Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands

by Susan Carol McCarthy

  For what? I want to know. For WHAT! I rage at the Rock of Ages who, as far as I can determine, has turned His back on this whole stupid mess called the State of Florida. When will this nightmare end? And why, WHY is ALL this happening?

  Sophia stands on the front steps, frantically fingering her beads, watching the driveway for signs of the truck. We hear it, she from the steps, me from the lawn, roar onto the property. I watch her fly down the walk to the far side of the drive, and, as Sal climbs from the truck, fling herself into his arms.

  The minute I see Daddy’s face, I can tell he’s heard the news. Wrenching his door open, he strides right past me, asking, in a voice like granite, “Your mother in the house, Roo?” But he does not look or, taking the steps two at a time, listen for my reply.

  Chapter 23

  The most frightening part of a hurricane is its eye.

  Like the giant blade of a buzz saw broken loose, a hurricane spins wildly; its outer edges blow and bite and dump barrels of water and dangerous, wind-whipped bits of wood and trash. After that, closer in, comes the real rain and the horrible sound of the wind cracking hundred-year-old oak trees in two. If you’re lucky, locals say, the hurricane only glances in your direction and whirls off, moving on to the next community, the next state or, better yet, back onto the ocean where it came from.

  If you’re not lucky, if you have the unfortunate luck of living directly in its path, the center of the storm, the eye, engulfs you in terrifying silence. You wait, and watch, and wonder when it will pass, when the crack of old trees, and the rain, and the winds, and the barrels of water will return, all over again. It always does.

  In the ten terrible days after Christmas, after the murder of our friend Harry Moore, after Sal and Sophia left Mayflower for good, the Klan’s silence is deafening. Not a word, not a sound from the men in white who, everybody knows, spent the last nine months whipping the state into frantic frenzy.

  For ten days, during which the F.B.I. sorts and sifts through the Moores’ ripped-up floorboards, the shattered ceiling planks, the tinsel of Christmas glittering in the yard, and finds too few clues as to who did what, we wait. Ten days after her husband died, the day after his funeral (where Reverend J. W. Bruno pronounced “You can kill the prophet but you cannot kill his message”), Mrs. Harriette Moore dies, too.

  Mrs. Moore’s death is the first sign that this hurricane’s overquiet eye has passed. A flurry of increasingly loud events follows:

  Mr. James Ferris, the wealthy Chicago retailer whose family owns the winter estate just south of town, calls Daddy to ask if “there’s still martial law in Miami.”

  “No,” Daddy tells him, “never was.”

  “Ruthie’s been after me to visit the Bahamas,” Mr. Ferris tells Daddy. “We thought we’d try there this year, put off Florida ’til next year, when things are more settled.” His is the first of many calls from longtime big-spending customers who “just aren’t comfortable” coming to Florida this year.

  After that, we have an odd, unsettling encounter with Mr. Barrett of Barrett Hardware in Orlando:

  Daddy has dynamite. He and most citrus growers around Mayflower use it to blow the stumps of old dead orange trees in preparation for planting new seedlings. The powerful variety, called ditching dynamite, is also used to rout the stubborn tentacle roots of a stand of palmetto. Above ground, there’s nothing friendly about a palmetto. Underground, its roots are as mean as an army of octopi, thick as a man’s arms and impossible to dig up.

  On a Saturday afternoon in mid-January, Daddy and I drive down to Orlando to the big Barrett Hardware Store. Daddy, an avid subscriber to Popular Mechanics, read about a new kind of electric fuse which makes igniting ditching dynamite “a heck of a lot safer.

  “Usually, you just dig a hole as close to the root center as possible, put in the sticks, light the fuse strings and let her go,” Daddy explains to me. “A fuse string burns at three seconds a foot, so you have time to run away before it blows. Sometimes it fizzles, or you think it has. If you walk in too soon to check it, you risk getting yourself blown up or blasted by flying palmetto. These new electric fuses are expensive but a lot more reliable than the strings.”

  “Is that what you think the Klan used on Mr. Harry?” I ask him.

  Daddy takes a deep, raggedy breath. “Maybe. Especially since the boom sticks were hidden under the house.”

