True Fires

by Susan Carol McCarthy

  “In the first place, I didn’t bar ’em, the Lake Esther school board did. In the second place, you Fifth Columnists never get it right anyway.”

  “Sir, are you calling me a Communist?”

  “See right there? There you go!”

  “Sir, didn’t you act independently? Didn’t you remove those kids before the school board even knew they were there?”

  “I’m sworn to uphold the law.”

  “So your action did precede the school board’s directive?”

  “If I do not respond to my constituents, I could be cited for failure to do my duty.”

  “The family claims they’re Irish-Indian, sir. What makes you so sure they’re not?”

  “You ever raised a chicken, son? Or a sheep or a cow? Any 4-H schoolkid knows you breed a Indian red with a white, you get somethin’ lighter, not dark. And definitely not kinky hair. Everybody knows Indians have long straight hair, not a curl, one.”

  “You a board-certified ethnologist, Sheriff?”

  “Go to hell!” Goddamn Ruth Barrows, got the Pinko Press cawin’ over this like a buncha goddamn crows in a cornfield.

  “Who in the world was that?” Birdilee looks up from her magazine, eyes quizzing him over her reading glasses.

  “Some goddamn reporter from the St. Pete Times.”

  “Kyle-honey,” she says with a small frown, “what’s raisin’ chickens got to do with those poor Dare children?”

  “Goddamnit, Birdilee, don’t you go jumpin’ on that ‘poor children’ bandwagon with me! Those kids have Nigger in their blood, plain as day!”

  Birdilee blinks at him. She removes her glasses, bites her lower lip in thought. When she speaks, her tone is soft, airy, as if she’s puzzling out a problem and in need of his help. “Funny thing, honey. I’ve been volunteering at the hospital ten years now, seen every skin tone you can imagine, coal black to paper white and near everything in between. Funny thing is, underneath, every one of ’em bleeds the same color, not one bit of difference atall.” She frowns again, then adds, with a shrug, “Course, I’ve never raised chickens. So I wouldn’t know ’bout them.”

  DeLuth glares at her. “Confound it, Birdilee.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Sometimes you don’t have a brain, one!”

  27

  Lila drums her fingers on the green suede blotter atop her father’s desk. Ring, goddamnit, she wills the big black phone in front of her. She’d called the Governor’s office over an hour ago. And his secretary, Gert, after the obligatory condolences, had promised, “I’ll give the Governor your message just as soon as he’s off the phone, Miss Hightower. Shouldn’t be too long atall.”

  Lila had smiled then. There was something deliciously full circle about using her father’s name to gain access to the Governor’s ear so she could initiate the downfall of Kyle DeLuth. But now, the Governor’s delay had become an irritant, a signal, perhaps, of some resistance and, she guessed, murkier waters than she’d hoped for.

  Lila picks up the heavy, black Bakelite receiver, then quickly puts it down. Too soon to call again, she decides and jumps at Sissy’s knock on the office door.

  Sissy shakes her head, rolls her eyes upward signifying that what she has to say springs from the upper bedroom where Violet Hightower reclines against her velvet headboard, cussing over the morning crossword puzzle.

  “Now what?” Lila asks, dropping into the co-conspirators’ tone she and Sissy use whenever they’re forced to deal with her mother.

  “She need tuh see you.”

  “She does, does she? What for?”

  Sissy shrugs. “Could be anythin’. Coffee too strong—though Ah been makin’ it the same way for thirty-seven year—pillow too soft, mattress too hard. Or, mebbe, she g’wanna ’pologize for bein’ the mizrables’ human bein’ on God’s green earth, and fuh spendin’ ever’ blesset day makin’ ever’body else mizrable too!”

  Lila laughs. Sissy’s humor had always been the light that had gotten her through the dark tunnel of Violet’s mother love. “Oh, Sissy, without you, I’d’ve either killed Mamma or gone crazy myself by now.”

  “Either way,”—Sissy’s grin crinkles her whole face—“I’da been there to change the sheets.”

  Caught between baby-sitting the silent phone or answering her mother’s summons, Lila eyes the clock. It’s twenty till twelve, the magic hour when Violet Hightower allows herself the first of many bourbons that will send her from prickly to passed out just after sunset.

  “Sissy, I’ve got a call in to the Governor’s office. If he calls back before I’m done with Mamma . . .”

