On their first attempt, the whites had dropped their voices to a whisper when the group entered the lobby through the front door. Today, in their self-conscious attempt to ignore them, their voices rose and bounced around the lobby, talking about this and that over the event taking place in front of them. Celeste was mindful of Sheriff Trotter's promise to blow her brains all over the lobby. She wondered why Mr. Heywood hadn't already come tearing down the stairs. Maybe they'd be ambushed at the top of the stairs this time. Inching toward freedom, she thought.
Just as the small group rounded the balustrade to go up the stairs to Mr. Heywood's office, the sure-footed sound of hard police shoes thunking fast through the hall announced Sheriff Trotter and a deputy as young and robust as Trotter himself. Celeste put her hand on Geneva Owens's arm, as much to keep from running as to give support to the older woman.
Trotter and his deputy held handcuffs out and ready. "Y'all back, huh?" Trotter's face pressed toward lightheartedness, his tone a chiding imitation of a benevolent shopkeeper.
Every muscle in Celeste's body pulled tight in preparation for the blows she had every reason to believe would be coming soon. She had a fleeting wish that Mr. Landau hadn't been talked into this nonviolence thing. A few passing whites stopped to watch. When Sheriff Trotter smiled, they smiled with him. He was their sheriff.
Reverend Singleton stiffened. "Yes, sir, we are. We've come to see Mr. Heywood about registering to vote." His clear preacher voice lifted above all other voices in the high-ceilinged lobby.
Celeste held her breath. Her jaws clamped, her forehead sank into furrows and frowns in memory of Sheriff Trotter's gun against her temple.
Trotter fumbled for his next words. "Well, he's ...he's not here today." His phony jocularity lost heart. "You turn and let me get these cuffs on you. I get y'all situated in a cell, then go see if I can find him. How's that?" His lips turned corners, bent like pipe cleaners. He swiveled Reverend Singleton and brought his wrists together to fasten on the cuffs. Reverend Singleton winced. The deputy did the same with Mr. Landau, who had a face of stone so set and unmoving he might have been a sculpture, a face carved in some forgotten hinterland.
Trotter recognized Mr. Landau. "You one of them working over at Crown Zellerbach?"
"I am." Mr. Landau didn't say "sir."
A silence hung in the air where that "sir" had lived for years. They might hit him, and hard. That "sir" defined the entire relationship between Negro men and white men. Nobody smiling now. Celeste knew that white business owners in town had tried to get Mr. Landau fired from his job when his truck had been identified outside the church during voter education class. So far they hadn't succeeded.
Celeste eased closer to the deputy, hoping he'd be the one to handcuff her. Stay away from Trotter. She scanned the lobby for any Negro people who might be witnesses in case things got out of hand, in case Trotter drew his gun. If any had been there, they'd already scurried out that back door when they saw Reverend Singleton, Celeste, and the others coming in the front. Didn't want to be associated with the protestors, the agitators, hadn't found defiance in themselves yet.
Trotter reached for her arm. His face flushed and his blue eyes hardened into granite the way Shuck's eyes had when he'd met J.D. for the first time in front of the student union on campus. She brought her other arm to the back, making it easy for him.
Unlike the day before, Trotter couldn't have been more polite. He must have been caught off-guard then. It was possible that since the world had its eyes on Mississippi, the state government had decided to at least feign civility towards its Negro citizens. Some national press still swarmed all over the state. No way to know how long it would last. But civility or not, they were headed to jail, and the only thing they'd done so far was come in the front door of the building and ask permission to register to vote.
Dolly Johnson volunteered her wrists in front of her body. The deputy slid her strappy straw bag up onto her shoulder, spun her quickly, and brought her arms around her back with a good yank. A woman from the small crowd of onlookers said, "Oh, my," her voice sounding almost like a fainting moan of sexual pleasure. Perhaps she recognized Dolly Johnson as the Negro woman who had the blonde-haired child and needed to express her joy at seeing Dolly publicly shackled. Celeste gave a look to Dolly, a confirmation that it would be okay.
