The Dry Grass of August (23 page)

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Authors: Anna Jean Mayhew

BOOK: The Dry Grass of August
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“What?”
He walked away.
“Link.”
He didn't stop.
“I brought your mother's things, her flowered bag.”
He turned.
“There's three fruitcakes in it. She bought one for a church party, one for y'all, and one for her best friend.” I was ashamed I didn't know who that was. “It's by the coatrack in the foyer.”
For a second his face softened. “I'll get it.” He disappeared into the crowd, leaving me with Leesum among the clumps of people standing under trees, talking, glancing at Leesum, barely looking at me. I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Reverend Perkins said, “You all right now, Miss Watts?”
I nodded. “It was a good service.”
He touched my hand. “Mrs. Luther told me all about you. All about you.You were . . .” He stopped. “She said you—” He cleared his throat. “She loved you, that's all.”
Tears came to my eyes. He put his arm around my shoulders. “You'll find a way to get on without her. Lord doesn't give us more'n we can bear.” He looked into my eyes. “You know that?”
“That's what Mary always told me.”
“Just you remember it.” He spoke to Leesum. “I'll see you later.”
“Yessuh.”
I said to Leesum, “I have to go. My folks don't know where I am.”
He looked like a man, dressed up, serious, as he walked with me to the street. “We sendin' somebody to Georgia.They gone find out what happened to Miz Luther.”
“The church is?”
“Yeah, Deacon Hull, the one what spoke up in the service. Maybe one or two others.”
“The sheriff's working on it.”
“They never try too hard to find out who killed a colored.” Colored. Leesum was colored. I kept forgetting what that meant.
A yellow cab drove up, the taxi I'd come in. I took Leesum's hand. “I've got to go now.”
He stared at me with his green eyes. “I be thinkin' of you, Jubie.”
“Same here. Good-bye, Leesum.”
From the backseat of the cab, I watched him standing on the curb.
The driver asked, “How was the funeral?”
“Good. I'm glad I went.”
“Reckon you were the only white there.”
“Yes.”
“Did you forget your tote?”
“Oh, no, that belonged to the woman who . . . I took it to her family.”
We passed the House of Prayer for All People and Daddy Grace's red, white, and blue mansion across from the ice house. When we turned left onto Morehead, I scrunched down in the seat in case any of Mama's friends were at the Junior Woman's Club. When I sat up, I asked the driver, “Why'd you come back for me?”
“Got a girl your age. Wouldn't want her in colored town by herself.”
I liked him for not saying nigger town. When we pulled up to the house, he said, “That'll be a dollar. You gonna be okay, now?”
I gave him a dollar and a quarter. “Yes, sir. Thank you for your kindness.”
My heels tapped on the slates of the front walk as I ran to the house. Back in my room, I sat at my dresser, trying to think what to do. In the mirror my hands went to Stell's straw hat, removed it, put it down on the glass-topped dresser, like a lady in a movie, taking off her hat after a tea party. I put it back in the hatbox exactly as it had been, returning the box to the shelf in Stell's closet. I folded the white cotton gloves Meemaw had given me, which I'd never worn before, and put them in the top drawer of my bureau, putting away a girl I'd never really been. When I pulled my T-shirt over my head and zipped up my jeans, I felt I was myself again. I left my room neat, not like my room at all. If I got the car away from the house, there'd be no way for anybody to tell I'd ever been home. Even the shining kitchen could have been Aunt Rita or Young Mary.
I had backed the car into the driveway and was pulling down the garage door when Linda Gibson hollered from her upstairs window, “Hey, June! When'd y'all get home?” I jumped in the car, pretending I hadn't heard her.
At the corner I turned toward town. Traffic was getting heavy as men came home from work, and I felt nervous driving among so many cars. I turned onto Princeton and pulled into the crowded lot at Freedom Park. A breeze came through the open windows. Boy Scouts and their dads were playing ball in the diamond next to the parking lot, yelling and raising dust.
I stretched out on the front seat to decide what I should do, but all I could think about was Mary in her coffin, in the ground, cold, still—forever. I closed my eyes and tried to talk to her, not praying, just speaking out loud. “Hey, Mary, I went to your funeral, and it was fine.You would have—” I stopped, thinking that she already knew everything, just like when she was alive.
C
HAPTER 27
I
woke to the sound of laughter. The pole lamps in the picnic areas made the park an island of light in the gathering dusk. People sat in the grass around the lake. A man cooking on a grill beside a nearby station wagon handed a hot dog to a boy. A woman filled tumblers from a thermos. I smelled hamburgers cooking and my mouth watered. I locked the car and walked the five blocks home.
The house was quiet. I wanted to turn on the lights or the attic fan, anything to help me feel I wasn't so alone. I got Daddy's water bottle from the fridge and gulped from it, water dribbling down the front of my T-shirt. The dim light from the fridge danced on the bulletin board where we'd left a handmade card saying,
“Good-bye, Daddy. We'll miss you. See you at Pawleys!”
