Circling around a crowd, me and Beth slowed and stopped to stare at all the damage. We were both surprised. The area was a mess. Two buildings had fallen partway down, and a few others looked like they might do the same. The biggest shop, the grocery store, had lost its windows. A rowboat could have floated through. Out in front of the scratched and nicked doorway, there were drippy sacks of flour and sugar piled up in heaps. On the grass, next to a muddy stack of cans, there was a dead fish, but it wasn’t all that neat to see.
Gawking at the clutter and all the people struggling to save things, my stomach turned, and I stopped thinking about Mr. Dunn and the farmer who’d spotted me.
Beth said, “This isn’t as fun as I thought.”
“Naw, it isn’t.”
Watching, Beth shook her head. “Where’re the blacks gonna shop for food?”
“Maybe they’ll open an emergency store?”
“You think they might have to shop at the A&P or Douglas and Johns?”
I said, “Nobody would let ’em.”
“I bet,” she agreed.
Covered from head to toe in sparkling orange mud, one of the black men glanced up in our direction. Placing a soggy box on the ground, he took off his cap and started up the road toward where we were standing. As he got closer, my stomach churned on account of thinking that he was going to yell at the crowd for spying.
Stopping a few yards away, the man took out a red, cowboy handkerchief from a back pocket. He wiped at smeary marks of clay on his face and nodded at me and Beth. “Ma’ams,” he said.
It took a second, but I whispered, “Mister?”
Waving a dirty finger in my direction, but not right at me, he said, “My name’s Mitchell, Miss Carmichael. You don’t know me none, but I know your daddy ’cause my daddy works the Carmichael property out near Clio.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Anyways, for years I seen you in town with your daddy. I seen you up near the dry goods store. That’s why I come up here to say hello. I know who you is and I know ’bout what you said in the Bennettsville Times this week. I just wanna tell ya it was a nice thing. It was, even though it won’t do nothing.”
Surprised, I asked, “Did you read it?”
He laughed in a loud, strong way. “Can’t read a lick, but word about your story been going round. People knows what you done, and they ’preciate it. Thing about it is, most folks don’t got any idea what you look like.”
I nodded.
“It’s true. If they did, they’d say hello, ’cause people are grateful for the effort. It’s the first time I ever heard of anything like that getting writ up in any paper round here.” He snickered. “Can you imagine a black man driving a Cadillac in Marlboro County? That’s all right.”
We stared at each other. “Where are you gonna get your groceries now?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Somewheres,” he said.
“Do you own that grocery store?”
“Naw. But I know what’s good for me. I know we gotta get it back on its feet.” Scrubbing a hand across his rough hair, he told us, “Well, gotta get back to working.” He turned away slow.
Beth called after him. “Did you find a ditch eel in the grocery building?”
Over his shoulder, he answered, “Naw, it was in the hardware store.”
“Did anyone get bit?” she asked.
Twisting around, Mitchell smiled. “No one did. Thank goodness.” Waving over his head, he carried himself back to the collapsing building, where he stopped and talked to people who were hauling out goods.
At the Fairchilds’ house, their cook put a picnic basket together for me and Beth. Once it was arranged, we carried it up the street and toward the horse fountain in front of the courthouse. Going along the sidewalk, I was less worried about people and what they thought of my newspaper story. Mitchell had made me feel better.
Flattening a blanket on the brown grass, Beth and me took a seat and watched the crowds of dusty people wander past. A little ways behind us, some farm kids played tag. They shouted and howled happily until one of them tore the crotch from his good pants. Crying, he left to find his family, his head bowed.
Beth said, “You think Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks ever argue about things?”
Not knowing much about either movie star, except that she’s beautiful and he’s handsome and good with swords, I thought about it for a second. “I bet they don’t ever.”
“Did you know they named their mansion Pickfair? It’s the first part of both their names, put together.”
My arms got goose-bumpy. “That’s nice.”
“Yeah. If I can’t meet a prince on account of living in America, marrying a movie star might be an all-right thing.”
“If he’s famous enough.”
“That’s what I mean, a famous movie star.”
