“What’s that mean?” The sun glints off Doto’s cat-eye glasses.
“Well, not much, we thought,” Luther says. “With as much trouble as they in already, we figured they wouldn’t dare try anythin’ else . . .”
“But?” Daddy, his face still expressionless, eyes Armetta.
Inside, I feel a trapdoor open and my stomach fall through it.
“But,” she says, “last night, Polly—she works for Miz Hannah Garnet, Mistuh Reed’s mamma—Polly heard Mistuh Reed talkin’ to Mistuh Emmett about ‘callin’ out the Klavaliers.’ ”
“What are the Klavaliers?” Mother’s hand reaches over to curl under Daddy’s arm.
“That’s a Klan term for the men who jump you with axe handles and ball bats,” Luther says quietly. Daddy draws a breath.
“Mistuh Emmett said no, it was time to lay low, but Mistuh Reed said he’d already called ‘a couple of the O’landah boys, just a little walk and talk.’ ”
“Which means,” Luther says, “a little rough stuff but no killing.”
“Are you saying the Klan’s coming after Warren?” Doto blazes.
“I’m sayin’ there’s talk,” Luther tells her.
“What can we do?” Mother’s face is drained of color.
“You can pack up and leave right now,” Doto replies firmly. “Take a vacation, a long one. You said you had a pretty good winter, you can afford it. If you can’t, I’ll pay!”
“It’s not that, Doto,” Daddy says calmly. He squeezes Mother’s hand. “If we turn tail and run, the Klan’ll make sure we have nothing to come back for. We can’t afford to lose everything.”
I hold my breath.
After a moment, Mother straightens, squaring her shoulders. “Luther, Armetta, you know these men better than we do. What do you suggest?”
Luther leans in, hands on his thighs. “Well, Ah’ll tell you: Ah know you have a scatter gun,” he says to Daddy. “Load it and take it with you wherever you go. Take the dog, too,” he says, pointing at Buddy. “These things tend to happen at night, so don’t go out unless you absolutely have to. If you do go out, go as a fam’ly, never alone. The Klanners think of theyselves as Southern gentlemen. They don’t usually attack a white man in front of his wife or chil’ren.”
“This is abominable!” Doto fumes, fire in her eyes. “I’m hiring some security guards. If we can’t find them local, I’ll get some Pinkertons down here from Chicago, armed to the teeth!”
“No, Doto, no,” Daddy tells her quietly. “It’s probably just talk. And, if it isn’t, we’ll deal with it ourselves.”
“Mist’Warren, MizLizbeth, Ah’m sorry to spoil your Sunday dinner like this,” Luther says gently, “but Ah told Armetta you’d want to know right away.”
“You were absolutely right,” Daddy tells them both. “Thank you, and please thank the ladies for their help.”
So begins my family’s final nightmare.
Chapter 36
Since the first of the year, my friend Vaylie’s postcards reveal that her father’s “spells” have gotten more frequent. She’s been “on tour” more often than not—to Savannah, Plymouth Rock and Cape Cod, Charleston, South Carolina, and last month, Quebec, Canada. I’m delighted when, at last, an envelope containing a real letter arrives:
Dear Reesa,
I’m sorry it’s been so long since I wrote you. As you can tell from my postcards, Mamma and I have been away, a lot! The bad news is, no matter how hard I’ve tried to keep up, I’ve already flunked seventh grade and will have to repeat it. The good news is Daddy’s gone to live in a sanatorium and we get to stay home.
How this came about is a very long story. I’ll give you the short version: With Mamma and me out of town so much, Daddy’s mamma had to deal with him a whole lot more than usual. After he wrecked her car, stumbled into church drunk, and got mad enough one day to shoot my horse, his mamma decided he might have a problem after all. She got the best doctors in Richmond and Washington, D.C., to examine him. All of them said the same thing: Daddy’s a “manic depressive,” which means when he has a bad spell, he’s completely out of control. (Somehow, my daddy’s mamma believed the doctors over what Mamma and me have been trying to tell her for years.)
