Too Black for Heaven

by Keene, Day

  Dona opened the door and walked in. The shop was poorly air-conditioned. The building that housed it was old. A blonde came forward to greet her.

  “I’m Mrs. Morgan. Belle Morgan. What can I do fo’ you, dearie?”

  “I’d like to see a swimsuit.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I wonder if you could tell me the reason for the crowd?”

  “It’s court day,” Mrs. Morgan told her. “Today, tomorrow an’ Saturday.”

  “I see.”

  Mrs. Morgan led the way toward the rear of the shop. The laboring motor of the air-conditioner made it difficult to hear the other woman.

  “Just what did you have in mind? Somethin’ in lastex or wool? Or perhaps a dressmaker’s suit?”

  “Dressmaker, I believe.”

  “They’re smarter. But with that pretty little body of yours, you’d look sweet in anythin’. Might I ask what you weigh, dearie?”

  “Ninety-eight pounds.”

  “An’ very well distributed. Now me, I have to wear a girdle and live in this heat besides. A size eight?”

  “In most models.”

  “You’re lucky. But then you’re also very young.” Mrs. Morgan laid a box on the counter and removed the cover. “Now here’s a cute little number I just got in the other day. Black-and-white check with a built-in bra an’ a cute li’l flared skirt. You can wear it with or without the straps.”

  Dona held the suit against her dress and looked in a floor mirror. “It’s very pretty. I’ll take it.”

  Mrs. Morgan laughed. “Just like that. Without even inquirin’ the price.”

  “I don’t imagine it’s too expensive.”

  Mrs. Morgan looked at the code number on the tag. “No. Only eighteen-fifty. But I wish all my sales were like this one. Runnin’ a smart shop in Blairville is a problem. We have so many more of the have-nots than the haves.”

  “I see,” Dona said. She gave her a bill from her purse.

  “Out of twenty dollars,” Mrs. Morgan said. She wrapped the suit in tissue and put it in a green bag with the name Bon Ton printed on it, then led the way to the front of the shop and the cash register. “On a vacation, Miss — ”

  “Miss Santos,” Dona supplied her name. “Yes, I guess you could call it that. At least I’ll be in town for a few weeks.”

  Mrs. Morgan rang up the sale. “Are you staying at the hotel or at one of the lakes?”

  “One of the lakes.”

  Mrs. Morgan gave her her change. “With your husband, I presume?” She laughed. “No, of course not. You said Miss Santos. What lake are you stayin’ at, dearie?”

  “I believe it’s called Loon Lake.”

  Some of Mrs. Morgan’s friendliness dissipated. “Oh. Right on the lake?”

  “Yes. In a charming little cottage. It’s owned by a Mr. Sterling.”

  “Yes. I know. You know Blair?”

  “No. I just drove into town the night before last.” Dona started for the door, turned back as if puzzled, “I wonder, Mrs. Morgan, if — ”

  “You wonder what?” the blonde woman asked, coldly.

  “You’re native to Blairville?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps you can tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What sort of man is Mr. Sterling?”

  “Why should you ask that?”

  Dona drove a small spike in the coffin she was building. “Well, I just rented the cottage yesterday afternoon and Mr. Sterling insisted I come to a party he was giving. And it wasn’t so hot. That is, it was too hot. Too hot for me, so I left. But when I met him yesterday afternoon, Mr. Sterling seemed such a gentleman.”

  Mrs. Morgan’s smile returned. “Seemed is the correct word. I went to school with Blair. I know him.” She clucked like a mother hen. “An’ you listen to me, dearie.”

  “Yes?”

  “Keep your door locked. An’ if anyone knocks on it after dark, pick up your phone and call 113.”

  “113?”

  “The sheriff’s office. Blair only knows two pastimes, drinkin’ an’ pretty girls. An’ I’ve heard he’s developed ulcers.”

  “I see,” Dona said, soberly. “Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Morgan.”

  The blonde woman walked to the door with her. “Not at all. There was no way you could tell. Blair does look like a gentleman.”

