Pulling down the visor of his truck, Floyd reread his saying for the day: IT’S NO GOOD BEING A MENTAL GIANT IF YOU REMAIN AN EMOTIONAL PYGMY. As he drove up and down Gallatin, committing the saying to memory, trading nods with folks as they emptied the stores and headed on home for supper, Floyd’s spirits gradually began to lift.
He gave himself a little pep talk. Attitude was everything, and he needed to keep his on track. Couldn’t let this Delia thing get him down again. He had overcome worse. Take yesterday’s saying, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re going to be right.” It was all a matter of not getting detoured into negativity.
By the time he got to the barbershop and stepped in through the door, tripping the little bell, there was already a crowd gathered. Hayes Alcorn, Brother Dear, and half a dozen others looked up and nodded at Floyd, and said their heys and howdys. The old shoeshine boy grinned his usual grin. Nobody looked at Floyd with the least bit of suspicion, not even the sheriff, who sat slouched in his chair acting bored.
The others quickly returned to the amusement at hand, making fun of the new Yankee in town who was at that moment up in the chair getting his hair cut by Slats. As usual, Marvin was taking a ribbing about his accent.
Hayes Alcorn was the one talking now. “Say ‘school’ again, Marvin.”
Marvin said it, making it sound like two words. Everybody howled.
“Y’all hear that?” Hayes said. “‘Skew all.’ Don’t that beat all.”
Marvin joined in the laughter. He even looked like a foreigner, with his swarthy complexion and severely pocked face, probably from some northern affliction. Marvin had married a local girl and got the job managing the Nehi bottling plant in Greenwood. But he was a real sport, never taking himself too seriously.
Floyd took the chair next to Hayes and felt so relieved he decided to join in. “What’s that thing on top of your house, Marvin?” Floyd asked.
“Roof,” Marvin said good-naturedly. There was another round of laughter.
“Sounds like a dog barking, don’t it?” Floyd said with a chuckle. “Ruff. Ruff.”
Marvin cocked his head so Slats could get the stiff little hairs on the side of his neck. “Now that you mention it,” Marvin said, “a Negro family who lived in our town pronounced it that way. I think they were from down South.”
An ugly silence gripped the barbershop. It was Hayes who finally spoke up. “A neee-gro?” he said derisively. “What’s that?”
Marvin’s face reddened. “Negro. The colored. You know.”
“How many neee-groes lived in that town of yours in New York?” Hayes asked, dead serious.
“Illinois.”
“Same thing.”
Slats whisked the back of Marvin’s neck. It was almost quiet enough to hear his falling hair hit the floor.
“There were two families, I believe,” Marvin answered carefully. They all shook their heads in amazement.
“Well, you ain’t no expert then, are you?” Hayes said. “What we got down here is nigruhs.”
Then Hayes glanced over to the shoeshine stand. “That right, Ben?”
The balding colored man who had been sitting there quietly smiled bashfully and said, “That’s right, Mr. Hayes.”
“See,” Hayes said. “We expert at nigralogy.”
Trying again, Marvin said carefully, “Nig-gruhs. Is that how you say it?”
Hayes slapped his leg and guffawed. “We gone make a Mississippi boy outa you yet, Marvin. You know, you can’t just marry into it.”
There was an immediate burst of relieved laughter from the crowd. Slats carefully loosened the barber’s sheet from around Marvin’s neck and then whipped the cloth in the air with a loud crack. Snippets of coarse black hair rained on the floor.
Marvin paid Slats for the haircut and bid the group good-bye, chuckling to himself and repeating, “Nig-gruh. Nig-gruh,” as he walked out the door.
At that moment Shep Howard, the insurance agent, walked in with Gaylon King, the publisher of the Hopalachie Courier. They took chairs along the wall with the others.
Hayes Alcorn rose to his feet, which everybody always joked was a quick trip for Hayes, considering how short he was. “I think that’s everybody. Slats, would you mind pulling the blinds? It’s time we started up.”
Hayes stepped up into the barber’s chair and looked down with great satisfaction upon the gathering of county leaders. Not a hair over five-foot-four, he was a man who enjoyed being looked up to. Even though he was Princeton-educated, he took every opportunity to prove to people he was still one of them, only more so. That included speaking as if he’d never got out of high school.
