Jodi’s voice was low and clear. “This place is meant to be a refuge from that world, of commerce and value and buying and selling. And you want to drag us all right back into it.” She put down the pile of angora yarn in her lap, stood, and pointed her finger at Bethie. “You’re a sellout. A bougie sellout.”
Bethie’s face burned. “I am not a sellout! Look around you. This place is a mess! The wiring’s old, and the bathroom’s practically falling off the side of the house. The furnace needs to be replaced, and the kitchen sink leaks.”
Bethie could have gone on, but Ronnie, her old friend, Ronnie who’d brought her to Blue Hill Farm, Ronnie who’d saved her, raised her hand. The room got quiet. Blue Hill Farm had no official leader, no hierarchies, but Ronnie was the one who’d found the farm and brought them all together. When she talked, the collective listened. Bethie held her breath, waiting for Ronnie to speak up and save her again. She watched as Ronnie, whose face was wrinkled and whose brown hair was mostly gray, got to her feet and said, “The only constant in the world is change.” She put her hands on Bethie’s shoulders. “Maybe Blue Hill Farm isn’t your place anymore.”
“What do you mean, this isn’t my place?” But, even as she was asking, Bethie knew the answer. She could feel the truth, in Ronnie’s hands, in Jodi’s pointed finger, and in Philip’s sullen stare. Maybe the status quo was okay for the rest of them, but she was tired of living in a house where the hot water ran out after the third person’s shower; tired of the old-fashioned kitchen with its tilted floors and tiny sink and its temperamental oven. She was tired of every decision having to be made by consensus, tired of lentils, tired of tofu, and, yes, tired of wiping herself with cheap, scratchy toilet tissue. She’d been reborn here, she’d thrived here, she’d made peace with her own flaws and failings here; she’d found work, direction, meaning. Now, maybe Ronnie was right. She could hardly believe that she was even thinking it, but maybe it was time to go.
She’d left a week later, with permission to use the Blue Hill Farm name and recipes, and with Rose of Sharon, who’d decided that she’d also had enough. Rose of Sharon subletted a friend’s apartment in Five Points, and Bethie moved into the rooms above the shop. In sixth months’ time, they’d gotten more customers, hired two clerks, leased a larger kitchen. Now it was time for the next step, trying to secure a small-business loan. Phil had told Bethie he’d meet her there, but by ten-fifteen, Phil hadn’t shown, and the secretary outside the bank’s vice president’s office was giving her the stink-eye, so Bethie rose to her feet.
“I’m ready, if Mr. Jefferson can see me now,” she said. The woman outside of Mr. Jefferson’s door looked at Bethie’s dress and hair and sandals, gave a brief, displeased nod, and led Bethie into a plushly carpeted office, fitted with bookcases and an imposing desk. Behind the desk, in a suit and tie, with his close-cropped hair starting to gray at the temples but his uptilted eyes, and his smile just the same, sat not just any Mr. Jefferson, but Harold Jefferson, late of Ann Arbor and Detroit.
“Why, Harold!”
He smiled at Bethie, the grin that promised fun and trouble and put his white teeth on display. Bethie’s heart leapt. “Well, well, well,” said Harold. “I saw the name Elizabeth Kaufman on my schedule, but I wasn’t sure it would be you.”
“Where have you . . .” Bethie felt breathless, flushed and light-headed, like she’d been lifted by a hurricane, spun all around, and dropped into Oz. “You’re a banker?”
“I am. Now. I was in the army after college.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t known that Harold had been in the army. “I should have known that. I could have written.”
“I wouldn’t have said no to letters.” Harold’s smile faded, and Bethie bowed her head, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “Aw, c’mon, I’m not that bad, am I?”
Bethie gave a kind of gasping combined sob and giggle.
“No,” she said, and shook her head. “You’re not bad at all.”
“So what can First Bank of the South do for you today?” Harold asked. Twenty minutes later, their line of credit secured and their business concluded, Harold offered her his arm and walked her to the bus stop and asked if he could see her Saturday night.
* * *
“So,” Bethie began. “Tell me everything.”
