The Summer We Got Saved

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  “Why?” Tab watched Dominique go on, unaware that they were not behind her.

  “’Cause her pa don’t never stop talking. Can’t get a word in edgewise, and if he ain’t talking, he’s having her do the talking. Showing off what she know, having her say foreign things. She talk strange enough already.” Eloise pointed to two empty chairs. “Let’s us sit over there.” They sat down at a table brimming with eggs and bacon, grits and hot biscuits. “That’s Dora,” Eloise said, gesturing to the girl seated next to Tab. “She go over to Fisk in Nashville, a colored school.”

  “Hi.” Tab sat down and glanced across the room. Dominique was turning to introduce them to her father, only to discover they weren’t behind her.

  Tab was buttering her third biscuit when there was a tap on her shoulder. “I told Father you were too shy to come sit with us, but he wants to meet you anyway.”

  Dominique’s father had stopped halfway across the room to talk to another man. She turned. “Father, I want you to meet—” She stopped and walked over to him. “You said you would come.”

  “I will, Dominique, one minute.” She stood there waiting on him. They were the same, both tall and lean. He was the darker, even had the gap in his front teeth that she did, but a mustache overrode it. His eyes weren’t particularly large, but they seemed to shine, as if he might be on the verge of tears, which, of course, he was not, but the impression was that of a man poised to tell you interesting, even great things. When he walked over and turned his attention to Tab, for that instant, Tab felt she was in the center of his focus. “So this is Dominique’s new friend.” He took her hand and placed his other one on top of hers, smiling at her, his eyes gleaming. “You mustn’t be shy. I know Dominique can be imposing on occasion, and sometimes that—” He turned his head and the light turned off. “James, let me have a word with you before you go.” And then back to Dominique. “I need to have a meeting with James there. I’m afraid we won’t be able to swim. Why not get Tab here to swim with you?” He patted Tab’s hand. “You girls have a good time,” and followed James out of the dining room.

  Tab sat back down and found some strawberry jam for her biscuit. The dining room was emptying out. The Fisk student had gone and Dominique sat down in her chair. “Shy? You told him I was shy and didn’t want to meet him? Why did you say that?”

  “Well, I turned around and you weren’t there. What else was I supposed to think—that you people just don’t have any manners?”

  CHAPTER 15

  Miss Laura

  NO ONE SHOWED UP for Maudie’s first Thursday night of voter-registration school. Others from her Highlander class were at sit-ins in Raleigh or marching down near Mobile or in Mississippi. On some nights, the little radio in her room would pick up news of what was happening in those places.

  No one came on the second Thursday night.

  The next Sunday, she asked Reverend Earl if she might say a few words to the congregation to remind them of the voting-registration classes. Reverend Earl said he was the only one who made announcements when he was in the pulpit. He would remind the congregation. It was a hot day and the paper fans were out in full force, trying to keep babies from crying and children from squirming. Maudie sat next to Miss Laura in the front row. “I want to thank you for sending the little boy to bring fresh water every day. Does he stay with you?”

  “Lord no, child. I’m too old to keep a handle on JD. He worse than a swarm of bees. He stay at my house when his mama ain’t home. He belong full-time to my nephew Jessie, stay up the road from me.” She turned in her seat. “He back there in the last row now. Have to stay back there to keep a eye on JD. He always up to some no-good.”

  “He does seem to have a mind of his own.”

  Miss Laura looked over her glasses to Maudie. “He ain’t been giving you no sass, has he? If he do, you just tell me and I’ll tell his daddy.”

  “Oh no, he’s just fine. Comes every day without fail. I was just wondering.”

  Maudie turned around in her seat, to see JD intently watching her conversation with his great-aunt. She smiled at him. He glared back at her. She talked on to Miss Laura just so JD would know they were discussing him. “Is that his daddy sitting next to him?”

  “That’s Jessie.”

  Maudie glanced back at a tall man who looked like a grown version of JD, dark brown skin, darker eyes set wide apart, the forearms and shoulders of a laboring man. Next to JD was a mousy-looking woman. “And is that his mother on the other side?”