  Dona stood in the sun in front of the shop, debating walking around the square to Judge Harris’s office. She decided to cut across. Mrs. Morgan would make a good witness.

  The square was two blocks long and two blocks wide, with the courthouse exactly in its center, the apex of four walks extending to the four outer corners.

  Most of the activity was centered around it. All the benches in the shade and most of those in the sun were occupied by unshaven men, whittling, spitting, sitting. Dona recognized some of them, including the collarless, tieless, little man from the afternoon before.

  Clusters of men and women, most of them farm folks, some white, some colored, stood around near the courthouse door, talking earnestly or just glancing at the door from time to time. There was a constant coming and going of deeply-bronzed men who looked like lawyers, deputies and court attaches.

  Most of the crowd seemed to have brought their lunches. The lawn was littered with used waxed paper, grease-stained brown bags and crumpled paper cups. Two white men, barely screened by a flowing azalea bush, were taking turns drinking from a mason jar.

  An old colored man with an oilcloth-covered basket on his arm was calling softly, “Git your peanuts, folks. Git your fresh goober peas.” From a white cart, a perspiring white man was handing out ice cream bars as fast as he could make change. Another man, standing under a tree, was selling soda-pop from a metal washtub filled with cracked ice.

  In the roped-off street, directly opposite Harris’s office, an enterprising carnival man had apparently been given a permit to erect a battered carousel and several kiddie rides. They were all doing capacity business. Swarms of white and colored children raced across the lawn, their eyes bright with excitement, screaming, laughing, playing, pausing only long enough to beg their parents for another dime. The asthmatic organ of the carousel was wheezing a Strauss waltz.

  Rather than attempt to force her way through the press of adults and children around the rides, Dona turned south toward the semi-deserted area around the band shell. It was quieter here. The grass was green and free from litter. Only an old man, so senile his head shook constantly, dozed in the sun.

  A fly lit on the old man’s face. He brushed at it but didn’t awaken. Dona had to wait for a break in the stream of cars before she could cross the street. Judge Harris was standing in the doorway of his office, fanning his sagging jowls. The cardboard fan had a brightly colored picture of the Christus on one side and the legend ADLER’S FUNERAL PARLOR printed on the other. He looked fatter standing up than he did sitting in his chair.

  “Afternoon, Miss Santos. Quite a doin’s, eh?”

  “Yes, it is,” Dona agreed.

  Judge Harris stepped aside to allow her to precede him into the office. “Thought you might drop by. Beau said you liked the Sterlin’ cottage.”

  “I do, very much.”

  Harris eased his bulk into his chair. “I never seen it myself but they say it’s quite nice. Sterlin’ tell you what the rent is?”

  “One hundred dollars a month.” Dona laid five twenty dollar bills on his desk. “Now, if you’ll give me a receipt.”

  “Proud to. Glad I had somethin’ you liked.” He wrote a receipt for the money. “Find it any cooler out there?”

  “Much cooler.”

  “Should be. Loon Lake is spring fed. Used to fish it a lot an’ I mind you could keep beer cold jist by tyin’ strings to the bottles an’ danglin’ ‘em over the sides of the boat.” Harris gave Dona the receipt. “Used to be a good lake fo’ fish. Catch all the brim you could tote, occasionally a bass. But I s’pose it’s fished out now. Nothin’s li
ke it used to be. Jist standin’ in the doorway thinkin’ that.” He looked over the yellowed pictures in the window, over the revolving canopy of the carousel, at the second floor windows of the courthouse. “Glad I ain’t on the bench any more. You decide a case one way an’ the die-hards give you hob. You decide it the other way an’ the N.A.A.C.P. gets on your tail.”

  Harris resumed fanning himself. “Well, like the poet or someone said, ‘The old order changeth, yieldin’ place to new.’ Let’s hope it’s fo’ the best.”

  “I hope so.” Dona wanted to ask about Beau and didn’t know how to phrase the question. She put the receipt in her change purse. “Thank you for being so kind.”

  Harris waved her out of the office with his free hand. “Thank you an’ come back.”

