“A band of Gypsies, Momma.”
“Mighta been,” Hazel said grudgingly. This was her story, after all. She gathered up her excitement and continued, “They had these wagons with roofs. You should have seen them. Painted red and blue and green and yellow. Pictures of flowers and animals and such. And there were snow-white horses grazing on the hill. Their bridles had little gold bells.”
“Yes ma’am, sounds like you sure nuff had a big day. Shouldn’t you be getting on home now?” Vida glanced nervously up and down the road.
“There were real live Gypsies?” Johnny asked.
“Sure! A mess of them. I mean, a band of them. With gold hoops in their ears and the men wore bright-colored head rags. They had real dark skin and these mysterious black eyes. They was something! And real friendly folk.”
“You talked to them, Momma?”
“I did. I said, ‘Nice day to be outdoors, ain’t it?’ Invited me to sit around their fire. Gimme a drink of something out of a bottle that had a real worm in the bottom. Brought it up all the way from Mexico. They told me they was on their way to Meridian, where the queen of all the Gypsies is buried. Going there for some kind of a Gypsy powwow.”
Fishing another peppermint from her bag, Hazel sighed contentedly. “The things you learn in this ol’ world. I swan. One day I’m going to come across that colored girl from the circus and find out where she got them pretty clothes.”
“Yes’m,” Vida said, mostly to herself.
Hazel loved these chats with Vida. They were a perfect ending to her driving days. These days started with Vida showing up early in the morning with a little blue bottle in her flour-sack tote bag. After they got Floyd off to work and Johnny off to school, Hazel would pack a couple of sandwiches or some cold fried chicken and head out by herself, staying gone till late afternoon. When she was done, she would pick up Johnny and Vida at the house and then head back to Tarbottom. Hazel was getting good at angling the Lincoln within a hair’s breadth of the front steps. That way Vida and Hazel could hear each other talk without Hazel having to get out of the car. Floyd had told her it went hard against tradition for a white man or woman to put both feet on a colored person’s porch. A man might could put one foot up maybe, as long as the other stayed on the ground. Hazel didn’t mind pushing a few conventions, but she wasn’t taking any chances on getting sent away for being crazy again. Besides, this way was just fine. Vida seemed to be able to hear Hazel perfectly as she related from her car all the strange and wonderful things she had seen during her drive. At least, Vida had never asked Hazel to repeat anything.
Hazel looked on contentedly as her son pretended the dolls were Gypsies and made them do a little Gypsy dance. At first Hazel had been leery about Johnny playing with dolls instead of his cowboy toys. No doubt that boy had his own way about him. After living under the house in the dirt for most of the summer, he now insisted on dressing in his Sunday clothes for school. Refused to put on a pair of jeans. He looked like a little businessman, with his white starched shirt and dark blue pants, toting his Cisco satchel. Even his teacher said he was special, all right.
Hazel smiled proudly as Johnny sang a peppy Gypsy dance tune. She figured she would take her own advice about helping a thing in the direction it was headed. Vida said a mother is the person who shows a child where home is, but Hazel figured there was more to it than that. A child’s not going to stay at home forever. Like her, Johnny was reaching out for something. It took Miss Pearl to recognize and name what Hazel herself had been reaching for all these years, and now Hazel wanted to do the same for her son. She figured that though a mother might not be able to change the direction her child was heading, at least she could make sure he got there with a fistful of hope. If acting out stories with cornshuck dolls was what it took to make Johnny happy, then more power to him.
Maybe I’m not such a bad mother after all, she dared think.
With her friend close by on the porch and her boy lost in play, the sun setting on a world with plenty left to explore, for the first time in a long time Hazel was actually at peace. It was as if her own far-flung hopes were coming home to light.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
ANSWERED PRAYERS
Levi reached on top of the chifforobe and brought down the brown paper sack. Very carefully he drew out his felt hat with the oval crown, the brim that was still stiff as new. After removing the newspaper stuffing from the hollow of the crown, he held the hat out before him and lightly touched the small satin bow on the shiny band. This was the hat he had worn only to deacon meetings and to conferences with the Senator, on occasions when he needed to use his sway. The hat hadn’t seen the light of day for years. He hadn’t needed it. There wasn’t anybody who would listen to him.
