Shuck had it in his mind that the whole summer of violence and death would end up being about the politics of people who already had the power. Not wanting to take a swipe at Celeste's idealism, he kept that to himself when she called. He had an inkling that surviving a summer in Mississippi would pretty much demolish her rosy view of what could happen and how much time it would take. Why hammer the point home? Experience was the better teacher. He'd spent his life preaching to his children that their generation could do anything they wanted. Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't entirely true. It didn't mean the sky was now the limit for Negroes, but it was getting close. For him, luck had been pivotal. That's the path he'd taken. He wanted better for his children. Luck had a way of running out.
Celeste just needed to finish her work and get the hell out of Mississippi in one piece. That's all he asked. He turned the radio off, hummed Dakota Staton's "Broadway," saw himself walking on Seventh Avenue toward the Sheraton Hotel and the cabaret with live jazz and dressed-up women.
The heat wave was setting records for the summer, and an anxiousness for change bubbled up to the surface. Detroiters grew weary of summer, secretly pined for new seasons to tidy through, clean out the wilted flowers, re-dress the trees in bursts of color, and lure the winds that swayed the branches. They ached for summer all winter long, but didn't mind when it left. There was Indian Summer to look forward to, that last warm spell, and after that the very first snow, which draped the city in a spectacular white gown. You just wanted to stand and look at it, pray everyone stayed home, didn't go out there driving and walking and dirtying it. But life went on. After a while, you prayed for a break from the slush and bitter cold. Then you dreamed of spring, pined for buds on trees and soft-voiced birds and little whiffs of warm air returning. He realized that he really wanted this summer to be over, that he was pushing it along too fast and with it, his own life. Better to take it slow, make it last, but Mississippi loomed, confusing even his sense of time and the good life.
Shuck leaned his head back on the soft leather of his seat, watching through half-closed eyes as other cars pulled into the small parking lot to the side of the building. Negroes with big cars and tiny houses, or one-bedroom apartments in working-class neighborhoods, bringing cash money to wire to the south-not for daughters and sons working for "the cause," but for relatives left hanging on by a breath and a thin dime in Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky. They might be sending money to a household like the one Celeste lived in right now. Shuck watched them get out of their cars dressed in house shoes, do-rags on their heads, the sometimes-employed with cigarettes smoked down to the filter, loud-talking and back-slapping.
The city had been a mecca for black job seekers since he was a child. Truth was the slots had been filled for years, but no one knew how to close the doors and the leftover people stayed on. He saw the For Sale signs on houses all over the city, the boarded-up buildings along Dexter and even on the side streets downtown. A slow, slinking decline. Every week, the newspapers-the white ones and the Negro one-talked of businesses closing. The business to be in right now was moving and storage. Shuck imagined white people scattering out of the city so fast, pieces of their clothing dangled out of their suitcases and car trunks, overstuffed boxes bumped the trunks open. They snatched their children off the playgrounds of schools that had remained integrated right up until the last great migration of southern Negroes in the late 1950s. Then it was, "Let's get the hell out of here." Southern Negroes coming in the back door while home-owning, tax-paying white people ran out the front. Even the experts couldn't keep track. It wasn't that there were no tax-paying, property-owning Negroes. There were plenty. But not enough to support the city.
Shuck didn't know if he should hit the road out of Detroit or stay put with a prayer. And where would he go? Follow the white folks to the suburbs? Move the Royal Gardens out there, too? His New York dream of a supper club with live entertainment languished. The music he loved lived in whispers. Old people's music, Posey called it. You barely found it on the radio, and most of the clubs in town, white-owned or Negro, were filling their jukeboxes with the new music. Young people liked the singing groups, the dance-stepping, shantung-silk-suit-wearing men who crooned love songs in rhyming couplets, and the girl groups with their sleek gowns and puffed hair singing gaunt lyrics. He never got enough of Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, Gloria Lynne and Ella; he put his ears to the speakers for Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, and Jimmie Lunceford. His springtime music would always be dancing in the aisles with Wilamena to the big bands swinging at the Fox Theatre. Shuck felt like a throwback in his own city, in his own life.
