Chapter 17
The answer is no.
God doesn’t care what’s happening in Florida. And, apparently, Mr. J. Edgar Hoover doesn’t either. (Of course, in little Mitchell’s mind, God and Mr. Hoover have become one and the same.)
Without Anyone’s intervention, the Miami Klan continues to terrorize that city’s non-white and non-Protestant neighborhoods. You can read all about it in the newspaper; though, since the big blast last June, the stories are buried in a back section . . . as if it’s perfectly
normal
to have dynamite blow up another Catholic church, or a Jewish synagogue, or Negro housing project.
Everyone says it’s a miracle nobody’s been killed.
Yet.
Last Saturday, the Orlando Klan jumped in, blowing up a perfectly good ice-cream stand called the Creamette. We drove over the next day and I could not believe my eyes. What was once a nice little drive-up business is now a heap of rubble, as if a nasty-tempered giant monster stepped on just
that
place and flattened it to nothing.
Daddy talked to the owner and his wife, who were picking through the piles, shaking their heads. “Somebody called us,” they told him, “a man’s voice telling us we better stop serving white people and Negroes from the same window. We only had the one window to hand out the ice-cream cones.
What
were we supposed to do?”
The Orlando paper says the blast hurled concrete blocks two hundred fifty feet in the air. The lady across the street said she spent the entire day picking up rocks, pieces of metal, paper napkins and the little white wrappers they put ice-cream cones in, scattered all over her yard.
Everybody’s talking about it: the people at church, the customers at Voight’s, the last of the summer tourists heading home for Labor Day and, of
course
, the ladies at Miz Lillian’s Beauty Parlor.
Miz Maggie Brass, wife of Deacon Aldo, is on the same Labor Day–Christmas–Easter perm schedule I am. (Nobody gets a summer perm. The weather’s so hot and heavy that everybody’s hair frizzes, perm or not, so why bother?)
“It’s hurricane season,” Miz Maggie says. “Got everybody on edge, doin’ crazy things with dynamite.”
“No, no, it’s the Nigras gettin’
uppity
, movin’ into their fancy housing projects,” says Miz Opal Taylor, in for her weekly shampoo-and-set. “The Klan’s just keepin’ ’em in their place. I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Eugene Cox, that Georgia Congressman, y’all know him? He says it’s the
hand
of Stalin
behind these Nigra uprisings.”
“
Up
risings?” Miz Lillian laughs, coaxing Miz Opal’s top curls into place with a red rat-tail comb. “Far as I can see, the Negroes haven’t done a thing! It’s the Klan that’s
doin
’ it all.”
“And why’d they bomb the Jewish synagogues and the Catholic church? None of ’em have a
single
Negro member,” Miss Iris, Miz Lillian’s assistant, wants to know.
“Be
cause
, Iris,” Miss Opal, sounding aggravated, says,
“those left-wing liberals are
ag
itators, givin’ the Nigras
ideas
about livin’ next to whites. Next thing y’know, they’ll wanta be eatin’ in our
res
taurants, usin’ our toilets,” Miz Opal says.
“Maybe even comin’ to our beauty parlors.” Miz Lillian winks at me in the mirror, aggravating Miss Opal right back.
“Lillian! You’re not about to let a Nigra woman in here!” Miz Maggie barks, her voice rising out of the rinsing sink.
“I don’t know, Maggie. I never had the chance to work with that kind of hair. Might be interestin’,” Miz Lillian says, stifling herself.
At supper, I relate Miz Opal’s “hand of Stalin” comments to my family.
“That’s ridiculous,” Mother says, Miz Opal being one of the church ladies she regularly avoids.
“Devil’s trick, my dear,” Daddy says, shaking his head.
“What do you mean?” Ren asks, making a face at the spoonful of succotash Mother’s placed on his plate.
“If you’re the bad guy, people are
against
you, right?” Daddy asks, pointing a fork full of limas in Ren’s direction.
“Right,” Ren nods.
