Gone to Green

by Judy Christie

  "Oh, no problem, no problem at all. Come on in here where it's warm. I'm Marcus Taylor. Welcome to Green."

  "Mr. Taylor, I'm Lois Barker. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for having me over this evening."

  Pearl Taylor walked in from the back of the house and gave me a small hug, something I was learning people down here in North Louisiana liked to do. "Good to see you again, Miss Lois. Have a seat."

  The house was incredibly homey. Compared to the house where my furniture now sat out on Route 2, it looked like heaven. Nothing was fancy, but it all seemed so cozy. There were similarities between the way the Lakeside Motel looked and this home. I sat on the end of an Early American style couch, and Mrs. Taylor sat on the other end. Mr. Taylor sat in an upholstered recliner that clearly was his regular seat. I got the idea that no one sat in the chair except Mr. Taylor.

  Pearl wore brown knit slacks and a brown and peach shirt. Marcus had on navy blue slacks and a nice plaid long-sleeved shirt. He was about sixty with graying hair and a quick smile. I had guessed Pearl to be in her late fifties when I encountered her at the motel, and her appearance today confirmed that. Her hair was a deep brown, and she wore it swept up in the back, almost in a French twist.

  "We thought we could visit for a while about the neighborhood association and then eat some supper," Mr. Taylor said.

  "We invited our daughter for supper, too," Mrs. Taylor said. "Thought you might enjoy some younger company. And we'd like her to meet you. We hope that's okay."

  "Oh, certainly. That's great," I said, alternating between thinking I needed to get back to the paper and it was very nice of them to have me in their home for a meal, the first people in Green to do so.

  Our meeting for the next hour and a half was informative and helped put into context a lot that was going on in Green. Sometimes the couple chatted, and at other times Mr. Taylor referred to a handwritten page in a spiral notebook, stressing that he wanted to make sure he covered all his points. I could tell he was taking our conversation very seriously.

  Every now and then, his wife got up and went to the kitchen "to check on our supper." Something smelled quite good, and my stomach started to growl.

  The couple had been involved in the Lakeside Neighborhood Association for nearly three decades, had helped found it when such community groups sprang up at the grassroots level everywhere. I was surprised when I found out the organization included these homes on the lake and those across the road, the rundown neighborhood known as Lakeside Annex.

  "We've lived in this house on the lake for thirty-seven years. Hard to believe," Mr. Taylor said. "We've owned the motel for nearly twenty-five. My bride here is a retired schoolteacher, and I retired from the post office. I drive a school bus these days, keep those young rowdies in line."

  Looking at his notes, he switched gears and made a little statement. "Our association wants to make sure each neighbor is treated fairly, and this precious resource of our lake is never taken for granted. And we want to make the Lakeside Annex a better place to live, upgrade the houses, and hold landlords to property standards. With all of that in mind, we have officially opposed the Cypress Point subdivision, which would limit access to the lake, further pollute the area, and change the texture of our community."

  Pearl jumped in. "We bought our home from the Wilson family long before anyone ever thought the property was worth anything. Even though it's on the water, it sits lower than lots of local land. It's a bit swampy in the summertime."

  ,,most black folks couldn't afford to buy a house back then," Marcus said, "but my Pearl was good with money, and we both had steady work. We were blessed. Nowadays, the tenants can't afford this land, so they keep on renting. We don't believe people should lose their houses over that. They ought to be able to work something out with Major and his partners."

  As though wrapping up their presentation, Mrs. Taylor stood up and smiled. "I think I hear Kevin now. We'll have some supper, but I just want to say we hope the paper will support our position on the development. I know the McCullers are partners in it, but that doesn't make it right."

  Another new piece of information. The Big Boys were investors in this. I wondered if they also were involved in Mossy Bend.

  Marcus Taylor stood up, too. "God has given us this beauty, and we must be good stewards of it. And we must take care of the poor. That's what the Bible says."

