Daddy and Luther nod, grab chairs and sit, facing the agent on the bench.
“Your deputy staying?” Mr. Jameson asks, meaning me.
Daddy studies me a moment. Then he says, “Reesa, your mother’s expecting you in the showroom.”
I leave them real reluctantly and walk slowly around the waxer’s large metal hood that runs sideways to the washer, six feet high and eight feet long. On the far side, I can hear their voices through the hood’s air vent. If I peer through the vent, I can just see Daddy’s and Luther’s profiles through the other air vent on the opposite side.
“Mr. McMahon, Mr. Cully, I’m here to tell you that you have friends in high places,” Mr. Jameson of Ohio says, rustling his papers.
“Really? Who would that be?” Daddy asks.
“Well, let’s start with my boss, Mr. Hoover. And while we’re at it, let’s add a Mr. Thurgood Marshall of New York City.”
“Okay . . .”
“And, Mr. Cully, you’re the father of Marvin Cully, shot and killed last March?”
“Yes, sir.” Luther sounds nervous. He glances at Daddy.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Cully, you’re not in any trouble. In fact, truth be told, I’m the one in trouble,” Mr. Jameson tells him.
“What do you mean?” Daddy asks. Luther stays silent.
“Well, as you know, two people were assassinated, by dynamite, over six weeks ago. So far, my elite corps of crackerjack agents have produced precious little evidence, and not a lot of suspects. Mr. Hoover is, shall we say, not happy; particularly since Mr. Truman of the White House, Mr. Marshall of the N.A.A.C.P., assorted influential people from the Civil Rights Congress, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the Florida Board of Tourism are all breathing down his neck.”
“Is that so?” my father says mildly.
“Believe me, it is very much so,” Mr. Jameson says.
“What’s this have to do with us?” Daddy asks him.
“We’re operating in a bit of a vacuum here. Although your state’s assorted departments of law enforcement promised ‘full and complete cooperation,’ they’ve done nearly nothing to help us get to the bottom of anything. In spite of that, we have some extremely compelling reasons to believe that the Opalakee Klan has direct knowledge about the murders of Mr. and Mrs. Moore. The problem is, we have no inside sources. According to Mr. Marshall, you have a very clear handle on things around here, Mr. McMahon. I don’t suppose you’d consider joining the Klan for us?”
“Me? A Klanner? Mr. Jameson, I’m a Yankee, for starters, and a man who speaks his mind pretty clearly. Even if they’d have me, which they wouldn’t, I couldn’t do it. It would take me—what d’you think, Luther—three, maybe four, minutes to blow my cover?”
“I figured you might say that. But here’s the real reason I’ve come . . . Mr. Marshall says that between you and Mr. Cully, you have a circle of friends who, let’s see, how’d he say it, ‘would put the F.B.I and the C.I.A. to shame.’ ”
In my narrow view, I see Luther stiffen. At his side, Daddy shoots him a quick look, then turns back to face Mr. Jameson, who says, “What I’d like to ask you is this . . . I have a list of names we believe to be members of the Opalakee Klan, cross-referenced from several other sources. What I’d like you to do, and you don’t have to say yes or no this minute . . . what I’d like you to do is look over this list and have your circle of friends look over it, too, and simply cross off anyone who’s not a known Klan member. Of course, if you see any glaring omissions, and you’d like to add a name or two, that would be fine. But at this point I’m merely looking to delete anybody who’s not a Klan member. Is that something you might be willing to do to help us catch young Cully’s and the Moores’ killers?”
“If we agree to look at your list, Mr. Jameson, what happens to it when we’re done with it?” Daddy’s tone is careful, not saying yes or no.
“Well, I’ve thought about that. I’ve placed two pieces of paper in this envelope.” I hear the rustle of more papers. “The first sheet is the list we’ve been discussing. The second is a short summary of an event that occurred last August fourth. A high-speed chase between a black Chrysler and three pickup trucks. Did you see it?”
“Didn’t everybody?” Daddy replies.