“Best way to get people rooting
for
you is to accuse your enemy of being something worse than you are.”
Ren frowns. “You mean if people think that Negroes are turning Communist . . . that’s supposed to make it okay for the Klan to blow up their houses?”
“Exactly,” Daddy tells him.
“Mother’s right. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Ren mutters, turning his attention to his meat loaf.
“But will it work?” I want to know.
“I certainly hope not,” Mother says.
“Depends.” Daddy leans forward, both elbows on the table. All of sudden, he’s very serious. “Sometimes, this kind of thing starts out small, like a new plant, a vine like kudzu, for instance. If nobody pays attention to it, it grows and grows, and before you know it, it’s taken over a whole hill-side, choked the life out of every other plant around it.”
“Warren,” Mother says, in a way that means
quit scaring
the children.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” Daddy shoots back at her. “These are devilish times we’re living in, Lizbeth. There’s no hiding that from anybody, especially these children.”
At Daddy’s stinging tone, Mother retreats behind her Poker Face, gets up and clears the table. It’s their last exchange of the evening.
To tell you the truth, I’m worried about my mother. Ever since we went to visit the Creamette, or rather the place where the Creamette used to be, ever since we toed our way through the rubble of what’s left of that other family’s business, she’s not been herself. Fact is, none of us are.
Chapter 18
The number eighty-six school bus lumbers to a squeaking stop in front of the post office. The bill of Taddy Carver’s green John Deere cap turns profile, nodding toward the steps. Taddy’s big hand cuffs and thrusts the handle. The doors split open and the boys—Ren plus Roy and Dwayne Samson—tumble out ahead of me, barking and romping like bloodhounds released from their cages, eager for the woods.
Over the din of their cries for weekend adventure, Taddy’s cap dips a silent “See you Monday” to me. The doors swish closed and the bus, clutch complaining mightily, heaves itself back onto the road. The Samson boys cut left toward their house, but I amble right, behind the bolting bird dog that is my brother.
It’s a relief to be back in school,
I decide, feeling the first-week jitters crowd out this summer’s insanity.
As the front porch door slams behind us, the phone is ringing in that jingle-jangle way that means it’s a party-line call. Ren, knowing it could only be Miss Maybelle at the Post Office or Miz Sooky across the street, tears into the bathroom.
“Reesa! Where’s your daddy? I
need
him,
quick.
” The voice is Miss Maybelle’s and it’s urgent.
“He’s not here, ma’am, probably at the packinghouse.”
“You’ve
got
to find him. I need his help
now!
Understand?”
“Y-Yes, ma’am.” Something is very wrong. There’s no doubt about that.
“He must come right away!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, sensing no time for questions. “I’ll find him.”
Mother answers on the first ring.
“Where’s Daddy . . . something’s wrong at the post office . . . Miss Maybelle needs him,” I tell her in a rush.
“He’s gone over to Winter Garden to pick up a tractor part. Reesa, what is it?”
“She didn’t say. Just that he needed to come quick!”
“Weren’t you just there, Reesa? Did you see anything wrong?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.” What could it be?
“Robert’s due any minute,” Mother tells me. “I’ll send him along as soon as he gets here.”
As I hang up the phone, Ren demands an explanation. Getting it, he turns without a word and heads out the door.
“Where are you going?” I yell, running after him, then, realizing his intent, race to catch him.
The front of the post office is as dead as usual this time of day, at least two hours before the mail is sorted and available for pickup. There are no cars or trucks, front or back, no sign of anything or anyone outside. Carefully cracking the door, we peer inside, then back at each other. One whiff of that musky-sweet scent and we
know
, without asking, what’s wrong.
“Damn, need my fork stick!” Ren whispers, tiptoeing in with a hunter’s grace. The lobby’s empty, but over the counter, in the shaft of sunlight slashing across the backroom floor, I see the diamondback rattler, coiled and spitting at a frozen Miss Maybelle. The rattler whorls in the dusty light, dead center between Miss Maybelle, who’s trapped at the front counter, and the room’s only exit at the back.
