The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (55 page)

“Hey,” Eliot says.

Dwight looks up with such a piercing hatred that Eliot nearly trips backward. The younger brother is momentarily confused, then remembers Dwight has no idea that Eliot has already apologized to Keith, which surely would have at least mitigated the glower. Eliot undresses, hanging up his suit to dry. In the morning he'll have to wash that bit of mud off the leg bottoms and give the whole thing some sort of quick ironing. He gets into his pajamas.

“I was supposed to get to read the tribute, but you weren't here to show it to me so guess I'll jus have to wait an be surprised tomorra.”

Eliot pulls the pages out of a drawer and hands them to Dwight.

“I may wanna add a few things.”

“Whatever you want.” Eliot gets under the blankets and turns away from his brother to face the wall.

As Dwight reads what Eliot has written, he softens. “Oh yeah.” After a moment he laughs out loud. Then, wonder: “I
forgot
about that.” There are sniffs and tears and Dwight finally finishes, wiping his face and looking at his brother's back. “It's beautiful, Eliot.”

Eliot is silent. Dwight looks down at the pages in his hand. “Beautiful. Jus. There's jus one thing. It might be dumb but, I was thinkin. What do you think we added somethin, I don't know, ordinary. Like, remember when Mom would be readin, like the way you hooked her onto Gwendolyn Brooks? And somethin would impress her, or make her sad, and she'd take off her glasses and sigh, an start touchin em, rubbin the frames—”

It is so powerful it comes out like a scream, Eliot's sudden wailing, sobbing, the torture as if he were being stabbed over and over not catching his breath, his pillow soaked in seconds and the flood won't stop, Dwight rushing over to lie next to his brother, behind his little brother who shakes so violently the headboard harshly and rapidly bangs the wall, and Andi and Lon rush in but leave quietly, neither of the brothers seeing them, Andi and Lon running into Aunt Beck on the stairs, the entire house lit up with Eliot's torrential grief, it won't stop, for two hours it won't subside and Dwight holding him, and Eliot letting Dwight hold him, and Dwight not letting go.

 

17

“‘Sweatin like a nigger in court,' sure you heard that comin up. Big joke till you confronted with it literally. Cracker judges, I'd consider it a resounding success to get a life sentence. Least it's not the chair. Not a lynching, victory you actually
made
it to trial. And God don't let the charge be raping a white woman, when everyone knows damn well the experts on interracial rape are white
men,
thinking colored women are theirs for the taking. One time this ole judge look like he falling to
sleep
during the proceedings, a man's
life
on the line and—” Beau stops himself, seeming shaken. He looks at Eliot, who wears his glasses for driving. “I'm talking too much. You rather I be quiet, you just concentrate on the road?”

Eliot, a vague smile on his face, shakes his head in the breeze whipping through the windows, rolled down even in late October to provide some relief from the Cotton Belt humidity. Beau had been much more considerate where Eliot was concerned since his mother's death fifteen days ago. It is late afternoon Saturday, and Eliot has been driving since they departed Indianapolis yesterday morning, waving off Beau's offers to take the wheel. On Friday, as planned, they had gone as far as Memphis, then started early this morning to make their Deep South destination before sunset. Just inside the border they had briefly stopped by the home of a local man, who hid Eliot's Falcon out back and loaned them his 1954 Plymouth turquoise two-door station wagon. Thus for their two-night stay, Eliot and Beau have in-state license plates.

“You're just being nice. You want the radio?”

“No, I wanna hear what happened with the judge who fell asleep in court.” What Beau doesn't realize is his windbagging has become a comfort to Eliot. A sense of normalcy, of life before.

“Oh you
were
listening!” Beau chuckles self-deprecatingly. He finishes the tale, the trial outcome dismally predictable, then switches on the dial. “Let's see where we are.” Mostly static, two stations playing country music. Then, “Hey!”

“What!”

“What did that sign say?”

“Nathan, Alabama, Population something. We're still fifteen miles away.”

Beau sits back. “Huh.”

“What?”

“That's where my sister lives. I had no idea it was so close.”

“You wanna stop in and say hi?”

Beau shakes his head. “Haven't seen her in twenty years. She and I get to talking we'll be there hours, and you and I will
not
be driving ole Dixie after dark.” He stares out at the high weeds lining the road. “But maybe I'll call her tomorrow.” Beau falls into a pleasant world of far-off memories, for the first time in the entire drive saying nothing for so long that when an announcer begins a mellow monologue Eliot turns up the volume, to get a feel for the local landscape and to fill the silence.

They pull onto the grounds twenty-five minutes later, half an hour before dusk. A tiny poverty-stricken Negro village at the edge of town, the houses resembling little more than shacks, but this particular shack happens to have a telephone and thus was the one the locals felt would be most useful for the Northern visitors. The hosts come out to greet their guests. Martha Coats is brown, about five feet tall and stout, her darker husband Jeremiah a sturdy six-five.

