"Everything else fine here. Project's going good. Saw it tonight." He put in the good word for her, though she wasn't convinced it was going all that well. Voter education needed speeding up, that's for sure.
With no exhausts from cars and trucks, no smells of cigarettes and cigars, no tumultuous breathing locals, the mawkish aroma of the magnolias lining the main street of "downtown" Pineyville clung to the night air like a cheap perfume. Just half a block from the pay phone was the stingy drugstore, the only place she'd spent any money since coming to Pineyville. Each time she'd gone in there, the straw-haired white woman, red-faced and plump, sat in the breeze of a whipping table fan behind a glass case displaying faded peach shelf paper and an assortment of odds and ends: toothpaste, Band-Aids, mercurochrome, hydrogen peroxide. The chewing gum and candy bars were arranged in designs on the top of the display case with a slight covering of orange dust. She kept the Kotex in the back. When Celeste had gone in, the woman smiled an empty smile that matched the coldness in her eyes. When Celeste left, the woman called her "y'all" and invited her to come back soon.
Ed turned the car around in the gas station. "Pineyville's so bad, black people better not even laugh when they walk down the street."
"Not much to laugh about anyway." She said. "It's not safe out here this time of night." Then, "You say black."
"Negro is their word. Black is mine." It sounded like a challenge, like he was trying it out on her to see where she was with it.
The thickness of the day's journey had thinned down to the two of them. She wanted to lean into him the way she had on the dance floor, rest her head on his chest.
"You know what running drunk is?" Ed smiled.
She checked behind them, to the front, and to the dark sides of the road. She hoped he wasn't going to lecture her about drinking too much in Hattiesburg. It seemed forever ago even though it had only been a couple of hours, long enough for the night to go from soft to deep black. She wanted him to find a place, some cluster of trees big enough to camouflage them while they pressed themselves together, rolled naked on a bed of pine needles, picking up scalded orange dust in their hair, in the creases of their elbows and knees. "Never heard of it."
"I got so drunk one night, my legs started running down Canal Street. I grabbed onto light poles and swung myself around to slow down. I was headed for the ferry to go home to Algiers. Thank God the ferry was at the dock, or I woulda run right into the Mississippi River." He glanced over at her.
She didn't want to talk about being drunk, but she had an image of what he said and it made her smile. He hadn't had as much to drink as she. But he hadn't been trapped in Pineyville for weeks either. "Algiers? Algiers is in Africa."
"Cross the river, where I grew up." His dark face glowed. "I go to a place in New Orleans got a man with two peg legs who stands on his hands on a table and tap dances on the ceiling." He glanced sideways at her to see her response.
"You're exaggerating." She laughed.
"No, chere, and that ain't the half of it. You ever hear of Plaquemines? Leander Perez country in Louisiana. They got a special prison for civil rights workers. Old French fort full of snakes and dried bones. Make Mississippi look like a vacation." He spoke as if he knew the place intimately.
She looked at him. "You been there?"
"Oh, yeah." He stared at the blacktop, the front lights of the car reaching ahead of them. "Two years ago. We tried to grow up a voter registration project down there. Never been so scared in my life. Couldn't hardly find a piece of dry ground to even sit on, and you better not go to sleep. We ended up hunched over on some stones left from the fort. Slept in shifts."
She didn't want to think about it but he'd put the picture in her mind, a snake-infested swamp prison with a bayou floor. Why did he tell her this? The guys in the movement swapped stories, one-upped each other when they sat down to drink and relax. She'd seen that in Jackson. Like guys in a war movie talking about the taking of this hill or that town. They spoke reverently of the injuries sustained by fellow fighters. The battles changed them forever. Ed was bringing her into his inner world talking about Plaquemines. It must be his nightmare place, the setting and time he'd never forget. One more nightmare, and she might not make it.
As they neared Freshwater Road, Ed turned off the headlights. There wasn't another car on the two-lane. The darkness of the night was astounding.
Her whole body sighed in disappointment when he turned into Freshwater Road. She had a thought to ask him to go back to Hattiesburg, go back to Otis's and finish dancing the night away. He parked near the remains of the house across the way, some distance from the front of Mrs. Owens's house. Stars like jacks, the moon a thickening arc that had been tucked away in a toy box of clouds. No rolling around on the earth making love in the pines. They were quiet. No lights down Freshwater Road, and it wasn't yet midnight.
"Other places are better." He paused and checked behind them. "Natchitoches, Evangeline, Vermillion, St. John the Baptist. Lot of places to see besides Plaquemines." The words rolled off his tongue like warm honey off the tip of a tablespoon. He enticed her with these place names, which called to mind bunches of blood-red flowers growing along the side of a road. "I take you to the bayous. Cypress trees grow out of the water, nets made of Spanish moss."
The words poured out of his mouth in a rush. She knew then that these words were a cover for his fear. He wanted to say words that sounded far away from this place, sweet story-sounding words. He'd been to that French fort in the swamps, and he'd made it out. A good ending. But with so much work still to be done, he might not make it all the way through. The aura that surrounded the volunteers was fear, shining like a halo. Good fear, walking-in-God's path fear.
"You come to New Orleans, we'll run on the levee." He'd captured her but showed no hubris, no swagger. "Better than running drunk."
"You're right about that." She was floating downstream in his river on a barge loaded with indigo-dyed cotton and peg-legged men who tap danced on the sky. "What'd they say in Jackson? You leaving tomorrow?" She knew she had to stay and do what she'd come there to do, but she didn't want him to leave her all alone in Pineyville. Promised God she'd never get drunk again if He'd make Ed Jolivette stay or take her with him.
"We got to check on McComb." He slumped down in the car, his liquid hands draped over the steering wheel. "Somebody threw a bomb in the voter education center. We got to stop by there and rev people up again. Scared some away."
She knew about McComb. Herbert Lee, Louis Allen. Dead. The dark unnamed. People beaten for working in voter registration. Children born of numb-mouthed parents, jailed for months, singing insane songs to stay sane. Bombs thrown into churches. Black smoke rising, leaping licking flames on a crusade of destruction. Fire on the cross. He knew where he was going, and knew he might not come back. No time for holding on.
"You gon come to New Orleans?" He said it again as if he needed to make appointments for after Mississippi to get through it.
She gave a short laugh. "If we live that long." They sat for a while in the car, slouched down in their seats, she over by the passenger door, window rolled down, slapping a mosquito on her calf. Still behind the wheel, his long legs sprawled over toward her side, his right knee crooked and touching her thigh like a heated rock. The car sat tilting into ashallow gullet' separating the weed-choked vacant lot from the road. Celeste watched Mrs. Owens's house for signs of life. No lights came on.
Massive quiet coming now. Cicadas and crickets. Little eavesdrops of sound. Ed smiled, the space between his front teeth making him look like a boy who could spit for a city block with his teeth closed. "Mosquitoes like you. Must be sweet."
"Wish they'd find somebody else to chew on." She slid her hand into his. He squeezed it, his hand firm, the pressure sure.
He took his wire-rimmed glasses from his front pocket and set them on top of the dashboard. That was the move that propelled her toward him over the Naugahyde seat. She pressed herself against hi
m until the only thing between them was a dream of moving water. She felt his body against hers, needing a rest from thoughts of death. He knew it-that's why he'd parked away from the house. The mass of loneliness inside her pushed outward, making her feel like a needy child. Take me with you, when are you coming back? Memories of standing by windows in solitary shafts of light waiting for the Cadillac, waiting for Shuck. Loneliness in the absent-mother world.
When are you coming back? The kids at school ask me where's my mother. I'm gonna start telling them she's dead.
Don'tyou do that. You hear me?
Ed unbuttoned her dress and kissed her humid skin, pushed the straps of her bra off her shoulders, lifted her breasts out of her bra, and stroked them until they swelled and quivered. He stirred the car moving to the middle of the seat, then unsnapped the straps of his overalls and pulled them down to his ankles. "Sit on me, sugar." His voice came from a hol low deep inside, his lips barely forming the words. She straddled him. He guided her down slowly, his smooth hands around her waist until she felt his full warmth reaching up inside her. He felt like dense morning mist on a wide river softening everything in its path. The night and Freshwater Road surrounded them. She didn't care that they were in a funky car on a dusty road in a backwater town in southern Mississippi. She was glad to be there even as the car seat burned her knees, the seam of fake leather creasing to the bone.
