Freshwater Road

by Denise Nicholas

  Shuck hustled her into the car, still twirling that toothpick in the corner of his mouth, saying not a word, not needing to. They headed for the main post office all the way downtown, she tapping the corner of the envelope on her pant leg, her tongue licking her new tooth. She barely noticed the city passing by, only that it seemed she'd been gone for a long time. Shuck was too cool for comfort. He waited in the car as she jumped out to mail the note. She could well have dropped it in the public trashcan nearby, but didn't. He'd know. Somehow, he'd know.

  "Time for you to start doing better by your own people, and I'm not talking about a bunch of Negroes in Mississippi," he said as she climbed back into the car. Shuck didn't say another thing to her until they got in front of the Royal Gardens.

  Celeste pouted out the window, his words a garble in her ears, thinking he was being charitable using words like "your own people."

  He relaxed in a slow drive-by of the club, the white Cadillac splashing its reflection in the front windows, Shuck saying he needed to buy a grill gate for the place if he intended to stay in this section of the city. Shuck U-turned in Lafayette Street, then paused by the curb to lower the convertible top. She wanted to go into the empty club, sit at the bar, listen to the jukebox, have a drink. Shuck had other things on his mind. He reminded her of his New York dream of a swankier place down on the riverfront or out in the near suburbs. If they had a place with a restaurant, they'd be open on Sundays for dinner.

  They skirted downtown, the Sunday evening city streets nearly deserted, and drove over East Jefferson to Belle Isle, where the picnic crowd was thinning out and the air off the river felt breezy and fresh. The sky took on a lavender hue as they parked and walked, found an empty picnic table facing Canada, and watched the sailboats on the river in the evening light. Even with the river breeze, the residue smells of outdoor grilling laid over the small island.

  She didn't know what Shuck wanted to talk about, but this was definitely his place for getting into serious things. They had come here when the school plans were made-the plans she nearly ruined after her freshman year when she got pregnant. Now, she held her breath waiting for him to speak, praying it wasn't about Wilamena.

  Shuck started in about her finishing college, about the promises that were made. He said he didn't give a damn if not another Negro voted in the entire United States of America, in the whole world, until the end of time. All he cared about now was her finishing what she'd started. He said she'd never deal with being Negro in America without a college education as well as she would with one. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. After that, she could do whatever she damn well pleased, go to the moon for all he cared. Celeste nodded in agreement, Geneva Owens's words in her head. What's that going to do to your daddy? You not finishing school right now?

  "Anything you want to talk about? Now's the time. When we get back in that car, I don't want to hear another thing except that you're going to keep your promises." Shuck stared off across the river.

  Celeste stumbled. "I'm going back to school. I haven't broken any promises. I was only gone for the summer." Still lying. Getting pregnant had taken the prize for broken promises. And, if Mrs. Owens had allowed it, if Wilamena hadn't tried to take so much from her, too, she'd still be down there. Getting good at lying, and why not? According to Wilamena, her whole life was a lie. Except her Mississippi summer. That was all hers.

  He turned to her. "You went to Mississippi before you told me a thing about it. I'm getting too old for surprises like that."

  "I'm sorry." Quick rehearsals raced through her mind. Wilamena told me. Is it true? Am I your daughter? Not a soul ever thought we looked alike, not really, but that happens. Is it true? What does it mean? Why did she tell me that? "You're not old."

  He ignored that, his eyes dancing with the anger he'd been holding in all summer long. "You made it hard for me, and you worried your mother. You worried everybody." Shuck quieted. "I didn't even tell Momma Bessie, afraid she'd have a heart attack. What if you'd died down there? Then what?" He released a deep breath like he'd finally gotten the worst of it off his chest.

  She didn't know what. She'd been afraid the whole time she was there, but it didn't stop her. And what if she had died down there? What if Sheriff Trotter fired that gun? Would Wilamena track down the man who might be her real father and invite him to her funeral?

  "I had to go." Mississippi gave her life a higher meaning, shoved it to a different plane, separated her from the past like a soldier who goes to war and always has that as his marker. It would be the same for everyone who'd been there.

  "It's not just old people who die, Celeste." Shuck set his dark eyes on her.

  "I know that. There were young people who died down there." She avoided his eyes then submitted, terrified that he'd see Wilamena's truth on her face like a neon sign.

  "There's a way to do everything. Running off like a thief is not it." Shuck looked back out to the river.