  “Daddy,” I say, feeling my tongue grow thick, “I can’t believe they did that to him.”

  Daddy is quiet a minute. Then he says, “He knew there were risks, honey.”

  “But his wife . . .” The words get stuck in my throat.

  “There’s no accounting for that level of cowardice,” Daddy says, wheeling abruptly into the parking lot, his eyes clouding with contempt.

  I trail him through the front door of Barrett Hardware, through the big aisles, to the back counter where Mr. Barrett handles special requests. Mr. Barrett is very tall and thin with a helmet of white hair, “a real Southern gentleman,” my father says.

  He listens patiently to Daddy’s request, nodding in recognition and understanding, but in the end he shakes his head. “I know what you want, young man, but I can’t help you.”

  “Is it something you could order for me?” Daddy asks.

  “As of this week, as the result of a visit by high law-enforcement officials, I am out of the powder and explosives business. And you should be, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Daddy asks.

  “Just what I said. My basement which has, in the past, been stocked with powder and explosives to meet the needs of my agricultural customers is now empty. My purchase records have been appropriated.”

  From the sweep of Mr. Barrett’s hand, I gather “appropriated” means taken away.

  “Who was it? The F.B.I., the County Sheriff, who?” Daddy asks, immediately curious.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, young man,” Mr. Barrett says. “Only that these items are now in the possession of high law-enforcement officials.” Mr. Barrett lifts up his open palms in that way that means I’ve said all I care to. “Like I said, I’m out of the dynamite business and you, sir, should be, too.”

  Daddy’s always said that the reason they called Stonewall Jackson “Stonewall” was because it’s near impossible to get a Southerner to do or say anything he doesn’t want to.

  Daddy and I walk out, unanswered and empty-handed.

  A week later, when the plain black Ford pulls into our parking lot, Ren and I watch it through the office window. Both doors open at the same time and two white men in white shirts, dark ties and pants step out of the car and shrug themselves into their suit jackets.

  “Definitely not tourists,” Ren says.

  “Salesmen, maybe?” I wonder.

  “Naw, salesmen are usually alone. Mormons?”

  “No Bibles or books,” I point out.

  We watch the men cross the gravel, enter the showroom and approach Mother at the counter.

  “Mornin’, ma’am,” the older one says. He’s got a wide red face atop a body shaped like a barrel. His shoes are very shiny.

  “Good morning,” she replies. “May I help you?”

  “We’re lookin’ for a Mistuh Warren McMahon. This his place?”

  “It’s ours. Warren’s my husband and he’s in the back. May I tell him your business, please?”

  The older man puffs out his chest and hikes up his belt, like it ought to be obvious his business is important. He reaches into his coat pocket and flips out a black leather wallet. “Agent Thomas Elwood of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This here’s Agent Odom.”

  “Ma’am,” the younger man says, dipping a pointy chin at Mother.

  “Reesa, Ren, please get your father off the platform,” she calls in our direction as the agents’ eyes skim the showroom for our hidden location.

  Without a word, Ren and I fly out of the office, across the showroom to the side door, up the steps, around the big waxer to the washer machi
ne, where Daddy’s upending boxes of grove fruit into the cleaning tank.

  “Daddy, the F.B.I.’s here! Two of them. In the showroom with Mother!” we pant.

  “What?” he says, looking at us like we’re crazy, like we’ve just told him the Martians have landed in Mayflower.

  “Mother wants you now. They’ve got badges and everything!”

  We follow him off the platform and into the showroom.

  “Gentlemen, Warren McMahon,” Daddy says, extending his hand with a smile. “My children tell me you have F.B.I. badges. I have to tell you, they won’t sleep tonight if they don’t get a good look at one.”

  Young Agent Odom grins at us, pulls out his wallet, flips it open and lets us see. Agent James S. Odom, the card says beside the shiny silver shield that spells out Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  “You a G-man?” Ren asks him.

  “Yessir, I am!” Agent Odom seems hardly old enough to be anything.

  “Ever met Mr. J. Edgar Hoover?” I want to know.

  “Not personally, but we teletype a report to ’im every night.”

