Freedom's Just Another Word

by Caroline Stelllings

  Every night before bed Clarence stared at Thelma’s picture. It sat over the fireplace. I thought he was talking to her in his head, but nothing came out of his mouth and his lips didn’t move. There was something in his eyes, though; a sort of faraway look that told me he was thinking about her and remembering what it was like back in the bayou, when they were young. I wondered if he still felt bad about what happened with Wendy Wood. I wondered if, when he looked at me, it reminded him.

  I hoped not.

  I hoped not because other than Thelma, Clarence had led a crappy life.

  Thelma told me why they had to leave the bayou. It was because of something Clarence did. A couple of years after the war had ended, he threw a fit in the local town council building and was driven out of Vinton the next day.

  He and Thelma were accustomed to segregation and living under the domination of the white world, and, according to her, Clarence had never once talked back to a white person. He accepted his lot in life and was one of those people who was tougher than tire casing and who saw racism and the despair that went with it as a personal challenge.

  But for Clarence, the war was the great equalizer—or at least it should have been. He’d enlisted in the United States Navy in 1939 as a Mess Attendant, Third Class, which was one of the few rankings open to African Americans back then. By the time he was serving aboard the battleship West Virginia, he’d been promoted to Ship’s Cook, Third Class.

  That was just before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  Enemy aircraft dropped armor-piercing bombs through the deck of the battleship and launched torpedoes into her port side. Clarence’s legs were badly burned, and another black sailor, nineteen-year-old Johnny Foster, struggled to carry him through oil and water to the quarterdeck just as another explosion went off.

  That was when a large piece of shrapnel—the size of a toaster, according to Clarence—hit Johnny Foster square in the abdomen. He survived, but wished he hadn’t. After years of pain and several surgeries to repair the damage, the injuries Johnny suffered did kill him, a week after his thirty-third birthday. Clarence has lived every day since, knowing that by saving his life, Johnny Foster eventually lost his own.

  Clarence did everything he could while Johnny was alive. He sent money, and made many trips south to visit him at his mother’s place in the Texas Panhandle. Her name was Agnes and Clarence told me that despite being over seventy, she still ran a little curio shop called The Wagon Wheel on Route 66 just east of Amarillo.

  “You should see this place,” Clarence told me. “It’s jammed from the floor to the ceiling with drink coasters, refrigerator magnets, bolo ties, ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers, and flags. And old Agnes, well, she’s what you’d call an obstinate maverick—refuses to retire. She’ll still be sittin’ there when the Interstate finally bypasses her.”

  Clarence used to go to Amarillo at least once a year while Johnny was still alive, and often he brought Johnny up to Saskatoon to spend time with him and Thelma. Johnny stayed the whole summer once. It was 1951, the same summer Wendy Wood was here. I never met Johnny Foster. I wouldn’t remember if I did; I was a baby when he died. But Johnny’s photograph had always been staring at me from where it sat on the mantel. Along with his war medals.

  “I’ve got to take those back to his mother,” I once heard Clarence tell Thelma when she was dusting and polishing. “He never should have left them to me in the first place.”

  “He wanted you to have them, because you were there with him at Pearl Harbor. You suffered too.” Thelma was right.

  “Being awarded a Navy Cross is a huge honor,” he said. “It’s not the kind of thing you stick in the mail. No, I’m going back to Amarillo with those medals some day.”

  He never made it. I think it was too painful to go back there without Johnny waiting at the other end with an armful of corny souvenirs. (Damn near every piece of glassware we drank from featured either the Route 66 shield, a picture of a bucking bronco, or a semi-naked lady in a cowboy hat. And the slogan Don’t Mess with Texas was as common at our place as Bless this House was everywhere else.)

  Thelma told me it was his experience with Johnny at Pearl Harbor that caused Clarence to throw the fit in Vinton.

  “At first,” Thelma explained, “Clarence was real happy that the council was mounting a special plaque in the city hall for the boys in service, as they were called in those days.”

