Paradise (25 page)

In the next-to-last row, Lone DuPres sat next to Richard Misner, Anna on his other side. She leaned forward to glance at Anna and learn whether she, too, was losing her mind. Anna smiled but did not return her look, so she sat back to endure another one of old Nathan’s incoherent dreams.

Nathan ran his fingers over his head, closed his eyes as if to get the details straight.

“Was an Indian come up to me in a bean row. Cheyenne, I believe. The vines were green, tender. The blossoms coming out all over. He looked at the row and shook his head, sorrowful-like. Then he told me too bad the water was bad; said there was plenty of it but it was foul. I said, But look here, look at all the flowers. Looks like a top crop to me. He said, The tallest cotton don’t yield the best crop; besides, those flowers the wrong color. They’s red. And I looked and sure enough they was turning pink, then red. Like blood drops. Scared me some. But when I looked back he was gone. And the petals was white again. I reckon that sighting is like this here story we going to tell again this evening. It shows the strength of our crop if we understand it. But it can break us if we don’t. And bloody us too. May God bless the pure and holy and may nothing keep us apart from each other nor from the One who does the blessing. Amen.”

When Nathan left the platform, amidst murmurs of kindness if not gratitude, Richard Misner took advantage of the pause to whisper something to Anna and leave his seat. He was hoping to relieve nascent waves of the claustrophobia that had not plagued him since he was jailed with thirty-eight others in a tiny cell in Alabama. He had embarrassed himself then, because the sweat and nausea signaled fear to his companions. And it was a hard lesson knowing that whatever risks he took, however eager he was for the dangerous confrontation, a crowded cell could humiliate him before teenagers without pity. Now, feeling the onslaught of suffocation in this tightly packed schoolhouse, he joined Pat Best, standing in the hall watching the play and the audience through the door. A long table of cakes, cookies and punch lined the wall behind her.

“Hello, Reverend.” Pat did not look at him but adjusted her body to accommodate him in the doorway.

“Evening, Pat,” he said, blotting moisture from his neck with his handkerchief. “Out here is better for me.”

“Me too. See everything from here without stretching or peeping between two hats.”

They looked over the heads of the audience as the curtains, made of percale sheets—laundered and carefully ironed—wavered. Children in white surplices filed through the parting, the perfection of their serious faces and flawless hair undone occasionally by a knee sock sliding down to an ankle or a bow tie twisted to the right. After a glance at Kate Golightly they took a uniform breath for O holy night, the stars are brightly shining…

At the second verse Richard Misner leaned over to Pat. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“No. Go ahead.” She thought he was going to ask for a donation, because he had been having difficulty raising money (in the quantities he hoped for) to aid the legal defense of four teenagers arrested in Norman and charged with possession, resisting, arson, disorderly, inciting and whatever else the prosecution could ferret out of its statutes to level against black boys who said No or thought about it. They had been in jail, Richard Misner told his congregation, for almost two years. When arraigned, they’d been behind bars for twenty months. The trial date was about to be set, and lawyers needed to be paid for services already rendered and more to come. So far Richard had collected only what the women had given. Women who thought more about the pain felt by the boys’ mothers than of the injustice of their sons’ situation. The men, however, Fleetwoods, Pulliam, Sargeant Person and the Morgans, had been adamant in their refusal. Clearly Richard had not carefully enough shaped his plea. He should have built a prodigal sons foundation rather than a political one. Then, as he stood outside Calvary, continuing his requests, he would not have had to listen to “I don’t hold with violence,” from men who had handled guns all their lives. Or “Little illegal niggers with guns and no home training need to be in jail.” This from Steward, of course. However much Richard insisted they had no guns, that demonstrations were not illegal, the men kept their wallets closed. Pat decided, if asked directly, to donate as much as she could. It was pleasant to think of his needing her generosity, so she was annoyed to learn that that was not at all what was on Richard Misner’s mind.

“I’m trying to smooth a situation out at the Pooles’, and I think I’d do well to talk to Billie Delia, if you don’t mind. Is she here tonight?”

Pat held on to her elbows and turned to look at him. “Can’t help you, Reverend.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure that whatever’s going on out there has nothing to do with Billie Delia. Besides, she doesn’t live here anymore. Moved to Demby.” She would have liked to stop being so hostile to him, but with the mention of her daughter’s relationship with those Poole boys, she couldn’t control it.

“Her name’s come up once or twice. But Wisdom Poole won’t give me anything to go on. Something’s tearing that family apart.”

“They don’t like prying, Reverend. It’s a thing about Ruby.”

“I understand that but something like this has a way of spreading, touching more than one family. When I first came here it was plain: if there was a problem brewing, a delegation was formed to see about it. Keep people from falling out with one another. Seen it with my own eyes and been a party to it too.”

“I know.”

“This community used to be tight as wax.”

“It still is. In a crisis. But they keep to themselves otherwise.”

“Don’t you mean ‘we’? ‘We keep to ourselves’?”

“If I did, would you be asking me to explain things?”

“Pat, please. Don’t take anything I say amiss. I just remembered that the young people in Bible class say ‘they’ too when talking about their parents.”

“Bible class? More like a war class. Kind of military, from what I hear.”

“Militant, maybe. Not military.”

“No budding Panthers?”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“Well, let me tell you. Unlike most of the folks here, we read newspapers and different kinds of books. We keep up. And yes, we discuss strategies of defense. Not aggression. Defense.”

“They know the difference?”

He didn’t have to reply right away because applause began and lasted until the final member of the children’s choir disappeared behind the curtain.