“Everything,” Harold repeated, and gave her a wary smile. He’d arrived at her place in a blue-and-yellow plaid sports coat, a white shirt, a dark-blue tie, and polished loafers, carrying a bouquet of yellow roses, and Rose of Sharon, who’d come over to do Bethie’s nails, had stared at him as if he’d just stepped off a spaceship. “This is Harold,” she said. “We went to high school together. He’s an old friend.” Harold drove a Chevrolet, and he’d taken Bethie to an Italian restaurant called Nino’s for dinner. Bethie had worn her best dress, light-blue silk with short sleeves and a long skirt, and a draped neckline that showed the very tops of her breasts. She felt, or imagined that she could feel, other diners looking at them as Harold held out her chair, before taking his own. Harold was still solidly built, wide shouldered and broad chested. His uptilted eyes still looked like he’d just finished laughing, his reddish-brown skin was still smooth—“Black don’t crack,” she remembered Harold saying—and he still had that familiar smell, of spice and soap. What she noticed most was how his posture had changed. He’d been graceful back in high school, with an athlete’s command of his body, and even though he’d claimed to hate “prancing around in public,” he’d been a good dancer. Now, he stood like she imagined a soldier would, his spine stiff, almost rigid, and he favored his right leg when he walked.
For dinner, they had split a chopped salad and garlic bread. Harold tried her ravioli, she sampled his shrimp, and they shared a bottle of Chianti. They talked about Atlanta, and how it was different from Detroit, and about Detroit’s radical mayor, Coleman Young. Bethie filled Harold in on her sister, and Harold told her that he, too, had a sibling who’d gone East, that his oldest brother, James, had become a preacher and had gotten a pulpit at Mother Bethel A.M.E. in Philadelphia, the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in America. Finally, with most of the pasta eaten, Bethie had asked what she’d really wanted to know—what had brought Harold to Atlanta and what he’d been doing since their last encounter.
“Well.” His nostrils flared as he inhaled. “You know I was doing civil rights work, back in Ann Arbor. I helped organize the student strikes.”
Bethie nodded, feeling ashamed that she didn’t know more. She remembered her sister telling her that Harold had been in SDS; and she had vague memories of seeing him at campus protests, but during her time in Ann Arbor, the only things she’d cared about were her theater friends, Devon Brady, and LSD.
“After I graduated in 1965 I went back home to organize. I could see how the deck had been stacked against African Americans. All of the inequities that were built into the system. I wanted to change things.”
Bethie nodded, remembering Jo’s fights with her mother about the Civil Rights Act, about African American families moving into their neighborhood, and what it was doing to property values. Do you think you can win a marathon if someone moves your starting line five miles back? Jo would ask, and Sarah would stick out her chin and say, Life isn’t fair.
“I painted houses for money, but my real work was in the community. Trying to educate people. Trying to show them a way out, to get them to vote, to come to city council meetings, advocate for themselves. My parents thought I was crazy.” Harold made his voice low and gruff, adjusting his posture the way he had when he’d imitated his father, back at rehearsals in high school. “ ‘Hard work, that’s the only way up,’ my pops used to tell me. ‘Nobody handed me a damn thing. I worked for what I have. Any man can do the same.’ ” Harold shook his head, and Bethie thought about how much Harold’s father sounded like her mother. “I’d ask him, ‘How much more do you think you’d have if you’d been born with white skin?’ Or ‘How are folks supposed to pull themselves up by t
heir bootstraps if they don’t have any boots?’ ” Harold smiled a little at the memory. “Oh, we had some terrible fights. Then the riots happened.” Harold’s voice trailed off, and his gaze slid away from hers. Bethie nodded. She knew, of course, what had happened in Detroit in 1967, how the police had raided an after-hours bar, which had started a fight, and the city had burned for five days. Buildings, businesses, houses had all been destroyed. There’d been lootings, and beatings, more than forty arrests and over a thousand injuries. Eventually, the governor had called in the National Guard. It is a Shame to see them burning their Own houses, destroying their Own businesses, Sarah had written to Bethie. I will never Understand. But Bethie, who’d attended a few teach-ins by then, thought she could. Imagine every single day you walk past a store full of things you can’t have, can’t buy, Jodi had said. Jodi had been sitting at first, cross-legged by the fire, but as she’d spoken she’d gotten to her feet, a short, solidly built woman in bell-bottoms and a T-shirt with a Black Power logo. The firelight had shone on the braids that fell around her face and had made her dark skin gleam. Imagine knowing that if you walk in that store, you’re going to be followed and watched and treated like a thief. Imagine seeing your father and your brothers getting pulled over, getting arrested, getting locked up for nothing, trying to find jobs, trying to hold jobs, with everyone assuming they are criminals. Imagine every day you go to a school where the building’s run-down and the textbooks are outdated and there’s forty kids in every class, and you put your hand over your heart for the pledge—one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all—but you know it’s a lie, and there’s no liberty for you, no justice for you. She’d widened her eyes, looking at the women and men who sat in a circle around her. Wouldn’t you feel like burning something, too?
