Sacred Dust (38 page)

Then, it’s written, she must be burned and any woman who shows pity, tormented.

But first, the nigger parade. They say a throng is expected. Let the damned come walking. The more fools, the more blood. The more blood, the more the real chosen of this earth will rally.

Oh, hell, yeah. I’m telling these faggot doctors every damn thing they want to hear. I have to be out of this ???-sanctioned penitentiary in time to stand proudly among my ranks. It humbles me to think I had the honor to live and participate in history’s highest event—the Battle of the Angels!

T
he George Wallace Inn restaurant was crowded. It was close enough to Birmingham and frequented by enough northern business types to make the sight of a black man and a white one having lunch together no matter worthy of mention. But Hezekiah had another reason for meeting the boy here. He could tell by Heath’s manner of speaking that he was a born and bred Prince George County cracker. He could easily be some Klucker nut who wanted a chance to shoot him. Hez figured at the very least if the boy was going to shoot him, there would be plenty of out-of-county witnesses.

The first thing Hezekiah noticed about the boy was his physical attitude. Heath was possessed of that arrogance men who have no foothold on this earth will adopt. It reminded Hez of himself years ago. When Heath leapt to his feet, the boy’s height took Hez back a minute. He was over six feet with a wrestler’s shoulders. His white shirt was worn, but it was clean and ironed. A scorch mark along the right wrist said that he had ironed it himself. It promised sincerity. Heath pumped his hand and smiled like a priest or a banker or a big time deal maker with an agenda. His teeth looked good, no small accomplishment for a Prince George County boy. His hands were broad and calloused.

Hez slid into the booth and lifted his menu and studied it. He laid
it aside to study Heath. He thought he could descry some intellect behind the freckles and the dark yellow hair that almost hid his face, especially since he kept his head low.

“So you’re putting on a Harmony Festival, are you?”

“That’s right.”

“What time Saturday?”

“Nine A.M.”

“What’s the plan?”

“A walk from the edge of the town to the square.”

“Have you petitioned for a parade?”

“It’s not a parade.”

“What sort of protective arrangements have you made with local law enforcement officials?”

Heath smiled. “Man, you talk just like a preacher.”

Hez made no response. He was waiting for an answer. Heath’s smile faded.

“They won’t give me no protection.”

“Ask for it—in writing. In case you wind up in court.”

Heath quickly pointed out that this was his festival. He was leading it, and Hezekiah and whoever else he wanted to bring along were welcome to participate, but the organization of the actual event was Heath’s job. Hezekiah, who had organized hundreds of demonstrations and marches, large and small, was used to the inevitable local leader who felt his territorial rights were being violated.

“Don’t want to steal your thunder.”

Heath looked guilty. He had a conscience. That was good.

“What’s the exact route?”

“It don’t much matter.”

“Young man, if I’m bringing a busload of black faces into Prince George County next Saturday morning at nine A.M., it matters to me and them enormously where they get off the bus and where they get back on it. You can be damned sure we want local law enforcement there in case of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The Ku Klux Klan kind.”

“Oh, man, you’re talking about six, maybe seven old farts.”

“One man with one bullet shot the King dead in his tracks, and the Civil Rights Movement died with him. That, I might add, was in a city of a million people in a predominantly black neighborhood with security guards stationed close around him. We’re going to be in a little all-white town in the middle of a county that prides itself on its all white population.”

“Look, if them ol’ boys give us any trouble and we got a busload of people, we can beat the hell out of them. Frankly, I’m looking forward to the opportunity.”

Hezekiah smiled at that. Hezekiah laughed until he had to blow his nose and ask for water over that. His shoulders shook so hard three fat women with short haircuts in the next booth turned to look at him. Heath went beet red. He looked like he was about to pull out a gun and blow Hez to Georgia. Then he spoke.

“We won’t perpetrate violence of any kind regardless of what opposition we face.” Heath eyed him with dull incredulity. “You think that sounds cowardly or naive or preachy, don’t you?”

