?”

  Tab couldn’t help the grin. In her wildest dreams, she could not have imagined getting herself in a situation of such advantage. “Did you bring those fake eyelashes with you, the ones you hide in the top of your dresser?”

  Glasses were jerked off and thrown back in her purse. “No, I did not, and forget it.”

  “Granddaddy would like to hear about this place.” It sounded like the first line of a song, and she was ready to sing endless verses.

  Eugenia broke away from those greeting her and came back to the car to get them. “Isn’t this unique? Don’t you love the setting, the trees all around, and the little lake? You know, we’re on the very top of the mountain.” She took a deep breath. “Sort of symbolic, don’t you think?” She swung the car door open. “What’s the matter with you two? Come on out and see for yourself.”

  “It’s pleasant to me as all get-out,” Tab said, and hopped out, stretching her arms to mimic Eugenia. “You know how to pick ’em, Aunt Eugenia,” she added, and opened the door wide for Tina.

  Eugenia introduced them to the two people she had been talking with. The leader was Myles—Tab didn’t catch the last name—a white man, and the colored woman Aunt Eugenia called Septima. Both looked pleasant enough and were a vague disappointment to Tab, as she’d been expecting to glimpse a gun or some other evidence of serious intent.

  All of them walked toward the main house, carrying suitcases. “We’ll take a bus over to pick up the children tomorrow and bring them back here for the weekend,” the leader was telling Eugenia. “It’s been a h
ard time for those kids. I’m afraid they’ll all back out of trying to integrate the high school over there if we don’t give them more support.”

  They took the girls and the luggage to their assigned bunk room and left, still discussing their plans, Eugenia engrossed in every word. “I’ll be delighted to help.” They could hear Aunt Eugenia’s voice trail off as she walked down the hall, away from them.

  On the first floor, the house accommodated several bunk rooms and the dining room. Tab sat down on the bottom bunk she had been assigned. Tina had the top. Eugenia was rooming upstairs with older people. This room had two bunk beds, small orange crates stacked at the end of each bed to store clothes, and one small closet. “Course it’s not so pleasant that I wouldn’t go on right now and send a letter home if anybody happened to think about not giving me what they promised.”

  “Don’t give me that. You’re in this just like I am. If I get in trouble, you get in trouble.”

  “You’re the older one.” Tab was sing-songing again. “The older one is responsible for the younger one.”

  “Oh shut up.” Tina flipped open her suitcase on the bottom bunk and began pitching clothes to Tab. “That’s my crate over there. Put this in and then we’ll do yours.” Tab caught shorts and shirts, socks and shoes, then placed them in the upturned orange crate, which had one shelf and served as a wardrobe. Tina left the other—the dresses, hats, and gloves—in the suitcase, snapped it closed, and stuck it under the bed before she got to Tab’s. She was beginning to pitch stuff to Tab when they heard, or half-saw, movement on the top of the other bunk in the room. Someone was lying in the top bunk, with a sheet pulled up to the neck and a comic book over the face, like she, or he, had been sleeping when they arrived.

  And that’s what she said, from under the comic, that she had been sleeping when they came in, and they immediately said they were sorry they had awakened her. It was a girl’s voice, and she said, in what was a distinct Yankee accent, that she was from Connecticut and—apropos of nothing—liked Elvis, and that it was all right, because she needed to wake up anyway. Tab and Tina shrugged shoulders at each other. They still couldn’t see her, only the comic book and the body form under the sheet.