By that next Sunday, Reverend Earl had heard about it, or at least he had heard something about it, not quite all, but enough to take note during announcements.
“Hear tell they gonna be a model set up outside here, showing how to get registered to vote, compliments of our voter-registration school, sponsored by Word of Truth. Gonna show people how to go down to the courthouse and register. Think we should give a big hand to our voter-registration class and Miss Maudie.”
There was curious applause.
“Matter a fact, hear they need a truckbed to build it on, and I’m gonna surprise ’em by saying right here and now I’m gonna lend mine to do the job.”
More applause.
“Use it for hauling food round in the winter, but I can spare it for a time.”
A guest at Miss Laura’s table, Reverend Earl took down his Sunday dinner napkin. “Surprised you ’bout the truck.”
“You coulda knocked me over with a feather,” Aunt Laura said, and gave him the biggest piece of fried chicken off the platter. “I was wondering what they was gonna do for a place to put it.”
“It was supposed to be a big secret.” Maudie glared at Jessie.
“I done told him we was gonna build a voting exhibit, that’s all.”
“That’s all? What do you mean, ‘that’s all’? That’s a heap,” Reverend Earl said. “Think you finally getting your feet wet, Sister Maudie. Just like I knew you would.” He helped himself to collards. “Have people see what’s it like if they go down to vote. Let ’em test it out. Ain’t no use in rushing things. It’ll come soon enough.”
Jessie gave the corn bread to Maudie and winked. “Butter it while it’s hot, girl.”
CHAPTER 34
The Float
THIS OLD HEAP OF JUNK won’t even make it halfway to town.” Roy Boy had his head stuck down under the hood of the preacher’s truck. Brother Earl had brought it over the night before. “What Reverend mean, giving us a heap of junk like this?” Maudie was holding a flashlight for Roy Boy’s look at the engine.
“It’s because he thinks we ain’t got a need to move it.” Jessie closed his car door and walked over to them. “He thinks it don’t matter if it runs or not—matter of fact, he told me he was taking the battery ’cause he knew we wouldn’t need it.”
“See, Jessie, we should have told him what we were up to.” Maudie clicked off the light. “He would have helped.”
“Maybe so, maybe not. Brother Earl funny ’bout things sometimes,” Jessie said. “He like to be the one say when to gee and when to haw. When the ladies first say they want somebody like you down here, he flat set against it. Took him a long time to come round.”
“And you were for it right off, were you?”
“Don’t go messing with me, girl. I’m here, ain’t I?”
It was decided that they would fix up the truck as a surprise for Reverend Earl. “Besides,” Roy Boy said. “What’s Brother Earl gonna do ’bout it if we tell him the thing don’t work? He ain’t got the money to fix it up no way.”
From the beginning, it became the gathering place for all of them. Maudie would sit in the new swing, imagining what it might look like when they finished. The cotton girls began coming most every day. They didn’t have that much to do during the day, till picking time, they said. They began to walk around it, looking at it and thinking of what they might do with the crepe paper Mr. Calvin had bought them, seeming to feel that it was theirs to do with as they pleased. In truth—although the cotton girls wouldn’t let on—they had never come in contact with crepe paper before, had never handled such bright stacks of color, and if they had, they would not have thought of using it in such a mundane way as to decorate an old truck.
Miss Laura found some old chicken wire in her barn and had Jessie take it down to the church and nail it to the sides of the truck. When it was in place, the cotton girls began stuffing each hole with strips of meticulously cut crepe paper. The sides of the float began to take on the look of an abstract painting, random colors splashing out in all directions on the wire.
On Sunday after services, church members would stand by admiring it. The cotton girls got wind of the compliments to be had and began showing up for church. Hungover and high-heeled, they would walk in through the back door and sit next to Maudie and Miss Laura in the front pew, dresses so tight, they were hard-pressed to sit in one place for the whole hour. While there were plenty of raised eyebrows, Reverend Earl made it a point to say that everyone was welcome at Word of Truth. The cotton girls twitched shoulders and gave loud amens.
