Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands (12 page)

Chapter 23

The most frightening part of a hurricane is its eye.

Like the giant blade of a buzz saw broken loose, a hurricane spins wildly; its outer edges blow and bite and dump barrels of water and dangerous, wind-whipped bits of wood and trash. After that, closer in, comes the
real
rain and the horrible sound of the wind cracking hundred-year-old oak trees in two. If you’re lucky, locals say, the hurricane only glances in your direction and whirls off, moving on to the next community, the next state or, better yet, back onto the ocean where it came from.

If you’re
not
lucky, if you have the unfortunate luck of living
directly
in its path, the center of the storm,
the eye
, engulfs you in terrifying silence. You wait, and watch, and wonder
when
it will pass, when the crack of old trees, and the rain, and the winds, and the barrels of water will return, all over again. It always does.

In the ten terrible days after Christmas, after the murder of our friend Harry Moore, after Sal and Sophia left Mayflower for good, the Klan’s silence is deafening. Not a word, not a
sound
from the men in white who, everybody knows, spent the last nine months whipping the state into frantic frenzy.

For ten days, during which the F.B.I. sorts and sifts through the Moores’ ripped-up floorboards, the shattered ceiling planks, the tinsel of Christmas glittering in the yard, and finds too few clues as to
who
did
what
, we wait. Ten days after her husband died, the day after his funeral (where Reverend J. W. Bruno pronounced “You can kill the prophet but you cannot kill his message”), Mrs. Harriette Moore dies, too.

Mrs. Moore’s death is the first sign that this hurricane’s overquiet eye has passed. A flurry of increasingly loud events follows:

Mr. James Ferris, the wealthy Chicago retailer whose family owns the winter estate just south of town, calls Daddy to ask if “there’s still martial law in Miami.”

“No,” Daddy tells him, “never was.”

“Ruthie’s been after me to visit the Bahamas,” Mr. Ferris tells Daddy. “We thought we’d try there this year, put off Florida ’til next year, when things are more settled.” His is the first of many calls from longtime big-spending customers who “just aren’t comfortable” coming to Florida this year.

After that, we have an odd, unsettling encounter with Mr. Barrett of Barrett Hardware in Orlando:

Daddy has dynamite. He and most citrus growers around Mayflower use it to blow the stumps of old dead orange trees in preparation for planting new seedlings. The powerful variety, called ditching dynamite, is also used to rout the stubborn tentacle roots of a stand of palmetto. Above ground, there’s nothing friendly about a palmetto. Underground, its roots are as mean as an army of octopi, thick as a man’s arms and impossible to dig up.

On a Saturday afternoon in mid-January, Daddy and I drive down to Orlando to the big Barrett Hardware Store. Daddy, an avid subscriber to
Popular Mechanics
, read about a new kind of electric fuse which makes igniting ditching dynamite “a heck of a lot safer.

“Usually, you just dig a hole as close to the root center as possible, put in the sticks, light the fuse strings and let her go,” Daddy explains to me. “A fuse string burns at three seconds a foot, so you have time to run away before it blows. Sometimes it fizzles, or you think it has. If you walk in too soon to check it, you risk getting yourself blown up or blasted by flying palmetto. These new electric fuses are expensive but a lot more reliable than the strings.”

“Is that what you think the Klan used on Mr. Harry?” I ask him.

Daddy takes a deep, raggedy breath. “Maybe. Especially since the boom sticks were hidden under the house.”

“Daddy,” I say, feeling my tongue grow thick, “I can’t believe they did that to him.”

Daddy is quiet a minute. Then he says, “He knew there were risks, honey.”

“But his wife . . .” The words get stuck in my throat.

“There’s no accounting for that level of cowardice,” Daddy says, wheeling abruptly into the parking lot, his eyes clouding with contempt.

I trail him through the front door of Barrett Hardware, through the big aisles, to the back counter where Mr. Barrett handles special requests. Mr. Barrett is very tall and thin with a helmet of white hair, “a real Southern gentleman,” my father says.

He listens patiently to Daddy’s request, nodding in recognition and understanding, but in the end he shakes his head. “I know what you want, young man, but I can’t help you.”

“Is it something you could order for me?” Daddy asks.

“As of this week, as the result of a visit by high law-enforcement officials, I am out of the powder and explosives business. And you should be, too.”

“What do you mean?” Daddy asks.

“Just what I said. My basement which has, in the past, been stocked with powder and explosives to meet the needs of my agricultural customers is now empty. My purchase records have been appropriated.”