It had been only a week and a half since I'd taken down the swim meet schedule and pushed the thumbtacks into Daddy's card. All of us had written something personal, even Davie—Mama dipping his hand into green poster paint, pressing it to the card. A piece of paper had been added with a brass thumbtack that was pushed into the palm of Davie's handprint. On the paper was writing that I couldn't read in the dim light, except for the signature, “Mary.” I pulled at the note. The tack popped out, hit the floor with a ping.
A car door slammed. I stuffed the note in my pocket. The den door rattled, keys jingled, and Daddy called out, “We'll bring it in later.” I backed into the front hallway and opened the basement door, holding my breath, trying to make myself weightless as I tiptoed down the stairs, feeling my way. The basement was musty in spite of everything Mary had done to get rid of the mildew. I fumbled until I found the door into the tiny bathroom under the stairs, used only by Mary and the yard man. There was no lid to the toilet and I sat on the seat, trembling, my arms around my waist holding tight to stop the shaking. Footsteps clumped from the den through the dining room, until they were right over me.
“She's been here.” Daddy.
“How do you know?” Uncle Stamos.
“This place was a mess when I left.”
“I thought Mary's daughter was coming in.”
“That didn't work out.”
“You're almost out of bourbon,” Uncle Stamos said.
I could hear them clearly. What had Mary heard from down here?
“Do you know how hard it is to get car keys made at Pawleys Island?”
“Why'd you have to do that?”
“Couldn't find mine. If Jubie took them, I'll kill her.”
I believed him.
“Where could she be?” Uncle Stamos asked.
“Off on a joy ride. She'll wreck the Packard. Again.”
“Stealing her mother's car . . . that just isn't like June.”
I loved Uncle Stamos for taking up for me.
“Paula lets the girls get away with too much. Jubie needs a firm hand.” A chair scraped the floor. “You gotta crack the whip. Same with the boys in the shop.”
Uncle Stamos said, “It's got to be better with David Lacey as foreman. He's a good man.”
“To make niggers behave, put a nigger in charge.” The tone of Daddy's voice made me shiver. “He's big enough and mean enough. He'll hold them.” Ice rattled in a glass. “The problem's not just in the shop.”
“You mean the Supreme Court thing?”
“Before you know it, they'll be in our schools.”
Uncle Stamos said, “It might not be as bad as you think.”
“It'll be worse. But the W.B.A. will delay it, at least in Charlotte.”
“I wish you weren't involved in that.”
“I wish you were. It's important. There are ramifications—”
Someone knocked at the kitchen door.The cowbell clanged.
“Hello, Linda.” Daddy's voice boomed good cheer.
“Hey, Bill.Where's the rest of the family? Jubie acted—”
“You saw Jubie?”
“She drove off in the Packard about four thirty. How'd the fender get smashed?”
“An accident in Georgia. Did she say where she was going?”
“She acted like she didn't hear me.”
I sat on the toilet. What would Mary do? I could almost hear her say, “Jubie girl, you in trouble. Get yourself to a better place.” I stood and took a few steps away from the toilet, back into the basement, bumping against Daddy's wine rack. The bottles rattled. I froze.
The floorboards groaned above me. “I'm going to the bathroom.” Uncle Stamos' footsteps faded toward the den. Daddy said something. Mrs. Gibson laughed.
I groped through the basement, climbed on stacked boxes of canning jars, and shoved open the window on the side of the house. When I pushed off to scoot onto the windowsill, the boxes tumbled, making a terrible racket. My shirt caught on the sill, and the latch scratched my belly as I slid into the yard. My feet tangled in the boxwoods and I got dirt in my mouth, but I was stumbling forward before I stood all the way up, gasping until the back of my throat was hot and dry, headed for the safety of Maggie's house.
At her front walk I stopped, pressing my hand to the scrape on my belly. The living room door was open onto the screen porch and I heard music, a phone ringing, Mrs. Harold calling, “Tommy? Telephone.” I opened the screen door. Their cocker spaniel was asleep on the flowered sofa in a pool of yellow light. There was a basket of yarn beside Mrs. Harold's rocker, a newspaper in Mr. Harold's green easy chair, his pipe in a wooden holder nearby. The room was cramped with mismatched furniture. Mama would say it was tacky. I was never so glad to be anywhere in my life.
“Maggie?” I called out.
“Margaret?” Mr. Harold's voice came from the back of the house. “Someone's at the door for you.”
“Jubes!” Maggie ran through the living room and threw her arms around me. Her white blonde hair smelled of Prell and felt wonderfully cool to my hot cheeks. “When'd you get home? Cripes, what's going on? Mother!” She yelled over her shoulder and Mrs. Harold hurried into the living room.
“Jubie!” She brushed wisps of gray hair from her flushed face. “Your mum's very worried about you.”
