Freshwater Road

by Denise Nicholas

  "Really?" She took her eyes away from the crows. He'd seen her looking at them. Relieved to hear his voice, take her out of her own mind.

  "Crows the most intelligent birds God made." He said it as if all the world should know it, and the sound of his words was round, open.

  "How so?" He had her interest, easy to do now but she still tried to sound nonchalant, thinking how in the world did he know that. And, did he really know it or was he just talking?

  "Trainable." That was all he said. She wanted to hear more, like did he have some hobby learning about birds? Trainable? Were these crows some metaphor for women? She already knew she wasn't trainable. And what did intelligence really have to do with being trainable? Some brilliance was wild and not trainable.

  "Trainable, huh?" He sounded like he meant more than the words coming out of his mouth. Maybe it was the stillness around him that she was reading into. Crows. Black like Negroes. Black as a crow. Blackbird. Ugly as a crow. Lazy as a crow. Now, they're smart. Wouldn't you know.

  Trying to be distant with Ed wasn't working. She had an urge to run her finger down his forearm, it was so even, the muscle against the slight indentation of bone. She wanted to stare into his face and not talk at all. She'd been isolated for too long.

  "Y'all leave them birds alone. They not bothering nobody." Matt left the wipers going though the rain had slowed to a sprinkle. "Mrs. Owens doing okay?" With each wipe, another insect scrap smeared across the windshield. The rain and the wipers didn't clean them off, just smudged them around until there were bug remains and road dust wiped all across the windshield. Matt and Ed had been driving around Mississippi checking on the various projects for more than a week. The car looked it.

  "She joined my class." Celeste rolled a little with the car movement, her thigh shifting to touch Ed's leg.

  "She read?" Ed rubbed the ridge of his nose. He was more serious than any professor she'd ever seen at school, like a scientist who lives in a basement lab. His calm made her jumpy.

  "Reads that Bible every night. She's teaching me the Bible. I know she thinks I'm a candidate for hell 'cause I can't quote chapter and verse. She's saving me." She knew that kind of thing would impress Ed. Valuing the gifts of the local people was part of the mission. "I guess I need saving." She stared off into the distance chastising herself for saying that she needed saving when in truth she needed far less. What would he think of that?

  They drove along, knowing their license plate numbers were on lists owned by the White Citizens Councils and passed to the police and the Klan. Three pairs of eyes scouring the air straight ahead, listening, watching out for panel trucks with shot guns loaded in the racks and too many men. They were outnumbered, maybe not by souls, but certainly by power, by guns, and most of all, by the sheer intensity of the hatred against them.

  A sign read, "Hattiesburg, 5 miles." The rain stopped. The gray slipped off to the east leaving a cloudless, aquamarine sky and a freshly reignited sun. Within minutes, the clean post-rain air had siphoned moisture from the Gulf and the creeks, rivers, and ponds and spread itself heavily over everything again like quilts.

  They rolled down the windows. She wished she was sitting in the back seat with Ed, closing her eyes, the air blowing her dress farther and farther up her thighs. She saw herself in a French movie with Ed Jolivette as her lover.

  They were in Hattiesburg before the last raindrops dried off the hood of the car, creeping to the far side of town. Wood framed houses set back from the curbs, some with full wraparound porches, wicker furniture, porch swings. Squares of lawns with forest-green hedges. Splashes of color from dipladenias and geraniums. Sidewalks. Real pavement, not just dirt and gravel. Vast umbrella-like trees. Willows, live oaks, magnolias. They rode through the Negro section of town and they might well have been in another country. The poverty shocked Celeste to silence. She felt as if she was on parade driving through, not wanting to stare at the shanty houses built side by side, the barefooted children playing in the dirt. The picture of neglect was overwhelming and she realized that in Pineyville that same poverty was spread out over the countryside. In Hattiesburg, it was bunched together so that nothing of nature might soften the blow. The trees did nothing to assuage the picture, nor did the near-tropical sky.

  Matt turned into a gravel parking lot. They walked into a cinderblock building with no sign. She followed Matt, feeling Ed's eyes on her back the whole way.

  16

  Celeste adjusted to the dim light, saw the cinder block walls painted glossy strawberry red, then spotted the aging jukebox sitting like a live band waiting to play a downbeat. There was a garish confusion of chromium-braced chairs featuring assorted orange, pink, sky blue, and milky turquoise plastic cushions and seat backs. The chairs surrounded kitchen-sized Formicatopped tables arranged near a small dance floor marked off by black and white oversized linoleum squares.

