by Tricia Dower
Mother’s hand tests Linda’s forehead. “You’re warm. Should we go home?”
Jeez. “Of course I’m warm. It’s a million degrees in here.” She hates when Mother touches her in public in a way that implies they’re close.
“No need to snap at me.”
“Sorry.” She’s not.
“I’ll ask you again.” Enunciating: “Do you want to go home?”
She wants to drop through a hole and disappear. It’s unlike her to fall under a spell like an enchanted toad. She lifts her head to Mother’s offended blue eyes. “Not before the potluck.”
Daddy laughs.
Mother says, “Oh for Pete’s sake. You two wait in line to shake hands with Mr. Freedom Rider if you like but I can’t be on my feet that long. I’ll go save us seats inside.”
“Good idea,” Daddy says.
Forty-five-year-old Mother, aka Betty Wise, has a condition that manifests itself in prostrating fatigue and pains that baffle doctors. It has led to the removal of a healthy uterus, appendix and gall bladder. It also liberates her from standing in line, engaging in difficult discussions and conversing with people she doesn’t like. She leaves through the back of the sanctuary, dodging the line-up across the front.
Daddy scoops up the sweat-stained fedora beside him, what he calls his FDR hat. “It surprised me, you up on your feet there like a shot.”
“Was I the only one? I didn’t look.”
“I counted a dozen or so. You were first, though. That young man’s a powerful speaker. But keep in mind preachers and politicians tend to oversimplify complex issues.”
“Like what?”
“Like the whole racial thing. It’s not that easy.”
“What’s complicated about everybody being equal?”
“You’ve got to bring some people into equality in stages. I wouldn’t like you doing anything reckless and getting yourself arrested like that fellow did.”
Her first memory of Daddy is of his face dark with emotion as he bore down the slate sidewalk toward her, a child of two or three who’d toddled around the corner out of sight. He was afraid for her, she can reason now, but she was terrified of him. The details are faint, like those of the assault, but the shame remains, the sense she’d done something wrong.
“You can’t keep me safe forever,” is all she says.
He winks. “I can’t?”
“Nosiree, señor.” She kisses his sweaty cheek. “I’m starving. Let’s get in line.”
Squeals of children released from the nursery ricochet off the walls of the wood-paneled Fellowship Hall. Enticing aromas rise from long tables laden with platters and casseroles. Folks haven’t shown up in force just to give the fledgling minister the once over. They’ve come for the potluck, too. No Sunday roast to fix. Only baked beans, a molded salad or rice pudding in exchange for someone else’s scalloped potatoes and date bars. The Sisters in Christ Women’s Circle have baked a ham. Linda got a whiff of maple glaze when she dropped off a tray of brownies before the service.
Mother waves. As if they could miss her in that magenta polka-dotted dress and upside-down flowerpot of a hat. She’s claimed a folding chair and leaned two others against a table gussied up with a paper cloth and a Mason jar of marigolds.
“She’s stronger today, don’t you think?” Daddy says with the forced cheerfulness he’s used since Mother permitted him back in the marital bedroom two years ago.
Linda pretends to give it some thought. “She’s had a pretty good run lately.”
Mother prefers “Mom” and Linda tries to oblige, but the word often catches in her throat. “Daddy” is never anything else even though it might come across as childish or something a pampered Southern belle would say. When Linda was little, Mother’s periodic appearances were like visits from the dark side of the moon, her eyes unfathomable craters. She felt rejection seeping like a fetid odor from under Mother’s closed bedroom door. Daddy, not Dad, not Father, was the constant in Linda’s younger life, the one connected to the world. It’s unfair to resent someone for being sick. Linda knows that. Even if it weren’t, expressing anger is unacceptable in the Wise family. Unseemly. Low class.
She shuffles through the receiving line in a haze of anticipation. Despite the heat, a childhood Christmas comes to mind: lining up at Kresge’s for Breakfast with Santa, a list of virtuous deeds at the ready to show how deserving she was of benevolence.