  Sissy waves her on, out of the room. Wouldn’t be the first Governor she’s talked to, Lila reminds herself as she mounts the carpeted stairs. Sissy’ll handle him as well as she’s handled all the others.

  Midway up, Lila stops, one hand on the mahogany banister. On good days, she found dealing with her mother a challenge. But today, with the weight of a hangover bearing down behind her eyes—Hooah—she’d have to be careful. She grasps the rail, lifts one heavy foot, and then the other, trudges slowly uphill as though waist-deep in water.

  She and Louis were ten when their parents decided to build the “Big House” in the grove. From the onset, she remembered, the principal bone of contention was the size and shape of this staircase. Lila had sided with the Judge, who wanted something solid and straightforward. But Louis, poor Louis who could never see through anything or anybody, had sided with Mamma whose vision was “something more Twelve Oaks than Tara,” heavily carved, elegantly curved.

  “The Wilkeses of Twelve Oaks,” she’d say, as if that fictional family actually existed, “were true gentry like my family, the Randalls. Not bootstrap Irish like Gerald O’Hara, or, for that matter, your father.” The wrangling over the final design went on for weeks, until, finally, the Judge brokered a peace: Mamma could have her way—the design Daddy called “Violet Ascending”—if, and only if, she agreed to give up her daily stream of afternoon sherries. She did. Then quietly switched to bourbon over ice with a sprig of mint, which she insisted, fooling no one, was “only a watered-down julep and what of it?”

  Upstairs, turning the French porcelain doorknob into her mother’s bedroom, Lila forces a slow, measured breath. The sight of her mother ensconced in the ridiculous thronelike, violet velvet bed—as close to Vivien Leigh’s red one in Gone with the Wind as local upholsterers could get—floods her with dread. What new level of craziness would they reach today? The competing scents of crushed mint, Jim Beam bourbon, and her mother’s all-pervasive Violettes de Nice perfume could, if she wasn’t careful, make her retch.

  “Mamma, why are you wearing a hat in bed?”

  “This is not a hat, Lila. It’s an Empress Eugenie creation, in my signature color, of course.” Violet reaches up and pats the turned-up felt brim, higher on one side than the other, caresses the dyed-to-match egret feathers at its peak, and smiles, coquettish, beneath her reading glasses. “Besides, it helps me think.” Bright pink lipstick and liberal face powder attempt to hide the long-term effects of Kentucky bourbon on her mother’s once good looks. But, no amount of makeup can disguise her watery, red-rimmed eyes, the bulbing of her nose, or the sagging of her jowls into a jiggling double chin.

  “Well, for my money, it makes you look more Blanche DuBois than Scarlett O’Hara,” Lila says, drawing first blood.

  “Both Oscar-winning performances, my dear,” Violet croons back. “And, you needn’t remind me whose money is whose,” she adds acidly.

  “Sissy says you need to see me?”

  “Not need to, want to. There’s a difference,” Violet pouts. “Lord,” she sighs, clasping her hands, gazing heavenward, “she has my eyes but she cannot see.”

  God, now she’s Joan of Arc in a feathered hat and satin bed jacket. “Your point, Mamma?”

  “My point is, Missy,” Violet brightens, “I want to give a party and I’d like your help.”

  “A what?”

  “A party, sil
ly. Everybody knows I’ve been laid low, my nerves absolutely shot by your daddy’s death.”—Violet feigns hurt at Lila’s sudden intake of breath—“Well, they do! It’d be a sort of combination celebration, y’see, my coming out and your coming home!”

  “No,” Lila says quietly.

  “Oh, just a small thing at the Citrus Club—”

  Lila interrupts. “The two-letter word for absolutely not.”

  “It would be fun!”

  “It would be absurd,” Lila says stiffly, between her teeth. “Nobody in their right mind gives themselves a party to celebrate the end of their supposed nervous breakdown. And, besides, I’ve not ‘come home,’ I’m merely passing through.”

  “Oh, c’mon, honey. We haven’t had a nice party ’round here since . . .” Violet trails off, suddenly aware she’s on shaky ground.

  “Since the night Louis nearly killed Daddy then ran off and joined the Army. You’re right, Mamma, that was a swell time.”

  “But it was your daddy that spoiled that one,” Violet says, recovering. “And, obviously, he won’t be able to make this one.”

  “No, Mamma. And neither will you. Because there’s not going to be a party.”

  “Good God Almighty, you’re as selfish and unreasonable as he was! Can’t you see I need a reason to get outta this bed? Or do you expect me to sit up here and waste away forever?”

