True Fires (19 page)

“What?!”

“For violating state laws on segregation. Which, of course, the Sheriff says, he would be duty-bound to prosecute.”

“Oh, Lord!”
Kick Ass strikes again.

Dr. Leighton purses his lips, as if trying to rid his mouth of a bad taste. “Of course, I cannot, in good conscience, break the law. But . . .” Eyes solemn, he presses the fingertips of both hands together in a prayerful tent, “neither can I sit by while the minds of these children go unattended. I have discussed this matter with the leadership of my faculty. And I am here to offer the Dare family, through you, the voluntary services of two highly qualified tutors.”

“Tutors?”
Brilliant!

“There are four children, I understand, in grades one, two, three, and five? The tutors, who teach at Clark Christian during the day, will come at night, twice a week, and instruct the children at home. In addition, we will provide all required books and materials.”

Ruth sits back.
What a brilliant, goddamn beautiful idea!

“Mrs. Barrows, I’d like you to reassure the parents that I will personally supervise the quality of instruction.”

“Your offer is wonderful. I’m sure they’ll be delighted. And much more receptive than our demented Sheriff.”

“We are a
Christian
institution, Mrs. Barrows. As I told Sheriff DeLuth: he, as a lawman, knows his duty; just as we, as Christians, know ours.”

After Dr. Leighton’s formal farewell, Ruth hears the mechanical grind rising to the rolling roar of the giant flatbed press in the back. Saturday’s edition was out of Hugh’s hands and into the capable grip of sweating, swearing pressman Joe Stephens.

Ruth sits, listening to the rhythm, like a heartbeat, of the press pumping ink onto newsprint. She smokes, sending gray rings spinning toward the ceiling. She surveys her desk: on her left, the still unclosable bottom drawer; on her right, Carolyn Ellis’s first “Blurbs from the Burbs”; and, in front of her, on top of the kids’ “We Care!” petition, Dr. Leighton’s card, which she’ll drive out to the Dares’ place first thing in the morning.

Jesus. Days of wondering if anybody’s listening, days of wishing
someone would do something. And then this one.
Ruth leans forward, presses the cream-colored button. “Hugh?” she calls into the interoffice speaker.

“Yep?” she hears his raspy, distracted voice yell over the rumble of the press.

“Can you come up front? We need to talk.”

36

Finally, after supper Saturday night, Pap agrees to walk out with Daniel and “take a look-see at them possum prints.”

“I hope they’re still there,” Daniel tells Pap as they make their way across the field, Pap holding the piney wood torch high above his head.

They are. But, once Pap gets a look at them, he squashes the idea of a hunt straightaway.

“This ’un here”—he points to the clearest print, with the toe like a hooked thumb on the side—“is her back foot. Ain’t a possum alive make a print that deep less’n she’s carryin’ five or six, mebbe more, younguns on her back. Cain’t hunt that possum till the younguns are grown and gone.”

Daniel is doubly disappointed. Not only is the hunt off, the pile of bee husks he’d told Pap about is gone.

“Them empty bee husks was right here, Pap. I swear it. A whole heap of ’em, sucked plum dry,” Daniel tells him, pointing to the spot where the husks used to be.

Pap grins in the torchlight. “I’m sure they was. But bees can be as persnickety ’bout their hive as any woman. Probably carried ’em off out inter the field somewheres.”

“What?”

“Ants the same way. Don’t bury their dead, jus’ carry ’em off someplace away from the livin’.”

“That true, Pap?”

Pap eyes Daniel and nods. “They’s gone, ain’t they?”

“But what’s to keep that possum from comin’ back, gettin’ into ever’ one of these hives?” the boy worries.

“Well, I’ll tell ye.” Pap drops a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, heads him back toward the clearing. “The first thing is plum laziness. That possum had to work all night to make a meal outta a bunch o’ bees. With all them mouths to feed, ye gotta b’lieve she’s lookin’ fer somethin’ easier—field mouse mebbe, or, since the rain softened things up, some big ol’ earthworms. The second thing is: tomorr’, ye gonna find yoreself a camphor tree, pull off some branches, bring ’em out here and step on the leaves, crush ’em up a little, see? Then, sweep ye a wide circle round them hives. Possums don’t take to camphenated oil anymore’n people do.”