On occasion, Lou Ann and Izzy even became interested in some of the Bible stories Reverend Earl used for making points in his sermons. One Sunday, at the end of a story about the wisdom of Solomon, Lou Ann—long arms lounging over the back of the pew, chewing gum to cover the previous night’s activities—had leaned over to Izzy, “You mean that Solomon king was gonna cut that baby in half right there in front of his mama?”
“That’s what he say.”
“That son of a bitch.” she had said, in grave contemplation of the injustices in this world. Later, Reverend Earl had reminded her there were children present, and Lou Ann had agreed. “I was wondering how come you telling such a no-count scary story in front of them little children.”
There were tarps to cover the float each night to keep out the dew and possibly the rain, although it was a very dry summer. One morning, when Maudie went outside to look at it, somehow the tarp had slipped off and half the crepe-paper decoration had been ruined by a heavy dew or maybe rain, but the ground looked bone-dry. When the cotton girls came that afternoon, they were in tears, having never created anything so beautiful, and then to have it ruined. Mr. Calvin, who had taken to dropping by every afternoon or so, came up close to inspect. He said for them to dry their eyes. He would buy more crepe paper. They still had plenty of time to begin again.
Jessie, when he came, said that he had remembered putting the tarp on tight and anchoring it with the cinder blocks. They were all sitting to one side now. The others said for him not to worry, that it wasn’t his fault he forgot. He said he hadn’t forgotten.
For his part, Jessie was building a registration counter like the one used at the courthouse. They decided to have a policeman dressed in uniform standing to one side, police usually being involved in such things. Miss Laura was making the uniform. And there would be a big American flag.
It didn’t get dark until almost eight o’clock, so they had plenty of time to work. The cotton girls spent hours deciding on which colors to restuff into the chicken wire. Now that they were doing it for a second time, they had worked out a grand design, which they were not revealing to the public, the public consisting of everyone except the cotton girls.
Roy Boy could be heard from under the hood, clanking and cussing. Sometimes in the evening, Miss Laura would come to sit in the swing, sewing on the policeman’s outfit as she watched the progress.
Every Sunday, church members congregated to comment on its progress and ask when they would get to walk through and try the thing out. Maybe they should have a party, they suggested, and invite the other churches around the Crossroads area, Pleasant Valley CME and Reverend Earl’s other church. There had never been a project of such grand scale associated with the Word of Truth Missionary Baptist Church—stuck back in the woods, down in a gully, a building so old that on rainy Sundays, buckets were placed at strategic locations to catch the leavings of a leaky roof.
Some of the mothers had come to Maudie. In the fall, might she consider starting up an afternoon tutoring session here at the church, for their children, the ones who were behind and needed help?
On the Sundays when Reverend Earl was preaching elsewhere, Miss Laura led the congregation in singing, Jessie would make announcements and then various members would get up and speak as the spirit moved them. Lou Ann and Izzy listened with great interest to the confessions of faith, to the stories of Christian conversion that had caused the membe
rs of Word of Truth to be born again. Before this time, they had always been just two of twenty or so in the fields, only concerned with scavenging cotton bolls to make their weights and pay at the end of the day. There had never been anything that interesting to do before midnight. Now they began showing up early every Sunday to explain to the children who followed them around just exactly how it was that you went down and registered to vote. As soon as they were finished with this particular crepe-paper beautification project, they themselves were headed down to the courthouse. Maudie had already taught them how to write checks, and wasn’t it logical that if you could do that, you could vote? After that, as soon as they got some money, they were going to open up a bank account. The children of the church stared up in awe.
