Darby (18 page)

As he passed by the front windows, someone started sobbing like they’d whacked off a finger in a cotton gin. I searched around to see who it was, but my eyes were fuzzy and blurred. Then the lady from the Mill Village wrapped her arms about me. She said, “It’s okay, child. It’s gonna be okay.”

That’s how I knew it was me making all the fuss. Feeling weak, I hugged the nice lady’s dress against me.

Coming over, Daddy thanked her and politely unlatched my hands. He helped me into his office, where, sitting in his chair, I sobbed, “Mr. . . . Mr. . . . Mr. Dunn, he . . . he . . . nearly hit you, Daddy! He . . . he . . . nearly hit your face.”

Daddy wrapped his arms tight about me. “Darby, honey, it’s all right. He wasn’t going to do any such thing.”

“But . . . but . . . Daddy, all a Marlboro County’s gonna hate us so . . . so bad.”

“That isn’t true,” he whispered. “That isn’t so. We’re going to be fine. We’re going to be all right. We’ve got deep roots and good friends around here.”

I shook my head. “But . . . but I heard him, Daddy. I heard him say he was gonna get us for backstabbing.”

“He’s just talking,” Daddy promised, patting my cheeks. “He’s only talking.”

Between tears, I hiccupped. “All right. All right, Daddy,” I said, but I didn’t feel like it would be all right.

“Don’t pay him any mind at all. Don’t,” he told me.

“But . . .” I said, hiccupping, “what if he tells the Ku Klux Klan? What if —”

“Darby, nothing’s going to happen.”

After a minute, I sniveled. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s my girl,” he said to me. “Be strong.”

We sat that way for a while, and I told him, “I wish I wasn’t crying.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you do. Now, come on, you wipe your eyes and I’ll walk you down to the Fairchilds’ house. What I want is for you to forget about this and have fun. You just let it fall from your head and have a good day. For me, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, sniffling hard.

“You let it go, sweetheart.”

Standing at the door to the Fairchilds’ giant, presidential-seeming house, with the wet smell of Marlboro County filling the air, my daddy asked Beth to fetch her father. Obliging, she ran into the shadows of their home, past a chair that Jefferson Davis, who is famous for being the Southern president during the Civil War, had sat in once.

When Mr. Fairchild came to the door, my daddy said, “Robert, I’d appreciate a quick conversation. Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” Mr. Fairchild answered. “Come on in.”

Daddy followed me and Beth into the cool hallway. After giving me a kiss on the head, he said, “Darby, you be good.”

“Yes, sir.”

My daddy and Mr. Fairchild walked off toward the library.

Beth said, “What do you wanna do?”

I answered, “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should go on and see the flood damage?”

Feeling uncertain about things, I mumbled, “If you want.”

Beth went into the front closet to fetch her coat. “I wonder if they’ll find more fish today.”

“I wonder, too,” I said in a halfhearted way.

“My daddy told me that somebody found a ditch eel inside their cash register, and it was still alive and squirming.”

“Yuck,” I replied, thinking that if I found a ditch eel, I might scream. Those things are so ugly. They look like big snakes with four of the littlest legs, and even though they aren’t poisonous, they bite similar to a snapping turtle. Also, they make a whistling sound, which is sickening if you think about something as slimy as that whistling.

Hauling her hair up over her coat collar, Beth stopped and gave me a look. “Is something making you sad?”

I shrugged.

“Is something?” she wanted to know, her pretty lips all wrinkled.

Shrugging once more, I whispered, “Something happened at my daddy’s store this morning.” It made me shaky to remember Mr. Dunn. “Can we just go on and see if they find another ditch eel?”

Beth waited before saying, “I guess.”

So together we strolled down the mossy, brick front walk and started up Main Street. Dragging along beside the yards and gardens filled with camellia bushes and shiny-leafed magnolia trees, I told Beth that I thought President Coolidge should live in her house on account of the little balcony that overlooks the front yard. “Every morning, he could come out and wave to people from up there.”