“Maybe,” I told her. I thought for a few seconds, and asked, “Have you ever heard of any famous newspaper girls?”
“Naw, I haven’t ever.”
“Me neither.”
A horse and wagon clattered toward the fountain, and Beth and me hopped up from our blanket and met them by the stone water trough. The driver was a big man I’d seen a few times in my daddy’s store. Wearing a round hat and nice clothes that seemed small on him, especially near his stomach, he yanked the reins hard to stop his horses. Smiling, his wife adjusted a thick coat around her shoulders as their three boys wrastled in the back of the wagon.
“Hello, ma’am and sir,” me and Beth called. “Can we scratch your horses’ noses?”
The man shrugged. “When they done drinking,” he said, spitting snuff into a can.
Beth told the farm family, “They’re real pretty.”
The wife said, “We brush ’em a lot.”
“It looks that way,” I told her.
After we’d patted and patted those horses, they pulled away, and we sat back on our blanket and ate ham sandwiches and deviled eggs and biscuits with a dollop of jam. It was just past noon, and we drank lemonade and watched the Sanitary Café fill up with people while kids stood in line for the matinee at the Carolina Theater. Other families found their lunch baskets and blankets and spread a place for themselves on the cold lawn. A man with girls at the Murchison School settled his stuff alongside us, except that when he saw who I was, he moved across the yard. Mostly, though, everyone else who gathered to eat was friendly.
Me and Beth stayed there till about three o’clock in the afternoon, till we got chilly from a freezing wind that had kicked up. All together, we’d patted nearly fifty horses when, as we were getting ready to go, a family from Beth’s church brought their mares to the fountain. We ran over.
The man, Mr. Waddle, shooed us both. “Hey now, I ain’t interested in either a you two touching my horses.”
Taken aback, Beth said, “But, Mr. Waddle, you let us pat ’em last time.”
Hopping off his wagon, Mr. Waddle grabbed his mares by their harnesses and steered them to the water. “Here’s the situation. I ain’t gonna allow it no more. Your friend here, Miss Carmichael, she wrote a corrosive little article, and for that, I ain’t gonna allow her ta do nothing. Forget it!”
Mrs. Waddle tried to shush her husband by saying, “Please, Sammy.”
Mr. Waddle paid her no mind.
Once the horses were drinking, he said to me, “You gotta learn some respect, Darby Carmichael. If you don’t, you gonna have all manner of trouble come your way. You and your family lost friends this week, that’s fo’ sure. Your daddy, he lost some business, too.”
I slumped.
“You hear me talking to you? Y’understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, heading toward our blanket, which I imagined wrapping myself inside like I was the center part of a cigar. My thoughts flashed with pictures of Mr. Dunn scaring me that morning, and I shivered and felt like a little girl in a world of wolverines, McCall’s number-one meanest animal along with sharks. Getting to the blanket, I stood o
ver it like I was frozen. I stared down at the pattern of flowers and corn stalks, and slowly, like a door opening into a bright house, my brain got thinking. I stood there, and slowly, then faster, I got madder and madder at the likes of Mr. Waddle and Mr. Dunn. My courage, which must’ve been located beside my warm heart, caught a sudden, furious fire, and I spun about and was as bad-mannered as I ever was in my whole life. Fuming, I yelled, “Mr. Waddle!”
Surprised, he and his wife looked at me from where their horses drank.
Walking closer, I said, “You coulda told me you don’t agree with what I wrote, but I suppose you’re too mean and disrespectful to be friendly and you oughta be ashamed about that.”
Shocked, Mr. Waddle stepped away from his horses. “You best shut your bratty mouth, girl, ’fore I have a talk with your father.”
I said, “Mr. Waddle, I’m . . . I’m not the one being bratty. You’re playing like a big baby ’cause I think different than you. That’s brattiness. Not liking me for thinking different is being bratty.”
Mr. Waddle stepped from around the fountain, so that I cocked my legs to run. Out of shape like he was, though, he must have figured he would never catch me. Instead, he declared, “You best straighten yourself out, girl. You best learn yourself some respect.”
“You oughta,” I said back.
