Freshwater Road

by Denise Nicholas

  Mrs. Owens came through the short hallway and onto the screened porch. "What you doin', child?"

  "I felt so sweaty, and my hair needed washing." Celeste stood up on the bottom step.

  "People clean themselves down here. I got a tub for that. No need to be washing your hair out in the front yard." Mrs. Owens was sharp and clear in her disapproval.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am." Celeste knew she'd stepped over the boundaries of what was acceptable. "I'm sorry." She flushed with embarrassment and felt like Shuck's little girl again, scolded for stepping out of line.

  "Mrs. Owens, I need to talk to my daddy." If anyone had told her that she couldn't talk to Shuck that night, she'd have wept in distress. "I should have called him before now. I promised." Maybe if she talked to Shuck just the sound of his voice would calm her down.

  "You caint go to that pay phone this time of night." Mrs. Owens's voice broke, her words coming quiet, fast and fear-tinged.

  "I can run it and be back before anybody knows I'm out there." Celeste knew she had an edge in her voice, too, from her desperation.

  "Then I'm goin' with you, and that means you cain't run." Mrs. Owens turned to go into the house. "Cause I cain't."

  Celeste hadn't been in this house a good week and already she was wearing thin on Mrs. Owens with her petulant need for things to be the way they were at home-exactly what the office in Jackson warned them against. It would be dangerous enough for Celeste alone, but she surely didn't want to be the cause of any harm coming to Mrs. Owens. She wanted to run the whole way and run back. She needed the run, too-forget the heat, she needed to push out, press herself into another mindset, another place. She went to her room, pulled on cotton slacks and buttoned on a short-sleeved shirt, laced up her gym shoes, clutched some nickels and dimes so tightly in her palm she felt the indents in her skin. If anyone in Jackson found out about this, they'd send her packing back to Detroit.

  Voter registration projects were supposed to have cars. She needed one, didn't like feeling so cut off from the rest of the world. With a car, the trip to the pay phone would be nothing. She sat on the side of her bed and closed her eyes, slipping into a reverie of freedom, aching to get out of Pineyville even for a few hours. New Orleans wasn't very far away. There had to be a museum, a park, places to take the freedom school children, a city street to walk on, store windows to loiter in front of. She pictured the wide Mississippi River like the Detroit River at home, a bridge like the Ambassador to Canada. Ramona and Margo probably had cars for their projects. They were in bigger towns. But a young woman driving around the countryside in a marked car would be vulnerable. And, there was no safety in numbers. Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman didn't make it back to their project. Every sheriff and highway patrolman in Mississippi knew the movement cars. They were all registered vehicles, all the plates were known. Easy prey.

  "I'm sorry. I might be better off on my own. I can move faster." Even this, she knew, was against the rules.

  "I'm goin' with you if you have to go." Mrs. Owens came from her bedroom, buttoning her housedress, a light scarf tied around her hair and looking like she could shake Celeste senseless. She had a white scarf in her hand.

  There was no way Celeste could force her to stay in the house.

  "You best put something white on so drivers can see us in the dark." She held the bandana towards Celeste.

  "Maybe it would be better if no one saw us, don't you think?" Celeste read the look on Mrs. Owens's face to say, how are you going to come down here and tell me what the best thing to do is? Celeste shrank and took the scarf.

  Mrs. Owens stood there. "You best to put something light on so some tired truck driver on his way to New Orleans don't run over us." She repeated it in a voice that defied misinterpretation. Celeste tied the white scarf around her damp hair, feeling reined in by this woman like Wilamena never seemed to be able to do. Wilamena might've tried when she and Billy were very small, but she never seemed to have the will to carry it through. If you pushed against Wilamena, she fell. Celeste pushed. Wilamena didn't want to be bothered with the day to day. She had glamor days left and two children were stealing them from her. Mrs. Owens had drawn a line that said, I'll do this with you but you'll do it my way.

  They went out, closing the doors quietly behind them. When they got to the mailbox, Celeste stopped. The arm wasn't up, but she figured the post office workers wouldn't put the arm up anyway even if they did deposit mail in the box, especially mail with her name on it.