From the sweep of Mr. Barrett’s hand, I gather “appropriated” means taken away.

“Who was it? The F.B.I., the County Sheriff, who?” Daddy asks, immediately curious.

“I’m not at liberty to say, young man,” Mr. Barrett says. “Only that these items are now in the possession of
high
law-enforcement
officials
.” Mr. Barrett lifts up his open palms in that way that means
I’ve said all I care to
. “Like I said,
I’m
out of the dynamite business and
you
, sir, should be, too.”

Daddy’s always said that the reason they called Stonewall Jackson “Stonewall” was because it’s near impossible to get a Southerner to do or say anything he doesn’t want to.

Daddy and I walk out, unanswered and empty-handed.

A week later, when the plain black Ford pulls into our parking lot, Ren and I watch it through the office window. Both doors open at the same time and two white men in white shirts, dark ties and pants step out of the car and shrug themselves into their suit jackets.

“Definitely not tourists,” Ren says.

“Salesmen, maybe?” I wonder.

“Naw, salesmen are usually alone. Mormons?”

“No Bibles or books,” I point out.

We watch the men cross the gravel, enter the showroom and approach Mother at the counter.

“Mornin’, ma’am,” the older one says. He’s got a wide red face atop a body shaped like a barrel. His shoes are very shiny.

“Good morning,” she replies. “May I help you?”

“We’re lookin’ for a Mistuh Warren McMahon. This his place?”

“It’s ours. Warren’s my husband and he’s in the back. May I tell him your business, please?”

The older man puffs out his chest and hikes up his belt, like it ought to be obvious his business is important. He reaches into his coat pocket and flips out a black leather wallet. “Agent Thomas Elwood of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This here’s Agent Odom.”

“Ma’am,” the younger man says, dipping a pointy chin at Mother.

“Reesa, Ren, please get your father off the platform,” she calls in our direction as the agents’ eyes skim the showroom for our hidden location.

Without a word, Ren and I fly out of the office, across the showroom to the side door, up the steps, around the big waxer to the washer machine, where Daddy’s upending boxes of grove fruit into the cleaning tank.

“Daddy, the
F.B.I.’s
here! Two of them. In the showroom with Mother!” we pant.

“What?” he says, looking at us like we’re crazy, like we’ve just told him the Martians have landed in Mayflower.

“Mother wants you
now
. They’ve got badges and everything!”

We follow him off the platform and into the showroom.

“Gentlemen, Warren McMahon,” Daddy says, extending his hand with a smile. “My children tell me you have F.B.I. badges. I have to tell you, they won’t sleep tonight if they don’t get a good look at one.”

Young Agent Odom grins at us, pulls out his wallet, flips it open and lets us see. Agent James S. Odom, the card says beside the shiny silver shield that spells out
Federal Bureau of Investigation
.

“You a G-man?” Ren asks him.

“Yessir, I am!” Agent Odom seems hardly old enough to be anything.

“Ever met Mr. J. Edgar Hoover?” I want to know.

“Not personally, but we teletype a report to ’im every night.”

“Okay, you two, thank the gentlemen, then make yourselves scarce,” Daddy says, waving us off, away from the counter.

Kneeling on chairs inside the office, Ren and I quickly fold ourselves over Mother’s desk, straining to hear the adult conversation.

“I didn’t catch how you happened to know my name?” Daddy asks the two agents.

I catch my breath, sure the G-men will say that it was Mr. Hoover himself who sent them, because of Daddy’s long-ago letter about Marvin’s murder.

“We understan’ y’all have some dynamite.” Agent Ellwood’s clearly the boss. “We had an interest in knowin’ what y’ plan to do with it?”

“Same thing every other citrus grower in the county does with it—blow stumps, try to win the war against palmettos.” All of a sudden, Daddy’s got his guard up and I think I know why. For years, Ren and I have played a game called “Accents,” where we listen to the way customers talk and guess where they’re from. Some accents are harder to peg than others, but Agent Ellwood’s is pure Florida panhandle, the heart of Cracker country.

“Would y’all have any other uses for it?” Agent Ellwood drawls.

“You mean, like blowing people up, or destroying private property? Gentlemen, my wife and I aren’t Klan members. In fact, you can probably tell from our accents, we’re not even Southerners,” Daddy says, throwing his arm protectively around Mother.

“But y’all are familiar with Klan activities ’round here?”

“Well, they killed a young friend of ours last March. I wrote your boss a letter about it but never heard anything back. At Christmas, the Klan ran the only other Northerners in town out of here because they were Catholic and made the mistake of being too nice to the local Negroes.”

