Orchard of Hope (31 page)

“Or editor’s daughter trying to get one more picture, huh?” Jocie helped her shove the stuff in the basket.

Beulah laughed. She was about Tabitha’s age and had long brown hair that was whipping all around her face. She reached up to push it back out of her eyes and went stock still as she stared down the street.

“Oh my gosh! Will you look at that?”

Jocie turned to look. A group of maybe twenty men were marching up the street, the wind pushing the white robes they were wearing out around them like small sails. Some of them were holding white hoods up around their faces. Others let the wind blow the hoods off their heads. Behind them the black clouds seemed to be touching the ground, and it was almost as if the men had stepped straight out of the dark storm clouds onto Main Street.

“Who said they could come? We’re not even having a parade or anything,” Jocie said as she raised her camera up to take a picture.

“I don’t think the Ku Klux Klan asks permission. They just do whatever they want to do,” Beulah whispered as if she was afraid they might hear her.

“But what are they doing here?” Jocie had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as the men got closer, walking in formation up the street, not looking right or left.

“Nothing good.” Beulah dropped the basket on the sidewalk. “Heck with the napkins. Let’s get inside.”

Jocie let Beulah drag her back toward the store while she tried to take a couple more pictures. She wasn’t sure the pictures would come out. It was so dark the street lights were coming on even though it was still a couple of hours before sundown.

“Quit taking pictures,” Beulah said. “No need attracting their attention.”

“Why?” Jocie asked. “It’s just black people they hate, isn’t it?”

“Who knows with them? Just the sight of them scares me silly.” Beulah stepped back inside the store. When Jocie didn’t follow her in, she stuck her head back out and said, “You’d better get on in here too. They might know about that boy working for your daddy.”

“You mean Noah?”

“Whatever boy your daddy gave a job to. I don’t know his name.”

“Noah. Why would they care about that?” Jocie asked.

“He’s a colored boy, isn’t he?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“You don’t have to know the reasons for everything, Jocie. You just better come on inside out of the storm and away from them.”

“No, I’ll be okay. I’ll just wait till they go by and then go on across the street before the storm hits.”

“Suit yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Beulah took one last look at the clouds and the men in the street before she ducked back inside and disappeared.

Jocie stepped back against the building under the awning and watched the men moving up the street. They didn’t pay any attention to the wind or the thunder or even seem to be aware of the people on the sidewalks. They kept their eyes straight ahead and walked in step, moving in concert like one giant creature.

Suddenly everything was too quiet—as if the storm in the sky was holding its breath along with the people on the sidewalks while this human storm marched past. In the unnatural silence, the sound of the men’s boots hitting the street jarred the air.

Jocie raised up her camera and took another picture. Her heart jumped up into her throat as, suddenly, the four men on the front row all turned their eyes toward her as if they were the head of a beast looking for prey. She hid her camera behind her back and fervently wished she had gone inside with Beulah or run on across the street to the newspaper office. She wished she were anywhere but standing pinned against the side of the ten cent store by the cold eyes staring at her. Then they turned as one to stare ahead of them up the street once more, and Jocie was able to breathe again.

She ran into the ten cent store and past Beulah, who said, “I told you to get off the street.”

Jocie didn’t pay any attention as she raced on out the back door to the street that ran behind the stores. Her only thought was to get to the Grill before the men out in the street did so she could warn her father that they were coming. Who knew what might happen if the white-robed men found out a sit-in was going on?

Jocie was panting by the time she opened the door into the Grill’s kitchen. “For land’s sake, child, what you doing coming in the back door? You trying to scare the life out of me?” Willanna, the cook, asked.

“I’ve got to tell Dad something.”

“I think he done sent you home once. You better have a good story.”

Willanna wiped her hands on her apron and followed Jocie to the swinging door out of the kitchen. She stopped there to watch as Jocie rushed out behind the counter. No glasses were sitting in front of any of the people at the counter. Myra Hearndon still had her finger holding her dollar bill forward. Grover Flinn and Chief Simmons were standing behind them with their hands on their hips as if trying to decide what to do. Mr. Flinn’s nose was even redder than it had been when he passed Jocie out on the street earlier.

