Four Spirits (38 page)

JUST BEFORE SUNSET, STELLA'S AUNT PRATT WANTED HER
steel fingernail file, and she knew exactly where it was (she knew where all her things were) in the shallow drawer of her dresser hopelessly across the room. She'd have to wait till somebody who could walk well came into the room. She'd already taken off her leg brace. Then she'd ask, very courteously, if that able person would please look in the top, flat, handkerchief drawer and get her steel fingernail file.

She'd just picture something else instead of her steel file: the little wooden carved rose embalmed in a clear plastic bar. The tiny rose pin was in a box on the bedside cart; Pratt could reach her jewelry if she wanted to. Stella had liked to pin the red rose on the hem of her short skirt when she was a little girl, so she could see it better than if it was up on her shoulder. With her small thumb, Stella—poor little orphan—would rub the plastic over the rose again and again, but the delicate rose was safe inside the plastic.

These days, when Stella came into the room, she surprised Pratt—Why, who was this grown girl? Hair flipped up so even all around from shoulder to shoulder. Pratt often forgot now that time was passing. It had been the 1940s and now it was almost the mid-1960s, and what had happened to the 1950s? What was she herself doing all that time while Stella was getting bigger? And why was it that she was worried about Stella?

Stella had graduated, but she was always going to school, still. To teach, she said. She had decided to teach black children, like a missionary. Was that what integration was? Stella seemed strained and thin, but Krit never noticed.
Maybe Pratt imagined it. She spent her nights imagining now, and watching her stories on TV in the day.

The mirror over the old dresser was mottled and cast a darkness over anyone who looked in it. But a mirror could be resilvered, Pratt knew that. Someday, she'd have the big mirror brightened up and then it would flash, over there in the corner, like sunlight off the pond. Down at Helicon.

That day when Barney Chesser went mad from dog bite. The pond had flashed brightly that day. She'd noticed the brightness of the pond just before somebody—well, she knew who—had dashed in and said,
Barney's gone mad. He said for his sister to put down her iron—there in the front bedroom—to put down her iron and to pick up the twin babies and get out of there. Barney said he felt funny. He said Sis must lock the door.

The doctor had his lariat, and he had been west once and knew how to throw a lasso. They broke out the window and lassoed Barney and threw loops around the bed and tied him to the bed, all the time his head slinging back and forth, trying to bite, the foam flying. If the foam landed on an open sore, you were as good as bitten, and no hope for you.

And what could they do for Barney Chesser, bit by a mad dog?

He'll bite off his tongue!
one said. To prevent that, the doctor took his pearl-handled knife and stuck it between Barney's teeth. And Barney bit the pearl handle in two.

By nightfall, he was dead. And Pratt, in her house across the street, folded her hands on the windowsill and watched them douse the house with kerosene. Except for what was in the mad room, they carried out all the furniture. Pratt watched the men hold their torches to the corners of the house. She stood there, her arms folded across the windowsill, with little Son beside her till Gene, her husband, came back, and they all three stood together to watch the house burn.

Before she left this afternoon, Stella had stood in front of the mirror primping, but what was that place she had mentioned going to?
If y'all needed to find me, Cat Cartwright and I are working out at Miles College. I'd rather you not tell Aunt Krit, though.

Pratt remembered Barney's sister Bernice, her only nineteen, snatching up her twin babies, hurrying, setting a baby on the floor once she was outside the front bedroom so she could lock the door. It would have been the big twin she sat down; she always carried him on the right, where she was stronger.

Sometimes Pratt felt the world was like Barney Chesser's bedroom. Somebody was going to go mad. Like Hitler did. Pratt wished, if she could, that she'd be able to pick up what was most precious and get out of there, if that happened in Alabama. Watch the whole South burn up, from a safe distance.

Stella ought not be out late after dark with colored people, but Pratt would bite off her tongue before she'd say anything to Stella, or Krit, about it. “Mind your own business,” her mama had said, “if you want to get along with people.” Men had been killed over in Mississippi: two Yankees and a darkie. “Civil rights workers,” the TV had said.

Pratt ran her thumb over the top of the nail on her first finger. It had a split there; she could feel it. She wished she had her steel fingernail file.

“AT THE KLAVERN,” RYDER JONES TOLD HIS WIFE, “THEY
say white teachers are going out to Miles College.”

“Well, you can't believe everything you hear,” Lee answered. “Now tuck your head down so I can shave your neck.” She was proud of her new electric shaver. What with Bobby getting big and needing haircuts, and Ryder going to the barbershop every two weeks, and Tommy outgrowing his bowl cut, she figured they'd save in the long run if she invested in some barber tools. She'd stitched up a little white shoulder shawl with a turned-up pocket all round the hem to catch cut hair. She'd used some leftover Klan robe fabric.

