Orchard of Hope (13 page)

Of course, Paulette was cute. She had a figure and long blonde hair that curled up at the ends, and her mother let her wear lipstick. Jocie was straight as a stick, had brown hair that she hooked out of her face behind her ears, and she didn’t even own a lipstick. Some questions weren’t even worth wondering about, Jocie decided as she headed back to the pressroom to help her father get the paper ready to print.

Noah showed up just as the noon siren sounded. Then the clock on top of the courthouse started its twelve slow bongs. On its heels, the Christian Church bells rang and then played “Rock of Ages” the way it did every Monday at noon. There was a different hymn for each day sort of like day-of-the-week underwear. One thing for sure, nobody in Hollyhill was going to forget that it was time to eat lunch. That was what Jocie and her father were doing when Noah tapped on the pressroom door before he pushed it open.

“Nobody was at the desk out front,” he said. “So I just came on back.” He had on jeans and a plain white T-shirt.

“Come on over and grab a chair,” Jocie’s dad said. “We’re just finishing up lunch.”

Jocie pulled a sandwich out of the paper sack. “I made extra if you want one. Bologna and cheese. And we have tomatoes. Boy, do we ever have tomatoes.”

“I ate before I came. I don’t expect you to feed me,” Noah said.

“Suit yourself,” Jocie said as she laid the sandwich on the table. “But there it is if you want it. Me and Dad won’t want it and Zella wouldn’t eat it even if she was here. She says nobody would eat bologna if they gave the first thought to what they put in it. She’s probably right, so I don’t think about it.” Jocie took a big bite.

Noah looked back over his shoulder toward the door. “Where is Miss Curtsinger?”

“Zella?” Jocie said. “Oh, she usually gets lunch up at the Grill or goes home. She’s not much for eating at her desk.” It sounded funny hearing Zella called Miss Curtsinger, but maybe it would be better if Noah stayed extra polite to her for a while until Zella got over what she called his impertinence last week.

Noah pulled over a chair and eyed the sandwich a minute before picking it up and saying, “There’s no need letting it go to waste.”

“No need at all,” Jocie’s father said. “We’re trying to come up with which story we’ve got that might sell a few extra papers this week.”

“Nothing much happened in Hollyhill this week,” Jocie explained. “At least not newspaper-type stuff. First Baptist is having a revival, and we have a piece about the evangelist they’ve brought in from Louisville, but that’s for the church page. And we’ve got some pictures of the schools being cleaned up for school to start.”

Noah looked over at Jocie’s dad. “But aren’t the schools being desegregated? That should be a big news story in a little town like this. Actually, it’s a pretty unbelievable story that the schools aren’t already integrated. I’ve never gone to a school that wasn’t integrated.”

“You’re farther south now,” Jocie’s father said as if that explained everything. “Besides, school doesn’t start till Thursday next week and the
Banner
goes out on Wednesdays. So we’ll print those stories next week.” He gave Noah a look. “Do you like to write? If you do, you could write something about how different starting school here is from what you were used to in Chicago or something like that.”

“You might not like what I wrote,” Noah said.

“Then I wouldn’t print it.” Jocie’s dad fastened his eyes on Noah. “We might as well get one thing clear right at the beginning, Noah. The
Banner
is just a small-town paper. We put out one issue per week. We’re here to serve the community by reporting on what happens in Hollyhill and Holly County. We don’t do national news like what Congress is up to or what’s happening in Vietnam unless it has a local handle, such as one of our Hollyhill boys flying the bombers over North Vietnam or one of our senators coming through town. Neither of them ever has, but if they did, it would be front-page news for the
Banner
. We leave the national and state news to the daily papers out of Lexington and Louisville.”

“So how do you sell papers if you don’t have anything much to write about?” Noah asked.

“We manage,” Jocie’s father said. “Folks here want to read about what happens in town and at the schools. They like seeing their pictures or their kids’ pictures in the paper.”

“Sounds pretty dull,” Noah said. “I thought newspapers tried to come up with controversial stories to keep people interested.”

“I don’t print stories to stir up trouble just for the sake of stirring up trouble.”