While Slats pulled the blinds, Ben hurriedly packed away his tins of polish, trying his best not to make a sound. He carefully folded his blue apron, laid it on the shoeshine chair, and then moved like a phantom across the shop floor, opening the door in a manner that kept the bell from ringing. Though the day was fair, Ben stuffed his fists in his pockets and hunched up his shoulders as if he were stepping out into a bitter wind. Slats locked the door behind the old man.
Hayes cleared his throat. “Before we get started, I want to thank y’all for the prayers and all the kindness you’ve shown to my wife, Pearl, the Senator, and me. And I’m sure I can speak for Billy Dean and Miss Hertha, too. You-all made the unbearable a bit more bearable.”
A quiet murmur rose up from the group of men as they crossed and uncrossed their arms and shifted in their chairs. Again Floyd imagined all the eyes were now on him and that Hayes was about to dramatically point a finger and accuse him of illicit test drives with his niece.
To Floyd’s relief, Hayes turned his attention to Billy Dean. “And I think we should continue to keep the sheriff in our prayers as he pursues the monster responsible.”
The sheriff, who was sitting cross-legged, slouched down in his chair, did no more than nod in Hayes’s direction, seemingly more interested in flicking the lid of his cigarette lighter.
After Hayes let a little memorial silence pass, he announced, “Well, that brings us around to why I asked y’all to come today.” He reached down and gave the lever on the chair a little pump, sending him up a couple of inches, and then continued. “All this integration mess coming out of Washington, D.C., is giving the nigruhs ideas that they can get away with other things. Take what’s going on over in Alabama right this minute. One solitary nigruh woman refused to take her rightful place in the back of the bus. And now not a single nigruh in Montgomery has ridden a city bus for nearly a year. How she do that? Not by herself, you can be sure. They being organized against us, gentlemen. And it’s not just Alabama. Y’all know as good as me this talk about equality is nothing but a Jewish-Communist conspiracy. A way to mongrelize America by letting the nigruhs have their way with our women.” Hayes let the obvious sink in.
Was Hayes implying that Delia had been molested by a colored man? A surge of feeling for Delia welled up in Floyd. He gripped the arm of the metal chair and tried to think of something positive to stem the sadness. Well, at least they were looking for a colored man, he told himself. That got him off the hook. Then he hated himself for thinking it.
Hayes continued, “Seems every other county in Mississippi has already formed them a Citizens’ Council to resist it at a local level. Now, Delphi, being the progressive town we are, needs to get on the bandwagon before we get left behind. I think it’s up to us as forward-thinking county leaders to get the ball rolling.”
Denton Prevost, who had planting interests in the Delta alongside the Columns, asked, “How’s the Senator going to feel about this council thing? I can say for a fact, he don’t abide the Klan in this county.”
Hayes nodded. “You right about that. Why, many a time I myself have heard the Senator say, ‘Hayes, the only thing worse than the Klan in their white sheets is the Supreme Court in their black ones. Neither one,’ he’d say, ‘got no business telling me what to do with my niggers.’”
There w
as a round of appreciative laughter for the Senator’s sentiments and Hayes’s fine impersonation—laughter from everybody except the sheriff. Floyd was keeping a close eye on him, and right now Billy Dean seemed bored to tears. As Floyd watched, the sheriff lit a cigarette and inhaled, blowing a jet of smoke up at Hayes in his barber’s chair throne. It might have been judged an aggressive gesture if Billy Dean’s expression revealed anything other than pure indifference.
Hayes cranked himself above the cloud and continued. “I know for a fact, if the Senator wasn’t grieving, he’d be here with us this evening, lending his support. You see,” he said, “the Citizens’ Council is not the Klan. We’re not a bunch of yahoos out to lynch nigruhs. We are a legitimate association of civic leaders who will work with the Sovereign State of Mississippi to protect its constitutional right to be led by white people.” He paused to survey the group face by face, and then concluded, “We’ll have the full support of the state and its governing bodies, as well as the complete backing of my brother-in-law, the Senator. We’re talking respectable.”