He checked all around for any lurking do-nothing men, then chastised himself for having the thought. After all, he was downtown on a street with traffic, pedestrians going and coming in and out of office buildings. Teenagers who might be troublesome slept later than he did.
He patted his breast pocket for the envelope of bail money, then glanced down at his newly polished gray leather loafers, in perfect blend with his light gray jacket and dark gray slacks. He preferred fall and winter clothes. Camel hair and wool gabardine, dark suits with French-cuffed shirts. Silk ties. Didn't like wearing galoshes. First thing was to get this money to Jackson before the shit hit the fan. If Celeste got arrested, he wanted the money to be there to get her out right away. No Negro person was Mississippi-jail material. Nothing but nightmares. He didn't want Celeste to see the inside of a jail in Mississippi or anywhere else.
Inside, the Western Union office smelled of stale cigarette butts. There were trash bits in the corners, yellow paint going grimy. The big plate glass window hadn't been washed in a month and featured all sizes of hand prints, smudges wiped this way and that. Up high, a good half of the yellow lights on the Western Union electric sign were burned out and the dark brown writing needed repainting.
Shuck, a standout of perfect elegance in a throwaway-looking place, stepped into the short line of patrons, angling himself so he could see out of the front window while he waited. Traffic moved around the circle of Grand Circus Park like a silent movie-Fords, Plymouths, Chryslers, delivery trucks of all kinds. A halo of decay veiled all of it.
At the counter, he opened his envelope and took out five crisp hundred dollar bills and splayed them out like cards in a good poker hand, took the paper napkin on which he'd jotted the One Man, One Vote office address, and laid it beside the money. He'd send the money and keep praying Celeste made it through to the end of this Freedom Summer thing. Wouldn't do for him to go down there. They'd all be dead.
The young woman behind the counter smiled. "Morning, sir. May I help you?" She had a crispness in her voice. Her Western Union uniform fit, yellow shirt tucked into dark slacks, her hair pulled back away from her pretty brown face. He was relieved, not up for any double negatives, any slack-jawed southernisms. Not that he considered himself a man of words.
"Good morning to you. I want to send this to Jackson, Mississippi, as fast as you can get it there. Here's the address."
"You want to send a message with it?" The woman slid him a pad for writing out messages. Her nails were neat and clean. She must be a college student at Wayne. Very professional, he was thinking. The kind of young person he'd hire to work in the Royal Gardens, part-time. He figured he could pay more than Western Union.
"I do." Shuck wrote Celeste's name on the message next to the amount he was sending and what it was for. Then he wrote, "Come on outta there, now. Love, Shuck." Then he remembered she'd probably never see the note. He didn't care. He left it.
The woman totaled his costs and gave him a receipt. "Have a nice day, sir."
Shuck made a snap decision, tore off a piece of paper from the pad and wrote his name and phone number, the name of the bar and the address. "You need any part-time work, give me a call. It's a nice place. You in school?
The girl blushed, eyes tracking quickly down the row of patrons behind Shuck. "Yes, sir. I'm studying at Wayne."
Shuck l
owered his voice. "Call the place. My name's Shuck Tyree. I'm the owner." He felt so proud to say that to that young woman, knew his eyes twinkled when he said it.
She took the piece of paper, slid it into her pants pocket, eyes nervous, darting, as if she wanted Shuck to get going. "Thank you, sir."
Shuck nodded to the mangy man in line behind him and walked out to his car. He had choices. To live out the next few years grabbing all the joy he could from the life he'd built, or make some big changes, not knowing what might be on the other end. He knew he'd take care of Momma Bessie and the old house for as long as she wanted to live in it. Alma would stay in his life whether she moved to Outer Drive with that jungle of plants or not. Leave those plastic covers behind.
Shuck drove around Grand Circus Park to Woodward and went toward the river, passing Hudson's department store, the traffic slowing him to an easy summer crawl, his Cadillac gleaming in the afternoon sun. One worry left. Every time Momma Bessie asked him about Celeste, he told her she was doing fine. If he told her where Celeste was, there'd be a long thick pause as if Momma Bessie expected him to announce he was getting on a plane and flying to Mississippi. Celeste wouldn't leave Mississippi until she finished what she went there to do, whether he went down there or not. And how would he get to that god-forgotten town anyway? A flight to New Orleans or to Jackson, then a car ride to Pineyville. What car? Would he be able to rent a car in either city? Better to close the Royal Gardens and drive down, take Posey and all the guns and bullets they could find on the west side of Detroit. Put a sign on the door, "Mississippi or bust."