“The second sheet merely describes the incident. You may write in any comments you deem appropriate. As you can see,” Jameson says, handing the envelope to Daddy, “it’s already stamped and addressed to Mr. James J. Smith—that’s me—at P.O. Box 12 in Orlando. All you have to do is look things over, make your comments, then seal it and mail it as soon as you can.”
Daddy turns again to face Luther. Slowly, without moving, Daddy raises an eyebrow and, it appears, Luther drops his chin in a nod.
“We’ll take a look,” Daddy says, standing up. Luther and Mr. Jameson stand, too.
“And mail it?” Mr. Jameson asks.
“I’ll deliver it myself into the hands of our lovely postmistress,” I hear Daddy promise as I duck hastily out the side door and into the showroom.
After Mr. Jameson leaves, Daddy and Luther want to tell Mother what happened. But she stops them.
“Why,” she wants to know, “didn’t you send Reesa down here with me?”
“I did,” he says.
“Well, she wasn’t here,” Mother tells him. All three adults turn their eyes on me.
Uh-oh, I think. I was hoping she hadn’t noticed.
“But . . .” Daddy’s stare is turning to a glare.
“But little Miss Big Ears stood on the other side of the waxer spying on you and the F.B.I.,” Mother says in that tone that will brook no excuses.
“Well, why not?” I say, blistered by her calling me Little Miss anything! “It’s about time Mr. James Jameson showed up. And what could he possibly say that would be any worse than what I’ve seen or heard already? I saw what the Klan did to Marvin, same as you. I heard that deputy in Mount Laura tell how it happened. I heard him say how, if Mr. Reed Garnet hadn’t shown up late, Marvin might still be alive. And I’m the one who had to go make nice at the Garnets’ house this very afternoon! It’s not fair for you to treat me like a baby. I’m not one—not anymore!”
I realize, when I finish, that I’ve embarrassed Luther, who’s now studying his shoes, and I feel bad about that. Daddy’s looking at me with admiring eyes, but Mother’s face stays a blank.
“She makes a good point,” Daddy says softly, but in that way that leaves everything up to Mother.
“Oh, Reesa, when I was your age”—she shakes her head sadly—“it was the middle of the Depression. I worried every single day that my father would lose his job and we’d wind up in the soup lines. My mother told me not to worry, that worrying was her job, that children should have fun, and I should be carefree. But I worried anyway. So I guess it wouldn’t help for me to tell you the same thing. I’m just sorry we didn’t do a better job protecting you from all this. And for the record,” she says, “you’re not full grown, just more than halfway.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say with as much earnestness as I can muster, considering Daddy’s winking at me behind her back.
At his suggestion, the four of us go into the office off the empty showroom. It’s late in the afternoon and doubtful that we’ll have any more customers today. As we gather ’round his desk, Daddy opens Mr. Jameson’s envelope, pulls out two sheets of paper, and sets them side by side on his blotter.
Luther responds to the first one with a low whistle.
Daddy was right, I think, when he told Mr. Marshall that a list of Opalakee Klan members would read like the local social register. Most of the two dozen or so names are all too familiar.
Across the desk, Mother’s eyes meet Daddy’s. For the first time in a long time, the curtain of her composure parts. In her face, I see fear and the flare of resistance, like a little flame leaping up.
“You agreed to do this?” she asks him carefully.
Daddy’s jaw juts. “We both d
id,” he tells her, nodding in Luther’s direction.
Her eyes drift back to the paper on the desk. She stands very still, then looks back up at Daddy. His face is firm, his eyes steady. With the slightest shake of her head, she registers her worry and retreats from a fight. The curtain drops, closing us out again. Closing herself in?
Don’t worry, I itch to tell her, but it’s clear she will. Besides, we can’t back out now. This is important! Mr. Marshall himself sent Mr. Jameson our way. Mr. Marshall and the F.B.I. wouldn’t put Daddy, Luther and the maids in any danger, would they?
The list is arranged alphabetically. As Daddy and Luther pore over it, the most obvious omission is at the top. With a ballpoint pen, Daddy adds: Bowman, J.D.
“How the hell did they miss him?” he wonders aloud.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Beside the name of Casselton, Emmett are the initials E.C.