The sanatorium is just as nice as can be. You’d never know it was a nut house for rich people. Mamma and I visit him every Saturday, and Whit and Claudette go three times a week. With his medicine and the “treatments” (I think they shoot electricity into his head, but nobody will tell me for sure), Daddy seems to be pretty happy. Once a week, on Sundays, if the doctors say he’s been good, his mamma takes him out to her horse farm. He loves to watch the horses run, seems to have forgotten what he did to mine.
Mamma seems much happier, too. She’s stopped taking her nerve pills and is starting to look and act like her old self again.
As for me, I have to thank you for that letter you wrote me, sitting in your tree. I carry it with me wherever we go, and read it whenever I feel really bad. Thanks to you, I never gave up hope. Because you believed in me, I figured I was honor-bound to believe in myself. My new tutor, Mrs. Brad-ford, says that if I work extra hard, there’s a slight chance I might catch up with my old classmates. I KNOW I can do it, Reesa. My luck, like the tide, has turned!
Love, VAYLIE
Dear Vaylie,
I was so glad to get your letter and to hear you’re home for good! I’m sorry about your daddy, though, and about what he did to your horse. It must have been awful for you.
Do you like your surprise? It’s a rattler skin, of course. One of your “cousins” shed it in the scrub behind the old sinkhole. It means he’s grown a brand new skin, with one more rattle on his tail to boot. When I found it, it reminded me of you, of all you’ve been through, and how you’ve made it through without losing your way.
Oh, Vaylie, I wish I could say the same for me.
Things are as bad as they can be here, and getting worse. And, I can’t begin to see a way to wiggle our way out.
What’s happened is this: My father got involved with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, helping them find out who killed the colored couple, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Moore. It was the Klan, of course. Everybody knew it. But not a single white person was willing to do anything about it—except Daddy. What he did was a good thing, the absolute right thing to do. But now the Klan’s found out about it. And we hear they’re sending some men after him to get even.
Vaylie, there’s not another person in the world I can tell this to: I’m as scared as I can be. My parents try to act as if everything’s okay, but I know it’s not. I can see in their eyes that they’re scared, too. Worse yet, so’s my grandmother, Doto, and she’s never been afraid of anything in her life!
The worst thing, Vaylie, is the upside-downness, the inside-outness of things. Like the crazy people rule the world and they’re after us because we’re not nuts. For the first time, I understand why your mother took you on tour so much. I wish somebody would take us out of here until everything’s over.
But that’s not my parents’ way. “We’ll get through this,” they say, and I wish I could believe them. But the truth is, I’m not sure who, or what, to believe right now.
I don’t know if you’re a praying person, Vaylie. We’ve never really talked about it. But if you are, please, please, please, put an extra word in for my family, and for me.
Your tried and true friend, Reesa
Chapter 37
There’s just no describing the infinite difference between everyday life lived unawares and the agony of keeping watch for strange men who want to hunt and hurt your father.
It’s the little things that loom largest: the lock on the back door that hasn’t worked for years and who knows where the key is anyway; the after-dark carton of milk that normally Daddy would run and get, turned into an awkward family outing; the two-minute drive between church and home, after Wednesday night’s choir practice, now too risky to be taken alone; the swishing sound outside, maybe no
t the wind rustling the palmettos.
Nights especially last an eternity. Somehow, my family gets through them, avoiding the obvious with small, coded conversations and polite I-don’t-mind alterations in long-established routines:
Doto, the queen of hot fudge sundaes, gives up her favorite dessert rather than have Daddy risk an after-supper run to Mr. Voight’s freezer section. And she seems to have a huge amount of paperwork which keeps her at her post on the front porch whenever we’re home.
Mother, who hasn’t sung in the choir for years, rejoins the sopranos in the second row. She rides to and from practice with Daddy, and Buddy stands sentry, tied to the choir loft door.
Buddy, who’s spent most of his life sleeping in my room, moves, at my suggestion, to the rug at the foot of my parents’ bed.
Ren and I keep an eye out for anything, everything the least bit out of the ordinary. And Mitchell wears his cowboy six-shooters everywhere, “in case,” he tells us, “the bad guys come.”
Just before Memorial Day, the Grand Jury, having reconvened its proceedings in Miami, hands down its indictments.
