Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands

by Susan Carol McCarthy

  “Do you . . . really believe we’ll see Marvin again . . . up there, I mean?”

  “Ah do, child, Ah do,” she says gently. Her eyes seem lit from within, her great face shines with faith. “In the meantime . . .” she says, dropping her chin like Marvin used to, “Ah brought you some snicker doodles, and, since those boys done traipsed off to O’landah, Ah ’spect you get the whole plate to your own self.”

  “Snicker doodles?”

  “Your mamma put ’em over there,” she says and points to the desk in front of the showroom window, “next to your puzzle.”

  “Thank you, Armetta,” I say, hugging her, “for . . . well, everything.”

  “Have some cookies, girl. Ah gotta get myself back to work,” she says, but holds me real tight a moment longer before she goes.

  I sink into Mother’s desk chair. The crunchy sweetness of a snicker doodle can’t cover the taste of bitter grief in my mouth. Staring through the shelves of the shell-lamp section, I hear Mother making change for a customer.

  Beyond her, in the driveway, a second car wheels in and parks beside the people just leaving. I recognize, with surprise, the big blue Pontiac that is May Carol’s mother’s car.

  Miz Lucy Garnet, blonde hair, pink shirtwaist and big black sunglasses, steps out of her car alone. As she greets my mother, I wonder where May Carol could be.

  “Hey, Lizbeth. How you doin’ today?” Miz Lucy calls, tucking her glasses with a snap into a small white purse.

  “Trying to stay cool,” Mother says. “How about you? Looks like it’s heating up pretty good out there.”

  “Yeah, probably, I had the air conditioner on.” Miz Lucy sounds distracted as she scans the showroom, spotting Armetta at work on the honeys and marmalades. “Listen, Lizbeth, would it be okay with you if I have a li’l conversation with Armetta? Won’t take a minute.”

  Mother, apparently not wanting to speak for her, turns toward the stepladder and calls, “Armetta?”

  Through the office window, I can tell Armetta’s noticed Miz Lucy but elected to keep on cleaning.

  Miz Lucy strides, high heels clacking across the concrete floor, around the rack of postcards, past the three big showcases of small souvenirs, to the great wall of glass jars in the back. “Armetta, could we talk a minute?” Miz Lucy calls up the ladder.

  “Ah got lots to do here, Miz Lucy.”

  “Armetta, please?”

  Armetta carefully, quite deliberately sets aside her spray bottle. She lumbers down and off the ladder, keeping the white cloth in her hand. Miz Lucy cups her elbow and pointing to the shell-lamp section, just in front of me, says, “How ’bout over there?”

  The two women move to a spot in front of the open window. May Carol’s mother is a fragile, pretty woman, a Southern Belle who married well. Next to her, Armetta stands at least a head taller, her arms thick and powerful next to Miz Lucy’s frail white ones.

  “Armetta,” Miz Lucy says urgently, in a voice so low that both Armetta and I incline our heads to hear. “I’m about to go out of my mind. May Carol can’t sleep, won’t eat, won’t hardly do a thing ’cause of missin’ you. Durin’ the day, that girl’s like a haunt, wanderin’ from room to room. Every night, she just cries and cries. What can I say, what can I do to get you to come back to us?”

  “Miz Lucy, you know this has nothin’ to do with you and that chil’.”

  “Yes, Armetta, and you have to know that Reed had nothin’ to do with Marvin’s death.”

  “No, ma’am, Ah can’t know that. Ah’m not saying Mistuh Reed pulled the trigger, or nothin’ like that. But Ah know it was the Klan that kilt mah Marvin and that Mistuh Reed’s a member.”

  “But, Armetta, there’s three different Klan dens around here. Reed’s is just a card club, bunch of overgrown boys playin’ poker.”

  Armetta looks off into the sunshiny distance outside and breathes deeply. The broad planes of her face are still when she turns back to Miz Lucy.

  “Miz Lucy, Ah can’t. Ah just can’t feature comin’ back to your house, cleanin’, cookin’, puttin’ clothes in the closet, seein’ that white robe hangin’ in there.”

  “Armetta, I could make him keep his robe at his mother’s house. I could bring him to you and he’d swear on the family Bible that he had nothin’ to do with this. Reed said he would if it’d help you feel comfortable comin’ back to us.”

  “Ah’m sorry, Miz Lucy—”

  But Miz Lucy cuts her off, whispering like a cry, “Armetta! Don’t you see I’m beggin’ you here!”