Daniel laughs, catching Pap’s joke. Mam thought camphenated oil cured everything. She was forever pestering them to “rub a li’l oirl” on Pap’s sore shoulder, Daniel’s cut foot, ’Becca’s runny nose. Pap, especially, hated the smell of it. “Get away from me! That stuff stinks to high heaven,” he used to tell her.

At the cabin, Daniel places the piney torch in an iron bucket by the steps, and the two of them sit in rockers, watching sparks sail up off the torch and into the dark clearing.

“Spent most of the day in the woods again, did ye?” Pap asks quietly.

“Yes. Sampson’s teachin’ me how to fish Indian style. I ain’t got the hang of it jus’ yet, but I will.”

“A boy b’longs in the woods. I b’lieve that.” Daniel hears the slow creak of Pap’s rocker, then a sudden stillness. “But, for the next couple weeks, I need you home with Lu and the girls.”

“Why?”

“There’s things goin’ on, boy, in town. Got nothin’ to do with us. And ever’thin’ to do with us. Could spell trouble.”

In the trembling light of the fading piney torch, Daniel sees Pap’s hawk nose, his scowling brow, in profile. “What things, Pap?”

“Accordin’ to Miz Barrows, there’s people in town want y’all back in their school. And, there’s people who don’t. Bunch of high-school kids signed a paper sayin’ they’s on our side. Bunch of Klanners painted up the newspaper office, killed their dog, sayin’ they ain’t. Accordin’ to Miss Lila, there’s a lawyer down at the Courthouse wants to take the school board to court. In the meantime, Miz Barrows is bringin’ out some teachers from a private school Monday night, catch ye and the girls up on yore lessons. The worst of it is, there’s an election come Tuesday to see if that Sheriff DeLuth gets to stay Sheriff or not.”

“Mebbe they’ll vote ’im out, Pap.”

“Well . . .”—Daniel sees the match, hears the suck and flare of Pap’s pipe. Pap takes a long pull. Beneath his nose, the tamped-down tobac glows crackly red—“ef they vote ’im out, Sheriff’s likely to rare up ugly, like a bear throwed out of his den. And, ef they vote ’im in, he could jus’ as easy bloat wild, like a b’ar hog gone crazy on gooseberries. Either way, could be bad.”

“But, me and Sampson are—”

“Not now, Daniel.” Pap sucks hard again. There’s no mistaking his father’s steely resolve. Daniel’s heart sinks.

“What d’you want me to do, Pap?” he asks.

“I want ye here for Lu and the girls when Will and I ain’t,” Pap replies, eyeing Daniel through the rising, meandering vine of pipe smoke. “I want ye to unwrap yore twenty-two and my shotgun, and clean ’em up good. I bought some new shells today, we’ll keep ’em at the ready. I don’t aim for ye to do any shootin’, boy. But I do want ye keepin’ an eye out.”

Daniel feels the weight of his father’s request fall, like a whole cupboardful of coverlets, across his own bony shoulders. He hangs his head. “All right, Pap,” he says, his voice and his hopes gone hollow.

She Who Decides is unspeakably relieved.

Just days after the disaster of the clawed intruder, the Young One, the favored of He Who
Provides, arrives to cleanse the colony’s grounds
of the intruder’s lingering scent.

The Young One’s action, She knows, destroys
the markings that might otherwise invite additional trespass. In their stead, he creates a powerful, repellent moat; its scent a soothing balm to
Her fearful, grieving kin.

The children are safe, She assures the Old
Ones. We are all now safe, She tells the rest,
many of whom counseled flight against the fear
of another ruinous fight.

We stay, She Who Decides pronounces. We
weather the Winter and trust Spring’s promise.
And we watch, She decrees, that the Young One
who comes daily to o fer his protection, is protected as well, within the free range of our
shared ground.

37

As the Reverend Tommy Childs begins to read the names from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church, K. A. DeLuth bows his head and tries to look pious. But, inside he’s grinning from ear to ear.
As far as this election game goes, it’s a helluva
fourth quarter.

“Bobby Reid, Lois Ann Allen . . .”

This week alone, there’d been that crazy old coot runs the Christian reform school outside of town. We’ll welcome them Niggers in
our midst, the old coot says. Over my lily white dead ass! Set him
straight, didn’t I?

