The Summer We Got Saved

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  The others continued to stuff. There were a few twenty-dollar bills left on the table as Jessie slipped the box under the table and the preacher walked in the room.

  “It’s only Reverend Earl,” she said.

  “What you mean, ‘only Reverend Earl’? Ain’t I somebody?” He came into the room, a big grin on a sweaty face wiped down with his handkerchief.

  “What’s going on here? Y’all ready to go to voting?”

  Roy Boy placed his notebook over the remaining money and sat perfectly still, his head down.

  “Nothing much, Brother Earl.” Jessie got up to walk toward him. “Nothing much. You come to join up?” For a moment, he placed his hand on Reverend Earl’s shoulder, a gesture unfamiliar to Jessie and the preacher.

  “Heard tell we got us some new members.” Reverend Earl was looking over Jessie’s shoulder. “Been so busy, ain’t had time to come by and say welcome.”

  Mr. Calvin stood up.

  “This here Calvin K. Jerome, Brother Earl. You know him. Work down at the foundry with me.”

  “Hear y’all from Brother Ben Simmons’s church over on the bluff.”

  “Yes sir, Reverend. Me and Roy here come on out with Jessie.” Mr. Calvin smoothed his coat and stuck out his hand, but didn’t move from his place at the table.

  “I said they was welcome to come out, Reverend.”

  “Course they are, course they welcome.” Reverend Earl shook hands with Mr. Calvin and looked around the room, feeling the awkwardness. “Did I interrupt the lesson? Sure didn’t want to stop the voting school.”

  Heads shook almost in unison. “Naw, naw, didn’t do that.”

  Jessie picked up a pencil and tapped it on the table. “We was just learning a few things, not exactly ’bout voting.”

  “Like what?” Reverend Earl walked to the table and began to look down at the scattered papers.

  “Well, Reverend, to tell you the truth of the matter, we were doing a few things that don’t have much to do with voting,” Maudie said.

  The other men stared at her. “We were, uh, learning how to read the signs at the drive-in, stuff like that. Guess it wasn’t exactly what we was supposed to be learning in a voting school.”

  Reverend Earl looked down at the notebooks on the table for a moment and then raised his head and laughed. “Y’all looking so guilty. Thought you was in here planning to build a still out back.”

  There was tentative laughter and then they all started talking at once. “Wasn’t like that. No, just studying ’bout other things.”

  The reverend sat down at the table, leaned back in the chair, and looked at them with his one eye cocked on them and the other one closed. “Now listen here: Don’t go worrying ’bout staying on voting things all the time. Plenty time for that. Ain’t nothing wrong with learning other things, too—along the way.” He let the chair slide forward and banged a hand on the table. “Long as you using my church for learning, that’s good enough for me.” He opened both eyes and stood up. “Well now, brought along some Coca-Colas for y’all to celebrate. You know this here is the start of a real voting school.” He winked at Maudie. “Knowed it would take some time, but we coming along.

  “Come on out to the car, Jessie, I’ll give you them Cokes. I got to be going on over to Jackson’s Gap to check on Miss Luella. She down in the back and I got to figure how to feed them children of hers while she out of work.”

  He started toward the door and then turned back to them. “Miss Luella got three grandchildrens she trying to raise up, could sure use some . . .” He paused and looked at them, then seemed to think better of it. “Never mind. I think I got Miss Luella took care of for the time being.”

  Jessie followed him out the door

  “You give Brother Ben my regards,” he said over his shoulder. Roy Boy and Mr. Calvin said they sure would.

  For the rest of the evening, they drank Cokes—Reverend Earl had added a little something extra to the men’s bottles before he left—and recounted the money. “I think Reverend Earl would have been happy for you, Mr. Calvin.” Maudie was looking down at her column of numbers.

  “No sense telling nobody your business. Don’t need to know it,” Jessie said.