  "Go 'head, child." Mrs. Owens had a kindness in her voice now as if she understood how lonely Celeste felt, how cut off.

  Celeste opened the oblong mailbox, wishing now she'd finished her letter to J.D. to put in it, and that by putting something in, maybe she'd get something out. She reached her hand and half her arm inside, scraping her fingernails on the back wall, then slid her hand along the bottom in case she'd missed something. There was a thin envelope. She pulled it out, and it was addressed to her. Even in the dark of night, she knew Wilamena's elegant swirl. The Jackson office had forwarded it to Pineyville.

  "It's from my mother." She hoped Mrs. Owens didn't hear the distance she felt when she said "mother," a person she rarely mentioned. The older woman just nodded and adjusted herself for the trek.

  Celeste shoved the letter in her pants pocket. Wilamena and her cool words, reserved and formal, that always sounded and felt like obligation. No doubt it was another invitation to New Mexico. She'd read it later.

  "Guess you right about them post workers not wanting you to get your mail. They didn't even put that arm up. That's not right." Mrs. Owens sighed with exasperation.

  "No, it's not, Mrs. Owens, and it's probably against the law." Celeste saw it as a part of the grand cover-up going all the way back to slavery times. It happened, but let's pretend it didn't. Let's pretend those Negroes aren't even here unless we need them to do some menial back-breaking work.

  They took off, two women walking through the night darkness on the side of the road with crickets crying and dogs barking and the loneliest new moon Celeste had seen in her life. No beaming headlights. She thought of nightriders, flaming crosses, and panel trucks with loaded shotguns. Mrs. Owens breathed steady, her eyes straight ahead. Celeste sensed the woman heard every sound, from the soft scratchy thuds of their feet on the dirt and gravel shoulder to the siren barks of dogs tied, she hoped, behind fences.

  Their mission to reach the pay phone, make the call, and return home safely propelled them along the road. Celeste heard the sound of a car behind them and turned to see two globes of light coming their way. Mrs. Owens moved over on the shoulder and walked behind her. Celeste held her breath as the car drew closer. The sound of it moving on the uneven road drowned out all other night sounds. She didn't know if they should duck into the trees and let it pass. The car was near now, could see them for sure, and in seconds had passed them by without so much as a blare of its horn. Mrs. Owens sighed deeply. Celeste did the same. They didn't speak, just kept hiking along at a good clip.

  The tall pine trees were black against the deep blue-black sky, their guardians in the night. She thought of turning around, of apologizing to Mrs. Owens for dragging her out of her bed to walk a dangerous road, but something else had taken over. Now, it was more the idea of doing it, of not caving in to the terror that lived in the Mississippi air, of not letting the disappearance of the three boys and all the other dead and disappeared stop them. She believed Mrs. Owens felt the same thing though she never said it.

  They reached the solitary pay phone at the corner of the gas station with its small convenience light, highlighted by the one swinging traffic light blinking yellow all night long. There wasn't a car in sight.

  Mrs. Owens took up a position a few feet away while Celeste deposited a dime and dialed the operator, asking to make a collect call to Mr. Shuck Tyree in Detroit, Michigan, giving her name, clear and quiet, saying the phone number of the house on Outer Drive in a gamble that he was there. If the music o
n the party girl went too current and the crowd too young, Shuck might leave for an hour or two and stop by Alma's or go home before heading back to the bar to close up. If he was home, he wouldn't be there long. She heard the phone ring on the other end and prayed Shuck was there so she didn't have to place another call. Mrs. Owens stood still a few feet away watching the empty street. Celeste heard the clicking of the pick up and breathed a sigh of relief. The operator announced that she had a collect call from Celeste Tyree in Pineyville, Mississippi, for Shuck Tyree. Her thick Mississippi accent cut "Shuck" into two syllables.

  "Yeah, this is Shuck Tyree." He cut the drawling operator off, all expectation in his voice as he yelled into the phone. "You all right? Sure, I accept. That's my daughter."

  Celeste never felt so good hearing his voice. He was her home.

  The operator clicked off. Celeste hoped she wasn't listening in somehow.

  "Daddy. It's me." Before the words were out of her mouth, she felt the burn of tears coming to her eyes and blinked them back.

