Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands (20 page)

Revelations

The seven local Klansmen who were indicted by the Grand Jury found a friend in Federal Judge George W. Whitehurst. In December 1953, the judge granted their motion to quash the indictments because, he said, “the Federal Grand Jury has no jurisdiction to investigate the acts about which the suspects allegedly lied.” The Klansmen walked free.

But long before the men returned quietly to Opalakee, it was clear, in the days, weeks, and months that followed the blast in our back grove, that Emmett Casselton was a man of his word. The Opalakee Klan not only left my family alone, it left the rest of the community, black and white, alone as well.

Some people said the Klan disbanded because of Emmett Casselton’s say-so. “The old man got tired of it,” they claimed, and after all, he was the Exalted Cyklops
and
the area’s largest and most powerful employer.

I liked the version Armetta came up with better, that it was the
wives
and
mothers
of the Klansmen who decided they’d had enough of the Invisible Empire. “No more late-night meetings at the fishing camp,” “no more political rallies downtown,” “no more white robes in and out of the dry cleaners,” the women told their men, eager to shore up what little social equity remained in the fine old names that had been “dragged through the mud.” Somebody heard one ex-Klansmen joke “the Gran’ Jury was nothin’ compared to my wife.”

Years later, I heard a third version. I was in law school then and had driven home for Miss Maybelle Mason’s funeral service. Old Miz Sooky Turnbull, the ancient gardener, her face powdery and pocked like a huge potato, told me, “Y’know, Marie Louise, after that big boom behind your house, Maybelle marched right over to Casbah Groves warehouse, told Ol’ Emmett she’d got
wind
of his shenanigans. Told him if the Klan harmed so much as another
hair
on your brother’s head, or anyone else’s for that matter, she’d report certain rather
large
discrepancies in Casbah Groves’ Railway Express waybills to the I.R.S.! Y’know, Maybelle moon-lighted as bookkeeper for the R.E.A. station for
years
. She told Emmett if he didn’t think she’d do it, he had another
think
comin’. For some reason, Maybelle thought
the world
of your brother and you,” Miz Sooky said.

“Imagine that,” I said, sorting my memories of Miss Maybelle and Miz Sooky like suits in a Bridge hand, hearts from spades, diamonds from clubs.

Not long after Daddy and Emmett Casselton’s gentlemen’s agreement, the fishing camp in the middle of the lake became just that.

The children of The Quarters returned to the communal fun of “hide-and-whoop,” “chick-mah-chick,” and other favorite out-in-the-street games. After nearly sixteen months of having to hover near their houses since Marvin’s death, they relished their restored freedoms.

My brothers and I and the Samson boys dove in, literally, to new games of our own made possible by the disappearance of Dry Sink beneath the surface of the resurrected Little Lake Annie. Once again, as Miss Maybelle had claimed happened so long ago, kids leaped from the big limbs of the giant live oak and swung from ropes into the clear, ice-cold, spring-fed swimming hole.

One day, I invited Miss Maybelle to come see for herself the little lake. And she did, too, walking stiffly through the grove after work, in her sensible shoes and crisp gray-blue postmistress uniform. She stood outside the range of our wild splashes, arms folded over her chest, shaking her head from time to time.

When I swam over to her and got out of the water to ask what she thought, I noticed two things:

The first was that sometime over that summer, either I’d grown or she’d shrunk, but now we stood eye-to-eye and I wondered at the reasons I’d spent so many years
aggravated
by this little old lady.

The second thing I saw was that, instead of looking at the lake and the boys’ high jinks, her attention had drifted to the giant live oak. I followed her gaze up the huge trunk, then I turned to her and said, “It’s still up there, Miss Maybelle.” She looked at me sharply, but I didn’t cower under her gaze as I might have.

“What’s still there, Reesa?” she asked.

“The heart carved into the trunk. It’s still there, about two-thirds of the way up.”

Miss Maybelle’s eyes slipped away from mine and lingered on the old tree. Her face gave up a shy smile. “Imagine that,” she said.

In the years that followed 1952, before I left Florida for good, a number of curious things happened on a nearly regular basis:

People came to our house. The hesitant tap, never a knock, after supper or before breakfast, announced their need. And, for quite some time, their location, front or back, told us their color. I know Daddy never directed anyone to our front or back door. They sorted themselves, according to their custom.

He wasn’t a minister, a lawyer or a psychologist, yet somehow my father became chief counselor to Mayflower’s downtrodden. Sometimes it was a letter in need of reading or writing, or a legal form, or a government notice. A man from church in shock over the receipt of “divorce papers,” a young woman from The Quarters heading north to Detroit, or a couple having difficulty collecting on a relative’s insurance.

The people at both doors trusted my father to help them sort things out, decide what to do. No money was ever offered or expected, nor would it have been accepted. He simply gave them a few minutes of careful listening, some logical, intuitive counsel and an occasional investigative phone call to the proper authority.