Dolly's face got pinched and dark. She cut her eyes at the deputy, who cuffed her, then gently pushed her toward the rest of the shackled group, his thin face and diluted blue eyes intent on his work.
Mr. Landau's face masked whatever he felt. Reverend Singleton had spent a good hour convincing him that nonviolence hadn't yet run its course, that there was a power in this he'd never know by using a gun. Now, here he was in handcuffs for trying to do what the Constitution guaranteed. He wasn't a man who could've withstood chains.
The officers handcuffed Sister Mobley and Geneva Owens last, holding their bibles and purses for them. It was all done in a few short minutes with not a voice raised or a scuffle heard. No need to excite people. The white citizens of Pineyville went back to their business, inured overnight to this new activity in the lobby of the public building. The Negroes had been handled satisfactorily. No guns drawn, no ministers flying across the lobby and crashing to the floor. No aching cry from the lungs of a terrified child. Celeste felt grateful to be alive and maneuvered herself as far away from Trotter as possible. Again, she expected the white people in the lobby to applaud the imminent incarceration of the troublemakers. They didn't.
The deputy hustled Celeste and the other women to the women's jail in an L-shaped lip of the building on the back parking lot, near the Negro entrance. Reverend Singleton and Mr. Landau disappeared, led to the Negro men's section-the jail that Leroy Boyd James had been dragged from before he was shot and thrown into the sludgy Pearl River.
One by one, the deputy removed their handcuffs and pushed them into the cell. When the door clanged shut, the women were standing in a small concrete square with two metal-framed bunk beds, a scummy seatless flush toilet without toilet paper, and a face bowl whose metal finish barely showed through brown filth crusted over it. Not a piece of soap in sight. They hadn't been processed in, no fingerprints taken, no photos snapped. No legal proof that they'd been arrested. The old trick. The other cell across the hallway stood empty. Celeste climbed up to one of the top bunks and figured that Dolly, who was younger than either Sister Mobley or Mrs. Owens, would take the other top bunk. Instead, she sat herself down on the bottom bed, then stretched out on the filthy mattress.
"You might give that bunk to Mrs. Owens or Sister Mobley so they don't have to climb up." Celeste pulled way back on her tone, not wanting to antagonize Dolly.
Dolly looked at Celeste with Labyrinth's expression, all single-minded petulance. "I have a fear of heights," she replied. She sat up, bending over to avoid grazing her head on the upper bunk. Labyrinth's chip-on-theshoulder attitude came straight from her mother.
Celeste wondered where Dolly got a fear of heights in a low-building town full of, at most, two-story houses. Certainly the houses where Negro people lived were all single story, except the Sophie Lewis mansion, and that was damn near to New Orleans. She doubted Dolly had ever been there.
Sister Mobley threw her bible and small cotton purse up on the top bunk and made motions to climb up there. "No need for a fuss."
Celeste jumped down to the concrete floor, thankful she'd worn her tennis shoes again. "Sister Mobley, don't climb up there by yourself."
Mrs. Owens lowered her chin, stared at Sister Mobley's ill-fed body. "Sister Mobley, get on that bottom bunk. Now, Dolly, you get your hind parts up on that top one. I'm old, I'm tired, but I'm not too tired to deal with your smart mouth."
Sister Mobley scuffled trying to get herself up on that top bunk fast before the war started. Celeste stood there for support, feeling Sister Mobley's thin fingers digging into her shoulder.
Mrs. Owens came over and took Sister Mobley's bony
arm and sat her down on the bottom bed. Sister Mobley popped up like a jill in the box, grabbed her bible and purse from the top. "I don't mean to be no trouble."
Celeste backed away.
"You're not the trouble." Mrs. Owens put her hands on her hips and stared at Dolly Johnson.
Dolly came off the bunk and stood in the middle of the cell. "Who says you get to tell everyone what to do?
