The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (57 page)

“Oh good, because I was seriously considering becoming a lesbian and avoiding all this drama. You'll be the first to know.”

“You'll make a lot of women very happy.”

He was quiet all Thursday, sequestering himself in his office. At five he walked out to Andi's desk, noticing her putting her things together to leave. She looked up.

“I talked to Didi.”

She had stared, her eyes shining.

“Can we. Can we talk tonight?”

“I have my class.”

“Oh! I forgot.”

She continued softly. “Let's talk tomorrow.”

Friday was busy, and he couldn't find a moment alone at Andi's desk until mid-afternoon.

“You and Will going for a drink tonight?”

She had looked at him, an odd smile. “Uh-uh.”

“I thought you always did on Fridays.”

“We had been. But, I don't know. Neither of us brought it up today. I'm kind of looking forward to going home and washing my hair, getting to bed early.”

“How about dinner first?”

Her eyes still on him. “I'm kind of tired, Eliot.” He nodded, a bit embarrassed, and turned to head back to his office. “How about tomorrow night?”

He turned around smiling, hopeful.

“Slow,”
she had reminded him.

“Definitely.”

And they had taken it slow. They picked up a pizza and went back to Andi's just to talk. And they kept things slow all through dinner, and all through the long evening chat, and all through their ice cream dessert, and all through sex that night and all day Sunday, periodically hearing the crazy neighbor dog which now caused him to laugh.

As promised, Eliot had called Didi a few consecutive evenings, and on Monday morning, six days after the procedure, he rang and there was no answer. His heart beating, he tried her at work and was relieved and elated when she answered, sounding like her old self. She told him her colleagues were glad her rough bout with “the flu” was finally over, then began enthusiastically elaborating on a case she had just been assigned. For a moment he worried that her giddiness indicated she had forgotten that they were no longer together, as the decision was made in her fragile fog of the previous week. Then he wondered if she were forcing a deliberate smiling face to prove how she had already emotionally moved on. No, she seemed genuinely jubilant. And then it hit him: how life-threatening her out-of-hospital surgery was, and how grateful she was just to be alive. And he loved her. No longer carnal desire, but rather his admiration for her unceasing courage and drive and unparalleled strength, and he fiercely hoped that he would always have the honor of calling Didi Wilcox his friend.

He'd forgotten it was his birthday until his father called later that morning. Because it was his mother who'd always made this call, it was all Eliot could do to be gracious during the two-minute conversation, and instantly after hanging up he had placed his palm tight on his mouth to gag the sobs. At 4:30, his colleagues surprised him with cake in the conference room. At five, Andi had to rush off to study for an imminent and crucial exam. As things were just starting with them again, he certainly wouldn't have expected her to take him out for his birthday, and at any rate he was hardly in the mood to celebrate this first motherless one. But when he returned to his office he found on his desk a small box, as if to hold a ring, and a note: “Happy 26th.” A shiny new penny. Andi's gift of luck for his next Dixie venture, just as when she had found the heads-up cent and given it to him for his travels to Georgia. When he turned the coin over, he saw that both sides were heads.

Eliot holds the egg, happy that Rosie didn't peel it because it is this tactile activity he loves most about the food. He watches a pickup baseball game, colored children and white. He marvels. By pubescence the lines would start being drawn, but at this age, even in the Deep South they could put aside their differences so as to collect enough players for a team. So when exactly does it begin? The point of no return, when race defines
every
thing?

He remembers his undergraduate days, a few mixed mixers with other local colleges wherein he had had his share of run-ins with a certain faction of the White Left and its patronizing arrogance. Befriending Negroes on
their
terms. They might say schools should be integrated, but would they send their children to the former colored school, to have them taught by black educators? The answer to that had left many Negro teachers supporting segregation for fear of losing their jobs, their dire predictions ultimately proving wretchedly accurate. And if a liberal socialized with you, did they consider you another distinct human being or merely a symbol of their broadmindedness?