  There were even more people on this side of the square than there were on the east side. The sun felt hotter here. As a colored family bunched together to give her room to pass on the walk, Dona’s feeling of being in flight returned. Still, in a strange way she liked this town. Despite its poverty and cruelties and contrasts, it was basic, fundamental, deep-rooted in the soil.

  When she reached the cross street leading to St. Jude’s she was tempted to turn down it just to walk past the church again. But the Church, like Charles, was in her past. She was deliberately planning this thing she intended to do, covering every possible avenue of error, examining any angle that might trip her. And as far as she knew, unless it was included in the changing order that Judge Harris had mentioned, the Sixth Commandment was still in effect.

  The bank building was modern and completely air-conditioned. The foyer was delightfully cool. The elevator starter was in a white uniform. Dona tried to remember if the signs she had seen were on the second or third floor windows. She asked the starter.

  He held the door of an elevator for her. “On the second floor, Miss. The suite of offices in the front of the building.”

  Jack Ames’ reception room was painted a light pastel and furnished in cool-looking green leather and rattan. Beyond it, through an open door, Dona could see a larger office, paneled in wood, of which one entire wall was lined with leather-bound books. The receptionist, a pleasant-faced woman with prematurely white hair, stood up as Dona entered.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Miss?”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Ames,” Dona told her.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Mr. Ames is in court right now and will be for another hour. Would you care to wait?” As Dona debated waiting, she added, “If it’s urgent or important, you might catch him in Judge Moran’s chambers. I believe court is recessed at the moment.”

  “It’s not that urgent,” Dona said. “I have some shopping to do. I’ll come back later.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE SUPER-MARKET was in the middle of the block, cooled by enormous ceiling fans and filled with strange smells and unfamiliar brand names. There were pearly grits, corn and waterground meal. The meat had a blanched look. Great slabs of white meat called pig-pork, mounds of pig tails and pig livers, shiny tin pails labeled, Chitlings — 2 pounds — 36 cents, were on display. Even the fish were strange. Grunts, catfish, brim, snapper throats. The produce counters were piled high with collards, okra, turnip greens, black-eyed peas, small fruits resembling miniature pomegranates that the counter girl said were Cattley guavas.

  Dona pushed her wire cart through narrow aisles, flanked by gleaming mounds of canned goods and stacked one-hundred-pound sacks of sugar and flour. What she thought were corn stalks turned out to be sugar cane.

  All she wanted was a loaf of bread, a pound of coffee, two pounds of sugar, some butter, a quart of milk and a package of breakfast cereal.

  She found sugar and coffee, an unfamiliar brand with chicory added, milk and butter in a refrigerated case, then a table piled with loaves of bread, and a long shelf filled with familiar packaged breakfast foods. As she waited in line to check out, the woman behind her smiled, “You’re new in town, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Dona admitted, “I am.”

  “Staying at one of the lakes?”

  “That’s right.”

  The woman wasn’t prying. She was merely being friendly. “That’s the way things go, I guess. We live half a mile from a lake, one of the prettiest in the county. Good fishing, a nice beach. But when Joe gets his vacation, what do we do? We drive hundreds of miles to Panama City or Biloxi, so Joe can go deep-sea fishing and the kids can swim in the Gulf. You know the old saw, the one about greener pastures.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Dona said.

  Her purchase totaled two dollars and seven cents, a third of what the same amount of groceries would be in Chicago. The girl at the check-out counter was capable and friendly. As she gave Dona her change, she smiled, “Come again.”

  The boy who sacked her items insisted on carrying them to her car and refused a tip. Despite what the coffee shop waitress and the Courier cameraman had said, there were decided advantages in living in a town like Blairville.

  It was hot standing in the sun. She turned and entered a Rexall drug store next door to the super-market. It smelled and looked like all drug stores. The shelves and counters were filled and stacked with items not included in the pharmacopoeia, such as sun glasses, beach balls, cheap records, electric fans and toasters, cosmetics, plastic dishes, boxed candies, and toys of every kind. Two revolving wire racks held paperbound books and a wall rack held magazines and comic books. Via a piped-in recording over some radio station, Charlie Applewhite was singing Cross Over The Bridge.