“I’d been arrested at demonstrations a few times by then, and it turns out the FBI had been watching me,” Harold said. “They sent an agent to talk to me when I was locked up, and they gave me a deal. They wanted to plant me with the Black Panthers. Told me that for every person I helped them bring in, they’d pay me a few thousand dollars. I said no.” He shook his head. “I hated the war.”
Bethie shook her head, hoping her expression could adequately convey how much she, too, had despised the war.
“But I wouldn’t inform, so they gave me a choice: the army or prison. I didn’t want to fight, but I sure didn’t want to get locked up, either. I knew I’d never be able to get a job once they let me out, and I figured, if I enlist, at least I’ll get to be outside. Breathing fresh air, reading whatever books I wanted. You know? And my pops would be proud of me.” He lifted his wineglass and took a long swallow. “I did my basic training in Fort Gordon, Georgia. First time I was ever on a plane. By January 1970, I was in Cam Ranh Bay, on the Cambodian border.” He tapped his fingers on the tablecloth. His eyes were far away. “I don’t know if you ever saw a picture, but it was all sand and palm trees. If you put up a resort there, you’d have rich people paying to stay.” He reached across the table to top off Bethie’s wineglass and to refill his own. “I started off as an armorer, in the Fourth Infantry Division. We repaired small arms, and we patrolled Highway 19 from Cambodia to Qui Nhon, trying to find caches of enemy food and weapons. They’d send us out. Clear this village, clear that one. When there was nothing else to do, we loaded sandbags.”
“Were you . . .” Bethie licked her lips. Her mouth was dry, and her mind was churning. There were so many things she wanted to ask—what he’d done to get arrested prior to the riots, what had happened to him once they’d begun, and if he’d gotten hurt. How his parents and brothers and sisters had felt when he’d gone to Georgia, then to Vietnam. Was it as bad as she’d heard, was it as unfair, were the black soldiers given the worst assignments and put on the front lines, and if he’d had a girlfriend, or even a wife; a woman who’d loved him and who’d worried while he was gone. She wanted to tell him that she, too, saw the unfairness, that she was committed to trying to change things. She cleared her throat, sipped her wine, and finally managed, “What was it like, being a soldier over there?”
“You mean, did I kill anyone?” Harold’s face was very still. “I never shot anyone face-to-face.” He snorted. “You like that answer?” He lifted his glass, looked into it, and set it down without drinking. “I was afraid. That’s what I remember most. Waking up scared, going to sleep scared, and being scared every minute in between.” He pressed his palms against his face and moved them from his cheeks to his ears, back and forth, like he was washing his face. “My last month there, I was driving an amtrac—an amphibious tractor, like a tank. It wasn’t technically my job, but they said they didn’t have anyone else to do it. We hit a mine. Got blown straight up in the air. It was . . .” He paused, bringing his hands to his face again. “It was the loudest sound I’d ever heard in my life. The gunner and I got blown straight out of the trac, and when I came down, a piece of it—a piece of the metal—landed on my leg. And it was on fire.” His voice was steady and matter-of-fact. “My fatigues . . . my leg . . . just burning.”
“Oh, God.” Her heart was pounding, and her face felt cold. She wanted to touch him, and wondered if she could, if he’d want that. She wondered if people would see, and if they’d stare, so instead of reaching for his hand, she said, “Harold, I’m so sorry.”
