Four Spirits (15 page)

“DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE HURT, MISS SILVER
,
after these demonstrations?”

Mr. Fielding, the store owner, paused at Stella's switchboard desk. He spoke almost accusingly, as though she and the college students had caused the disruptions.

Actually, they'd done very little, and Stella felt ashamed. Only a few people, like Marti Turnipseed, had dared to align themselves with freedom. Tom somebody, too—very quiet, inoffensive-looking young man.

Many of the students thought Marti and Tom were freaks. Stella didn't. She made it a point to get close to them. To say hello. Pretty feeble on her part. But she was scared. She was doomed if she was kicked out of school. She had no future without school. Without a scholarship.

“Countless people beaten up.” The store owner answered his own question. “Countless separate incidents of violence.”

Stella wanted to please Mr. Fielding but she didn't know the right answer.

“They weren't directly in the demonstrations,” he went on, alleviating her ignorance. “Four innocent colored people nearly beaten to death. People ought to be more upset. One was just a yard boy waiting for the bus. That's what came of demonstrations. Did you know that?”

“No, sir.”

“Are people too upset out there to study? Classes going on smoothly?”

“Yes, sir.”

They both stared down from the mezzanine at the customers on the first
floor. The store wasn't crowded, but there was a smooth stream of people coming through the front doors. The women usually stopped at the lighted accessories counter, or at least glanced at it. The men went on. Stella liked to see young couples come in together. Mr. Fielding seemed like an eagle surveying his territory.

“This could be the beginning of revolution,” Mr. Fielding went on with his musings. He needed somebody to listen. Why not the switchboard girl? “It could come to revolution,” he told Stella again.

“It seems to be over. For now.”

“People need to pray. People need to think about loving their fellow man.”

“I agree,” Stella said firmly. So that was where Mr. Fielding stood. It was hard to tell. He seemed angry. No, he was deeply worried. He cared about what was happening in his city. It wasn't just a business matter for him.

She cared, too. But what could she do besides smiling at Marti Turnipseed?

“You're going to graduate next year. Then what?”

Because his white hair swirled like cake frosting, Stella remembered her mother's words from long ago:
frost the sides of the cake first, then the top.
That was the sequence. Not advice she needed now; Aunt Krit made and allowed only plain cake in her house. No frosting. You could have a dish of canned peaches next to the cake.

Then what?
Mr. Fielding had asked her.

Stella wished the switchboard would blink, the telephone would ring, and she'd have to answer it. That was her job, first and foremost.

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe go to graduate school. Get a master's degree.” She thought,
He doesn't own me. He's been good to me, but he doesn't have a right to ask about my future. It's mine.

“I see you're engaged.”

“Yes, sir.” A wave of nervousness swept over Stella. She could not think of her engagement without thinking of danger.
She your fiancée?

“When's the wedding?”

“We don't know. We have another year of school.”

From the balcony, she peered down through the glass top of the accessories counter on the main floor at a row of purses. Part of her job was to watch for shoplifters.

“That's right. You're smart to get your education. You've got a pretty little diamond there.”

He surveyed his store. He didn't sell diamonds. The jewelry in accessories was set with rhinestones. He was glad not to be responsible for the quality of the diamond in Miss Silver's engagement ring.

In the shoe department Mr. Sole, a full head of gray hair, a gray mustache, was kneeling before another customer. Mr. Sole started at age twelve in the grocery department; he would have worked for the Fieldings for fifty years, come one more. Mr. Fielding intended to present him with a check for $1,000.

A thousand dollars,
the phrase was hefty, had a certain thud to it. “To show appreciation,” he would say, each word held tightly between his lips for fear that the phrase would burst at the seams. Mr. Fielding feared he might weep at the presentation banquet. How could he possibly convey the way Mr. Sole's devotion moved him:
$1,000. To show appreciation.

Mr. Sole was Chinese. How in the world had he ever come to Birmingham? Mr. Fielding looked at the young woman sitting at the switchboard. Lucky. She had her whole future ahead of her. Who knew what she might become, might do? Would certainly feel.

“Where's it from?” he asked of her diamond. “Jobe Rose? Bromberg's?”

“Kay's,” she answered.

He sighed. “Bromberg's is probably the oldest family business in Birmingham. Maybe Alabama. You get quality there.”