“. . . Getz, Mary Lou Meyers, Janet . . .”

That fat bastard Cantrell instigating these kids in Youth Group—
Youth Group!—to get up their “We Care!” petition. Spreadin’ that
bleedin’-heart bullshit all over the high school. Could’ve arrested the
whole lot of ’em for pollution of county property, if I’d known about it.

“. . . Charles Patterson, Gwen Moore . . .”

Need to have Miss Emily down at the post office give Cantrell’s
mail the once-over. I’ll lay five to a dime he’s a member of what?—the
Progressive Party, the Civil Rights Congress? Probably subscribes to
The Daily Worker,
or some such shit. His ass is grass.

“. . . Charlotte Stone, Dottie . . .”

Course, that little twat Ruth Barrows had to air it all out in
Time
magazine. Their covers are always red, ain’t they? The idea of
seeing my name inside a Red wrapper makes me wanna puke. But,
like the Judge always said, good or bad, publicity’s still publicity.

“. . . Lee, Joan Marie Cuozzo . . .”

Have to hand it to Fred Sykes. He and his wife, three kids, bunch
of Realtors, Jaycees, handing out free trick-or-treat bags to the station
wagons downtown. “Your Future Sheriff Wishes You a Safe and
Happy Halloween!” Probably had ’em printed up at the
Towncrier
’s
print shop. Lila wastin’ the Judge’s money like that. Bet the ol’ man’s
turnin’ over in his grave.

“. . . Louise Hewitson, Angela Stout . . .”

Back of the treat bags, Sykes and his wife and kids make a pretty
picture. But, it don’t beat mine on Ol’ Blue. Clive Cunningham says
it reminds him of Roy fuckin’ Rogers on Trigger, and you can’t get
more American than that!

“. . . Elizabeth Finneran, Joanne . . .”

Halloween on a Friday night! Goddamn Niggers went crazy with
their numbers. Biggest haul I can remember. Have to call Hallwelle
in Houston on Monday, tell ’im I’m ready for another bull. Gray one,
this time. Spice things up a little.

“. . . Anne Knickerbocker, Marty . . .”

Barbecue at the Cattlemen’s Club went great yesterday. Like Clive
said, “Sykes’ll take a few of the new subdivisions up north, but the
rest of the county knows what’s what. You can eyewash it all you
want, but the Sheriff’s job is to keep the Niggers in their place. And
Kick Ass knows how.”

“. . . Blye Phillips, Karen O’Rourke . . .”

The topper was Clive’s wife. Standin’ up there sayin’ somethin’
should be done about these poor misguided kids, the sixty who signed
the petition, listed on the front page of the Barrows’ Saturday rag. It
was Sarah Cunningham’s idea to call all the Baptist preachers in
the county, create a public prayer list, announce their names from the
pulpit, ask the Good Lord to show them and their parents the error of
their ways. That it wasn’t Christian to question God’s divine plan,
or the established state laws on racial segregation.

“. . . Don Hardy, Vicky Newell . . .”

In the pew beside him, Birdilee reaches over and squeezes his hand, hard, and gives him a dirty look. Had he chuckled out loud?
Sorry, darlin’,
his eyes tell her, then return to the high-gloss shine on his Sunday boots.
Course Birdilee didn’t
much like Sarah Cunningham’s plan. “Aren’t these kids entitled to
free speech?” she said, or some such nonsense. We all had a good laugh
over that one!

DeLuth shifts position in his seat, rearranges his pants’ seam to the center of his knee.
After this election, think I’ll take
ol’ Clive’s advice, hire a deputy, maybe two. Yeah. One white, one
Nigger. So nobody can accuse Sheriff K. A. DeLuth of being less than
fair-minded. Hope I run into Fred Sykes downtown today. Have to
tell ’im, “You are three and out, buddy. This game was a blowout
’fore you even suited up.”

38

Tuesday morning, Lila’s in the kitchen, sharing a second cup of coffee with Sissy, when sounds from the second floor suggest that the Lady Violet is on the move.

“What’s she up to?” Lila asks Sissy.

“Lawd knows. Reckon she decided to get outta bed?”

“I sure hope not.”
As if there’s not enough going on today already.
Lila locks her jaw.

“ ’S election day, ain’t it? Mebbe she g’wan to do her patriotic duty.”