“Like the Rotary?” Floyd asked hopefully. He sure didn’t want to be involved in anything mean-spirited.
“Yes,” Hayes heartily agreed. “Exactly. Upright, patriotic men operating by the full light of day in the community’s best interest. Why, just between the eleven of us here plus the Senator, we can evict, cancel credit, cut off commodities, or fire anybody who wants to make trouble. No need for lynching anymore. This is a new day for Mississippi.” Hayes paused while a murmur of agreement rippled among the men.
“Why, over in Indianola, they got it locked up so tight that if a nigruh even starts thinking about voting he has to leave the county to earn penny one. And it’s all on the upright. No violence. Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”
Not bothering to look up, Billy Dean stubbed his cigarette on the sole of his boot and yawned. “Yep,” he said. “That’s the way to do it, awright. Lawful.”
Floyd noticed Brother Dear nodding vigorously, throwing his vote firmly on the side of nonviolence. He didn’t know what it was about some of these people in Hopalachie County. Back in the hills there was a lynching now and then, but these Delta people were damn near nigger-crazy. Talking about how the colored wanted to take over the schools and the churches and the bedrooms. To hear them tell it, every white woman in the county was in danger of waking up one morning and finding herself impregnated with a colored baby.
On the other side of the coin, it certainly was an honor to have been asked to be a founding member of this thing. The way Hayes explained it, maybe this Citizens’ Council wouldn’t be so bad. What harm could it do? It sure wouldn’t hurt business any.
“Well, if we all in agreement,” Hayes said, “I think we should start by electing officers and then plan a recruiting drive to get the rest of the county involved.”
Floyd even took vice president.
Floyd stuck close to the sheriff after the meeting broke up, pretending to be going in the same direction. As Billy Dean reached for the door of his cruiser, Floyd stopped in his tracks and snapped his fingers. “Sheriff!” he called out. “Something come to me this here second. Something that must of slipped my mind before.” Floyd hurried over to where the sheriff stood waiting for his revelation.
Floyd began talking in a rush. “Delia was at the dealership one day last week looking to trade in, and she said she sure loved that Mercury Montclair we had on the side lot, but then she said she didn’t know if the fella she was seeing would like it, and I told her why not surprise him and see if he don’t, and she said he hated surprises and that he had threatened to kill her over the last one she give him.”
Floyd waited for the thousand follow-up questions he had practiced the answers to. The sheriff looked at him unblinking. “Well, how come I didn’t bring it up before,” Floyd said, proceeding with the interrogation he had imagined, “was I didn’t think she was serious about it. You know how you can get so mad at somebody you love, you liable to say things you don’t really mean in a million years? I was thinking it was that kind of thing. How come me not to mention it before now.”
Floyd knew he was talking too much for an innocent man, and his face began to burn hot. He just couldn’t seem to get his mouth stopped. “You know what I mean,” he rambled on. “I thought it was one of those things, like we all do. Like, ‘I’m gonna kill you, Hazel.’ You know what I’m saying, don’t you, Billy Dean?”
Floyd was finally able to get himself to shut up. The sheriff studied him coolly. After a long moment he reached to open his door and turned back to Floyd. Without a hint of emotion, Billy Dean said, “I’m sure you’re right about that. Done the exact same thing myself on occasion.”
The sheriff drove off, leaving Floyd on the sidewalk a free man.
Pulling up to the house, Floyd had convinced himself for the thousandth time that everything was going to be fine. Like his book said: “To rise above your petty problems, tackle even bigger problems. Successful men are known by the size of the problems they choose to focus on.”
Today his fellow citizens had entrusted him with grave responsibilities. By anyone’s standards, Floyd was a successful man. An important man. A man of the community. A man who could be trusted with larger problems and purposes. Yes, at last he had a firm grasp on things.
The house was dark when he stepped in the door. Vida had left hours ago, and Hazel would be asleep in her room. It was the solid, reassuring quiet of things under control. Yes, he told himself again, things were going to be fine. “Johnny!” he called out in the dark. “You here?”
