Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

by Jonathan Odell

  Billy Dean raised his eyes to see a giant of a man, barrel-chested and immaculately dressed in a New York–tailored suit, come stomping down the stairs. He was carrying a .45 of his own.

  “There he is, Billy Dean!” The Senator was almost squealing. “You got a clean shot! What you waiting for, boy?”

  Delia ran to Jeffery and flung her arms around him. “Leave him alone, Daddy. You’re talking about the man who’s going to be the father of your grandchild.”

  The Senator looked down at the sheriff. “I changed my mind. After you shoot him and lock Delia away, put Levi in the cell with my daughter. He’s the only one that could ever talk any sense into that girl. Where is he when you need him, anyway?”

  Billy Dean’s head was swaying in his hands, his gun pointing over his head at nothing in particular as he desperately tried to figure his next move. Maybe I should go ahead and shoot the nig—Jeffery—he thought. No, then I’d probably have to shoot Delia, too. Maybe I could yell out, “That’s my baby we talking about here!” but then I’d have to shoot the Senator.

  No, she’s got me. She’s got me good. There ain’t a thing I can say. Not a thing I can do. He cast a longing eye toward Delia, who stood there looking pure as the driven snow. Unwed, nearly seven months pregnant, and her arms around a—Jeffery.

  Billy Dean had embezzled, perjured, defrauded, plundered, extorted, connived, and outright sold his pride for that woman. Probably doomed himself to a prison cell before the week was out. Still, the craziest thing was, Billy Dean thought, I can’t hate her for it. How does she do that? he wondered. Hell, he thought as he watched them there, holding each other, I can’t even hate Jeffery for it.

  “Boy,” the Senator said, “are you all right? You don’t look too good.”

  Billy Dean didn’t say a word. There wasn’t a word he could say. Not a move he could make. Delia had outcheckered him good. Jumped all his men and wiped the board clean.

  Chapter Fifty

  LOSS FOR WORDS

  The bell rang from upstairs for the third time in twenty minutes, and again Vida, who was busy at the sink, sent Johnny up to see what she wanted. Two minutes later he had returned. “She wrote, ‘I want Vida.’ I think she’s lonely again and needs you to tell her a story.”

  Vida shook her head. “Your momma is the beatin’est white woman alive. Didn’t you tell her your stories?”

  “I told her all my good ones twice. I can’t think of no more.”

  “Two hours before Mr. Floyd gets home, and I ain’t had the first thought about supper.” Vida wiped her hands on the dish towel and then flung it down on the countertop. “I knows what it is she’s wanting. Might as well go give it to her.”

  She unplugged the coffeepot and placed it on the tray along with two cups, a glass of grape Kool-Aid, and a slice of fruitcake. Then she stomped up the stairs as loud as she could, trying to stave off any more bell ringing. Before she got to the door it started again. “Put that thing down before I hang it around your neck like a cowbell!” Vida yelled. “We here already!”

  Johnny got the door, and Vida entered the room where Hazel was propped up on a bank of pillows, her neck wrapped in bandages, scribbling furiously on one of Johnny’s tablets. She handed it to him, and he in turn held it out to Vida.

  Vida dropped the tray on the foot of the bed and snatched the pad. “News flash,” Vida said, not looking down at the paper but at Hazel. “They’s a spoiled-rotten white woman in this very room who starting to take ’vantage of her piteous situation.”

  Thinking her not funny, Hazel pointed her finger at the pad.

  Vida read the note and frowned. “Well, I tell you why I ain’t been up sooner. I been cleaning up after my friends, as you know good and well. Can’t we have our coffee and fruitcake and swap Santy Claus without you getting your tail bent?”

  Hazel took the pad from Vida and wrote, “WELL?”

  “Weeellll,” Vida said as she poured the coffee, “well is a mighty deep subject.” Both she and Johnny laughed at that, but Hazel flicked the pencil impatiently against the tablet like a drumstick.

  “Sure was easier when you hid behind the corner and eavesdropped.”