  Lila pauses,—Careful now—locks steady eyes on her mother’s, and says, in a very calm voice, “I gave up expecting anything from you, Mamma, years ago.”

  Violet retreats behind half-lowered lids. “Oh, it’s all my fault, is it?”

  Lila’s hands have begun to tremble. She hides them, clasped, behind her back. “Get outta bed, or don’t, Mamma. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.”

  “Really?” Violet’s slow smile stretches her lips into a pink-rimmed slit. “And, I was so hopin’ we could invite your general and his pretty wife.” Her hands, shaking, toss the folded front page to the foot of the bed.

  Lila tenses herself, to stop the trembling, and casually— she’s determined not to appear forced—leans forward, picks up the newspaper, and scans the headline: “Ike Taps Taylor Army Chief, Atkinson to Assist.” The photo below hits her like a fist. In the center, Ike, grinning, flanked by the two generals: Jazz, lean and level-eyed—sporting a third star!—and handsome, intense General Maxwell D. Taylor, pumping Ike’s hand. Behind them, two matrons: pert, proud Lydia Taylor, and thin, startled-looking Kitsy Atkinson. Damn you, Ike! And, Jazz—Assistant Chief of Staff? Oh, Jazz—how could you?

  “She’s a looker, that one,” comes the sly, dangerous taunt from the bed. “Lousy in the sack, I imagine. Not atall like you.” Lila shivers, feeling nakedly exposed to her mother’s drawling insinuation. She cannot, will not, meet Violet’s awful eyes. “Quite the vixen you are—with your fancy silk panties and French lace bras—”

  “Mamma!” Lila cries hollowly. (She’d taken great pains to hand wash and hang dry her underthings in the supposed privacy of her own bathroom. Obviously, the Lady Violate’s been up to her old tricks.)

  “Bet you take it any way he wants, then sit up and beg for more!” Violet sneers.

  From somewhere far away, the peal of a ringing telephone sails like a life preserver into the space between them. “If you’ll excuse me”—Lila clutches the paper, summons the strength to walk, weak-kneed, to the door—“I have an important call.”

  SHE’S BREATHLESS, from the news about Jazz, from her mother and the stairs, as Sissy hands her the phone and exits the office.

  “Governor, how kind of you to return my call. How are you?” Lila sits in her father’s chair, drops the newspaper on the desk blotter in front of her, stares at the familiar face. Oh, Jazz, how could you?

  “Not bad for an old lame duck. How’re you? And how’s your mamma?” Governor Big Jim Yates booms from the other end. Lila pictures him towering over everybody but Kyle at her father’s funeral, white-haired, heavily jowled, with a constant, concerned scowl.

  “Got herself a new hat, perked her right up!” Lila says, her eyes skeetering up to the ceiling, in Violet’s direction. Though, of course, this is all Ike’s doing. Prissy old bastard.

  “Well, she’s been through a lot these last few months, hasn’t she?”

  “Haven’t we all?” This isn’t the first time Ike sni fed divorce and wagged another star in Jazz’s direction. “And, Governor, that’s just why I’m calling. You know how Daddy liked to keep everything and everybody on a short leash?” Just like Ike, come to think of it. But, damnit, Jazz . . . we had a deal!

  “He was a master at it, darlin’.”

  “Well, I’m havin’ the devil of a time finding a good grove manager to take over the reins around here.” What am I gonna do now?

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  Not half as sorry as I am. “I’ve got a great candidate—best tree man you ever saw, and a firm hand with the picking crews, but—”

  “But, what?”

  “But, Kyle DeLuth’s decided my man’s children can’t attend the local school. They’ve got a little Indian blood in ’em, not much, but Kyle’s decided he doesn’t like their looks. So he’s barred them from attending school.” God, I’m surrounded by sorry bastards.

  On the other end, Lila hears the creak of wood, Big Jim shifting his enormous weight in the Governor’s chair. When he speaks, finally, his tone, she notes, has turned guarded. “What’s your school board have to say about that?”

  “Well, they promised the family a hearing. But, Kyle talked ’em out of it. I spoke to Hamp Berry and he’s willing to look into this, set things straight. All he needs is a nod from you.” Goddamn ol’ boy network!

  Another chair creak. “Well, Lila,”—she hears the hedge in his voice—“you know K.A. and I go back ’bout as far as your daddy and I do.” Same damn thing every-damn-where I go!