“Where’s your daddy?” Miss Maybelle asks us desperately, nothing moving but her mouth.
“He can’t come, but Robert’s on his way,” I assure her, watching Ren size up the situation. Over his shoulder, something in the corner catches my eye.
“Can you use the push broom?” I ask and point.
“Yes!” he says. “Help me up, then hand it to me.”
“What are you two doing? Don’t come in here!” Miss Maybelle cries out of the side of her mouth, eyes glued to the snake.
I hoist Ren up on the counter and he squirms quickly across it and to the right, out of the snake’s line of sight. Quietly he says, “Don’t worry, Miss Maybelle, I’ve caught a
million
snakes. You stand real still now.
I’ll
get him.”
With great care, I pass him the long-handled push broom, then reach across to put my hand over Miss Maybelle’s ice-cold claw clinging to the counter’s edge. As Ren mountain-climbs across the wall of mailboxes and steps lightly, gingerly onto the worktable, the snake senses something and bobs his hood. Miss Maybelle’s bony fingers find mine and crush them so tightly I cry out, a sharp yelp of pain.
Ren raises a finger to his lips, then inches down to his knees. He twirls the broom into position, brushes up, rail-side down. Holding it like a pool cue, eyeing his mark, he rams it down onto the back base of the snake’s skull, pinning it, tail wildly flopping, to the floor.
He looks up, grinning ear to ear. “Can you toss me an empty mail sack, Miss Maybelle?” he asks her.
“Is it safe to move?” she wants to know, still clutching my hand.
“Perfectly,” he tells her.
Miss Maybelle lets go, grabs a soft canvas sack from under the counter and with a nervous jerk heaves it Ren’s way. Catching it with one hand, maintaining pressure on the flat, trapped head with the other, Ren slides off the table and scoops up the writhing body, tail first into the sack. With a practiced flick, he lifts the broom and yanks the drawstring, securing the rattler inside.
“Safe and sound, Miss Maybelle,” he says, holding the sack, like a prize, up in the air.
Relief wilts her. “Oh, my dear boy, thank you, thank you,” she says.
“No problem,” Ren tells her. “How’d he get in, in the first place?”
“Must have snuck in during the afternoon delivery. I turned around and it was just
there
.” She shudders. “Will you take it out and kill it?”
“
Kill
him? He was just looking for a safe place to sleep. Naw, I’ll let him go, out in the scrub where he belongs.”
Out front, we hear the sudden rumble and heave of Robert’s motorcycle. The big front door bangs open. “Miss Maybelle, Miz Mac says there’s trouble. What’s wrong?” Robert growls, ready for action.
“Not a thing,” she answers, her eyes lighting on Ren. “Not anymore.”
Ren, still holding the squirming sack, recounts his heroics for Robert. The sun streams through the window, bathing Miss Maybelle in light. As she thanks us again, I find myself blinking at her powerful resemblance to the pretty bride-to-be in the photo in our attic.
Vaylie’s postcard arrives the following week, her choice an unfortunate one for our postmistress. The picture on front shows a coiled diamondback rattler, tail and triangular head erect, pointy fangs like drapery hooks ready to strike. Red letters on the front say
GREETINGS from the Natural History
Museum, Washington, D.C.
On the back, she writes:
Guess who’s on tour again? Is Junior High great? I hate
missing the first few weeks, takes forever to catch up. Did you
know a rattlesnake is part of the Pit Viper family? I told
Mamma that since she always calls Daddy’s mamma “the old
viper” that must make me part rattler. Maybe I’m related to the
bunch we saw in ol’ Dry Sink. If you see one, tell ’em “hi” from Cousin Viper! Will write more when I can.
Love, VAYLIE
You’ve got something there, Vaylie, I think. There’s a bit of the rattler in all of us. But as far as I’ve seen, human snakes are a whole lot meaner than the reptile kind.