“An this is our granbaby Leona,” Martha says. Whether Leona, who looks about ten, is the offspring of their daughter or son, and where that daughter or son is now, neither Eliot nor Beau inquire. The one-story home contains two bedrooms of equal small size, and the lawyers are loaned what is apparently the child's room, a single bed and several blankets on the floor.

“You can roll it up in the day if you need walkin room,” she suggests to Eliot. “I'm assumin Beau bein the elder will have the bed.”

But Beau looks at Eliot nervously. “You want the bed, Eliot?” This sensitive generous thing is all new to him, and he seems flustered every time he speaks a kindness as if he may have done it wrong.

Eliot sets his suitcase next to the unfurled bedroll. “My brother and I used to camp in the backyard. Least now I won't get eaten by the mosquitoes.”

“You still might,” says Martha.

There are pigs' feet and greens for dinner, and they sit and get acquainted for a couple of hours. Before retiring Beau asks the Coatses if he might use their phone to call his sister in Nathan tomorrow morning before she leaves for church. The couple is delighted to hear he has people so close.

“You wanna call her now?” asks Jeremiah.

“I imagine she still goes to bed with the chickens. Last time I phoned after nine she laid me out so bad by the time she finally got around to ‘How are you?' my whole long-distance allotment had been exhausted. I had to tell her, ‘I'll let you know that next call.'”

The crickets are loud, and Beau's snoring louder. With a small flashlight, Eliot reads a while, then stares at the ceiling. In a variation of a recurring dream, it is Eliot's twenty-seventh birthday, a year from now, and he is home in Humble with cake and ice cream and Dad and Dwight. “We have a surprise for you,” Lon says, and in walks Claris. Eliot is in an ecstatic awe, and everyone laughs. “We
knew
we could fool you!” his mother says.

Early the next morning Beau phones his sister. By his tone, it's clear she's thrilled to hear from him. After a few minutes he says, “Rosie. Guess where I am?” The whole house hears her screaming response.

“Come on, make yourself useful,” Martha says to Eliot, and he follows her outside to the chicken coop to help collect eggs. “You won't be seein me an Jeremiah in the voter registration line tomarra. We're already registered.”

“Really?”

“Bout five of us they let on the rolls. Make it look like they ain't prejudiced. Don't ask me how we made it to the fortunate few, probly jus drew our names from a hat.” She counts eggs to herself. “Where your people from?”

“Maryland.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Humble.”

She frowns. “I don't know that one.” She blows on an egg. “Well I bet your mama must be proud a
you.
Lawyer.”

Eliot doesn't pause in his egg collecting. “She was.”

“Aw, she not with us no more?” Eliot shakes his head. “When she pass?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Martha nearly drops her basket. “She
jus
passed?” Eliot nods. “Aw. Bless your heart.” Martha collects more eggs. “Bless your heart,” she says again softly to herself.

When they get back in the house, Beau announces that Rosie will visit later that morning. She wants to prepare a meal for Beau, and since he can't get out there, she told him to ask Martha not to cook. She would be bringing enough for everyone, dinner
and
supper.

“Would you rather take the car and drive to her?” Eliot asks.

“Nope. Never know what might come up, we need the car.”

At 8 a.m., the three representatives from the local NAACP arrive. They are dressed casually, as if they are farmer neighbors, and perhaps they are. Warren, who gives the impression of the leader as he does most of the talking, appears to be in his mid- or late forties. Joe Archie seems mid-thirties, and Les around Eliot's age. They thank Beau and Eliot again for being here as there are no local Negro lawyers. Then they all discuss the strategy for Monday, tomorrow, over breakfast. Warren mentions a recent hysteria sparked by the integration of the high school, so they should be prepared for troublemakers.

“I hate to say it,” says Martha, “but we ain't lettin Leona go to the white school, not till things calm down anyway.”

“Wait for that, she might be graduated,” Warren says.

“Then that's the way it's gonna be. Sure, I'd like her to have the nice new books. But mostly I like havin her in one piece.”

Beau remarks, “Indianapolis schools been legally integrated since '49, but don't they do every kind of gerrymandering, trying to keep the old separate ways.”

Joe Archie grins. “Yaw Up-South, huh?”

“Sure,” Beau says. “And make no mistake: Up-South go all the way to Boston, at least.”

Rosie's car pulls in around 10:30, a half-hour after the NAACP men have left. She is light-skinned with brown freckles. Like Martha, she is short and rotund and in her fifties, as if these were traits of all local women. Beau walks out to greet her, and she has barely stopped the car before she runs to him. Her eyes dance, and Eliot sees that she adores her brother.

