Daniel’s bursting with questions. “Them our bees? You live in them woods? You make that-air cart? Is it hard to pull? Kin I try it?”
The old man appears to eye Daniel sternly, as if he has no time for a lonely boy’s eager questions. But then the ancient face cracks, showing teeth as gray and pointy as an old picket fence.
“Bees off first, heh?” he tells Daniel in a deep voice that rumbles from his chest.
Daniel trails the old man and the strange cart across the flat and fragrant pea field to a spot some hundred yards from the cabins. Stepping out of the harness, Sampson circles to the back and eyes Daniel again. “Help me?”
“Sure.” Daniel steps forward, then, hearing the angry buzz from inside the hives, scoots backward, afraid of being stung.
Sampson points a patient finger to the hive’s opening, wrapped with a tight wire mesh. “Bees in, air out,” the old man tells him and, grasping one side of the hive, waits for Daniel to take the other.
The wooden hive is three boxes high and heavy, but together, the old man and the boy shoulder it off the cart— “Easy, easy now,” Sampson says—and gently onto the ground. A vent hole in the upper back, Daniel sees, has been stuffed closed with a wad of cotton cloth.
Like the first, the other five hives vibrate with the thrum of angry wings. “What’re they so het up about?” Daniel wonders, helping set the last of the hives into what has become an outward-facing circle.
“Don’t like moving,” Sampson replies, then, eyeing Daniel, “any more’n you.”
How does he know that? Daniel feels a sudden, bewildering exposure, like a rabbit caught out of its hole. He steps back as the beekeeper pushes a pair of boards under each hive to raise it up and off the ground. He watches Sampson return to the cart, pick up a thing that looks like a big watering can with small bellows attached. The old man lights a match, drops it into the can, and, using the bellows, pumps a smoke stream out the spout and in Daniel’s direction. The sweet scent of burning pine needles curls through the air.
“Smoker,” Sampson explains. “Bees can’t hear. Use their eyes ’n’ noses instead. Smoker tells ’em everythin’s all right, th’ chil’ren are safe.”
“Children?”
“Hive’s just a big bee family, doin’ for their chil’ren.” He holds the smoker’s spout to the bottom hole of the nearest stack. Gradually, the hive’s angry thrum shifts to a more peaceable hum. Gently, he removes the wire mesh. In the back, he pulls out the wad of cloth blocking the vent hole and smokes that as well.
“Happy now,” Sampson reports, moving on to the next one.
“Ain’t they got a queen in there?” Daniel asks.
“Queen’s every bee’s mamma.”
“Who’s their pap?”
“Think I am.”
“How you know what bees think?”
Sampson shrugs. “Do.”
That’s it, Daniel decides, watching the beekeeper smoke his way around the circle of hives. It’s not only that this Sampson’s more ancient than th’ Ol’ Cher’kee. It’s that other thing, too. The feeling that, somehow, he knows more than any ord’nary human ort to.
“You part Indian?” Daniel asks.
“Yat’siminoli.”
“What?”
“In English—Seminole. Means free people, unconquered.”
“But, you’re . . .”
“Part African? Part Slave-For-A-Day.”
“You were a slave?”
“Oh, ho! No!” The old man’s howling laugh erupts from somewhere deep in his belly. “Slave ship brought grandfather from Africa to St. Augustine. Escaped from boat docks next day. Seminole name meant Slave-For-A-Day.”
“Indians took your granpap in?”
“Yes.” Sampson looks up from the last hive.
Daniel stands in the hives’ center, surrounded by the hum of a hundred thousand reassuring wings.
“Indians took in my ancestors, too,” Daniel tells the old man quietly.
“Yes,” Sampson says.
He knows that, too, Daniel thinks.
The Seminole—a black Indian older than th’ Ol’ Cher’kee! — nods, floats a small cloud of pine-sweet smoke into the heart of the humming circle. Daniel sniffs. The perfumey smell works its way up his nose and down into his chest.
Like medicine, or magic, it salves the pinky-white, prickly tight scars that hang, like scabs, upon his heart. For the first time since Mam got sick and died, since Pap packed up everything and left their home hill, since that big bear of a Sheriff made ’Becca feel bad about her nose, for reasons he can’t begin to understand, Daniel, encircled by six beehives, feels— somehow—safe.