  “Okay, you two, thank the gentlemen, then make yourselves scarce,” Daddy says, waving us off, away from the counter.

  Kneeling on chairs inside the office, Ren and I quickly fold ourselves over Mother’s desk, straining to hear the adult conversation.

  “I didn’t catch how you happened to know my name?” Daddy asks the two agents.

  I catch my breath, sure the G-men will say that it was Mr. Hoover himself who sent them, because of Daddy’s long-ago letter about Marvin’s murder.

  “We understan’ y’all have some dynamite.” Agent Ellwood’s clearly the boss. “We had an interest in knowin’ what y’ plan to do with it?”

  “Same thing every other citrus grower in the county does with it—blow stumps, try to win the war against palmettos.” All of a sudden, Daddy’s got his guard up and I think I know why. For years, Ren and I have played a game called “Accents,” where we listen to the way customers talk and guess where they’re from. Some accents are harder to peg than others, but Agent Ellwood’s is pure Florida panhandle, the heart of Cracker country.

  “Would y’all have any other uses for it?” Agent Ellwood drawls.

  “You mean, like blowing people up, or destroying private property? Gentlemen, my wife and I aren’t Klan members. In fact, you can probably tell from our accents, we’re not even Southerners,” Daddy says, throwing his arm protectively around Mother.

  “But y’all are familiar with Klan activities ’round here?”

  “Well, they killed a young friend of ours last March. I wrote your boss a letter about it but never heard anything back. At Christmas, the Klan ran the only other Northerners in town out of here because they were Catholic and made the mistake of being too nice to the local Negroes.”

  They killed Marvin in Emmett Casselton’s lemon grove! They scared old Sal and Sophia into leaving here forever!

  “What was it y’ say the Klan did ’round Christmas?” Agent Ellwood asks sharply, his fat blue pen poised over his small black notebook.

  Just like that, they’ve brushed past Marvin’s murder as if it doesn’t count!

  “Christmas Eve,” Daddy says, “which is twenty-four hours before the event I imagine you’re interested in. On Christmas Eve, they threw an unlit stick of dynamite through our friends’ store window, warning the owners that if they didn’t leave town, the next one would be lit.”

  “What’d the owners do?” Ellwood asks, putting his pen down.

  “They left,” Mother says quietly.

  It’s clear their only interest is the Moores’ murder. To hell with anybody else.

  “Mistuh McMahon, you friends with local Klansmen?”

  “I know a lot of the local men, do business with them from time to time, and, in general, try to get along with everybody.” Daddy’s tone is even more guarded than before. “We have property here, a business, and—as you can see— children who attend the local school. We get along. But we’re not what I’d call friends.”

  “Looky here, Mistuh and Miz McMahon, we’re on a sort of fishin’ trip, officially to determine if all citizens are receivin’ equal protection under the law. Unofficially, we got some suspicions ’bout the Opalakee Klan. Y’all be willin’ to speak with our supervisor?”

  “Regarding?” Daddy asks, politely.

  “Oh, jus’ the general lay of the land ’round here, how things work in Orange County and Opalakee?” Ellwood says.

  “I’d be willing to speak generally about just about anything, Agent Ellwood. What’s your supervisor’s name?”

  “Jameson, sir, James Jameson’s his name. Can he call y’all at this number?” Ellwood says, pocketing one of our business cards from the little plastic holder on the counter.

  “I’d prefer to speak with the gentleman in person,” Daddy tells him. “I like to see who it is I’m talking to.”

  “I’m not exactly sure when he’ll get up this way. He’s operatin’ outta Orlando, though, and he jus’ might want to stop by.”

  Daddy shrugs. “We’ll be here.”

  Agent Ellwood hikes his pants again, an important man off to more official business. “Thank y’ for your time, Mistuh McMahon. Ma’am. Y’all have a real nice place here.”

  “Thank you.” Mother nods stiffly.

  Agent Ellwood and Agent Odom, who hasn’t said a word since showing us his badge, turn and walk out into the sun. At the Ford, they shrug off their jackets and lay them on the back seat like they were babies. As the frowning Agent Ellwood starts the engine, Agent Odom shoots a shy smile and a small wave in our direction.

