Freshwater Road

by Denise Nicholas

  New Mexico, the wild land of the southwest with little water and fewer Negroes, was an impossible concept to grasp. Wilamena might as well have gone to the moon. On the postcard, the place looked all dark pink and white hot, but the color of the sky, the dense blue of it, was new, had a light behind it that didn't diminish the depth of color. No skyline at all. He pictured a long, low-slung house with sand right up to the doors and windows, cactus plants everywhere. Albuquerque.

  Shuck put his dirty dishes in the sink, then splashed a generous jigger of Crown Royal over ice cubes and carried it to the foyer, where he sat in the upholstered chair by the window. After Wilamena remarried and settled out there, Shuck made sure she knew that everyone in Detroit was doing fine without her. Cyril Atwood. He rolled the name around in his mind. He was the quiet type, an engineer, tall and lean with deep-set eyes. Not a smile in sight. He wondered how Wilamena, who he knew had a need for grandness and flash, could stand to live with a man who barely spoke and didn't like music. He'd never met a Negro man who didn't like music, but Cyril was as close to white as Wilamena could get. She had to be going crazy with boredom out there.

  the occasional car leisured by out on Outer Drive, the driver no doubt admiring the thick, deep, shadowed grass, the height and fullness of the grand elm trees up and down the street. He slowly dialed Wilamena's number in New Mexico, one number at a time, each one making him feel like he was slipping on ice, smooth but cold. He left his finger in the rotary dial, let the machine take his finger all the way back to the metal stop. What if Cyril answered the phone? So what? He had every right to call Wilamena. She was the mother of his children. But something in his voice might reveal his morning dream. He sipped his Crown Royal for cool and courage, the ice cubes cooling down the sting of a day's first drink. The ringing echoed on the other end of the line. Shuck focused on the lush music rolling through his house, the memories that came with the sounds.

  "Hello?" Wilamena's voice pitched forward, startled.

  "It's me." Shuck held his breath, flutters winging in his stomach. He didn't want to stumble over his words like a tongue-tied kid. It had been months since he'd heard her voice, close to a year. Even her "hello" was like no other. Strong, present and turning in on itself at the same time. Like a girl.

  "Well, I'm glad you returned the call, finally. I was beginning to think you never got my message." Wilamena paused.

  Not an iota of Negro in Wilamena's voice. Nothing of Detroit lingered. The music twisted a breath out of him. "No, no. Posey gave it to me." He sipped his drink. His foot tapped on the plush carpet to the beat of the music, the husky voicing of saxophones, the graceful piano licks. "I'm a working man." Wilamena thought that outsmarting the police who pursued gamblers like they were murderers and outrunning the Italians who coveted his lucrative numbers business didn't constitute real work.

  "And, how's Posey doing?" She made an effort to be mannerly. Posey knew them both in the old days, but she'd never asked about him before. It was her way of apologizing for bringing Posey up short on the phone. Shuck knew that asking about Posey wasn't necessarily about Posey. She wanted something specific. He didn't know if he wanted her to get to the point quickly or if he just wanted to linger there with her voice and the music.

  "Fine. Everybody's fine, Wilamena." Shuck sat back in the chair, settled in, and let the memory of her body smooth out inside him.

  "Are you at home?" Wilamena sounded doubtful. "You were never one for hanging around a house."

  She nailed him. But that was all in the past. These days, he searched for reasons to stay home. He just couldn't find any. Behind her clipped speech, he saw the smile of even teeth and how her eyes sparkled when she danced the jitterbug in the aisle of the Fox Theatre. When Duke Ellington eased into "Mood Indigo," she closed her eyes and leaned into him. They were slow dancing in the blue-speckled light of a spinning globe. Now, he hoped she could hear the soulful recording of Coleman Hawkins's mellow horn all the way to the desert.

  "Shuck?" A softness in her voice.

  Shuck stared out the foyer window, lost in the deepening shade.

  "Are you there? Shuck?" By the second time she said his name, the old Wilamena had seeped in, demanding, self-important.

