True Fires (18 page)

The Lounge was noisier, more crowded than she’d expected. She made her way to the bar, bought her own drink over the protests of an older, expensively dressed regular who sat in the corner, sharing sarcastic asides with the bartender. A man more her age, a cocky smiling salesman, made a run with “What’s a doll like you doin’ in a dump like this?” and the bartender shooed him away.

It’s so obvious: The problem with marriage,
she’d thought,
is
that even under the best of circumstances, with a guy as fine and fair
as Hamp, for example, it’s all compromise and capitulation. And
with Jazz? Jazz, who in the company of his cronies could be every bit
as insu ferable as Charlie Jackson? Marriage with Jazz wouldn’t be
a deliverance
(as she’d always thought);
it would be, more than
likely, a demotion, a relegation to the wives’ end of the table!
What
had
she been thinking? She was a round peg and marriage was a square hole. She, who suffered no fools lightly, had, for the past nine years, been fooling herself! The realization mushroomed in her mind like an atomic cloud, and she felt herself, without warning, reduced to dust, vulnerable to the slightest breeze, the least waft of wind.

Then Tom
—she’d let young Tom slip in beside her because he’d asked, in a polite Midwestern farm-boy twang, “May I buy you a drink, ma’am?” She’d liked his solid, wholesome looks, and the fact that he was Army, “temporarily assigned to recruitment, ma’am.” (She’d resisted telling him that, according to the new Assistant Chief of Staff, his job was in jeopardy. Or that, under other circumstances, her rank, several grades higher than his, would dictate a salute.) He wore his loneliness openly, unarmored. An eager young buck who’d not yet lost all the soft, green felt off his antlers. He’d seemed, she remembered vaguely, a safe place to fall.

How much time, how many drinks passed, before he suggested she take a look inside his wigwam? (“Though folks around here appear ignorant about real Indians, ma’am. Technically, it’s a tepee.”) She’d never know.

The only thing she did know, with a certainty as sharp and clear as this morning, is that an entire life of running away— from Louis’s death, the perception of her parents’ betrayal, her engagement to Hamp, and, last night, the very idea of marriage itself with Jazz or anyone—was getting her nowhere. Wherever she went, the pain followed, made heavier by the shame and guilt that attended her leave-taking. Not to mention the sordid shock of waking up next to a stranger!
Oh,
God.
The memory makes her cringe.
NEVER again!

What was it that compelled her to leave, usually without thought or explanation? How was it that other people stayed—
like Daddy, for instance, sticking with Mamma all those
years, enduring far worse than I can imagine
?

Wheeling north, through the tree-lined streets, past the stately Victorians, the tidy storefronts that define Lake Esther, Lila wonders,
What am I doing here, really?

And finds herself wishing,
Once, just once, I’d like to feel like I
was running toward what I want, instead of away from what I
don’t. Or, better still, that I had what it takes, in advance, to know
the di ference.

35

This is it,
Ruth thinks. The dreaded day of reckoning, her self-imposed deadline when, with the additions from this afternoon’s mail, her bottom-left desk drawer will no longer close. And she can no longer hide from Hugh the number of subscription and ad cancellations that have been streaming in for days.

We’ll have to talk.
Ruth lights a cigarette, stubs it out without tasting it.
He’ll be furious. Worse yet, hurt,
that she’d deliberately withheld evidence of what was becoming painfully clear—that their editorial outrage and detailed coverage of the Dare family’s dilemma, their aggressive stance against K. A. DeLuth, and support for Fred Sykes, was costing them business on every level.

He’d warned her she was pushing too hard, too fast. This weekend’s full-page photo essay, titled
Separate but Equal?
, had dared to compare the local white school’s brick and mortar respectability, its spanking new gymnasium, gleaming floors, and glistening locker room showers to the ramshackle 58-year-old converted horse barn that housed the colored school, its battered hand-me-down desks and textbooks, its rickety row of outhouses lining the playground, and its appalling “science lab” equipped with one Bunsen burner and a bowl of goldfish.

