“Who was it?” asked Gaylon King, the newspaper publisher.
“Levi Snow,” Hayes said as if the name itself would raise alarm. He plopped down dramatically in his personal chair with legs six inches higher than all the rest. “You can see we got a problem.”
The county attorney, Hartley Faircloth, looked at Hayes incredulously. “You mean that old colored man who tends yards? What he do, threaten Miss Nellie with his rake?”
Everybody laughed.
His face pinking up, Hayes shot out of his chair and leaned over the table. “The man is a known agitator. Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”
The sheriff didn’t bother looking up from his lighter. “Was once,” he mumbled.
Hayes waited for the sheriff to tell the rest of the story, but it was obvious that Billy Dean was all talked out on the subject. Narrowing his eyes at the sheriff, Hayes said pointedly, “Nellie told me you didn’t even arrest him. That right?”
“I took care of it,” the sheriff said.
Hayes shook his head and pulled back to address the whole group. “The way I understand it, he use to be one of them NAACP preachers trying to stir up the colored. Y’all might remember that nigruh church getting burnt down out in the county a few years back.”
Nobody seemed to. Yet Hayes said, as if they did, “Well, that was his!”
Hayes planted his little balled-up fists on the table and leaned in toward Billy Dean again. “Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”
“’Fore I was elected,” Billy Dean said, clicking the lid of the lighter shut.
Johnelle Ramphree, from the hardware store, piped up. “That old man’s harmless, Hayes. Maybe a little addled, is all. I don’t think we got nothing here to worry about. Not from a poor ol’ afflicted colored man. He’s nothing like the one that tried to vote down in Brookhaven.”
Hayes was not one to be dismissed so lightly. “That’s only a front. He’s been biding his time. He told the sheriff as much. Right in front of Nellie. Given this mess in Montgomery with that King preacher and the Supreme Court going pinko, and nigruhs asking to vote right here in Mississippi, he knows the climate is right. No telling how many he can get stirred up if we don’t do something immediately. Gentlemen, it’s up to us. Hopalachie County is in the grips of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy. We might have another Martin Luther King right in our midst.”
Floyd shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was Floyd who had first talked his neighbors into using Levi in their yards, and he had the man’s daughter working right under his own roof. He decided he better weigh in on this thing before it turned on him. “Now, I agree with Johnelle,” he said. “I been around Levi, and he seems a pleasant enough colored—” He stopped and corrected himself, “I mean nigruh.” He better talk in Hayes’s language if he was going to head this thing off, something he’d learned from that book about influencing people.
“Floyd!” Hayes said. “You ought to be more concerned than anybody. I’ve seen him out there talking with your boy. Johnelle said he was criminally insane.”
“I believe I said ‘addled,’” Johnelle corrected.
“No matter. Did you ever see how big that nigruh is? Six and a half feet if he’s an inch.” Hayes was reaching up over his head as far as he could, but Floyd figured he still came a few inches short. “And those hands could choke a cow,” Hayes added.
The nickel-plated lighter shut with such a crack, everybody’s head snapped toward Billy Dean. It was clear that something had caught his interest. Straightening up from his slouch, Billy Dean said, “He might well be dangerous, at that.” He stuck the lighter in the pocket of his khakis and pulled up to the table as if he had decided to join the meeting after all.
Thrilled to finally be getting support from the sheriff, Hayes went after Floyd. The little man looped his arms out in front of him dramatically. “Why, I’ve seen him tote a two-hundred-pound tree trunk the length of my yard. Ain’t you the least bit worried, Floyd? At least for your boy’s sake? For your wife’s?”
Of course, Levi had also been seen by the whole neighborhood talking to Hayes’s wife, Pearl. That wasn’t being mentioned. But Floyd decided not to be antagonistic. Try to see the other person’s point of view. “Maybe we should hear Hayes out,” Floyd said, settling into a reasonable position. “Why don’t you tell us what it is you’re suggesting, Hayes?” Floyd was impressed with the sound of that. Almost statesmanlike.