  Armetta takes another long, slow breath. “Miz Lucy, Ah’m just as sorry as Ah can be. Ah’m sorry for you and Ah’m sorry for li’l Miss May Carol and Ah’m sorry that mah Marvin lies rottin’ in his grave at age nineteen with cuts on his body and a bullet hole in his head. Ah could never, ever, again work in the house of a Klan member.”

  Miz Lucy Garnet, whose blue eyes are full of wobbly tears, takes a step backward. She fumbles with her white purse, finds and pulls out her big black sunglasses. Putting them on, there inside the showroom, she says, light-voiced, “So, you goin’ to be workin’ permanent for Warren and Lizbeth now?”

  “This is jus’ temporary, cleanin’ mostly, gettin’ things ready for the summer season,” Armetta answers.

  “Then what?”

  “Ah hope to find me another family to work for.”

  “In Opalakee?”

  “Yes, or here or Wellwood, it don’t matter. Ah’ll find somethin’, some place.”

  “I’m sure you will, Armetta. And I’m sorry we couldn’t straighten this out.”

  “Marvin’s killin’ is somethin’ that won’t stand straightenin’, Miz Lucy.”

  “Goodbye, Armetta.” Miz Lucy says it quietly. She turns to go, but stops midway and turns back. Removing her glasses, she’s obviously remembered something.

  “May Carol asked me to say ‘hey’ for her,” she says, biting her pink lip.

  “You tell that chil’ she’s a angel, tell her Ah said she’ll always be a precious li’l angel to me.”

  “I, uh . . .” Miz Lucy looks up at the ceiling, bosom rising, as if she’s collecting herself from the very air. “I, uh . . . don’t suppose I could get a copy of your snicker doodle recipe for her? May Carol, uh . . . she asked me to ask.”

  “You know it’s outta my head, all my recipes are; but . . .” Armetta’s face softens. “Ah’ll try. If Ah can figure out the measures, Ah’ll write ’em down and send ’em to you.”

  “Thank you, Armetta. We’ll watch for it.”

  Miz Lucy Garnet turns on her white patent-leather heel and strides quickly out of the showroom. Passing Mother, she waves vaguely in her direction. “Lizbeth,” she nods and keeps on walking out into the sun shining on the Pontiac, high heels crunching the gravel driveway.

  Armetta shakes her head and treads slowly back to the marmalade wall, climbs steps, picks up her spray bottle and resumes her work.

  “Time in the fire,” she’d told me. Seems to me some people get more than their share.

  “You all right?” Mother calls to her.

  “Ah’ll be fine, MizLizbeth. ’Ventually Ah’ll be jus’ fine.”

  Chapter 10

  Somewhere, someone must have put grieving to music. There must be a song that, when you hear it, helps your heart heal its aching hole. I don’t know that person, and I don’t know that song. But, I do know, mine has lyrics— Marvin’s dead, gone forever—and that my brother Ren’s is a simple series of beats— Bhhh-dmmm (pause) p f; sometimes harder, BHH-DMM, sometimes softer, Buhhhh-dummmm, with a varying pause, and a final p f.

  Ren’s grief song is the sound of a solitary person throwing a baseball that hits the ground, bounces against the car barn wall, arcs through the air and into a lonely glove. The rhythm, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, changes with the distance between the ball and the wall, which alters the arc and the glove pocket’s answer.

  I can see my brother outside my bedroom window, a lean little figur
e facing a big, blank wall, on the bright opening day of Major League play. For baseball fans across the country, this is a personal holiday. But for Ren and Marvin, it was a holy day in the sacred celebration of Heaven on Earth.

  Marvin gave me nicknames, Bible Drill secrets, Mistuh Bee stories. But his gift to Ren was baseball.

  Two years ago, on my brother’s sixth birthday, Marvin gave Ren his first glove and the great love of his life. He had Daddy’s permission, of course, because Daddy can’t play—the polio withered the muscles required for an overhand throw. So it was Marvin who taught Ren to catch a ball, fire a pitch, hit a curve, follow a game on the radio and love the Brooklyn Dodgers.

  Marvin wasn’t alone, of course. Old Sal Tomasini, the Italian grocer who grew up in Brooklyn, was in on it, too. The same year Ren got his glove, the Dodgers won the 1949 National League pennant, Marvin’s hero Jackie Robinson was picked Most Valuable Player, and Sal and Marvin christened Ren their lucky charm.

