Читать книгу Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League - Jonathan Odell - Страница 13

Chapter Six

THE COLUMNS

The sun was setting scarlet by the time Levi drove past the last cluster of tenant shacks and turned onto the generously graveled lane leading up to the Columns. Like emerald-suited soldiers, house-tall cedars lined both sides of the quarter-mile entrance. The Buick slipped between the last pair of trees and Levi slowed, proceeding at a crawl as if in reverence to the white mansion that rose up before them. Vida was forever in awe that something that gleaming bright had been plopped down in a heat-distorted world of mules and shanties and sweating field hands.

Tonight half a dozen cars were already parked in the circular drive. Instead of joining them, Levi pulled off the lane onto a rough track used by mules and tractors, and drove carefully around to the rear of the house, bringing the Buick to a stop at the back gate. He got out and walked over to the cast-iron bell that sat atop a cedar post. He pulled the rope three times. The bell clanged loudly.

The kitchen door was flung open and Vida was relieved to see that it was Lillie Dee Prophet, the Senator’s cook, who came out, limping across the yard up to the fence.

“That you, Brother Pastor?” she asked, squinting hard into his face.

“Hello, Sister Prophet.” He formally tipped his hat to the wizened woman. “How you this evening?”

“Ain’t jumpin’ no stumps, Rev’rund.”

Vida’s father laughed and shook his head in the way that made you feel like you were really something for saying what you did.

Lillie Dee bent her head down and strained to make out the shadows inside the car, her toothless gums working without pause. “But it’s like I told my last boy over there,” Lillie Dee said, nodding her head toward the woodshed in back of the house, “like I told Rezel, ever day I can get out of bed, I count it as a blessing from the Lord.”

Hearing Rezel’s name, Vida crooked her head to see around Lillie Dee. She spied him standing in the shadows, hard-muscled, wearing overalls and a ripped cotton shirt, gathering an armload of stove wood. She tried to catch his eye. Sullen, he stubbornly kept his gaze away from the place where people were bandying his name about. Vida’d heard stories about him singing the blues at the juke joints in a way that could turn sisters one against the other. Yet the Rezel she knew was gentle and shy-mannered, sometimes stopping by her house when her father was away with flowers or pears stolen from the Senator’s own trees. And he was good to Nate. They never talked about it, but maybe Rezel would take her and Nate in. He would be a good daddy. He could protect her, and, maybe love her enough to kill the man who wanted to hurt her child.

Her father said to the old cook, “Well, Lillie Dee, you certainly blessed to have your boy staying on with you. That bound to be a comfort.”

“Rezel?” Lillie Dee shook her head sadly. She looked back at the boy, throwing her voice loud enough for him to hear. “He the same as all the rest of them. Talking about going up North. Say people up there pay him money to sing that devil’s music. Pardon my snuff, Rev’rund.” Lillie Dee spit juice on the ground and continued, “Why, you think it be the Promised Land, the way they all heading off up thataway.”

For a moment the news saddened Vida. Then her spirits lifted. Maybe Rezel was planning to ask her to go with him to this Promised Land! Out of the reach of the white man. And if he was too shy to ask, then she would certainly ask him.

“I’m sorry to hear about it, Sister Prophet,” her father said. “They still plenty of good life left in Mississippi for the upright colored man. ’Cause of you, Rezel got him good work here with the Senator. Too bad he can’t see that.”

“That’s the truth, Rev’rund.” Lillie Dee grinned slyly at Levi. “Carrying my wood never did you no harm, did it?”

Vida saw that Lillie Dee’s comment brought a rare expression of bashfulness to her father’s face, and for a moment Lillie Dee was no longer a member of his flock. This was the woman who had overseen his chores when he was the houseboy for the Senator’s father.

He cleared his throat and removed his hat. “Lillie, will you tell the Senator that I need to conference with him on something weighty?”