She leaned over his shoulder and grabbed the seatback, then dug her knees into the seat to brace herself. Sweat ran down her face and chest as she began to move. She looked quickly through the back window and saw no lights, no movement. They were safe for now. A moment. She checked the house again to be sure no lights had come on, checked as far down the road as the Tucker house. Nothing. He moaned into her throat, then brought her face in front of his. She tasted his sweet salty sweat and probed inside his mouth with her tongue, lingering on his lips and kissing him hard then soft then hard again. Her dress fell away. He unhooked her bra, bringing the straps down her arms and completely off. She smoothed her hands over every part of his skin, as if to trace a memory for the hungry nights ahead.
He laid her down on the car seat, opened her legs and kissed her thighs, then ran his tongue up the middle of her body, his lips stopping on her stomach, on her ribs, her neck and finally her mouth. He put himself inside her and moved gently. She hugged him hard, stifling a cry tinged with laughter that she buried in his chest.
"What's so funny?" He lifted his weight, his eyes the only lights on earth.
"I'm not in Mississippi." Her head pressed into the car door, crooking her neck. She tried to maneuver down. He held her still for a moment. She didn't know how he'd arranged his long legs and didn't care. He sat up and pulled her into him, taking quick looks in both directions up and down Freshwater Road.
"No sugar, you with me and I'm sure not in Mississippi." He held her close for a long quiet moment, his heart beating in her ear like the paddles of a steamer.
A quarter moon traced in the sky. There was a sea of anxious night, too ominous for sitting in cars, talking in low tones. A slight salty breeze crept up from the Gulf of Mexico, rustled around, and quickly disappeared. She wished she could tackle it to the ground, make it stay.
"I'm sick of this heat. I need a real bath." She thought maybe she'd run away, run down to Sophie Lewis's house and take a bath, sit on the sofa and listen to music, pretend this whole time was something she'd conjured up while she stared out those big shuttered windows.
"Be careful you don't hurt Mrs. Owens's feelings, now." Ed chastised her.
"I won't. I was thinking of Sophie Lewis's house down near Carriere. You met her?"
"Sure haven't. But I heard of her."
"You oughta see that house. Never seen anything like it."
"These little old houses lean to the side because of the weight that's on them." He brought her back to the here and now. "Lot of people see this place, know what's going on, but they don't take the step to come here. You did."
"You did, too." She talked low, soft, sorting through the streaks of reasons why she'd come to Mississippi. "It was more than a step, Mr. Jolivette. It was a long bad train ride."
"Yeah, but I was born in it." His neck was arched, his head resting on the seat back.
She sat up, pulled on her panties, pulled up her dress to cover her breasts, and leaned her head back by his side, her legs heading toward the passenger door so he could rest his across the front of the car. He needed room. Ed was quiet, both of them staring at the ceiling of the car as if it held a starry night.
"Lot of speakers on campus talking about the movement. I heard them. I needed to get out of there." She closed her eyes, counting the days since her last period. She was safe. She had absorbed the lesson, taken it to heart. She'd not been with anyone since J.D. and that was a year ago now, but still she counted the days every month out of habit. The days ticked off inside her like a clock that was a part of her being and had to be paid attention to no matter what else was going on. She never wanted to see Middleman again. There would be no more trips to River Rouge.
"How long before you think you're ready to go to the courthouse?" Ed brought her life raft to shore. Back to the real deal.
"I guess a couple more weeks. You know about the Deacons?" Fear trickling in.
"Sure 'nough." He said nothing else.
She wondered if that was a tactical silence.
They stayed still for a long while, both of them teetering on the edge of sleep. She listened so hard she thought her ears would crack and inside that listening, she felt peace.
The night heat spread the smell of their lovemaking all through the car. She imagined it smoothing out over Freshwater Road like the smell of night jasmine, like the faint scent surrounding the stands of long-needled pines. She'd better check the seat before they went inside. Matt would be in the car tomorrow, ready to leave for McComb. Looking for signs, maybe, that they'd done it.
18
Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were found-or rather, their bodies were excavated from an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Celeste assumed the boys had been dead for a while. Mrs. Owens knew from the beginning that they were dead. She'd said as much on that first evening. She knew Mississippi like she knew the back of her hand. There was no surprise in the discovery. But if any people understood the need to nourish hope in the face of unfathomable distress, the Negro people of Mississippi surely did. Tears, anger, frustration, but still the work of the summer had to go on.
The dug-up bodies didn't create the slightest disturbance in the quiet, peaceful veneer of Pineyville. No ribbons or flowers, no stores closed; it remained like a model train village with plastic people in the identical places everyday. When Reverend Singleton and Celeste passed through town on the way to Freshwater Road, Celeste spotted Mrs. Owens stepping into Percival Dale's grocery store. She noticed there was no grimacing Hudson at the gas station, no stone-faced Mr. Tucker pumping gas and cleaning windshields. Perhaps, she thought, he'd gone home for lunch as a ruse to keep track of his wandering daughter. She relieved Reverend Singleton of the trip to the house and got out to help Mrs. Owens carry the groceries.
Celeste crossed the street to avoid an approaching white woman, then crossed back and headed for the store just as the registrar of voters, Mr. Heywood, came out onto the sidewalk eating an ice-cream sandwich that was quickly melting. He stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. Reverend Singleton had pointed the man out to her more than once over the summer. Celeste refused to cross the street again to avoid him, and surely wasn't going to step off the pavement. Here was the embodiment of the reason there were no Negro voters on the rolls in Pearl River County. Lanky and smooth-faced, with brownish straight hair laced with gray strands, he wore a khaki-colored summer-weight suit with a tie, and carried a newspaper under his free arm. His angry eyes had sunk into their hollows so that Celeste couldn't see their color.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Heywood." She followed her orientation ins
tructions, the protocol when encountering the enemy, plastering a crooked smile on her face while her insides churned. Be cordial, extend yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of doing. Even innocuous encounters lay the groundwork for the future south. Be mindful of the future. Let the hurts of today and yesterday be put aside.
Mr. Heywood scoffed at her, an unintelligible word tangled up with residues of ice cream that spewed out of his mouth and onto her face. She didn't understand the word, just felt bits of cool milky spit spray her. Another jiggaboo moment. But what was the word this time? A lexicon of epithets to select from. Of course, he could say and do whatever he pleased. He turned in a huff and fast-walked toward the Pearl River County Administration Building.
Mrs. Owens had told her that Mr. Heywood had been instrumental in getting the county to plant magnolia trees in the business district and that he wrote poems for the local paper extolling the beauty of the flowers, comparing them to his wife's white skin. He and his magnolia blossoms. If he got to the sheriff's station before she moved along, he'd have her arrested for loitering. It was an offense for a Negro person to idle on this street. If you weren't working, you best not be on any street standing around looking shiftless. Grandma Pauline used to say, "Everybody needs a shift." Celeste had a shift all right, as the outside agitator, the northern rabble-rouser. She stared at Mr. Heywood's back as he loped towards the sheriff's station, still stunned at the vehemence with which he'd greeted her. She touched the splotches of ice cream that clung to her skin, rubbed the sticky sweetness from her face.
Mrs. Owens came out of the grocery store empty-handed with Mr. Dale on her heels. "Now, Miz Owens, you sure you don't want to just go on and do your shopping?"
Celeste saw again Labyrinth's blue eyes and blonde hair in Percival Dale. Labyrinth's resemblance to him was quite remarkable, but for the color of her skin. His hair didn't have the depth of color that hers had. He was of medium height with a sturdy build and a pug nose. What had Dolly Johnson been thinking in this small town to get involved with a married white man? And did she ever bring Labyrinth into town? Mr. Dale nodded to her but focused on Geneva Owens and her empty shopping bag. Celeste had no clue as to how Mr. Dale viewed her and the work she was doing in Pineyville. She'd been in the store with Mrs. Owens before. He'd never been rude.
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