Freshwater Road

by Denise Nicholas

  Celeste grabbed the photo of Wilamena and Cyril Atwood from her dresser. He more than likely was passing for white-but if he was, why did Wilamena invite her and Billy to New Mexico to visit? They'd surely gum up the works. Maybe he wasn't. But one thing was for sure. Cyril Atwood had the kind of fair looks Wilamena adored. Even that was a stretch because Wilamena married Shuck, and Shuck was definitely brown. Celeste tore the photo out of the frame and ripped it into pieces. But Mrs. Owens would notice it not being there in its spot. She dug around in her book-bag for the tape she used to put up the children's drawings on the wall of the church. She taped the photograph back together. It looked a sight, the cactus plant not quite on the level of the people standing in front of it. She put it back on the dresser and camouflaged it with her toiletries. She'd have to look at it every time she looked at the photo of Shuck and Billy, every time she brushed her teeth and combed her hair, changed her clothes.

  She stood by the dresser, staring at Billy and Shuck like she'd never looked at them before. Billy favored Shuck and she Wilamena. There was no secret in that. She stared at her own face in the mirror. Wilamena's family ran the gamut from dark-skinned to white. It was crazy. Grandma Pauline told her that whole branches of the family tree had disappeared, gone forever. Nobody seemed particularly interested in seeking them out.

  Maybe Wilamena's letter was just a horrid strike, a blow in an ongoing fight. What did she want from her? What if her mother was lying? What if she'd just gotten angry at not being able to find her, at having to always go through Shuck? This was a way to disengage her from Shuck, push Shuck out of the picture. Create a question of paternity, then walk off into the sunset as if it meant nothing at all. Wilamena'd always bristled at the closeness Shuck had with his children, especially with Celeste. Was it possible? She couldn't contain the thoughts in her head. Wilamena had lost her mind out there in New Mexico.

  The reek of sweat and mold oozed through the room's air like nitrous oxide. Celeste felt a tickle in her chest, thought she might laugh. She left the letter on her bed and stood at her side window holding the lace curtain. Not a car passed on Freshwater Road or on the two-lane. The quiet roared like rolling thunderclaps in her head. There was no place to run, no person to help her ferret through the morass Wilamena had dumped on her. Did Shuck know anything of this? He hadn't warned her. Not one inkling that this could be true. She searched her mind, went through Shuck's presence in her life, found no holes, no pretense, no warnings. He was there. But in some small alcove of her mind, something sank into place. Some distant memory of a feeling of otherness, of a hidden something that lurked behind doors, in shadowy corners. The unspoken. What would possess Wilamena to do this? What kind of jealousy and loneliness in her own life would encourage her to try to destroy Celeste's closeness to Shuck? The weight of it began scuttling her life as she knew it and finally grounded itself inside her, attached to her like roots. This woman who took herself out of the lives of her children now tried to remove one child's only anchor. It was more than cruel.

  She'd never speak to Wilamena again. She'd never say a word about it. Do like the people in Mississippi do. It never happened. She'd throw the letter in the outhouse hole in the morning. For now, she put it back in its envelope and stuffed it into the pocket of her suitcase as if otherwise it might gather strength and run out into the world screaming.

  19

  Ed Jolivette drove Celeste to New Orleans the day after the memorial service for Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner in Meridian. She took the chance on going with him, figured they both needed to get out of Mississippi for a break, though Louisiana didn't seem far enough away. Volunteers and local people from all over the state had convened for the service. People had come from New York, Washington, and even California. The speakers brought the truth home, wrapped the congregants' anger and desolation in words that mourned and honored the dead young men. Celeste reunited with Ramona and Margo and they sat under a tree together to share their grief and, like all the volunteers, to compare notes on their projects. The volunteers understood their jobs still had to be completed, that they'd have to carry their sorrow back to their projects and try to find a way to weave it into the work.

  Ed's car-another dusty, cigarette-smelling Dodge, a contribution from some car company up north-was quiet but for the heavy breeze whooshing in the opened windows. Celeste eyed him in his mauve and white pullover shirt and denim pants, a burnished prince from some unknown tribe, as they drove south on Highway Eleven. Spanish moss hung from the cypress trees like tangled hair.