Beth laughed.

I asked, “Do you ever wonder what the president gets to eat for dinner?”

“Probably only steak and pie.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

At the corner of Townsend Street, Beth glanced at me and stopped. She crossed her arms. “Darby, I think you gotta say what happened this morning. I can’t stand not knowing why you’re sad.”

I explained to her, “Daddy told me not to think about it.”

“But telling me isn’t like thinking about it,” Beth declared. “It’s true. We’re best friends.”

Hearing that, I smiled. To be honest, I knew talking about it
was
the same as thinking about it, but I told her anyway. I thought for a second. Then I blurted, “Mr. Dunn came into the store this morning and threatened me and Daddy. That’s all.”

Beth’s eyes got big. “Like what kind of threat did he make?”

“He said people were gonna call us backstabbers and that we were gonna get our comeuppance.”

Beth shook her head. “Ever since my daddy got a brick thrown at his window, I hate Mr. Dunn so much.”

I said, “Me, too.”

Bennettsville’s pretty stores were just getting going when Beth and me passed down Main Street. Alongside us, the rough, bumpy roadway puffed with dust. Farmers were arriving with their families in big wagons and trucks. Noises filled the air. There were clatters and rattles and engines rumbling while metal wagon wheels crunched alongside curbs. Dogs howled from apartment windows above the shops. Chains and straps jingled nice from horse harnesses. Folks called to people they hadn’t seen in a week or two. Free of their mothers and fathers, farm kids wove down the sidewalks at full speed, stopping at the Candy Kitchen’s windows to look in and dream.

We wandered past the courthouse and its important-seeming tower and wide lawn. Then we skittered along a road that swoops down toward Crooked Creek and the flooded Gulf.

Circling around a crowd, me and Beth slowed and stopped to stare at all the damage. We were both surprised. The area was a mess. Two buildings had fallen partway down, and a few others looked like they might do the same. The biggest shop, the grocery store, had lost its windows. A rowboat could have floated through. Out in front of the scratched and nicked doorway, there were drippy sacks of flour and sugar piled up in heaps. On the grass, next to a muddy stack of cans, there was a dead fish, but it wasn’t all that neat to see.

Gawking at the clutter and all the people struggling to save things, my stomach turned, and I stopped thinking about Mr. Dunn and the farmer who’d spotted me.

Beth said, “This isn’t as fun as I thought.”

“Naw, it isn’t.”

Watching, Beth shook her head. “Where’re the blacks gonna shop for food?”

“Maybe they’ll open an emergency store?”

“You think they might have to shop at the A&P or Douglas and Johns?”

I said, “Nobody would let ’em.”

“I bet,” she agreed.

Covered from head to toe in sparkling orange mud, one of the black men glanced up in our direction. Placing a soggy box on the ground, he took off his cap and started up the road toward where we were standing. As he got closer, my stomach churned on account of thinking that he was going to yell at the crowd for spying.

Stopping a few yards away, the man took out a red, cowboy handkerchief from a back pocket. He wiped at smeary marks of clay on his face and nodded at me and Beth. “Ma’ams,” he said.

It took a second, but I whispered, “Mister?”

Waving a dirty finger in my direction, but not right at me, he said, “My name’s Mitchell, Miss Carmichael. You don’t know me none, but I know your daddy ’cause my daddy works the Carmichael property out near Clio.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Anyways, for years I seen you in town with your daddy. I seen you up near the dry goods store. That’s why I come up here to say hello. I know who you is and I know ’bout what you said in the
Bennettsville Times
this week. I just wanna tell ya it was a nice thing. It was, even though it won’t do nothing.”

Surprised, I asked, “Did you read it?”

He laughed in a loud, strong way. “Can’t read a lick, but word about your story been going round. People knows what you done, and they ’preciate it. Thing about it is, most folks don’t got any idea what you look like.”

I nodded.