  Just then the front door opened and a striking young woman walked in wearing a white lab coat and carrying a pretty leather purse. "Oh, Daddy," the woman said, laughing and walking over to hug Mr. Taylor. "Are you preaching again?"

  Her father returned the hug warmly, and her mother stepped up for an embrace of her own. For a moment they were a tight circle, and I was moved by their affection for one another, moved and isolated.

  "You must be Lois," the woman said. "I'm Kevin Taylor, lucky enough to be the daughter of this pair." She winked. `And a de facto member of the Lakeside Neighborhood Association. I don't contribute much to their group, but I sure get some good suppers out of the deal. I would shake your hand but I need to wash my hands before I pass on any more germs."

  Kevin Taylor? Kevin Taylor? Where had I heard that name? My mind went into its computer search mode, hoping the "find" function came up with something quickly. She wore a lab coat. She carried an expensive handbag. She was affiliated with the Lakeside group.

  Aha! Alex had mentioned her, something about her wanting to build a house and getting turned down. Now I remembered.

  "Our baby girl made a doctor and came home to Green to look after us," her father said proudly. "We told her she should stay down in Houston or move to Atlanta or Dallas where there are more opportunities, but she insisted on coming home."

  It was clear that having his daughter home made his world immensely better, and I wished I had spent more time with my mother before she died-and that I could better remember my own father. Kidney failure killed him when I was only seven.

  When Kevin surfaced, she smelled of Dove soap, had combed her hair, and shed the jacket. She was an extremely attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties and one of the warmest people I had ever met, a woman who seemed comfortable in her own skin.

  Our supper will stand forever on my list of memorable meals. We had roast beef and gravy, cooked all day in a CrockPot, rice, some peas Mrs. Taylor had put up last summer, and a tomato mix called "chowchow." She had made that, too, and the bread-and-butter pickles and the biscuits.

  It had been weeks since I had a home-cooked meal, and I hoped I was not making pig noises.

  We opened with a lengthy blessing by Mr. Taylor, praying for everyone from the world's leaders in their quest for peace to schoolteachers and students and brotherly love. He made special mention of Kevin and her healing ministry and his two other girls and their families and then prayed that I might have wisdom as I sojourned in Green. It was a very moving prayer, although I did seriously consider sneaking a bite of biscuit to tide me over.

  As we ate, Mrs. Taylor told me to call her Pearl and to call her husband Marcus. They somehow seemed a bit too distinguished for that, and so I began to call them Miss Pearl and Mr. Marcus, just like that.

  Much of our conversation revolved around Kevin and me. I was curious about her name and her profession. She wanted to know about my background and how I was doing in Green. She asked the second question as though she knew the answer could go in either direction. She seemed to be asking how things were going beneath the surface, where the real action in Green happened.

  Miss Pearl told the story of naming Kevin. "Her daddy already had two daughters and thought this baby was going to be his boy. He chose the name of his younger brother who had been killed in the Korean War. When Baby Girl Number Three arrived, he was not to be swayed." At this point, Mr. Marcus jumped in. "Besides, I figured this surprise gal was going to do something special with her life and having a man's name couldn't hurt a bit."

  Kevin laughed during much of the
story, saying it had certainly made life interesting. "I am on some pretty wild mailing lists," she said, "ranging from Viagra advertisements to Playboy subscription offers. You just wouldn't believe what can happen when people think you're a man."

  "So you have a private practice here?" I asked.

  "I'm in a two-person family practice office with a physician who wants to retire in a year or two. He needed a partner badly, and not that many young does want to move to towns like Green. I've been back for almost two years. You should see what happens when new patients walk in." But she told the story without a trace of bitterness, as though she understood she was a different kind of doctor for this little town.

  Part of what made that meal so good was the food, part was the talk, sitting around a table in a real home, visiting, laughing. The business of the association had been temporarily set aside, and I was there as a newcomer to town, someone who needed a warm welcome during this cool season. I did not want to leave. This was the first place I had felt comfortable in quite a few days.