“Thank you,” Hayes said, acknowledging Floyd’s contribution. “It’s not as if I’m advocating violence. I told y’all from the beginning that’s not what the Citizens’ Council stands for. Like our charter says, we stand for a peaceful yet firm response to any attack on our way of life. I suggest we make an example of this nigruh by guaranteeing he never works again in this county. We boycott him. And what’s more, he doesn’t get credit from any Delphi merchant nor service from any professional.”
Gaylon King wasn’t convinced. “Seems like a little overkill for a poor ol’ broke-down colored man, don’t you think, Hayes? I agree with Johnelle. This don’t compare at all to that agitator in Brookhaven. By the way,” the publisher added with a sly grin, “this wouldn’t have anything to do with the rumors about you announcing for governor, would it? How about a quote for the paper?”
There were a few sniggers. Gaylon went on, “I can run it as my lead story: Hayes Alcorn Single-Handedly Starves Out Old Colored Man.”
That drew an even bigger laugh. Hayes ignored it and continued outlining his all-out campaign to save the county from the conspiracy at hand. “And I suggest we extend this boycott to all members of his family.” Hayes looked down at Floyd. “That means you need to get rid of his girl, of course.”
Floyd sat up in his chair. “I don’t see why that’s necessary, Hayes,” he protested.
“Well, exactly what do you see as necessary, Floyd? What does our vice president suggest?”
“Well,” Floyd said, taking a breath and diagramming the situation in his head. He could already see the sparks flying if he had to tell Hazel he was going to fire Vida. She was sure to throw a duck fit. Things around his house had changed dramatically over the past month. Hazel was all fired up and full of grit, dressing nice and out driving the Lincoln like the old days. Maybe even drinking, but not enough to tell it. She seemed happy. Though he would prefer to believe his positive mental attitude had rubbed off on her, he was more convinced Vida was somehow behind it.
“Well?” Hayes said impatiently.
Floyd cut his eyes to the ceiling and exhaled deeply, letting Hayes know he was still in a mulling mode. Maybe it would be better if Vida were gone, he thought, taking the other side of the issue. He had probably trusted her too much. Truth was, Floyd had no idea what was going on in his home. This thing with Delia had sapped all his extra energy. Floyd got the feeling that as a result of his lack of attention on the home front, he was now surrounded by a conspiracy between his maid and his wife. Could be his own son was in on it. Still he didn’t want to rock the boat. Floyd had the vague feeling that Hazel knew about Delia, and he wasn’t anxious to find out how much. Let sleeping dogs lie.
The room was still waiting for Floyd’s best thinking on the subject. He cleared his throat. “Well, maybe we can give Levi a good talking-to and tell him to get back to his yard work,” he said hopefully. “I bet that’s all it would take.”
Hayes’s response was immediate. “No! No! No! That’s not the way it works at all,” he cried, sounding like his chances for governor were slipping away before his eyes. His reaction was so violent, Floyd began to worry about the extension on his business loan.
Then Hayes started strutting around the room like a banty rooster. “We’re the Citizens’ Council! We’re supposed to strike fear in the hearts of agitators. We don’t give them a good talking-to. Now, y’all got to get behind me on this. And Floyd, you of all people. The vice president for Christ’s sake.” He glanced quickly at the other end of the table. “Sorry, Brother Dear.”
B
rother Dear, sheathed in his white linen suit, had been listening intently to the debate and used the opportunity of Hayes’s blasphemy to insert himself on the Lord’s behalf. He smiled at Hayes forgivingly and then leaned forward to address the group. “I’ve been listening carefully to what’s been said here today. Now, I know that each of you comes here with the well-being of your community foremost in your thoughts and prayers. So I think it’s safe to put aside any doubts you might be having about the motivations of others at this table.”
Hayes nodded aggressively.