“For Exalted Cyklops. The big cheese,” Daddy explains to me.
The second change is further down. There are three entries with the same last name, a prominent father and his two sons. Daddy crosses off the younger son’s name. He lives down the road from us and is a deacon in our church, always has a roll of Life Savers in his pocket in case somebody gets a coughing attack. His father and older brother live further south and attend Opalakee First Baptist.
“I’ve had many conversations with him,” Daddy tells Luther. “He’s a good Christian and absolutely against the Klan’s tactics. Even told me once that the rest of the family kid him about it, calling him ‘medium rare.’ ”
“What’s that mean?” I’ve never heard the term applied to a person before.
“That’s their way of saying he’s soft and a little pink, meaning Communist.”
“He’s a Communist?” I ask quickly, balking at the idea.
“Of course not,” Mother says. “It’s just their way of insulting him because he’s chosen not to join the Klan.”
The second sheet is a lot more interesting. At the top, the title says “Attempted Abduction, 8/4/51.” A paragraph about the Big Chase follows. Below that are four numbered sections.
The first section is about the Chrysler New Yorker and the four people who were in it—two N.A.A.C.P. attorneys and two Northern reporters.
The other numbered sections contain descriptions of each of the three pickups. All three sections say “occupants,” followed by blank lines. There is a question mark at the beginning of each line. All three truck sections have an area marked “vehicle owner.” Two of the three have the owner’s name filled in correctly. (We aren’t the only ones who know an Emmett Casselton Casbah Groves truck when we see one, even with the name covered up.) In the section for the big black Ford pickup, the “vehicle owner” line is blank with another question mark. Daddy fills in the name: J. D. Bowman.
“That’s it for us, Luther,” he says, carefully replacing the two pages into the envelope and handing it over. “The rest is up to the ladies of your C.I.A.”
Luther takes the envelope and nods. “Looks like there’ll be a special choir practice after church tomorrow.”
Chapter 27
Bloom time, which used to be my favorite time of year, is back. For most people, it’s the perfumed time of new beginnings. For me, it’s the anniversary of Marvin’s death. I am in gloom time. And, most certainly, not the girl I was last time the tangerine tree outside my window wore its band of Angel Blossoms. I can never be that girl again, so safe, so sure of everything and everyone. I long to feel that comfortable inside my skin, but I will never be her again.
It’s been one whole week since Daddy and Luther mailed Mr. Jameson’s envelope to his Orlando P.O. Box. I felt sure we’d have heard something by now. But as the days drag by, as the date Marvin died comes and goes with no hint of resolution, the nightmare I thought I’d outgrown returns.
I wake screaming. The run through the grove, the crowd on the hill, the flashing red lights are all the same. But this time, after I kick and claw my way to the front, after J. D. Bowman sees me and yells “Grab her, too!” because “She’s a Jew!,” the men in the circle yank me between them. Their faces, now familiar from the F.B.I. list, surround me, contorted in anger, eyes hard, teeth bared, as a hideously laughing J. D. Bowman raises a rattlesnake whip high above my head . . .
This night, Mother and Daddy are out for the evening. It’s Doto who hears me and holds me tight. Turning on the light, she sits down beside me and we talk quietly for some time, going over every awful detail of the dream.
“All right, then,” she says, “I have an idea. Will you wait here while I get you something?”
Within moments, she returns with the spare set of her special pink bedding. Together, we strip my mattress of its usual white cotton and remake it with my grandmother’s sheets, ordered just for her from Chicago’s Carter-Ferris-Mott. Slipping between them, I relish the silky pink softness, the scent of Ivory Snow, and I thank her with all my heart.
“I’m sure I’ll sleep perfectly fine now.”
She nods, cat-eye glasses winking in the light; then, lifting my chin between her fingers, she asks, “How come I never heard about this bad dream before?”
“Kept it to myself,” I say.
“Because?” she wants to know.
“Because Daddy’s got enough to worry about without taking me on, too.”
“And you figure you can fend for yourself?”
“Yes!” I shoot back, then, meeting her gaze, tack on a respectful “ma’am.”
“Oh, Reesa,” Doto says, “you, your father and me . . . we are cut from the same quarry, rock-hard and marble-headed.”