Glaring at me, Mr. Waddle climbed onto his wagon and grabbed up the reins. Giving his horses a swat, he brought them about and pulled away, heading down Main Street.
“Darby,” Beth said as we walked to her home.
“Yeah?”
“You shoulda ignored Mr. Waddle.”
“I know,” I said.
At Beth’s house, we shuffled upstairs to her room and sat for a while. I looked out her window and across Main Street. Surrounded with pretty trees, the houses looked like toys. “You wanna play with your dolls?”
From her bed, Beth said, “I suppose.”
I told her, “Don’t worry about Mr. Waddle. I’ll say it was me who was rude and impolite.”
“I don’t think my daddy’s gonna care.”
We got out her two prettiest dolls and, troubled as we were, we made up a crummy story about them losing an ivory hair comb. We looked in Beth’s garbage can and under her bed pillows and on top of her dresser. Finally we played like we found it on the floor by her baby doll crib. It was boring, but we got warm after being mostly cold all day, and at about four o’clock I told her I had to go back to my daddy’s store.
“Sorry I messed things up.”
“It’s all right,” she told me.
“I’m gonna tell your daddy it was me.”
“Best friends get in trouble together,” she said.
Leaving out the Fairchilds’ front door, I went down their walkway and turned and nearly ran into Chester and Mercury, who were clip-clopping along the sidewalk. They stopped, and behind them, downtown Bennettsville looked pretty in the fading, melting daylight.
“Hey, Darby,” Chester said, steam coming from his mouth.
“Hey, Chester.”
“Where you going?”
“To my daddy’s store.”
Wiping at his nose, he looked down. “You want me and Mercury to carry you up there?”
Smiling, I told him, “That’d be a nice thing to do.”
“Get on in.”
Riding in Chester’s wagon, teetering toward the Carmichael Block, I noticed how people grinned at us like I’d never caused an ounce of trouble in my whole life.
Chester cleared his throat. “Darby . . . your dress seems real clean.”
“It . . . it got washed last week.”
“It’s bright.”
I said, “Chester, your clothes are bright, too,” causing his neck and ears to turn red.
Downtown, everything had slowed from the day, and whole blocks were nearly empty of people. The stores were lit up pretty inside, and a few customers talked or looked around before heading for their farms or homes. It seemed like the only busy places left were the Sanitary Café and the Candy Kitchen.
Embarrassed about Chester complimenting my dress, I didn’t say any more till we got to my daddy’s store. When we were there, I climbed from out of his goat cart and told him, “Thanks.”
Shy, he looked at Mercury’s backside. “Darby, whenever you wanna ride, you just gotta ask. Any time is okay.”
“I’m gonna ride a lot,” I said. Then, embarrassed again, I shoved through the door and into Carmichael Dry Goods.
Standing behind the counter, my daddy was talking to a farmer.
I waved.
Daddy waved back. Then he led the man toward a lineup of things like hammers and saws. Wandering over to the register, I leaned my back against it. Russell was gone for the day, and the elevator’s doors were pushed wide open. For a few minutes, I watched my daddy talk to the farmer. Lifting my eyes, I searched across the street and looked at the People’s Bank. It was real nice out, with the sky above purple and smooth. My eyes flitted across some rooftops, just catching partial sight of a fast, dark automobile as it howled by on the street. Then, like the whole world slowed down, there was a series of booms and two front windows flashed and exploded glass.
Before I even knew what was happening, shattering sounds filled my ears, and among that terrible breaking rain, a brick skittered down an aisle and stopped against one of my feet. After that, everything went quiet except for more pieces of falling glass and my daddy’s breathing, which sounded almost exactly like a dog who’d run and run on a hot South Carolina day.
“Daddy?” I yelped.
The farmer shook himself, and glass fell from his shoulders. “You . . . you think we had an earthquake?”
Breathing hard, Daddy told him, “I don’t think so.” Then he asked me, “Darby . . . Darby, sweetheart, are you okay?”
Barely able to talk, I answered weakly, “I . . . guess.” I looked down at the cracked brick by the toe of my shoes and saw three big letters scraped into the top and sides. “KKK,” it read. Even though it was battered and chipped, I could see it as clear as day.
