I drew back, mortified. How had I let myself go this way? Graham, however, was grinning from ear to ear. Outside the theater he asked if I’d like to go to the Stemwinder for a beer.
I shook my head too emphatically and we settled on a soft drink at Exley’s Drug Store. As we sat opposite each other in the booth, I was still too embarrassed to look him in the eye. Our conversation was stiff.
“Let’s go for a drive,” he suggested when we were back in his roadster.
As he headed up Seven Mile Mountain, I was still upset over my performance in the theater. What must he think of me? What does he expect of me now out here in the night? Why didn’t I insist that he take me home?
Graham drove up the twisting road past the Hunting and Fishing Club to Lookout Point, from which our family had first viewed Alderton. There were already a half dozen cars parked there, couples in each car. I was getting panicky. “Please, Graham, let’s go home.”
He stared at me a moment. “I don’t like this spot either.”
He drove back down the winding mountain road. We’d gone perhaps four miles when he suddenly turned to the right onto a dirt road. He drove a few hundred yards, then pulled to the side, stopped the engine and snapped off the lights.
“Know where we are, Julie? Just ahead is McKeever’s Bluff. That’s where he brings his special railroad car.”
Graham moved close beside me. “Let’s pretend we’re back in the theater,” he said brightly. He put his arm around me. I pulled away.
“What’s the matter, Julie? You give me one signal in the movie, another one now. Is my breath bad?”
“No.”
“Do I have B.O.?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s start all over again.”
As he reached for me, I groped for the door handle and the door sprang open. I stepped out and began walking back toward the main road. Graham started the car, turned around, drew abreast of me.
“It’s a long walk, Julie.”
I kept going.
“Get in the car. I promise not to get within two feet of you.” I did and he kept his promise.
It was a miserable experience. Obviously, where men were concerned, I had everything to learn.
As Miss Cruley had predicted, the ancient Babcock printing press, vintage 1903, needed careful repairing almost every week. Dean Fleming kept the intricate contraption going, and also regularly adjusted and cleaned the old hand-operated Ludlow press used for job printing. He oiled the cutter, which trimmed the edges of newsprint, made minor repairs to the typewriters, started the coal furnace in the basement when the building supervisor dawdled.
When Mr. Fleming first volunteered to help, the Editor could not have guessed that so much work would be needed. But his unpaid assistant never faltered in his commitment; in fact, he worked more than the promised hours when necessary, so that Dad was soon talking about his maintenance man almost reverently. As friendship grew between the two men, they had long talks in the Editor’s office.
One day in early December I overheard the Editor querying Mr. Fleming about local churches. “We’ve tried several,” Dad said, “haven’t found one we like. What church do you attend, Dean?”
“My sister and I like our little Yancyville Community Church. Probably too far away for you. Have you tried Baker Memorial?”
“Louise and I went there once. They have no pastor.”
“Oh, but they do now. A young man, full of fire. I think you’ll like him.”
As a result of this conversation, Dad decreed that the whole family was to go to Baker Memorial the following Sunday. I was annoyed to have to cancel plans for a drive with Margo. As we walked the six blocks to church, I found myself resenting Dean Fleming’s growing influence on our family.
Baker Memorial was on the corner of Main Street and Elm. We passed it every time we walked to downtown Alderton. The original stucco walls of the church must have been white, but years of Alderton’s soft-coal grime had turned them a leprous gray. The leprous look came from huge bubbles or blisters in the stucco. Clearly, they had proved too great a temptation for generations of boys walking past: every bubble within reach of a rock or stick had been punched into an open sore where dirt could gather.
Inside, however, the uncertain December sun filtering through the stained-glass windows laid patterns of soft color across the mahogany pews. And if the attractive interior was a surprise, the young preacher, Spencer Meloy, was even more so. He was tall, well over six feet, I guessed, had dark hair, dark-rimmed glasses, a lantern jaw, and a ready smile that transformed a rather angular face. A man in his twenties seemed too young to be the pastor of a prestigious church like Baker Memorial.
The Pileys, who attended Baker, had given Dad additional information about him. Spencer Meloy was the son of Judge Carleton Meloy of Philadelphia, a well-known lawyer and judge of the circuit court. The young pastor had come to Alderton in early November, leaving a small, 150-member church in a Philadelphia suburb. Meloy’s name had been given to the Pulpit Committee by Thomas McKeever Sr., president of Yoder Steel and the most influential member of the church. (Was there anything in town this man didn’t run?) McKeever’s long friendship with Judge Meloy seemed to be the deciding factor—plus the youthful pastor’s vigorous, enthusiastic preaching style and, Dad suspected, the low salary he was willing to take.
“Vincent Piley says that Meloy’s sermons have been controversial,” my father reported. “And apparently he’s raised some eyebrows by inviting workingmen and Negroes to church. I gather that the church officers selected him because he is so personable and, they thought, young enough to be malleable. Now they’re not so sure.”
The pleasant voice from the pulpit was reading Scripture:
He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted . . . to preach deliverance to the captives.
