Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  “It tastes kind of odd with doughnuts, doesn’t it?” Miss Rosa said. “But we don’t have any crackers.”

  Jim thought the stew and pork and beans were better—the best food he had ever eaten.

  Around the campfire there was a great deal of talk about SNCC, CORE and Black Power. One talker said, “There was never any discussion about white supremacy, but when we talk of Black Power, Jesus! Excuse me, Reverends.”

  Jim believed everything that was said, but the words buzzed in his head and he found it hard to concentrate.

  “It’s a funny thing,” Miss Rosa said, “but all I feel is, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ I don’t distinguish between SNCC, CORE, and so forth.”

  George Thompson looked at her with admiration. She had been a parishioner of his for many years, except for a brief sortie into Christian Science that had not lasted long. He asked her now about Miss Minerva, and she told him about her departure with a sense of relief.

  “Our friendship of many years has been broken, and I don’t know how to amend it. Perhaps I shouldn’t even try. But it was a friendship for so many years. . . . It’s a strange thing, Mr. Thompson—it happened so innocently. As you know, she has suffered severely from migraines. We tried cure after cure, doctors galore, and I mentioned that perhaps she ought to go to a psychiatrist in Atlanta. She was mortally offended and just moved out—like that.”

  George Thompson had to re-evaluate his thoughts. The town had buzzed for years with gossip about Rosa’s and Minerva’s relationship. But Miss Rosa’s face was flushed now in the firelight, and George Thompson realized that once she might have been beautiful. He was a widower who had lost his wife five years ago, and the parsonage was empty without a woman. For the first time since his wife’s death he considered marrying again, although the thought was still veiled—he did not put it into words.

  “I think you did exactly right about Miss Minerva.”

  “My suggestion was certainly innocent.”

  The repetition of the word “innocent” suddenly wiped away all thoughts of gossip and imputations of strangeness about Rosa Culpepper. A curious lightness entered his heart.

  There was singing around the campfire—“We Shall Overcome” and other freedom songs, followed by “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” and the grand old hymns from an old-fashioned age, although many of the marchers were tired and their voices were drowsy.

  The Freedom Marchers, their first day finished, were about to go to sleep.

  Then suddenly a wild and dreamlike thing was happening. More than a dozen Klansmen, dressed in their robes, appeared over the crest of the hill. They stood in silence, looking at the marchers. Then a Klansman with a megaphone bawled out, “You’re in enemy territory. This is a warning. You’re being warned.” The voice echoed through the hills, clear and eerie, while the Klansmen stood there: “A warning, warning.” Then there were seven shots in the dark.

  Each marcher thought for a moment he had been hit. Then the white-robed Klansmen silently turned and disappeared below the crest of the hill.

  Dr. Farrell put more wood on the fire and began to examine the shaken marchers. Apparently no one had been hit. “Cute sense of humor,” Harry Farrell said scornfully.

  Odum stood apart, staring through the darkness at the hill where the Klansmen had stood. When Jim approached, Odum said softly, “Those——! Who they think they are! Who they think I is!” and he spat upon the ground.

  “Don’t think about it,” Harry Farrell said as the two boys came back to the campfire. “It was just a damn cute trick they pulled on us.” He smothered the fire. “Now it’s time to rest and sleep,” he said with authority.

  At that moment Jim solved the problem that had puzzled him for so long. He opened his bedroll and thought about being a doctor—a doctor very much like Harry Farrell. From his daydream a voice was calling, “Jim?” It was Odum, lying close to Jim’s pallet. “Jim,” he said again, this time with urgency in his voice.

  “Yes, Odum?”

  “Learn me to talk like you.”

  Jim lay listening to the eerie sound of a hoot owl and smelling the green scent of woods and honeysuckle. Then he too was asleep.

  The next morning, washing was the first problem. Jim offered to look for water, but the idea of buckets presented a further headache. While he was standing around in a quandary, the problem was solved. A man with the twangy voice of a mountaineer appeared in the camp and said, “I guess you folks wanta eat and wash up. I got a good well, and my wife is cooking biscuits.”