The Reverend Brunson is taller and even better looking inches away. She wants to rise up to her full five-foot-two height and brush back strands of hair that have curled in the heat and spilled onto his high forehead. He pulls her timid hand into his larger, firmer one and says, “Hi. I’m Ron.” Pastor Judge introduces her as a young woman who has devoted her life to the Lord. She rolls her eyes. “I was in the youth choir.”
Pastor Judge says, “Oh, don’t be so modest,” and she could pound him to bits. How self-righteous he was four years ago, attempting to counsel her about her weight. Penguin belly swaying on tiny feet, he had the temerity to lecture her about the body as God’s temple.
Then Ron—such a strong, no-nonsense name— repeats her name, the sound of it from his mouth like a blessing, and says, “You were brave to stand with me this morning.”
Brave. Her face goes hot. He looks at her so intently she yearns to say something profound. “I’d like to know more about the Freedom Rides,” is all she can come up with. His eyes are a deeper brown than eyes have a right to be.
“You’d better sit beside me at lunch then.”
“Dora Beal, head of the Pastoral Committee, has that spot,” Pastor Judge says.
“Mrs. Beal can sit on my other side.”
The pastor slaps his hand on his heart, feigning offense. “That’s supposed to be my seat but”—craning his neck, clowning—“looks like Betty has an extra chair. What say you, Roger?” He winks at Daddy, who says, “I believe she has.”
Pastor Judge asks her to fix “our young reverend” a plate. She feels her face flush. How would she know what he likes? As if reading her mind again, Ron says, “Whatever you select I will eat with gratitude.”
She peels off her gloves and stuffs them in her white vinyl pocketbook. Four years ago, she weighed over two hundred pounds. She’s a respectable one-thirty now, more curvy than jiggly. But some people will remember. The buffet table throbs with action. Lest the Sisters in Christ hovering over it decide she’s returned to a gluttonous state, she comes straight out with it: “I’ve been asked to fix the Reverend Brunson’s plate.”
Elvira Melton rescues her. “Here, let me help. Fill your plate and I’ll do his.”
Linda takes a thin slice of ham, a miserly scoop of macaroni salad and two deviled eggs for herself. Sets a heaped plate before Ron at a table with eight places. Folks she’s known since she was a kid occupy six: church committee heads handpicked, no doubt, to dine with the new minister. Their eyes widen when she takes the empty chair on his right.
A pleasingly manly tang of perspiration drifts from him. He’s shed the robe, looks defenseless in black slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, puckered around the collar and seams, the permanent-press kind. Daddy has a few. They don’t wash up as perfectly as you’d expect. Short dark hairs like burnt grass cover Ron’s arms. He mouths thank you to her because Old Charlie Dunbar, who’s been Men’s Club president forever, is speaking directly opposite her, spiffy as usual in a frosting-pink shirt under a suit and vest as white as nougat. Until she was eleven, he deposited a dime for ice cream in her hand every Sunday after church.
She catches him say “burn their draft cards” and Ron respond that if he weren’t exempt he might do the same. “I don’t believe in killing for any reason. My father didn’t either. During the Second World War, he ministered to conscientious objectors in a public service camp.”
Old Charlie nods as if in approval.
Mrs. Beal, whose prodigious bust is a long-standing joke among church youth, asks what Ron will handle while Paul and Winnie Judge are on vacation. He says whatever’s needed, hoists a pitcher of iced tea from the table and gestures: does Linda want some?
She nods. He pours, his arm so close she can feel its heat.
Cliff Stearns on her right reminds Ron the Rotary Club keeps going all summer and expects an invocation every other Wednesday night. Mr. Stearns runs an accounting business and does River Street Methodist’s books except at tax return time when he’s swamped and Daddy steps in. Ron sets the pitcher down and gives him a thumbs-up. “On my calendar already.”
Her thumb is half the size of his.
“Where are the Judges off to?” That loudly from tall, skinny Archie Sloan, the head usher, seated left of Old Charlie. He probably has only fifteen years on Daddy but like everyone else at the table except Linda and Ron he seems positively prehistoric. Her lungs seize up at the prospect of being stuck in Stony River until her teeth sleep in a glass.