“Senator’s got company tonight, Rev’rund. Why don’t you come back in the morning after breakfast?”

“It can’t wait. Tell him it’s about the election. He going to want to see me and my girl.”

The old woman worked her gums thoughtfully for a moment. “Well,” she said, “y’all drive on up in the yard and I’ll tell him.” As she unlatched the gate, she said, “I’m warning you, now, he ain’t going to ’preshate it. They been drinking most the afternoon and just commenced they supper.”

While Vida, Nate, and Levi waited in the car, the Senator’s bird dogs sniffed around the Buick and, one by one, hiked their legs and relieved themselves on the tires. Field hands drove tractors and led mules in through the gate and put them away in the barn for the evening. White people’s laughter, cold and brittle, broke over the darkening yard. For over an hour, Levi sat sweating behind the wheel, mopping his face and jumping in his seat every time the door opened. But each time the screen swung back, it was only Lillie Dee announcing the start of another course.

This was not how Vida had imagined the “conferences” her father talked about so proudly. She had expected the Senator to welcome her father on the front gallery under those grand columns and make him comfortable in a room fit for Solomon while her daddy advised the Senator on important matters.

The smells from the Senator’s supper drifted into the car, and Nate began to whimper and tug on Vida’s braids. She tried to comfort him by stroking his soft black hair, but her own fingers trembled.

“It’s a ways past Nate’s suppertime, Daddy. Maybe we ought to do like Lillie Dee says and come back again.”

Her father gripped the steering wheel tightly, staring through the windshield into a grove of pecan trees rapidly disappearing in the dark. “Can’t. The Senator know we out here. Anyway, he be glad we come with a warning. He going to thank us. You wait and see.”

There was something missing from her father’s words.

“He’ll show that peckerwood which road leads out the county. I know he will. You wait and see if he don’t.”

At last Lillie Dee poked her head out of the door and called, “I just served them they cake and coffee. Won’t be too long now.”

Levi turned to Vida, his eyes pleading through the darkness. She had never seen her father fearful, and the sight jerked at her stomach.

“Now, Vida, you pay respect to the Senator. Say ‘yessuh’ and ‘nosuh.’ Don’t look him in his eyes. Don’t shame me, girl.”

“I’m scared, Daddy. What he going to do to Nate?”

Her father didn’t seem to hear Vida’s question. “The Senator been good to me. He raised up my first church. He believed in me when I told him about seeing the shining face of God in a mighty whirlpool of churning water, calling me to be a preacher of the Word. He believe me then. He’ll believe me now.”

Like a cannon, the voice of the Senator came booming from the kitchen. “All right now, Lillie Dee. Tell Levi to come on in.”

They entered through the back door, and Vida saw the Senator up close for the first time. His frame rose before her like a cypress trunk, dense and broad. He had one massive arm propped against a marble biscuit block while the other held out an empty whiskey glass to Lillie Dee, who took it and left the room. Other colored servants scurried in and out of the kitchen carrying silver trays of tinkling china.

“Now, what’s so important that it can’t wait, Levi? And why you got the young’uns with you?” The Senator wiped his hand on his linen suit coat. “Hurry up, now, I got company.”

Levi kneaded the brim of his hat with both hands. “Yessuh. I know you do. I just thought, see’n as you and me go way back. . .well, suh. . .what I gots to say. . .”

Vida’s heart dipped down past her stomach. This was not how it was supposed to be at all! This was her father, the man whose words made people shout with joy and dance in the aisles. Who stood up to the white man. She found herself taking a step backward toward the door.

The Senator’s face colored. “Stop beating the devil around the stump, Levi. Spit it out.”

“Yessuh. Well, my girl here. . .well, she got something to say.”

Vida could feel the Senator’s bleary gaze fall upon her. No words would come. The only sound was the pulsing of her blood pounding in her ears. She took yet another step backward.

When things didn’t seem as if they could get any worse, her father’s shoulders fell like a cord of wood had been dropped on his back.