  “Of course, Governor. But, it was Daddy who made Kyle what he is today. And now that Daddy’s gone, Kyle’s running roughshod over some innocent schoolkids. He’s just flat-out wrong on this. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

  “I hear you. But, Lila,”—creak—“you’re your daddy’s daughter so I’m gonna give it t’ya straight, same as I’d do for him. You know my term’s up first of the year. I got ninety days left then I’m heading home to the panhandle. Got me a good-size ranch and . . . well, darlin’, K.A.’s promised me the use of his blue-ribbon bull soon as I get there.”

  The Governor’s blatant self-interest flaps like laundry hung on the line between them. Sold out! For a blue-ribbon bull. And a third star!

  “Any suggestions for me, then?” she asks, trying to hit the mark between sober political allowance and sincere feminine distress.

  “Well, now,” his tone is suddenly magnanimous, “the quickest way out is to elect yourself a new Sheriff.”

  Lila gasps. “But the election’s not till November fourth, and I’m due back in Washington the end of this month!”

  “Well, if you need some strings pulled to stay a little longer, darlin’, you let me know. In the meantime, you could call Lamar Rawlings. He’s on deck, y’know, with no connections to K.A. that I know of.”

  Lila shakes her head. The governorship of Florida had been passed like a baton between mostly panhandle partisans ever since Reconstruction. And would continue to be until the rest of the state raised enough hell to effect reapportionment. If Lamar Rawlings was “on deck,” it was a given he’d be Florida’s next governor.

  “Matter of fact,” Big Jim was adding, “Lamar’s from Jacksonville. And I doubt he’s charmed by K.A.’s speech-making at some blamed fool White People’s rally over there last month.”

  He’d thrown her a bone. Lila knew she was expected to be grateful. “Thank you so much,” she tells him. Self-serving sonofabitch!

  “My pleasure, darlin’. And, when you and I are done, I’ll have Gert get you Lamar’s home phone number.”

  “Could Hamp start something on hi
s go-ahead?” she presses.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “May I tell him you said so?” C’mon! Give me this, at least!

  “If you need to, honey. Will that ’bout do it then?”

  Game over. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  “Take care, darlin’. My best to your sweet mamma, hear?”

  The bastards win—Lila jabs a finger at Ike’s photographic chest—again. Sadly, slowly, she traces the resolute jaw, the handsome cleft chin of Lieutenant General Jasper P. “Jazz” Atkinson.

  Oh, Jazz. The weight she’d felt earlier, behind her eyes, had shifted to the back of her neck, spread across her shoulders and, now, pushed heavily on her chest.

  The photo in the newspaper is black-and-white. Her mind fills in the colors: the dark blue sheen, the quiet whisper of worsted wool, the winking gleam of brass and gold, the flare and pop of the reporters’ cameras, the subtle spice of General J. P. Atkinson’s aftershave. “The General” was only one of his characters—the one she’d met first and liked least—sly, controlling, sardonic. “General J. P. Asskisser,” he’d say, clicking his heels sharply, snapping a crisp salute. She preferred “Jasper,” the shy Ames, Iowa, farm boy who’d bring her flowers, bump into furniture, fumble over buttons with a quiet “Beg your pardon, ma’am.” And, above all, she loved “Jazz,” the free-spirited sybarite who’d leap into her bed and announce that, tonight, he was the incomparable Art Tatum and, head to toe, she was his piano.

  Oh, Jazz. How did this happen? When? And why? But, of course, she knew—she KNEW—that it was Jazz who’d promised the divorce from Kitsy, a honeymoon in Paris, a quiet retirement to Virginia. But, when the phone rang—was it Ike or his old friend Max Taylor on the other end?—it was, of course, The General who’d taken the call.

  “Oh, Jazz,” she sighs hollowly, out loud, and leans back limp against the chair. This was her private nightmare come true: that The General would never give up his grip, his eager grasping for more and always more power and prestige. And Jazz—

  A memory flickers across her closed eyelids, vividly sharp. They were in New York, at a tedious official conference all day, and afterwards, anonymous in their civvies, the cramped jazz club where Tatum was rumored to play. The piano great never showed, but the performing quartet was quite good and, in between sets, the hulking young man, introduced as one of the “new beat poets,” assailed the crowd with his biting, off-the-cuff rhymes. His method was to pick someone out and, after a brief squint, spout his poetic pronouncement. He chose Jazz and, in the dreariest of couplets, declared: