Chapter Forty-Two

JUNE 1945

Celia fought back the tears that filled her eyes —tears of anger and frustration as much as sadness —as the men lifted Marshall into the back of Doc Vishy’s car.

“Chester, I will drop you off at the turn to the Tates’. Tell Olney that Marshall has come and that he’s going to stay with me. He’s had a concussion. I want to keep watch and it will be safer, just for now, until we know those hoodlums won’t return.”

The doc offered to drop Celia and Joe at Garden’s Gate, but Joe declined. “Let Marshall stretch out on the seat. The walk’s good for me, Doc. You take care of him. You’ll let us know how he’s doing?”

“Better than that. Marshall can telephone once he’s up and around —tomorrow, perhaps. Celia? You want to ride?”

“No thanks, Doc. I need to pick up the mail. I’ll walk with Joe.”

The doc drove off slowly, raising only a slight plume of red clay dust.

Joe and Celia walked silently up the hill.

When they neared the general store, Celia climbed the steps. Joe followed, the bell over the door jingling their arrival.

Ida Mae wasted no time on greetings. “Celia, was that Chester in the car with the doc I just saw go by here?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Is he all right?”

“Fine. Chester’s fine.”

Joe looked at her as if he didn’t understand why she didn’t tell Ida Mae about Marshall. She gave him a small warning shake of her head but either he didn’t notice or still needed to vent his fury.

“He was carrying Marshall Raymond. Some thugs beat him as he got off the train, left him there in the weeds by the platform. A veteran in uniform!”

“Oh, my land. What are we comin’ to?” Ida Mae shook her head. “Is he gonna be all right?”

“Doc thinks he’ll be fine,” Celia intervened, trying to brush it off.

Joe shot her a disgusted look. She couldn’t help that. He wasn’t from No Creek. He didn’t understand.

“Well, that’s a relief. It’s a terrible thing, I grant, but what did he expect? Flaunting a United States Army uniform like that!” Ida Mae tsked and handed Celia the mail for Garden’s Gate.

Celia saw Joe’s eyes go wide and his mouth open to speak as she shoved him toward the door. “Thanks for the mail, Ida Mae. Be seeing you!”

Joe swore under his breath in that language Celia didn’t recognize as she pushed him down the outside steps. “Why did you do that? Why do the Tates stay here? Why does anybody stay here?”

“Because this is our home. It’s been home to the Tate family ever since they came to this country as slaves.”

“Slaves?”

“I know that sounds crazy to you, but there’s so much you don’t know, Joe, so much I need to explain.”

“If you think of Marshall and the Tate family as slaves, if that’s how you see them connected to this community, I don’t see as we have anything to —”

Celia’s dander was rising. “You can push all that past aside if you want to, but until you understand where people around here came from and why they think the way they do, you won’t be able to help them get beyond it. You can’t just whisk a magic wand and make the past disappear or rewrite it because you don’t like it. You’ll never change the present if you do that. You have to learn from what’s gone on and work hard if you want to make the future better.”

Joe stopped. He stared at Celia, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He looked like he might bust a gusset. He started to speak, stopped, and walked on. They trudged up the hill in silence. Celia could feel the heat coming off each of them. Marshall had been beaten by no-account thugs. Why was Joe so angry at her?

Just past the church Joe slowed, his foot clearly aching him. “Look, I’m not mad at you, Celia. I’m just mad —at those guys, at that woman, Ida Mae, at the way things are here, the way they’re holding up Violet back in England —everything. This place is like stepping back a hundred years.”

“I know what happened to Marshall is dead wrong. I know what Ida Mae said is stupid,” Celia spoke softly. “I know that keeping Violet from her daddy is terrible, but it’s not enough to be mad. We have to help change things.”

Joe looked incredulous. “How? Just how we gonna do that? How can anybody change another person —a whole society? We don’t know who those morons were that jumped Marshall. Trying to change Ida Mae would be like changing Ivy’s father. He just couldn’t see beyond the color of Marshall’s skin, and neither can she.”

Celia held her breath. If she told Joe, asked for his help, she’d be breaking a promise to Olney. But she needed someone who believed things could change, somebody who’d help her. Was Joe that person? Could she make him see?

She started speaking softly, as if to herself as much as to Joe, but she knew he heard. “How can people think of themselves as equals —how can others think of them that way —when the whole race stays uneducated and dirt-poor? How can that change when the state gives them lousy textbooks and won’t pay for teachers and schoolhouses of the quality they do for us? How can things change when they can’t own their own land, when banks won’t give them loans to buy houses or land, when they can’t reap a crop to benefit themselves but have to pay landowners so much to sharecrop or tenant-farm?

“That’s how the Belvideres got rich. That’s how the Wishons got rich —well, besides moonshine. They owned land. The colored families —slaves long ago and tenant farmers and sharecroppers now —did all that work for them but never owned land of their own.”

