Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

by Jonathan Odell

  Chapter Forty-Four

  ALL IS WELL

  “Congratulations, boys.” Floyd pushed the papers across the desk on an imaginary axis between the Gooseberry twins, not knowing which one would want to take charge of the signing. “Y’all got a real good deal out of me. That Mercury Montclair is quite a car. Put all the miles on her myself.” Floyd sighed. “All easy miles.” He wistfully looked out the window, bidding a silent farewell to the last evidence of Delia in his life. The perfume had dried up weeks ago.

  Taking their cue from Floyd, the brothers each reached under identical tape measures draped around their necks and retrieved the silver Cross pens from their shirt pockets. First Lou scanned the agreement carefully, moving the pen along the paper as he read. Then he slid the paper across the desk to Sid, who automatically signed it.

  So that’s how it works, thought Floyd, finding the whole thing fascinating. Anybody else would have missed a detail that small. Floyd figured that was why he was so successful in business. He strove to understand the psychology behind things that most people took for granted. After all, that’s all sales was, psychology and attitude. The study of human behavior.

  “How’s the family, Floyd?” Sid asked, stoking up a cigar and then handing the lighter to his brother.

  “Fine. Real fine. Never better.” Floyd said it as if he meant it. Because he did mean it for a change. It had been touch-and-go there for a while, but now everything was under control. Floyd had amazed even himself at how fast he was able to whip his family into shape. It proved to him that his instincts for the psychology of people were sharper than ever.

  There was a thousand percent improvement in Hazel. Talk about a turnaround! After all the wisdom he had tried to impart to her over the years, and after all the hardheadedness she had paid him back with, who knew the thing she would latch onto was his suggestion for her to do church work? The idea was hardly out of his mouth and then lickety-split, she off and gets a job volunteering in the church office, putting her bookkeeping skills to good use. She was Brother Dear’s right-hand girl. Even help put the weekly bulletin out. Besides that, she visited sick folks and delivered food to the needy evenings, becoming a regular pillar of the community. He hadn’t smelled liquor on her in weeks. Something inside Floyd must have instinctively known what to say, even if it was in the heat of anger. Instinct. That’s what it was. Pure-dee, unadulterated instinct.

  “Yep. Real fine,” Floyd said proudly. “And Johnny’s becoming a baseball fanatic. Only the other day we were out tossing the ol’ horsehide around. He’s going to be a real sports nut, I can tell.” He winked at Lou. “You know how boys are.” Floyd had always wanted to say that.

  “That’s mighty fine,” said Lou.

  “He’s a real boy, ain’t he?” said his brother. They both lifted their large bulks from the chairs.

  “Now, I’ll have that car gassed up and sent right over to y’all’s house. Be there before you get home for supper.”

  “You tell Miss Hazel Happy Thanksgiving,” Lou said.

  “And that boy of yours, too,” added Sid. “Going to be reading about him in the sports pages.”

  “I’ll sure tell the family y’all asked after them.”

  At that, the twins proceeded one after the other through the office door, like a pair of freighters through the Panama Canal. Floyd followed in their wake.

  “Proud y’all came by,” he called out as they headed down the sidewalk to their store, the smoke from their cigars curling above them into a single column. Floyd stood there for a moment, watching traffic, counting the cars and trucks he himself had put on the road. He thought about the many lives he had touched. No man is an island, that’s for sure. With her charity work, he knew Hazel was finding out about that, too. A sensation of pride welled up in Floyd’s chest and his eyes filled with tears. Things really were fine.

  Hazel parked her Lincoln behind an old abandoned filling station on the edge of town. It was a half hour before first dark, and the temperature had begun to drop. She got out and opened the trunk, loaded with turkey hens for the needy. After locating the wires, she disconnected the light over the license plate and then got back in the car and waited.

  A few minutes later, a battered pickup came grumbling down the two-lane, braked to a complete stop right in the center of the road, and then died. After starting it up again, the driver turned and came lurching onto the broken apron of concrete, torturing the gears. The truck was soon followed by a red-and-white Chevy. Both automobiles joined the Lincoln in the rear of the cinder-block building.