The older woman's hand fluttered to her heart and her breath came in tight little fits. "You just like everyone else in here, Dolly. You barely got a pot to pee in and a window to throw it out of." Mrs. Owens paused. "And I'ma tell you something else, you coming down here with us, that Percival Dale ain't gon side with it. No matter what you think, no matter how many times you roll over in that bed with him, when his back's against the wall, he's a white man and to him, you a poor-butt nigger woman with one of his kids to feed. You go on and climb up there to that top bunk. Fear of heights. Whoever heard of such a thing? Ain't no height. It's a bed. And not much of one at that."
Celeste'd never heard Mrs. Owens say so many words in a row, and certainly never heard her express herself with such wrath, the kind she might've wanted to display in the lobby but knew she dared not.
Dolly Johnson's face trembled then folded in on itself and tears listed down her cheeks. "You didn't have to go and say all that, Geneva Owens. That wasn't called for." She took her straw purse from the bottom bunk and threw it on the top. "Mr. Dale don't do nothing for us but help me feed my kids. Ain't nothing else." She sobbed. "Oh I don't want to be in this old place."
"Calm yourself, child. We would all of us rather be at home." Sister Mobley patted her bible.
"If he does that, he's doing the very least of what he supposed to do. But, I bet he ain't gon come here and see about you in this jail. He's got a wife right around the corner. No point in you coming in here trying to act grand." Mrs. Owens paused, calmed herself, and sat down on her bunk. She took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped her whole face then her hands as if she had water. "Now, Dolly, get up on that bed and take a rest cause we don't know what's coming. Dealing with those children and no husband to help, Sister Mobley more needs a rest than anybody in here." Mrs. Owens shook her head from side to side.
Sister Mobley coughed, and sighed, then opened her bible, while Dolly Johnson climbed up to the top bunk rolling her eyes at the entire world, bouncing around and causing the springs to grind and squeak. Finally, she settled in, staring at the ceiling. All was quiet except for Sister Mobley turning those crispy-thin bible pages. A fury of pages turning.
Celeste climbed back up to her bunk, but she didn't want to put her head on a pillow that smelled like rancid sweat and used Kotex. She leaned against the cinderblock wall and threw the pillow off the foot of the bed. It flopped in a dull thud on the floor. She heard the mesh springs under the moldy mattress squeak as Mrs. Owens lay down. She longed for a glass of that too-sweet iced tea, anything cold to drink. She imagined a tall glass of ginger ale loaded with ice, the smell of ginger caught in the froth of carbonation going right up her nose.
More than likely, she thought, the police would allow Reverend Singleton to make one phone call for the whole group. It was Tuesday morning. The One Man, One Vote Jackson office would alert the FBI that six people had been arrested in Pineyville. After the bodies of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner had been found, the number of FBI men in the state shrank. Not enough agents to investigate every complaint. The Jackson office would send the bail money down and a lawyer if needed. Nothing to do but wait.
"I sure hope they don't beat up on poor Reverend Singleton and Mr. Landau. You think they will, Sister Celeste?" Sister Mobley spoke holding her opened Bible across her chest.
"They may not beat them. Might think arresting us is enough to scare us off." She hoped she was right.
This arrest tactic was yet another way of obstructing them, slowing them down. These tactics had worked for so many years, they probably believed they'd work now. Mr. Heywood and his sheriff knew well that Negro people would eventually be registered to vote in Mississippi. It was a matter of time-but for this year, time meant everything because of the coming national elections. Registration would close. The southern whites would win it by slowing the movement's progress to a crawl. No way they'd win in the long run. Battle lines had been drawn in the red dirt as if the Civil War and Reconstruction had to be relived again and again, an endless replaying ofvanquishers and vanquished. Negro people got caught in the middle, the pawns of both, the scorned reward, disparaged and disqualified.
Sister Mobley ran her thin finger down a bible page, mumbling scriptures.
"It's a good thing those newspaper and television people still shining a light all over the state." Celeste said it to calm the others more than because she had any real belief the press would help them now that the three civil rights workers had been buried. She hadn't seen a television in weeks, had no idea what was being reported to the outside world.
Dolly eyed Celeste. "Haven't seen any of 'em come down here." She rambled around in her purse, pulled out a wristwatch. "I gotta pick up my kids from my sister's."