  He was a Negro farmer making a precarious living from the soil. The marchers followed him eagerly. He had appeared as if by a miracle, and after the visitation of the night before, the marchers needed this sign of support. They were thirsty, and the well water was sweet to their parched tongues.

  Mrs. Black, the farmer’s wife, was at the stove, and as well as biscuits there was a meal of hominy grits, fatback and hot coffee.

  “Did you hear the Ku Kluxers last night?” the Reverend Mr. Miller asked.

  “We seen ’em and heard the shots and shut our eyes.”

  After a good breakfast and many “thank yous” the marchers set off again. The crest of the hill was only a short distance away, and since it was Sunday, the Reverend Mr. Miller conducted a short service when they reached it.

  “The Lord has delivered us from snakes, poisonous swamps and the hand of the wicked. We praise thee, our Lord, our benefactor and our courage.” At the close of the sermon the marchers sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

  On the road again, Jim found a leaf for his mother and put it in an envelope. He would mail it at the next stop, wherever that might be.

  Marching downhill is almost as difficult as going uphill. To the left they saw again the first foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. At the next town they met many white hecklers, so they didn’t even look for the general store. The town was so turbulent and threatening that they were uneasy until they were well away.

  Then in a peaceful meadow there was another miraculous sign of support, just when they needed it most. There were twenty watermelons cooling in the chill water of a mountain stream. No one was in sight, but the marchers knew they were a friendly sign. Quickly they cut the melons and divided them. Then they bathed their feet in the brook.

  George Thompson thought about miracles as he waded. Shortly after his wife died, he had visited the Holy Land. He had wanted to see Ephraim, the place where Jesus went on his retreat just before the Crucifixion. He could not find the town on the map, and was puzzled until he realized that the place now had an Arabic name. When at last he found the town, it was on a high hill in Jerusalem, from which Christ could see all around the countryside and meditate. The watermelon miracle reminded him of his journey, and of the hill seen through Christ’s eyes. Also for some reason he was thinking of Miss Rosa on that nightmare night before—saying not a word, not becoming hysterical, as any delicately nurtured Southern lady might have.

  In much the same way Jim was thinking of Janet. There was truly a miracle about it somehow—watermelons in a chill stream with no soul in sight. He said to Janet, “I’ve decided . . .”

  “Decided what?”

  “What I’m going to do in life,” Jim said. “I want to be a doctor. Will you wait?”

  “I’ll wait for you, Jim.”

  Her voice thrilled him. Could love be a miracle?

  Jim had always thought of himself as an agnostic, like his father. A year ago he had aired his feelings in detail to the whole family, speaking against Christ and quitting Sunday school. But now he thought of the shattered window of Christ, with its crown of thorns so strangely intact in the dim ruby and yellow of the stained glass, back in the First Baptist Zion Church where the March had begun. There was a wildness in his blood and a springing in his heart. Was this turbulence caused by Janet’s voice? By the cool stream? By the head of Christ? How could he know?

  They were still bathing their fe
et in the stream, and Jim asked Janet, “Do you believe in God?”

  “Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” she said. “Right now I think I do.”

  He voiced a thought that had bothered him this spring. “I don’t think exclusive love is right. But with you, Janet, I’m afraid it’s exclusive love I feel. Am I un-Christian?”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying, darling. Love to me is love—you can use any fancy adjectives you want.”

  “C’mon, children,” Miss Rosa said. “It’s time to get going again.”

  The marchers knew that as they neared Atlanta the dangers grew. Even so, they were joined by three new people—an old man, a young girl and her beau. They too wanted to march to Atlanta.

  At the next town there was more jeering, so they did not dare go into the general store.

  There is a peculiar rhythm in a march—the rhythm of tired, shuffling feet, the rhythm too of terror. A dreaminess that is quickly punctured by the sudden awareness of danger. Marchers walk like sleepwalkers and are suddenly jerked awake. They were walking toward the west, going down the hill. A barbed-wire barricade was all at once before them. They stopped and waited, and as they were waiting they began to pray and sing:

  “We are soldiers in the Army,

  We have to fight and die.