  After handing Hazel a cup and taking away her pencil, Vida sat down on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, and began to recount the day’s gossip. “Creola say she done changed her mind about Miss Pearl. Creola done decided that Miss Pearl ain’t so much nice as she is stupid.”

  Hazel narrowed her eyes and looked at Vida scornfully.

  “Just because you done switched your mind on Miss Pearl, don’t mean I can’t have my own thoughts on the matter.”

  Hazel shrugged.

  “Well, Creola say Miss Pearl told her next time she gets the fool idea to go vote, she should come talk it out with her first. Miss Pearl say she been doing some reading on the nature of colored people and how they can’t think too good for theyselves ’cause they backed up with feelings left over from Africa and slave times. Miss Pearl say she’ll do a better job of looking out for Creola, so she don’t get herself in any more trouble.” Vida and Hazel both shook their heads at that.

  “Well, you know Creola was fit to be tied. She say next time she was going to pass that test, just to show Miss Pearl who was backed up and with what.”

  Vida handed Hazel Maggie’s fruitcake. “Course, when Creola said that about voting, Sweet Pea right away reared back and say. . .” Vida looked down at Johnny, who was sitting on the floor taking in every word. “Cover your ears, child.”

  Johnny did as he was told. Carefully he watched Vida’s lips.

  “Sweet Pea say, ‘Next time, hell! If I go ’round trying to vote every week, I ain’t never going to get no damn man through my door.’”

  Hazel rolled her eyes and smiled.

  When Vida handed Johnny his Kool-Aid, he dropped his hands from his ears. He had heard it all the first time anyway.

  “I don’t know who she be fooling. It’s my daddy Sweet Pea got her sights on.” Vida grumbled. “Merciful Jesus, that’s one woman I ain’t never calling Momma. Course, Sweet Pea has a swolled-up head now, gettin’ that big reward like she did. I tell you how that come about?”

  Hazel shook her head, though she had heard it twice. “She say she was listening to Miss Hertha being real ugly to Deputy Butts. Carrying on about her priceless rings and cameos and things. Say if they can drag ever mudhole in Mississippi looking for her sister who ain’t even dead yet, then they sure nuff can sic one blessed hound dog on Billy Dean.” Vida laughed.

  “That’s when Sweet Pea took them to a place in the woods where she thought he was probably hiding. Caught him red-handed. ’Speck he’s busy as a man can be, hashing over old times with his friends up at the state prison.”

  Hazel shook her head sadly. She had had such high hopes for the sheriff turning himself around.

  “I thought for sure, spite of the roadblocks, he would have got clear up to Chicargo, or some such place.” Vida was quiet for a moment, nodding, thinking. Chicago, for her, had come to symbolize the very heart of the unknown world.

  “Anyway, that where he was, all right. He kind of give up. I reckon I can see why he went back there. One time I figured it had to be his praying ground. The last place he seen the face of God. I know for a fact that’s the last place he seen his momma. I guess for Billy Dean Brister, God disappeared that day, too.” She smiled sadly. “Boys and they momma, huh, Miss Hazel?”

  Hazel looked over at Johnny, understanding what she meant.

  “Said he was drunk as Cooter Brown. Crying like a baby.”

  Then Vida laughed. “Course he’ll be safer locked up than on the loose. I heard some low-count agitator dropped Miss Delia’s purple letter in Miss Hertha’s mailbox. Should be some fine fireworks by New Year’s Day. I swear, if that family was in a circus, I’d follow them town to town!”

  Hazel waved her fork with satisfaction, hoping she got to see Hertha and Delia tear each other’s hair out.

  “And
now we got us a Sheriff Butts to fret about. Course, we don’t know much about him yet. We ain’t got nobody in his house, but the League is working on it. Creola got a cousin.” Vida winked at Hazel and they both smiled.

  “And that ol’ Misery! Well, you know how she be. She say, ‘All that trouble y’all got into and didn’t change nothing. Still can’t vote yet.’” Vida grinned. “You hear that? Even got ol’ Misery saying ‘yet.’ Now that be a mighty change right there. A mountain done moved. Like Daddy said, ‘You can’t turn back a step once it’s been took.’ He say you might can turn back the person what took it. Kill him even. But that step is out there for good, waiting on the next person to come along.”