And they thanked him in ways they felt appropriate. To those same porches, front or back, they delivered a crate of just-picked white corn, a fresh-baked peach pie, a half-dozen jars of homemade rhubarb jam, and, once, a lactating nanny goat for the child (my little brother Mitchell) who developed an allergy to cow’s milk. We were no longer strangers in the strange land we called home.

Another curious thing involved the ladies of Luther’s “C.I.A.,” our guardian angels who, for their own various reasons, we never came to know. There were many, many black women who worked in the homes of white people in Opalakee, Mayflower and Wellwood. I’d see them all over in their white, pink or pale gray uniforms walking down a road, sitting on a park bench, or waiting patiently for the bus.

Privately, I’d wonder, “Was
she
one of them?” “How about
her
?”

“I wish I knew,” Daddy would say, “I’d like to thank each and every one for their help.”

One day, Daddy and I were out riding in his pickup truck, the name of our family business brightly emblazoned on both sides. An older maid in a white uniform and thick-soled shoes sat alone on the green wood bench that was her bus stop, both hands resting on top of the big black purse in her lap.

Daddy and I saw
her,
and obviously, she saw
us
. The question (“Could
she
be one of them?”) so prominent in our minds must have shown up on our faces. She looked at us squarely, crinkled her eyes, and ever so slowly raised two fingers of her right hand off her purse top, into the “V-for-Victory” that was Marvin’s special sign.

Daddy smiled the wide ear-to-ear grin he was known for and nodded his acknowledgment. She did the same, in a secret, silent ritual that was to be repeated by so many other hardworking black women, again and again, for many years.

I will never forget that first exchange of signs and smiles. It was, for me, an homage to the exceptional dignity and grace of my heart’s first and unforgettable best friend. Although Marvin Cully died horribly years ago, he will live forever, for me, in the hope-beyond-hope of his parents and others turned luminous by “time in the fire,” in the free flight of a honeybee and the whippoorwill’s insistent first call to spring.

It was Marvin, I remember whenever I smell orange blossoms, who showed me my stripes and gave me his wings.

Epilogue

Revised March 27, 2007

The March 1951 murder of central Florida
citrus picker Melvin Womack (whose death inspired the fictional life of Marvin Cully) was
never officially investigated. His killers have
never been named.

The assassination of Harry T. and Harri
ette V. Moore in Florida, four years before the
Montgomery bus boycott, twelve years before
Medgar Evers’ murder in Mississippi and seventeen years before the killing of Martin Luther
King in Memphis, made them America’s first
Civil Rights leaders to fall in the contemporary
fight for equality. For well over five decades,
their senseless killing—explored by a Federal
Grand Jury in 1952, by Geraldo Rivera in
1991 and again by the Florida Department of
Law Enforcement in 1992—remained an unsolved mystery.

Upon its completion, the 3,000-page record
of the Grand Jury’s deliberations in Miami,
along with twenty boxes of F.B.I. support files,
were shipped to the State Attorney’s Office and,
by court order, sealed for forty years. When re-opened in 1991, they
revealed that Agent “Jim Jameson” was also a man of his word.

Although the files clearly reference the Ku Klux Klan materials
which my father, teen-aged “Robert” and clever old “Luther” liberated
from the fishing camp, and which eagle-eyed “Armetta” helped identify,
there is no mention of their names or of the secret circle of maids who, in a
mutual, miraculous leap of faith, brought the walls of the “Opalakee” Klan
tumbling down. Our celebrations of these things were small and quiet.

There were, however, loud Hallelujahs all around when, in October 1952, 1953 and 1955, Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn
Dodgers made it to the World Series. And, in 1955, finally brought
home a victory, for all of us.

More recently, four years after the original publication of this
book, there came another cause for celebration.

In early 2004, Florida’s then Attorney General Charlie Crist
(now Governor Crist) decided to re-open an investigation into the
Christmas Day 1951 murders of Civil Rights pioneer Harry T.
Moore and his wife Harriette. Twenty months later, on August 16,
2006, Crist announced:

“The investigation, led by the Attorney General’s Office of Civil
Rights in conjunction with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), points to extensive circumstantial evidence that the
Moores were victims of a conspiracy by exceedingly violent members of
a Central Florida Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan. Following extensive review of available information, more than 100 additional interviews, the most detailed excavation of the crime scene ever
undertaken and extensive analysis, investigators concluded that at
least four individuals are thought to be directly involved.”

In the presence of Evangeline Moore, the Moores’ only surviving
daughter, Crist named the names of Earl J. Brooklyn, Tillman H.
Belvin, Joseph N. Cox, and Edward L. Spivey. All four, deceased.
All four, members of the Apopka (which I call “Opalakee”) Klavern
of the Florida Ku Klux Klan.