Shedding light on the broader injustice of segregation (toward which the community had, for decades, turned a deliberately blind eye) had been a calculated risk. Ruth looks at the overfull drawer with disgust. But after last week’s horrors— the school board’s insanity, Gordon’s poisoning, the Sheriff’s maniacal rant—
what did you expect
? That, over the weekend— having viewed the paint and the posters out front, the pictures in the weekend edition—the Mayor, the Town Council, someone, anybody would rise up? Decry DeLuth? Demand resignations from each and every school-board member? Thank the
Towncrier
for its outstanding journalistic vigilance?

Fat chance.
Instead of collective outrage, her desk drawer was full to overflowing with cancellations from all over the county. Instead of voices raised in support, her office was enveloped in a sickening silence.

Ruth watches the snake of smoke still rising from the cigarette in her ashtray. It writhes up, curls over, fans out briefly like the head of a cobra, then disappears into the air. She sighs.
Later today, we’ll have to talk.

“IS MIZ BARROWS IN, please? I’m Miz Carolyn Ellis. We have an appointment.”

Ruth swivels her chair from the typewriter at her side to the front of her desk, to take a look at her two o’clock.

Carolyn Ellis is slim, thirtyish, a beautiful blonde, hair done up in a perfect French twist. Flawless skin, ivory pearls, trim red suit, discreet black bag and pumps.
Probable waste of
time,
Ruth thinks. She tended to be impatient with beautiful, well-groomed, stylishly dressed women. Not because she envied them. But, too often, she found them more effort than they were worth. Ruth’s own mother had been beautiful once—before age, disappointment (not the least of which was her mousy, myopic daughter), and an overabundance of bathtub gin robbed her of the very thing she valued most. Women who wore their beauty like armor, flaunted it like a prize, expecting to be courted and admired, were the worst. Occasionally, however, one of them would surprise you. Like Lila Hightower, who bore her looks lightly, as an addendum or afterthought to her surprisingly keen intelligence.
Prize or surprise? Which, Mrs. Carolyn Ellis, are you?

Carolyn’s entrance into Ruth’s office is smiling, graceful, Ruth’s welcome polite but perfunctory. The younger woman sits, declines Ruth’s proffered cigarette, and launches into her reason for coming.

“Miz Barrows, my husband and I have a relatively new business on the Trail, about ten miles north of town. House of Linens, it’s called. We sell sheets, towels, window coverings to new families moving into all the new subdivisions going up out there . . .”

Well-spoken. No doubt good with the ladies in trauma over pink
versus blue kitchen curtains,
Ruth thinks.

“We also have a line of table linens and party wear, so if anyone’s having a party or any kind of bash, we generally know about it firsthand.”

Good for you! But why are you bothering me?

“About a month ago, our son, Richie, signed on with your man, Donny, to run a paper route in our neighborhood. Richie was so excited, went ’round signing up everyone on our street and a lot more in our subdivision, ShangriLa Shores. But last week, he started hearing that a number of his customers were canceling their subscriptions.”

Ruth sets her cigarette on the lip of her ashtray, criss-crosses her arms.
Let’s all cry a river for poor little Richie.

His mother continues. “Poor thing worked so hard to get the papers out on time, even in all this rain we’ve been having, toss them on the doorstep, things like that. Richie was devastated, convinced that he’d done something wrong. But my husband and I told him that sometimes things aren’t what you think, and the only way to know for sure what’s wrong is to go around and ask. Long story short, Miz Barrows, Richie’s customers told him, ‘Hey! If it’s
our
newspaper, how come
we’re
not in it? Except for Fred Sykes,’ they complained, ‘the
Towncrier
is all about the folks in town. What about
our
end of things? Where are
our
Boy Scouts,
our
birthday parties,
our
ladies’ luncheons?’ So, Miz Barrows,”—Carolyn stops to smile prettily—“here’s where my proposal comes in. I worked on my high-school newspaper, took a few writing courses in college. Got to wondering . . . What if, on the page opposite your ‘Tidbits from Around Town,’ I provided you with ‘Blurbs from the Burbs’—a weekly column about what’s happening in the subdivisions?” Carolyn extracts two sheets of paper, typewritten, double-spaced, from her bag. “Here’s an example of what I have in mind.”