Looking up, Vida saw that Billy Dean had stepped into the room. His eyes, as dark and cold as the iron pots that hung on the wall behind him, bored into Vida through mean little slits.

“Go on ahead, girl,” he said. “What you got to tell the Senator?”

Vida’s knees went soft as Nate grew impossibly heavy in her arms. She backed against the warming oven to keep from crumpling to the floor. Even though she wasn’t supposed to look a white man in the eyes, in Billy Dean’s she had seen murder.

“Billy Dean,” the Senator said, not bothering to turn around. “I’m glad you were able to tear yourself away from Delia. She ain’t yours.” His voice was full of scorn. “You know, it’s getting hard to tell which of my daughters you got engaged to. I hope I don’t have to point Hertha out to you.”

“Only being sociable, Senator. Don’t you worry about me none. I ain’t letting Miss Hertha out of my sights.” Then Billy Dean stepped up beside the Senator and smiled a sideways grin. He slapped the Senator on the back. “I’m a man of my word. Just like you.”

The Senator wasn’t amused. Billy Dean quickly removed his hand and then waved his drink at the callers. “You having yourself some kind of high-level meeting back here with all these fancy-dressed niggers?”

The Senator scowled at Billy Dean. “This here’s the colored preacher I was telling you about. You take care of ol’ Levi and he’ll tell you what the nigruhs are up to.”

The Senator smiled fondly at the preacher. “Ain’t that right, Levi?”

“Yessuh. That sure is right,” Levi mumbled, looking at his shoes.

“Why do I care what the niggers are up to?” Billy Dean scoffed.

The Senator spun toward Billy Dean. “I’ll tell you why you better care. If you going to be my sheriff, looking out for my five thousand acres, you sure as hell better know what the nigruhs and everybody else is up to. I want to know about Yankee labor agents trying to steal my tenants, and croppers lying about gin weights, and the federal government trying to agitate. That goes double for the Klan scaring off my coloreds. And I better know about trouble a day before trouble happens. You got that, Billy Dean?” The Senator kept up his glare until Billy Dean dropped his eyes. He focused instead on Levi’s chain, glowering at the praying hands.

“Whatever you say,” Billy Dean grumbled, looking as if he had more to add but jiggling the ice in his drink instead.

The Senator turned back to Levi. “Now, what you got to tell me about the election?”

Vida prayed for her father to say something. He stood there motionless, bent like a willow after an ice storm. There was only silence. Finally Lillie Dee returned with a tray of fresh drinks for the Senator and Billy Dean.

Billy Dean tossed back half his drink and wiped his mouth. He sniggered. “I bet I know what Levi wants. He wants to vote for me come the election. That right, boy?”

Levi looked as if he had been slapped. “Nosuh!” he said quickly, the sound of alarm ringing in his voice. “Voting is the white man’s business. You won’t catch me messing with none a that.”

“I don’t know,” Billy Dean said. “Could be I heard talk about you and that secret nigger club. What y’all call it? The Double-A-C-P?”

The Senator looked at Billy Dean as if he were an idiot. “Levi?” He gave a sharp laugh. “Levi cares as much about voting as a horse cares about Christmas. Besides, he knows which side his bread is buttered on.” This time it was the Senator who slapped Billy Dean on the back. “Just like you, boy.”

Billy Dean’s face reddened again, but his angry scowl was directed toward Levi.

The inside kitchen door swung open and a plump, well-dressed white woman about the Senator’s age poked her head in. “What are you men doing in here?” she asked, holding a lacy handkerchief up to a neck whiter than the china on the countertops. “You are entertaining guests, Hugh. Did you forget?”

When her brother didn’t answer at once, she looked carefully around a kitchen filled with tense expressions. Without speaking another word, she touched the handkerchief to her lips and eased back through the door.