  Celeste slouched down, head back, arms in a lethargic fold across her chest, seeing through slits as they passed the turn-off to Sophie Lewis's in Carriere. She imagined being alone in the big empty house, the cool of the rooms, the shadows of the potted palms on the walls and floors. Sophie Lewis toured during most of the summer, Reverend Singleton said. Her voice lifted her up and away from the humdrum of normal life in southern Mississippi, kept her on the move, no settling in here or there to deal with the quagmires of the day to day. She probably never even read her mail, had someone to filter it, to throw the bad mail away. She surely couldn't step out onto a stage to sing a soaring aria if the mire of life weighed on her mind. Protected. Sophie Lewis lived a ratified life.

  Celeste didn't read Wilamena's letter again, but she thought about it plenty, debated how much of it was true and how much was just Wilamena's destructive jealousy. In truth, her mother couldn't possibly be sure of Celeste's paternity if she was still living with Shuck when she'd had the affair. If she'd had it at all. Celeste continued to stare into her cracked mirror and into the photographs of Shuck and Billy. Had she imagined the similarity into being? Was that her love speaking and not the facts? And so what if it was?

  "Your thoughts so deep, chere, they weighing down the car." Ed glanced over and smiled, with that little-boy space between his front teeth belying the seriousness in his eyes. "Better spread those stones before they take us both under."

  She heard him, acknowledged what he'd said with a half smile, then went back to staring out the window.

  She hadn't earned this trip, not really. Civil rights workers got rest and relaxation days after big events, arrests, beatings. She, by movement standards, didn't really deserve the R & R in New Orleans. She thought about how, as bad as she'd felt when the cops beat Matt, she'd surely not be able to contain herself if the same happened to Ed. It had been long weeks since her nonviolence training in Jackson.

  Celeste counted down the miles to go on the road signs. She thought again of Mary Evans in the train station singing her way out of that bathroom on her way to New Orleans. It's a good-time place. They crawled through faceless little Ozona and headed on toward Picayune, passing more tung tree orchards. She steeled her mind against seeing one more Negro person doing backbreaking menial work while a white man sat on a horse or stood around in the shade shouting orders. That was an image that had stood the test of time.

  "I got strong shoulders." Ed's quiet voice broke through her reverie.

  "They're all right." She imagined them pulling over under the willows and making love in the daylight, but she said nothing. The need for life tried to push all the death out of her mind. Something was dying in the world, in her world, and she had no way to stop it.

  "Anytime you want 'em, you can have 'em, sugar." He smiled the slightest bit.

  Words might open her cellar doors. No telling what would fly out. Mr. Heywood warned Mrs. Owens about keeping her in her home. The gunshots fired, the warning of worse things to come. The boys were dead. And, Wilamena. What in God's name would be next? "I can drive too, you know." She took the rubber band off her ponytail, unbuttoned her blouse down two buttons, rested her arm on the window opening, the air beating her face and hair, drying the sweat on her scalp.

  He ignored that. "At night, we take the back roads, flyin'." He shifted in the seat, moved his dark hands on the steering wheel.

  "I thought we weren't supposed to drive at nigh
t in Mississippi." Celeste didn't want to be on any back roads, day or night. Fear just from thinking about it charged through her stomach. She closed her eyes, head back, teeth tight, jaw set hearing the voices from the memorial service, thinking of the utter senselessness of the deaths of those three-as if that would stop this movement forward, as if those deaths would end the march of time. But still, they were so young.

  "It's better not to, but if you're out there late at night, you better be movin', and you better have a gun."

  Celeste glanced over at him. His demeanor had not changed. "You don't have a gun in this car, do you?"

  Ed didn't answer her, but his eyes said that if he didn't have one now, he would very soon. Matt had talked that way after that beating on the road down from Jackson, embarrassed that he'd been beaten and not defended himself, hopped up about going to meet with the Deacons for Defense and Justice. A salve that said I am a man, too. It was the memorial service talking through Ed, the three deaths. He needed to affirm that he would defend himself if necessary. Be a man. She put her head back, heart racing, tried to fake a nap.