“If I find out she’s votin’ for Kyle DeLuth, I’ll wring her neck!”

“Awww, c’mon now, Missy,” Sissy cackles. “She don’t like the Sheriff any more than she did the Judge.”

“Then why the hell did she stick with ’em both all these years?”

Sissy eyes Lila sideways. “Your mamma ain’t like you, girl. She need somebody to stick to.”

“Right. Like a black widow needs her web.”

“It’s true, girl. The Lawd give her two feet, but she ain’t never learned how to stand on ’em.”

“Stand on what?” Violet asks, pushing her way through the kitchen’s swinging door. She’s dressed in a lavender suit that appears a tad tight across her belly; plus heavy powder, bright lipstick, and an overdose of Violettes de Nice perfume.

“Two feet? One’s own ground? Principle?” Lila taunts.

“Who we talkin’ ’bout?” Violet wants to know. At the counter, she picks up a leftover piece of bacon from its serving plate, holds it between two fingers, pinky elevated, as delicately as a canapé.

“You, Mamma.”

Violet takes a bite. Eyeing Lila, she retorts, “Spiders eat their young.”

“So far,” her daughter says softly, “you’re one for two.”

“You cats g’wan t’ fight,” Sissy grumbles, “you best take it outta mah kitchen.”

Violet laughs. “We’re not fightin’. Lila never fights. She hits and runs. Don’t you, girl o’ mine?”

Lila feels herself at once rising to and resisting her mother’s bait.
Don’t do this, do NOT do this with her,
she tells herself and puts on a saccharine smile. “Does this mean you’re over your nervous breakdown, Mamma?”

“Well, of course, it does.” Violet grabs a dishtowel to wipe the bacon grease off her fingers, checks her seventeen-jewel Lady Hamilton watch. “The polls are open. You headin’ out anytime soon?”

“Not till ten,” Lila tells her.

“Ready when you are, Missy,” Violet says, her tone awash in sweetness. Then she asks Sissy, “Any more biscuits?”

AT TEN, Lila emerges from her father’s office, hoping her mother’s changed her mind. But Violet sits primly at the kitchen table, purse and white gloves in hand, smiling like a birthday child awaiting her presents.

“Mamma, I’ve got one question before we go. You votin’ for Kyle or not?”

Violet looks hurt. “Not,” she says, pouting pansy-colored lips.

“Let’s go then,” Lila sighs, grabbing the keys to the grove truck off the rack by the back door.

“Oh, can’t we take the Cadillac? I’ll never get into the truck in this skirt.”

Lila loathes the royal blue Hightower Cadillac. Even now, it reeks of her father’s cigar smoke and her mother’s pretentions. “You could drive yourself, you know.”

“Oh, I’m hardly strong enough for that,” Violet shoots back and hands her the Cadillac’s keys.

Once they’re on their way into town, Lila tells her, “I have a few errands to run. Why don’t I drop you off at the polls? When you’re done voting, you can walk across the street to the Women’s Club. I’ll pick you up there, at eleven.”

Violet clasps her purse, feigns shock. “Drop me off? By myself ? I think not! Run your errands. I’ll just wait in the car till you’re done.”

The sunny streets of downtown Lake Esther are thronged with cars and people. Violet’s eyes dart left and right. She rests her arm on the open window, waves a white-gloved hand weakly and smiles wanly at those she knows.

As if they’ve all come out to welcome her back,
Lila fumes silently.
From what? A month of breakfast, crossword puzzles, and
bourbon in bed!

WHEN LILA PULLS IN FRONT of the law offices of estate attorney T. Paine Marsh, Violet sits up, eyes brightening at the prospect of being fawned over by the old gentleman. “Paine’s office?” she exclaims. “Can I come?”

“Just dropping off a few files, Mamma. Won’t be a minute,” Lila tells her. “Wouldn’t want you to exhaust yourself on the stairs,” she adds, moving away from the car as quickly as she can.

Although Paine Marsh was never a part of the Judge’s tight circle of Courthouse cronies, her father trusted him. “Only lawyer in town worth his shingle,” Judge How-High used to declare. Marsh’s family was among the county’s original settlers. He’s a solid, old-school gentleman, tall with an attentive stoop, white-haired, impeccably dressed in a charcoal gray suit. Today, he greets her warmly, with the affection of a special uncle for his favorite niece, and ushers her into the highceilinged, mahogany-paneled office that smells pleasantly of pipe smoke, leather books, and Olde English furniture polish.