  Laughing, giggling, talking boys and girls occupied most of the booths, sipping sodas and cokes, over jokes known only to themselves.

  The fountain girl was rushed. It was some minutes before she took Dona’s order. She sipped her large Coca-Cola slowly through two straws. The drug store was as good a place as any in which to kill time. After the glare and heat of the street, the store seemed dim and cool.

  Dona had almost finished her coke when she heard a familiar voice.

  “Another Bromo, please, Miss Duval.”

  The counter girl laughed. “What, again?”

  Dona looked in the back mirror, then down it to the far end. Beau was standing just beyond a small sign that read, COLORED.

  The fountain girl kidded him as she prepared his Bromo. “You must have pitched a good one, Beau.”

  Beau’s voice was still deep and rich but there was no inflection in it. “Yes.”

  “Got hold of some of that real old Delta Dew, eh?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Down in one of the jukes?”

  “Yes, Miss Duval.”

  The girl gave him his change. “It must have been a cutie. That’s the fourth Bromo you’ve had today. What happened to your face? Did you just get in a fight or did her husband come home too soon?”

  Beau said what was expected of him. “Her husband came home too soon.”

  He finished his drink and limped slowly down the aisle toward the front of the store. Dona continued to look in the mirror, conscious that Beau had stopped behind her, ostensibly to put his change in his pocket.

  His voice, pitched low, was meant for her alone. “Don’t turn around, Miss Santos. Please. But thank you. Thank you very much.”

  Dona inclined her head over the cracked ice in her glass to indicate that she heard him and Beau went on. One of the youths in the front booth, slightly older than his companions, stopped him. “Hey, Beau. Guess what?”

  “What?” Beau asked.

  “I got my induction notice this morning.”

  “You pleased or sorry?”

  “I can’t decide. Do I get any choice as to which branch of the service I go into?”

  Beau said, “They change the rules so fast I can’t keep up with them.”

  “If I get a choice, I think I’ll put in for the Air Force.”

  “That’s a good branch,” Beau said. “There would have been a lot more casualties in Korea if it
hadn’t been for the fly-boys. Of course, I’m partial to the Infantry.”

  The youth laughed. “I don’t know why you should be. Well, see you when I get back, Beau.”

  “When you come back,” Beau said. “And good luck, Mr. Roberts.” He lifted his hand in a smart salute and limped out of the store.

  An immediate argument developed in the booth as to how many times he’d been wounded and how much leg Beau had left. One youth insisted it was cut off in the middle of the thigh. Another claimed the amputation was below the knee.

  A vacuous brunette sitting in the booth sniggered, “What you goin’ to do if you draw a nigger officer, Tom?”

  Roberts was impatient with her. “You’re about ten years out of date, Dolly. There’s no segregation in the Army any more. Besides, if this cold war turns hot and my captain should be colored and half as much a man as Beau, I’d sure as hell rather have him for me than against me.”

  “Watch your language,” the girl said, sharply. “I’ll have you know there are ladies present.”

  The boy made a pretense of looking around the store. “Where? For God’s sake, tell me where? I’ve always wanted to see a lady in this town.”

  Dona waited until the group left the booth, then walked out into the sun again. The sidewalk still teemed with people. Most of them had finished their shopping and were merely walking, stopping now and then to talk with people they knew. Dona walked to her car and leaned against the hot metal, trying to figure some way to pass another half-hour. She considered returning to the comfort of Ames’ air-conditioned reception room but she didn’t want to seem too eager about the gun permit. It was always some little thing that tripped one. She knew that much from listening to Charles discuss murder cases on which he’d worked.

  Then she saw the tag tied to a spoke of the steering wheel and walked around the car to see what it was. It was a ticket for over-parking. She looked through the car at the meter. She’d been parked for less than forty-five minutes but red was showing on the dial. Either the meter was out of order or she hadn’t twisted the lever hard enough.

  She swore under her breath and asked a farmer admiring the Cadillac where the police station was.