  "Yeah. I'm here." He wasn't yet ready to let go of the fantasy he'd created in his mind about his ex-wife. "You oughta see the club, Wilamena." He'd said too much. Wilamena was a married woman. Better that she stay out there in New Mexico, stay out of trouble. Nothing out there for her to do. Shuck thought of her dressed in a light blouse that revealed her perfect shoulders, a skirt that rounded her hips and thighs. She had a real woman's figure. Where was she sitting or standing? Where was Cyril? In the pause, he put his dream words into her mouth and answered in his own head.

  I'd love to see the Royal Gardens, Shuck.

  It was supposed to be us, Wilamena. Walking down Seventh Avenue, hanging out in Harlem.

  "I tried to call Celeste but her phone's disconnected." Wilamena's actual words broke through his reverie. "I thought she was going to summer school."

  One thing Shuck knew for sure: Wilamena didn't like unearthing their daughter through him. He stopped himself from saying she'd gone on a trip to Europe, or even Africa, somewhere far away where Wilamena couldn't reach her. He settled for the truth. "She's in Mississippi. Doing voter work for the summer." He sipped the smooth liquor, and hoped the sound of ice cubes clinking on glass made it through the wires to New Mexico.

  "Why would she do that?" A true wonderment arose in her voice.

  "They call it Freedom Summer, Wilamena." Shuck knew well that she didn't own up to being connected in any way to any Negro in Mississippi. To any Negro anywhere.

  "Who calls it? Who's they?" Wilamena's voice seized like a shallow pond freezing over in a blizzard. "She needs to see a psychiatrist. What's she trying to prove? How Negro she is?"

  Shuck laughed. "Celeste is fine." Without giving her credit for it, he accepted Wilamena's appraisal as at least partly true. But no matter. Celeste needed to be in the real world. Just maybe not the Mississippi real world.

  "It's not funny, Shuck. Mississippi, of all places in the world? Voter work? You both need to see a doctor." Wilamena didn't get it. Never did. Something missing in her view of things. Like she saw herself in a Hollywood movie playing the white girl. It was the thing Shuck disliked about her, what he'd always wanted to protect Celeste from becoming.

  "It was her decision to make, Wilamena. College kids from all over the country are down there. White and Negro. Lot going on in Mississippi." The trees on Outer Drive formed swaying shapes against a tilting gray-blue sky.

  "I don't care about them." Her tone arched into a point, a blade.

  "Tell me something I don't know." He nearly said, you don't care about anyone but yourself, but he pushed it down his throat, and it nearly gagged him, that little truth he'd been dying to report for all those years. He'd spent years trying to protect Celeste from the ravages of her own mother, knowing all the while that Wilamena didn't intend to hurt, she just couldn't help it. The music lay back against the walls and carpet. He tried to find the beat again, the sleekness in the sounds, but had lost it.

  "Well, did you even try to talk her out of it? What if she gets killed? Negroes die down there for looking the wrong way. Are you crazy? She doesn't owe those people anything. You let her go?" Wilamena hissed in a whisper.

  Shuck wondered if someone had come into the room where she was. He listened for footsteps, doors. "She was already in Mississippi when I found out." He wanted to shake her through the phone, tell her it was way too late for all this caring.

  "What a stupid idea." Wilamena dismissed the entire meaning of Freedom Summer in one short phrase. Shuck recognized the throwaway. She banished the notions and feelings. Freedom Summer withered and fell away in her disdain.

  "She's fine. Leave it alone." He wasn't going to let on as to how frightened he was for Celeste-how he scoured the papers and television broadcasts to ke
ep up on Mississippi news, the shootings and burnings and bombings. It was a small war. If Celeste died in Mississippi, it would be on him.

  "Is there a phone number where I can reach her?" She sounded officious now, like she and only she had the capacity to correct a situation that had spun out of control. Of course, he'd been waiting on a phone call himself.

  "You can call the Jackson office of One Man, One Vote. They'll pass a message on to her." A delight the thickness of a blade of grass in his voice. He knew the conversation was over, but he refused to let go. "She's doing what she believes in. Can't fault her for that, can we?"

  "Passing messages along. How absurd in this day and age." Her exasperation singed the air. "Well, where is she living? You're telling me there's no phone?"