“But sometimes trouble needs to be stirred up in order to get wrongs righted,” Noah said.

“Then that would be a different matter, but I always want to walk the peaceful route first,” Jocie’s dad said.

“That’s fine by me.” Noah took another bite of his sandwich and chewed a minute before he went on. “The peace road is a fine one to walk if people will let you walk it. But the fact is, they’ve put my mama in jail three times for walking that road or trying to walk that road down in Mississippi and Louisiana. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., he doesn’t do anything but talk the peace road, and they’ve put him in jail a few times too. According to Mama, he and a few thousand more walked on your state capital here in March. Did you print anything about that then?”

“They didn’t march through here. People got that news in the daily papers.”

Jocie had stopped eating her sandwich as she watched them talk. They weren’t exactly arguing, but Jocie could hear an edge of irritation to her father’s voice. He was trying to hide it, but it was there. Having Noah in the pressroom wasn’t going to be a thing like having Wes there to back up her father in whatever he wanted to do. Noah had questions and he didn’t seem to want to wait for the answers.

“Do you really think your Hollyhill is going to be that much different when the black people here decide they want to go in the front door at the courthouse or sit at the counter to eat at the restaurant uptown?” Noah said.

“I hope so,” Jocie’s dad said. “And I pray so.”

Jocie spoke up. “What do you mean, go in the back door at the courthouse? Can’t anybody go in any door they want to?”

Jocie’s dad looked uncomfortable as he answered. “I’m sure they can now.”

“What do you mean ‘now’?” Jocie asked.

“Well, there used to be a sign. I don’t think it’s there anymore, but it could be I just haven’t been paying attention. Is there a sign there, Noah?”

“I didn’t see one, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was,” Noah said. “There are signs like that all over the South that white people don’t pay much attention to until black people quit paying attention to them too.”

“What signs?” Jocie asked.

“Saying colored people should use the back door or ‘whites only’ signs that say they shouldn’t come in at all.” Noah took another bite of sandwich as if he was just talking about the weather or something.

Jocie stared at Noah. “There’s no sign like that here.”

“So maybe there isn’t,” Noah said with a shrug. “But whether the sign is still there or not, it’s still in people’s heads. A few of them told my mother as much when she went in the courthouse when we first came down here. Of course she went right on through the front door and out it again when she’d finished her business there.”

“As she should have.” Jocie’s father crumpled up the wax paper that had been around his sandwich and threw it in the trash can. “I know we’re far from perfect here in Hollyhill, Noah, but I think if you and your family will give the people a chance, they’ll come around. Desegregating the schools is going to change things.”

“Things need to change,” Noah said.

“You’re right. There’s no place for the kind of things you’re talking about in our town.”

“Do you think there’ll be trouble next week when school starts?”

“No, I don’t. Not in Hollyhill.”

Jocie’s father sounded sure of his answer, but Noah didn’t seem ready to believe him. “There’s been plenty of trouble in other places in the South.”

“We’re not that far south.”

“Then how come the schools aren’t already desegregated?” “The black people here didn’t want to give up their community school.”

“All the black people live in one community?”

“They did till your family moved in,” Jocie’s father said.

Noah sort of smiled as he said, “I guess my mama will have her chance to stir things up even when she’s not trying. She promised my daddy she’d stay off the Freedom Road for a while.” Noah’s smile disappeared. “Things are just getting too bad. People, even women like Mama, have been getting dragged off to jail and beat up by the police. Others just come up missing down there on the Freedom Road and then show up later, dead.”

“Nothing like that will happen in Hollyhill,” Jocie’s father said.

“But if it did, would you report it in your newspaper the way it really happened instead of trying to say it was the colored people’s fault because they were out there trying to breathe the same air the white folks were breathing?” Noah looked at Jocie’s father as if his answer was especially important to him.

“I would report the truth.”

“Even if it meant half your subscribers would cancel their papers?”

“Even if it meant all my subscribers canceled their subscriptions.” Jocie’s father’s mouth was set in a hard line. “I look to the Lord to lead me to do and say the right things both at church on Sundays and here at work the rest of the week. But like I said, I don’t make trouble just to make trouble, and if you want to work here, Noah, I’ll expect the same out of you.”