When she presents him with the stack of Receipts of Sale for the Judge’s Brahma herd, he shakes his head, lets out a long, slow whistle. “So, top of everything else, our Kyle could be a cattle thief ?”

“You got any title transfers in your file?” Lila asks him. “ ’Cause Daddy didn’t have any in his.”

“Not a one. Shall I present our query before or after the final vote count?” he asks, blue eyes twinkling beneath silver brows.

“Sooner’s better than later, don’t you think?”

HER NEXT STOP, two blocks away, is the campaign headquarters for “I LIKE SYKES, Future Sheriff.”

In the seat beside her, Violet cranes forward to scan the hubbub of anxious and expectant faces milling about—
new
people,
Lila notes,
nobody who’d know who she is
—then sits back dejected. “I’ll wait here.” She sighs, closing her eyes.

Fred Sykes, handsome in a pale blue dress shirt with a loosened red tie, stands behind the row of hunchbacked volunteers who are working the phones to get out the vote. Despite a noisy industrial-size fan in one corner, the room is hot, ripe with the smells of sweat, strong coffee, and stale pastries.

“How’s it goin’ today?” Lila asks him. They’ve spent the past four days campaigning together.

Sykes’s smile is confident, but his eyes are deeply tired. “DeLuth’s high jinks with the Baptists, turning the kids’ petition into a public prayer list, seems to have backfired with the Methodists and Presbyterians,” he says.

“Yeah, but what are the numbers? Don’t the Baptists outnumber the others two to one?”

“Three to one, actually.” Sykes says it ruefully.

“How about the Jaycees? The Junior League?”

“We got ’em. We got just about everybody who’s not hard-shell Baptist, racist, or somehow in business with our present Sheriff. The question is, will they be enough?”

“When do you think we’ll know?” Lila demands.

“Polls close at seven, should know something for sure by nine. Win or lose, my wife’s putting on a party at the New Haven Community Center tonight. Will you come?”

“I’m not much for parties.” Lila masks a small shudder at the memory of Ginger and Charlie’s barbecue. “But will you call just as soon as you hear?”

“Of course. And, Miss Hightower . . .”

She sees in his face the start of some kind of emotional thank-you. “You’re welcome, Fred Sykes, Future Sheriff,” she interrupts, releasing them both. “Just beat the bastard, would you please?”

Sykes presses his lips, a determined half-frown, turns tired eyes back to the phone banks.
He’s done his best,
she thinks,
but,
hooah, it’s still a crapshoot.

VIOLET’S RECEPTION at the precinct is as predictable as leaf curl in late summer. At the door, Lila stands back, watches the ladies manning the polls embrace her mother as the invalid restored, with gentle, outstretched arms, soft shoulder pats, and the quiet clucking of hens.

On her part, Violet plays it to the hilt, smiling heroically, thanking all graciously for their concern, dabbing a lavender linen handkerchief delicately to dry eyes. The prodigal penitent returned.

How many times over how many years has she played exactly this
part?
Lila wonders.
And how often have these same women sanctioned her charade with their ritual acceptance?
Was this a white-gloved triumph of good manners over Violet’s social chicanery? Or, was it a sincere act of Christian charity on their part?
Probably,
Lila realizes,
a bit of both.

Predictably, the ladies invite Violet to join those who are breaking for lunch at the Women’s Club across the street. Violet turns a preening face toward Lila, who stands at the exit, Cadillac keys in hand.

“Well, if Lila doesn’t mind picking me up in an hour or two . . .”

Lila, who’s had quite enough, smiles slyly. “Of course not, Mamma. Shall we say two? Or, if the juleps are as good as you remember, four?”

Violet, her back to her friends, slits her eyes, and says, in full sugar, “Maybe I’ll just call you when I’m ready?”

“No, no, no!” Pearl Lee Bagwell steps forward—Pearl Lee, who was their neighbor on Beech Street before the Judge and Violet built the big house outside of town, who shared many an afternoon sherry with Violet in those early days, who is no longer allowed to drive and has a Negro chauffeur—“you go on, Lila. Jack Henry and I will see your mamma home.”