“Bob said he saw an old Pontiac with two white girls in it turn in at Miles College.”

“Maybe they was lost.”

“Maybe it's time for some teachers and students out there to learn a lesson.”

She lifted the shaver away from the back of his neck. “What kind of lesson, hon?” She let the shaver go on buzzing.

“Don't play dumb, Lee. You know I don't like that.”

The shaver vibrated and buzzed in her hand like the most powerful bumblebee in the world. She thought how brave kids used to sneak up on bees massaging a clover head; the brave ones could grab a bee by its wings and hold it up buzzing between two clamped-together fingers.

Lee decided she'd better not say anything else to Ryder about his business. She put one hand on top of her husband's head and pointed his chin down. He
let her, just like she was the real barber. Now the white skin rose up out of the cape, a little crescent of white skin below the sunburn.

“Ain't you 'bout finished?” Ryder asked impatiently. “I'm tired of this.”

“I just wanted to finish up good so it would last.”

“Kids at your mama's?”

“Yep.” But why was he asking her that? It was Saturday night, first Saturday night of the month, Mama always kept them. “She'll bring 'em to Sunday school in the morning, hon.”

“Lee, come round here to the front and kneel down and look me in the eye.”

She obeyed at once, snapped off the shaver, and laid it on the kitchen table.

“Now,” he said, looking down at her like he was a king on a throne instead of a fool on a stool. “Can I trust you, Lee?”

“ 'Course, honey. I ain't done nothing.” But she was feeling guilty and scared. “Not a thing.”

“I'm talking 'bout the future.”

Why did he look all nervous and eager? What did he want to do to her?

“Yes, you can, honey,” she said. “Only—”

“Onlyest what?”

“Don't hurt me.”

He smiled at her, and she felt the fear rise up her throat like the mercury column in a thermometer.

“I need to teach you something,” he said.

“Oh no,” she pleaded. “What I done done, Ryder?”

“I don't mean like that. I'm gonna share something with you. Something secret, and I got to know I can trust you not to tell.”

“I won't ever tell anybody,” she said. Her knees were hurting from pressing on the hard kitchen floor. Her eyes were just above the level of the tabletop. She looked at her barber tools lying on the kitchen table—the long skinny scissors with the extra loop for bracing. The little black plastic comb. The electric shaver, the dusting brush with the green plastic knob handle. The barber instruments resembled pieces from a doctor kit, special and expensive. “I could charge the neighborhood kids a quarter,” she said. “Do their hair. Earn a little extra.”

“Pay attention to what I'm trying to tell you.”

She stared up into his eyes.

“I've got the directions, and the things we need”—he was almost panting—“to make bombs. I want you to help me practice it. Not to set anything off by ourselves, but just to practice. And I don't want you to tell a living soul.”

“I won't, Ryder. I never would. But I don't know nothing about bombs.”

“I do,” he said. “Bob's been trying to teach me. You're good with your hands, Lee. I always been kind of clumsy, and my fingers is stiff from being out in the weather all the time.”

“Want me to untie the cape now?”

“You can, but that's not the point. You got good fingers what with sewing and now barbering. You could help attach wires. That kind of thing.”

She rose up from her knees. “Ryder, I'm not sure that's a woman kind of thing. I don't know if the other wives—”

“That's why it's got to be just our secret. I don't want you talking to any other wives about this. Not even if they're Klan. Especially if they're Klan.”

Her gaze fell on the green plastic handle of the soft barber brush. Bombs? The handle reminded her of marble what with a few streaks of white running through it. She didn't want to bomb anybody. She could hear again the distant thud when the little colored Sunday school girls were exploded. She blurted, “I want another pair of panty hose.”

“You what!” He was turning red in the face.

“Here, hon, let me dust you off with this soft brush,” she hurriedly suggested. Lee knew that the soft dusting always soothed him. She made a stroke on his neck. He closed his eyes. She softly, softly brushed the little cut hairs from his neck and cheeks. Carefully, she brushed down his nose like she was painting his picture with the brush. The ugly color drained back down into his body.

“The panty hose could be my reward for helping,” she said. “Just one pair. They're so modern. I just love them.”

“I like you in a garter belt,” he said, with his eyes closed.

She saw the lust tension gathering in him—just the words
garter belt
.

“Well, I could still wear a garter belt whenever you liked.” She stopped brushing his face. “And I could wear the panty hose when I liked.” He opened his eyes. She looked at him and smiled. “I got a garter belt on right now.”

“And you'd study the directions and go over it with me?”

She carried the barber cape over to the garbage and carefully shook the hair
out of the hem-pocket into the brown grocery sack. “Mama always said I could learn 'bout anything I studied on.”

He slid off the kitchen stool and held out his hand to her. “Let's take advantage of the kids being gone.”