Others, closer to the case than I, have questioned Crist’s motive
and political timing—he was, after all, running for governor—and
called his investigation “deeply flawed.” Although many murky
questions remain unanswered, I choose to focus on the shy, relieved
smile of my dear friend Evangeline. She was twenty-one when she
lost both her parents to the Klan’s homegrown terror. She was seventy-one when I first contacted her to bless my e forts to tell the story of both
our fathers. Now, at seventy-six, with her parents finally receiving
the public acknowledgment and respect they were always due, Evangeline Moore is at peace. As to the murderers, Evangline says, “God
has taken care of them, and they are resting in hell.” Amen.

Author’s Note

Every family has its stories. This one was my father’s to tell. Anyone who knew my father and mother, or my paternal grandmother, will recognize the inspiration for Warren, Lizbeth and Doto. And anyone who lived through the period, or takes the time to research it, will note my efforts to render historical events and figures as real as I could.

However, this
is
a work of fiction. For two very important reasons, many of the principal and secondary characters—especially Reed Garnet, his wife and daughter, J. D. Bowman and his twin sons—are pure fiction with no resemblance or relation to anyone who ever lived. In the first place, I wasn’t even born when bombs lit up the skies above Miami. In the second, the real Klansmen who roamed the back roads and groves of our area, including those who were indicted by the federal grand jury, have their own families and stories. Which are, of course, theirs to tell.

Acknowledgments

When I was in my mid-twenties, visiting relatives outside Chicago, my paternal grandmother overheard me tell someone, “I grew up in central Florida.” Not long afterward, she pulled me aside. “Wild plants and animals—and some unfortunate children—simply grow up, Susan.
You
were
raised!
A whole lot of people invested a whole lot of time and effort in your upbringing. Don’t deny them the credit they deserve for the way you turned out.”

I turned out to be a writer. And credit for that is long overdue to a handful of teachers who, early on, insisted I take my writing and myself seriously. Thank you to Gladys Wilson, Aronelle Lofton, Sara Harvey, Janet Connelly and Myrtle Hubbard. Belated thanks also to the fistful of professionals who, later on, challenged me to write hard and fast (and paid me for the privilege of doing so): W. R. “Mac” McGuffin, publisher of my hometown newspaper; Wilson Flohr in Orlando, Alan Goldsmith in Atlanta, John VanderZee in San Francisco and Tom Sharrit in San Diego.

Of course, I might never have moved from point A (writing Advertising) to point B (attempting a Book) without the inspiration of Diane Dunaway and the San Diego Writers’ Conference. And, I might not have finished the manuscript properly without the help of Elizabeth George and my fellow writers in her Masters’ Class at the Maui Writers’ Retreat.

From beginning to end, the reference departments of the local libraries in Carlsbad and Oceanside were a huge and constant help to me. The archivists at
The Miami Herald
and
The Orlando Sentinel
could not have been more patient or accommodating. Mr. Frank Meech, retired F.B.I. and one of the lead agents on the Moore murder case, was a generous and enjoyable source.

My book club read the early draft with insight and enthusiasm. And, afterward, became the best cheerleaders any writer could hope for. Bless you, Kathleen Bernard, Mary Blaskovich, Jan Brownell, Lindsey Cohn, Francie Droll, Rosemary Eshelman, Valerie Gilbert, Peggy Martinez, Kitty Meek, Debbie Moyer, Audrey Piper, Tricia Rowe, Monika Stout and Cris Weatherby. Also, Blye Phillips, my favorite contrarian who demanded, “Tension! I need more tension!”

Eternal gratitude to Lane Zachary for becoming my agent and my friend. Lane reads with an editor’s eye and an artist’s heart. She also, according to Bantam’s Kate Miciak, “writes one of the best cover letters in the business.” Kate is my editor. Everyone says Kate is brilliant and, in my experience, everyone’s right. She’s also fun, funny, and a writer’s dream to work with. Kate connected me to the big, boisterous Bantam family who, sight unseen, embraced me as one of their own. Heartfelt thanks to attorney Matthew Martin, managing editor Anna Forgione, copyeditor Pat Crais, art director Jim Plumeri, and book designer Laurie Jewell, for your time and efforts on my behalf.

Thanks, above all . . . to my sister-friend Joanne who lent me her passion for baseball and the most patient ear possible. To my husband Paul and our sons, Travis and Connor, who made time and space in our lives “so Mom can write” and let no good news go uncelebrated. To my mother who provided liberal amounts of horticultural detail and maternal encouragement. And to my father. This project began as a present for Dad’s seventy-fifth birthday. In the six months of almost daily long distance phone calls, discoveries, and heart-to-heart discussions before he died, it became, clearly, his gift to me. Thanks, Dad. You, more than anyone, get the credit for the way things turned out.

Susan Carol McCarthy
January 2001