The regulars were already inside when he pulled up in front of the Royal Gardens. They knew not to park in his space just outside the door. Rodney's old Cadillac and Chink's new Mustang were parked front to back just beyond Shuck's space. Iris parked her old hunk of junk Studebaker more than half a block away. Shuck never told her, but he didn't want that car near the front of his place, attracting the wrong kind of customers. She must have guessed it after looking at his best-of-Negro-life wallpaper. Millicent's sleek Chrysler was parked back of Shuck's spot. He didn't mind that at all. Posey always parked his Oldsmobile across the street from Shuck's Cadillac, said he liked to park in the direction he was heading when he left, didn't want to be out there U-turning like Shuck did every night.
He walked in with a smile on his face for the first time in weeks. The money was on its way to Celeste. For now, that's all he could do. The rest of the summer would be a waiting game. As soon as he walked in the door, he heard the new music on the jukebox and began to shake his head. "Posey, that music's for children. Nobody in here right now qualifies." He went to his seat at the back of the bar, newspapers and mail in his hands as usual.
"We just tryin' to keep you from getting too old, too fast, that's all." Posey prepped the bar for the evening. "Isn't that right, y'all?"
"Sure is, Shuck." Iris jumped in. "We been worried about you. You walking slower, head all down, look like you lost your best friend. These kids' music put a skip back in your step."
Iris had on her work clothes, a man-looking shirt with the sleeves rolled up over something he couldn't see. Compared to the women in the wallpaper, Iris looked like she was on work detail as janitor. Shuck didn't like it. With her teenaged children, this new music was right up Iris's alley. She couldn't get away from it if she tried. She wasn't the type to teach her children about Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, take them places so they knew where they came from.
The voice in his head told Iris she'd better be worrying about herself. He wouldn't say it, didn't want to hurt her feelings. "I'm all right."
"Celeste doing okay?" Millicent sat quietly smoking, twirling that luscious pearl-plated cigarette lighter, sipping a Tom Collins, looking good in a low-cut summer print dress, gold bangles on her brown arms, matching gold hoop earrings, hair pulled back and up against the heat. "I know it's on your mind." Shuck could see in a minute how she made supervisor at the main post office. She carried herself very well.
"Thanks for asking, Millicent. So far, so good. Be glad when it's over."
Chink nodded down to Shuck. "I know that's right."
The thumping bumping new music from the jukebox swelled between them. For a moment, Shuck saw them all as foreign, as if he'd entered a world unknown to him, incomprehensible. He didn't want to be old yet, didn't want to be thought of as out of it, but things were slipping. How did these people fit into the new sounds, the new thinking, when he did not? Why now after all these years was he feeling out of step? He picked up his newspaper and thumbed through as much to hide as to read.
"Posey."
Posey walked down to him, white shirt agleam against his night black skin.
"Hey.
"You up for going to Mississippi? If it gets necessary?"
Posey rubbed two fingers down on both sides of his mouth as if he were smoothing a moustache. "I'm in."
"Keep it to yourself. May not be. Just checking."
"All right, man." Posey slapped a flat hand on the bar, nodded and went back to his work.
They could do some real damage in Pineyville. Posey was mad enough at the world about losing his house to a scheming ex-girlfriend, he'd be perfect for the job. Shuck sensed Posey was humoring him, but he didn't care. He knew this idea of going to Mississippi was a flight of fancy, but one he needed to scope out. He was too old to be fooling around down there, but if push came to shove, he'd go. They'd go. Celeste was nobody's wimp, had taken the bit between her teeth in a way he never dreamed she would. But not like that, not in that place. You had to be young to do something like that.