  Hazel nodded appreciatively, as if that were a really good saying. Seeing that Hazel liked it, Vida repeated it proudly, “Yep, that’s exactly what he said, ‘You can’t turn back a step once it’s been took.’”

  Vida paused for a moment and then said, “I know it’s crazy, but my daddy done won me over. We been talking to the folks who run that Montgomery boycott. I guess he and me going to become a couple of civil righters, right here in Mississippi. They’s a lot to do. They’s a lot of little boys same as Nate going to grow up second-class citizens less somebody does something. ’Cept you can’t tell nobody.”

  Hazel crossed her heart.

  Vida went on for another several minutes, keeping an eye on Hazel, whose lids got heavier and heavier until she finally drifted off to sleep. Johnny and Vida quietly loaded up the tray. Vida turned out the lights, and the boy carefully pulled the door closed.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, as Vida set the tray on the counter, Johnny said, “Santa Claus coming tonight. Ain’t he, Vida?”

  “Sure is, and don’t say ain’t.”

  “He coming to your house, too?”

  “I ’speck he’ll drop in. Along with all my other friends. And Willie and Daddy.”

  Vida ran a little more hot water into the sink and then swished the dishwater with her hand to build a few suds. “And tomorrow,” she said, “I be back here. Me and you can show off our presents.”

  Vida placed the last dishes in the sink, and as she washed, she began to sing. This time the tune she put the words to sounded more like a carol. It was always changing. As she sang, she thought about Nate. What would he be getting for Christmas? He was ten tonight. Clothes, maybe? A football? Books? He could probably read real good by now.

  She looked up out of the window. The weak December sun was nearly done for the day. Did he remember? she wondered, as she did every day.

  After she repeated the two lines several more times, Johnny said, “You always singing them same words, Vida. Ain’t you got no more?”

  “Don’t say ain’t. Them’s the only ones I know of.” She continued singing what she knew.

  Thinking Vida had sounded sad about that, Johnny said, “I’ll make you some more for your Christmas present.”

  She smiled into her dishwater. “That would make me proud.”

  As Vida washed and Johnny hunched over his tablet at the table, they sang the words together.

  Drivin’ a big black car

  For a big white man.

  EPILOGUE

  He stood at the window, watching the snow. It fell in a lacy curtain across the skyline, its folds covering the streets and gathering up over the sidewalk. Headlights and taillights and streetlights and traffic lights and neon winked and blinked and flashed through the snowy screen and reminded him of decorations on an immense tree.

  The man never tired of watching the snow, seeing the seasons change with such force. Maybe because in this place, like the seasons, a man could make himself over, too. Here he could change into something more than anybody had ever told him was possible.

  “One more time,” the boy called out, bouncing on the bed behind him. “I want to watch your fingers. I bet I can learn to play as good as you.”

  He turned away from the window and the snow. “It’s past your bedtime. They going to be back any minute.”

  “Just once more. Please? It’s Christmas Eve.” The boy looked at him expectantly, knowing that in the end he would get exactly what he wanted.

  Even as he asked, the man was returning to the chair by the bed. He gently lifted the guitar from its case. The boy leaned in as the man showed him how to make the chord. He began the song once more, slowly this time, so the boy could study the fingering:

  Vida, wear your white dress to the station,

  Bring your parasol too.

  I got me a real meal ticket,

  A solid gold plan.

  Drivin’ a big black car

  For a big white man.

  “I want you to teach me that one first.”

  The man laughed. “That right?” He plucked a high C and then bent the string, making the note rise up like a question. “Why you suppose that is?”

  “Because you put my father in it. He’s the big white man in a big black car.”

  “Yep. You right about that.” The man strummed the final chord of the song. “And him and your momma are going to be back anytime. They’ll be all over me if you still up.”

  “Tell me the story one more time.”

  Sitting down by the boy’s bed again, he said, “OK, a quick version. I wrote that song because your daddy found a way to get me out of trouble when nobody else would bother with a Mississippi hick, cotton lint still in his hair. But he did. Imagine, a big-shot lawyer, standing up for a eighteen-year-old punk.”