  When she opened her eyes, they were coming into Slidell, Louisiana, heading for a bridge. Neon signs flashed "liquor" like it was being handed out for free. People on the streets walked easy, men in shorts and women in halters strolling in and out of open-air tackle and bait shops. Negro and white people just out lingering. The lake air mingled with a lift from the Gulf, had a bite of coolness in it, but it was funky, too. She sucked it in like it was a healing vapor. She wanted to stop and walk along the dirty beach. She scanned the placid surface of Lake Pontchartrain, the crescent of land on the other side disappearing in a low-slung layer of mist.

  Ed maneuvered the car over the old bridge, the tires bumping over the metal ridges and cross planks. Past Ed, out the other way toward Lake Borgne and the Gulf of Mexico, a procession of white boats pointed in toward the shore. She was thinking of a pleasure cruise, of lying on a white deck lounger in a skimpy swimsuit with big sunglasses and a tall cool drink close by. Escape.

  "Trawlers. Been out in the Gulf. Probably got shrimp. Sport-fishing boats, too." Ed's voice had the relaxed sound of a man at home.

  "I had other thoughts," she said. She couldn't really squeeze a vacation fantasy into her experience of the south. She remembered what Margo had said: Down to the Gulf, it's still Mississippi, Alabama. Same damned thing. But New Orleans had to be different. It was already different just seeing people lazing around on the streets, going in and out of stores.

  "You ever tasted pompano?" Ed said it like he knew she'd never heard of it.

  She played the student well. "What is it?"

  "It's a fish." He grinned.

  "What kind of fish?" She didn't feel uncomfortable letting him know what she didn't know.

  "From the Gulf. They call it Florida pompano. It's good-sweet, even." The fishing boats trailed towards shore like toys on a city park pond. "Makes me hungry just thinking 'bout it."

  Pompano. The word had a rhythm just like Ed's way of speaking, and she already knew he was good and he was sweet.

  The easy pace of the car, the sun glimmering on the water, and the talk of good eating reminded her of long ago summer Saturday afternoons at Momma Bessie's. Some distant uncle who'd left in the dark to go fishing on Lake St. Claire brought his catch to the old house. Fish scales flew around the kitchen and the blues played on the record player. Everyone talked long and hard about Detroit, about wherever they might've come from in the south, about jobs and houses and relatives. They drank Jack Daniel's and Johnnie Walker Black, and the old ones drank Four Roses. Billy and she and the cousins and the neighbor children tagged around the apple tree in the backyard, ran in and out of the house hearing snatches of conversations that sang like the music. The smell of frying fish devoured all the molecules in the air. Wilamena had already left town by then.

  "You gotta see this place when a hurricane blows through. Waves coming off the Gulf, water surges rolling in big as buildings over the land." Ed half-turned to her. He always seemed to be eyeing her for a response, listening, paying attention. He exaggerated to yank her back again from the brink of her tumbling thoughts. She thanked him with her look, then saw the water out the window-it barely lapped against itself, an old dog licking a worn-out shoe.

  Cars whizzed by on the bridge-no hateful-eyed stares here, just carloads of people going about their summer lives, children's faces in the windows, looking like they'd jump right out and over the bridge they were so ready for a swim.

  They left the bridge and drove through Bayou Sauvage with its houses on stilts in the water, through the mud-slow suburbs and into New Orleans, which simmered in an afternoon swelter so ferocious Pineyville seemed like a cool memory. Hot air rolled in the open windows, a thick funk that smelled like old shrimp shells. She hung out of the car window, her hair a mass of spikes and curls.

  The car slowed along with the lethargic traffic on Gentilly, the sun sharp against the windshield on her side. Ed turned onto St. Bernard and they passed blocks of doll-like houses with green shutters and ornate porticos. He told her they were in the area where the black Creoles lived, mixed-race people who traced their heritage back to the French and Spanish. In the days of slavery, the rich young white men had kept beautiful colored women in small houses in the French Quarter, and their children became the free people of color, the Creoles. Many were educated in France and practiced in all the trades and crafts at the time of slavery. Matt called Ed Creole, and his name was certainly French, but his skin color was deep-dark.

  He told her of the Negro wrought-iron workers, the musicians, the whole society that grew up separate from African slaves and Europeans. She was swallowed up in his talking, filling in the blanks in her mind, angry that none of it was taught in any school she'd ever been in. Those Creoles, he told her, could be as prejudiced as white people. Wilamena would fit right in. He pointed out Congo Square, where the slaves celebrated their free days with festivals of food, music, and dancing and told her until this day, you might find a plate of food under a certain tree put there to appease the gods. Voodoo was practiced there and on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. His talk took her miles away from the waiting confrontations in Pineyville, the memorial service, Wilamena's letter. A small wedge, a new landscape to build on, and she gobbled it up for fear of the knots and rocks inside her.

  Ed parked and led her into a storefront restaurant where people sat on benches at long tables with mounds of red-shelled claw-legged things on newspapers and bottles of beer lined up like bowling pins. The air conditioners slammed out cool air and the front door stood open. Loud pulsing music played over the speakers, men's voices sounding earth-rich and low, their accents so thick she couldn't make out the lyrics. It was neither rhythm and blues nor jazz but it was black, deep black, and it sneaked into her body as she walked behind Ed to a table. He sat her there and went off before returning with a newspaper pouch of crawfish and a waitress behind him carrying two frozen bottles of beer. He taught her how to crack the shells and suck the meat out of the head and the tiny claws. She leaned against the wall, put her feet up on the sitting bench, drank beer, and watched the traffic go by on Claiborne Avenue, Negro people and white people both coming into this place, both eating and drinking. Mississippi wasn't even an hour away.

  "God bless New Orleans because one more day in Mississippi, and I might've volunteered to throw myself into the Pearl River. Do the Klan and Sheriff Trotter a favor." Celeste swallowed a belch and heaved out a sigh that had comfort all through it. A rich feeling of contentment, like Reverend Singleton's at Mrs. Owens's breakfast table.

  "Chere, you can't think like that. Good things going on, too." He'd recovered from his oblique talk of guns and resumed being the nonviolent architect of change. He leaned over his pile of crawfish, liquid drizzling down his chin, hands breaking off the bigger pieces. She wanted to lick the juice right off of his face. The music changed to the rhythm and blues of Otis's jukebox in H
attiesburg.

  "Shuck would love this place." She drank her beer and watched Ed rubbing lemon wedges over his hands, then drying them on napkins. People laughed, talked, and swilled beer like it was water, nobody bothering anybody else. "My father." The words bounced in her head, reverberated against her skull. My father. Had Ed heard her? Or had she swallowed the words, another expression of her confusion? Tears came to her eyes, and she looked out the window until they returned.

  Ed went through the pile of paper napkins she'd assembled from the napkin holder. "Your pa must be a laissez-faire kinda man."

  "That's a fine way to put it." She knew he was just that and to the bone, and she worshipped every bit of that quality in him. She knew she could rely on it to get through Wilamena's mess.

  For a moment, it seemed there was no one in the restaurant but them. She turned away from his barefaced allure, the strong pull of him making her dizzy, the music spiraling her closer toward him, too. The memory of making love with him in the car on Freshwater Road kept her awake nights. She didn't know if the isolation of Pineyville was magnifying the feeling or if it had a weight of its own that would carry no matter where they were or what they were doing, and for the moment, she didn't care.

  Back in the car, full and sleepy in the afternoon heat, rivulets of sweat ran down her chest. The hot car seat branded the backs of her thighs through her slacks. When she put her arm on the window casing, it was hot enough to scorch her skin.

  They drove slowly through the French Quarter, where people walked on the streets with drinks in their hands and stood in entryways throwing up in broad daylight. She marveled at the ironwork, the narrow French-named streets, the balconied houses and palms growing like weeds. She'd left America and landed on some island, a throwback place. They drove to the foot of Canal Street to where the ferry docked and she reminded him of being running drunk and laughed. Together, they boarded, the dark currents of the river swirling south, the white riverboats with their bright bunting going north, great barges and cargo ships angling this way and that as they maneuvered into the docks. New Orleans gleamed in the bright sunlight.