  The doors opened, the cars emptied, and the women fell to work without speaking. Hazel removed a cardboard box from among the turkeys and took it to the hood of the Lincoln. There she and Creola began divvying up the circulars, hot off the Baptist church mimeograph machine.

  Sweet Pea went to the trunk of Willie’s car and lifted out a box of blank paper and a couple of gallons of mimeograph ink he had donated to the women for their next run. She transferred it all to Hazel’s trunk, alongside the birds.

  Vida was crouched over a county map spread on the fender of Creola’s husband’s truck. Holding a flashlight with her one good arm, Hannah stood over Vida’s shoulder aiming at the map, though it wasn’t dark enough to need it yet.

  Maggie remained in the backseat of the Chevy, gazing out the window with her single eye, admiring the darkening blood-red sky, humming serenely to herself.

  As they completed their tasks, the women gathered around Vida. The energy of the group was charged tonight. A current of constrained panic seem to hum about their heads.

  “You hear from that NAACP yet?” Sweet Pea asked. “We need to get some help. It’s getting scary. I’m starting to feel eyes all over me in the dark.”

  “You ought to be used to that, girl,” Creola said with a giggle.

  “I talked to them, all right,” Vida said. “They going to be as helpful as tits on a boar hog. They say all they leaders is being blowed up and run out of the state. Told us we might better slow down and let them catch up. Say we done jumped the gun a couple of years. They ain’t got no organization yet in Hopalachie County.” Vida sounded disgusted. “’Sides, when they found out we didn’t have no man running the show, that’s when they almost hung up. Thought I was lying.”

  “What about Rosie?” Creola protested. “You tell them about her? She a woman.”

  Vida laughed darkly. “They say this ain’t Alabama. Things is worser in Mississippi.”

  “Glad it ain’t just my imagination,” Creola said with a weak chuckle.

  “They told me in Alabama the Law is bad to stand around and let you get kilt. But in Mississippi the Law be the ones trying to kill you. Don’t matter if you is a woman.”

  The women exchanged nervous looks and anxious smiles. They knew what Vida was saying was true.

  “So,” Vida concluded, “if people going to hear the word about being a first-class citizen and getting the vote in Hopalachie County, it’ll have to come from us womens, I reckon.”

  Sweet Pea shook her head. “I knows they need to hear it, and I hate to be no doubting Thomas, but we been talking up the vote for weeks. Not one soul say they going to go down to the courthouse with us. The sheriff got everybody scared to get off they porch.”

  “Ain’t just the sheriff,” Creola added bitterly. “It’s them white niggers like Misery admiring over the white man. Makes my blood boil. And them chicken-eating preachers. Telling everybody to wait for the sweet by-and-by. ‘Don’t stand up in the boat,’ they all say. They ain’t noticed but they the only ones got a boat. The rest of us is in the swamp fighting with the gators.”

  “Y’all want to quit, y’all go ahead,” Vida said glumly. “I can’t blame you. I only come to it recent. Ain’t been just a few weeks since I told Daddy he was crazy for doing what he did.”

  At the mention of Levi Snow, the women got quiet for a spell. The only sound was Maggie’s humming.

  Sweet Pea broke the sil
ence. “Awright. Show us where to go.”

  Relieved, Vida took the flashlight from Hannah and clicked it off, using the skinny end to point at the map. “Now, Hannah, you and Maggie take Willie’s car and head on out to the Shinetown settlement tonight. Take the old Satterfield Road. Sheriff’s people hardly ever patrols it.”

  “Let that sumbitch come ahead on,” Hannah said angrily, lifting her clenched fist in the air. “Sheriff going to pay for doubling his take on me. I can’t hardly afford to stay in business no more. Let him come ahead on and pick a fight with ol’ Hannah! I’ll beat his ass till his nose bleeds.” Hannah was so agitated she was flapping her stump now. “Let him come on ahead, is what I says!”

  Vida put her hand on Hannah’s shoulder, trying to calm the woman down. “Don’t get so worked up, Hannah. You got to be careful. Willie skin me alive if you scratch his new car.”

  “Don’t you worry none,” Hannah said. “I know how to handle that boy and his car both.”