Seven men from our area are ordered to surrender on June nineteenth for arraignment before the Federal District Court. Starved for resolution, I gobble up the details of the Miami Herald story:
They were charged with lying under oath when they denied to the grand jury that they were members of the Ku Klux Klan, or that they took part in a series of violent acts in Central Florida from 1949 to 1952.
J. D. Bowman leads the list of those indicted! The charges against them range from denying membership in the Klan to denying involvement in a number of incidents, including the attempted abduction of two N.A.A.C.P. lawyers and two Negro reporters, the beating of a local Negro for union activities, the flogging of another and the burning of a shack occupied by a man accused of molesting small girls.
When Daddy reads the article, he tells me, “It’s important to note that they’re not being charged for actually committing the crimes, but for lying about them to the Grand Jury, Reesa. There’s your lesson in the difference between state and federal jurisdiction.”
Justice, by a thin thread called perjury, has been served. Even though the indictments carry no direct mention of Marvin or the Moores, it seems that, at least, right has won out. After weeks of self-enforced confinement, the need to celebrate pushes my family out of the house.
We pile into Mother’s station wagon, Buddy in the back, and drive to Orlando and the new Ronnie’s Restaurant for hamburgers and ice-cream sodas all around. The evening floats, light, optimistic, party-like, until Doto suggests that “now that this is over, I can think about heading home.” The boys and I howl in protest.
On our way home, my brothers fall asleep against Doto in the back seat; Mother and I remain alert, out of habit, in the front. We enjoy the night, the familiar sights, as Daddy wheels north up the Trail, onto Old Dixie and into our driveway.
Halfway in, however, Mother hisses, “Warren, stop the car !”
Chapter 38
Hands fly out in front of me as Daddy hits the brakes and Mother cries, “There, behind the palmetto.”
From the floor of the back seat, the boys elbow their way up sleepily, asking, “Whuh? Whuh’s that?”
“Shhhh!” Daddy flicks the headlights to bright. There, in the narrow space below the big palmetto beside our walkway, are two pairs of dark pantlegs with heavy boots.
Daddy slides his shotgun from under the seat, says softly, “Doto, on the count of three, open your door and lean to the right. Buddy’s coming through.”
“One, two, three!” As his door and Doto’s fly open, front and back, Daddy yells, “Get ’em, Buddy, get ’em!”
Buddy bounds over the back seat, out Doto’s door and tears up the driveway, barking like a banshee. Two men appear in the shadows, running, axe handles in hand. Daddy springs to the front of the car, carrying his shotgun, and rests an arm on the hood to steady his aim. I hear the small click as he releases the safety. Panic yanks me to the dash.
“Buddy,” I cry. “Don’t shoot Buddy!”
Suddenly, one of the men, shorter, gray-haired, stumbles on a tree root and falls. Grabbing his ankle, he turns and freezes in our headlights, a grizzly face pinched in pain.
Buddy closes in, snarling. I gasp as the other man slams Buddy’s head with his axe handle and yanks his partner to his feet. Buddy collapses, yelping, on the drive.
Without a word, with both men clearly in his sights, Daddy slowly shifts his aim up, above their heads, and fires both barrels into the night.
We watch them run, three-legged, away from us and around the car barn in the back. Buddy staggers to his feet, still whimpering in pain, and runs after them.
In a blur, Daddy hurls himself back into his seat, dropping the shotgun onto the floorboard, and jabs the car into gear, engine racing, up to the house.
“Quick, quick, quick!” he hollers, yanking arms, elbows, and Mitchell’s whole body up the walk, across the porch and into the living room, away from outside doors and windows.
Ren and Mitchell sit stunned on the sofa. I perch, numb, on the arm of Daddy’s chair. The adults race around the house checking locks and latches, crimping curtains, tucking blinds to seal out the night.
“Warren,” Doto blazes on the porch, “you had a clean shot! Why didn’t you take it?”
“I had two thoughts . . .” Daddy tells her flatly. “If I took the shot, I’d’ve killed them. If I’d killed them, the Klan would kill me, probably before I made it to Orlando to report the crime. Where would that leave Lizbeth and the kids?”
“Oh, Warren, what now?” Mother whispers. I’ve never seen her so pale.