Today they would listen.
Next Levi pulled out his gray preaching suit that hung flat against the back wall of the wardrobe. He remembered those early dawns after he had lost his church. Vida would lay this suit neatly across the bed with a fresh starched shirt and dark tie. She would tiptoe soundlessly around the bedroom, trying not to disturb him as he prayed on his knees to the Lord to give him another chance. He would dress and spend the day traveling the county, begging every cotton-field church he came across to let him say a few words. All Levi had ever wanted was to preach.
Today his prayers were being answered, exactly forty years from the morning he stood on the banks of the Hopalachie River and first saw the face of God looking up at him from that whirlpool of churning water. Forty years. The same amount of time Moses spent in the wilderness before leading his people to the edge of the Promised Land.
He held the suit up before him. The moths had got to it, but it would do for today. He smiled sadly, thinking there might be bigger holes in it by sundown.
Levi put on the fresh white shirt he had paid a woman to boil and starch so Vida wouldn’t know. Standing before the cracked mirror that hung on the chifforobe door, he knotted his silk tie with the hand-painted butterflies he got hand-me-down from the Senator; then put on the vest and coat. The cracks in the mirror broke Levi’s face into four distinct pieces. Levi smiled at that, too. “Thank you, Lord,” he prayed simply, “for today is the day you make me whole again. I step into the darkness with you.”
The only thing left to do was to loop his gold chain across his vest, the watch having been sold years ago to put gas in the old Buick. He rummaged through the fruitcake tin and the bottoms of all the drawers, in the pockets of his clothes. The chain was nowhere to be found. Vida would probably know where it was. She often pulled it out when she got lonesome for Nate. He gave up the search and took it as a sign from God against his vanity. Levi carefully positioned the hat on his head.
He looked up into the sky when he stepped out the door. He had never seen such a sight! Curiously shaped clouds in a multitude of unearthly colors, moiling and swirling, like heaven was still mulling over what kind of a day to turn out. When he understood, tears came to his eyes. It was the whirling, ever-changing face of God, looking down upon him, showering him with blessings, showing him the way out of the wilderness.
Billy Dean Brister sat in his office with his new air conditioner going full bore. It was coolish for November, but he liked to watch the lazy curl of smoke rising innocently from his cigarette, until the shaft of cold air from the vent blasted it. The unsuspecting smoke would rupture and be whisked away across the room in a thin cloud. It helped him think.
Delia had really put his ass in a crack this time. What had she been thinking of? Now the Senator was telling him if he didn’t find either her body or the nigger who killed her that Billy Dean would have to resign. Pompous old fool. All the time going on about how they were his niggers and nobody knew his niggers except him. But just wait. The minute somebody or something went missing, he was the first one yelling, “Which one of them sorry ingrates did this to me?” Don’t even have a body to examine and he knows for sure that Delia was drowned by some grudge-holding darkie specially out to ge
t him. Served one term at the lousy state house a hundred years ago, and that supposed to make him some kind of know-everything god?
Billy Dean blew another jet of smoke into the stiff current of air. The question was, what the hell was he going to do to buy some time? Wasn’t as easy as turning over a few shacks in colored town. If the Senator found out about him and Delia, he would do more than ask him to resign. The Senator would have him take Delia’s place at the bottom of the river.
He should have known Delia would bring him nothing but trouble. Trouble was her middle name. Always living on the wild side. Doing things to shock everybody. Like marrying those nose-talking Yankees. The woman even had the nerve to bring them down here and rub it in everybody’s face. And those love letters of hers. Leaving them under his windshield wipers. On the seat of his desk chair, right in his office. Any reckless place she could think of. That purple-and-white paper was her personal calling card. He’d told her a million times to leave off with them purple letters.
“Don’t say purple, Billy Dean,” she’d purred at him. “That’s too common. Like you. It’s lavender and cream. With a touch of Chanel. Like me.”