“You don’t know Prince George.”

Hez sat up straight. His eyes narrowed. He flipped the back of one fist against his upper lip nervously. He cleared his throat.

“I may not know Prince George County, Alabama,” he conceded, “but I knew a King.”

Heath drew a waft of hair nervously off his forehead.

“I learned nonviolence from a King. I learned it walking beside him through fiery hordes of lost white faces in cities you’ll never see. I learned it taking beatings in a hundred thirty-seven jails in twenty-seven states. There are no weapons in God’s army. Now let’s order some food.”

Hez was sure now that it was folly to go to Prince George. It was utter foolishness to march into that hateful country behind this ignorant boy. Hez was thinking about all those he had recruited for the march, good people who trusted him, people who expected him to skulk out a neighborhood or a town or a county
before
a march and ensure all the basics like where the bus parked, who would be standing by with station wagons and a quick route to the nearest friendly emergency room if needed, and who on the local police
force could make the chief understand that his force would be barbecued on the six o’clock news if it went bad for the marchers.

Hez was face-to-face with a pissed off local redneck who had taken on some
Harmony Festival
because he hoped it would catapult him to local prominence. This kid didn’t know
jack.
This kid was living proof that a poor white man has no place to turn in this country.

Hez also knew he was already knee deep into this thing. He’d spent half the night praying over it. It was as if some ancestral angel had visited him in his sleep and given him the charge. Hezekiah was going to Prince George if every cracker in the county nailed him to the courthouse doors. The notion had worked its way down between his bones and filled him with an ache that could only be alleviated one way.

“Well, I hope you don’t think the mayor is going to meet us at the edge of town with lemonade and keys to the city.”

“Young man, I think you better examine your motivation here. Because it would appear to me that you’re looking for a fight.”

“Hell yes, I am.”

Hez shook his head and removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “The whole point of this Harmony thing is to demonstrate the indomitable majesty of the human spirit.”

“Man, if we don’t stand up to them, they’ll mow us down.”

“If that’s God’s will, then so be it.” Hez was taking the march away from Heath. He wondered how long it would be before Heath realized it. “Go on,” said Heath, “I’m listening.” The more Hezekiah spoke, the less the boy seemed to understand about the nonviolent nature of freedom, about the Living Hand of God lighting fires in the hearts of men and the oneness of the human spirit. But it didn’t matter so much in the end. Because after an hour, Heath understood one thing very clearly. Hezekiah was in command of his Harmony Festival.

T
imes get troubled and the night reveals its teeth. A hospital volunteer woman called here this evening from Galveston, Texas, to say Lily is in intensive care. She had found my phone number in Lily’s billfold. She needed to notify her next of kin. I asked her if Glen knew, and she told me that Glen is dead. He shot himself after he blew Michael’s head off and put four bullets in Lily’s chest.

I did what I have always done when receiving the news that the world will never again be as I have known it. I disconnected from all sensation except facts and what actions were required. Mother was sitting three feet away from me when I took the call. She understood without a word that something had been torn asunder and action was required. She kept perfectly still.

I wrote down the woman’s telephone number. I walked into the kitchen and took a screwdriver out of the drawer next to the sink. I picked up my car keys and threw a sweater over my shoulders. I remember thinking as I waited for the ice on the windshield to melt that southern people never dress for the weather. I had pried open Lily’s kitchen window on two other occasions when she had been locked out. It’s an easy thing to reach through and turn the door lock from the inside.

The house smelled of new paint and carpet. I found the address book where I knew she kept it in the desk by the telephone. I smiled
remembering how Lily and I had laughed at the stupid man who had designed that kitchen to include a desk. She had a little brass desk plate made for it. “EXECUTIVE-IN-CHARGE-OF-MEAT-LOAF.” It was still sitting there, still gleaming. Glen had left everything in that house gleaming. I drove back home and called the woman with the phone numbers. She told me that Lily wasn’t expected to live through the night. Mother was still sitting there where I had left her an hour before. I hung up the telephone and explained things to her.