Soon the pastor was into his sermon, describing village life in Jesus’ day. Why, I wondered, did I have such trouble keeping my mind on sermons? I could get excited about the plot of a story, or racial injustice, or even about a concept like the League of Nations, yet never experience that same kind of involvement with preaching, not even my own father’s, back in Timmeton.
Then I noticed something. This new preacher may have invited workers and Negroes to attend services, but I could not find one person who fit these categories. The congregation seemed to be made up entirely of middle- or upper-class white people. Just like Timmeton. Unbidden, unwanted, a host of memories crowded out the softly colored sanctuary in Pennsylvania, brought back those painful last years in Alabama . . .
It had begun with Mother searching for someone to make some curtains and help with household mending. I had first seen Mattie Howard when she appeared at our house one day to measure our front windows. The tall, dignified black woman was not only an expert seamstress but also a teacher in her Ebenezer Baptist Church’s Sunday School.
A few months after she came to sew for us, Dad had somehow paved the way for Mattie and two women from other Negro churches in our area to attend a national Christian Education meeting in Indianapolis. All three had come back to Timmeton with enthusiastic plans to improve their Sunday School curricula. They invited Mother, who taught a women’s Bible class at Dad’s church, to meet with their teachers once a week as they launched their new programs.
Mother agreed. Since the Negro churches were small and scattered, she suggested the basement room of our own church for this weekly meeting. My father needed the permission of his Board of Elders for this use of church property.
Dad reported to us that at first the opposition seemed mild and good-humored: chivalrous objection to how much of Mother’s time the teacher-training course would take; the practical necessity of keeping church heating and lighting expenses down by limiting evening meetings.
Then one of Timmeton’s outstanding lawyers and a close friend of my f
ather’s had risen to his feet and, according to Dad, said something like this: “Now, Ken, we all realize how openhearted you are to people. But you’re a Virginian. What you must understand is that the ratio of coloreds to whites here in Alabama is at least four to one. That’s always handed us special problems. After the Great War, Negro soldiers came back from overseas restless and ready to cause big trouble. We’ve had to be on guard. A thing like this will boomerang every time. You’re a good man, Ken, and I want to protect you and your family. I vote a flat No against letting down the bars this way.”
My father had obviously been nettled. “Do you mean to tell me that intelligent men like you would make a decision like this on the basis of fear? What are you afraid of? An uprising sparked by Mattie Howard?
“Look here, I love you guys. You’re my friends. But gentlemen, you’re missing the point. Jesus Christ gave us clear instructions: ‘Feed My sheep . . . feed My lambs.’ All Mattie Howard has asked for is a little feeding. Isn’t that the business of this church—any church?”
Silence. Two or three of the men present, I gathered, had looked decidedly uncomfortable. But as my father studied the faces of the others, he saw only a sudden and inexplicable hardness of heart in men whose basic nature was generous and loving. He told us later that his faith in the ability of the Christian church to change men’s hearts began to drain away at that point.
In the days that followed, although my parents tried to hold their conversations away from us children, I knew they were upset. Mother then suggested that she go to Mattie’s own Ebenezer Church to conduct the weekly teacher’s training class. Surely no one could object to that.
Wrong again. One of the elders got wind of it, talked with the other men on the Church Session, then came to see my father at his church office one afternoon. The elder had been polite but firm. The wife of their pastor could not teach a class in any Negro church. If she did so, she would end up being the most gossiped-about woman in Timmeton; the officers of the church would then be helpless to protect her good name and reputation.
“Are you going to let them do that to us?” Mother asked, as angry as I had ever seen her.
In the end Father had capitulated to his elders because, as he pointed out, under church law he had no choice. But looking back, I wondered if this hadn’t been the beginning of the series of things that went so very, very wrong for Dad. A few months later came that teaching mission in Louisiana, the attack of malaria, the hospitalization . . .
Belatedly I reined in my runaway thoughts. Spencer Meloy was about to close his sermon. And he seemed to be looking directly at me:
“So this morning let’s take a good look at the way our church is going, be ruthlessly honest with ourselves. Are we preaching the gospel to the poor? Really ministering to the brokenhearted among us? What about the captives of all kinds—captives of alcohol, of disease, of racial prejudice?
“Where would Jesus be in our town? I’ll tell you where. He would accept invitations to dinner at the wealthiest homes—without hesitation, gladly. But most of the time He’d be down in the Lowlands, yes, even in and out of the bars, seeing what burdens He could lift from the bruised shoulders of men.”
Mr. Meloy lowered his voice.
“My friends, you and I together in this church are making a new start. Let’s have the courage to forget traditional barriers that divide them from us. We have to be willing to forge new paths if we would follow the Master.”
Something stirred in me. No pastor would have preached this kind of sermon in Timmeton. For the first time, I felt a rush of affection for my new home town.
On the way out of church, Mr. and Mrs. Piley joined us and introduced us to some of the members. Among them was a florid-faced man in his mid-sixties, balding except for a white fringe around his head. His thickening figure carried, with unaffected grace, a suit of the finest woolen fabric I had ever seen.