  Florida Crackers bearing the badges of Mr. Hoover’s F.B.I. . . . it’s clear the other side of this hurricane has begun to blow.

  Chapter 24

  The word is out. You’d have to be a hermit not to ’ve heard that Florida has “race troubles.”

  I sit in the showroom office, flipping through the clippings sent from our far-flung relatives. It doesn’t matter which one you look at— Time, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, newspapers from Maryland to Montana—they all say the same thing. Under the swaying palm trees, inside the orderly orange groves, Florida leads the nation in cases of race prejudice and violence. Also, despite six weeks of intense investigation, the F.B.I. has not a single suspect in the Christmas night murders of Harry and Harriette Moore.

  I study the pictures of Mr. Harry and his wife. She was a schoolteacher, too, he’d said. We never met her, but she has a pretty face and the same kindly look in her eyes that he always had.

  In the showroom, I hear my mother sidestep questions from the troubled tourists.

  “You expect this sort of thing in Mississippi or Georgia,” a lady with an up-east accent is saying. “But Florida?”

  “Hard to believe,” my mother lies.

  In my hand, a Chicago clipping tells the truth: “Even in the 1920s, Florida, not Alabama or Mississippi, led the South in lynchings in proportion to population.” I wonder who did the math.

  The husband and wife driving the big Pontiac Chieftain with New Jersey plates exclaim, “It was front-page news in the Times. We almost didn’t come!”

  “We’re glad you did,” Mother, wearing her guise of Cheerful Saleslady, assures them.

  We are, after all, a family of shopkeepers; like Daddy says, “merchants on the South’s most lucrative trade route.” In exchange after exchange, my mother models “proper showroom behavior.” The rules are simple, and older than I am: These people are on vacation, they’ve left their real lives behind and have no interest in ours. Never complain, never explain, just politely present the Florida of their fantasies. It makes me sick.

  Isn’t it wrong, I used to ask Marvin, to pretend niceness you don’t feel? Especially to people who are rude, or, sometimes, downright mean?

  “Cock-a-doodle, li’l Rooster!” Marvin mocked, narrowing his eyes at me as if I was a fool. “Try being colored,” he’d gr
inned. The truth—that my complaints were ridiculous, his, impossible—popped up between us like some jeering jack-in-the-box. We both laughed, shamefaced, and hastily, awkwardly, moved on to other things.

  Oh, Marvin, things are much worse now than they were then. Some days, I’m glad you’re not here to see it. Most days, though, I’d give anything to have you here to talk to.

  At Mr. Marshall’s invitation, Armetta joins a group of over two hundred N.A.A.C.P. representatives from fifteen states at an emergency meeting in Jacksonville.

  “They’re hoping,” Daddy tells me, “to turn their outrage over the Moores’ murders into something meaningful.”

  Together, the group creates and unanimously adopts the Jacksonville Declaration, a single sheet of demands for “seven basic rights of full citizenship.”

  Proudly, Armetta thrusts mimeographed copies of the document into our hands. The Declaration calls for:

  “One—the right to security of person against the organized violence of lawless mobsters or irresponsible law-enforcement officers;

  “Two—the right to vote as free men in a free land;

  “Three—the right to employment opportunities in accordance with individual merits;

  “Four—the right of children to attend any educational institutions supported by public funds;

  “Five—the right to serve unsegregated in the armed forces of the country;

  “Six—the right to travel unrestricted by Jim Crow regulations;

  “And seven—the right to go unmolested among fellow Americans as free men in a free society.”

  Daddy calls it a manifesto. He ribs Armetta that “all good Communists have to have one.” I sit, dumbfounded by my own stupidity.

  Nothing, not one thing, on their list seems the least bit unreasonable to me, but the fact that the list exists must mean, can only mean that these things are not currently available because, and only because, of a person’s skin color? Does the entire country—the land of the free, the home of the brave—know this? Is ignorance like Miz Sooky’s, arrogance like Emmett Casselton’s, outright lunacy like Sheriff Willis McCall’s so widespread that people like us, we are in the minority?