  Miss Laura didn’t bother to turn around. “Whoever it is, she ain’t his mother. She ain’t been in this church since she married Jessie, and that’s more years than I care to count.”

  At the end of the preaching, Maudie noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that Miss Laura was having a disagreement with JD’s father and Reverend Earl. Miss Laura turned abruptly and left them to walk toward her. She interrupted the others gathered around Maudie. “I come to see if you might take dinner with me and Jessie and JD. Ain’t got nothing fancy—ham, biscuits, peach cobbler—but we’d be happy to have you.”

  There were knowing looks from the others in the group. Viola touched her arm. Miss Laura pulled away. “Ain’t gonna have nobody in my church don’t feel welcome. This child come all the way up here—” She looked around at the others. “Come all the way up here, least we can do is—” She looked at Maudie. “Would you like to come?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I do love peach cobbler.”

  “Then let’s go. Don’t nobody want to drive us, we can walk. Just over the hill beyond them trees.” But they didn’t have to walk. Jessie was waiting for them in his car when they came out of the church.

  Maudie was surprised to see that the house was only a few hundred feet away from the church, around a curve in the road and hidden by dense woods. It was situated just off the road on a slight rise, having been built by some early settler who saw the promise of the rise in the land combined with the shelter of good hardwoods. A chicken coop, a garden, and an old hay barn lay sprinkled out around the house. Jessie pulled the car up beside the neat brown clapboard homestead. A porch ran the length of the front. Each window was decked out with shutters that were painted a bright blue. To the right of the blue front door was a wood swing on chains. On the other side of the door were four old bent-metal rocking chairs with flowered cotton cushions faded from use. Running up the front steps and along the rim of the porch were containers bought originally for the coffee they contained and now home to flowering plants, mostly petunias, which cascaded over the red-and-black Eight O’clock coffee cans. In the front yard, in the space between the road and the porch, was a huge oak—probably growing there long before the house was built, probably the reason for the house being situated there in the first place.

  Miss Laura laughed when she saw Maudie staring. “I know what you looking at, them shutters and that door, brightest blue I could find. People say go on down the road and look out after that blue house. That’s where Laura stay.” She was taking her hat pin out, removing her Sunday hat, and smoothing down her hair. Don’t nobody have trouble finding my house.”

  “It’s nice, Miss Laura. I was thinking how friendly.”

  Miss Laura glanced at Jessie. “That’s what it is, friendly, and that’s the way it’s gonna be, even if some folks don’t see it that way.”

  Jessie got out of the car, taking no notice of Miss Laura. He was looking at one of the blue shutters, which sat askew. He walked over and used his fist to knock it back in place. His hard hands and oversized shoulders and arms were from his work at the foundry in Bainbridge. Miss Laura had told her that several of the men of the church had been lucky enough to get work at the foundry in Bainbridge. Jessie had been the first, and he had recommended others for jobs.

  What was a round, slightly chubby face on JD had turned into a hard angular one on the father, but the resemblances were unmistakable. After thirty-five, maybe forty years, this is what JD would look like. She imagined thei
r baby pictures must be identical. How must it feel, she wondered, to produce an exact replica?

  “Sit for hours on this here porch,” Miss Laura said. “Say howdy to everybody come down the road.” By this time, she had reached the front steps and now she held her hand out for Maudie. “Come on, ain’t but three of ’em to climb.” Maudie took Miss Laura’s hand.

  The porch gave a view of rolling cultivated fields that began on the other side of the road and lasted out to a tree line. Miss Laura settled herself into one of the rockers. Maudie remained standing, taking in the view. “My daddy come by that land, before Worlds War Two. Saved up and bought it off the Rutland place.” Miss Laura swept her hand out in front of her. “Now I rent out.” She pointed off to her right. “Starts over there by that blackberry draw. Jessie used to farm it, but wasn’t enough of it to do no good. Had to go to town to get a job at the foundry.”