  Vida grinned at Hannah. “Other way ’round, if you ask me. Willie got you wrapped around his little finger. Serves you right for trying to rob the cradle.”

  “Where is that boy?” asked Sweet Pea. “Why ain’t that little brother of yours helping us?”

  Hannah answered for Vida. “Willie say don’t bother him till the shooting starts. Say that’s the onliest way things going to change in this county.”

  “I hope he wrong,” Vida said. “That’s how come we got to try Rosie’s way first.” Then she went on with the business of the evening. “Creola, how’s your driving coming along?”

  “I got here, didn’t I?” Creola answered a little defensively.

  “Just barely!” Sweet Pea declared. “Thought I was going to have to stand in the middle of the road so Creola would have something to aim at.”

  “Hush! I didn’t come close to no ditches this time out. I getting good as Miss Hazel.” She smiled admiringly at Hazel, who beamed at the compliment. The women thought she was the best driver in the whole state of Mississippi, better than any moonshine runner they had heard of.

  “Now, y’all remember to unhook your back lights so nobody can get your tag number,” Hazel called out as they dispersed. “And cut off your headlights when you moving from house to house. Somebody might be watching.”

  Somebody was. As they left, no one noticed the car sitting across the road behind a screen of trees. It pulled out shortly after Hazel and took off in the same direction as the Lincoln.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  THE CHASE

  The Lincoln rolled onto a tabletop landscape of straight lines and perfect right angles, a twilight world uninterrupted by hills or curves or contours. Endless rows of stalks, recently picked over and streaked with white scraps of cotton.

  Hazel laughed softly to herself and said, “I remember the first time I saw this Delta. I was standing in them bluffs behind us, looking down on it all at once.”

  “Humph,” Vida snorted. “I was probably out here with a hoe in my hand, looking up at you and cussin’.”

  “It took my breath away, scared me so,” Hazel said, continuing with her memory. “Floyd and me looking over the flat floor of the world. Me gripping on to him for dear life.” She chuckled softly to herself. “We was so excited. It was a brand-new world. Nothing but hope in front of us. Stretching as far as from here to China.”

  Vida looked over at Hazel. “I remembers the first time I seen you. Hope done fled the coop.”

  “I already give up by then.” Hazel shrugged and smiled. “I couldn’t get the hang of being somebody’s wife and momma. Some folks just fall into it, I reckon. Me, well, I couldn’t see it to save my life.”

  “And I can’t see myself being one of the lovely Lennon Sisters,” Vida said. “Everybody don’t take to things the same way. Daddy says we each got our own story calling out to us.”

  Hazel laughed. “I guess the trick is to get everybody else to shut up long enough to hear it.”

  “Amen,” Vida said.

  “Of course, there’s a lot of things I’d do different,” Hazel confessed. “Take Floyd. I’d of stood up to him a lot quicker if I knew it’d make me love him more. Ain’t that something? As soon as I found out I didn’t need him, that’s when I knew I wanted him. He’s a good man. But he’s only a man.” Hazel laughed. “Lord knows, long as he has his little sayings, he can yank his world around any way he wants it. Now Johnny—he’s in for some hard times, I can tell. You know how he is. He’s. . .” Hazel looked over at Vida for the word and then said, “I don’t know, special maybe. The world don’t seem to fit him right. And he’s trying so hard to make it fit. I only hope he don’t have to give up too much. It’s always the best parts they want to take away from you. I hope they don’t take his story away.”

  Vida smiled. “Johnny too much like you. He’ll have to find his own way, but he’ll do it. I know that boy. When the time comes, he got a heap of fight in him. A heap of fight.” She laughed, remembering. “One time he near about poked my eye out with his little fist. Now, that don’t change. I know. It’s the fight what gets you through. It’ll be there when he needs it. It was you give him that.”

  Sniffling, Hazel said, “You’re a good friend to me, Vida.”

  “Don’t do that!” she fussed. “You know I can’t stand it when you get all boo-hooey.”

  After Hazel took the next right off the pavement and onto a gravel road, she saw another car making the turn behind her. It was coming up fast. “Uh-oh. Vida, hold on.” Hazel wasted no time. She flattened the gas pedal to the floor and the tires bit down hard on the gravel. The car seemed airborne.