  The words dug into her, gouged a space out and sat down. He was talking to Wilamena and to her at the same time, and she knew it.

  "I was going anyway." She wilted inside. "I wrote you."

  `After you'd already gone. Not good enough."

  "I had to go." She repeated it, hoping he'd understand what it meant. "Maybe I was just afraid you'd talk me out of it." She figured he did understand, but had to say the hard things.

  A pressure built up in her head. She didn't want to do the things that Wilamena had done, couldn't handle being more like her than she ever thought. She was standing in the Pearl River County Administration Building, Sheriff Trotter ready to pull the trigger, the cold barrel of the gun pressed against her temple. Small river waves lapped on the shore. She wished she could walk into the cold water, plunge into the currents, and swirl away on a free ride to nowhere.

  In her mind she was saying the dreaded words. Daddy, Igot a letter from Wilamena. Her mouth couldn't come up with a lick of moisture. The words stuck and clung to the inside, hollowing around, hiding in her throat, jump ing into her ears. She held her breath, reaching now for a life vest, water sucking into her lungs against her will.

  Shuck sat so still everything else seemed to be moving. She thought the picnic table might just float off down the river, and they were firmly on dry land. Tears coming into her eyes, dropping down her face. Mrs. Owens's voice spoke in her head. You can't hide here, child. She wanted to hide somewhere. Crawl under the picnic table, peek out, needed something for herself. If she let go of Shuck, she'd drown.

  What does it mean? The voice in her head retreated to a child's place. She wasn't so grown-up. Didn't want to do what Wilamena had already done, drop a load on some unsuspecting person, trip them like an uprooted pavement in the dark.

  Shuck sighed, braced his arms on his thighs, his shiny brown shoes on the picnic table seat, the two of them sitting on the tabletop. In the evening light, the red hints in his summer-dark face glowed. He gave her his handkerchief. It smelled of Old Spice, reminding her of the days before these demons scratched at their doors, when everyone was smiling wide. But that was real, too, that Old Spice time. It was all she had of a past. She thought she heard his heart thundering.

  He put his arm around her shoulder. "You have to start thinking about how it's going to feel to the other person. It's not just you in the world by yourself."

  "I know." The Wilamena truth retreated. Something in the way he spoke, the way he chastised her for being so thoughtless. He was banking on her not being totally in Wilamena's image.

  Shuck's eyes stayed on the water, the currents in the river moving the surface water fast, the last reflection of light laying flat on the river, or was it now the moon? This sideways glance of faded light. "You know you're going to have to go out to New Mexico, spend some time."

  Not another tear fell from her eyes. It was the lie she'd told Mrs. Owens. Going to New Mexico for Christmas to see my mother. She got caught every time she lied. Now here she was stuck again.

  "She's ang
ry at me." She knotted her mind around the known reasons for Wilamena's anger. Her refusals to go to New Mexico, her comradeship with Shuck. They sat there, night bearing down, the twilight noises rising, car horns honking on the evening air behind them, single waves slapping the rocks nearby. Windsor's lights dancing.

  "I think she's angry at me. She called here trying to find you. She shouldn't have to do that. You gotta do better, Celeste." Shuck's head wagged from side to side as if to say she'd better do better to get the pressure off him. He needed that, too.

  She wanted to ask why Wilamena was angry at him after all these years, but she was afraid to open another box, let another tribe of demons fly free. It was the answers to the simple questions that stumped you. "You're right. You're right." Thinking she'd rather break a leg than go out to New Mexico. "I guess I can go for Christmas."

  "Is that a promise?" He was the lawyer and she was testifying with her hand on the bible.

  "Yeah, I promise." How could she spend two weeks with her mother when they had not a thing to talk about, not a common interest in anything? How could she be in that house with her after the letter? She'd do it for Shuck. And what if Wilamena brought up the letter? Her note? Would they have a knock-down, drag-out about it? More than likely. They'd be like erupting volcanoes, burning lava sliding over everything and years of black rock before green ever showed its face again. She'd never bring up that letter to Wilamena. Would refuse to discuss it. Just let it sit there like a rocky shore, no invitation to dock. It was going to be some Christmas.

  "She's lonely out there." Shuck had "I told you so" in his voice.

  "Why is she so lonely?" Celeste had never thought of her that way.

  "Hard to talk to those people. Engineers. Don't know what's going on." Shuck looked back at his gleaming white Cadillac parked at the curb yards behind them.