Mr. Fielding watched Mr. Sole laboriously rise from his kneeling before the customer.
The soul of the shoe department,
new employees always joked. But it was true. Someday soon he would leave Fielding's, and all Mr. Fielding would be able to do would be to hand him the check, to say the words: “A token of our deep appreciation for fifty years of faithful service.”

And then Mr. Sole would leave them. Mr. Fielding didn't know where Mr. Sole went to church, but he was sure he went someplace.

“Get your education,” he said again to Stella. “That's something nobody can ever take away from you.” He turned to go back to his office behind the switchboard. “Don't get mixed up in any demonstrations. You won't, will you, Miss Silver? Don't ruin your future.”

“No, sir,” she replied.
But I could,
she thought.
I can do whatever I want to.

“STEEL WILL DIE IN BIRMINGHAM,” PHILIP FIELDING SAID
to the inner circle. “It's dying now.”

Twelve businessmen, in immaculate and stylish dark suits, silk ties hanging from their necks, stared at him, then nodded. Permission given to continue—and permission had to be given in this group for it to exist—Philip Fielding went on.

“We are the future in Birmingham—commerce and education. Particularly medical education.”

Could he have continued if one face had darkened with disagreement? He must persuade them to change, but he could not dissent. No maverick—certainly not himself—could break away howling for integration. No, they had to move as a collective body, and yet the circle must be widened.

“Why do I say steel is dying? Why is that important to us?” All of them talked with the steel men, knew their attorneys as friends and neighbors, but the Inner Circle was a mixture of Christians and Jews who owned other businesses. “Foreign steel, cheap labor, no unions abroad. The unions are too strong now here in Birmingham. We all know that. But the economy of this city will rest more and more on us. To flourish—we
must
have one thing. What is it?” He saw anxiety rise on their faces like the mercury in so many thermometers in a heat wave. Quickly, he said, “Solidarity.”

Everyone relaxed. The word was mumbled with approval. Now was the time to make the herd take a step. He spoke not from his heart—which was
thoroughly conservative and loved most the South of his own childhood—but from shrewd necessity.

“With solidarity amongst us, we can afford to talk to
them
. I've already talked with A. G. Gaston. He's a reasonable colored man. A businessman. He's not pushy. He's as polite as any one of us. Most important he's a very successful businessman. He's respected in his community and we can offer him respect. I respect him. Bull Connor is an embarrassment to us.

“The idea, gentlemen, is to open negotiations. Then we can take time to plan our course. Then this rioting and demonstrating in the streets will end.

“A colored boy on his bicycle was badly beaten, nearly killed. He was nowhere near a demonstration. We don't want
that,
gentlemen. We're not for violence. Violence is the worst thing in the world for business. They call themselves nonviolent—and some of them are—devoutly so—but we have loved the peace and harmony of the races all our lives. We are the ones who really treasure and who really can create a nonviolent atmosphere.

“Couldn't you sit here just the same, if Mr. Gaston were sitting on my left, and maybe Mr. What's-his-name, who made a fortune in black beauty products, with him sitting between, say, Jerry and Mike? You could do that, couldn't you, Jerry?”

Jerry chuckled nervously. “I don't quite know what we'd talk about,” he said.

“It doesn't matter,” Fielding exclaimed. “It's the
tone
we're working with. We're accessible, in the right atmosphere. We'll work up to issues.”

Mike said, “Everybody could talk about his church.”

“Yes,” Fielding said, “or temple. How is the atmosphere amongst people we're working with? We could talk about that. What do people fear and hope? Both sides. We can share that.”

“Should we include pastors themselves?”

And so inch by inch, the unbroken circle moved away from the old intransigence toward being slightly more willing to negotiate with the other half of the citizens of Birmingham.

 

WHEN FIELDING GOT HOME,
he collapsed into his La-Z-Boy and asked his wife to please bring him some orange juice.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Her little birdlike face was screwed up. At
one temple Gertrude still had crossed bobby pins. She'd been too anxious to take down all her pin curls.

“Come sit with me,” he said and drew her onto his lap. “I don't like it,” he said. “I didn't want it. But Birmingham will change.”

“Who was Mahatma Gandhi, Philip?”

“You remember him from the newsreels. Back in the 1940s. A tiny little brown man in a loincloth. He made the British give up India.”