They killed Marvin in Emmett Casselton’s lemon grove! They
scared old Sal and Sophia into leaving here forever!

“What was it y’ say the Klan did ’round Christmas?” Agent Ellwood asks sharply, his fat blue pen poised over his small black notebook.

Just like that, they’ve brushed past Marvin’s murder as if it
doesn’t count!

“Christmas
Eve
,” Daddy says, “which is twenty-four hours before the event I imagine you’re interested in. On Christmas
Eve
, they threw an unlit stick of dynamite through our friends’ store window, warning the owners that if they didn’t leave town, the next one would be lit.”

“What’d the owners do?” Ellwood asks, putting his pen down.

“They left,” Mother says quietly.

It’s clear their only interest is the Moores’ murder. To hell with
anybody else.

“Mistuh McMahon, you friends with local Klansmen?”

“I know a lot of the local men, do business with them from time to time, and, in general, try to get along with everybody.” Daddy’s tone is even more guarded than before. “We have property here, a business, and—as you can see— children who attend the local school. We get along. But we’re not what I’d call
friends
.”

“Looky here, Mistuh and Miz McMahon, we’re on a sort of fishin’ trip, officially to determine if all citizens are receivin’ equal protection under the law. Unofficially, we got some suspicions ’bout the Opalakee Klan. Y’all be willin’ to speak with our supervisor?”

“Regarding?” Daddy asks, politely.

“Oh, jus’ the general lay of the land ’round here, how things work in Orange County and Opalakee?” Ellwood says.

“I’d be willing to speak
generally
about just about anything, Agent Ellwood. What’s your supervisor’s name?”

“Jameson, sir, James Jameson’s his name. Can he call y’all at this number?” Ellwood says, pocketing one of our business cards from the little plastic holder on the counter.

“I’d prefer to speak with the gentleman in person,” Daddy tells him. “I like to see who it is I’m talking to.”

“I’m not exactly sure when he’ll get up this way. He’s operatin’ outta Orlando, though, and he jus’ might want to stop by.”

Daddy shrugs. “We’ll be here.”

Agent Ellwood hikes his pants again, an important man off to more official business. “Thank y’ for your time, Mistuh McMahon. Ma’am. Y’all have a real nice place here.”

“Thank you.” Mother nods stiffly.

Agent Ellwood and Agent Odom, who hasn’t said a word since showing us his badge, turn and walk out into the sun. At the Ford, they shrug off their jackets and lay them on the back seat like they were babies. As the frowning Agent Ellwood starts the engine, Agent Odom shoots a shy smile and a small wave in our direction.

Florida Crackers bearing the badges of Mr. Hoover’s F.B.I. . . .
it’s clear the other side of this hurricane has begun to blow.

Chapter 24

The word is out. You’d have to be a hermit not to ’ve heard that Florida has “race troubles.”

I sit in the showroom office, flipping through the clippings sent from our far-flung relatives. It doesn’t matter which one you look at—
Time, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post
, newspapers from Maryland to Montana—they all say the same thing. Under the swaying palm trees, inside the orderly orange groves, Florida leads the nation in cases of race prejudice and violence. Also, despite six weeks of intense investigation, the F.B.I. has not a single suspect in the Christmas night murders of Harry and Harriette Moore.

I study the pictures of Mr. Harry and his wife. She was a schoolteacher, too, he’d said. We never met her, but she has a pretty face and the same kindly look in her eyes that he always had.

In the showroom, I hear my mother sidestep questions from the troubled tourists.

“You expect this sort of thing in Mississippi or Georgia,” a lady with an up-east accent is saying. “But Florida?”

“Hard to believe,” my mother lies.

In my hand, a Chicago clipping tells the truth: “Even in the 1920s, Florida, not Alabama or Mississippi, led the South in lynchings in proportion to population.” I wonder who did the math.

The husband and wife driving the big Pontiac Chieftain with New Jersey plates exclaim, “It was front-page news in the
Times
. We almost didn’t come!”

“We’re glad you did,” Mother, wearing her guise of Cheerful Saleslady, assures them.

We are, after all, a family of shopkeepers; like Daddy says, “merchants on the South’s most lucrative trade route.” In exchange after exchange, my mother models “proper showroom behavior.” The rules are simple, and older than I am: These people are on vacation, they’ve left their real lives behind and have no interest in ours. Never complain, never explain, just politely present the Florida of their fantasies. It makes me sick.