“They provided the labor that got white men rich, the backbreaking labor,” Joe agreed.

“Yes.” Maybe he did see.

“It’s a vicious cycle. Slavery’s been gone more than eighty years, but do you have any idea how hard it was for Marshall to get into college? How hard it’s going to be for him to get into medical school —any of the few that will accept coloreds?”

“Exactly.” Celia stopped and set a hand on Joe’s arm. “It’s a vicious cycle until somebody breaks it. Till somebody maybe shines a light on a wrong from the past that, when it’s righted, might change the future for some. At least might change it for Marshall.”

Joe grunted and walked on. “Miracles are God’s business.”

“But He uses us, when we’re willing.”

“Miracle workers? I’m not seeing volunteers.”

“How about you,” Celia ventured, “and me?”

Joe stopped dead in the street, staring at Celia. “Right a wrong from the past? Nothing I’d like better than to rattle some skeletons around here. I’m in if you’ve got any bright ideas.”

Celia grinned. “Like a light bulb.”

For the next three hours, while Celia’s mother canned tomatoes with Mercy Tate at the Tates’ cabin and Chester spent the afternoon playing stickball, Celia and Joe huddled in the library at Garden’s Gate, bent over the old Belvidere ledgers, documents, and deeds that Doc Vishy had returned to her, insisting she let Miss Lill handle everything. Only when they’d gone through everything word for word did she show him Minnie’s diary.

“I haven’t even shown these to Mama or Chester. I mean, Chester knows there were papers in the attic, and Olney knows some. He and Doc Vishy are the only ones I’ve shown any of it.”

“What did they say? Does Olney want to —”

Celia snorted, sitting back. “He doesn’t want any part of it. He says that the land deeded to his grandfather is now owned by Rhoan Wishon, and it was Rhoan’s father who led the Klan to kill his daddy over it. For him that’s the end of it.”

Joe shook his head. “But if they owned the land, how could —”

“Olney’s daddy held no proof at the time Old Man Belvidere —that was Miss Lill’s great-grandfather —sold it to Rhoan’s daddy at auction. The only proof left after the courthouse fire during the War between the States was hidden in the attic, here at Garden’s Gate, and nobody knew about this copy of the deed —only Minnie Belvidere, and I guess she never told, or maybe never told where she’d left it. My guess is that she didn’t know her brother had the attic room sealed off. I think she must have left before that happened. The room itself became a legend nobody’d believe. Even Olney said he thought the whole story of the safe room and the deed was the ravings of an old man, a wish of his granddaddy’s gone sour.”

“He’s afraid what might happen if this comes to light.”

“Yes, he is,” Celia agreed. “He’s scared for himself and his family and he’s scared for Marshall. Rhoan Wishon’s a big part of the Klan here. Olney doesn’t want to raise a tussle he’d lose, one he fears he or Marshall might hang for.”

“Unless it came out in the open —legally and publicly enough that they couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Celia sighed. “Olney said if it was up to him, he’d burn all these. I told him that I can’t; they rightfully belong to Miss Lill. She’s the last of the Belvideres, far as I know, and I can’t help but think she’d want to make this right. It was her family that granted the land, her family that hid these documents away, and a member of her family that wrongfully sold the land.”

“Have you told her?”

“No, Olney made me swear not to bother her while Reverend Willard was injured. We were all so worried he might not make it.”

“Well, seems to me she’d want to know now. She’s a strong woman; I could see that.”

“She is.” Celia knew how hard it had been for Miss Lill to put her past and the oppressors from that past behind her and move forward.

“If she knew that Marshall had better prospects here, it might help in her fight to get Violet released to his care. She’d have to own that her great-grandfather was a rat —a cheat. Would she be willing to do that?”

“To help Olney or Marshall? In a heartbeat —I know it. She’s faced up to things that bad and worse in her growing-up family, even when they were made public and folks shamed her.”

“Then write her.” Joe sat back. “Lay it out before her without telling her what to do. Trust her.”

“But I promised Olney . . .”

“You said that was because her husband was in danger.”

“Reverend Willard’s not in danger now, so my promise is fulfilled.” Celia wished she’d thought of it that way before. It was a relief to have a friend to talk this over with, someone outside the family, someone from outside of No Creek.

“I wouldn’t send the originals across the Atlantic.”

“No, I’ll just tell her the gist. She’d not want me to risk losing anything.” Celia hesitated. “I know you’re close to Marshall, but I don’t think you should tell him about this until we know what Miss Lill wants to do. Getting his hopes up if things should go wrong —”

“It’s not my business to tell anybody anything. I appreciate that you showed me all this. I know it’s in confidence. I won’t betray that. I won’t betray you. You can trust me, Celia.”

Joe’s openness warmed Celia through. “I know. I’m glad you’re here, Joe.”

Joe covered Celia’s hand with his own and squeezed. “So am I.”