Jocie’s father started frowning when he saw her. “I told you to go back to the newspaper office.”

“I know, but this is important. The Klan’s coming up the street.”

32

Beside Jocie’s father, Myra Hearndon pulled in a quick breath, then shut her eyes for a moment before she opened them again slowly, but she didn’t move. She sat just as straight, her face forward, and didn’t take the first look over her shoulder. Everyone else looked out at the street.

Grover Flinn was almost yelling at the police chief. “See what’s happening? You should have gone on and run her out of here like I told you to do.”

“Now, Grover, she’s just sitting there. There’s no law against that,” Chief Simmons said.

“You could’ve arrested her for disturbing the peace.”

“I haven’t seen any peace being disturbed except maybe by you. And you surely couldn’t expect me to arrest Brother Boyer or Miss Alice or David here, now could I? What would I charge them with? Being thirsty?”

“Well, somebody ought to have done something. I don’t want any trouble with the Klan,” Grover said.

Outside the men in the white robes had come to a halt in the street in front of the Grill. The people clustered around the Grill’s door began easing away as if they were afraid of being caught in the middle of whatever trouble might come.

Suddenly Mary Jo slammed down the towel she’d been using to rub a hole in the counter. “Enough is enough!” she said, glaring at Grover. She walked around the counter past him and Chief Simmons straight to the door. She pulled it shut and turned the lock just as two of the men in white robes started walking toward the Grill.

“We’re closed,” she shouted through the glass door as she flipped the paper sign hanging on the door over from OPEN to CLOSED.

The two men stared at her through the door. She didn’t pay them any attention as she stalked back past her boss and behind the counter again. She went straight over to Myra Hearndon, pulled out her order pad, and said, “Now what was it you wanted, ma’am?”

“What do you think you’re doing, Mary Jo?” The words squeaked out of Grover Flinn as if somebody was choking him.

Mary Jo looked over at him. “I’m taking orders from these customers who got in the door before closing time. I’m hoping they won’t want anything that Willanna will have to cook, but if they do, we’ll stay here and cook it if the storm don’t knock out the electricity.”

“I haven’t said you could serve them.” Beads of sweat popped out on Grover’s head.

“You hired me to serve customers that come in this place. Now I never gave it a whole lot of thought before where anybody sat, but I’ve had plenty of time to think the last couple of hours. The truth is, me and Willanna have been working here together for over ten years.” Mary Jo glanced over at Willanna, who was still standing in the door to the kitchen. “We’ve rubbed shoulders, drank out of the same cups, sweated together over that stove back there, and she ain’t never caught the white disease and I ain’t never caught the black disease.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Willanna said, lifting her eyebrows up and nodding a little.

“So I don’t think it much matters where anybody sits.” Mary Jo looked back at Myra, her pen poised over her order pad. “Now that was a soft drink you wanted, wasn’t it?” She totally ignored Grover Flinn, who was staring at her as if she’d sprouted horns and a tail.

“Yes, thank you,” Myra said. “With plenty of ice, please.”

“The same for us,” Brother Boyer said. “And we appreciate it, Mary Jo.”

“Just doing my job while I still have one.”

“Nobody’s going to fire you,” David said with a look over at Grover Flinn. “Grover couldn’t get by without you to wait on people, could you, Grover?”

“If he thinks he can, he’ll have to get by without my cooking too,” Willanna said.

“I never said anything about firing anybody,” Grover said as he sank down in a chair beside one of the tables out in the middle of the restaurant.

“That’s good to hear. Now you take some deep breaths, Grover, before you have a coronary,” Mary Jo told him. “And Chief, you go on and make those peeping toms in sheets get away from my door. They’re the ones that ought to be arrested, coming in here from who knows where trying to scare folks. And I done told them we’re closed.”

“We may be worse than closed before they’re through,” Grover said, but his nose was fading from bright red back to a more normal pink.