  After supper, we moved back into the living room for coffee and a frozen pound cake that Miss Pearl had heated, apologizing she didn't have a fresh one for us. As we chatted, the talk turned again to the neighborhood association. I asked Kevin about her house-building experience, and she wrinkled up her face.

  "Do we really want to go over that story?" she asked. "It's sort of old news to me."

  "If you wouldn't mind ..." my voice trailed off, and then I started again. "It would help me gain perspective on what's going on. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about the community."

  For ten minutes or so, Kevin told about moving back to Green, living with her parents for a few months, and choosing a place to live. "I finally had some money to spend after med school, and I wanted something nice. I guess if I admit it, I wanted people to know I was doing just fine."

  The first house she tried to buy was in Mossy Bend, a townhouse right on the water. She went through an open house one Sunday and made an offer on Monday. The owner turned her down flat. So on Tuesday she met his price, determined to have that house.

  "The next day he took it off the market," she said, twisting her face up again. "Said his sister and brother-in-law were moving back to town in a few months and were going to live there."

  "The house sat vacant for several months and then went back on the market and sold to a young white couple. It was pretty clear Mossy Bend wasn't ready for people like us," Marcus Taylor said.

  "Now, Daddy, we don't know that," Kevin said, but she reached out and patted his leg.

  "Then I decided to build a house, over near the motel, on some property Mama and Daddy own. I hired an architect and adapted plans for one of those great houses that sit up on stilts. But the zoning commission wouldn't approve my plans. Said it was too close to the lake, and drainage wasn't adequate. I redid the plans and pushed the house site back. They turned me down again. Now six months later they plan to build a whole slew of houses like that, in almost the same place."

  She smiled, but her words had taken on a little bite. "Now I rent a house across the street in the black part of town," she said, emphasizing the last words. "It only has one bathroom and no central heat or air, but the neighbors don't mind having me. And I sure am saving a lot of money."

  "But that's wrong," I said. "That's blatant discrimination. How can they get away with that?"

  "Things have been done a certain way in Green for many years," her father said.

  "I know something will open up," Kevin said, shrugging. "These things have a way of working out when the time is right."

  Suddenly the Taylor house didn't seem so cozy. I needed to get back to the newspaper and work on the mayor's retirement story with Alex.

  10

  Red carcasses fill pails next to the picnic benches at the home of Mayor Oscar Myers. "This is what I live for," the ninetytwo-year-old mayor said, ripping the head off a crawfish. "Mudbug season is here, and every year we invite the entire neighborhood. This year it's bigger and better than ever."

  -The Green News-Item

  While my early days in Green seemed to crawl by, the next couple of months flew. It was as though someone had taken my life off slow motion and put it on fast forward. My mind was jammed so full of new information that I didn't know what to do. I practically lived at the newspaper office.

  People came out of the woodwork to talk to me about this problem or that. They included Miss Barbara Beavers, dress shop owner and regular advertiser: "I do not like the way my ads look. They are smeared, and you can't tell the difference between the house coats and the evening gowns."

  And Bud Dillon, "no relation to Matt, ma'am," who wrote a folksy farming column. "We need more agriculture coverage. It's the backbone of our country. People depend on The NewsItem for farm prices and new varieties of soy beans and such."

  Some people, like Bud, were friendly characters who made living in Green richer and worthwhile. Others, like Miss Barbara, could be mean-spirited and bossy.

  In addition, I was soon called upon by a number of special-interest groups, the number and variety a surprise to me in such a small place. "Can you help us with our literacy fund-raiser?" "Can we count on your support for the Catfish Festival?" "Would you make a donation to the Friends of the Confederacy?"

  Many meetings began with polite civility and deteriorated into my feeling evil and misunderstood. "We don't think we are getting the coverage we might expect," one club would say. "The newspaper's position is clearly biased," another would complain.