  “What about women?” I asked.

  “Oh, plenty of women served during the war, Easy,” she said, “but none from Vinton had lost their lives. This plaque was for the young men from the area who had died in the war.” She thought for a minute. “Now, where was I?”

  “Clarence’s fit.”

  “Well, Clarence and I, and the other servicemen and their families, were having coffee and waiting for the unveiling. When the mayor finally pulled off the sheet, the look on Clarence’s face was like nothing I’d ever seen.” She shook her head back and forth. “Etched into a background of shining gold plate were the names of the white boys who had lost their lives. At the bottom, on the plain wood, under the heading Coloreds was a list of the black men who had died beside them. In small print. Like an afterthought.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “What did Clarence do?”

  “He walked over to that plaque and tore it off the wall. Then he turned to the mayor and said that blacks and whites might have to use different washrooms, and they might have to drink from separate fountains, but the blood that poured out of their wounds aboard that ship at Pearl Harbor was the exact same shade of red.”

  I never asked Clarence about it. Thelma told me to let it rest, so I did. I asked him once why he moved to Saskatoon—why that would be his choice—and he said that the garage was for sale and that it was the right price. I think it was the farthest place from Vinton he could find.

  Once Thelma was gone, the garage was the only thing Clarence had left. And me. That was why I wished he’d move back to the States and take me with him; I knew how guilty I was going to feel when I finally left Saskatoon in the dust. Clarence held on to the ever-dimming hope that one day I would become marvelously efficient at motor mechanics and would decide to apprentice with him; but deep inside he knew that once I had enough money, I’d be gone as sure as yesterday’s rainbow. He couldn’t blame me; waiting for the blues to come to Saskatoon would be like waiting for the earth to take a radical detour from its regular orbit. He knew I had to go.

  By the spring of 1970, Clarence could see that although I was putting in hours with him and collecting my pay, my heart was not in the garage. I wanted to sing. I needed to sing. And I was going to sing. So he advertised for an apprentice, and by the end of May, along came Larry Alder from Porcupine Plain, a small town about three hours (and thirty years) east of Saskatoon. Clarence said that in his application, Larry wrote about being the seventh son of a wheat farmer on an operation with a mere 1,200 acres, and therefore only enough land for six sons. He claimed to be hardworking, and said that although he knew how to repair tractors and combines, what he really wanted to do was fix cars.

  Larry was a year older than me, but it was clear from the beads of sweat on his upper lip that he was nervous when we first met. I figured he’d never been to the city before, and never seen a black girl either, because he stared at the ground when I picked him up at the bus station.

  “Didn’t Clarence warn you that we were black?” I asked him. “You can change your mind, you know. The bus hasn’t left yet. There’s still time to—”

  “Go home? No, I don’t—”

  “So he did warn you then.”

  Larry was confused. “Warn me?”

  I took a good long look at him. He wasn’t bad-looking, and his jeans weren’t horrible, but the big brown belt and horseshoe buckle at his waist looked like something he’d found in the back of his grandfather’s closet. Larry’s shirt was clean. It h
ad obviously gone through hundreds of washes, and it probably had a few weeks of wear left in it before it was ready for the ragbag.

  And his hair was cut too short. His mother probably did it on the front porch with a pair of shears.

  I tried my question again. “Didn’t Clarence tell you that you’d be working for a black man?”

  Larry didn’t reply, and for a minute, neither one of us said a word. I could tell that he was trying desperately to assemble enough courage to cast the first stone into the pool of silence between us.

  “I like black people,” he finally muttered.

  “Have you ever met one?”

  “On television.”

  “Television?” I asked. “C’mon! How can you meet someone on television?”

  He thought about it for a while, then replied, “In Porcupine Plain, that’s about the only way you can meet anyone.”

  That made me laugh, anyway.