  Calvin had been saving for the forty-plus years he had been working at the foundry and not once had he ever put any extra money anyplace but the Buster Brown shoe box. There was $5,631.25 in the box—enough for a new house or two or three cars—a fortune.

  Mr. Calvin said he would take off early for the first time in all his years of working at the foundry.

  CHAPTER 26

  Banking Business

  THAT DAY, he wore his blue suit, one of the two he owned. The seat was slick and the knees were noticeably worn, but she thought he looked the picture of a gentleman when he opened the front door of the bank for her, removed his hat, and walked up to the nearest teller, holding his box. He had told her on the way to town that he wanted to make sure the safe was fireproof and that it was locked up good and tight every night. She had said she thought that would be a good idea.

  Of course everybody knew Calvin. He had been around Bainbridge all his life. Still, there was much consternation over the Buster Brown box. The teller told the vice president, a young boy not long out of the university, and the vice president came out to see the box. He then called the head of the foundry to see if Calvin had really been working there as long as he claimed. With each query, they stood patiently at the front teller’s window, waiting. Maudie began to think that she should not have let Mr. Calvin bring his money here. They were looking at him as if he were some kind of a thief. Each time another question was asked, Calvin’s head took on that crouched look she had seen on nights when he didn’t know the answer to something she might ask him. His eyes scanned the floor and then the wall behind the person who was speaking. She stepped up and began explaining why he had the box of money. It had not helped, probably even made it worse. The teller and the vice president had asked who she was, and when she had mentioned the voting school, there was more silence and staring and shifting of feet. It was the first time she had felt pride at being connected with the voting school. Finally, the vice president said he guessed it was all right, that they would accept the money provisionally and wait to see if any had been reported missing.

  There was silence as the teller and the vice president stood on one side of the teller cage and Maudie and Mr. Calvin on the other.

  “Provisionally?” Maudie glared at the vice president. “Provisionally?” She began taking the stacks of money that were already on the counter and putting them back in the box. “Mr. Calvin Jerome has been in this town, has worked in this town, all his life. He doesn’t need anything provisionally. He needs a good bank that will protect his money, and I think the one down the block will do just fine.”

  Calvin picked up the box top, waiting to cover his money once she had finished repacking.

  There was a voice from behind them. “Donald, don’t tell me you’re letting all that good money get out of here and end up at the First National.” Maudie kept packing. “Donald, everybody in town knows Cal. He’s worked at the foundry for—what is it, Cal, forty years?”

  The man came up and put a hand on Mr. Calvin’s shoulder.

  The vice president began to sputter. “Mr. Mitchell, course I know Cal, but all those old bills, mostly in tens and twenties . . . I just thought to be on the safe side—”

  “Cal is probably the safest side you could be on, Donald. Do you think he robbed a bank? Use your eyes, man.” He turned to Mr. Calvin. “Cal, we’d be proud to have your money.”

  But Calvin was not to be mollified. “I thank you, Mr. Mitchell, but”—he put the box top down hard on his money and picked the whole thing up—“don’t believe I’ll be doing no banking here.”

  He turned to Maudie. “Ain’t even been offered a look at where they gonna keep it. Don’t even know if it safe from fire and being stole.”

  The president of the bank though
t this was wildly funny and laughed so loudly that it echoed up to the marble ceiling and bounced down off the marble floor.

  “Donald.” He still shook with laughter. “Miss Finley. Y’all give Cal here a tour of our walk-in safe and show him each and every fire extinguisher. And, for good measure, you might give him one of those toasters we’re giving all our new accounts.”

  Before he walked off to greet another customer, he said to the vice president and the teller, “I hope you two will be able to convince him to keep his money here—as that was his plan in the first place, before y’all got hold of him.”

  They were another hour touring the bank, looking at the fire protection, walking inside the safe and seeing some real money. Finally, the new vice president, sweat soaking the underarms of his white dress shirt, had been able to convince Calvin that the Bank of Bainbridge was the place to keep his money.