  From our position on zoning to litter control, we drew criticism. What distressed me was how many people seemed to think you were a bad person if you disagreed with them. "We can disagree without being disagreeable" became one of my least favorite phrases, since it generally preceded the newspaper getting blasted with both barrels.

  Mercifully, these meetings were punctuated by the "social callers," those who wanted to say hello and welcome me to town. They often brought a cake or produce or flowers from their yards. "We want you to know how happy we are to have you in Green." "We'd love to have you speak to our garden club." "This is the recipe that won first place at our Homemaker's Tea. We hope you enjoy it and our community."

  At first I tried to refuse the small gifts, citing the age-old newspaper conflict of interest issue. However, Iris Jo and Tammy intervened, telling me that refusing was seen as arrogant or "uppity"-Tammy's word.

  "Just go ahead and accept them graciously and share them," Tammy said. "I hardly think Gertrude Lindsey is trying to buy you with that batch of brownies."

  Some of these individuals became friends, mentors of sorts. They dropped by, or I would run into them on the street, heading into the library or at the grocery store. They would occasionally send me a handwritten note with a word of praise.

  Lots of them invited me to church, but I put them off. "I'm still settling in," I said.

  In between all the community meetings, I decided to meet with every person on my payroll and see what we might do to make the newspaper better and maybe make the Green area a better place to live. I considered this Step Two in unloading the paper in a few months, following Step One of relocating to Green and Step Three of moving away from Green.

  My first such meeting was with the news staff-all two of them, plus Tammy, who seemed to have a hand in every department. The part-time photographer didn't show up. "He works for advertising," Alex said.

  We sat down with sandwiches and soft drinks, and Tom immediately spoke. "I'd like to write editorials," he said, chewing noisily. "For every edition, the way we used to. I can sign up community columnists, too, to give their side of the story."

  Up until shortly before Ed bought the paper, The NewsItem had used old-fashioned country correspondents, and we decided to bring those back, mostly older women who wrote about comings and goings in their tiny communities.

  We roped Tammy into lining those up. She worked the phones like a telemarketer from a major corp
oration and collected a long list of citizens who produced local news for ten bucks a column. "Dr. and Mrs. Ricky Coffey welcomed out-oftown guest from Waco, Texas, over Easter weekend." "Estelle Gardner celebrated her ninetieth birthday with five generations at her table." "The Daisy Fellowship Garden Club invites you to its gumbo supper. All proceeds will go to maintain wildflower areas in the city." They even helped us cover the all-important local sports, from city leagues to high school games.

  Alex was not to be left out during the planning discussion. "I want to do more investigative projects. I'm telling you, something's up with zoning. I can't quite pin it down, but I'm getting tips about Major Wilson and the McCullers and the projects they're handling. Plus, I'm hearing a lot of buzz about the proposed route for the new interstate highway."

  Tammy interrupted. "I hear we're getting a Red Lobster."

  "That's not true," Tom said. "Green doesn't have liquor by the drink, and they said they won't come without a change in our liquor laws."

  "That's not what I hear," Tammy said, with a sniff. And so our first planning meeting went.

  One of my rising expenses was paying for public records, a luxury I had taken for granted in my former life. Sometimes I would see Alex's car in the parking lot at the paper late into the evening or find him sifting through official papers when I came in after a community function.

  These community functions were mostly new to me. While I had gotten out some in Dayton, my primary role had been in the newsroom. The workflow and news cycle had often interfered with my attending events-and I had been proud of keeping an arm's length between newsmakers and me. Here it was different.

  My phone rang steadily. "We'd like to invite you to our annual banquet, Miss Lois," a club or business would say. "We'll have a place for you at the head table." The calls also came when I could not make it. "Dub and Chuck always found time to attend," a civic club president said. "Our members will be so disappointed that you won't be there."