“It’s true. If they did, they’d say hello, ’cause people are grateful for the effort. It’s the first time I ever heard of anything like that getting writ up in any paper round here.” He snickered. “Can you imagine a black man driving a Cadillac in Marlboro County? That’s all right.”

We stared at each other. “Where are you gonna get your groceries now?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows. “Somewheres,” he said.

“Do you own that grocery store?”

“Naw. But I know what’s good for me. I know we gotta get it back on its feet.” Scrubbing a hand across his rough hair, he told us, “Well, gotta get back to working.” He turned away slow.

Beth called after him. “Did you find a ditch eel in the grocery building?”

Over his shoulder, he answered, “Naw, it was in the hardware store.”

“Did anyone get bit?” she asked.

Twisting around, Mitchell smiled. “No one did. Thank goodness.” Waving over his head, he carried himself back to the collapsing building, where he stopped and talked to people who were hauling out goods.

At the Fairchilds’ house, their cook put a picnic basket together for me and Beth. Once it was arranged, we carried it up the street and toward the horse fountain in front of the courthouse. Going along the sidewalk, I was less worried about people and what they thought of my newspaper story. Mitchell had made me feel better.

Flattening a blanket on the brown grass, Beth and me took a seat and watched the crowds of dusty people wander past. A little ways behind us, some farm kids played tag. They shouted and howled happily until one of them tore the crotch from his good pants. Crying, he left to find his family, his head bowed.

Beth said, “You think Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks ever argue about things?”

Not knowing much about either movie star, except that she’s beautiful and he’s handsome and good with swords, I thought about it for a second. “I bet they don’t ever.”

“Did you know they named their mansion Pickfair? It’s the first part of both their names, put together.”

My arms got goose-bumpy. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah. If I can’t meet a prince on account of living in America, marrying a movie star might be an all-right thing.”

“If he’s famous enough.”

“That’s what I mean, a famous movie star.”

“Maybe,” I told her. I thought for a few seconds, and asked, “Have you ever heard of any famous newspaper girls?”

“Naw, I haven’t ever.”

“Me neither.”

A horse and wagon clattered toward the fountain, and Beth and me hopped up from our blanket and met them by the stone water trough. The driver was a big man I’d seen a few times in my daddy’s store. Wearing a round hat and nice clothes that seemed small on him, especially near his stomach, he yanked the reins hard to stop his horses. Smiling, his wife adjusted a thick coat around her shoulders as their three boys wrastled in the back of the wagon.

“Hello, ma’am and sir,” me and Beth called. “Can we scratch your horses’ noses?”

The man shrugged. “When they done drinking,” he said, spitting snuff into a can.

Beth told the farm family, “They’re real pretty.”

The wife said, “We brush ’em a lot.”

“It looks that way,” I told her.

After we’d patted and patted those horses, they pulled away, and we sat back on our blanket and ate ham sandwiches and deviled eggs and biscuits with a dollop of jam. It was just past noon, and we drank lemonade and watched the Sanitary Café fill up with people while kids stood in line for the matinee at the Carolina Theater. Other families found their lunch baskets and blankets and spread a place for themselves on the cold lawn. A man with girls at the Murchison School settled his stuff alongside us, except that when he saw who I was, he moved across the yard. Mostly, though, everyone else who gathered to eat was friendly.

Me and Beth stayed there till about three o’clock in the afternoon, till we got chilly from a freezing wind that had kicked up. All together, we’d patted nearly fifty horses when, as we were getting ready to go, a family from Beth’s church brought their mares to the fountain. We ran over.

The man, Mr. Waddle, shooed us both. “Hey now, I ain’t interested in either a you two touching my horses.”

Taken aback, Beth said, “But, Mr. Waddle, you let us pat ’em last time.”

Hopping off his wagon, Mr. Waddle grabbed his mares by their harnesses and steered them to the water. “Here’s the situation. I ain’t gonna allow it no more. Your friend here, Miss Carmichael, she wrote a corrosive little article, and for that, I ain’t gonna allow her ta do nothing. Forget it!”