After he had scraped his knuckles trying to get the rusted bolts to loosen, Roy Boy had finally replaced the truck’s water pump. Now he was replacing all the old belts and gaskets, remembering as he went along that he knew more about cars than he had realized. Perhaps, if he got too tired of being assistant janitor at the foundry, he might ask Jimmy, down at Jimmy’s Battery Shop, if he could use a good mechanic.
The foundry men were building a big wooden frame—one like they had seen used on the foundry float—to fit over the front of the truck cab. It would eventually be covered with crepe paper, leaving a peephole for the driver. Ed, the one with the six children, brought them out to see the float one Saturday, let them stand up on top of it, drew a picture in the dirt to show them what it was going to look like when it was finished.
Mr. Calvin took it upon himself to bring out two cans of gasoline. Reverend Earl had left the truck that empty. He placed the cans under the flatbed behind the crepe paper. They would be ready when Roy Boy got the truck in driving shape, or maybe as an incentive for Roy Boy to hurry up and finish so they could try it out.
It became natural for the two of them, Jessie and Maudie, to sit and talk each evening after the others had gone. Maudie thought it reminiscent of talks with her mother or brothers. Jessie was amazed by it. Before, he had always been awkward with words. Now the conversation was effortless. He had never felt so at home with anyone: not with his child, certainly never with his wife. All through the evening as they were working, he would think about being there with her, just sitting in the swing when the work was done.
From the time Jessie was eight years old, he had known nothing but work. It had been like breathing. Up in the morning and out to the fields, men and women and children. He had not been aware that there was anything else or anywhere else until he was older—twelve or thirteen—and had traveled with his father along the red clay road, which had become a bigger clay road, and finally the blacktop highway that was Crossroads. He had stood by while his father sat on an old nail keg outside the Crossroads filling station and played checkers with other men. He had watched in amazement as the few cars traveling from Huntsville to Bainbridge had stopped to fill up. He had never seen cars like that—shiny, with chrome fins and white sidewall tires. Trucks and tractors, or older worn-out cars with bald tires and gas tanks always on empty—that’s what he had known.
As much as this was a revelation, traveling to Bainbridge when he was fifteen had been like going to the moon. Before the war and electricity, they hadn’t even had a mailbox. Not having one had probably saved him. His mother had told him this when he didn’t get a draft notice at the war’s beginning. Everyone else close to his age in surrounding tenant houses had gotten one. He had not. His mother had kept him on the farm, with few excursions to Crossroads during those first years of the war. Later, when he could get a ride, he ventured back into the city of Bainbridge, drawn by the local movie house, oranges all the way from Florida at the corner fruit stand, and people who actually went into a store to get their hair cut.
On one of these visits to town, wild good fortune had struck. A man had come up to him and handed him a piece of paper. “You look like you might be strong enough.” The man had given him the paper and walked away. He stood holding it and watched as the man looked around at the other people standing outside the corner fruit stand, choosing the few other young men he saw standing there and handing them a paper. Jessie had no idea what the paper said, school being ten miles from his house and impossible for him to get to on a regular basis, even if they could have spared him in the fields. He edged over to another man, who had also been given a paper. The man was standing next to a girl, maybe his sister or girlfriend. Jessie heard her ask the man what his paper said. “Say they hiring down at the foundry. Come Saturday morning at seven, and they hire you if you can do the lifting.”
“You going?” the girl had asked.
“Nah, ain’t going. Soon as the war’s over, they gonna take back all them peoples gone off now.”
The girl had taken the paper from him. “Look like good pay. Wonder do they take girls?” The man had laughed so hard, she had thrown the paper in his face and walked off, but the part about good pay had not escaped Jessie. He had taken the paper home. A friend of his father’s at Crossroads had told him what it said.
It had been his wildest dream come true to get that job, to get real money, which he alone could spend or dispense as he saw fit, or as he and his mother saw fit. And the work had been child’s play compared to what he was used to doing. He had kept waiting for the hard parts, but there were no hard parts, as far as he could tell. He worked pouring castings. If you were careful, there was nothing to it.
