When finally Kate Golightly touched the organ keys and the couple turned around to face the congregation, Soane cried. Partly at the sad bright smiles of the bride and groom, partly in dread of the malice, set roaming now, and on its way to her house.
It had long been noticed that the Morgan brothers seldom spoke to or looked at each other. Some believed it was because they were jealous of one another; that their views only seemed to be uniform; that down deep was a mutual resentment which surfaced in small ways. In their automobile arguments, for example: one’s fierce preference for Chevrolets, the other’s stubborn defense of Oldsmobiles. In fact the brothers not only agreed on almost everything; they were in eternal if silent conversation. Each knew the other’s thoughts as well as he knew his face and only once in a while needed the confirmation of a glance.
Now they stood in different rooms of Deek’s house, thinking the same thing. Fortunately, Misner was late, Menus sober, Pulliam triumphant and Jeff preoccupied with Sweetie. Mable, who had attended the ceremony, had relieved her daughter-in-law for the reception. The wedding couple were in line—glazed smiles in place, but in line nevertheless. Pastor Cary—soothing and jovial—was the best bet for keeping things steady. He and his wife, Lily, were treasured for their duets, and if they could get some music going…
Steward opened the piano while Deek moved through the guests. As he passed Reverend Pulliam, nodding and smiling with Sweetie and Jeff, Deek gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. In the dining room the food table drew appreciative murmurs but as yet no takers except children. The coos over the gift table seemed strained, excessive. Steward waited at the piano, his steel-gray hair and innocent eyes in perfect balance. The children around him shone like agate; the women were brilliant but quiet in their still fresh Easter clothes; the men’s squeaky new shoes glistened like melon seeds. Everyone was stiff, overly polite. Deek must be having trouble persuading the Carys, he thought. Steward reached for tobacco, silently urging his twin to try somebody else—the Male Chorus, Kate Golightly—quick before Pulliam took it in his head to pray them back into battle stations or, Lord help us, Jeff began reciting his VA grievances. Once that started his next target would be K.D. who had never served in the military. Where is Soane? he wondered. Steward could see Dovey unpinning the veil from the bride’s hair and his innocent eyes enjoyed his wife’s figure once more. In anything—Sunday dress, white church uniform or even his own bathrobe—the look of her body made him smile with satisfaction. But Deek was cautioning him now about distraction, so Steward left off admiring Dovey and saw the success of his brother’s efforts. Kate came toward the piano and sat down. She flexed her fingers and began to play. First a preparatory trill, accompanied by friendly coughs and murmurs of anticipation. Then Simon and Lily Cary arrived, humming, humming, while they considered what to begin with. They were a third of the way into “Precious Lord, take my hand,” smiles had turned toward the direction of the music, when they heard the horn blast of an ancient Cadillac.
Connie did not come, but her boarders did. Mavis drove the Cadillac, with Gigi and Seneca in the back and a somebody new in the passenger seat. None of them was dressed for a wedding. They piled out of the car looking like go-go girls: pink shorts, skimpy tops, see-through skirts; painted eyes, no lipstick; obviously no underwear, no stockings. Jezebel’s storehouse raided to decorate arms, earlobes, necks, ankles and even a nostril. Mavis and Soane, greeting each other on the lawn, were uncomfortable. Two other women sauntered into the dining room and surveyed the food tables. They said “Hi” and wondered aloud if there was anything other than lemonade and punch to drink. There wasn’t, so they did what a few other young people had already done: drifted out of the Morgans’ yard and strolled past Anna Flood’s store to the Oven. The few local girls already there clumped together and withdrew, leaving the territory to the Poole boys: Apollo, Brood and Hurston. To the Seawrights: Timothy Jr. and Spider. To Destry, Vane and Royal. Menus joined them, but Jeff, to whom he had been speaking, did not. Neither did the watching groom. Dovey was removing the fat from a lamb slice when the music hit. She cut her finger in the blare and sucked it when Otis Redding screamed “Awwwww, lil girl…,” obliterating the hymn’s quiet plea. Inside, outside and on down the road the beat and the heat were ruthless.
“Oh, they’re just having fun,” a voice behind Reverend Pulliam whispered. He turned to look but could not locate the speaker, so he continued glaring out of the window. He knew about such women. Like children, always on the lookout for fun, devoted to it but always needing a break in order to have it. A lift, a hand, a five-dollar bill. Somebody to excuse or coddle them. Somebody to look down at the ground and say nothing when they disturbed the peace. He exchanged glances with his wife who nodded and left the window. She knew, as he did, that fun-obsessed adults were clear signs of already advanced decay. Soon the whole country would be awash in toys, tone-deaf from raucous music and hollow laughter. But not here. Not in Ruby. Not while Senior Pulliam was alive.