  A freckly, beige-brown man stepped from behind the bar, smiling. "Hey, now. Ha' y'all during?" He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a dark cowboy tie and a holstered gun on a belt.

  "All right now." Ed shook both of the man's hands at the same time. Matt followed. Celeste nodded and beelined for the jukebox-she hadn't heard a note of music except church music and freedom songs for weeks. She scanned the selections. Rhythm and blues and deep blues. No Frank Sinatra here, no Dinah Washington, either. Wilamena would turn on her high heels and stride out the door. Shuck might handle it for a while, but he'd grow restless with all that deep blues. She'd left her book-bag and change purse in the backseat of the car. Ed Jolivette brought her two quarters and she pushed buttons until her finger hurt. "Gypsy Woman" flowed into her like an elixir, smooth and knowing, the words like her own personal anthem now. She walked to the bar with Curtis Mayfield's high sweet voice filling her ears and the backbeat releasing her hips, her head moving from side to side, her lips falling right into the words.

  "Otis, this is Celeste Tyree, working with us for the summer." Matt barely glanced at her, then drank from a huge tumbler of ice water.

  "Otis Gilliam. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Tyree." He shoved a glass of water in her direction over his homemade bar, nodding his head.

  Celeste sat on a barstool. "Mr. Gilliam."

  "Oh, now, you call me Otis." He grinned. "Please, call me Otis, anytime, anywhere."

  Celeste drank the water and eyed Otis's pistol. This must be the bucket of blood the old people talked about a long time ago. Then she remembered Sophie Lewis's father and how he sat on his front porch with a shotgun to protect his house. There was something coming into clarity here and it wasn't what it was supposed to be. Real men wear guns. Nonviolence had a boundary, a limit. Ah, yes, she thought, if a man had something he wanted to protect, without question he'd better be armed. Would nonviolence ever get them where they needed to go?

  "Man, you better give us something real to drink. I know you got some gin back there even if you did make it in your bathtub." Matt's hand slid his water glass back across the bar. "I need a real drink."

  "Cain't. 'Gainst the law." Otis gave Matt a serious look, winked at Celeste.

  At the Royal Gardens, the long bar mirror and the mood lights reflected an assortment of liquors and ingredients that looked like a festival of alcohol, labels from Ireland, Kentucky, Canada, France. Shuck joked that his good stuff would kill a typical street wino. There wasn't a single bottle on the home-style dining room buffet behind Otis. What kind of bar was this?

  Ed stood. "If the white man don't get you, the black man surely will. Let's go." He had a stony unreadable look on his face.

  Celeste looked at Ed and Matt like they'd lost their minds, hoped this routine would soon end. She didn't move from her barstool.

  "You let the young lady put money in the box and you gon leave before her records finish playing? You ain't got no manners. Neither one of you." Otis folded his arms across his chest.

  "Thank you, Otis." Chuck Jackson swept her into "Any Day Now," the big bass drum vibrati
ng right through her. She was just about as happy as she'd been in weeks.

  Matt stood. "You the one. Break out the gin and tonic. We know you paying off that sheriff. This young lady been in Pineyville for weeks. Ain't seen a drink, a television, even heard a radio. You know what that place is like."

  "Pineyville? Lord, have Mercy. That's a shame. Sending a fine young woman like this to that godforsaken town? Y'all crazy. And Sheriff Trotter down there giving everybody hives. Oh, she need a real drink all right. Probably need two or three. Do it for her. Not for you two knot heads." Otis looked directly in her eyes, all robust charm. "What would you like, Miss?" He gave a little half bow. "Pineyville? You shoulda told 'em no."

  "She's bad. She can handle it." Matt sucked air.

  "Gin and tonic with lots of ice." Her mouth watered even as she laughed. She heard the joking seriousness of what he said. Part of it must have been his usual ritual and part of it real sympathy for her being stuck out there in Pineyville with a sheriff no Negro person had a kind word for. She didn't want to think about not being here in this red cinderblock place with its homemade bar and real jukebox blaring. It was a heavenly interlude and not a bible in sight. And it was cool. Too soon she'd be back in Pineyville.

  Otis reached under the bar and pulled out a bottle of gin and made three tall gin and tonics. The icy glass breathed onto her face like a chill wind off a frozen lake.

  Matt and Ed sat again and took healthy swigs of their drinks.

  Otis gave her the sideways look. "Where you from, Miss Tyree?"

  She sipped. "Detroit. Please, call me Celeste." The tonic was too sweet, like every cold drink she'd had in Mississippi.

  "I knew you wadn't from 'round here," Otis said, satisfied.

  "My daddy owns a bar, too." She gulped now, wished she could take a thermos of the stuff back to Freshwater Road. Pralines from Sophie Lewis, gin and tonics from Otis. If she borrowed right, maybe she could make it through the summer.

  "Got me a ally." Otis slapped the handle of his gun. "This young lady knows how hard it is to keep a bunch of wild Negroes patted down." He swaggered, nodding to her, teaching. "Now, this Miss'sippi's dry. Good business for someone like me." He reared back, adjusted his gun belt. Otis Gilliam was a saloon-keeper like in the old wild west of the movies.

  "Yeah, it's been good to my daddy." The way she said daddy, she knew, made men want to have daughters when they notoriously wanted sons. She drank her gin and tonic. "Dry?"

  "Like during Prohibition." Ed said. His body kept time gently to the music.

  She glanced at the door. "If it's dry, what are we doing sitting here drinking?"

  "I told you, he pays off the Sheriff." Matt said. "Hey, man, when's the next payment due?

  Otis deadpanned his face toward her. "I'm gon' ignore him. You see, you can't just walk in a bar anywhere in Miss'sippi. Oh no. Not in Miss'sippi." He dropped the second syllable. "You out there in the boondocks. Ain't nowheres to get a drink out there." He made it sound like it was miles away, out west somewhere, in another state across plains and mountains. "Les' you in somebody's shack drinking out a jar, dipping out a crock. You in a different country here."

  "Come to Louisiana. Got enough liquor there for everybody." Ed swilled his gin and tonic and pushed his glass forward.

  Celeste searched through the too-sweet tonic for the gin. "You got any lemon or lime?"

  "Girl, where you think you at?" Otis chided her and got a shriveled lemon out of his kitchen model refrigerator. "'Course I got lemon." He cut it into paper-thin slices and put them on a small white plate.

  Celeste put one slice in her glass and started eating another, her head bopping slightly to the beat. The tart lemon tasted clean, cut the sweetness of her drink. She chewed the rind. Otis stared at her. "They not feeding you out there?"

  "Damn, girl." Matt's head moved side to side to the bumping rhythm. "Maybe we should've gone by Short Sixth Street to feed you."

  "Don't want to get scurvy." She laughed at herself going through the slices like they were candy-coated. She hadn't had an orange or a lemon in weeks. "What's Short Sixth Street?"

  Ed caught her in the mirror, his face seeing her and turning from her at the same time. "Just a street. There's a black restaurant over there."

  He said "black" like Ramona. A restaurant Negro people could sit in. She hadn't been in one since Jackson.

  "See them chairs?" Otis waved his hand towards the jangle of chairs. "I bet you come in here, took a look, and thought I had to be crazy." He waited for her answer.

  "I sure wondered about them." She played along. "Didn't know if I was coming to get a drink or to get my hair done on somebody's back porch in Black Bottom."

  "What you know about some Black Bottom?" Total disbelief on Otis's face, his head going backwards a few inches from its normal position.

  "I know where it used to be." She'd heard all about Paradise Valley, Black Bottom, and Hastings Street-the old Negro section of Detroit, on the East Side. Shuck had certainly warned against her and Billy even thinking about going over there. He knew teenagers came up with wild notions, testy things to do to just to prove they could.

  "You don't know nothing about no Black Bottom." Otis talked to her like a parent might.

  "I bet if you come to Detroit, I could take you over there." Celeste wiggled her head and smiled, proud she knew something that he thought she shouldn't know.

  "Yo' daddy would take me. Not you. Anyway, already been. When it was the jumpingest place on earth. Been some of everywhere." Otis wiped their water rings from the bar. He was a countrified Shuck. Shuck always talked about the Flame Show Bar and Dinah Washington. She felt comfortable, spinning on her stool to face Matt. "I played `Kansas City' just for you." The gin was creeping into her brain, and her tongue began a thick and lazy flop in her mouth.