Richard Merlo says, “Wherever Billy Graham’s set up a revival tent. They hound him like Beatles fans,” eliciting a “Shh, they’ll hear you” from Mae Merlo who must’ve cut her gray hair with a bowl. Linda peers over the throng of chewing faces, can’t see how the Judges would’ve heard. The pastor’s three tables away deep in conversation with Daddy. His wife, Winnie, is behind the buffet with the Women’s Circle, wiping her hand on a striped dishtowel. She’s younger than him, slim and fun loving with a honey-colored ponytail. How can she stand him?
Mrs. Merlo says she’s glad Ron mentioned David and Goliath today. She’s a minor scholar of the war between the Israelites and the Philistines. “Neither side wanted a fight,” she says. “Wouldn’t you agree that’s often the case?”
“When it comes to the front line, amen,” Ron says. “Those who order wars? The most blood they see is from shaving, I’d venture.”
The word for his body is angular.
“That’s a little harsh,” Mr. Stearns says. “Some of them have served, too.”
“They’re not serving now.”
Mr. Stearns screws up his mouth and Mr. Sloan frowns. Old Charlie salvages the moment with a recollection of whooping it up with school chums on Armistice Day in 1918, everybody weeping and hugging after the war that was supposed to make any other unnecessary. He winks at her and she experiences a rush of gratitude. He might have genuinely liked her as a child.
Ron says, “Linda, you wanted to know more about the Freedom Rides.”
Did she? Mesmerized by his husky voice and curious accent, she chases her mind back to his sermon. “How did you know what to do at the bus terminal?”
“I should have mentioned that, but I was going on forever and a day as it was.” He addresses the whole table. “Since my fellow Riders and I were white, we sat at the colored lunch counter in the Jackson terminal. Guaranteed to strike a nerve. Riders who went before trained us in nonviolence techniques. We weren’t to lift a finger to protect ourselves. We were to demonstrate that love, not violence, is the way to peace. That the injustices Negroes suffered were serious enough for our self-sacrifice. That change had to happen fast because terror had held it back far too long.”
A shiver passes through her. She’s never met such a pure soul.
“The trainers pushed and hit us. They poured coffee on us, spat on us and called us nigger lovers so we could practice not fighting back.”
Mrs. Beal sucks in a breath. “Is it necessary to use that word?”
“My apologies. It was then. You have to be ready to hear such language and not flinch. I’ll admit it was a struggle for me.”
Linda flinched when high school bullies called her pig, cow, hippo, whale.
“I tried to maintain my self-respect when I was arrested but I yessirred a guard who was slapping a blackjack in his palm.” He smacks his own palm with a spoon and Linda winces.
“That’s nothing to apologize for,” she says. “I can’t imagine even one day in jail.”
Mrs. Beal leans over him, grazing him with her bosom. “Are you still in college, Linda?” Ron discreetly slides his chair back. The woman must have to special-order her bras.
“Yes. Third year.”
Ron folds his napkin into a little square and wipes his mouth. “Majoring in…?”
He has the straightest nose.
“Psychology.”
He furrows his brow as though appraising her anew.
“I assumed you were further along,” Mrs. Merlo says. “Several of you girls I had in senior Bible have already graduated.”
“I got a late start.” She doesn’t need to know Linda required remedial courses first.
Mr. Sloan asks what kind of job she can get with psychology. She tells him social work. Old Charlie says that’s all wrong for a sweet thing like her, she could end up somewhere dangerous like Harlem. She has to laugh. “Did my father tell you to say that?”
Before he can respond, Mr. Merlo says, “You don’t have to go as far as Harlem. Elizabeth and Newark are darned rough these days.”
The conversation is heading in the wrong direction. She tells them social workers staff the perfectly safe red brick building in which she interns, near the perfectly safe new shopping center. Mr. Sloan asks if it’s a prison. She says, “Sort of, for eight- to twelve-year-old boys in trouble with the law. It’s got the coziest kitchen and lounge. For some, it’s the best home they’ve ever had.” Her throat cramps at the truth of those words. “We can’t hold them past three months.” She tells them she types, files and answers the phone, that sort of thing. “The best part is attending case review meetings. When I volunteered in high school I played games with the boys nobody came to visit.”