The Convent girls are dancing; throwing their arms over their heads, they do this and that and then the other. They grin and yip but look at no one. Just their own rocking bodies. The local girls look over their shoulders and snort. Brood, Apollo and Spider, steel-muscled farm boys with sophisticated eyes, sway and snap their fingers. Hurston sings accompaniment. Two small girls ride their bikes over; wide-eyed, they watch the dancing women. One of them, with amazing hair, asks can she borrow a bike. Then another. They ride the bikes down Central Avenue with no regard for what the breeze does to their long flowered skirts or how pumping pedals plumped their breasts. One coasts with her ankles on the handlebars. Another rides the handlebars with Brood on the seat behind her. One, in the world’s shortest pink shorts, is seated on a bench, arms wrapped around herself. She looks drunk. Are they all? The boys laugh.
Anna and Kate carried their plates to the edge of Soane’s garden.
“Which one?” whispered Anna.
“That one there,” said Kate. “The one with the rag for a blouse.”
“That’s a halter,” said Anna.
“Halter? Looks like a starter to me.”
“She the one K.D. was messing with?”
“Yep.”
“I know that one there. She comes in the store. Who the other two?”
“Beats me.”
“Look. There goes Billie Delia.”
“Naturally.”
“Oh, come on, Kate. Leave Billie alone.”
They spooned potato salad into their mouths. Behind them came Alice Pulliam, murmuring, “My, my, my-my-my.”
“Hello, Aunt Alice,” said Kate.
“Have you ever in your life seen such carrying on? Bet you can’t locate one brassiere in the whole bunch.” Alice held the crown of her hat in the breeze. “Why’re you all smiling? I don’t think this is the least bit funny.”
“No. Course not,” said Kate.
“This is a wedding, remember?”
“You’re right, Aunt Alice. I said you right.”
“How would you like to have somebody dancing nasty at your wedding?” Alice’s bright black eyes searched Anna’s hair.
Kate nodded sympathetically while pressing her lips tight so no smile could seep through them. Anna tried to look seriously affronted before this stern preacher’s wife, thinking: Dear Jesus, I wouldn’t last an hour in this town if I married Richard.
“I’m going to have to get Pastor himself to stop this,” Alice said, and moved resolutely off toward Soane’s house.
Anna and Kate waited several beats before setting their laughter free. Whatever else, thought Anna, the Convent women had saved the day. Nothing like other folks’ sins for distraction. The young people were wrong. Be the Furrow of Her Brow. Speaking of which, where was Richard anyway?
Down on his knees, Richard Misner was angry at his anger, and at his mishandling of it. Used to obstacles, adept at disagreement, he could not reconcile the level of his present fury with what seemed to be its
source. He loved God so much it hurt, although that same love sometimes made him laugh out loud. And he deeply respected his colleagues. For centuries they had held on. Preaching, shouting, dancing, singing, absorbing, arguing, counseling, pleading, commanding. Their passion burned or smoldered like lava over a land that had waged war against them and their flock without surcease. A lily-livered war without honor as either its point or reward; an unprincipled war that thrived as much on the victor’s cowardice as on his mendacity. On stage and in print he and his brethren had been the heart of comedy, the chosen backs for parody’s knife. They were cursed by death row inmates, derided by pimps. Begrudged even miserly collection plates. Yet through all of that, if the Spirit seemed to be slipping away they had held on to it with their teeth if they had to, grabbed it in their fists if need be. They took it to buildings ready to be condemned, to churches from which white congregations had fled, to quilt tents, to ravines and logs in clearings. Whispered it in cabins lit by moonlight lest the Law see. Prayed for it behind trees and in sod houses, their voices undaunted by roaring winds. From Abyssinian to storefronts, from Pilgrim Baptist to abandoned movie houses; in polished shoes, worn boots, beat-up cars and Lincoln Continentals, well fed or malnourished, they let their light, flickering low or blazing like a comet, pierce the darkness of days. They wiped white folks’ spit from the faces of black children, hid strangers from posses and police, relayed life-preserving information faster than the newspaper and better than the radio. At sickbeds they looked death in the eye and mouth. They pressed the heads of weeping mothers to their shoulders before conducting their life-gouged daughters to the cemetery. They wept for chain gangs, reasoned with magistrates. Made whole congregations scream. In ecstasy. In belief. That death was life, don’t you know, and every life, don’t you know, was holy, don’t you know, in His eyesight. Rocked as they were by the sight of evil, its snout was familiar to them. Real wonder, however, lay in the amazing shapes and substances God’s grace took: gospel in times of persecution; the exquisite wins of people forbidden to compete; the upright righteousness of those who let no boot hold them down—people who made Job’s patience look like restlessness. Elegance when all around was shabby.
Richard Misner knew all that. Yet, however intact his knowledge and respect, the tremor inside him now was ungovernable. Pulliam had fingered a membrane enclosing a ravenous appetite for vengeance, an appetite he needed to understand in order to subdue. Had the times finally gotten to him? Was the desolation that rose after King’s murder, a desolation that climbed like a tidal wave in slow motion, just now washing over him? Or was it the calamity of watching the drawn-out abasement of a noxious President? Had the long, unintelligible war infected him? Behaving like a dormant virus in blossom now that it was coming to a raggedy close? Everybody on his high school football team died in that war. Eleven broad-backed boys. They were the ones he had looked up to, wanted to be like. Was he just now gagging at their futile death? Was that the origin of this incipient hunger for violence?