Brother Dear’s beatific smile and melodious voice had already given a new gravity to the proceedings. The men around the table now wore the sober expressions of civic responsibility. “I believe what Hayes says bears listening to,” he continued. “Since the Supreme Court handed down that Brown decision a couple of years ago, our community institutions have been under constant attack from Washington. Our local government. Our schools. Our businesses. Next in logical sequence, like the falling of dominoes, will be the church. And finally it’s the family that will topple.”
He let that sit a minute before he went on. “Our local traditions make up a complex weave.” Brother Dear made a dramatic sweep of his hand over the sleeve of his white suit to demonstrate. He was well known for using visual aids in his sermons. “That weave, our community fabric if you will, is a living, breathing testimony to our shared Christian faith.” To emphasize that point, Brother Dear reached up and lightly touched his cross-of-diamonds stickpin.
Then he shook his finger at the group. “And this is not about prejudice and discrimination. Why, look at us here. We have Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians all sitting around the same table together.”
Everyone grinned sheepishly, acknowledging the private reservations they had had about such a thing in the beginning. Everyone grinned, that is, except for Billy Dean, who, when Floyd glanced over at him, seemed to be deep in thought. From where he sat, Floyd could see the sheriff’s hands under the table, and instead of the lighter, he was fiddling with a gold chain of some kind, fingering the links one at a time. Floyd noticed a charm shaped like praying hands dangling from the chain.
“Nor is this simply about a yardman and a maid,” Brother Dear was saying. “It represents a kind of gnawing at those fibers that hold together our community. We need to take righteous action before more threads are broken and the fabric loosens. Before we disintegrate—desegregate if you will—into social chaos. You all know what that means.”
Floyd rolled his eyes. Yeah, he figured he knew what it meant. All those colored men had been biding their time for three hundred years, working the fields, getting out from under slavery, getting themselves lynched, burned, and drowned, and finally going all the way to the Supreme Court—all that, just to get them a white woman. If that was true, Floyd thought, they ought to get some kind of blue ribbon for pure determination.
No, he couldn’t figure out the logic of some of these people. Yet what he could figure out by the silence around the table was that Brother Dear’s sermon had pretty well clinched the deal for Levi and Vida. All that was missing was the amen and hallelujahs.
Floyd hardly looked at Hazel all through supper, and when he did, his expression was tinged with guilt. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen it coming for a long time now. Hazel prepared herself for the worst, the other-woman confession. Delia might be dead and gone, but so was Floyd’s affection for Hazel. She was certain that he had already replaced Delia with another.
She watched apprehensively as he took the last bite of his minute steak and carefully folded and unfolded his napkin several times. He glanced at Johnny. “Go up to your room and play. OK, Little Monkey?”
“All my doll people are at Vi—” Johnny caught himself before he broke his and his mother’s secret. “Yes sir,” he said, and took off upstairs like a guilty man set free.
“Hazel,” Floyd said gravely, unfolding the napkin again and somberly laying it over his plate as if he were covering the face of a dead friend. “I got something I need to tell you.”
She closed her eyes and bit her lip. Here it comes, she told herself.
“Bad as I hate to. . .” Floyd said.
“Oh, God,” Hazel moaned, slumping down in her chair.
“Bad as I hate to. . .we going to have to let Vida go.”
It took a moment for it to register. “Vida?”
“It’s for her own good, Hazel.”
Hazel knew she should be thankful he wasn’t asking for a divorce, but it wasn’t gratitude or even relief she was feeling now. Not even fear. Something else was taking hold.
“You’re going to fire Vida? That’s what you’re trying to say?” There was a boiling down deep in her gut. The floor seemed to quake under her chair. In her mind she saw a tattered lace handkerchief tied to a flagpole and whipping valiantly in a gale-sized wind.
Shifting into his most logical voice, he said, “Now, she’s only a maid, Hazel. I can find you another one just as good by suppertime tomorrow.”
When she saw him begin to rise up from the table, it was like another person took over inside. Her fist came banging down on the tabletop hard enough to rattle the silverware in the drawers.
Floyd fell back into his chair, covering his head. Hazel heard herself speaking to her husband in a voice that was flat and final. “Ain’t no way you getting rid of Vida.” Her face burned hot, and she was not sure where the voice had come from, only that it had been too long in the coming.