  She thought he might just get up, go to the car and drive away. Be a memory. That her whole life had been a dream. "She married him."

  "Yep." A certain get-up-and-go in his voice.

  "She oughta be happy. She likes it out there." The words came out soft, but in her mind, the sarcasm floated. She remembered how Wilamena over the years had described the aspen trees glowing golden in autumn, the snow on the pinon trees, how her stationery had a rendering of the New Mexico mountains and sky.

  "I don't think she's been happy a day in her life." Shuck's head moved back and forth like he was grinding the meaning of it all into something he could carry in his pockets.

  Celeste heard him loud and clear. Maybe that was why Billy left home and didn't seem to want to come back. The waters were too muddy for swimming, too much work to keep everyone on an even keel, somebody always falling overboard. Kept clear of it all. Billy was older, wiser. Some day she'd have to talk to Billy about all this.

  "I feel like an old person." She clasped her hands onto her knees like Mrs. Owens did when she was ready to get up from her rocking chair.

  "You got nothing but future." Shuck squeezed her into him then let her go, lit a cigarette, the sharp quick clank of his cigarette lighter a percussion behind the lapping water. "You wanna smoke?"

  She took a cigarette and he lit it, holding his hand against the breeze coming off the river. She drew in the smoke, let it curl down her throat into her lungs, coughed. "Haven't smoked since I left Ann Arbor."

  "Good. Don't start up again." He blew the smoke out in white puffy ringlets, and she could feel his body relaxing next to her.

  "I won't, Daddy." The word echoed just the slightest bit in her head, then settled down. She'd smoke this one, feel the deep stirring the tobacco gave to her stomach and lungs, the flutter in her heart, float out the smoke evenly, hold the cigarette like one of Shuck's polished women in his bestof-Negro-life wallpaper, then never smoke again. "Daddy" wasn't some miscellaneous, bone-dry word, some throwaway to be tossed to a tired dog. It meant everything. Wilamena lost her father when she was very young and maybe she just didn't want anybody to have what she'd never had, especially not her own daughter. Some people were like that. Celeste didn't know how she'd ever talk to her mother when the time came or what she'd say. She knew that she, Celeste Tyree, would never tell Shuck about that letter, and she knew Wilamena wouldn't either. Shuck would never allow her to. That was good. It would end right here. Somehow, she had to get herself to New Mexico and celebrate Christmas without tearing into Wilamena. Christmas with no music.

  During the hottest days of her Mississippi summer, she'd longed for autumn, the cool at the edge of the wind, the flamboyant leaves sketched against a boyish blue sky. It was as if you were on a viewing stand celebrating the end of a glorious parade that too quickly disappeared down the street.

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  Janet Fitch, Journeyman Fiction Workshop, William Reiss, James Ragan, Professional Writing Program, University of Southern California, Lee Chamberlin, The Squaw Valley Community of Writers, James D. Houston, Shelby Stone, Naomi Harris Rosenblatt, Bill Galvez, Gail Berendzen, W.O.M.E.N Inc., Beverly Todd and Friends Three, Nancy O'Connor (Mrs. Carroll), Dennis and Denia Hightower, Asaad Kelada, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, Emmett Nicholas, Otto and Kay Nicholas, Louise Burgen, Rudy Lombard, the Ebell of Los Angeles, Kynderly Haskins, Kenneth Reynolds, and Douglas Seibold.

  In writing this book, I referred mostly to my own first-hand knowledge of both Mississippi and 1964, but I also read many of the books published about that era. A few I kept close at hand were, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement by Aldon D. Morris; In Struggle by Clayborne Carson; Walking with the Wind by John Lewis; and Free at Last? by Fred Powledge. A major character in this book is a reader and collector of Jet magazine, and I am grateful for the important work done by Johnson Publishing. Also, in Chapter 2, a character makes reference to a fictional Detroit News article about Mississippi during the run up to Freedom Summer. While the article is fictional, the statistics mentioned are real, drawn from Eyes on the Prize by Juan Williams. I also found The Detroit Almanac, edited by Peter Gavrilovich and Bill McGraw, to be a goldmine of tidbits about my old hometown.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Denise Nicholas is an actor and writer who has appeared in numerous films and TV shows, including Room 222, for which she earned two Golden Globe nominations, and In the Heat of the Night, for which she also wrote several episodes. She lives in Southern California. Freshwater Road is her first novel.