  "I know who it is." He sat on his excitement, trying to be the cool guy. "You think I don't know who it is?"

  "Thought maybe you forgot me." She joked to harness her own loneliness, knowing Shuck wasn't going to get sentimental with her or anyone else and wasn't going to allow her to, either.

  "I know you not in jail?" He questioned and dared at the same time.

  "No, I'm on a corner pay phone. The lady I'm staying with, Mrs. Owens, is here with me being the lookout." Celeste tried to put a wry joking tone in her voice then angled herself to see down the main street of Pineyville, acting cool and nonchalant. Street lights blazed down in front of the County Building, the blackness just beyond it.

  "You need a lookout to make a phone call?" Shuck's voice rose up in disbelief.

  "I could've come by myself." She lied. There was no way. She wouldn't be at the phone if Mrs. Owens hadn't come along. She'd have turned around in five minutes.

  Mrs. Owens stood a few feet away, the signal light blinking yellow on her deep brown face.

  "Listen to me. You can always get on that train. Don't have to stay there. Get on a plane. Don't make me have to come down there and kill somebody." Shuck took a breath. "Pineyville. Of all the damned places." The cool guy had ducked and run.

  Did Shuck know about Leroy Boyd James? Is that why he said ofall the damned places? "It's going well, really." She gave it her best pleading. That going well helped his breathing slow to normal. No need to say anything about the ride down from Jackson with Matt, that would upset him too much. The only thing he'd say about Miss Sophie Lewis was that the woman ought to pack up and get out of there. She let the going well stand.

  Shuck grunted. "When's this damn thing over?"

  "August. I'll be home sometime in August." She started crying, didn't want Shuck or Mrs. Owens to know, turned herself away from the older woman. "You tell Billy?" She sounded like a criminal talking on a phone from behind bars, tears running down her face.

  "He thinks you lost your mind." Billy didn't know her now, anyway. He knew her to high school, then he was gone to college, and now she had come to this place. He didn't even know she'd had a white boyfriend in college unless Shuck told him. Unlikely.

  "I don't think he'll be living in New York long." Shuck implied that New York was kicking Billy's behind. "Wilamena called here looking for you." He was letting her know that he'd told Wilamena where she was.

  Celeste stopped crying, wiped her face on the back of her hand.

  "You know about how that went over." He was chastising her for not staying in closer touch with her mother. She knew very well that Wilamena didn't like searching for her.

  Celeste felt the letter in her pocket, a warm weight against her body. She hadn't called her mother "momma" since she was a little girl. The grandmothers, Momma Bessie and Grandma Pauline, had subsumed the mother notion, taking up so much space in her mind that "momma" receded to a small place. But, it never disappeared. Didn't even know if Wilamena minded being called by her first name. Wilamena in her house with no music wouldn't want to know too much about Mississippi.

  "Make sure you write her." He paused. "You catch more flies with honey." Shuck chuckled in the back of his voice.

  Celeste rode over what he said, didn't want to spend her whole phone call talking about Wilamena. "I need you to send bail money down in case I get arrested. Send it by Western Union to the Jackson office of One Man, One Vote. They'll take care of it from there. Five hundred dollars." She'd been told to make this phone call while she was in Jackson, then Matt told again before he left, and now, finally, she was doing it. She'd lived that first week wondering if she was going to stay in Mississippi long enough to get arrested. After the police picked her up in Jackson then let her go, she'd felt lucky. Then with Matt on the road down, she'd missed the blows and knew she was lucky. She felt like she was running on Shuck's luck. "This is costing a fortune, Daddy."

  "I don't give a damn how much it's costing." Shuck held on and let go at the same time. "I'll take care of the bail money. You be careful, you hear?"

  She heard the pride in his voice and the warning, too, like she had from the lady in the segregated bathroom in Jackson. "I will."

  Shuck hung up.

  Celeste in that one little moment felt so alone that hanging up the phone seemed like disconnecting herself from her own life.

  Mrs. Owens nodded in the direction of Freshwater Road. "All right now, child, let's go."