Ruth gives the copy a distracted scan. Carolyn’s proposed column is packed with the kind of information—names, dates, details of events—that will play well in the new house farms taking root north of town. But her overly alliterative style—“Bright-eyed and bushy-pigtailed Becky Palmer has bagged Brownie Scout Troop 220’s top title for Best Door-to-Door Girl Scout Cookies Sales Scout”—will require some heavy editing.
Until she gets the hang of it,
Ruth thinks.

“Our store’s right in the middle of things,” Carolyn persists, “so it would be an easy thing for me to do. And maybe you and I—well, we could work a trade—my weekly column in exchange for a regular display ad for House of Linens?”

“Why, Mrs. Ellis—may I call you Carolyn?”
And may I take
back every petty thing I thought about you?
“What a delightful idea.”

Minutes later, as Ruth escorts Carolyn to the lobby and bids her good-bye, she sees the jalopy, an older model with a rumble seat, pull up out front, and six, no seven, teenagers pile out onto the sidewalk. One of them, a burly football-type, opens the front door, then, seeing Carolyn, steps hastily aside to hold it open for her and, behind her back, gives the other two boys an appreciative eye roll.

Beauty doth of itself persuade the eyes of men. And teenage boys,
Ruth thinks. She pauses to watch the rest of the group burst through the door into the lobby, crowing “Hey, Peggy!” to the receptionist, barely out of high school herself, and crowd ’round her desk. “We’re here to see Miz Barrows.” “She in?” “Nice desk,” they chatter.

Peggy turns wide eyes toward Ruth who, leaning against her office doorjamb, says, “I’m Mrs. Barrows.”

As the teenagers move toward her, obviously intent on invading her office, Ruth steps aside, hears herself suggest to the boys that perhaps they should bring in a few more chairs from the lobby.

As the three boys grab chairs, and the four girls direct the placement of seats, Ruth returns to her side of the desk to survey each one individually.

“Miz Barrows, hi!” the pretty black-haired girl up front in pink angora says, “I’m Mary Lou Meyers and I—well,
we
read your article in
Time
magazine, the one about nobody cares?”

“Yes,” Ruth says.
Meyers? Meyers Lumber and Construction?
She checks her mental list of prominent local family names and businesses.

“And we, well, respectfully disagree,” Mary Lou says. “And, have brought you a petition, signed by sixty kids at our school, that says so. We’d like your help sending it to
Time
magazine, please.” As Mary Lou thrusts the two sheets of paper onto Ruth’s desk, the two girls on either side of her, both brunettes, one in voluminous blue polka dots, the other in pleated red-and-white plaid, nod and murmur and smile their agreement.

Ruth turns the petition around, so the title—“We Care!”— is at the top, quickly reads the text, then glances over the list of signatures below and on the following page. More familiar local surnames,
though none from the county’s big-money citrus or
cattle families,
she notes. And she can’t help but ask, “Do your parents know about this?”

“Well, yes, most of them do,” Mary Lou answers, without smiling.

The crewcut football-type behind her chimes in, “We’d prob’ly had more sign it, but a lot of kids said they’d get in trouble if they did.”

“And, these are all students? Any teachers? Adults?”

“Nope, just kids from the high school,” the fourth girl, a curly redhead with bright blue, protruding eyes, says.

“Who came up with this idea?” Ruth asks.
Charlie at
Time
is going to love this.

“Well, ma’am,” Mary Lou says, seriously, “a bunch of us just felt it was the Christian thing to do.” The polka-dot brunette beside her nods in sober agreement. “We were just sick over what happened to those children, felt so helpless about helping them. So we decided we had to do something. Maybe it will wake up the adults.”