Outside, somewhere in the back grove, an engine roars to life and recedes. Buddy’s hoarse bark turns into the howl that usually means whoever was here has left.
I shoot to my feet without thinking and run to the back door.
Daddy joins me and whistles for him from the porch. We hear his woof acknowledging the whistle. Then Buddy, tags jangling, tail wagging raggedly, limps out of the darkness.
“Good boy!” I say and drop down to pet and hug him. At my touch, Buddy yelps in pain.
Daddy moves in to inspect the bump on Buddy’s head, the gash on his shoulder and his apparently tender rib cage. “He’s bruised pretty bad,” Daddy tells me, “but nothing appears to be broken.”
What kind of monster beats a dog with an axe handle? I want to rage, but the truth hits me, Buddy was not their intended target. And an even more awful idea follows: This is what they did to Marvin.
“C’mon, honey,” Daddy says softly as he leads Buddy and me back into the living room. “Those men are gone and there’s nothing more to do about it tonight. How about you kids watch a little television before you go to bed?” He turns it on and switches channels to an old movie, James Cagney tap dancing in Yankee Doodle Dandy. “We’ll be in the kitchen for a while,” he says, as Mother and Doto trail him out of the room.
I fall back within a whirling chair, straining to hear them in the kitchen. They decide to leave the bright overhead light off “just in case.” Their chairs scrape as they take their seats at the table. The talk is low-voiced, urgent. I know the topic is what do we do now. And, I can tell by their tones, they are not in agreement.
After half an hour or so, the boys have nodded off. My parents return to carry them upstairs, bidding Doto a strained goodnight. Without a word, my grandmother mounts the steps, heavily, to her room.
Mother comes down first to see me off to mine. Her face is still pale, her eyes overbright. Her fingers under my chin, as she tells me “Buddy will sleep with you tonight,” are ice cold. When Daddy lets him in a few minutes later, calling softly “Goodnight, Rooster,” Buddy curls with a heavy sigh in his old spot, beside my bed.
In their bedroom, I hear Mother and Daddy undress without a word. Then, for what seems like hours, I hear my parents argue in the night.
Daddy thinks Doto’s right,
Mother should take us home with her to Chicago. Nana’s there, too, he says, she’ll have plenty of help. Mother insists no, that’s not her home, this is, and she won’t leave him here alone. Back and forth, the argument goes: Daddy insisting, pleading, blazing, begging; Mother refusing, no matter what we will not go without him, she will not leave him or allow him, or Doto, or anyone, to split up our family. It would be like a death sentence. “These children need their father,” she tells him and I hear in her voice, as he must, the pain of her own too-early loss.
My grandmother’s pink sheets provide no refuge to me this night, as the very fabric of our lives stretches toward its breaking point. Everything I’ve ever known or valued seems to hang in the balance of my parents’ argument.
Worry, like a vise, tightens my chest. Please, God, I think, unable even to whisper a prayer, I’ve not been good at this faith thing, I don’t even know the words. Please, please help us, help them, know what to do.
Daddy’s tried everything, every argument or approach he can think of; but the stronger-than-stone woman that is now my mother is not, will not be moved. Silence like a cavern sits between them until, at last, he gives into her. “All right,” he tells her, “we’ll get through this together.”
“We survived the polio,” she tells him, “we’ll survive this. Somehow, you’ll figure our way out.”
I hear tears in their voices and, burying my head in the pillow, cry my own.
Next morning, at Mother’s insistence, in the face of Doto’s poorly masked exasperation, any discussion of what happens next is “tabled until further notice.”
“Daddy needs time to think,” Mother tells us.
It takes him a week.
Chapter 39
Ren and I watch him from under our eyelashes, ears open wide for a clue, a sign, some kind of indication as to what he’s thinking.
He shows us the piece of dark cloth he pulled from Buddy’s mouth, and we tag along after him as he checks the dirt beside the old car barn. We see the tracks where Buddy caught up to the men the second time. There’s blood in the dirt where someone was bitten. One of the men dragged one foot behind the other. Daddy points out the tire tracks where they parked, and more where they drove off through the grove onto Wellwood Road.
Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands Page 20