  Jessie had settled himself in one of the other chairs beside them.

  “You and JD stay here with Miss Laura, Mr. Jessie?”

  He nodded toward the road running away from the church. “Me and my wife live on down aways.”

  “Speaking of Carlie,” Miss Laura said. “She gonna be gracing us with her presence today?”

  “You know she say she coming, just like usual.”

  Miss Laura laid her hat on a side table and began to get out of her chair. “Just like usual,” she mumbled, and stood to go inside. “Come on here, JD. Your job to set the table.”

  Maudie and Jessie stayed on the front porch, an awkward silence between them.

  When Miss Laura called them in to dinner, there were five places set at a long table in the dining room, which was just off the kitchen. Straight-back chairs of various origins were gathered around a table spilling over with so much food, it barely left room for dinner plates: a large bowl of green beans with new potatoes in among pieces of ham hock, pickled beets in a glass bowl, squash and onions cooked together, and a large platter of country ham, another of cold fried chicken, fried apples swimming in butter and brown sugar, and large glasses of iced tea dripping circles of moisture onto the white tablecloth. Maudie walked over to one of the empty places, ready for her best meal since arriving. Jessie sat down opposite. “You wasn’t expecting the Queen of Sheba, was you, Auntie?”

  Aunt Laura took her place at the head of the table and began to take down her napkin. “Had me a few leftovers needed to get shed of.” She gave a long prayer and then passed the green beans. “Eat on up, child. We need to get some meat on them bones.”

  “Let’s us take our peach cobbler out on the porch,” Aunt Laura said when she and JD had cleared the table. Jessie began to get up out of his chair and then thought better of it. “I’d just as soon have mine inside.” He glanced at his aunt. “Cooler in here.”

  Without a word, Aunt Laura put the dishes of cobbler down on the table and they ate there in the dining room.

  Later, Maudie stood by the kitchen sink, helping to dry.

  “You doing all right down at the church? Got you plenty to eat, enough covers at night?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m doing fine.”

  “Sorry we ain’t got no indoor plumbing down there yet. We gonna have some one of these days.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Sure it ain’t too much bother for you?”

  “No, ma’am, it’s fine.”

  “You can take home some peach cobbler. We got plenty.”

  “I’m fine,” Maudie said, “but one thing I’d like to ask you.”

  “What’s that, child? Anything you want. You want some fried chicken to take with you?”

  “No, ma’am. I was noticing when I went to wash my hands—you got a big tub back there. Would you mind if I took a bath?”

  Aunt Laura’s hands went slack in the dishwater and she started shaking her head. “Of course you can. Course you can,” she almost shouted. “Everybody deserve to take a bath. Lord Almighty, everybody deserve to take a bath.” She shook the suds off her hands and grabbed Maudie’s arm. “Come on here right now.” She pulled Maudie back to the hall that led to the bathroom and got three fresh towels and a bar of soap out of the linen closet. “Here, child. You go on in there right now and stay as long as you like.”

  Maudie sat in the tub, which was filled with hot soapy water, and listened to them arguing in the living room.

  “To save my soul, I don’t know why I ever listen to no men. That girl down there, ain’t even got no way to take a bath, and we acting like nothing wrong and we acting like we Christians. I’m standing here letting you and Brother Earl talk me into doing something I knowed was wrong. All the time I knowed it was wrong.”

  “You want this house burned down round your ears? This house been give to you by your daddy. You gonna pass it on to JD.” Jessie’s voice was loud enough that Maudie knew he didn’t care if she heard.

  “What’s wrong is wrong. What good is a house if I’m living in sin? Ain’t I taught you nothing, boy?”

  “Everybody, black and white, pass by on that road out there. You think they ain’t gonna know it if you keeping some outside troublemaker in here? Don’t you think the first thing they gonna do is take it out on whoever keeping her? We done decided this long time ago, Auntie. If you and the ladies wanted to talk Brother Earl into bringing her up here, church best place to keep her.”