  “You!” the boy laughed. “A Mississippi hick!”

  “Yeah. Me,” he said, laughing also.

  “That’s when Daddy asked you to come live with us.”

  “Yep. When he got me out of jail. I started driving for him.”

  “How old was I?”

  “When I got out you were near about four. You know that for yourself. You trying to stretch this out.”

  “And now you’re going to be a lawyer like him.”

  “One day. If he’s a good enough teacher. End of story. Get to sleep now.”

  The boy yawned. “Are you ever going to write one about me?”

  “When you can carry a tune to sing it with. Time for you to go to bed. Let’s cut the light out.”

  The boy smiled, but his eyes were heavy. Reaching for the light chain again, the man said, “Time to cut off the lights. This time for true.”

  “Just one more.”

  “No.”

  “The story about the hands,” he said and yawned again.

  “Don’t ring a bell.”

  “You know. When I was little. The one you told about the golden hands on a golden thread.” The boy rubbed an eye with the back of his fist. “I heard it somewhere. Must have been you.”

  The man thought for a moment. Could the boy really be remembering?

  “No, I never told it,” said the man finally. “You must have imagined that one on your own. Maybe you got your own song to write.”

  How many more pieces would come to the boy before he would need to know the whole truth? How do you tell somebody a thing like that? How wide does a boy’s shoulders need to be to carry that much sorrow?

  “Thanks for the guitar.”

  “You’re welcome.” He clicked off the light. “Merry Christmas.”

  The boy, on his way to sleep, said softly, “I want to go there one day. Go see the big river and the alligator swamps. Cotton fields. That woman all dressed in white.”

  The man pulled the covers up over the boy’s shoulders. No, he thought, there was more than sorrow that got left behind. There was love, as well. He’ll need that one day. Everybody does.

  “They just songs,” he lied. “Believe me, you got everything worth wanting right here. For now.”

  He stood over the bed, studying the boy, his face illuminated by a wedge of light from the doorway. He reached down, intending to stroke him lightly on the cheek, but drew his hand back. He was growing up. Soon he would be too old for bedtime stories and lullabies. It would b
e time for the truth. Truth was already creeping up on the boy.

  As the man stood there watching, having his thoughts, the boy began to snore softly. Still, he decided, only little-boy snores. He had his whole life in front of him with no past to fret over. Let him have that for tonight. There would time for grown-up truths later.

  He was about to pull the door shut when he noticed the boy’s fist. It was clenched on the pillow next to his head, as if holding on tightly to something as he slumbered.

  Finally he whispered, “Good-night, little man,” and carefully closed the door on the boy’s dreaming.

  † † †

  ABOUT ROSA PARKS AND THE MAIDS OF MISSISSIPPI

  As a child growing up in 1950s Mississippi, I thought we had the worst television reception in the world. Nearly every night, broadcasters from our local channel interrupted the news to announce that they were experiencing technical difficulties. Little did I know at the time, the technical difficulties had nothing to do with broadcast signals, antennas, or any of the little doohickeys that made on-air programming possible. No, local stations in Mississippi purposely went dark whenever the national news was reporting something positive about Civil Rights. The technical difficulties were people like Mrs. Rosa Parks.

  In 1955, Mississippi was waging an all-out war against integration, and the news out of Montgomery only strengthened its resolve to keep up the fight. That year, the Mississippi legislature established and funded the Sovereignty Commission, a state agency whose charge was to preserve segregation. It was authorized to employ any means necessary, including tapping phones, monitoring mail, planting spies, and paying informers, to gather intelligence on private citizens suspected of working for Civil Rights. The Commission passed along surveillance files to law enforcement, the White Citizens Councils, and the Klan. They were also charged with ensuring that the state’s stand on segregation was always portrayed in a “positive light.” State media outlets were already controlled by archsegregationists, so local reporting on Montgomery conformed to the Commission’s standards. If national networks aired anything that was deemed favorable to Civil Rights, the local station interrupted the broadcast.