Mother told me to come sit by her on the sofa. She laid an arm on my shoulder and stroked my hair while I cried. Neither one of us said a word for a long time. Then Mother spoke.

“Did you ever notice how all great sadness is the same?” That took me back a minute. Then I realized what she was saying. I was sad over Lily. But I was reliving Carmen. That’s when I noticed that her eyes were wet and red.

“What are you crying for, Mother?”

“My child is sad,” she said.

Lily and Michael and Glen were splashed all over the Birmingham TV news this morning. Lily’s mama and Glen’s mama and the two kids. They’re calling Lily everything but the Whore of Babylon and Michael a New Age guru, and Glen distraught and mentally unbalanced. I had three calls from two different channels wanting a comment. They had a lady reporter walking through Glen and Lily’s house talking about a dream that was shattered by bullets and on and on like that. Lily’s mama was on the noon news saying, “She was born thankless.”

She made it through the night. I’ve called that hospital ten times, but “Extremely grave” is all I get. Mother, who’s never flown in her life, came into my room and offered to get on a plane with me and go down there.

Lily doesn’t have anyone now that her mama is a TV personality. Though it’s her children I’m considering. It might mean something to them later to know their mother didn’t die alone. I know Lily is going to die. All the same I called down there to intensive care and I
asked the nurse to tell her that her friend Rose is coming. She said she would.

It might be she has enough consciousness left. It might be she understood when the nurse told her that I’m on my way. I don’t know what that is to her if she does. It might ease her passing to know that someone is on the way. Mother repeated her offer to go with me. I wouldn’t know what to do with her in a hotel in Galveston, Texas. I have tried to accept Lily’s dying, but I can’t stop begging God to let her live.

I wish life would make sense for five minutes running. I wish something dazzling would roll up out of the woods and swallow me. It seems ridiculous to say, but the truth is, outside of my child, I was never involved in life before. I was never pulled into that great big chain of events all around me. I never wanted to be. I was afraid it would swallow or diminish or defeat me. Now I’m afraid I was right. But it’s not the dread of what I have to face alone down in Galveston, Texas, that pulls at my shoulders. It’s the terrible sadness.

Oh, God, I don’t want any more sadness. I want to sit in a room filled with pleasant, laughing people. I want to see Mother’s forsythia bloom yellow against a clean April blue afternoon. I want to go shopping. I want a cousin I haven’t seen in years to call me and say that she’s pregnant and ask me to be the godmother. I want Lily to live. I got off the plane in Shreveport long enough to call the hospital. I spoke with the head nurse in critical care. She said she’s weaker. If by grace she lasts until I get there, it’s only so that I can help her die.

M
y daddy is a man of few words. He keeps his voice low. You have to listen hard to hear him. He was sitting there on the trailer steps when I got back from the 7-Eleven. He had the newspaper in his hand.

“Hey.”

“Boy, I can’t believe I been reading some of the things I been reading.”

“This is a thing I got to do, Daddy.”

“Why?”

As I stood there, it stunned me to realize that I have always been a little afraid of my father. It made me feel like a naked little boy caught pissing where I wasn’t supposed to in the broad daylight.

“I won’t be ruled by fear.”

Daddy only knew one way of living. It had been beaten into him decades ago. Fear wasn’t a subject he ever discussed. I thought he was going to punch me and I knew I couldn’t punch him back.

“They should have kept you in Folsom Prison.”

“I’m not trying to make trouble, Daddy. If others do—”

“You know damned good and well that they will.”

“That’s their doing.”

“You’re egging them on. It’s not right.”

“What’s right about bullying and killing and running people
off?” I might just as well have punched him. I knew he’d take any defense I offered as a personal affront.