  “I ain’t decided it. You men decided it. Done gone on and decided it and now I’m gonna have my say. I’m undeciding it.”

  Maudie could hear the door slam and his car engine start as Jessie left from the side yard. She soaked a few more minutes and then re-dressed in her Sunday clothes and fastened her leg brace back on before walking out to sit at the dining table.

  Miss Laura was bringing dishes from the kitchen to put in the corner cupboard.

  “I’m just fine down at the church, Miss Laura, but I’d count it a favor if you let me come up and take a bath now and again. Sponge bath just isn’t the same.”

  Miss Laura slung the dishes in on top of one another. “Course you can, child.” She turned and went back in the kitchen and brought out more dishes. She set them down on the dining table, and when she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “Shamed of myself, I ain’t done more than I done, but that’s gonna change. That’s gonna change.” She turned and started noisily stacking dishes in the cupboard again. “Them men scared of they own shadow. Well, I ain’t.” She pointed toward the hall without looking at Maudie. “I got three bedrooms. I stay in one. JD in the other one when he stay here, which is most of the time, and I got another one that you welcome to move into, anytime.”

  “I don’t want to put you out, Miss Laura. I’m fine where I am,” she said, knowing that if she accepted, no one in the church might speak to her.

  “Ain’t nothing gonna happen to me, nothing.” Miss Laura closed the door of the corner cupboard and walked back into the kitchen.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Card Game

  IT WAS A RAIN SO SLIMY AND THICK, the drops seemed connected, long, slippery strands coming out of the sky. Maudie was using her hands, trying to push them aside. She was only a few feet away from the safety of the clinic. She could see Nurse Betty motioning to her to come in, but she couldn’t move forward. She looked down and saw that her legs below the knees were sending out roots, like snakes popping out of the skin, writhing and slithering, boring down into the ground, holding her fast in place, even as she twisted and screamed to escape.

  The reflection of car lights bouncing against the wall opposite her window woke her. She was lying on her bed in the back room of the church. She could hear women laughing and talking as the car drove away. Miss Viola’s son had brought the three of them to the church. Miss Laura was carrying a cake and talking as she came in the back door of the preacher’s office. Viola and Dottie Sue followed behind her, looking around nervously, having never been there when it was so dark in the corners; very seldom had they entered the church at night when they weren’t c
alled to enter. Miss Laura walked into Maudie’s room and held up the cake.

  “Thought if we was gonna have us a school, we need us some refreshments.”

  Miss Laura kept up a steady stream of talk, putting down the cake and beginning to take off her hat. “Had us a time getting here. Jessie had to work late at the foundry. Course I coulda walked, but not Viola. She too far away.” Maudie stared at them, still waking from her dream, trying to get her bearings. “And Dottie Sue, she too lazy.”

  “Don’t you go starting on me, Laura Jean Osborn.”

  Dottie Sue put down the bag she was carrying and began taking out paper napkins and forks. “Who was it baked three cakes for the last church cakewalk?”

  “Yeah, and then go out there and win one of ’em back. Walking round in that circle till she get the right number,” Miss Laura said.

  Dottie Sue was grinning big now. “Can’t help it if I’m lucky and you girls ain’t.”

  The other two looked at each other. “Luck? Your cousin Daniel the one doing the number calling.”

  Finally, Miss Laura took notice of Maudie. “Well, here we are. Now what you want us to do?”

  She realized they had come because it was Thursday night. She was supposed to be waiting for somebody to show up for her class. She hadn’t even bothered to put out her materials. She had spent the day reading and dozing.

  “Guess the first thing we can do is eat us some of that cake,” Miss Viola said and took a seat on the only chair in the room. “I done told Laura if she gonna get me hung, I’d just as soon have some of her caramel cake ’fore they string me up.” The three women laughed until they had to wipe away tears, their boldness bringing on the high spirits.

  “Yessir,” Miss Laura winked at the other women. “Didn’t know how much being a troublemaker could work up a appetite.” She began to cut pieces of cake. “Now what is it you want us to do at this here voting school?”