“Oh.” I collapsed into Mr. Harold's easy chair.
“What's happened to you?” Mrs. Harold stared at my torn shirt.
“I crawled out the basement window.”
“Margaret, get a fresh blouse for Jubie.” Mrs. Harold spoke sharply to Maggie, who stood there, her mouth gaping. “Run!”
Maggie flew down the hall.
Mrs. Harold sat on the sofa next to the easy chair, pushing the dog over. She was so fat her arms were dimpled at the elbows. Her chest was flat from when she had cancer. She fished a handkerchief from her empty bodice and dabbed at the scratch on my stomach. “Do you want to tell me what's going on? We really should call your mum.”
“Where is she?”
“At your auntie's.”
Maggie ran into the living room with her Ship'n Shore blouse, the one I'd helped her pick out.
“That's a girl,” said Mrs. Harold. “Jubie, go into the dining room and change. Are you hungry?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“That's something I can fix.” She headed down the hall. I went into the dim dining room and pulled my torn shirt over my head.
Mrs. Harold came back as I was buttoning the blouse. She handed me a plate filled with pot roast, corn on the cob, pineapple rings. “It's cold, but it's good.” She made room for the plate on the table next to Mr. Harold's chair. Maggie came from the kitchen with a glass of milk, a napkin, utensils. I dug into the food.
Maggie sat near me on the sofa. “I thought y'all were on a trip to the beach.”
“Mary got killed,” I said, chewing corn.
“Dear Lord,” said Mrs. Harold. “Who's Mary?”
“You mean your girl?” Maggie asked.
I nodded, putting down the cob, wiping my fingers. Maggie reached for my hand, her freckled skin pale against my deep tan.
“How did it happen?” asked Mrs. Harold.
“She was kidnapped by some men in Georgia while we were staying there. They beat her to death, and they . . . I took Mama's car and came home for the funeral.”
Mrs. Harold said,“You drove home from the beach by yourself?”
“Yes.”The phone rang.
“What a remarkable thing to do.” I wanted to hug her.
Mr. Harold called out. “Jubie, it's your mum.”
I walked into the hallway and sat on the stool tucked into the phone nook. “Hey, Mama.”
“Are you all right?”
She didn't sound angry. I was so surprised I couldn't speak.
“Jubie?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“I was so worried about you.”
“You were?”
“I didn't know you could drive on the highway.”
“I just learned.”
Silence, then Mama said, “Your father's upset.”
The scratch on my belly stung beneath Maggie's blouse. “I know.”
Her voice went sharp. “Have you seen him?”
“I was home, hiding in the basement. He and Uncle Stamos got there, so I left.”
“You've really done it this time, Jubie.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Music played in the background.
“It might be best if you don't see Daddy just yet.”
I twisted the phone cord around my finger. “How'd you know where I was?”
“Just a guess.You went to the funeral?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“I wish I'd gone with you.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do. I'm not saying what you did was right, but I'm glad somebody from our family was there. How was it?”
“Sad. Good. I saw Link and Young Mary. And Leesum.”
“Who?”
“The boy from Pensacola.”
“Oh, yes.” Her lighter clinked, she inhaled, exhaled. “Don't worry about your father.”
“Okay.”
“Where's the Packard? Bill says it's not at home.”
“At Freedom Park, in the lot off Princeton.”
“I have the spare keys. We'll get it.” She paused. “You can stay with Maggie tonight. Or here at Stamos and Rita's.”
“I'm sure it'll be okay with Mrs. Harold if I stay here. I need clothes.”
“I'll bring some early tomorrow. Everything's going to be all right, Jubie. I promise.”
I sagged against the wall of the narrow hallway, so tired I thought I might fall asleep before I found a bed.
In the morning, Mrs. Harold said if I'd give her my dirty clothes, she'd put them in with a load of wash she was going to run. In the kitchen, the washing machine chugged as Mrs. Harold came down the hall to where I sat with Maggie on the living room sofa, wearing Maggie's bathrobe, which was too small but adequate, like Mary's had been for Leesum. Mrs. Harold handed me a wrinkled scrap of paper. “This was in the pocket of your jeans, Jubie. I read it. I'm sorry.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I smoothed out the paper on my knee.
I aint coming back. I am telling what you did. Mary
Mrs. Harold sat down in the easy chair. “What does it mean?”
“I don't know.”
When Mama got to Maggie's house, she put her arms around me and held me for a long time, then stood back and smoothed my hair from my forehead. “I still can't believe you drove all the way home.”
Mrs. Harold offered tea, and Mama said she would love some.We sat on the sofa together while Maggie went with her mother to the kitchen.
“Here.” I shoved the note at Mama. “From Mary. It was on the bulletin board.”
Mama read it. “This isn't from Mary.”
“She signed it.”
“This is not her handwriting. It must be from Young Mary.” Mama stared at the note.

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