By the time the war was over, he had bought the little house they lived in and was paying on the thirty acres that surrounded it. When he went to the filling station up at Crossroads, people asked all manner of questions about his town work.
Aunt Laura had him contribute to the church fund to build a cross for the sanctuary. It was to be in honor of his mother. She had died the year the war ended. His father died soon after that.
The post office had even started delivering mail to his house. He had had to go out and buy a mailbox.
They had decided to take in one last movie before the end of summer caught up with them. John Wayne was Aunt Laura’s favorite, and he was playing. They got there plenty early. Reverend Earl was taking tickets. “Y’all get yourself some of that good Brunswick stew we got in the food stand tonight.”
When they found their parking place, JD got out immediately and began running with his friends. Aunt Laura had brought her lawn chair and had placed it out beside the car, but she was soon drawn to the cars of other friends. The two of them, Maudie and Jessie, were left arguing in the front seat. “You just looking for trouble, nothing to it. Air just naturally goes out of tires after a time. Ain’t natural for it to be in there in the first place.” She had taken to speaking in her old way when she was talking with him now. He smiled at her but said nothing about it.
“What you talking, woman? Air stay in tires for years. Somebody done let the air out of them tires. I been seeing them tires on that truck nigh on to the first day it come. Somebody come and let the air out of them tires.”
“Why would they do that? If they’d wanted to ruin the tires, they would’ve cut them, wouldn’t they? Ain’t that logical?”
“Logical? Logical? What’s you know ’bout logical when it come to tires? Been working on trucks all my life.”
She began to run her finger along the open window’s edge, looking out to the line that was forming at the food stand. Now she took such pleasure in teasing him. “I been watching them tires. They been getting lower and lower every day.”
“What? You been watching them tires?” He burst out laughing. “You didn’t even know them tires was there ’til I showed you this afternoon, all four of ’em, flat as a fritter. His hand came around her shoulder and he caught the back of her neck. “You do beat all.” He rubbed her neck and kept laughing. “You been watching them tires? Who you funning, girl?”
He reached over, picked up her crutch, and gave it to her. “Get on out of here, woman. I’m gonna get you a big bowl of that stew. Maybe that
’ll clear your head.” He got out of his side of the car and went to her side, opening the door and calling out to one of the foundry men he had seen walking by. “Come on over here, Ed. Maudie gonna learn you all ’bout tires.” They strolled over to the concession stand, Jessie holding her free hand, making sure she didn’t fall on the loose gravel, and all the while telling Ed about going to the float that afternoon and finding all four tires on the truck flat, and now they were going have to spend hours with a hand pump. They weren’t damaged, he didn’t think, just out of air.
Maudie walked along, listening to them talk and saying hello to all the people she knew now—and who knew her. Now, at night, she slept with a peace she hadn’t known in years. She had remembered again that she had wanted to be a teacher. Maybe now she would think about going back to school and becoming a teacher. When she mentioned it to Jessie, he had laughed. “What you think you are now, girl? You a teacher.” She had smiled and said nothing, because Jessie wasn’t educated enough to know that to be a teacher took years of training. “What you think the voting school is? It’s a school,” he had said, “and you our teacher.”
They were approaching the food stand. Nat King Cole’s voice was floating on warm heavy air: “Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep . . .” She glanced out to the west at the huge orange glow that had been the sun and thought she had never been happier, and that’s why, at that very moment, she truly believed the tires had gone flat, all four of them, just naturally gone flat of their own accord.
CHAPTER 35
The Telling
LOU ANN AND IZZY had finished their masterpiece. Inside the red border, blue crepe-paper stars danced on a white background. Red-white-and-blue streamers hung from each corner of the float. In the center of the crepe paper surround, in bold black letters, it read WORD OF TRUTH MB CHURCH, BROTHER EARL WATTS, PASTOR.
The Summer We Got Saved Page 24