She often sees in a boy’s eyes the guy she recklessly accepted a ride from seven years ago, hears the rasp of his zipper, the click of the glove compartment holding the knife.
Eldon Jukes. His name can still freeze her breath.
A few years ago she read a newspaper interview with his grandmother. He had a rough start, his father lost in war when the youngster was three, abandoned by his mother after that, diagnosed with schizophrenia at some point. He’s dead now, a suicide. Some boys at the Home have survived conditions Linda can’t conceive of. It’s not okay to set fires or skin cats alive but she tries to understand what might have damaged someone enough to do it.
“You care about those boys,” Ron says, a statement, not a question.
“As much as I can in the little time I have with them.” She doesn’t want them growing up into psychos who can terrorize someone like her, a selfish motivation she isn’t proud of. She finds Daddy’s handkerchief in her pocketbook and dabs at her eyes, rarely gets as emotional as she has this day and doesn’t understand it.
Mr. Sloan’s cough is soft, tactful. He asks what Ron’s plans are after the Judges return.
“I’m praying for an appointment near my mother in Minnesota.”
“Your father’s not with her?” That from Old Charlie.
“No, he died of pneumonia three years ago.”
“Oh, what a pity. He was a pastor, too, you mentioned?”
“Yes, and my great-grandfather was a circuit rider.”
“How romantic,” Mrs. Merlo says.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Riding horseback in the wet and cold, living out of saddlebags, preaching in cabins, fields and on street corners. I bet he stunk.”
That gets a laugh.
“What are your chances of a church appointment?” Mr. Sloan asks.
“Hard to say. First churches usually have fewer congregants and prefer married men.” He pronounces married like merried.
“Ah yes, two for the price of one, the harsh reality of most churches’ financial situations,” Mrs. Beal says. She pats his back as if soothing a child. “Winnie Judge d
oes scads here, the bulletin for one thing. Do you type?”
“Two-fingered and slow as a dry crick as they say back home.”
Mr. Sloan laughs. “You should put a Wife Wanted ad in the paper.”
“I type. I can do the bulletins,” Linda says and the table goes quiet. She’s always had terrible timing. Head down, she busies herself with a deviled egg, lets a tiny bite slide down her flustered throat. It leaves a kick of paprika in its wake.
Mrs. Beal breaks the awkward silence. “What about your job, dear?”
“My evenings are free.”
Ron rests his hand on hers and her heart teeters at the end of a high dive. “I might take you up on that generous offer, if you’re serious.”
She can’t look at him. “I am.”
Mr. Merlo’s chair scrapes as he stands. “I’m off for dessert. Anybody else?” All except Linda and Ron rise.
She clears her throat and looks up at them. “Be sure to check out my fudge brownies.”
“You make brownies?” Ron asks.
“First-rate ones, I’m told.” Words dance across her mind. Wanted: Pastor’s wife. Must bake brownies, type bulletins.
He stands. “Lead on, Macduff.” She doesn’t tell him he’s misquoted Shakespeare.
On the way to the dessert table, he says, “Such long, slender fingers. You play piano?”
His hands could span way more than the single octave hers do. “Oh, Mrs. Horne can pound out any hymn you want on organ and piano.”
“So I’ve been told.” His been sounds like ben. “I was curious about you.”
The ancient upright in the living room has been silent since she quit her lessons. “I used to play.” She could dig out her old music and practice.
Must sing and play “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam.”
“Anyone ever call you Lin?”
“Nope.”
“Well, you look like a Lin to me. That’s a cute lid you’re wearing.”
A bow-shaped hat she had agreed to for Mother’s sense of propriety. She’s dying to take the end of a rat-tailed comb to the hair under it, the same ash-blond as Mother’s but teased and done in a twist, not antediluvian pin curls. “It makes my head itchy as sin,” she says.