"It probably won't be much longer." Celeste didn't have a clue as to what might be next or how long it would take.
Sister Mobley kept reading in a whispery voice, so small on that bunk bed Celeste wondered how she'd even brought three children into the world without breaking apart.
"The next group better be ready for tomorrow morning whether we're still in here or not. You can't let up on these white folks. They see it as weakness." Geneva Owens's wise observance quietly relaid the gauntlet. They had to be their own leaders now.
A gray army blanket lay folded across the foot of the bed, as foul as the pillow. The place reeked of urine. This was what she'd missed in Jackson. Now, she'd run out of all of Shuck's city luck. God only knew what else was coming, and it didn't have to happen in this jail. This might be the easy part, just sitting in a foul-smelling place for a few hours. Who knew what the night would bring to Freshwater Road?
"Sheriff Trotter never said what we were being arrested for." Celeste rambled through the instructions that had come from the Jackson office. Lists of possible charges, bail amounts, conduct for voter registrants, even words to say in the registrar's office, if they ever got there.
Dolly sat up against her own cinderblock wall, pouting and accusing at the same time. "That freedom school's against the law."
Celeste stared at Dolly. What was this now? Her new appearance and the words coming from her mouth couldn't have been more incongruous. Dolly had been the first to send her children to freedom school. Had she identified herself with the civil rights movement as a matter of style, like a way to dress? Or maybe her fear had taken over, undermining her new persona.
"Darn near everything we do is against one law or another." Celeste kept her eyes on Dolly. Was it possible that feisty Dolly ran back to her sometimes man, Mr. Dale, and talked about everything and everyone who came to the church meetings? Celeste had spent the summer worrying about Mr. Tucker with the devil in his eyes. She searched Dolly's face for an answer, for the truth.
"Who said so?" Mrs. Owens's tone dared Dolly to say that Mr. Dale had warned her about the school.
"It's been in the newspapers."
"You brought your own children first, Dolly." Celeste focused hard on her.
"I didn't know it was illegal." Dolly didn't flinch.
"Because some white folks say it is, doesn't make it so." Mrs. Owens took the space, the very air from Dolly's words. "Besides, we not in here because of freedom school. We in here because of voting."
Celeste nodded "yes" to Dolly, thinking of Shuck's perennial line. You catch more flies with honey. She wouldn't let go of Dolly, not with those two children's minds and lives being shaped in the balance. "To them, I'm teaching communism and the overthrow of the government. How they get that from Negro history and art classes is beyond me."
"See, I told you." Dolly spok
e gently to Mrs. Owens knowing now that the older woman would not put up with her if she went too far. Celeste's stomach turned. Had she misread Dolly so completely? Or was this jail cell testing Dolly's resolve? How would she find out the truth? And when?
In her materials, Celeste had read of a Negro girl in Tennessee killed by the Klan for teaching freed slaves to read and write. She knew that much about the past. The new laws were descended from the old ones that forbade teaching slaves. Only now it was more about keeping the quality of education so pared down to nearly nothing, so unrelentingly dismal, that it barely prepared a child to be a functioning member of society. But even that failed, because people so desperate for learning glommed on to whatever was available, and some used it to sail to great heights anyway. The freedom schools birthed questions in a place where questioning ranked with impertinence, the reward physical or at least verbal abuse. They did precisely what the whites feared-dug out and discarded the last vestiges of slavery, even those with deep roots in Negro people's minds, holding them down even when the threat had all but disappeared. The movement challenged it all. The old way of life was unraveling again, just as it had begun to do during Reconstruction. That's why she'd come here. That's why she sat in this foul-smelling cell instead of on Shuck's silk sofa in the house on Outer Drive, or even instead of walking down the streets of Paris with J.D. She felt energized.
"Did your house get shot into?" Dolly sounded like she was in a beauty shop, talking about some gossipy thing that happened in the neighborhood. She was just making conversation, Celeste figured, an attempt to make up for her earlier lapse of commitment. A world of things had happened since the night shots were fired into the house.
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