And Beau seems a completely different person around Rosie: soft, affectionate. Leaving the talking to her, which she does a lot of. Amusing the table with anecdotes of Beau as a boy, of their family and childhood neighbors, of the crazy colored and white folks out in Nathan. The Coatses reluctantly leave for their 11 a.m. church service around 11:45. (“Never starts earlier n noon,” Martha had remarked.) Rosie feels a little guilty for skipping church herself, but “I know the Lord'll forgive me missin this once. My brother's in town!”

Eliot decides it would be nice to leave the siblings alone to catch up, so he tells them he brought some work with him and should go into the bedroom now to look at it.

“Just a minute first,” says Rosie. She puts her hand on Eliot's. “My brother told me about you losin your mama recently, an I jus wanna say I sure am sorry.”

“Thank you.” At moments Rosie reminds him of his mother. But these days a lot of things remind him of his mother.

“We all gotta go through it. Beau was only ten when he lost his.”

“Yes, Lord,” Beau says softly, far away.

Rosie registers the confusion on Eliot's face. “Oh, you didn't know. I'm Beau's
foster
sister. We grew up together in Arkansas, an my husband Roy too. Beau was the only one his family, Miss Nancy an Mr. Melvin tried an tried but another baby never come. Beau's mama, dark as she was, still the prettiest woman in town. One day walkin down the street, these four white men start to touchin her. Broad daylight! His daddy,
big man,
find em standin outside the white saloon that night, he say real quiet, ‘Don't you never touch my wife again.' An them four men jus stare at him, shakin in their shoes, terrified to say a word. This we know for true cuz a neighbor a ours happen to be walkin by then. People was sayin, ‘Melvin, get outa town! Them white men gonna come after you!' Well he don't budge, an three days go by, four, five, he figure they done forgot all about it. Then the seventh night, everybody asleep, they come outa nowhere, hootin an a-hollerin.” She turns to Beau. “Took her, didn't they, Beau-Beau. Takin turns with her till she died.”

Beau nods, his sad eyes staring at something on the table no one else sees.

“Right in front a her ten-year-old son.”

“What happened to his father?” Eliot has fallen into Rosie's pattern of referring to Beau in the third person. Beau too seems to be reliving the tale from a distance, an outside observer, albeit not a neutral one.

“They held him to watch everything they did to his wife fore they ready for him. I don't even wanna get into what kinda mutilations before they burned him alive, an
conscious,
make sure he still got life in him before they tie him to the railroad track. His screams wakin everybody within a mile, wake me an my family. An not jus the terror. The grief, shock: what they done to poor Miss Nancy. A full hour till the locomotive come cut him in two, his wailin fill the air, seem like it burstin with all the horrors a the world. Never forget the sound till the day I die.”

Eliot stares at Beau. How could he have gone through all that and never spoken of it? How could Eliot have never
sensed
something of it in him? “You saw it?”

“I saw it,” Beau says quietly. “They meant me to see it. It was a show for
me
.”

“So my mama an daddy took him in. An we been brother an sister ever since.”

Another quiet. Then Beau says, “Now tell me how that rascal Roy's makin out.”

When Eliot feels he can leave without being rude, he excuses himself. In the bedroom he pulls out his work and stares at it for the next two hours, never comprehending a word.

At supper Beau is quiet. Martha asks why Rosie's husband didn't come.

“He's a veteran.” Beau buttering a biscuit. “Army, had his legs blown off. He moves around on a little cart in the house, but hurts him to ride in the car.”

Jesus Christ! thinks Eliot, what next?
Well Rosie, Roy and I were just having ourselves a little vacation in Hiroshima back in August of '45, when all the sudden

Beau sighs. “Sure wish I could've shook hands with ole Roy though. Rosie and I figured it out. Lass time we seen each other was our mama's funeral, '38. Twenty-four years.”

Martha marvels on the wild coincidence of their proximity. “Yeah, they moved here soon after they got married, can't remember why now.” Beau gazes out the window. “Until yesterday Nathan, Alabama, wasn't anything to me but an address on the envelope.”

At bedtime Beau goes to the outhouse as his roommate unrolls his bed. Eliot looks up, sensing another presence. Leona, looking sad.

“Hello.”

“My granmama said I gotta be nice to you cuz you jus lost your mama.”

Eliot smiles. “You have a very nice granmama.”

“Wamme tell you a joke to make you feel better?”

“Yes.”

“What's the biggest pencil in the world?” and without giving Eliot a second: “PENNSYLVANIA!” She doubles over in laughter, running out of the room, overcome by her own cleverness.

In the morning Beau and Eliot are at the courthouse at 7:30 as are the three NAACP men, and about forty Negroes are already lined up though the building won't open until nine. The government employees start rolling in around 8:45, conspicuously ignoring the two hundred colored men and women in single file. An assemblage of casually dressed white men stands near the queue, clearly
not
here in solidarity with the Negroes. Beyond them a squad of police officers with a van at the ready.