But what about the whites who truly struggle for equality, who risked their own lives coming South to fight with their black brothers and sisters? And the progressives who lived in the South. Diana and her father come to mind, daring committed souls Eliot had come to trust, to be deeply fond of.

What about Keith? And like an avalanche the reality comes crashing down: What had really irked Eliot was not his brother's sexual relationship so much as the fact that Keith was white. Not that Eliot would have been exactly thrilled had Dwight appointed his male colored lover as a pallbearer but, in seeing a sixth black man complete the assemblage, Eliot certainly would not have made that ugly scene that shames him now. And after all that, it was Keith's graciousness that had allowed him to see his mother for the last time. Evil is epidemic in White America—and Eliot thinks bitterly about the fate of little Max and Jordan—but it is not universal.

The image comes back to him now of Beau and Roy's embrace: more like brothers than brothers-in-law, and Eliot wonders if he and Dwight could ever be that close. After Eliot's emotional release the night before their mother's funeral, the brothers had remained stoic at the service, comforting their father when necessary but otherwise left to their own private ache. Yet there were words that needed to be spoken between him and Dwight. Well. They had both promised to come home and be with their father on Thanksgiving and Christmas too. There would be time then to start the conversation.

The courthouse clock strikes 5:45, and as Eliot strolls back to the jail he hears a crack. A Negro boy has hit the ball to the farthest outfield, and now runs as if victory in this game will win him the world.

Eliot crosses the threshold to see Warren, Joe Archie, and Les quietly talking. Warren smiles. “This your first time down South, son?”

“No,” and Eliot tells them about Max and Jordan. The local men are jolted by the case, and impressed by Eliot's part in it. He asks where Mrs. Yancey is.

“I talked her into staying home until we came for her,” says Joe Archie. “Close to a bathroom she can use.”

The sheriff walks in from the outside, not looking in the direction of the Negroes and continuing to ignore them after he takes the deputy's place and begins paperwork. Warren, flanked by the others, goes to the desk. “Sheriff Tucker, I would like to—”

“Bail's set at one hundred dollars.” Tucker doesn't look up.

Warren seems confused. “Sir?”

“You heard me, an one a you can go back.
One.
” He holds up his right index finger for emphasis before returning to his work.

Warren takes the colored men aside. “I don't have that kind of cash on me right now but I can get it. If you could talk to Mr. Yancey,” Warren is looking at Eliot, “let him know it's on the way.”

Tucker unlocks a door. “Double shift tonight, Jesse,” he utters to the guard, which sounds less like a friendly reminder than something between a reprimand and a warning, given that the watchman clearly just snapped to after a little shut-eye.

There are only two prisoners, a young white man with reddish-blond hair looking a bloody dirty mess who gapes at Eliot as they pass, and in the cell next to him Mr. Yancey. Eliot looks in at his client. A black eye, blood on his shirt. His arm hangs lazily, in a way that suggests it's broken. Eliot is astounded, and then angry at himself for being so: as if they wouldn't do such a thing to a frail old man. He turns to the guard, glaring. The guard smiles a little, shrugs. “Resistin arrest.” Glancing at the white man, Eliot thinks, Seems like a lot of that's going around. He makes himself focus on his client, speaking quietly, informing him that he is his attorney, assuring him that help would arrive momentarily in the form of bail, that he would be out soon and taken to the hospital. The old man nods. “Can you please tell my wife I'm alright?”

“I don't want to leave here until you are released, sir, but when the other men come back, I promise one of us will let her know.” Eventually Eliot hears Warren's voice from the front desk area, and he starts to walk out.

“Hey!”

The white inmate. He sounds agitated, indignant, the tone Eliot associates with a preamble to a spat of racial epithets, and because Eliot cannot afford to lose his temper now, he keeps walking.

“
Hey!
I
ain't got no lawyer!”

The guard snickers. He unlocks the door, and Eliot walks through to find Warren posting bail. The sheriff accompanies Eliot back to Mr. Yancey, ordering the guard to release the prisoner.

“Let him
out?
”

“His bail was jus posted, open the cell.”

“He was resistin arrest!”