  Larry picked up his suitcases, and we headed to the lot where I’d parked the tow truck. That was when I heard something that sounded like Meeeee. Meeeeah.

  Then I noticed that one of his suitcases wasn’t a suitcase at all. It was an animal carrier, and inside was a small black cat with big yellow eyes, like the gambler Thelma had told me about. I stopped in my tracks.

  “Don’t you like cats?” asked Larry, following my gaze to the cage.

  “Sure. Why not? What’s her name?” I stuck my finger through the wire and stroked the middle of the cat’s forehead.

  “He’s a boy,” said Larry. “His name’s Gilligan.”

  “Gilligan? From the television show?” I had trouble believing anyone could make it through an episode of that sitcom, let alone name their cat after it.

  “Gilligan’s Island was my favorite program,” said Larry with a smile. “That and The Munsters.” He opened up the door to the tow truck and placed the cat and his suitcase on the floor next to his feet. “I almost called him Herman, but I like Gilligan better. Gillie for short.”

  Larry watched out the corner of his eye as I switched gears.

  “I’ve never seen a girl drive a truck before,” he said. I thought about reminding him that at eighteen, I was no longer a girl, but figured where he came from, women were probably still considered girls until they’d had their fourth child.

  “Clarence told me you’re going to be staying at Mrs. Hill’s boarding house. Did you tell her you have a cat?”

  “Should I have?” Larry’s eyes turned dark with fear.

  “She’s allergic to everything on the planet,” I said. “Dust, dander, pollen—me.”

  I watched Larry’s spirits fall with a thud.

  “Oh, no,” he said.

  “And every time she sneezes it sounds like she’s shouting ah-screwyou.” I told him that to cheer him up, but it didn’t work. His ears turned scarlet.

  “Maybe I’d better head back home.”

  “Because of Mrs. Hill?”

  “Because of Gillie. We’ve never been apart. Not since the day I found him in the hayloft. She won’t want him at her house.”

  Part of me—the part generated by Wendy Wood— thought about having a bit of fun teasing the poor wretch from Porcupine Plain. I could use bad language and watch him squirm, or tell him stories about wicked city women and pimps and drugs. But no way could I let him worry about his cat. What if Thelma was watching me from heaven? She’d be furious.

  “Don’t worry, Larry. Gilligan can stay at the garage until you sort things out. Clarence loves animals.”

  A look of relief washed over him. But his ears were still red from me saying ah-screwyou.

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m Easy, by the way.”

  “You’re…easy?”

  Now the rest of his face matched his ears.

  “My name is Louisiana. Easy for short,” I said.

  I was enjoying giving him a bad time. Larry didn’t talk for a few miles after that; he muttered little things to the cat and looked out the window.

  By the time we’d pulled into the garage and parked the truck, I felt guilty for teasing him and tried to be nice. “So you found Gilligan in the hayloft?” I asked, taking the key out of the ignition.

  Larry nodded.

  “Didn’t it worry you? You know what they say about a black cat crossing your path—supposed to be bad luck.”

  Larry turned in his seat and, for the first time, looked me square in the eye.

  “Should I have warned you that Gillie was black?” he said with a smirk. We both laughed, and that was when I knew that although he’d never be a boyfriend—nothing like that—Larry and I were going to get along just fine.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The entire month of June was extraordinarily hot, and was made even more unbearable by Mrs. Hill, who—now that one of her boarders was working for Clarence—made her presence felt at the garage daily. She’d drop by with a sandwich and a selection of her homemade pickles for him at noon, then cast an investigative eye over whoever happened to be there, looking for anything she might be able to pass on to her network of spies. She couldn’t hang around too long, thanks to Gillie and my music, both of which disgusted her. You could tell by the way she squinted her eyes. The only other time I’d seen her do that was when Thelma had offered her some home-canned tomatoes. She refused them, but not before listing, for our benefit, the symptoms of that silent killer called botulism.