22
Principal Ed Cantrell checks his watch. Again. Seven twenty-three! Where the hell’s that goddamn Kyle DeLuth? he fumes, as the school-board members drone on about the cost of putting a new asbestos roof on the high-school auditorium.
Normally, he’s excused from attending these things, gets everything he needs from the minutes published the week after. Well, truth is, he has his secretary, May, read the minutes and tell him whatever he needs to know. But this business about the Dare children demands his personal attention.
Seven-thirty! Lila’s gotta be fit to be tied, he thinks. When she’d called to insist on coming (“I’m not about to let Kyle DeLuth railroad these kids outta their schooling,” she’d declared), he’d assured her they’d be first up on the agenda. And when, at the board’s request, he’d asked her and the Dares and that newspaperwoman, Ruth Cooper Barrows, to wait in the hall, outside the courtroom where the meetings take place, he’d promised them entry “just as soon as the Sheriff shows up.”
So where the hell is he? Cantrell wonders, putting a hand inside his coat pocket, feeling the two Bufferin his wife, Alice, slipped in “just in case.” But, of course, the water fountain is out in the hallway where, no doubt, Lila sits, jiggling her Capezio-clad foot in angry impatience.
You’d think with all the time they’d spent together in high school—Kyle and her brother were best friends, hardly ever saw one without the other—they’d have figured out how to get along. But, Lord! The fire in her eyes at the mere mention of his name is enough to singe your eyebrows. Cantrell chuckles. These board members have no idea what they’re in for.
Just then, the door behind the dais opens and DeLuth strides in, having let himself in the back way, through the Judge’s chambers.
“Sorry, boys, got caught up in a call from the Governor,” he says, grinning, pretending he’s oblivious to the fact that he’s stopped them, midvote, in their approval of the new roof expenditure.
The seven men seated at the long table facing the empty courtroom nod their hellos and finish their vote quickly.
Rather than take a seat next to Cantrell, DeLuth continues to stand, holding a book and a newspaper relaxed at his side. At the sound of the gavel—“Motion passed!”—Cantrell stands, too.
“Mr. Chairman, if you don’t mind, I’ll get the Dares now. They’re waiting in the hall.”
“Now, Ed, that ain’t necessary.” DeLuth’s tone is like the indulgent mother of a spoiled child. “Mr. Chairman, this whole thing’ll be over in two shakes.” He rocks back on his boot heels to address the entire panel. “All y’all know I removed those kids from Lake Esther Elementary, on account of they don’t belong. Now, maybe y’all saw the Saturday paper, same as me? Exhibit number one is their picture. Is that a Nigger nose or what?” DeLuth shows off the photo and shoots Cantrell a reproachful look.
It’s best, Cantrell realizes, the children don’t hear this.
“Right here,” DeLuth points to the text, “is the father’s own admission that the family’s Croatan.” He tosses the paper onto the table in front of Zeke Roberts, School Board Chairman. “Now, what the hell, you might ask—I certainly did— is a goddamn Croatan? I don’t know what you did, but I pulled out my Webster’s dictionary and looked it up! In exhibit number two, Mr. Noah Webster says . . .” He opens the blue-bound bo
ok to his marker—A blank parking ticket, Cantrell notes. DeLuth holds the dictionary like a hymnal, and glances up, as if to make sure all present are suitably impressed by the eloquent simplicity of his presentation. “Mr. Webster defines Croatan as ‘a mixture of white, Indian, and Negro blood’!” He snaps the book shut and grins. “As plain as the nose on that pickaninny’s face. Case closed?” he asks, softly.
Without hesitation—Prearranged? Cantrell thinks—Chairman Roberts says, “All in favor of barring these kids from Ed’s school, say aye!”
The chorus of ayes tells Cantrell it’s unanimous. His heart sinks. And the expectant eyes all around make it clear that he’s dismissed to deliver the bad news to the people waiting in the hall.
Pain beats against his temples like a drum. “But, they’ve got two cousins in school, too. Redheaded with blue eyes,” he protests.
“Also Croatan?” DeLuth asks.
“Also barred!” Roberts decrees, pounding his gavel.