“Wait a minute.” Noah held up his hands as if to protect himself from Jocie’s father’s words. “You’ve got me all wrong, Brother David. I don’t want trouble. I hate trouble.”

“Good. Then let’s get to work on this week’s issue.”

Jocie tore the crusts off what was left of her sandwich and tried to think of something to say to get some of the tension out of the air. Wes would have been able to if he’d been there. He’d have said something about Jupiter or how they didn’t have anything but snooze news for this week’s paper. But before she could think of anything, Noah spoke up. “I think the top story should be about the drought. Or is it always this hot and dry here?”

“No, it’s extra hot,” Jocie said. “Hey, Dad, didn’t you take a picture of a dried-up pond somewhere last week?”

“That might work,” Jocie’s father said. “I’ll work on that while you show Noah how to start setting up some of the ads.”

Jocie pitched the rest of her sandwich in the trash and moved over to the table to start work. She was relieved when Noah followed her and paid attention to what she told him to do. Maybe they’d be able to work together. Still, it might be that she should start praying harder for Wes to be able to come back to work soon. Real soon.

14

As David went out of the pressroom, leaving Noah and Jocie with their heads together over one of the ads, he couldn’t keep the thought away that maybe he had made a mistake offering Noah a job. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but as Zella was quick to point out to him earlier that day, he hadn’t even given himself time to pray about it.

He’d talked to Zella as soon as he’d gotten to the office that morning about what he could pay Noah. Zella kept the books, made sure the bills got paid on time, wrote out their payroll checks, and kept them straight on taxes. She’d been doing it for years, even before David started working at the
Banner
when he came home from the service after the war. She kept them out of the red. And David was grateful, but sometimes Zella acted as if the money was hers. Especially when he proposed a new expense like hiring Noah.

They had the means. David kept his eye on what came in and what went out, so he knew the paper had been bringing in more money this summer. The tornado issues had sold out, and they could count on a boost in church ads with end-of-summer revivals and homecomings in the fall. Plus Zella had already sold a whole page of ads for the big sidewalk sale the downtown merchants were having over Labor Day weekend.

So he didn’t think it was beyond reason that the paper could hire an extra hand for two or three afternoons a week, even if they did keep paying Wes his salary. And the truth was, if they didn’t get extra help before Jocie went back to school, then the paper might not get printed on time. Late papers brought complaints, and no paper meant no revenue.

That’s what he’d told Zella, but she hadn’t bought it. She’d just looked up at him standing beside her desk and said, “It’s not like you to do this kind of thing without taking time to think and pray about it.”

“What kind of thing? You mean hiring some help? We need to get the paper out.”

She just kept looking at him. “You’re borrowing trouble. That’s what you’re doing, David. Borrowing trouble.”

“What makes you think that? Because Noah’s black?”

“It’s not just that he’s colored. He has a chip on his shoulder. Worse than a chip. A whole block. The boy will make problems. And besides that, you won’t be able to let him and Jocelyn work back there alone the way you did Wesley and her. While Wesley certainly can’t be the best influence on a young girl like Jocelyn, even so, you could rest easy knowing he’d take care of her.”

“He’s the same as family,” David agreed.

“Well, this boy very definitely isn’t family.” Zella pointed her ink pen at David. “And you can’t expect me to supervise them every minute while you’re out gathering stories or covering meetings or whatever. I have to do my work up here.”

“Jocie knows how to behave,” David said.

“Jocelyn has been doing whatever she’s wanted to do for years. Why, half the time you don’t even know where she is or what she’s doing.” Zella waved her pen around.

“That’s not true.” David frowned at Zella. There were limits and she had just about reached his. “Jocie is a good girl.”

Zella seemed to realize she’d gone a step too far. “I didn’t mean to imply she wasn’t, but she has had a different upbringing than most girls in Hollyhill. Working here since she was a child. As far as that goes, she’s still a child. She’s only thirteen. But even if she does want to do the right things, how do you know that boy will?”