Chapter 19
October third is a summer day with an autumn date. Ren and I spent the morning helping Sal and Sophia get ready for this afternoon’s crowd. In the scrawny shade under the scrub pines behind Tomasinis’ store, over a hundred people are assembling to cheer their beloved Jackie Robinson, and the Brooklyn Dodgers, to pennant glory over the nasty New York Giants.
After a season that, according to Ren, was pretty much a one-horse race, with the Dodgers in the lead April through September, the Giants came out of nowhere to force a pennant play-off, the three-game cockfight that, one way or the other, ends today.
Already, we’ve raked the dirt free of pinecones and rearranged the rough-sawn benches into semicircles facing the back of the store. Against the wall, Sal’s perched his small black-and-white TV set on a plywood shelf, suspended by ropes out of the window of their upstairs apartment. We’ve stood on the ground below while Sal fiddled with the twenty-five-foot antenna, yelling our opinions on the screen’s reception from the faraway Atlanta station. We’ve stocked the Coke-Cola cooler and arranged the charcoal in the side-split fifty-gallon barrels where Sal will barbecue, and we will serve, his secret-recipe, all-beef frankfurters, “like da Stahl-Meyers at Ebbets Field, only betta.”
Luther and Armetta are among the first to arrive just after noon, with Reverend Stone from St. John’s A.M.E. I see Jerry Tee, Jimmy Lee and Natty and others who work on our picking crew are here, and old ladies and young mothers and children who, lacking real Dodger baseball caps, wear blue cotton kerchiefs tied to their heads. They race around like a band of miniature pirates.
The hot dog work before the game is fast and furious. The talk around me is all baseball.
Marvin would have loved
this
, I think with an ache around my heart, as old Sal, the only person present who’s actually been to Ebbets Field, holds court: One boy asks, “Mistuh Sal, Big Nate says they usta be the Trolley Dodgers? What’s a trolley, anyway?” Some young men challenge Sal to “tell Willie ’bout Babe Ruth’s fastball in the ’sixteen Series ’gainst the Red Sox.” A man in an old brown Grays cap wants to argue: “Babe Ruth? Smokey Joe Williams could outplay Ruth any day of th’ week!”
At five minutes before game time, in a move that’s an important part of this behind-the-store ritual, Reverend Stone rises for the opening prayer. Reverend Stone is a wiry man with a big, booming voice. He holds a blanched palm high above the crowd and we all, even the youngest children, respectfully bow our heads.
“Lawd,
Lawd
, we thank You for Your son
Jesus
,”
the Reverend says, and a chorus of scattered voices say, “Amen.”
“And, on this day especially, we thank You
for our
people
’s son,
Jackie.
”
At this, the “Amens” become noticeably more enthusiastic.
“Now, Lawd, we know
better
than to ask
Your involvement in
petty
sports.
But in Your Son’s
glorious
Sermon on the Mount, He told us
‘Enter ye in at the
straight
gate.
Straight
is the gate, and
narrow
is the way,
and
few
there be that find it.’
We ask, Lawd, Your blessing on young Don Newcombe,
our starting pitcher.
We ask that
his
gate be straight and narrow,
and that there be
few
today that find it.”
Amens and muffled laughter ripple through the crowd.
“Lawd, we thank You for the four apostles who
spread Your good word—
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
.
And we praise You for the good wood of four
others—
Jackie, Campy, Duke and Gil
.
May their bats ring loudly the gospel of hope, faith, fairness
and the equality of
all
men at the plate!”
“AMEN!”
“We know it’s best, Lawd, not to hope too high.”
Reverend Stone pauses to eyeball the zealots in the crowd.
“And we
promise
You, Lawd, that,
whatever
today’s outcome,
we
will
—now and forever—praise Your
holy
name!”
“AMEN and PLAY BALL!” the crowd yells enthusiastically.
Jerry Tee clambers up the stepladder to turn up the TV’s volume, loud, and the game begins. It’s a shock to hear a voice other than the honey-toned Red Barber’s, but Ren explains to me, since they’re playing at the Giants’ Polo Grounds, their man Russ Hodges is announcing the game.