Cantrell is speechless. One by one, he eyes the men at the table to make sure he’s not mistaken. One by one, he sees their icy, unspoken message— Get on outta here and get rid of ’em. He turns, awkwardly, and carts the big bellowing bass drum that is his brain away from their unfeeling faces, past the empty chairs, and out the door into the hall.
“ WELL, IT’S ABOUT GODDAMN TIME!” Lila says, rising, then turns quickly to the youngest Dares. “ ’Scuse me, children.”
Most of the Dares—brothers Franklin and Will and the boy, Daniel; Will’s solemn-eyed wife, Lu, with the baby girl on her hip—stand anxiously to greet him. The three girls in flowered pastel dresses—dark-eyed ’Becca, freckle-faced Minna, and little SaraFaye, missing both front teeth—flank newspaperwoman Ruth Barrows, who’s got them involved in some kind of word game using her notepad.
“It’s over,” Cantrell tells them.
“Over?” Lila repeats. Between the drumbeats of his headache, Cantrell can feel the heat of her disbelief. “But Kyle—” She falters.
“Slipped in through the back and rigged the vote,” Cantrell tells her.
“Without seeing any of the evidence? Without any sort of hearing at all?” Ruth Barrows is dumbfounded.
Cantrell squeezes the top of his nose ridge between his eyebrows, hard, hoping to block the pain’s advance. “The vote was unanimous. Mr. Dare, your children are barred from attending our school.” ’Becca stands, moves toward her aunt, who slides a comforting arm around her shoulders without taking her eyes off Ed. “And, yours, too, I’m sorry to say,” Cantrell tells Will Dare and his wife. Their girls sit back, stunned.
“This is ridiculous!” Ruth Barrows is up, wrenching the doorknob into the courtroom, finding it locked.
“And goddamn illegal!” Lila blazes.
The beginning of a major migraine marches up and over Cantrell’s skull. “The Sheriff ’s the law around here.”
Lila bursts into full flame. “The Sheriff ’s become a goddamn Nazi and this is not, by God, the Rhine!”
“In this country, the law is the law. People are entitled to due process.” Ruth Barrows nods vigorously.
“And, by God, these kids are going to get it!” Lila vows.
Ed Cantrell surveys the two of them—tall, fiery Lila Hightower beside the short, smoldering Ruth Barrows—surrounded by a semicircle of Dares, young and old. His head’s become a pounding parade ground of pain, but somehow he hears it, the whispered echo of his earlier thought: They have no idea what they’re in for.
23
After reassuring Franklin Dare—“This school board’s nothin’ but a bunch of fools. They won’t get away with this, I promise you!”—Lila Hightower strides down the hall and mounts the stairs, two at a time, to the second-floor office of District Attorney Wade Hampton Berry.
Just outside his open doorway, where a rectangle of light planes across the wooden floor, Lila stops short. How the hell am I going to do this? she wonders. Ever since she returned to Lake Esther, she’d been avoiding him, sidestepping all but the most formal of exchanges. Now, I’m going to waltz in unannounced? As if I had the right? As if all that went wrong between us . . . Lila shudders. In the after-hours hallway, memories creep forward, call out like street beggars for her heart’s spare change. Stop it! This isn’t about us. It’s about those children, and the school board’s ridiculous, closed-door charade tonight. Hamp will understand that. He’s got to!
Lila, struggling, straightens her shoulders, levels her chin. And with as much confidence as she can muster, steps into the light and calls through the small reception room, “Too late for cocktails?”
In his office, Wade Hampton Berry reclines, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up above his wrists, the soles of his Florsheim Imperials crossed on top of his desk. He looks up from a cut-glass tumbler of amber liquid and, after the briefest pause, smiles—eyes brightening, mouth curling slowly into Hamp’s old, gotta-great-joke-to-tell-ya grin.
As if my walking in here was just the most natural thing in the world, Lila thinks.
Berry shifts his feet to the right and, with the lazy grace of the gifted dancer she knows him to be, slides open the drawer on his left, extracts another glass and a half-empty bottle of rich gold liquid. Squinting at the familiar black-and-white label, he drawls, “Whadya say, Jack? Bar still open for the prettiest girl in the county?”
“Pretty is as pretty does,” Lila says. As Hamp pours, she leans in, tips the bottleneck a little steeper, for three fingers’ worth instead of two.