  Behind them, in a white Buick, two men urged the driver to speed up. Driving was Hollis, Floyd’s shop mechanic.

  “That’s him, all right,” said the man with the gun. “Just like Billy Dean said. Look at that car go. Can you catch him?”

  “Who you talking to?” Hollis scoffed. “I got a V-8 322 under my hood. Watch this baby strut her stuff.”

  Hazel was going sixty now, and even though she couldn’t see the car through the cloud of dust gushing from her rear, she was sure it was back there somewhere.

  “They’s a wide place in the road up here,” she told Vida. “When we get there, I’m going to mash the brakes hard. Mind your head.”

  “Jesus Lord, Miss Hazel!” cried Vida.

  Hazel was as cool as a riverboat gambler. “Don’t you worry, Vida. I’m going to take care of you. I can do this.”

  “I knows you can, Miss Hazel.” Vida covered her face with one hand and braced herself against the dash with the other. “I got faith in you.”

  Hazel hit the brakes hard. The Lincoln skidded forward a few yards and the other car kept coming, then swerved trying to miss her. As Hazel continued in her skid, the rear swung around. The car spun once and then twice, each time veering farther to the left side of the road, until when it finally stopped, Hazel had the car sitting off on a sandy shoulder aimed in the opposite direction. The other car skidded off the road through a barbed-wire fence and came to a stop in an empty field.

  Waving good-bye through the blanket of dust, Hazel took off and sped back toward the paved road. By the time she began to slow for the turn, she saw the other car coming up on her again. She turned hard and swung onto the blacktop, heading the Lincoln back toward town. As she powered the big car into the advancing twilight and the distance between her and her pursuers increased, Hazel began to breathe easier. They would be safely home in less than twenty minutes.

  “I don’t mind telling you now,” Hazel said, “that was close.”

  Vida was holding her chest, unable to speak. When she turned back to look, there came a loud series of pops followed by a dreadful pounding noise. The car began to shimmy. It was if the Lincoln had a mind of its own. The rear of the car began fishtailing crazily, fighting Hazel. She gripped the wheel with both hands and struggled mightily against the wild sway.

  “I think they shot out a tire,” Hazel said
, trying to remain calm. “Anyways, we sure got a flat.”

  “Can we make it to town?”

  Hazel looked up into the rearview mirror. “Not ahead of them.” The car was almost on her again.

  Hollis yelled, “He’s swerving all over the road. Flat tire. I’ll be damned. You’re one lucky shot.”

  “Luck, hell. It was my good shooting how come us to be catching him. ’Cause that ol’ boy sure outdrove your ass.”

  Hollis sulled up. “Shut your mouth and get ready. Remember, he said just to scare them. I’ll pull up even, and you fire off a couple of rounds. Aim over the roof.”

  The man readied himself at the window with his .38. “Damn. Be careful. He’s all over the road now. He’s liable to ram into us.”

  There was little daylight left. As the car pulled up next to the Lincoln, the man with the gun stared into Hazel’s window. She glanced at him. For a second their eyes locked.

  “It’s a woman!” he shouted at Hollis. “A goddammed white woman. Did he say it was a white woman we was after?”

  “What difference does it make? Shoot!”

  He looked again. “Jesus, I think she’s got a nigger right up in the front seat with her! Goddamn. Looks like a nigger man.”

  “Hurry up and shoot!” yelled Hollis. “Let’s get out of here before she hits us.”

  “But it’s a goddammed white woman!”

  Hollis looked over to see what his friend was talking about. “Jesus Christ, don’t shoot! That’s my boss’s wife. She knows me.”

  “Makes me sick to my stomach,” the shooter said, not hearing. “White women out looking for niggers to fuck.” He lifted the gun and fired twice, shattering Hazel’s window. Hollis pressed the pedal to the floor, leaving the Lincoln behind. In his rearview mirror he saw the car veer sharply and fly off the road without slowing.

  Hazel managed to jump a ditch, negotiate her way through a roadside stand of pines, over a cattle gap, and finally settle the car safely in a field of soft winter rye.