Once, when Hertha threw a dinner party, Delia had sneaked off upstairs and put a steamy one right under his pillow. Right there in her sister’s own bed! She reveled in the possibility of getting caught. When she got pregnant, the game got serious. She taped one of those purple-and-white envelopes to his front door. It said that unless he left Hertha, whom she despised in a way only a sister could, and ran away with her, she would make sure her daddy knew everything. She would ruin him. If Hertha had come home thirty seconds earlier, he would have been ruined anyway. Plus castrated and shot. As it was, he was barely able to get the desk drawer shut and locked before she walked in. Billy Dean had been furious. That’s when he’d threatened to kill Delia. That had been a big mistake.
Just then his deputy flung open the office door, barging in on his thoughts. “Dammit, Lampkin,” he snarled. “Ain’t I told you to knock first? I didn’t hang no screen door there for a reason.”
“Sorry, Sheriff,” the baby-faced Lampkin said, not seeming to take the sheriff’s mood too personally, “I thought you’d want to know it first. They’s trouble over at the courthouse. Nellie Grindle is pitching a fit.”
“What’s wrong this time? She trying to take all the Senator’s dead friends off the voting rolls again? She knows he ain’t gonna stand for that.”
“Nope. You better come on. They’s a nigruh over there says he wants to vote.”
Billy Dean had been waiting for something like this to happen. Only a few months ago, down in Lincoln County, some nigger called himself Lamar Smith had tried it and got shot dead right there on the courthouse lawn in broad daylight. Some say the county sheriff had done it himself, but of course nobody would testify to it. If Billy Dean was called on to do the same thing, he’d be more than willing.
He got to the circuit clerk’s office to see the colored man still there, his hat in hand smiling respectfully at a pinched-faced woman with pointy glasses who by now had gone purple in the face.
“Sheriff!” she cried out in an annoying squeak of a voice, “it’s about time you got here. This nigruh’s trying to register for the vote. And when I told him to leave the premises, he flat-out refused.”
It took a moment for the sheriff to recognize the man dressed in the suit as baggy as a rodeo clown’s. “Well, lookee who it is!” he said. “I always said you was a troublemaker, boy. You been biding your time, ain’t you?”
Levi smiled shyly at the sheriff. “You sure were right about me, Sheriff. I been biding my time, like you say. I been weighing the matter and now I wants the vote.”
The sheriff studied Levi’s face and then frowned. This is all I need, Billy Dean thought. The Senator watching me like a hawk, and now his old pet nigger has gone crazy. Strolling right in here in front of God and everybody. No telling what he was liable to say. Billy Dean walked over to Levi and shoved him hard, slamming Levi into the doorjamb. “Get outa here!” he shouted.
When Levi opened his mouth to speak, the sheriff shouted louder, “Now, goddammit! Not another word out of your sassy mouth.”
Nellie dropped her chin. “Aren’t you going to arrest him for disturbing the peace or something?”
“Nellie, don’t you know Levi? Well then, let me introduce you two. This here is one of the Senator’s niggers. You know we got special rules just for them,” Billy Dean sneered. He looked back at Levi, who remained by the door with a pleasant grin on his face. “I don’t see you moving, boy.”
“That’s right, suh,” Levi said politely and bowed his head. His manner was almost courtly. “I was telling Miss Nellie, I come to take that voting test.”
That set Billy Dean back for a moment. “Are you deaf? Did you hear what I told you to do?”
“Yessuh,” Levi said. “But like you explained to the Senator, I’m a born troublemaker. Don’t know no other way to be. Guess you going to have to do what Miss Nellie say and toss me in the jailhouse.” Nellie clutched her old woman’s breast and gasped, “Of all the. . .I’ve never in my. . .”
The sheriff studied Levi warily. “You want me to arrest you? That it? You trying to rain the Senator down on my ass?”
“I want to vote, sir,” Levi said again, respectfully. “And I reckon if I can’t vote, I might as well go on to where they puts all the colored that try.”