Jocie looked at her camera. One picture left. She thought about taking a picture of Grover slumped at the table or Chief Simmons heading toward the front door, but instead she raised the camera up and turned it toward Mary Jo putting ice in the glasses. Mary Jo looked over at her. “You take a picture of me, Jocie Brooke, and I’ll take that camera away from you and stomp it flat.”

Willanna laughed. “Don’t you be messing with Mary Jo today, child. She means what she says.” She shook her head as she went back into the kitchen.

“We’ve probably got enough pictures for this week’s issue, Jocie,” her father said as he stood up. “We’d better get back to the office and work on getting them ready to print.”

Noah’s mother took a long drink of the cola Mary Jo set in front of her and then said, “I’ll walk along with you, Brother Brooke.” She slid gracefully off the stool. She lightly touched Brother Boyer’s shoulder as she looked at him and his wife. “I do thank you both for coming to have a drink with me.” She glanced out toward the street where there was no longer any sign of men in white robes. “Please pray for peace and cool heads.”

“We had peace before you came in here. If it’s gone now, you can take the blame,” Grover said.

Myra ignored him as she turned to Mary Jo and said, “That was one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen anybody do.”

Mary Jo looked as if she’d just been awarded a medal. Her cheeks turned rosy as she said, “It wasn’t all that much. I should have waited on you way back when, and then we wouldn’t have had to worry about those yahoos out on the street.”

When they left the Grill, there was no sign of the Klansmen. Jocie wondered if the ground had swallowed them up, or if they had stepped back into the storm cloud the way it had looked as if they had come. The clouds weren’t quite as dark as they had been and the thunder sounded more distant. Even so, as she and her father and Noah’s mother started down the street toward the newspaper office, raindrops began splattering on the sidewalk.

“It looks as if we may get wet,” Noah’s mother said.

“We can hope.” Jocie’s father held out his hand to catch a raindrop.

“And pray,” Noah’s mother said. “Alex’s apple trees need a good rain.”

“Everything could use a good rain,” Jocie’s father peered up at the clouds. “But it looks like the storm is moving away from us.”

“Do you think the storm, this other storm that Mr. Flinn says I’ve started, will move away from us too? Is the . . .” She hesitated as if even saying the word was painful, but she went on, making herself say it. “Is the Klan very active in Holly County?”

“Not that I’ve ever known. Those men, the ones I got a good look at, I’ve never seen them before.”

“I watched them coming up the street down in front of the ten cent store,” Jocie said. “I didn’t recognize any of them. Of course I couldn’t get a good look at some of them with those hoods up around their faces.” She looked over at her father. “Why were they here? They couldn’t have known what was going on at the Grill, could they?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jocie’s father said. “That was just coincidence.”

“It wasn’t coincidence that they were here,” Noah’s mother said. “They may not have come because I was staging a sit-in up there, but you can be assured they were here because of us. Because we bought that land from Mr. Harvey. Poor Alex. He just wanted a farm. We didn’t think we’d be challenging or breaking any barriers here just buying a piece of land. While I’m quite willing to make personal sacrifices to work toward true equality in our country, I don’t want my children to be in danger.”

“No good mother wants her children to be in danger,” Jocie’s father said.

Jocie waited for her father to say more, to assure Noah’s mother that her family was safe in Holly County, that nothing bad would happen, but he was silent as they hurried on toward the newspaper office. Jocie told herself it was just because the raindrops were hitting harder. He couldn’t stop and talk with the rain coming down. But even after they went inside and Cassidy was hugging her mother and Noah looked about ready to pass out with relief, Jocie’s father didn’t say anything to reassure Noah’s mother that things were going to be all right. Jocie waved at Noah and Cassidy as they followed their mother out the back door and dashed across the street through the rain to their car. Jocie’s father watched too, but he still didn’t say what she was wanting to hear.

Finally Jocie asked him straight out. “They’ll be okay? Nobody will bother them out on their farm, will they?”

Her father put both his hands on her shoulders, turned her toward him, and looked straight into her eyes. “I wish I could promise you that, Jocie, but I can’t. All I can promise you is that we will pray that nothing bad will happen and that Mr. Hearndon’s apple trees will grow tall and bear much fruit. It would be good to have an apple orchard in Holly County.”