He nodded without meeting her eyes.
“You don’t have to tell me anymore,” Bethie said. “I’m just so sorry. So sorry that it happened to you. It was a terrible, unjust war—”
“Yeah.” He drew a long, slow breath as Bethie cringed at the inadequacy of her words, at how clichéd they sounded. “I was in a hospital in Japan for ten months. I don’t remember a lot of it. I had surgeries and skin grafts. The doctors took off three of my toes, and for a while, they thought they were going to have to amputate my foot, but I got lucky. They said if I hadn’t been young and strong going in . . .” Harold shook his head. “It could’ve been worse,” he said. “It was for a lot of the men. Soldiers in the hospital with me, they lost their arms, their legs. One man, the whole side of his face was just gone. He’d been burned right to the bone.”
“Oh, Harold. Oh, God.” Bethie’s stomach was clenched tight as a fist. She felt a great, impotent rage sweep through her, fury at the war, and the politicians who’d sent so many young men to be maimed or killed.
“When I was well enough to go, I came back here, to Georgia. To Fort Gordon.”
“Not home?”
Harold shook his head. “My father said the army would make a man out of me. It took me a while to stop being angry about it. I needed some distance. My degree from Michigan was in economics. I got my discharge, and I took a job at the First Bank of the South.” He looked up and gave Bethie a smile that she could tell took effort. “And I kept hearing about this girl who made the best peach preserves down at the farmers’ market. This girl from Detroit. And when I heard that she needed a loan, I made sure I was the one to see her.”
Bethie felt her cheeks turn pink. She wanted to touch him again, and contented herself with looking at him and, very quietly, saying his name.
* * *
Every Saturday night after that, Harold would come to her place, always in a pressed shirt, sometimes in a jacket and tie, and always with a little gift: flowers, or a box of chocolates, the new Aretha Franklin or Stevie Wonder album, and once, on her birthday, a set of combs inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He took her to the movies, always insisting on paying for her ticket, and to outdoor concerts in Chamblee. They ate pizza and drank beer and played Did You Know and Do You Remember, with Bethie realizing that there was very little overlap between the kids she’d known in high school and Harold’s friends, or between the places she’d been to eat and dance and drive, and the places he’d gone. It was as if there was a city under the city, or two cities that existed side by side, both invisible to each other. Music was where they intersected. They both had grown up listening to Motown on the radio. Harold rememb
ered every word to every song, and she’d try to get him to sing, when she could. They talked and laughed, but Harold never touched her. It left Bethie confused and unsettled, flushed and breathless, feeling constantly like she’d misplaced something important, her car keys or her wallet, and she was always having to turn her room or her purse upside down to find it. She liked Harold, more than she’d liked any man since Devon Brady, long ago. She liked his patience, his solidity, the way he smelled. She liked his smooth skin, his big hands, with their neatly clipped square-shaped nails; the way he’d harmonize, almost unconsciously, with every song on the radio when they were driving, while drumming a backbeat on the steering wheel. But did he care for her? Was a life with Harold possible? And if it was, would Harold even want it?
After months of Saturday night dates and phone calls more weeknights than not, Thanksgiving came. Instead of going home to Detroit, or waiting to see if Jo would invite her to Connecticut, Bethie asked Harold to join her at Blue Hill Farm. There would be friends, and friends of friends, relatives and children and always a few strays, people who had nowhere else to go. “Is there going to be turkey?” Harold asked. “Because turkey is nonnegotiable.” Bethie promised him turkey, and Harold said he would bring macaroni and cheese, and he’d bake his mother’s sweet potato pie.
On the appointed Thursday, he picked her up at her apartment, wearing blue jeans that looked brand-new and a dark blue sweater that lent a richness to his skin and made Bethie think about laying her head on the broad expanse of his chest. Ronnie and Jodi and Danielle had cleared the furniture out of the living room and set up rows of folding tables, covered in slightly mismatched white tablecloths. At four o’clock, twenty-seven people gathered around the table and held hands and thanked the Earth for Her bounty before tucking into the turkey, which Bethie made sure was near their end of the table, and baked stuffed squashes, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, corn bread and relish, biscuits and jam, and Harold’s offerings.
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