Or was it Ruby?
What was it about this town, these people, that enraged him? They were different from other communities in only a couple of ways: beauty and isolation. All of them were handsome, some exceptionally so. Except for three or four, they were coal black, athletic, with noncommittal eyes. All of them maintained an icy suspicion of outsiders. Otherwise they were like all small black communities: protective, God-loving, thrifty but not miserly. They saved and spent; liked money in the bank and nice things too. When he arrived he thought their flaws were normal; their disagreements ordinary. They were pleased by the accomplishments of their neighbors and their mockery of the lazy and the loose was full of laughter. Or used to be. Now, it seemed, the glacial wariness they once confined to strangers more and more was directed toward each other. Had he contributed to it? He could not help admitting that without his presence there would probably be no contention, no painted fists, no quarrels about missing language on an oven’s lip. No warnings about meetings he held with a dozen or so young people. Certainly no public, let alone physical, antagonism between businessmen. And absolutely no runaways. No drinking. Even acknowledging his part in the town’s unraveling, Misner was dissatisfied. Why such stubbornness, such venom against asserting rights, claiming a wider role in the affairs of black people? They, of all people, knew the necessity of unalloyed will; the rewards of courage and single-mindedness. Of all people, they understood the mechanisms of wresting power. Didn’t they?
Over and over and with the least provocation, they pulled from their stock of stories tales about the old folks, their grands and great-grands; their fathers and mothers. Dangerous confrontations, clever maneuvers. Testimonies to endurance, wit, skill and strength. Tales of luck and outrage. But why were there no stories to tell of themselves? About their own lives they shut up. Had nothing to say, pass on. As though past heroism was enough of a future to live by. As though, rather than children, they wanted duplicates.
Misner was hoping for answers down there on his knees. Not a growing catalogue of questions. So he did what he was accustomed to doing: asked Him to come along as he struck out, late and agitated, for the wedding reception. Being in His company quieted anger. As he left the parsonage and turned into Central Avenue, he could hear the light breathing of his companion, but no word of advice or consolation. He was passing Harper’s drugstore when he saw a crowd gathered near the Oven. From it, in a burst of tuneup-needy engine roar, shot a Cadillac. In less than a minute it passed him, and he recognized two Convent women among the passengers. By the time he got to the Morgans’ yard, the crowd had dispersed. The sugar-drunk children were racing and tumbling with Steward’s collies. The Oven was deserted. The instant he stepped inside Soane and Deek’s house, he could see that all was aglow. Menus came forward to embrace him. Pulliam, Arnold and Deek interrupted their deep conversation to shake his hand. The Carys were singing a duet, a chorus backing them. So he was not startled to see Jeff Fleetwood laughing pleasantly with the very man he had drawn a gun on some weeks ago—the freshly married groom. Only the bride looked askew.
The silence in the Cadillac was not an embarrassed one. None of the passengers had high expectations of men in suits, so they were not surprised to be asked to leave the premises. “Give these little girls their bicycles back,” said one. “Get on out of here,” said another, through a mouthful of tobacco. The younger men who had laughed and cheered them on were ordered away without words. Just a look and a head movement from a man seven feet tall. Nor were they angry about the dismissal—slightly put out, maybe, but not seriously. One, the driver, had never seen a man who didn’t look like an unlit explosion. Another, in the front passenger seat, considered the boring sexual images she had probably incited and recommitted herself to making tracks to somewhere else. A third, who had really been having fun, sat in the back seat thinking that although she knew what anger looked like, she had no idea what it might feel like. She always did what she was told, so when the man said, “Give these little girls…,” she did it with a smile. The fourth passenger was grateful for the expulsion. This was her second day at the Convent and the third day of having said not one word to anybody. Except today when the girl, Billie something, came to stand near her.
“You all right?” She wore a shell-pink gown and instead of the shower cap had tiny yellow roses pinned into her hair. “Pallas? You okay?”
She nodded and tried not to shiver.
“You’re safe out there, but I’ll come by to see if you need anything, all right?”
“Yes,” Pallas whispered. Then, “Thanks.”
So there. She had opened her lips a tiny bit to say two words, and no black water had seeped in. The cold still shook her bones, but the dark water had receded. For now. At night, of course, it would return and she would be back in it—trying not to think about what swam below her neck. It was the top of the water she concentrated on and the flashlight licking the edge, then darting farther out over the black glimmer. Hoping, ho
ping the things touching below were sweet little goldfish like the ones in the bowl her father bought her when she was five. Or guppies, angels. Not alligators or snakes. This was a lake not a swamp or the aquarium at the San Diego zoo. Floating over the water, the whispers were closer than their calls. “Here, pussy. Here, pussy. Kitty, kitty, kitty,” sounded far away; but “Gimme the flash, dickface, izzat her, let go, maybe she drowned, no way,” slid into the skin behind her ears.
Pallas stared out of the window at a sky so steady, landscape so featureless she had no sense of being in a moving car. The smell of Gigi’s bubble gum mixed with her cigarette smoke was nauseating.
Paradise Page 17