  "Some people don't have phones, Wilamena. Pure and simple." In truth, he didn't know if Celeste had a phone or not, but assumed she didn't since he hadn't heard from her. Now he wanted to let Wilamena go. He told her again to go ahead and call One Man, One Vote in Jackson, and then told her goodbye.

  He drank the rest of his Crown Royal in a gulp, then walked a circle through the house, laughing to himself that he was still in love with that wrong-headed woman. He turned off the record player, poured himself another drink, then bore down on his scalawag memories, forced them back behind their gates. Some were still running in place no matter how many years went by, no matter how many fine women smiled his way. Alma was a good-looking woman, an educated woman, steady and straight, but she paled beside Wilamena. He'd be late getting to the Royal Gardens tonight. Something must be going on out there in New Mexico. She's lonely again, miserable, trying to stake a life in the unknownness of the southwest, in that dryness. Shuck liked to think of her pacing around like a caged pet, thirsty for music, for dancing, for an edge to her life. He could have her back, he told himself. She always ached for what she didn't have, never satisfied. Nothing had changed.

  6

  Bony dogs ran up and down barking at their arrival, then skulked off into the woods that stopped some yards from the back of the plank board house. White paint peeled off the boards. Those great long-needled pines, a thickness of them, stood arrow straight and seemed to grow out of nothing more than the peachy barren sand of a tropical island. The house with a downleaning screened-in porch balanced on stacks of cinderblocks, with a good two feet of unprotected crawl space underneath. Off to the back and to the side, well beyond a vegetable garden, was a lopsided playhouse-looking structure, like a way station before the start of the forest. A rusted-out tiller lay crippled in the sandy earth a few yards down Freshwater Road. The next house, slightly larger, was a good half of a city block away. A pile of wood planks and cinderblocks on the ground across the road appeared to be the remains of another house.

  Matt climbed out of the car and walked to the spigot, dropped his coverall straps, and took off his shirt. He bent over, flinching in pain, and stuck his head under the water, which first splashed its yellowish spray in all directions, then settled into a clear steady stream. He washed his upper body using a piece of soap from a small metal plate beside the spigot, gulping water between scrubs.

  Celeste stayed in the car, her wind-whipped hair standing in spikes and corkscrews around her head, sweat caking on her skin, the little glass cuts like so many pinpricks on her arms and face. There'd been no mention of outdoor baths. How could she do this? She saw herself spooning beans from a tin plate and drinking muddy coffee from a dented cup. The only thing missing was a wood-wheeled wagon and an old mare. She eyed the patches of flaccid vegetables interspersed with drooping flowers. She remembered Margo cautioning the new volunteers against acting as if the things they were accustomed to at home might be better than what was offered here.

  Matt replaced the soap and rinsed the sudsy residue from his upper body until soap scum floated on a moat surrounding the platform. Celeste searched Matt's body for signs of the beating he'd taken. His chest and arms were hairless and smooth, dark and muscular. He was shining wet. When he turned to the side, she saw a swelling near his waist.

  Celeste stepped out of the car, feeling creaky from clenching with fear for so long. She joined Matt at the spigot, hiking up her dress to keep it dry. She too gulped the mineral-tasting water, felt its cool splash on her legs and arms, and finally put her whole face under the faucet before grabbing the soap bar and lathering up her face and arms.

  "There's ice water in the kitchen." An older woman came out of the screened door talking, holding a towel, eyes averted from Matt's naked upper body. "You coulda waited til tomorrow with that Klan meetin' going on in Hattiesburg and all."

  Mrs. Geneva Owens stood barely shorter than Celeste. Her unpressed gray hair was bunched into a fat french twist, and her dark eyes were not too old to flash. She wore a waist-tied apron over a soft yellow print cotton housedress. Her skin was dark brown though not as dark as Matt's, and her laugh lines were deep grooves that kept to their places, didn't creak off into small lines and wrinkles. She looked dutiful, alert, and invigorated.

  "I didn't know a thing about it til Matt said something. We were almost here by then." Celeste spoke by way of introducing herself. "We saw a whole carload of them on the other side of Hattiesburg. Had their sheets and robes thrown over the seat back." She sounded like an excited child, as if this woman had never seen the likes of that in her life. She quickly remembered where she was.