Bleeding from an arm, my daddy came over to me. “Darby, sweetie?”
Scared and holding a hand over my mouth, I pointed at the brick on the floor.
Meanwhile, the farmer stumbled down the aisle and sat on a spool of wire. “Lord,” he mumbled, shaking pieces of glass from his hair.
Outside, people hovered and peered in through the broken windows. What remained of the crowds along Main Street formed a half circle in front of my daddy’s store. More folks came out of the Candy Kitchen, the Sanitary Café, and even the Carolina Theater. Shopkeepers left their places and rushed over. Within five minutes, word had spread into nearby homes. Shortly, the group of kids who’d been watching people dig out the Gulf rushed up the hill to gawk. Behind them, moving carefully, were several black men.
Holding his injured arm, my daddy picked up one of the bricks and went to a broken window. With a shaky voice, he asked, “Did anyone see who it was? Did anyone see anything at all?”
People shook their heads. A man shouted, “It was a gray car. That’s all I noticed.”
Dropping his chin, Daddy stared down at the glass shards around his feet. His jaw grew tight and clenched, and, lifting his head, he yelled, “You know what? You know why this happened?”
No one said anything, but they all knew. I could tell.
“It’s because of race,” my daddy declared, holding up the brick so that people could read what it said. “It’s about blacks and whites and what people believe. That’s why this happened.” He paused before saying more. “To think that my daughter and a customer were in here when these bricks were thrown, and both could have been injured or killed because the Klan doesn’t agree with an article in the paper. To me, that’s just unacceptable. That’s cowardly.”
Not very many people seemed to agree.
Shook up and shivery, I shuffled down an aisle and, cracking hunks of glass beneath my feet, climbed onto th
e ledge of a shattered window. From there, I looked out at the crowd.
Daddy said, “The Klan’s trying to prevent free speech about an issue we all know we’re going to have to address. We all know we’ve gotta talk about it.”
Somebody yelled, “You got sharecroppers all over your farm, Sherm, and you’re saying this stuff?”
“I am, yeah,” Daddy called back. “And I do have tenant farmers. I’m no saint. But I’ve begun to see something over the last few weeks. I understand the situation a little better, and I know things have got to give. Nobody should live fearful or hungry, not when we can do something about it. We’ve got to allow folks a chance to make a life in Marlboro County. As it is, blacks don’t have any hope of doing that. I’m arguing that it’s our job as human beings to be decent and humane and see that they get some.”
“You wanna give ’em too much,” somebody hollered back.
“You’re wrong,” my daddy called back. “No matter what you think . . .” he said, and all the sudden his voice trailed off.
That’s when my eyes caught on Turpin Dunn, who was a few inches taller than the other tallest person in the crowd. He was talking to the Klan man and some other people. Seeing them I turned and called out for Daddy’s attention, but he had already passed through the busted window. He was going right after them.
Mr. Dunn rose up, and shouted, “Come on! Come take your whipping, Sherman!”
Somebody shoved at Mr. Dunn’s crowd. They shoved back, causing everyone to start jostling angrily. Then, his shirt untucked and half unbuttoned, Sheriff McDonnell rushed around the corner and plunged into the crowd.
Right in front of me, it seemed like the entire town was ready to break into a horrible, giant fight. It seemed like, because of my article, somebody might get killed. Scared and guilty, I started screaming. I screamed as loud and strong as I could, over and over. “Stop it! Just stop it!” I shrieked.
It took a minute or so, but a number of people glanced my way. Seeing them, I kept on yelling, so that the rest of the mob eventually looked over, too, including my daddy and Mr. Dunn. Then, surprised I’d gotten everyone’s attention, I wondered what I was going to tell them. For a short time, I tried to think of things, but my brain wasn’t working like normal. So instead of thinking, I let words come from my mouth. “Don’t . . . don’t you know it isn’t good to fight? Don’t you know it doesn’t make sense? We oughta treat everyone nice. That’s all I was saying in my newspaper story, that we gotta be considerate. And that isn’t something to fight about.”
Darby Page 14
