True Fires

by Susan Carol McCarthy

  33

  A few years ago, when Ed Cantrell, Principal of Lake Esther Elementary, volunteered to take on the Tuesday Night Youth Group at Lake Esther Methodist, his wife, Alice, had railed, “Are you nuts? You spend all week with kids. You’ve got three of your own. Why take on the teenagers, too?”

  He’d found it hard to tell her the truth: that these same teenagers had been among his first students. That he relished the opportunity to see what kind of people they’d become. That their honesty, and earnestness, and painful striving, was a powerful antidote to the increasingly mind-numbing bureaucracy of his day job. That their youthful idealism reminded him of his own, before he’d got snookered out of the classroom, into administration. And, that, on an almost weekly basis, they needed him to remind them who they were, before puberty, and their parents’ private battles, and the whole country’s postwar posturing, pushed them into The Box he now called his life.

  Instead of trying to explain any of these things to Alice— whose entire life’s goal was a new split-level outside of town— he’d merely shrugged and said, “I’ve known these kids most of their lives. I know it sounds odd, but it’s like we grew up together.”

  He rarely prepares a text. They inevitably present one of their own. And, the anticipation and surprise of it, what things they choose to discuss, from serious to absurd, is the highlight of his week.

  As is his custom, Cantrell arrives early, unlocks the Youth Room door, turns on the lights, and arranges twelve folding chairs in a circle. The kids arrive in spurts.

  “Hey, Mr. C.,” Bobby Reid, the burly high-school fullback, calls from the door. “This here’s Lois Ann.” He proudly introduces the tiny, ponytailed blonde who wears, and appears lost in, his big scarlet-and-white varsity jacket. “She’s a Lutheran, but I told her you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Promise not to bite,” Cantrell assures her, as the two take their seats opposite him.

  “Hey, Brainiac,” Bobby turns to greet skinny, pasty-faced David Getz, arriving just behind them. “Meet Lois Ann.”

  David Getz nods, flushing red, and moves awkwardly to the seat on Cantrell’s left as three more girls—Gwen Moore, Janet Giles, Connie Wells—all brunettes, billow in together, pastel skirts swinging wide above their black-and-white saddle shoes. “Hey, everybody!” they call, wave, make their way gracefully to side-by-side chairs on Cantrell’s right.

  Behind them, the Gardener cousins, Jim and Jerry, shuffle in, in clashing plaid shirts, holding the door for pretty, raven-haired Mary Lou Meyers, in a slim blue shirtwaist, soft Capezios, and a waft of Shalimar.

  Cantrell notes, and relishes, the palpable rise in energy, the rush of noise as the group—rounded out by gangly, spectacled Charles Patterson, who places his Bible and a magazine on the only empty chair—settles into the circle.

  At seven o’clock, they bow their heads for Cantrell’s brief opening prayer. Afterwards, he looks up and, smiling ’round, asks, “What’ll it be tonight, folks?”

  Across from him, Bobby Reid, one arm draped around the back of Lois Ann’s chair, shrugs, and looks to the others to name the game. On Cantrell’s right, the three girlfriends— Gwen, Janet, and Connie—smile prettily and cast their eyes sideways to direct attention elsewhere.

  Next to David, Charles, intensely earnest, clears his throat and reaches for the magazine on the chair beside him. “Well, um, Mr. C.? David and I were talking outside, about this week’s Time magazine? Y’all seen it?”

  Charles flips open to the Viewpoint page, shows the column headlined “In Lake Esther, Florida, Nobody Cares.”

  Cantrell, who’d secretly hoped this might come up, asks the others, “Everybody seen it?” Two of the three girls, both Gardener cousins, Mary Lou—nod their heads. Others— including Bobby Reid and his girlfriend—shake theirs. “It’s fairly short. Why don’t you read it to us, Charles?”

  Charles jabs a finger at the bridge of his horn-rimmed glasses and, again, clears his throat. “Well, it’s about those Indian kids, the Dares,” he says, by way of introduction, then goes on to read the four paragraphs, which Cantrell, since yesterday, has virtually memorized. At its end, Charles looks up. “I don’t know about you, Mr. C., but seems to me, these kids got a raw deal.”

  “I have to agree with you,” Cantrell says quietly. And finds he’s relieved to admit it.

  Solemn David Getz tells the group, “My little sister had one of their cousins—SaraFaye—in her class. Sheriff barred her and her sister, too.”