  Celeste figured she'd pushed Mrs. Owens right to her limits and that she'd had all she was going to take of doing things Celeste's way. They took off, walking fast, their footsteps cracking over the gravel, thudding on the sand shoulder, sometimes scuffing quietly on the blacktop. Celeste listened for truck tires, for wild men who didn't need to be drunk to do horrendous things. She smelled pine and felt mosquitoes but didn't even bother to slap her arms, just kept moving, making sure Mrs. Owens breathing was deep and strong.

  When they arrived at the big mailbox, the house with the slanting porch looked like home. Millions of bright country stars tiptoed across the sky, running from the cloud banks that never stopped moving through, creating dark rooms of night.

  They headed straight for the kitchen and tall glasses of ice water. The old woman drank hers then said goodnight, closing her curtain door behind her. Celeste stood at the opened back door. The pine trees rustled in a slight current of air, like water sliding over old stones. At night, the aromas of rotting wood, outhouses, and meals cooked every day for years settled over and nearly obliterated the subtle scent of pine. Insects whistled in full knotty cries that thinned to aches. And always, the sporadic barking of the skinny dogs who scrammed under the houses of Freshwater Road or hightailed it into the pines when cars and trucks rolled by on the two-lane. They knew when to hide.

  Wilamena's thin slip of a letter pressed through her pocket against her thigh. With her mother, Celeste felt out of place, never knew how to crack the cool veneer. She scratched and pecked at the enclosure of Wilamena and got crumbs or nothing at all. Nobody owes you anything because of how you look. Wilmena'd written that after Shuck mailed her photographs of Celeste dressed in green taffeta for the junior prom. She'd responded in a phone call admiring the dress and Celeste's hair, then ended with that deflating scold. Finally, Celeste surrendered to her mother's coolness, let her be, held close to Shuck.

  She locked the back door, turned out the kitchen light, and went to her room. She was relieved. The walk and the phone call had given her energy. Had she not bathed naked, had she not gone to the phone, she never could've stayed in this house for another week, forget until August. Some prisons were worse than others. She pulled the sweat-damp letter out of her pocket. The return address was written on a beautiful linen envelope, the tiny numbers marking a house she'd never seen and a street name she only knew from the upper corner of other envelopes. Wilamena would berate her for going to Mississippi in the first place. After that, the invitation to
New Mexico would sit like a sour candy at the end of a bad meal. She put it under her underwear in the dresser drawer as if it were a treasured heirloom to be touched ever so delicately, not breathed on, not dropped or dirtied, polished only with the softest of cloths. Wilamena in a glass cabinet with the door locked. She needed support, encouragement, and the strength to see the summer through, not lectures about her decision to do this work.

  The next day when Reverend Singleton left her alone in the church while he went to run an errand, two children came in as quietly as if they were ghosts. The girl, with blond curly hair and blue-gray eyes set in a reddish brown face, handed Celeste a piece of paper with a note introducing them as Labyrinth and Georgie. She read the names over, said them to herself, wondering if the child had any idea at all of what her name meant. The girl had a dare in her eyes, so Celeste figured she must know something of her name's impact on people. The boy and the girl had no resemblance to each other at all, he being dark with intense brown eyes. The note said that their mother, Dolly Johnson, or her sister, would come back for them around noon. The more she looked at the girl, the more she understood what a brilliant stroke it was to name this strange-looking child Labyrinth.

  When Reverend Singleton returned, Celeste begged him to ring the bell in celebration of the beginning of Pineyville's Freedom Summer project and he did, laughing and protesting that he hoped the Negro people who heard it wouldn't think the place was on fire and come running with their buckets. Dolly Johnson's sister honked her car horn around noon, and the two children ran out the door yelling back to Celeste that it was their aunt come to get them. No lingering there that first day. And no wonder. They were the only children in the freedom school class so far.

  On the ride home, Reverend Singleton told Celeste that Labyrinth and Georgie had different fathers and that Labyrinth's father was Percival Dale, the white grocery store owner in town. Georgie's father was a Negro man named Hiram who Dolly had met in Hattiesburg, where she went around with him for a while. When she got pregnant with Georgie, Hiram took off for California. In his defense, Reverend Singleton said, Hiram had found work there and sent money on a semiregular basis for the care of his child.