He winked a nasty little wink, but suddenly she felt excited. They would just go to it, fast, before he hit her about something.

IN A SHADY GROVE, IN THE DAPPLED LIGHT OF LATE AFTER-
noon, Fred Shuttlesworth took a little time just for himself in the wooded area behind Pilgrim Baptist Church. It was Monday, and he'd come down from Cincinnati to lead his regular Monday-night mass meeting. He sat on a large pitted rock because it helped him identify with the apostle Peter. “Upon this rock…,” Christ had said of Peter, “I will build my church.”

And what was a church—any church—but a Movement? If the spirit inhabited a group of people, it didn't matter what church walls they were inside. They could be outdoors; they could be marching in the streets. Anybody in a demonstration was really in a church, a church on the move, because the spirit inhabited them and made their feet to move. The body was the temple of God and it was the Holy Spirit that came to live in the body and make it a temple.

This quiet place…with just him alone, quiet—it held a holy moment just like later, inside, when with all eyes turned upon him he would give his body, and his sweat, and his mind. The great flow of words would take form from his tongue and teeth and lips to tumble from his mouth like a mountain stream flowing from a cave in the high hills….

But now for his quiet moment with nature, alone on a rock.

He liked the spotted light, not gloomy and depressed like the shade, not bright and overbearing, urgent and punishing like full sun. He looked up into the lacy leaves. They had special trees here. Landscaped trees they called river birch, with fine cut pale green leaves, and whitish bark, scaly, mottled with gray, unpredictable.
Where the Lord leads, I will follow.

What was he without Scripture? More than the full armor of God, the Word was
inside
him. And the Word was
outside
him, suggested by the rippling of these little leaves and by the dancing shadows they cast on his skin. He thought of the four little girls who had passed, and his eyes filled with tears. He thought of his own children, their strength and their ready willingness to stand with him. And Ruby, his wife.

He placed his hand very gently, tenderly, on the rough, pocked surface of the rock, and his body remembered how he had lain, horizontal in his bed, and how he was lifted, lifted in his sleep, by the bomb placed under the floor of the house, directly under the position of his bed. It must have been a flash—all in a flash the bomb lifted the floor joists and scattered them, and lifted the floor planks and broke them, and lifted the legs of the bed and the bed frame, and the wire box springs up into the air, and the whole mattress and him on it in his pajamas. The sound roared around him, but he had been in the whirlwind of the Lord, kept safe in the eye of the storm.
Fear not, for I am with thee
….

In the quiet, he pondered these things and loved the small still voice inside his bosom.

Two boys came walking toward him, nicely dressed, respectable. One was little Edmund Powers, the other was tall, looked like Edmund, his father? No, Edmund's father had died in the steel mills. No, it had to be his older brother.

“I seek you out, Reverend Shuttlesworth,” Edmund chirped like a little bird.

“Come here, son.”

He held out his arm and had the little boy sit beside him on the rock. He put his arm around him and drew him close. “Howdy-do,” he said to the big boy.

“My li'l bro, he say I must meet you. My name Charles.”

Fred Shuttlesworth took his time. This was the quiet place, later the frenzy and the shouting. He studied their faces, so much alike, smooth and quiet, but the boy's with a brightness and the young man's with a calm that meant love. He loved his little brother. He couldn't do much for him, but he loved him.

“Was there somethin' you wanted to ask?”

“Edmund, he say I must ask you what mus' I do to be saved.”

“Saved?” Reverend Shuttlesworth asked shrewdly. “What do you mean by ‘saved'?”

“Saved from sin,” Edmund piped up.

Reverend Shuttlesworth squeezed Edmund's shoulder, but he said nothing. He continued to look at the big boy. Now the big boy couldn't meet his
gaze. He looked down at his feet. He sighed. Charles threw his head back and stared at the sky, like a prisoner waiting for the verdict.

“Saved from this world, I reckon.” Charles continued to gaze toward the canopy of leaves and the bits of pale blue that showed between them. “How mus' I be?”

“Come to the meetin',” Shuttlesworth answered. “Come see what the Spirit says to you. Let the Spirit tell you how you mus' behave.”

Charles looked right into the minister's eyes. “Tha's what Edmund tell me.” Charles smiled. “I mus' come to the mass meetin' and I mus' meet you.”

Again the minister hugged the little boy. “How's your mama?”

“She fine,” Edmund answered. “Baby, too. She name him Stoner.”

Part of a chain of love, Edmund sounded happy. Shuttlesworth thought: Edmund's own big brother loved him; now he could love his little brother. Edmund smiled at his minister, and Shuttlesworth felt warmed.
Blessed boy, who could bring blessings to others.

“But I don't work in the grocery no more,” Edmund added. “I a shoeshine boy now.”