Lila nods, waves, and is off, wondering how Pearl Lee’s liver is holding up after all these years.

On a whim that surprises her, Lila turns the Cadillac toward Beech Street to drive past her childhood home. It’s still there, the simple two-story clapboard beneath the solitary live oak, then and now, the biggest tree on the block. When they were children, Louis told her that the oak, with its tremendous trunk split just outside his window into five massive limbs, reminded him of a huge hand flung up, outstretched, toward heaven.
We believed in heaven then. When was
it I stopped?

At the end of Beech Street, Lila finds herself turning east onto Old Road, toward Pine Forest Cemetery. It’s election day, and if things go as she hopes, she’ll be leaving soon. She feels a gut-level urge to say a proper good-bye to Louis (she’d avoided his grave during the Judge’s funeral) and to deliver an overdue apology to her father.

Just beyond the heavy wrought-iron gates at the cemetery’s entrance, rusted open her entire life, she slows to make the sharp turn through the trees toward the family plot in the sunny southwest corner. Still in the shade, she sees ahead—
What the hell?
—and stomps on the brakes, hoping the thick layer of pine needles masks the sound of her sudden stop.

In the clearing, beside the Judge’s grave, a tall man in uniform holds on, leans upon a small slip of a woman. His shoulders shake; he appears to sob. With one slim hand, she braces herself stiff-armed against his squad car. With the other, she rubs his back gently, in small consoling circles. Kyle DeLuth and his wife.
Here? Now?
Then it hits her:
Election day. His first
without Daddy. Of course. Is it grief alone you’re feeling, Kyle? Is
there a bit of fear there, too? Are you wondering, as I am, who you are
without him? What are you, Kyle, without the Judge to call the
shots, set the limits, define the boundaries of your existence?

Lila shakes her head at the scene—
pure pitiful
. Slowly, she slides the Cadillac into reverse, and backs it out of sight.

On Old Dixie, heading toward her parents’ house, she rolls up the Cadillac’s windows, flips on the air conditioner against the afternoon’s gathering heat—hot for November. The cool air reminds her how much she misses her air-conditioned apartment in Georgetown, its smell of sandalwood, its pen-and-ink prints purchased from the stalls along the Quai de Montebello, its thick-walled sense of privacy and inviolable space.

In Washington, not necessarily at the Pentagon but inside the Beltway, there was the definite air of possibility, the distinct quickening sense that it was possible, with the flourish of a pen or the strike of a gavel, to alter the course of human destiny, allay the suffering, improve the lot of millions across the country, if not the world.

So unlike the air of transparent, patent inevitability in Lake Esther where, like the Judge always said, “everyone’s chickens come home to roost.”

THAT NIGHT, with Violet (who’d been helped, stumbling, up the stairs by Pearl Lee’s patient Jack Henry) tucked into bed, Lila sits at the desk willing the phone to ring.

Just before nine, it does. It’s Sykes, sounding genuinely hopeful. “Miss Hightower, I told you we’d have the results by nine. But they’re telling me it’s still too close to call!”

“How much longer?”

“An hour, they’re saying. Maybe less.”

“Call me the second you hear,” she tells him.

“Of course.”

AT TEN-FOURTEEN, the ticking of the clock has become unbearable. Lila, on her second pot of hot tea, jumps at the phone’s insistent ring. “Well, did we kick his ass or not?”

“Why, Missy, of course we did.”

Lila feels her blood freeze. “What the hell you doin’, Kyle?” she demands icily.

“Makin’ the same call I’ve made every election night of my life,” DeLuth says smoothly. “Old habits are hard to break, I guess.”

“You won?” Lila’s voice falters on the word, on the very idea.

“Why, yes. B’lieve it was the Nigger precincts put me over the top. Little slow addin’ up their final figures.”

On her end—
Goddamnit to hell!
—Lila’s speechless.

“It’s customary for the loser to congratulate the winner, Lila.” Kyle’s tone comes at her, awful as an ice pick.

“You . . . insufferable . . . bastard, rot in
hell
!” she hears herself roar and slams the receiver against the rumble of his laughter.

Damnit,
Lila fumes.
Damn him, and every ignorant, goddamn,
moronic, backwoods fool who voted for him! How in the hell . . .
She wrenches open the county phone book, flips the pages, scans the columns for the number.