Isn’t it wrong, I used to ask Marvin, to pretend niceness you don’t feel? Especially to people who are rude, or, sometimes, downright mean?

“Cock-a-doodle, li’l Rooster!” Marvin mocked, narrowing his eyes at me as if I was a fool. “Try being colored,” he’d grinned. The truth—that my complaints were ridiculous, his, impossible—popped up between us like some jeering jack-in-the-box. We both laughed, shamefaced, and hastily, awkwardly, moved on to other things.

Oh, Marvin, things are much worse now than they were then.
Some days, I’m glad you’re not here to see it. Most days, though, I’d
give anything to have you here to talk to.

At Mr. Marshall’s invitation, Armetta joins a group of over two hundred N.A.A.C.P. representatives from fifteen states at an emergency meeting in Jacksonville.

“They’re hoping,” Daddy tells me, “to turn their outrage over the Moores’ murders into something meaningful.”

Together, the group creates and unanimously adopts the Jacksonville Declaration, a single sheet of demands for “seven basic rights of full citizenship.”

Proudly, Armetta thrusts mimeographed copies of the document into our hands. The Declaration calls for:

“One—the right to security of person against the organized violence of lawless mobsters or irresponsible law-enforcement officers;

“Two—the right to vote as free men in a free land;

“Three—the right to employment opportunities in accordance with individual merits;

“Four—the right of children to attend any educational institutions supported by public funds;

“Five—the right to serve unsegregated in the armed forces of the country;

“Six—the right to travel unrestricted by Jim Crow regulations;

“And seven—the right to go unmolested among fellow Americans as free men in a free society.”

Daddy calls it a
manifesto
. He ribs Armetta that “all good Communists have to have one.” I sit, dumbfounded by my own stupidity.

Nothing, not
one
thing, on their list seems the least bit unreasonable to me, but the fact that the list exists must mean, can
only
mean that these things are not currently available because, and only because, of a person’s
skin
color? Does the entire country—the land of the free, the home of the brave—
know
this? Is ignorance like Miz Sooky’s, arrogance like Emmett Casselton’s, outright lunacy like Sheriff Willis McCall’s so widespread that people like us,
we
are in the minority?

To tell you the truth, it had never occurred me. The signs were all around and I never saw them. I knew we lived in a place, a state, gone crazy, where good people had been killed for no good reason. I knew our nation’s leaders had been preoccupied with other things. But the reality, the day-to-day dangers and restrictions that define a colored person’s life anywhere in this country, had never struck me before. The shock and shame of it leave me staring, flabbergasted, at Armetta’s proud document.

“Try being colored,” Marvin had told me. And I couldn’t. Even in my wildest imaginings, I wouldn’t have come up with the picture painted by Armetta’s seven points. And that sickens me, truly.

For her part, Armetta is
transformed
. The weary, weeping soul who attended both of the Moores’ funerals in Mims has become someone else. She’s fired and filled up. Seeing the change, feeling my own sense of fear and frustration, I can’t help but ask her, “Armetta, how
can
you be so hopeful?”

She looks at me steady, without smiling. “Hope’s like food, Roo, like air . . . there’s no real livin’ without it. This world’s not perfect, not even close. But everythin’ we want, everythin’ we’re hoping for,” she says, “is ahead of us. You can’t move forward lookin’ back.”

She’s right,” Doto tells me later when I show her the Jacksonville Declaration. “We can’t change the world overnight, Reesa. But we begin by changing the way we choose to live in it.”

That same week, I’m relieved to hear, at last, from Vaylie.

Dear Reesa, she writes.

Thanks so much for the silver friendship bracelet. I love it!
It was my favorite part of a very crummy Christmas.

Mamma and Daddy got into a big fight on Christmas
morning. Over me, of course. Well, actually, it was over their
presents to me. Mamma gave me a whole new wardrobe
specially ordered from New York—I was hoping for a pink
shirt with matching poodle skirt or maybe something with
polka dots. Anyways, everything I got is either bright red, blue
or green. My looks are “coltish,” Mamma says, and with my
freckles, I’m so polka-dotted already, she says, I can only wear
solid bright colors like “racing silks.” I hate every single thing
she got me, Reesa, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in any of it!