  Above Sal’s small store, which caters to the folks from The Quarters, is the cheerful, cluttered apartment where he and Sophia live. Rising above that is the twenty-five-foot radio antenna that connects Sal and the fans who gather behind his store on game days to the Brooklyn Dodger Radio Network.

  No doubt, they’re all there now, sitting on the benches under the scrub pines, watching the game in their minds with the help of the Dodger’s honey-toned storyteller, The Rhubarb, Red Barber.

  Old Sal was here earlier, offering Ren a ride. But Ren refused.

  “We can’ta open widout you!” Sal had said in his thick Milano-by-way-of-Brooklyn accent. “You are our lucky charm! Besides,” he’d pleaded, “It’s Preacher Roe pitching; you don’t wanna miss him.”

  Ren said nothing, and everything, with a shake of his head. Chin on his chest, face unreadable under the bill of his blue cap, he’d mumbled, “Sorry,” and turned away, walking resolutely down the drive to face the car barn wall.

  Sal’s eyes, behind his thick glasses, grew pained; their sadness magnified by the high-power lenses. His white mustache drooped over lips pursed in disappointment.

  “Sorry, Sal,” I’d told him, by way of comfort.

  He’d thanked me with a wave of his small hand, adjusted his own ancient Brooklyn cap and driven away.

  Bhhh-dmmm (pause) p f. The lonesome sound of Ren’s solitary play is a world away from the complex chatter of catch with Marvin.

  For the past two summers, the driveway where Ren stands now, facing the wrong way, was his and Marvin’s playing field. In front of an imagined crowd (Ebbets, of course), the two of them, fifteen feet apart, re-enacted baseball’s greatest plays, playing multiple positions as their personal heroes. Marvin was most often Jackie, the great Jack Roosevelt Robinson, white baseball’s first black player. Ren was sometimes Preacher Roe, the Dodgers’ league-leading pitcher, sometimes himself as a grown-up pitcher, Ren “Rocket Man” McMahon. (“When Rocket Man’s on the mound, nobody orbits the bases!” he’d crow.)

  “But can The Rocket do it again?” Marvin would taunt, his throw finding Ren’s glove with a firm Thwap! Ren would squint, hard, and hurl the ball back—Thwap!—and the imaginary game would begin, with Marvin, imitating Red Barber, calling the play-by-play:

  “Rocket Man’s held the flock scoreless, folks, through eight innin’s. Bottom of the ninth, one away, with Reese on first. Snider steps in to face McMahon.

  “Rocket Man checks Reese, an’ delivers. Duke swings— Thwap!—It’s a blue darter over the shortstop’s outstretched glove. The left fielder picks it up an’ rifles it to second— Thwap! —No, suh! Too late!

  “Listen to those fans as Jackie Robinson approaches home plate. Jackie leads the league in runs scored, an’ bases stolen. PeeWee’s on second, Snider’s at first. Here’s The Rocket’s windup, an’ the pitch— Thwap!—It’s a bullet back to the box. Rocket Man snags it, turns and fires it to second, doublin’ off a surprised PeeWee Reese!—Thwap!—Oh-ho, doctor! Rocket Man McMahon has single-handedly won the game!”

  “Waa-hooo!” Ren would holler, tossing his glove high in the air, tipping his cap to the imaginary crowd.

  What’s he thinking now? I wonder as the sound of Ren’s vigil echoes in my room. BHH-DMM (pause) p f. He’s not much of a talker, even on good days. Mother says he gets that from her side of the family. Oh, he can go on forever about baseball and his precious Brooklyn Dodgers. But when it comes to something personal, like “You missing Marvin, too?,” forget it.

  I asked Marvin once, “What’s the big deal about baseball, anyway?”

  He and Ren were taking a break, sitting in the shade beside the house.

  “Well, Ah’ll tell you, Roo,” Marvin replied, rubbing his chin. “Ah heard Red Barber say ‘baseball’s like life.’ His life, maybe. Not mine. Ah’d say baseball’s a bit of Heaven on Earth and Ah can prove it, too. Wanna see?”

  “Sure,” I said, sitting down beside him.

  Marvin drew a diamond in the dirt. “Looky here. If this is heaven, y’got to have the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, right? Well, the pitcher’s like God, standin’ highest on the mound, playin’ catch with The Son behind home plate. Backin’ God up is the Holy Ghost, the shortstop who’s all over the place. With me so far?” Of course I was. “Okay! Now, behind these three, there’s two bands of angels, three each: Cherubim on the bases, Seraphim in the field. Heaven on Earth!” He laughed. “But, Roo, wouldn’t be Heaven without a pearly gate and that’s right here,” he said, stabbing home plate. “And behind the gate is St. Peter hisself, dressed in a suit. Also called the umpire,” he said, as if I didn’t know.