  The final total came to $5,611.00. Calvin had taken out a twenty-dollar bill and change to celebrate and buy food for the next few weeks. And he left with a new toaster.

  They backed out of the parking place in front of the bank and said nothing until they were almost out of town. He rolled down his window to catch some fresh air and signal a left turn. “Them folks act like they doing me a favor taking my money. Seem strange to me.” They passed the foundry and Calvin waved to a coworker. “Leastways it’s in there now, and if the place burn down, they have to make it up to me, just like”—he hesitated—“just like Donald say.”

  They were still laughing when they pulled into Lowry’s Barbecue. “Make you wanna set a match to it, just on a general notion, don’t it?”

  “Just to see them all running out the front door, screaming and yelling and carrying the money,” she said.

  They had stopped at the best barbecue place in town—black-owned, but so renowned there was a carryout window for whites. They sat in one of the booths and ordered barbecue, Brunswick stew, french fries, coleslaw, loaf bread, sweet tea, and fried peach pies with ice cream for dessert.

  She had never felt so satisfied—with a meal, with a day. “You have the power,” she remembered they had told her at Highlander, “you just don’t know it’s there.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The Con

  FOR DAYS AFTER their fight in the dining room, Tab saw only snatches of Dominique. She wouldn’t ask, and Dominique didn’t volunteer anything, but Eloise could. “So where you been keeping yourself?”

  “Laisse tomber, ma copine,” and walked out of the room.

  Eloise stood holding a shoe she was about to put on. “What she say?”

  Tina was searching up under the bed for her lifeguard’s whistle on the gimp-plaited lariat. “Who knows? Probably ‘Kiss my foot,’ something like that.”

  It took two days of following to find out where she was going, what she was doing. The first morning after breakfast, Tab stayed back some distance and lost her when she went into the woods. The next day, she went to the woods early and watched undercover as Dominique came out and doubled back to go into the library. Tab waited several minutes before sneaking up to the door. The front door was open, but the screen was blocking a quiet entrance. She went around to the side of the building to get a look through the window.

  Dominique was the only one in the room, sitting at a table, writing furiously. She would glance at the book that lay open next to her and then write. Glance again and write again, over and over, her pencil jammed into the paper. At one point, she broke the lead, pitched it across the room, and took up another.

  Tab turned away and leaned against the side of the building. The sun was just above the tops of the big oaks on the other side of the lake. She could hear splashes. Eloise was at it again, spending every waking hour in the water. Tina was probably watching, whistle at the ready. Tab could smell the beginnings of the noon meal drifting by in the morning air. When she turned back, Dominique was slamming the book down on top of the stack of papers she had accumulated and throwing her pencil across the room. She sat there for a while, looking at the bookshelves opposite, before she got up and pulled out a book with a bright green cover. She went back to her seat, opened the book, and was immediately off in another place, her shoulders relaxed, her breathing easy.

  Tab watched her, thinking that the strangeness she first thought she saw in Dominique was really a type of beauty she had never considered before. Beauty that didn’t own up to anything she had ever been taught—the image of blue eyes and blond hair fogged over with hair spray. This look was cool and distant. It was the dark skin that conveyed it, smooth, without a blemish. She turned away, embarrassed at the thought. No one in her acquaintance would think of calling Dominique beautiful—but she was.

  Tab decided to go swimming.

  That afternoon, Tab was in the library, her feet propped up on a table reading a travel book on France, when Dominique came in from lunch. “What are you doing with my book?” Tab pushed the book across the table and watched as Dominique slowly opened it to a dog-eared page and began reading.

  “He’s making you write out a bunch of stuff for punishment, isn’t he?”

  Dominique didn’t answer. Tab looked at the stack of paper anchored by a heavy book. “What are you having to do, translate it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he speak French?”

  “Only a few phrases.” There was a slight smile.

  “And you?”