Johnny came bolting down the stairs at the sound of his father’s voice. “Big Monkey!” he called out. The boy ran over to his father and bounced happily up and down at his feet.
“Hey, Little Monkey,” Floyd said.
Floyd lifted Johnny up, not thinking. He only felt love for the boy, wanting to share with him the exhilaration of the moment. He swung the boy downward and then raised him fast on the upswing, as if he were about to toss him into the air. Yet this wasn’t Davie, who had trusted Floyd’s grip.
Even before Johnny’s scream, Floyd felt it. He himself was pierced by a panic so absolute it shut down his senses. Losing his balance, he staggered forward, holding on to his son for dear life. After reeling there in the dark for what seemed an eternity, he was able to set Johnny down, carefully, both feet on the floor. Still trembling, Floyd knelt down before the boy and looked into his face, only to see his own terror repeated in his son’s eyes. Floyd reached out and drew Johnny to him again. This time he began to sob, clutching his boy to his chest.
Chapter Thirty-One
A BURNED-OUT SHACK IN THE HEART OF THE WOODS
The cruiser was well hidden behind a curtain of kudzu-strangled pines. As he sat waiting, Billy Dean flicked open and closed the lid of the nickel-plated lighter. He didn’t know why he’d bothered taking it. Just couldn’t seem to help himself when he saw stuff lying around. He had quite a collection now, mostly dime-store flash. The kind of thing niggers hold dear. The kind of stuff his mother had cherished.
He snapped the lighter shut on the thought.
A couple of maids walked by yammering. He cricked his neck out the window to get a look, and then resumed flicking the lighter.
Normally Billy Dean wouldn’t mind driving down into Tarbottom in broad daylight to arrest somebody. Today, however, he didn’t want to be seen, didn’t want to risk it getting back to the Senator. He had to be careful. When it came to Levi and his family, the Senator made it clear they were off-limits. He hadn’t trusted Billy Dean from the very beginning on that count. He remembered how suspicious the Senator had been when Billy Dean told him somebody had burned down Levi’s church for starting up all that voting business.
The Senator had been infuriated. “Levi’s church, hell!” the Senator shouted. “That was my goddamned church!”
How was Billy Dean to know the Senator had built it himself, to keep his field hands contented? �
��I reckon the Klan burnt it down,” Billy Dean had said, thinking as fast as he could.
“What Klan?” the old man asked, eyeing Billy Dean doubtfully. “I don’t tolerate no Klan in my county messing with my labor. Daddy and me ran them out back in the twenties.”
“Musta been from somewheres else. Lusi’ana Klan, maybe.”
“What about that little boy?” he asked. “Who shot Levi’s grand-baby? That don’t sound like no Klan to me.”
“Boy’s daddy done it,” Billy Dean answered. “Found another mule kicking in his stall. Got crazy jealous and shot wild. He probably up to Memphis by now.”
“All this happen in one night?”
“Big night,” Billy Dean said lightly.
“Yeah, big load of shit, if you ask me.” The Senator had been blunt. “Here’s the quick of it, Billy Dean. From here on out, you let Levi and them alone. If anything happens to him or his, I’m going to hold you personally responsible. Got it? I done run the Klan out and it’ll take a lot less to drop-kick your sorry ass over the county line. The nigruhs in Hopalachie County are my business. Levi Snow is my nigruh.”
He blew a thick cloud of cigar smoke at Billy Dean. “I’ll take your word this once about that voting business, but I swear, if I ever hear anything different, if anything ever happens to Levi, if you lay one hand on him or his girl or his boy. . .” The Senator stubbed out his cigar in his silver ashtray. The gesture wasn’t lost on the sheriff.
“Yes sir. I hear it. They your niggers. Not mine.”
“Good. And now that we having this nice father–son chat,” the Senator had continued, “let me tell you one more thing I got on my mind.” The Senator had tilted forward in his chair and slammed his elbow on the desk, pointing his trigger finger straight at Billy Dean. “I know your kind, Billy Dean. Common as pig tracks. If I ever find out that you been fooling around on Hertha, I won’t bother kicking you out of the county. I’ll personally bury you ass-up, right under my back step, just so I can tromp on it every morning on my way out the door.”
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 21