“That's for the judge to decide, now unlock the goddamn door, Jesse.”

In a huff, Jesse does as he has been commanded and, with difficulty, Mr. Yancey steps out, aided by Eliot.

“This is not the way we usually do things here,” says Jesse.

And Eliot, staring at Mr. Yancey's injuries, no longer able to fully restrain himself, mutters, “I bet some of it is.”

“What did you say?”
Jesse snaps.

“Hey, I ain't seen
my
lawyer!” chimes in the white prisoner. “I ain't made no damn phone call!”

“Yes you did,” the sheriff says. “You jus don't remember,” and the inmate seems utterly confused. Eliot sees now that he has no shoes, his socks torn and filthy.

“I ain't no indigent! That damn sheriff tryin to make like I am, I ain't drunk! You know what kinda day I had? My sister beat to bits by her bastard husband an the cops do
nothin,
I
had to find her on the floor lookin like put through the shredder!
I'm
the one taken her to the hospital
the cops do nothin,
then I get
fired
for my trouble! I threw those goddamn shoes at Martin's head, I'd do it
again!
Come back here! You listened to
him
,
I
got a story to tell!
I
got a story to tell!”

The next morning Eliot wakes early, before his hosts, before dawn, and walks outside to gaze at the twinkling remaining stars. In a few hours he would be leaving, heading back north to home. The whistle of a lonely train in the distance, and then the birds chirping, something he hasn't heard since sunrises in Humble. As day breaks, he gets into the borrowed local Plymouth station wagon.

When he walks in, the jailhouse guard is talking to the sheriff. Eliot is surprised to see them both still here, then remembers the latter's remark yesterday evening about a double shift. They turn to Eliot, confused and vaguely alarmed. He sets the shoebox on the desk, opening it so they can see its contents.

“I brought these in case some Negro needed them, but
then—
” and at that moment Eliot spies in the wastebasket a lady's handkerchief, a delicate light fabric and intricate handmade needlepoint design, apparently something Mrs. Yancey dropped and the officers scrapped, and he remembers his mother making things like that once, she had wanted doilies to adorn the couch end tables in the living room and couldn't afford the store-bought laces, and suddenly the events of the past nineteen days—the agony of losing his mother and the drama of the funeral arrangements and the complications of romance and the bittersweetness of Mr. Daughtery's trial and the horror of out-of-hospital abortion and the vexation of another bout with Deep Southern hospitality—all seem to well up in Eliot at once. He tilts his head toward the cells, then turns and leaves quickly.

As he packs up the car at the Coatses', the couple stands with him to bid their adieus before heading off to work. Martha is a laundress, Jeremiah a janitor at the bus station. He shakes Eliot's hand, and asks when he'll be back this way again. Eliot says he isn't sure.

“Well you know you can always stay with us,” says Martha, giving him a few sandwiches to share with Beau on the road.

Truthfully, Eliot imagines he won't be returning. He had asked the NAACP men if he should stay for today, the last day of voter registration, to try again. They said they would be there, but they imagined most of the Negroes would not be able to spare another day off work, presuming a repeat fiasco. And yet the activists did not seem defeated, preparing to continue their drive, if not for this election, then the next. In a couple of weeks it will be President Kennedy or President Nixon with or without the Southern black vote. (Of course with both pledging their support of civil rights, many segregationists are still holding out for independent President Harry F. Byrd and running mate Strom Thurmond.) Winston Douglas and Associates would certainly continue to support and defend the struggle in the Deep South, but they would not be back to Prayer Ridge, Alabama, for a while, if ever.

Leona, dressed for school, dashes out of the house to offer Eliot a farewell riddle. “What kinda coffee they serve on the
Titanic
?”

“I don't know.”

“Maxwell House!” She runs back in, giggling her head off.

“I'ma pray for you an your daddy an your brother,” says Martha. “You know your mama's always lookin down on you,” and she gives Eliot a warm hug and a kiss. Eliot gets in the car. He puts on his glasses and turns on the ignition, then Leona comes racing out in a panic. “I mean SANKA! SANKA!”