  “Their daddy works for mine down at the lumberyard.” Mary Lou Meyers leans forward. “Like Miz Barrows at the Towncrier says, they’re not Nigra, they’re Croatan Indian.”

  Bobby Reid squints. “So why’d the Sheriff yank ’em out of school?”

  “You know Sheriff DeLuth.” David frowns and shakes his head.

  “But, they ain’t Nigra, right?” Bobby is persistent, determined to understand. “Why don’t he let ’em stay? ’Steada makin’ us the laughin’stock of the whole durn country!”

  Ruefully, Charles closes the magazine, stares down at the glossy cover.

  “This stinks.” Bobby looks hurt by the whole thing.

  Gwen and Janet nod in agreement. Beside them, Connie rearranges her dress pleats.

  The two pimply-faced cousins eye each other uncomfortably. Jerry, the one on the right, wiggles a blue-sneakered foot on his chair rung.

  “What can we do?” Bobby asks no one in particular.

  Cantrell, not wanting to assume the leadership role, looks expectantly around the circle of young faces. David, the one nicknamed Brainiac, doesn’t let him down.

  “We have free speech, right?” David asks. “Couldn’t we write Time magazine and tell ’em we disagree?”

  Yes! Cantrell thinks, but keeps his face impassive.

  “But, there’s not very many of us,” Mary Lou Meyers protests. “What if we drafted a petition and got the whole high school to sign it? Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Good girl! Cantrell thinks but, keeping his tone neutral, asks, “What’s everybody else think?”

  “Well, nobody would have to sign it, if they didn’t want to, right?” Connie sounds nervous.

  “Of course not,” Gwen says impatiently.

  Charles—who initiated the discussion—swallows hard.

  Beside Gwen, Janet shifts into organizing. “We could set up a table outside the auditorium.”

  “Or the lunchroom?” Gwen suggests.

  “Nah, nah, the gym!” Bobby says. “Everybody takes P.E. I’ll square it with Coach myself.”

  “But what would this petition say?” Charles wants to know.

  “Good question,” Cantrell answers.

  Connie, pouting, examines her nail polish.

  “Lois Ann, you got any paper in your purse?” Bobby Reid asks.

  FORTY MINUTES, and a heated discussion later, David, who’d reluctantly, but at Bobby’s insistence, served as the group’s “team leader,” asks Lois Ann, who wrote everything down, to read the finished draft.

  “ ‘Dear Time magazine,’ ” she begins.

  “ ‘In your October twenty-seventh issue, under the ‘Viewpoint’ section, reporting the Dare family story, you say that Lake Esther is: “. . . a town, where nobody, not one person, cares.” We would like to correct that statement. WE CARE.

  “ ‘We have not been asked our opinion, but we would like to state it anyway.

  “ ‘Our country was founded on principles set forth in the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and the Sermon on the Mount. We are proud of our country.

  “ ‘The Constitution says all persons are innocent until they are proven guilty, and that a man is to be considered truthful until he is proved to be a liar.

  “ ‘We feel Daniel, ’Becca, Minna, and SaraFaye Dare got a raw deal. Their right to an education has been taken away because of the opinion and prejudices of one man.

  “ ‘To be expelled for violation of Florida segregation laws is one thing; to be expell
ed because of unfounded suspicion is another.

  “ ‘Therefore, we believe the Dare children should be permitted to remain in school until the Sheriff can prove they don’t belong there.

  “ ‘That is our position and we want the world to know it.’ ”

  At this, Lois Ann looks up, around the circle. Her smile is tremulous. The others—except for Connie and the plaid-shirted cousins, who have remained silent throughout the discussion— burst into spontaneous applause.

  Ed Cantrell, watching, feels his chest ache with pride. He keeps his eyes, which have unexpectedly turned watery, on the speckled linoleum floor as a resolute Charles suggests, and leads them in, the closing prayer.

  34

  This is probably a mistake, Lila reckons, as she wheels past the overblown stone entrance of the new subdivision—“Welcome home to Fon du Lac”—onto a street so freshly asphalted the stink of tar still taints the air.

  “Fon du what?” she’d asked.

  “Fon du Lac, Lila!” Ginger had chuckled. “Charlie says it’s French for Passion Point, where we all used to go ‘to watch the submarine races’? ‘A whole lotta fondlin’ went on at this Lac,’ Charlie says.”