“Rumor is you do quite well.” Berry salutes her with his drink. He’d been a handsome young man—trim, sandy-haired, athletic—but the years of rural lawyering, buoyed, no doubt, by a sea of Jack Daniel’s, had begun to blur the fine chisel of his cheeks and chin, round out his waist and ribs.
“You know better than to lay stock in rumors around here, Counselor.” Lila takes a seat in one of the two leather chairs facing his desk.
“Shall we call it conventional wisdom then, Judge?”
God, how quickly we fall into the old ways—he the charming lawyer, me the ever-evasive judge, Lila thinks, embarrassed by her slip into the intimate banter of their college years.
“More like massive stupidity, if you ask me,” she tells him tartly, sucking in the bracing burn of Tennessee’s finest whiskey. They’d been best friends in high school, eager but awkward lovers in college. If we’d married, as everyone expected, would we still be together by now?
“Hmmm.” Hamp eyes her over the rim of his glass. “Shall we get down to whatever business brought you here, or shall I torture myself with the fantasy that you’ve come to see me?”
“Oh, Hamp, I am not the girl you remember.”
“Obviously not, my dear. You’re a gorgeous, full-grown woman now, with a slew of many starred-and-striped pelts on your belt. Or do my sources misspeak?”
“You have no sources on my love life, Hamp.”
“None but my own eyes and an abiding, bayonet-sharp understanding of the male animal in the presence of such a desirable female.”
Lila inhales raggedly. The air had gotten too close to carve out a proper breath. “Oh, Hamp, I’m not here to joust. You’re too good at it and we both know I hate to lose.”
“Better to leave the worthy adversary choking in your dust, right?”
The whiskey is working against her resolve. “Okay, Hamp.” She surrenders wearily. “You deserve your pound of flesh. I was an ass. And I am truly sorry.”
“Sorry is as sorry does, my dear.” Abruptly, he swings his feet onto the floor, leans forward and, now all business, asks her, “How can I help? That what you’re here for . . . help with the ignorant masses?”
“That and a certain imbecilic Kiss Ass.”
ONE HOUR and the rest of the Jack Daniel’s later, Lila emerges from Hamp’s office with her marching orders in hand. First up is a personal appeal to Tallahassee, aimed at getting the Governor to direct Hamp’s office to investigate the Dare children’s appropriate legal classific
ation, their denial of due process.
“The statutes are extremely clear,” Hamp had said. “If those kids are not one-eighth or more Negro, they’re entitled to attend the white school. What kind of proof do they have?”
“Birth certificates, marriage license, the Family Bible. Far as I can see, the whole family’s Blue Ridge Scotch-Irish except for Old Granpap.”
“A great-grandfather? And he’s . . .”
“Part Indian, Croatan, descended from Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony, fought for the Confederacy.”
“In a white regiment or colored?”
“I don’t know, Hamp.”
“Find out. While you’re at it, why not contact one of your four-star swains in Washington and suggest the F.B.I. investigate possible violations of the family’s federal rights? That’ll set Kick Ass’s bacon to burnin’.”
“Any chance we can wrap this up in the next nine days? I’m due back in D.C. November first.”
Hamp winces. “I thought the Belle of the County was back for good.” He doesn’t bother to hide his hurt look.
In the end, as she thanks him, he stops just short of asking her to dinner. Thank God! Lila thinks. He’s old business. Badly finished. But definitely over and filed for all time.
Outside, Lila’s surprised to see Ruth Barrows. The older woman leans against the hood of a station wagon parked beside the sidewalk, within the bright pool of street lamp that illuminates the Courthouse exit. Against the black backdrop of the nearly empty parking lot, she appears patiently on guard, cigarette in one hand, notebook in the other.
“So far, the school board’s a unanimous ‘No comment,’ but”—Ruth nods toward the doorway—“I’ve got one last board member to ambush before I leave.”
As Lila outlines Hamp’s suggestions, Ruth, cigarette hanging off her lip, jots a few notes. The harsh street lamp gives the lined surface of her page, the gold tube of her pen, the small white cylinder of cigarette an otherworldly glow. As if we’re the odd ones, Lila thinks, outside the bounds of the prevailing craziness.
True Fires Page 10