Someone turns off the ceiling lights. Quiet coughing domesticates the dark. Slowly, on a well-oiled pulley, the curtains part. Under lights positioned in the wings, throwing large shadows behind them, four figures in felt hats and too big suits stand at a table, counting giant dollar bills. The face of each one is hidden by a yellow and white mask featuring gleaming eyes and snarling lips, red as a fresh wound. Above a sign tacked to the table front, which reads
INN
, they count money, make slurping noises and do not stop when a parade of holy families dressed in torn clothes and moving in a slow two-step approaches them. Seven couples line up before the table of money. The boys carry staffs; the girls cuddle baby dolls.

Misner looked at them and, giving himself more time to think of a reply to Pat’s question, concentrated on identifying the children onstage. The four youngest Cary girls: Hope, Chaste, Lovely and Pure; Dina Poole; and one of Pious DuPres’ daughters—Linda. Then the boys, manfully grasping staffs while they two-stepped toward the money counters. Peace and Solarine Jury’s two grandsons, Ansel and one they called Fruit; Joe-Thomas Poole paired with his sister Dina; Drew and Harriet Person’s son, James; Payne Sands’ boy, Lorcas, and two of Timothy Seawright’s grandsons, Steven and Michael. Two of the masked ones were obviously Beauchamps—Royal and Destry, fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds who were already over six feet tall—but he wasn’t sure of the other two. This was the first time he had attended the play. It was held two weeks before Christmas, when he returned to Georgia for his annual visit to his family. This year the trip was postponed because an all-family reunion was scheduled for New Year’s. He would take Anna, if she agreed, let the folks look her over and, he supposed, let her look them over. He had hinted to the bishops that he was up for a new parish. Nothing urgent. But he was not sure he was well used in Ruby. He had thought any place was fine as long as there were young people to be taught, to be told, that Christ was judge and warrior too. That whites not only had no patent on Christianity; they were often its obstacle. That Jesus had been freed from white religion, and he wanted these kids to know that they did not have to beg for respect; it was already in them, and they needed only to display it. But the resistance he’d found in Ruby was wearing him out. More and more his students were being chastised about the beliefs he helped instill. Now Pat Best—with whom he’d taught Negro History every Thursday afternoon—was chipping away at his Bible class, confusing self-respect for arrogance, preparedness for disobedience. Did she think education was knowing just enough to get a job? She didn’t seem to trust these Ruby hardheads with the future any more than he did, but neither did she encourage change. Negro history and lists of old-time achievements were enough for her but not for this generation. Somebody had to talk to them, and somebody had to listen to them. Otherwise…

“You know better than anybody how smart these young people are. Better than anybody…” His voice trailed off under “Silent Night.”

“You think what I teach them isn’t good enough?”

Had she read his mind? “Of course it’s good. It’s just not enough. The world is big, and we’re part of that bigness. They want to know about Africa—”

“Oh, please, Reverend. Don’t go sentimental on me.”

“If you cut yourself off from the roots, you’ll wither.”

“Roots that ignore the branches turn into termite dust.”

“Pat,” he said with mild surprise. “You despise Africa.”

“No, I don’t. It just doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“What does, Pat? What does mean something to you?”

“The periodic chart of elements and valences.”

“Sad,” he said. “Sad and cold.” Richard Misner turned away.

Lorcas Sands leaves the group of families and in a loud but breaking voice addresses the masks: “Is there room?”

The masks turn toward each other, then back to the supplicant, then back to each other, after which they roar, shaking their heads like angry lions. “Get on way from here! Get! There’s no room for you!”

“But our wives are pregnant!” Lorcas points with the staff.

“Our children going to die of thirst!” Pure Cary holds a doll aloft.

The masked ones wag their heads and roar.

“That was not a nice thing to say to me, Richard.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I am not sad or cold.”

“I meant the chart, not you. Limiting your faith to molecules as if—”

“I don’t limit anything. I just don’t believe some stupid devotion to a foreign country—and Africa is a foreign country, in fact it’s fifty foreign countries—is a solution for these kids.”

“Africa is our home, Pat, whether you like it or not.”

“I’m really not interested, Richard. You want some foreign Negroes to identify with, why not South America? Or Germany, for that matter. They have some brown babies over there you could have a good time connecting with. Or is it just some kind of past with no slavery in it you’re looking for?”

“Why not? There was a whole lot of life before slavery. And we ought to know what it is. If we’re going to get rid of the slave mentality, that is.”

“You’re wrong, and if that’s your field you’re plowing wet. Slavery
is
our past. Nothing can change that, certainly not Africa.”

“We live in the world, Pat. The whole world. Separating us, isolating us—that’s always been their weapon. Isolation kills generations. It has no future.”

“You think they don’t love their children?”

Misner stroked his upper lip and heaved a long sigh. “I think they love them to death.”

Bobbing and bowing, the masked ones reach under the table and lift up big floppy cardboard squares pasted with pictures of food. “Here. Take this and get on out of here.” Throwing the food pictures on the floor, they laugh and jump about. The holy families rear back as though snakes were being tossed at them. Pointing forefingers and waving fists, they chant: “God will crumble you. God will crumble you.” The audience hums agreement: “Yes He will. Yes He will.”

“Into dust!” That was Lone DuPres.

“Don’t you dare to mistake Him. Don’t you dare.”

“Finer than flour he’ll grind you.”

“Say it, Lone.”

“Strike you in the moment of His choosing!”

And sure enough, the masked figures wobble and collapse to the floor, while the seven families turn away. Something within me that banishes pain; something within me I cannot explain. Their frail voices are accompanied by stronger ones in the audience, and at the last note more than a few are wiping their eyes. The families cluster campfire style to the right of the stage. The girls rock the dolls. Away in the manger, no crib for His head. Slowly from the wings a boy enters. He wears a wide hat and carries a leather bag. The families make a half circle behind him. The big-hat boy kneels and draws bottles and packages from the satchel, which he arranges on the floor. The little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head.