Billy Dean grinned. “The years ain’t been good to you, has they, old man? I believe you crazier than a coot.” All the more reason to get him out of here fast, before he starts to raving, thought the sheriff. Something sure wasn’t right here. Smelled fishy. If he arrested him, people might take the old man serious. The Senator would get involved for sure. The sheriff had another idea.
He grabbed Levi by the arm and yanked him out the door and down the corridor. By the time they got outside to the courthouse gallery, word had spread and a small crowd of whites had already gathered on the lawn. Among them Billy Dean thought he saw the glint of a gun. All the black faces had wisely pulled back to the safety of the other side of the street.
All anybody saw, black or white, was the overworked sheriff of Hopalachie County clutching an old colored man dressed in a ridiculous suit, with a foolish grin on his face. People started shaking their heads at the pitiful sight even before the sheriff pushed him down the steps.
As he lay there sprawled out on the sidewalk, his hat crushed beneath his backside, Levi nodded respectfully to Billy Dean, who stood with his hands on his hips at the top of the steps. “Sheriff, sir, I still want the vote. Now all these good people is my witness. So if you ain’t going to let me take that voting test, you best take me on to jail.”
A few gasps went up from the crowd, and they began mutter to one another, yet every eye stayed on their sheriff, waiting.
With only a wink from the sheriff, Levi Snow would instantly become just another colored killed by “unknown assailants.” All Billy Dean had to do was turn his back and walk back into the courthouse. Would the Senator still put the blame on him?
Billy Dean shook his head and grinned. “Crazy as a coot,” he laughed loudly. “Nothing a good sobering up couldn’t help.”
Reassured, the crowd laughed with the sheriff and then began to scatter.
As he walked away, Billy Dean said to himself, “Now let him tell his story and see who listens. That’s almost as good as dead.”
Not everybody was laughing. Later that afternoon, Floyd got a frantic call at the agency from Hayes Alcorn. He was convening an emergency board meeting of the Citizens’ Council. He said to be over at the bank in fifteen minutes.
Again, Floyd was convinced that it was about him and Delia. The sheriff was still looking for the murderer, and Floyd, a nervous wreck for more than three months now, had decided that somebody was bound to inform on him sooner or later. He would probably be called in for questioning and interrogated about all the time he stole from his poor, nervou
s wife to be with the Senator’s twice-divorced daughter. All the sordid details of their pathetic little affair would be on the front page of the Jackson Daily News. The word “illicit” haunted him in his dreams. Floyd left Hollis in charge and as he crossed the street to the Merchant and Planters repeated to himself, “I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!”
It was after banking hours, but Hayes was standing at the entrance, holding the door open for the members as they arrived and pointing them one by one to the conference room across the marble lobby. “Glad you could make it,” he told Floyd, looking truly appreciative. “These are troubling times.”
Floyd breathed easier. From the grateful look on Hayes’s face, Floyd could tell he was still considered to be on the right side of troubling times. Much relieved, he went on in to join the other members.
Floyd was met by a weary look from the sheriff, who sat pulled back from the mahogany conference table, his legs crossed, the Stetson pushed back on his head, flicking that old nickel-plated lighter. Billy Dean looked as if he had been run through the wringer all right, and it showed—months of chasing leads and tracking down suspects, running the hounds till they dropped, tromping through woods and thickets and digging up fields, dragging miles of creeks and swamps and rivers by the light of day and by torch at night, and so far only coming up with a couple dead bodies and neither of them white. Everybody knew his job was on the line. Floyd forced a smile at Billy Dean and then took a chair, angling it so his guilt-ridden face was out of the sheriff’s line of sight.
Hayes walked to the head of the table and cleared his throat. He always ran the meetings standing up, all five-foot-four of him. “Like I told everybody already, we got a crisis on our hands. A well-known nigruh agitator walked right in the circuit clerk’s office as big as broad daylight, and demanded to be registered to vote. Nearly scared poor ol’ Nellie Grindle to death. Twenty years, and she ain’t never had no nigruh to suggest such a thing.”
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 28