  “And me what?”

  “What is your aunt making you do?”

  “Stay two more weeks.”

  There was a loud exhale. “Jeez.” Dominique picked up a pencil and tapped it on the table, studying Tab. “I been meaning to talk to you about something,” she said, looking around to make sure no one else was within earshot and then lowering her voice too much. “You know that time I talked to you about how there might be a sit-in in Nashville?”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “You know, the sit-in, in Nashville, some people might be going from here—early in the morning and come back that day.”

  “Oh yeah. I remember now. You were thinking about going.”

  “It’s very secret. You can’t tell anybody, not your sister or your aunt, but how would you like to go, if I can get you a seat on the bus?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Is it against the law?”

  “It’s civil disobedience. Your aunt would be proud.”

  “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

  “Sure.” She touched Tab’s arm, and she never touched Tab. “There’s nothing to it. You might read things in the paper about sit-ins, but really most of them are routine. You won’t have any problem. You go in and sit at Woolworth’s counter and order a hot dog or whatever, and eat it—if they let you—and then come out again. It just officially integrates the lunch counter, and then we come back here.”

  “I guess it sounds okay to me. I remember them talking a little about it at the meetings, but we’re always talking or playing battleship. I didn’t pay much attention.”

  She was thrilled Dominique had asked her. She still felt the place on her arm Dominique had touched. “Like they said in the meeting the other day, ‘Everybody should be allowed to eat where they want to.’” She knew Dominique would like hearing that. It meant nothing to her.

  “All right, then, I can count you in.” She got up to leave. “Now don’t tell anybody else about this. It has to be our secret.” She looked down at Tab and smiled, and that turned to a grin. Then she laughed out loud as she got up to leave, walking off, never looking back.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Dominique didn’t answer.

  “They’ll just think you got up early and took a hike or something.” Dominique was whispering in her ear. It wasn’t light yet.

  “What?”

  “It’s time to go. Remember? The sit-in? Did you get out some good clothes like I told you?”

  “Yeah, I hid ’em in the hall c
loset,” Tab whispered.

  Dominique stood watching her in the dim light of the bathroom. She was already dressed in a black dress with white patent-leather belt and black patent flats. She combed her hair and watched Tab through the mirror. “Are you people still wearing crinolines? That went out five years ago.”

  “You said, ‘Put on your best stuff.’ This is the best I got. And you talk about behind the times. Gravy. Who ever heard of dressing up to go to Woolworth’s?” She slipped her black felt skirt with the pink poodle appliqué on over her crinoline slip. It stood out in waves around her, a hand-me-down from Tina. The poodle was faded and the fake gold chain that was his collar had tarnished, but it was Tab’s favorite. On top, she wore a pink pullover sweater and an angora collar that tied in the front, leaving pom-poms dangling. “I only wear this on the most special occasions, so this better be a lot of fun—well, not fun exactly.” She watched herself in the mirror, tying the collar. “I shoulda washed my hair and got some extra money from Tina. You shoulda told me last night we were going today.”

  “I told you that you couldn’t tell anybody. We’ll be back tonight.”

  “Good, ’cause I don’t wanna miss supper.”

  There was a vague light coming from the end of the hall—moonlight. “I forgot my gloves. I need to get my gloves.”

  “We don’t have time for that. We have to be the first on board.”

  “But I need to—”

  “Go on and brush your hair and wash your face, but be quick about it—and be quiet.”

  The screen door creaked slightly as they stepped out onto the porch, the rockers barely visible, the smell of honeysuckle thick in the night air. Dew had settled in on the grass and the gravel path they were following to the old school bus that sat under a tree off to the side of the main house. “There’s nobody here. You must have got the wrong day,” Tab said, still whispering, although there was no need now.

  “No, we’re just early.” She stuck her fingernails in the worn rubber gaskets, pulling back the folding door and holding it for Tab. “Go on. Get in.”