Straightening his jacket, the Senator started after his sister. “Billy Dean,” he said on his way through the door, “you find out what Levi wants. Then come tell me. Get some practice at being my sheriff.”

Left alone in the kitchen with the preacher and his family, and his face still flushed from having been told off, Billy Dean motioned toward the back door. Through clenched teeth he said, “Let’s go outside and have us a little powwow.”

Vida hurried Nate down the steps first. Before her father could take the first step, Billy Dean shoved Levi hard, causing him to topple down from the porch and land sprawled on the ground at Vida’s feet.

Looking up, she saw the crazy smile on Billy Dean’s face. His eyes cut toward the boy in her arms and at last Vida found her voice. “Lillie Dee!” she screamed.

The old cook was at the door in a flash. “Merciful Jesus! What’s going on out here? Levi, what you doing spraddled out in the dirt? You hurt yourself?” Without waiting for an answer she yelled out into the yard, “Rezel! Where you? Get here and help the Rev’rund on his feet.”

Her boy emerged out of the dark of the yard. From his fierce expression Vida could tell Rezel had been watching the whole thing. After helping Levi up, he went to Vida’s side.

“You and Nate all right?” he whispered.

She nodded, thinking about begging Rezel to run away with her that very minute

Just then the Senator’s younger daughter, Delia, the one they called “the pretty one,” joined Lillie Dee on the back porch. “Billy Dean,” she cooed, “what on earth are you-all doing out here? You were in the middle of telling me an amusing story, remember?”

Then she saw Levi brushing himself off. “My goodness, Levi, are you all right?” She shot Billy Dean a pouty look. “What have you done to Levi?”

“The old man fell down’s, all,” Billy Dean said gruffly. “I’ll take care of it. Everybody get on back in the house.”

Lillie Dee did as she was told, and when Rezel hesitated, his mother ordered him inside. He reluctantly obeyed.

Yet Delia remained behind. “Levi, you tell me to stay and I will. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The woman’s tone confused Vida. It sounded kind, but the way you would be kind to your pet dog. Nothing to hang your hopes on.

“No, ma’am, Miss Delia,” Levi insisted. “Nothing going on out here to worry you about. I was just giving my best to Mr. Billy Dean on his election.”

She looked back at Billy Dean. “You!” she laughed tipsily. “Our next sheriff. How low has our democracy sunk?” Delia shook her head, teasingly. “Hurry on back in, Billy Dean. Your fiancée is getting—oops!” she said, covering her mouth in mock embarrassment, “I mean, your food is getting cold.” She gave out a giggle and went back into the kitchen.

The screen door shut behind her, and Vida felt their last hope had left with her. She could hear Billy Dean’s breathing, fast and furious. In a voice bled dry of emotion, he said, “This ain’t over,” and then stomped back into the house.

During the ride home, the car was thick with things not said. Vida could tell from her father’s clenched jaw that he was figuring hard, considering and then discarding one option after another. As for herself, she could only come up with one, and she was doing it, holding tight to her baby until the nightmare passed.

Levi parked the car next to their house, switched off the motor. He left the lights burning. He sat there motionless, looking off into the distance where the headlights cut a ghostly path across the field.

Without looking at Vida, he said, “The boy ain’t safe here with us. And we ain’t safe with the boy.”

Nate was trying to tickle Vida’s neck with her plait. She stilled his hand, struggling with her father’s words. “What you saying, Daddy?”

“You heard the man. He say it ain’t over. Nate make that man crazy.” Then he said, almost to himself, “Your momma got kin in Alabama.”

Grasping his meaning, Vida cried, “I ain’t letting go of Nate, Daddy. You can’t make me do that.”

“We ain’t got no choice, Vida.”

Then she remembered. “Rezel’s going to the Promised Land! Me and Nate can go with him!”

“No, daughter. You know better. Rezel can’t take care of you and a baby. Rezel can’t take care of hisself. I promise, you pray on it and you’ll see it my way. God going to show us the righteous path.”