  Why the hell did I say I’d come? Lila searches for the street name and number among the modern, low-slung houses, too wide and too white for their narrow lots, bright green lawns still showing the tight grid of fresh sod, not yet grown in. She remembered Charlie Jackson, the class clown who’d apparently followed his father into real-estate development, and Ginger’s eager phone call:

  “C’mon, Lila, you’ve been a hermit ever since you got home! It’s Wednesday night, just a few of the old gang. I’m mixin’ cocktails; Charlie’s burnin’ meat. Get yourself out of Lady Violet’s lair. Come have some laughs with us!”

  Laughs. All things considered—Lila had just received General J. P. Atkinson’s formal assent to her formal request for extended leave—it seemed like a good idea at the time. But now? Hooah! She parks at the bare curb, two houses past the Jacksons’ place. If I don’t like it, I’ll just leave, she decides, stepping around the neighbors’ small mountain of moving boxes, a forgotten tricycle, a spindly soon-to-be-planted chestnut tree.

  The double black doors reek of fresh paint. Ginger—flaming red hair, red lips, billowing red polka dots—engulfs her in a big-bosomed hug. “There you are, lookin’ gorgeous as usual! Your perfume is divine. Helen, come smell Lila’s perfume, it’s simply divine!”

  Helen Morton, the same pudgy pink face amid blond pin curls that had secretaried their senior class, wrinkles her pug nose and sniffs the air just left of Lila’s neck. “Delicious, Lila! French? I knew it!” She takes Lila’s hand and tugs her off the landing into the living room. “Everyone, come smell Lila’s delicious French perfume!”

  Lila cringes. There appear to be four, no, five couples here, plus her and—Oh, God—at the bar across the room, offering up a quickly poured glass of Jack Daniel’s, Hamp Berry.

  This is going to be awful. One quick drink and I’ll excuse myself, she resolves as Hamp hands her a glass, and interrupts the cicada chorus of cooing women with, “You must see their boat dock,”—he cups her elbow, ushers her toward the big sliding-glass door facing the lake—“it’s Charlie’s pride and joy.” And thus they escape, past Charlie Jackson and Brady Morton poking the smoking barbecue pit, across the Bermuda-grass lawn to the wooden dock and its brand-new Chris-Craft runabout, hoisted up above the water, like a prize or a pig on a spit. The acrid smell of fresh sealant and Charlie’s recent overuse of lighter fluid assaults the more fecund scents of wet weeds, dark mud, and stagnant lake water.

  “For the record . . .”—Hamp eyes her intently—“I didn’t know you were invited, either.”

  Lila swigs her drink, thanks him for the rescue. “I don’t know why I agreed to come.”

  “Well, Ginger’s a force of nature, to be sure. But, when she promised entertainment, it never occurred to me that you and I were the floor show.”

  “What if we just left, Hamp? Jumped in the boat and got the hell outta here?” Jesus, Lila thinks, the Jack’s gone straight to my head.

  Hamp, suddenly dead serious, says, “And go where, Lila? And do what?”

  Lila instantly regrets the awkward pause, the discomfort that’s dropped like a stone between them. “Oh, Hamp, I’m sorry. I feel like a raving lunatic . . .”

  He laughs nervously. “And you sound like one, too.” He’s let her off the hook, again, switched to concern. “Too much time with Our Lady of the Purple Shadows?”

  Lila shudders. “Mamma’s even worse than I remember. And, as you well know, my memories aren’t pleasant.” Solid, unflappable Hamp had been the only friend she’d ever brought home, exposed to Violet in all her screeching, slurring, stumbling-down-the-stairs glory.

  Hamp shakes his head, calls up memories of his own. “After you left, there was only Sissy, and Kyle, and occasionally me, to run interference between the two of them. Of course, your daddy blamed her for the fact that both of you were gone.”

  “Turns out he was right.”

  He lets her comment pass. “At a certain point, two, three years ago, he didn’t bother to hide the fact that there were other women. Though, he did have the phone lines in the bedrooms and the kitchen removed, everywhere except his office, so she couldn’t eavesdrop or interrupt his calls.”

  “So Mamma became the spitting recluse she is today?”