Ruth sits back, wanting a cigarette badly. “You kids have done a fine thing here, a very fine thing. I’m sure your parents are proud of you. I would be.” She reaches for the fat, two-inch-thick file on her desk. “And I want you to know you’re not alone. These are telegrams, wires, phone messages from people all over the country who agree with you.” She flips open the file cover. “This one, from a lady in Nashville says, ‘Please know that there are many, many people who do care what happens to the Dare children and others in similar cases.’ Wired the family five dollars, too.”

There’s a sort of sigh, a settling, on the other side of the desk. Looking at their young faces, Ruth senses something that prompts her to ask, “Taking the high road isn’t always easy. Was there any trouble?”

Eyes shift away from her toward the floor. The tall, skinny boy in the back, gaze earnest and intense behind thick glasses, says, “We set up the petition table inside the gym. Outside, somebody put up signs saying ‘Nigger Lovers Enter Here’.”

Ruth winces. “I wish somebody had called me.”
Damn, another lost news photo!

The burly one beside him frowns. “We tore ’em down once we got wind they were there.”

“But, somebody put ’em back up this morning,” the earnest boy says.

“And, a few people,” the plaid and pleated brunette adds urgently, “got stones pitched at them for signing.”

Ruth grabs her pen. “Who? And who did the pitching?”

“Well, uh . . .” The spectacled boy in the back flushes.

“Actually, Brainiac here was one of ’em, but the guys who did it have been set straight, ma’am.”

“We did have sixty-two signatures.” Mary Lou resumes leadership. “But two kids came back, said we had to take their names off, on account of it might hurt their daddies’ businesses.”

Their faces, so bright and shining upon their arrival, flicker with disappointment.
So young,
Ruth thinks with a pang. “I want to thank you for bringing this in. You’ve done a brave and bold thing and I’m sure
Time
magazine will want to cover it.”
We certainly will,
she thinks.

“And, will you tell the Dares, too?” Mary Lou presses. “Let them know not everybody in this town is against them?”

“Of course. This should make their day,” Ruth says. “It’s certainly made mine.”
Unbelievable.
“Can I get a quick group shot of you kids holding the petition, please?”

FOR RUTH, the rest of the afternoon blurs in Friday’s hustle for Saturday’s edition. Gene in the darkroom grumbles over the last-minute inclusion of the teenagers’ photo. Walt the typesetter growls over the tight turnaround on a logo for Carolyn’s column and the ad for House of Linens. And at six o’clock, on her way out the door, Peggy, the receptionist, announces she’s not feeling well and will probably stay home tomorrow.

Ruth stands, key in hand, locking the front door behind Peggy, as the modern sedan purrs into the parking space out front. An older gentleman, distinguished, conservative suit, gets out, makes his stiff-jointed way toward her.
Now what?
she wonders, releasing the deadbolt.

“Mrs. Barrows? We’ve not met in person, but we’ve spoken on the phone. Dr. John Leighton, Clark Christian Academy.” He offers a bony, freckled hand.

“Of course. You referred me to the article by the Reverend Billy Graham. Thank you again. Please come in.”

Dr. Leighton places his hat, a brown, center-dent fedora, on the chair beside him and sits formally, hands clasped in his lap. “I enjoyed your story on the two Billys,” he tells her. “Men like Billy Hathaway are despicable—exploiting other people’s fears for their own profit. And I applaud your efforts to expose him.”

“Why, thank you . . .”
Wish I could say the crowd of cancellations in my desk drawer agreed with you.

“Mrs. Barrows”—Dr. Leighton leans forward—“yesterday, I called Sheriff DeLuth to inform him that my school, which is a privately funded Christian institution, would welcome the Dare children into our midst.”

“Wonderful!” Ruth says in a rush.

“But, unfortunately . . .” Dr. Leighton holds up his hand to stop her. “the Sheriff informs me that, were I to do so, I could be subjecting the school to
criminal
charges.”