“Good morning, Mr. McKeever,” Mr. Piley greeted him deferentially. “How is your family today, sir?”
“My son and his wife are in Pittsburgh for the weekend. I’m here with my grandson.”
Bryan McKeever and I had already nodded to each other. He was in my math and English classes, a boy who had a history of trouble in various private schools: poor grades, unexcused absences, drinking. Small for his age, Bryan was the only boy who had asked me for a date (which I had declined) in the months that followed my humiliating evening with Graham Gillin. The word had spread through school, Margo told me, that I was not very friendly.
“Mr. McKeever,” Mr. Piley went on, “I’d like you to meet Kenneth Wallace, new owner of the Sentinel.”
The two men shook hands, stepping to one side so that the line could move on, I found myself fascinated with McKeever’s face. The skin was rutted, dotted with small brown blotches, the gray eyes penetrating, stormy. I learned later that he had been a widower for the past four years.
“You’re a man of courage, Mr. Wallace. Newspapers haven’t done very well in Alderton.”
“Why is that, Mr. McKeever?”
“Because they’ve been run by idiots.” His eyes bored so fiercely into my father’s that Dad stepped back. “I hope you can learn from their failures.”
“I hope so too.”
“By the way”—those intense eyes never seemed to blink—“Yoder might have a printing order for you. Get in touch with my son. We’re preparing a new booklet for our employees.”
My father was in high spirits as we walked home. “I like this church and I like Spencer Meloy. And a Yoder Steel print job! What a windfall!”
If the company was laying off men and slowing production, I found myself wondering, why a booklet? That wasn’t going to put food on workers’ tables.
But Dad was so elated that I kept my thoughts to myself.
It was doubtful that the Sentinel would survive the winter. Over five hundred people had dropped their subscriptions since Dad took over. He continued sending the paper to hundreds more who didn’t pay their bills. Somehow we got through December, including a very lean Christmas. Dad ran out of money in January and again the bank refused to give him a loan.
One mid-January morning the Editor told us at breakfast that this week’s would be the final edition. No one said a word.
In school that day I didn’t hear a thing that went on in any of my classes. That afternoon I opened the door to the Sentinel, dreading the I-told-you-so lecture I expected from Emily Cruley. But the green-visored head was bent to a paper-cluttered desk.
The Editor was in his office, a dazed look on his face. “Dean Fleming came here this morning with a check for five hundred dollars.”
I stared at my father, speechless.
“He said it should get us through the winter.”
“A loan?” I asked numbly.
“Don’t know. Dean just handed me the check and left.” When my father began to sob, I did too.
Disaster had been averted for the Wallace family at the very last moment, but not for others throughout the nation. Thousands of businesses closed that bleak winter of 1934-35. The recovery program was getting some people back to work in the big cities, but in smaller places like Alderton, the economic malaise hung on.
My father had contacted Tom McKeever Jr. by phone the day after the conversation with his father at Baker Memorial. The younger McKeever was encouraging and told the Editor that Yoder would soon be in touch about an order. Weeks passed, however, and nothing happened.
Since Dean’s money had been earmarked to save the Sentinel, Dad decreed that none of it could be diverted to family needs. Meat disappeared totally from the table; soup and crackers, macaroni and spaghetti became our standard fare. My own worst moment came one Saturday when Mother had an abscessed tooth—dental visits were out of the question—and we were without cash for the week’s groceries. I had to ask for credit at the A & P. The store manager sighed wearily at my request, then gave me a form that required my father’s signature before the groceries would be
released.
Our plight was doubly frustrating because, it seemed to me, we’d come so close to succeeding, these first months in Alderton. The Editor had worked days, nights and weekends to learn everything he could about Alderton. He had run a series of articles on community services: snow removal, hospital care, how to use the library, flood protection. His editorials called for a job information center, more public parking facilities, a town beautification program. Since ads were few, there was plenty of room in the four-page Sentinel for local color items and service features.
To establish a personal relationship with his subscribers, Dad had been calling on a certain number each week, often receiving compliments on how lively the paper had become.
As for me, my own private fantasy had taken flight. I loved my after-school work on the Sentinel, but my long-range dreams went far beyond writing for a weekly newspaper. Only in my most secret thoughts could I admit the full scope of it: I wanted to be an author, a real author like Emily Bronte or Louisa May Alcott or Ellen Glasgow or Mary Roberts Rinehart. That I was a high school girl in a town stuck away in the mountains of western Pennsylvania did not matter. I would become the best proofreader and researcher I could possibly be—and hold on to my dream.
Sometimes I wondered how and when this dream had started. For as far back as I could remember, the sound of words, the reading of stories, even the handling of books had not been merely a delight—it had been irresistible enchantment.
A scene from Timmeton often rose in my mind. I was a very little girl, standing on a kitchen chair and reciting Robert Louis Stevenson’s verses. I could still remember my ecstatic, almost sensuous pleasure in the music of rhythms tripping from my tongue . . .
Julie Page 6