  We have to hold up the Freedom banner,

  We have to hold it up until we die.”

  A sign on the barricade said, “Forbidden to marching scum.”

  A rough redneck and a deputy sheriff stood at each side of the barrier. On the other side of it were jeering crowds who threw rocks, bottles and fire bombs at them.

  Jim asked himself, “Why such hatred? Who are these jeering people?” He held Janet’s hand.

  Suddenly he saw a rifle being aimed, a rifle with a kind of blob on its muzzle.

  My God! was his instant thought. Are they going to shoot us?

  Then there was a peculiar shock, a sting in the eyes and pain. Holding on to Janet, he could feel her trembling. If he could only put his arms around her! Instead he said, “Don’t be afraid. I think it’s just tear gas.”

  By now the marchers had broken ranks as each tried to escape into the clear air. Jim wiped Janet’s face while Dr. Farrell was busy taking care of others. They needed water to bathe their eyes with, but there was no water around.

  The old man, the last person to join the march, swayed and fell beside the road.

  Dr. Farrell went to him, his own eyes still streaming, and putting on his stethoscope, listened to the old man’s heart.

  The rednecks and sheriffs clustered around. “Yeah!” one said. “He’s dead, all right.”

  Quiet came from both the marchers and the crowd. Each marcher had expected danger, but not death. A marcher started to sing, “Must Jesus bear the cross alone?” and the others joined in. The noon sun was blazing and the song of grief seemed to rise up to the merciless sun.

  A sheriff asked Dr. Farrell, “Who is this man?”

  “Does anybody know this old man?” Dr. Farrell asked.

  Nobody did. He was just a marcher who had joined the ranks late, and nobody knew his name. So the unknown marcher was taken to a police car and carried away.

  Guilt was mixed with the awe of namelessness. The crowd stood in uneasy silence as the marchers formed ranks without a word from anyone and slowly, still sniffling from time to time, took up their walk again on the other side of the barricade.

  They were so distraught that they were unprepared for the next sign of support. They had been marching down the valley, and on the left there was a beautiful ante-bellum house set in a meadowland of green grass, cool to the eye and very restful.

  Pure Gone With the Wind, Jim thought scornfully. And yet, as they approached the house a lady with her hair bleached by the sun said in a voice like a drill sergeant, “All you marchers follow me. I’ve been expecting you.”

  They passed through a gate in a hedge of clipped boxwood, into a beautiful garden where there were boxwood hedges lining the path and, to their delight, a boxwood star in a circle of zinnias. The house had Corinthian columns and its fresh white paint was shining.

  “I’m Mrs. Lula Jordon, and my house is at your disposal. Would you like to come in and look around?”

  Timidly the marchers looked into the two drawing rooms with their freshly starched curtains and damask draperies. There was a beautiful Duncan Phyfe table in the dining room. Mrs. Jordon looked at it with a puzzled expression.

  “There are too many of you to sit at this table no matter how many leaves I put in,” she said. “The best thing would be the trestle tables in the back yard. I have a barbecue every autumn in October, when the moon is full and the pigs and shoats have just been slaughtered.”

  “Miss Lula” was known throughout the countryside for her generosity. A young Negro boy, son of a field hand on the plantation, had one day begun to play her Steinway piano, and hearing his natural talent, she had had a music teacher give him regular lessons. His talent had grown, and when he reached the proper age she had sent him to the Juilliard School of Music, in New York. She had operated the plantation alone for the last three years, since her husband’s death. The field hands’ long hours and pitiable lives had depressed her, so she specialized now in orchidaceous plants and herb gardens instead of cotton. People came from miles around to see and buy her flowers, and the milk train delivered plants daily to Atlanta.

  There was a grand supper that night—barbecued ribs, fried chicken, two turkeys, green salad, ice cream and cake, and at the end of the meal, coffee.