It took a few moments for Floyd to regain his composure. His voice was still a little shaky. “Now, don’t upset yourself. You been doing so good and all. You’re letting your emotions get the best of you. Calm down and listen.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head vehemently, trying to block out his words. He reached for her hand, still clenched at her side. “Hazel, we got to be a team on this now.”
“Team?” She erupted in a burst of angry laughter. She snatched her hand from his. “My whole life long I ain’t never had a real friend before. Somebody in this world who would be on my side no matter what. Somebody I can tell everything to. Who listens without interrupting. Who don’t list out everything I should have done different. Who don’t want me to be nothing except what I already am. No way you’re gonna make me give Vida up, Floyd Graham. No way in hell. Vida stays! She’s the one on my team.”
The words had tumbled out in such a rush that Hazel wasn’t altogether sure what she had said. When she looked up at Floyd he seemed to have been struck dumb. He cleared his throat a couple of times and struggled to give her one of his trademark grins, yet the rest of his face wasn’t able to get behind it.
“Hazel, you’re talking about a colored woman,” he said. “She can’t be your friend.”
“Don’t go telling me what Vida is or ain’t. You got no right.”
“Now, I got to insist, Hazel,” Floyd said, his tone less confident than his words. “It might come down to staying in business or not. And I know you want what’s best for the family. Please, Hazel.”
As he went on begging, Hazel almost felt sorry for Floyd, until he said, “It might seem like a problem now, but we got to look at it as an opportunity.”
This time Hazel banged both fists on the table. “Stop spouting those things at me!” she screamed.
Floyd covered his head again. “What things?” he called out from his crouched position.
“Those sayings of yours. About how what is—really ain’t. And what ain’t—really is. About if you call something by a different name, all your troubles will disappear. Floyd, all you doing is tying my brain up in knots.”
“All I’m saying,” he ventured, “is if you take what looks to be your very worst problem and think about it positively, what you might have before you is something you can use. I already told you all this. Remember? Lemons and lemonade?”
Floyd found his salesman’s grin again. “Now all I ask is if you would take ten sec
onds and think about what I just said. See if you can make the problem work for you. Make some lemonade, so to speak.”
Hazel eyed him dubiously yet did as he requested. She gave it seven seconds, then she said, “OK, let me see if I got it. If I take the most awfullest thing, and look at it different, try to hang some hope on it, so to speak, then I might can figure a way to make it turn out good?”
“Exactly, honey. That’s all I’m saying.” Floyd was real excited now, as if there might be hope for her after all. “It’s the Science of Controlled Thinking.”
“I see,” Hazel said. “Like if I thought you cheated on me with another woman, for instance. There might be a way to make that work for me instead of against me?”
Floyd opened and closed his mouth several times as if he were straining for air. He stammered, “Wha. . .wha. . .what are you asking again, honey? Would you repeat that question for me?” His voice was all bluff.
She smiled innocently and said, “I’m asking, is that the way it works, Floyd? Am I a controlled thinker now?” There was a long moment of silence while Hazel’s big blue eyes looked expectantly at Floyd, waiting for his answer.
Floyd blurted out, “Hazel, I ain’t cheating on you! I swear it!”
Maybe he wasn’t. . .not now, this very second. Maybe there was no new woman in his life. Even if Floyd was technically right, he was still cheating with his words. He was sacrificing his dignity for a lie. He didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth.
“What’s the matter, Floyd? You look sick at the stomach.”
“What’s got into you?” he shouted. “Stop it, whatever it is, you hear?”
She knew she had won something and lost something at the same time. “Maybe I don’t understand your little saying after all, Floyd. Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough.”
She pushed herself away from the table and rose to her feet. When she stood, she noticed how strong and solid her legs felt beneath her. Hazel said more sarcastically than she meant to, “But please don’t fire Vida. Would you do that one thing for your poor, ignorant wife?”
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 29