  “Word was her ‘breakdowns’ became longer and more frequent, if that’s what you’re asking. In the beginning, the Judge carted her off to several different high-powered doctors, hoping for help. Each one came up with something different— passive-aggressive, manic-depressive, paranoid-schizophrenic. But all of them recommended he commit her to some high-priced sanitarium.”

  “Why didn’t he?”

  “He couldn’t. Or wouldn’t, I suppose. The last diagnosis was acute alcoholism and an enlarged liver. She came home, as usual, swearing she was off the sauce forever.”

  “God, what a mess.”

  “Yes, but—well, Lila, aren’t you leaving soon? ‘End of the month,’ you said.”

  “Well, no, not exactly—” she begins.

  “Hey, you two!” Ginger hollers from the sliding door. “The calf is cooked, and the carnivores are getting restless!”

  At the long table, the men have congregated at one end around the fragrant, steaming slabs of barbecued beef. The women at the other end busy themselves with the passing of roasted potatoes, baked beans, cole slaw, and dinner rolls. Lila and Hamp take the empty seats in the middle, opposite each other.

  Talk at the women’s end spins and tilts like a top toward their unseen children, stashed with sitters for the evening: Halloween costumes, this weekend’s school carnival, kids’ preferences for candied apples versus caramel popcorn, concerns about tooth decay, and pin-curled Helen who’s announced she’s expecting their fourth—“Brady just looks at me and another rabbit bites the dust!” Seated beside Hamp, she flushes pink, from apparent happiness, but, Lila notes, Helen’s eyes are lined and shadowed, and her shoulders slump with an older woman’s weariness.

  Between Helen and Ginger at the end, Mary Kaye Wilson, as puny and timid as ever, nods readily, drinks steadily— “Another touch of sherry, anyone?” While on Lila’s left, pert, ponytailed Trudy Stokes and greatly pregnant Nancy Roberts discuss the merits of Tidee-Rite Diaper Service versus a brand-new Maytag. Each of the wives, Lila sees, keeps a sly eye on her husband, with the same wary watchfulness as a G.I. on his General.

  At the men’s end, the topic is commerce: price of land, price of housing, price of citrus, fertilizer, pesticides, and the new frozen-fruit-concentrate plant going up outside of town. It seems odd to Lila that politics—which dominates talk in Washington—isn’t mentioned until she brings it up.

  “So, which way’s the election goin’ next Tuesday?” she asks, in a tone brazen enough to gain the attention of both ends.

  Helen, listening in on
the Tidee-Rite discussion, turns a shining pink face toward Lila, looks blank. Beside her, Mary Kaye tosses a wavering grin toward the man on Lila’s right. “Jimbo’s the political one in our family.”

  “Why, Mary Kaye, shame on you,” Ginger, their hostess, chides her with a playful tap of red nails. “A woman’s got to have a mind of her own!”

  “Yeah, Mary Kaye, you should do what Ginger does,” Charlie, their host, calls from his end.

  “What’s that?” Mary Kaye, wide-eyed, asks.

  “Well, it’s simple, really,” Ginger, now the center of the table’s attention, preens. “I was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat until Truman—all his talk about integrating the Armed Forces—turned me Republican. Now, anything with an ‘R’ by it gets my vote!”

  Next to Ginger, Nancy Roberts cups her belly like a beach ball, nods in eager agreement. There’s low laughter from the men’s end.

  “Including Kyle DeLuth?” Lila’s trying to keep the edge off her voice.

  “Now, Lila.” Charlie’s tone exudes patient reason. His pale blue Banlon shirt emphasizes the hot red of today’s sunburn. His aqua eyes glitter in a perpetual joker’s squint. “We all know there’s no love lost between you and Kyle. He’s more brawn than brain. Always was. But, you weren’t here when the Nigger war veterans came home, struttin’ up and down Main Street like they owned the damn place.”

  “Lounging ’round the bus stops bold as could be,” Ginger says, “whistling at white girls, winking at grown women.”

  “Ol’ Kyle got ’em off the streets, though,” Ken Roberts, Nancy’s gangly, hawk-eyed husband, drawls, “with his vagrancy law.”

  “They stopped whistling once they found themselves on the chain-gang,” Ginger says. Up and down the table, except for Hamp, heads bob.

  “And, you missed out on that New Jersey union organizer, too,” Charlie continues. “Eatin’ pigs’ feet with the Nigger pickers, filling their sorry heads with the promise of union wages. Can you imagine what union wages would do to the citrus business?”