Because I don’t follow baseball as fanatically as the people around me, I find myself watching them for clues as to what’s going on. Throughout the early innings, the fans are nervous, wringing their hands, shaking their heads over every pitch, hit and play. By the end of the seventh inning, the teams are tied at only one run apiece. People cast worried eyes at the TV screen and each other.
In “the top” of the eighth inning, when Maglie—the Giants’ pitcher who nobody likes—makes a mistake, a bad throw, and a Dodger named PeeWee runs home, 2–1, the fans cheer loudly. Then Maglie walks Jackie Robinson, and the crowd erupts. “Steal second, Jackie!” they holler. “Steal ’em all!” Miz Coralie Brown—the tiny old lady with a face as round and crinkled as a walnut, sitting next to Armetta— crows. But before Jackie can steal anything, batter Billy Cox hits a two-run homer and stretches the lead to 4–1. The fans are
thrilled
by that, and by the fact that in “the bottom” of the inning, the Giants don’t score a thing.
Now, in the ninth inning, the Dodger batters don’t score either. But the fans are hopeful as the teams change places. “Three more outs and we get our Series!” Ren yells in my ear, then, turning back to the screen hunched over and intent, wipes wet palms on his pants. Reverend Stone dabs his upper lip with a huge white handkerchief. Old Sal nervously taps his false teeth. And Miz Coralie holds up crooked arthritic fingers, double-crossed for luck.
The crowd is hushed and unhappy when first one, then another Giant batter gets on base. A third batter hits the first one home, bumping the score to 4–2, with two men still on base. Suddenly, there’s a great roar of disapproval as the Dodger manager walks out to remove Don Newcombe from the pitcher’s mound. “Leave ’im in!” Jimmy Lee and many others holler. “Let ’im be!” Miz Coralie wails.
The announcer Hodges identifies Newcombe’s replacement, a young pitcher named Ralph Branca.
Beside me, Ren is stunned. “Branca?
Nooooo!
” he howls as, beside him, old Sal mutters, “Is no good, Dressen, no good.”
The crowd is still grumbling as the Giants’ next batter, Bobby Thomson, comes to the plate. “Shhhhhhh, hush, now,” the old people hiss, some watching the screen, some merely listening, seeing the game inside their heads. Branca’s first pitch is a good one. “Strike one off the knees,” Hodges says. Ren and Sal eye each other in guarded relief. At the second pitch, the voice from the Polo grounds says, “Here’s a long fly . . . it’s gonna be . . . I believe . . .” And, then, a pause and the unbelievable, heart-stopping news, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”
Ren jumps up, slams his fist against the wall. “No,” he cries, “
no, NO!
” Old Sal buries his head in his hands, hiding his tears but not the moan in his throat.
Several people, including Miz Coralie, openly weep. Armetta turns to her with shiny wet cheeks. Luther and Reverend Stone stand to comfort them; Luther with a soft squeeze on his wife’s shoulder, the Reverend with a sorrowful “The Lawd giveth, and He taketh away.”
As the dejected young men, the disappointed parents and their silent children, the pairs of old people rise and turn to tread sadly home, I want to protest.
It would have been divinely
right
for these Dodgers, seven All-Stars among them, to have won this pennant. But apparently, Marvin has no damn pull in heaven. It would have been morally
just,
for Jackie Robinson especially, to have played the Series, and shown the world that Negroes are the equal of anybody. But, instead of the Dodgers’ brilliant Don Newcombe standing victorious, today black-hearted Sal Maglie— who viciously bean-balled Robinson all season—is the pennant-winning pitcher.
To my mind, because of Marvin, God owed us this win, owed the Dodgers their stay in Heaven on Earth. But, for reasons beyond me, God came down on the wrong side of right. And made baseball, as Red Barber says, “just like life.”
The late-afternoon sun pierces the pines with sharp orange swords of light. The departing fans trail long, lonesome shadows. Dusk comes fast and is wintry red.