“Not at all like Mother,” I say.
Doto doesn’t like my tone and leans in so she can eye me more directly. “Your mother’s a different kind of strong than we are, young lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she says, “we McMahons are the stuff that mountains are made of. But your mother . . . well, your mother’s more like a river, which is stronger still. Do you understand?”
I don’t and tell her so.
“No, of course you don’t. You live in a state without a decent-sized mountain or river in sight. I’ll tell you what: Next spring, I’ll take you west with me to your uncle Harry’s. We’ll go to the Grand Canyon, and when you stand on the rim and see that sight carved out of solid rock by water and ice, you’ll know exactly what I mean. We’ll follow the Colorado River north. You’ll see how fresh water makes the difference between a livable valley and an impossible desert. Maybe then you’ll understand the kind of strength your mother has.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, needing to think about it.
“You’re lucky to have the parents you have, Reesa. Don’t you forget that,” she says, squeezing my hand in goodnight. “Do you want this light on or out?”
“Out,” I say. “I’ll be all right.”
“Of course you will,” my grandmother chuckles. “Sleep tight.”
Two days later, Mr. Jim Jameson of Ohio parks his brown Dodge on the side driveway, away from the prying eyes across the Trail, and spends an hour or so talking to Daddy in the back. At one point, Daddy leads him into the showroom to point up and out the side door, at the spot that can only be Emmett Casselton’s eagle’s nest, the windowed office high above the tanks of Mayflower Citrus on the other side of the road. When they’re finished, the two of them amble up to Mother and me at the front counter.
Mr. Jameson makes cheerful small talk, about the weather, the upcoming primary elections. Mother tells him she’s on the fence between Stevenson and Kefauver, if, of course, Stevenson ever gets off the fence to run.
Daddy’s a Kefauver man all the way. He relished the newspaper accounts of Kefauver’s Senate Crime Investigating Committee hearings in Miami. Just last year, Kefauver’s committee had a field day with Dade County Sheriff “Smiling Jimmy” Sullivan, who couldn’t quite explain how, during five years in office, his personal assets jumped $
65,000 while his sheriff’s salary was never more than $12,000 a year!
“Believe me,” Mr. Jameson laughs, “I’ve a stack of files six feet high on that one.”
Kefauver’s committee also uncovered that William H. Johnston, one of the Governor’s cronies and a major state contractor, was a close associate of the Capone gang.
“You know,” Daddy says, “Governor Warren was furious over that. He’s vowed he’ll never let Kefauver set foot in this state again.”
“Won’t that be interesting come primary time in May?” Mr. Jameson grins. “Though I should be long gone by then.”
“Are you really that close?”
“Oh, there’s some very interesting irons in the fire,” Mr. Jameson replies. “Things are heating up. People are getting nervous. I anticipate a fair amount of action in the next couple weeks.”
Chapter 28
That Friday, Ren goes home after school with his friend, Petey Smith, who lives out in the country, a few miles east of Mayflower.
Daddy and I are set to pick him up before supper, around five.
Since the County Dump is just a mile or so past Petey’s house, Daddy asks Robert to load up the truck with a bunch of stumps that’ve been cluttering our grove road for weeks. Daddy and I head out around four. At the Dump, the old Negro caretaker named Horatio Sykes ambles over and helps us unload. The dump stinks. Everywhere’s that sweet sickening stink of things rotting, dying or in full, dark earth decay. Daddy tells me to breathe through my mouth, but I still feel the sting of it in my throat.
Afterwards, we double back to pick up Ren. Petey’s house is deep in a grapefruit grove that belongs to Emmett Casselton. The blue and gold Casbah Groves signs glint at us from mile markers beside the road.
“Looks like old Emmett forgot to spray for leaf curl,” Daddy says, noting the brown-tipped leaves as our truck weaves and bumps down the narrow dirt road toward Petey’s house.
As we enter the clearing, Ren bolts out the screen door and into the yard. He’s waving his arms frantically for us to stop. He’s got a bandage around his head and Petey and his father hot on his heels.
Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands Page 15