  “Now, jus’ like Heaven, a batter comes knockin’ at the pearly gate, askin’ God and St. Peter, ‘Can Ah come in?’ ‘We’ll give you three tries,’ the two of them say. God loves threes, don’t y’ see—three around the mound, three bases, three outfield, three outs. So the batter tries his hardest, and his teammates try, too. But here’s the best part, Roo: Once you get in, you jus’ as good as anybody else. In Heaven, they don’t count the color of your skin, or the cut of your clothes, or whether your shoes are shined or not. In Heaven, a black man can out-hit, out-run, out-field a white man and live to tell about it. A black man, black as Jackie Robinson, can be picked Most Valuable Player, over hundreds of white men. That ain’t like life, Roo. That’s Heaven on Earth!” Marvin had grinned, and sat back satisfied he’d proved his point. Looking at me sideways, he’d flashed me his V-for-Victory sign which, for Marvin, meant I know what I’m talkin’ ’bout here, or simply, gotcha!

  Wait ’til next year!” Marvin promised Ren last October, after the Dodgers lost their pennant to the “Whiz Kids” from Philadelphia.

  Baseball’s next year begins today: Jackie Robinson’s a Cherubim on second base, Preacher Roe’s passing judgment on the mound, the fans are assembled in Ebbets Field and under the pines behind Tomasinis’ store. But Ren’s outside facing a big, blank wall. And Marvin?

  Marvin’s dead, Buhhhh-dummmm, gone forever, p f.

  Chapter 11

  The month of April falls with the last of the orange blossoms into May. Armetta’s gone to work for Mr. and Miz Charles Clark in Wellwood. Miz Clark is the former Patsy Lee Berry, youngest daughter of the Wellwood Berrys, who are fine folks with no apparent Klan connections. Mr. Clark is from New Orleans and as nice as can be. The Clarks’ first child, Parlee Berry Clark, has just arrived and her parents need Armetta’s steadying hand.

  Ren and I continue our daily dashes to the post office but, to tell you the truth, I’m starting to think Mr. J. Edgar Hoover couldn’t care less about a cold-blooded murder in the middle of an orange grove.

  On a night in early May, Mother, Doto, Ren and I sit around the kitchen table attempting Pinochle. Under Mother’s patient tutelage, we’ve worked our way up from Go Fish and Old Maid through Crazy Eights, Rummy, Hearts, and Canasta, to Pinochle, her prerequisite for instruction in Bridge.

  Daddy, with a sleepy Mitchell slung over his good shoulder, ribs Mother
, “You know, you’re probably this town’s only serious card-playing Baptist.”

  “Don’t forget Lillian!” she mock-protests.

  “Twice a year does not a card shark make,” Daddy calls on his way upstairs. “Besides, you taught her everything she knows.”

  Mother grins, cuts and deals.

  All of a sudden, Buddy, our live alarm system, scrambles up and runs to the back door. Nose to the crack, his tail ticktocks welcome while, at the same time, a small warning growl rolls around his mouth.

  Luther’s knock follows and, opening the door, I see the source of his mixed reception. Behind him, just outside the circle of porchlight, stand two white shirtfronts split by dark ties, men dressed for business.

  “Evenin’, Roo. Y’all finished supper?” Luther asks quietly.

  “Yessir, we have.”

  “Ah brought a couple people to see your daddy.”

  “Please come in,” I say, pulling the screen door wide.

  Mother and Doto look up and hastily collapse their card hands.

  “Evening, MizLizbeth. Ah’d like you to meet Mistuh Thurgood Marshall and Mistuh Harry T. Moore.”

  “Gentlemen, welcome,” Mother says, rising from her chair and extending her hand. “Please meet my mother-in-law, Mrs. Dorothy McMahon.”

  “How do you do?” Doto stands, offering her hand in that queenly way she uses whenever she meets anybody.

  “And this,” Mother continues, “is Marie Louise.” Although they seem to be about the same age, the two strangers are quite different. Mr. Marshall’s a great golden bear of a man. His hand swallows mine in a firm, hearty shake. Mr. Moore hangs back, slim, dark, dignified. He meets me with his eyes before offering his grip.

  “Also known as Roo, I hear,” Mr. Moore says. His smile is warm and kindly. N-double A-C-P, I remember, from Daddy and Luther’s talk.