  "No need to be worrying the life outta me. What's left of it, anyway." She gave Matt the towel, then walked right back into her house as if she'd handed it to him through a bathroom door, never even acknowledging that Celeste was standing there.

  Matt dried himself then tossed the towel to Celeste. He shielded himself from the house and lowered his coveralls to tuck in his shirt. "Don't go bringing that siddity Detroit shit down here. I know you got it in you." He spoke very quietly as he slipped the overall straps up onto his shoulders.

  Celeste rolled her eyes at his back, water still dripping off her face and knowing full well she wasn't going to dry her face with a towel he'd used to dry his body. She'd never even done that with J.D.

  "That's better." The woman came out again, walked straight to Matt and squinted at the knot on his head. "What's that on yo head? Look like you been in a fight with the devil."

  "Wasn't no devil, Mrs. Owens, just a man. And I wasn't doing none of the fighting." Matt's eyes clouded and dropped in embarrassment.

  "State troopers. Two of them." Celeste worked to get the attention of the older woman off Matt, who seemed to shrink at using the word "fighting." It had been a beating. She struggled, too, for some acknowledgement of her own presence. Here she was, ready again to prove she belonged exactly where she was standing. No way around it.

  "Well, you won cause you here." Mrs. Owens heaved out a breath and put the positive note to it that Matt so desperately needed.

  The quiet ride through the surrounding pine forest had calmed Celeste, blocked out the beating and the gun pointed at them before it was fired into the air, but it all came back when the woman said, you won cause you here. If they'd lost, they'd be dead.

  "I got you a towel in your room, child." She took the damp towel from Celeste and smiled the slightest bit as if something was holding her back. But Celeste seized onto her use of the word "child" and knew she was going to be fine with this woman. She also figured that by the time they got into her room, the sun would've dried her off well enough. Mrs. Owens's reserve reminded her of Momma Bessie. Older Negro women notoriously favored boys. Always trying to make up for the brutalities of the world outside. Celeste had traveled that road, had seen Momma Bessie do the same thing her whole life not just with Billy and Shuck but with every walking, talking Negro man who came in her door. The men came first.

  "You right about that," Matt said, remembering his manners at last. "This is Celeste Tyree. She's gonna be staying with you over the summer."

  She gave Celeste a sideways glance. "You welcome here."

  "Thank you, Mr
s. Owens." Celeste's head bobbed with a serious expression. Full-out smiles were a long time coming in Mississippi.

  "Y'all hurry and come on in here and eat this food 'fore it spoils. And I got something for that knot on your head." Mrs. Owens walked inside, the screen door giving a muffled version of a slam.

  "Hey, Celeste, you got runnin' water-you just got to run outside to use it." He said it in a husky laughing whisper. "Hasn't been that long they've had electricity out here. Whole lot of white folks in Mississippi got no toilet plumbing either." As if that was supposed to make it all right. She got a better look at the small leaning structure near the pines. She didn't want to believe it was an outhouse, but what else could it be? Outdoor spigots and outdoor toilets. She hadn't connected the two when they first drove up. You missed something, Margo. If the One Man, One Vote office told the truth about the living circumstances, some of those volunteers would've taken a pass and stayed in the cities to do their volunteering. She checked herself. She, of all people, needed to do the harder thing, and this was going to be it.

  A dark wire traveled from the house to a T-shaped pole in the back. The same poles stood all along the road as far as the eye could see. The wires were relaxed, swinging between the poles like skinny black hammocks. They never looked so naked as this back in Detroit. Mrs. Owens's pole had a transformer-close to the corner, so the power company people didn't have to venture too far down Freshwater Road, this neighborhood of glorified shacks. Matt said the houses were built by the loggers back in the days of the timber boom, when the piney woods stretched across southern Mississippi. When the forests were cleared and the loggers departed, Negro people squatted in the houses, painted them, made them into homes. It was as if the slave shanties of a hundred years ago had been painted and electrified. Not much else had changed. In clearing the land for the houses, all the shade trees had been cut down too and no one had bothered to replant them. No lounging under live oaks on Freshwater Road. If you needed to hide, you had to run through empty space like a moving target, racing for the remains of the pine forest.