14
In the hottest hour of the afternoon, flies, crickets, birds, and even the dogday cicadas all stopped, leaving only phantom movements, elusive echoes. Celeste sat on a stiff chair in the kitchen with the back door open, the long-needled pines like a fortress wall less than a city block to the rear. Her voter registration study materials lay helter-skelter on Mrs. Owens's table.
By now Dolly Johnson was attending the voter registration class regularly, Mr. Landau, too, and Sister Mobley and Mrs. Owens. Others, more tentative, more afraid, ventured in, too. Each evening, one, sometimes two new people appeared in the back of the St. James A.M.E. Church, knotting their bodies into self-effacement, heads hanging low as if to be there and not be at the same time. Celeste beckoned, cajoled, even begged them to join the small group down front, those few who'd decided to risk life and limb for the right to vote. They moved up when they felt comfortable moving and not a second before. They remained wary of Celeste and of the work she was doing, unsettled by the air of threat that hung over Mississippi like an iron veil. Celeste couldn't separate the ongoing historical fears from new ones the movement brought with it.
Her daily routine leaned toward the grueling. Teach the children at freedom school in the mornings, home to eat, wash the sweat off her body, put on fresh clothes, rinse her morning clothes in the tin tub and hang them out back, then prepare for voter registration classes in the evenings. Some days, she swept the sandy dirt out of the house. On others, she walked into town to help Mrs. Owens carry groceries back to Freshwater Road, relieved to change her routine in any small way. No movie theater to slink into, no television, no radio (not in this house anyway), no cool library or lofty museum to amble through-just a front porch with a hard-seated chair waiting at the end of each long day.
Celeste stood from the table to stretch, the pale blue mimeograph ink and small print of her copy of the Mississippi State Constitution a burr in her brain. In Jackson, during her orientation week, the idea of the freedom school had baffled her most. How would she teach children from different grades at the same time? What would she teach? Now, she found the hardest task was preparing the beaten-down older people for voter registration. She walked to the door praying for a breeze from beyond those fragrant pines, her hand smoothing the cypress wood repairs over the bullet holes in the door frame. No breeze came, but Sissy Tucker sped through t
he heavy air creating a zephyr that bounced her tight braids up and down, almond eyes wide, running across the orange sandy earth out of the trees and heading right for Mrs. Owens's back door. Celeste remembered the hateful fire in Mr. Tucker's eyes the day of the church picnic, the warning he cut her in the rearview mirror of his big Hudson after she told Sissy she'd take her to see a movie. "Sissy! How are you, come in, come in." She quickly unhooked the screen, and Sissy darted in like a panicked bird.
Celeste sat the panting child at the table and gave her a glass of ice water, remembering the tears that welled in Sissy's eyes after her father crushed her dream of going to see a movie. Sissy was throwing down her gauntlet by even coming to this house. Celeste had to buck up. She glanced down the short hall to the porch where Mrs. Owens dozed in her rocking chair. Sometimes there came an easing of the day's heat, arriving like an unexpected check in the mail late in the afternoon. The sun's rays somehow shifted to a less abusive angle; the temperature didn't change one degree, but it seemed the full fire of the sun had inched farther away. Sissy had a patina of sweat on her oval face. Her hibiscus-yellow summer dress had broad straps across her dark little-girl shoulders. Her yellow socks looked purposely dyed with orange splotches, and her black Mary Janes were scuffed and scratched but not a bit run over at the heels.
"Thanks again for warning me about the sacred ground." Celeste stood opposite her in the tight kitchen. What if the big Hudson with the blastedout windshield pulled up? She glanced out the small window. What would she do with Sissy? "You can sure holler."
"You welcome, Miss Celeste." She sipped her water carefully. Although Sissy's eyes were anxious, there was a soft belligerence in them, too. She was proud that she'd warned Celeste with her big voice at the church picnic and maybe even prouder that she was doing what she wanted to in spite of her father.
"Reverend Singleton said he was going to speak to your father about you coming to the freedom school." Celeste listened for the sound of wheels on gravel. Now that the house had been shot into, Mr. Tucker would never allow his daughter to participate in anything that had the word "freedom" attached to it. No doubt she'd been told that this house, with its boarder and her freedom songs, was completely off-limits to her.
Freshwater Road Page 18