  Mrs. Hill always thought of my music as a sign of general degradation; something I would eventually outgrow like acne. “So will you be going to college in the fall, Louisiana?” she’d ask me. Her puff of gray hair looked like a gone-to-seed dandelion.

  “No. I’m going to sing.” I reached over to the record player and turned up the volume on Billie Holiday to drown her out.

  “My granddaughter has been accepted into teacher’s college. She’s going to be—”

  “A teacher.”

  “Yes. That wouldn’t be of any use to you, of course, but surely you could find some type of suitable program.” What she meant was that nobody would hire a black schoolteacher, but maybe I could learn to blow glass or something.

  I wanted to blast the music louder, but then Thelma came into my head.

  Be gracious, Easy.

  Let it go, Easy.

  Live your own life and do your best and you’ll see how things will turn out right for you.

  I kept my eyes focused on the quart of oil that I was pouring into a motor and said nothing. Thankfully, Gillie came over to rub against Mrs. Hill’s ankles.

  Larry spotted the cat and went to grab him, but I made a face so he’d leave him where he was. Mrs. Hill was about to sneeze, and I waited for the ah-screwyou, but she bustled out of the garage instead. “Don’t be late for supper,” she hollered to Larry.

  “How do you tolerate that old crab?” I asked him.

  “Mrs. Hill? Oh, she’s not so bad once you get used to her.” I had the feeling Larry would say the same thing about the bride of Frankenstein. He took the jug of oil from my hand and poured it into the engine for me—help I didn’t need, but that was Larry. “She can’t cook like my mother, though,” he added. And then, looking at his sandwich, he declared, “She mixes cheese whiz into tuna fish.”

  “Yuck.”

  “And her pickles are sour.”

  “No surprise there,” I mumbled.

  “She keeps the place clean, though,” added Larry. “If you dropped a slice of bread and butter on the kitchen floor, then picked it up, you’d never be able to tell which side had landed face down.”

  I took two sodas out of the cooler and snapped off the lids. “So by now, she must have told you all about me, right, Larry? All the sordid details?”

  Larry said nothing. He jammed a pickle in his mouth and reached for the bottle of cola.

  “Oh, c’mon,” I in
sisted. “You’ve been living at her place for a month now. You probably heard about Wendy Wood within the first twenty-four hours!”

  “Easy!” hollered Clarence from outside the garage. “Easy, can you come here for a minute?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I yelled back. Then I took a swig of pop. “Well, just for the record, I’ve never met Wendy Wood and don’t want to, okay?”

  Larry kept chewing his pickle.

  “I hate her. And as for Clarence, I’m sure he regrets—”

  “Easy!” shouted my father. “I need you out here! Now.”

  I folded the waxed paper back around my sandwich and headed out to the parking lot. Boy, did I get an eyeful. There stood Clarence, with a dumbfounded expression on his face, and next to him were two nuns. One of them was dressed in a long dark gray habit and veil, and the other, a younger one about my age, wore a gray jumper, a white blouse, and a small white veil. I figured it was the outfit she had to wear before committing, and I was right.

  “This is Sister Beatrice, and this is Marsha Evanko,” said Clarence, offering no further explanation as to what they wanted or why they were there. Then he nodded his head and left them with me.

  “I’m…uh, Louisiana Merritt,” I sputtered, making the snap decision not to use my nickname. Then, for some reason, I asked the younger nun if Evanko was a Ukrainian name, and she nodded her head in the same disinterested way Clarence had just done. I didn’t give a damn whether she was Ukrainian or not, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  I took a rag out of my back pocket and wiped off the grease, in case they wanted to shake hands. They didn’t reach out though, so neither did I. Marsha Evanko was thin and greenish, with big, damp eyes. Her limbs were spindly, like she’d been fabricated from pipe cleaners. The older one, Sister Beatrice, looked as if she’d melt at any moment. It was a stifling hot day, and that habit she wore seemed like something overlooked by the Marquis de Sade.