  "Can't wait." Matt looked at her in the bar mirror, sizing her up all over again. Ed eyed the multicolored chairs, said dryly, "They're different all right." Celeste wondered if he'd even heard the intervening conversation.

  "You can't talk. You from New Orleans. Whole place is different. Rats big as cats running around, and dead bodies floating in the cemeteries." Otis leaned against the bar with his two hands. Celeste wondered if the whole thing might not topple over. Maybe New Orleans wasn't such a good-time place after all. Rats and dead bodies floating?

  Ed laughed. "Only when it rains."

  When Jerry Butler sang "For Your Precious Love," Celeste sat there, elbow to elbow with Ed Jolivette, hoping he'd ask her to dance. He didn't. The song sank into her in a a downpour of need, the husky voice as dark and strong as Ed's face. She dropped her head; she didn't want him to catch her eyes in the mirror, afraid she couldn't hide her desire to be close to him. She was afraid she might put her head on the shoulder of a man she'd met two hours before. She wanted the record to play again.

  "And it rains all the damn time. Now, you, you from Detroit. A real big-city girl." Otis folded his arms across his chest again as if to say New Orleans didn't qualify and spoke in a tight-lipped, high-toned manner, the handle of his gun ready as a carpenter's tool, waiting to be swung into action. "Bet you never seen a Negro out his mind on corn?"

  "Nope." Celeste went along at first confusing corn with corn on the cob, not getting it, then it focused in her mind: corn liquor.

  Otis smiled, showing the two gold incisors in his mouth. "Lot of Negroes round here can't 'ford to drink bottled whiskey, so they get near drunk on corn then come through here for they nightcap." He'd gone back to his normal speaking. "Corn make you crazy. Laughin' one minute, tearing up the place the next. That's why I got them chairs. Cheap."

  "No telling what's in that stuff." Ed's face went serious.

  Matt laughed. "Aw, Otis, you know you like those chairs. You probably got the same thing in your living room. You probably got a barrel of corn back there, too."

  Otis laughed big. "I do not." He slapped the bar with his beefy, freckled hand. "That's what I mean, Ed. See
, you can have a conversation with Ed. You can't do nothing with that Negro." He nodded over to Matt. "How a Negro gon go pay they hard-won money for something to drink, and you don't even know what's in it, and you know the man selling it just as soon see you dead as standing there?" Otis filled the space behind the bar. "See, Negroes, even after all that's gone on, they still trust the white man too much. Not me. I never let 'em see my back. But you can't tell Negroes nothing. They keep drinking that corn."

  "Probably peed in it." Matt examined his gin and tonic, holding his glass up to the light. "Wooweee, Otis, this gin's kinda yellow."

  "What you looking at, boy?" Otis sounded like a southern white man when he said "boy." "That gin come from a sealed bottle. Sealed by the gov'ment. All these bottles got seals." He pointed under the bar to his stock.

  "They wouldn't pee in it, would they?" Celeste wasn't sure if they were joking again.

  "Never know." Otis swiped a rag across the bar and fixed them another drink.

  "That seal's a tax. Nothing to do with what's in it." Ed drifted away, taking the fun with him. She felt his consciousness reaching out, to keep them from going over the line from self-mockery to self-hatred.

  "They don't make two batches of corn, one for us, and one for them." She imagined ragged white men stirring gray liquid in vats out in the Appalachian woods and a beat-down Negro coming to buy, looking at the ground when they filled his jug.

  "Don't want you drinking from the same fountain, using the same toilet, sitting on the same seat, hugging the same woman. What you think?" Otis put a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. "I wouldn't put nothing from no white man nowheres near my mouth. You hear me?" He slapped the bar again. Celeste's glass bounced.

  Matt reached down the bar for a New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Otis been working with us since we came into Mississippi. He knows."

  Celeste wondered if he could draw his gun fast like a cowboy in a movie. The gin picked up speed in her veins, flushed her body, made the music seep deeper inside her, sent it rippling down her spine. She shimmied on the bar stool, one foot tapping on the curved chrome footrest. She hadn't felt this good in a long time, sitting at Otis Gilliam's homemade bar with his old jukebox thumping and Matt and Ed on either side. Johnny Ace sang "Pledging My Love."