AIMING FOR
120
WORDS PER MINUTE, GLORIA TYPED AS
fast as she could. While her fingers flew by touch alone, she kept her eyes on the Gregg manual; she loved to hear the ding of the typewriter bell at the end of the line, then her left hand flew up to the lever for the carriage return. Her ring finger felt the smooth metal curve, and—slam—the carriage rolled the paper down a line, and she was typing again, lickety-split.

It was a speed test. As soon as she got home from college, she gave herself two ten-minute speed tests every day. You had to deduct ten words from the word count for every error.

Still dressed in her pleated school skirt, she sat down at her desk as soon as she'd washed her hands. The typewriter was an old little Smith-Corona portable, Clipper model, but she felt lucky to have it. Very few of her acquaintances owned a typewriter—certainly not Christine. None had a car of her own. And what did it mean that she had these things? They made her shy, not normal. Because she was privileged, she must find a way to give back.

It was only three o'clock in the afternoon, and both her parents were at work. As tax accountants, her parents wore professional clothing, but few people saw them at their white-owned firm. They were kept out of sight, in a small special room, but they were crackerjack accountants, receiving regular raises and many expressions of appreciation from the owners. For Christmas, they were always given a frozen turkey and a plastic container of cranberry sauce, which embarrassed them, as they could easily afford their own.

They would leave work at 5:30
P.M
., as would Gloria's four aunts, who
would come quietly home in their gray dresses and white aprons, almost as crisp as when they left in the morning. The aunts would meet one another at bus stops along the route home till all four were together. They would come walking up the driveway quietly in their low-heeled shoes; sometimes two of them would be holding hands.
Domestics,
the sociology books referred to them that way.
Maids,
they called themselves, and each one, when in the world, would avert her eyes and seem as quiet and reserved as Gloria.

Wednesday night the aunts went to choir practice. During the week, from the garage apartment, Gloria could hear them singing in their barbershop quartet, a capella. Gloria imagined their four heads close together. From time to time one or the other would close her eyes in the bliss of making music—“Down by the Old Mill Stream,” “Sail On, Harvest Moon, Sail On,” “I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Now the house was quiet, except for the dozens of dings from the Clipper's carriage return.

Ten minutes of breakneck typing, then a few minutes to check the speed and accuracy, a walk around the room to loosen up, and the second speed test. Seventy words a minute. A second test: sixty-five words a minute. Gloria's pattern usually was to do better the first time—just seize the moment, all or nothing. Plunge in.

The typing was her insurance: in case she couldn't do what she hoped and prayed to do with the cello, then she could be a super secretary, one who could type accurately at phenomenal speed. Every month her average speed reliably increased by three words per minute, but she worried that she might be reaching the limits of her typing talent.

When she finished the second speed trial, Gloria fetched her cello from its special space between the head of her bed and the wall. The cello garage. The instrument stood vertically in a hard case—almost the size of a coffin; the lid opened like a door, which she would leave standing open ready to receive the instrument again two hours later. She removed the bow from its slot inside the lid. The music stand holding the unaccompanied Bach suites was already waiting.

She loved the moment after she sat down, when she fitted the curve of the cello's shoulder under her left breast. Now she was one with the instrument. Holding the cello between her knees, she tightened and then rosined the bow. Beginning on the open C string, she began her scales in four octaves. As
always the thumb of the left hand complained when she went into thumb position for the higher two octaves, but she ignored it. She must earn the privilege of playing Bach, even in an empty house in an ambitious black neighborhood in Birmingham.

At the top of the scale, she remembered hearing rapid scales tumbling through the piano room window at Miles College. She'd never heard such assertive and fluid scale work, effortlessly running the eight octaves of the piano. It was thrilling. She'd gone to the window to peek in.

Red hair! A white man, obviously. Skinny forearms, the fingers of each hand a mere pale blur as they swept in unison up and down the keyboard. Stunned, a bit embarrassed for her spying, she turned quickly away after that snatch of a glance.

In the empty house, she paused at the top of her scale, recalling the pianist's oceanic competence. Then she raced down the scale, spiccato; with one note to a stroke, she bounced down, emanating perfect little spheres of sound, handfuls of tiny, bouncing balls of notes, showing off to herself.