  “Best meal I ever tasted,” one of the marchers said.

  After dinner Miss Lula and Miss Rosa sat on the veranda together. Soon they were on the easy terms of Southern gentlewomen who like each other.

  Miss Rosa asked, “What was your maiden name?” And that, of course, led to genealogies and to a pressing invitation to spend the night.

  “I thank you very kindly, but I’m afraid I’ll have to defer it to another time. I don’t think it would be fair to the others to break off in the middle of a March and sleep in a comfortable bed. Don’t think I’m not tempted by your dear invitation.”

  “Well, another time,” Miss Lula said. “In any case, I hope you’ll all camp on my property tonight. I warn you, the people here are not very liberal. I particularly warn you against the town of Verona.”

  “Aren’t you fearful of feeding us and letting us camp here?” Miss Rosa asked.

  Miss Lula said tartly, “When you get to be my age you’re afraid of nothing—especially when you live alone as I do.”

  When the marchers were told they were going to stay on the property, they lighted their campfires and split up into small groups. The ladies chatted awhile longer, until Miss Rosa was too sleepy to talk any more. Then Miss Lula kissed her good night and Miss Rosa joined the marchers at the campfire, glad that the second day’s march was ended.

  The next day was a day of special soreness, even more painful than the second day. As Minney May Johnson said, “Every bone in my body aches. Is I goin’ on to Atlanta or is I not?”

  Her nearest companion said, “Marcher, shut up!”

  “Oh! but you is cruel. Don’t you hurt?”

  “I never expected a feather bed and heavenly hash when I started this March.”

  Everybody was stiff from sleeping on the ground, whether they complained or not. But the main thing was that, mile by mile, they were getting closer to Atlanta. Thirty new people joined them on this day, adding to the problem of food. Some of the marchers had brought their own, but hunger and thirst remained constant problems.

  Jim thought of his soft bed at home and cool sheets.

  They came to a stream where they bathed their tired feet, rested and drank.

  Then the march again, the soreness and the eternal sun. They passed a quiet town in which there were no jeering crowds. Miss Rosa, taking up her courage, asked Odum and Jim to go with her, and they bought provisions from the cou
ntry store.

  “There are non-bigots,” she said, pleased with her purchases. But she remembered that the next town was Verona, remembered Miss Lula’s warning against it. She talked with the March leaders, and they agreed reluctantly to detour the whole area, which would put them back many hours.

  At a town past Verona, one of the last of the marchers to join suddenly became very ill. Dr. Farrell helped carry him to the shade and sounded him with his stethoscope.

  “God help us,” he said. “This boy has pneumonia. Where is the nearest telephone?”

  Someone remembered a house a piece back that might have a telephone. The doctor followed directions and found the house that had been described. The place was neat, with a picket fence around it, but the white man who opened the door was surly.

  “I wonder if I could use your telephone?”

  The voice was not only surly but mean. “I ain’t loanin’ my phone to any of them God-damned marchers.”

  “I’m a member of the Medical Commission for Human Rights, and a boy down the road has pneumonia. I’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

  “You heard me,” the man said. “You and your marchers get the hell out of here.”

  Dr. Farrell pushed his way into the house and saw an old-fashioned telephone. The man stood guard, his hand on the receiver.

  “You ain’t usin’ this phone for no marchers.”

  Dr. Farrell said, “But the patient has pneumonia.”

  “I don’t care what the patient has.”

  Harry Farrell acted by instinct. He’d never hit a man before, but when he looked at the ugly face in front of him, he suddenly hit him on the jaw. The man staggered and fell, his head hitting the floor. Quickly the doctor called the operator and asked to be connected to the nearest hospital. It seemed to take forever to get the number and report the information, and the sullen, jeering face still watched him as he left the house.

  The patient was breathing heavily, and it seemed ages before the ambulance came. At the hospital the boy clung to Harry Farrell’s hand. They gave him a shot and put him in an oxygen tent. It took some time to get his name and address, and when all that was over, Harry still had a feeling that something was unfinished.