Daddy’s gift was a small box with a little porcelain pony
inside. It was his way of telling me that he’d given me a horse!
My very own Tennessee Walker! I was so excited but Mamma
about blew a gasket. “I told you absolutely NO on this horse
thing, Gerald!” she yelled. “I can’t believe you did this to me!”
and started crying up a storm. Daddy just looked at her, kind
of squinty eyed, and hissed, “If you’re gonna make the girl
dress like a goddamn jockey, the least you could do is give her a
goddamn horse to sit on!” I’ll spare you the details except that,
after they quit yelling at each other, Daddy dove into his
Bloody Marys and Mamma took a couple of her nerve pills and
they both passed out before we’d even had our breakfast. I had
to call my daddy’s mamma and tell her they were “too
indisposed” for us to make it to Christmas Dinner. Fortunately
for me, Claudette came by with a pan of her Christmas
gingerbread. She knows it’s my favorite. When I told her what
happened she called Whit and he came all the way from
Colored Town with a plate of their Christmas dinner just for
me. Claudette and Whit both sat down with me in the kitchen
while I ate and it was so good! Ham, sweet potato pone,
collards with fatback and a huge slice of pecan pie after. This
might sound crazy but I think I’d be a whole lot better off if
Whit and Claudette were my parents instead of the ones I got
stuck with. (And, wouldn’t my daddy’s mamma have a big fat
cow if she heard that one!)

Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? I have two
but you’re the only soul I’m telling them to. The first is to catch
up with my school work. After missing the whole month of
September, plus two weeks in November “on tour,” my grades
are just awful. My daddy’s mamma got a look at my report
card and suggested I might be better off at a school for slow
kids! I wanted to tell her I know I’d make honor roll if I could
stay in town for more than a couple months at a time, but she
won’t listen to anything that has to do with Daddy’s “spells.”

My other resolution—well, wish is more like it—is that
Mamma and Daddy will just stop fighting and get a divorce.
Reesa, I hope I don’t get struck by lightning for saying this, but
I think we’d all be a lot happier without each other. ’Course,
Mamma would have to change her ways without all Daddy’s
money, but we’d get by. And Whit and Claudette would take
care of Daddy just like they always have. The thing is, right
now, Daddy and Mamma and me are just like those three
rattlers in your clearing, coiling and rattling and hissing at
each other, then racing away as fast as we can to get out of the
big old hole we’re stuck in.

It’s a New Year, Reesa. I wish I could believe it’ll be a
HAPPY one. Write SOON!!!

Love,
VAYLIE

Grabbing paper, pen and a jacket, I head out of the house.

Dear Vaylie,

Do you remember the big old oak tree next to Dry Sink? I’m
sitting in it now on the same big branch we sat on last spring.
My friend Marvin told me everybody ought to have a tree and
this one’s been mine ever since I can remember; especially after
Marvin told me about its heart. You didn’t get to see it when
you were here but it’s carved in the trunk about ten feet higher
up, a small heart with the letters “R.S. + M.M.” in the center.
All my life, I’ve thought that heart was some kind of magical
message just for me. Marvin told me he found it when he was a
boy, but I’ve always been sure that M.M. was for me (Marie
McMahon) and that R.S. was a sign, the initials of the man
I’d marry someday. But, just now, thinking about our day here
and in the attic, it hit me that M.M. wasn’t me at all, that
the letters stood for Miss Maybelle Mason and her dead fiancé,
Richard Swann!!!

Oh, Vaylie, aren’t a whole lot of things not at all what they
seem? Like your grandmother thinking you’re slow when you’re
as smart as can be. And like Whit and Claudette acting more
like proper parents than your real mamma and daddy. It’s
happening here, too, in the way a whole lot of white people
think their skin tone makes them better than colored people—
when the truth is some of the finest people in the world aren’t the
least bit white!

My daddy calls the whole rotten mess “growing pains.”
“No pain, no gain,” he says. Personally, I see the pain, but
where’s the gain in your mamma and daddy being so mean to
each other, or in Miss Maybelle’s heartbreak, or innocent people
like my friend Marvin shot, and others—a colored couple
named Harry and Harriette Moore—killed in their beds? I
don’t get it.

Mother sees things di ferent. She tells me God’s like the
dealer in a giant card game. Because of luck, some people wind
up with better cards than others, but the important thing is to
do the best you can with the hand you’re dealt. That’s what
you’re doing, Vaylie—the best you can!

One thing for sure (I know because I’ve tried it both ways) is
we can’t give up hope. Marvin’s mother says hope keeps us
going, Vaylie. My mother says it keeps us in the game. ’Til
luck, like the tide, turns. It always does, she says.

Give yourself a Happy New Year’s hug from me, Vaylie.
And know I’m sending you all the love and hope and luck I
can spare!

xxxooo, Reesa