1965
We lived in the only house on Hockley Street, on the corner where Hockley intersected with Round Hill Road. Daddy’s father named the street after himself—Amos Hockley—and he and his brother built the house. Hockley Street was the only actual “street” in all of Round Hill. There were plenty of roads and lanes and trails, but my grandfather’d thought “Hockley Street” sounded grand. It was decidedly not grand. It had been a dirt road back when the house was built and it was a dirt road now and probably always would be. But our house was big, whitewashed, with black shutters, a red tin roof, and a wide porch with white rockers, one for each of us, and I always felt rich and proud. Our view from the porch was of the kudzu-choked trees and shrubs across the street. “Beautiful monsters,” Mama called them when I was small and afraid. They rose up from the earth to the sky in the shapes of dragons and dinosaurs. The kudzu didn’t come near our house, so it didn’t bother us and it kept anyone else from building on Hockley Street, which was just the way my family liked it. “We have paradise all to ourselves,” Mama always said.
Our narrow road ended in the deepest, darkest woods anyone could imagine—straight out of a Grimms’ fairy tale—but they didn’t bother us. When Buddy and I were younger, we just about lived in those woods, climbing the trees, playing hide-and-seek, and fishing in the lake. I was shy and had few friends other than Buddy and Mattie, who was our maid Louise’s daughter, a year younger than me. I loved Mattie. She died when I was eleven and Buddy started hanging out with older kids, and I suddenly had no one to play with. For a year, I was on my own, mourning the loss of both Mattie and my brother, but then Brenda Kane and her parents moved to Round Hill and I suddenly had a friend.
Buddy was smart enough to become a pharmacist like our father, who’d hoped his son would be the third generation of pharmacists in the family, but Buddy discovered cars and that was that. Everyone in town depended on him, not just for their cars, but their washing machines and radios and any other gadget they couldn’t get to work right. Once Daddy accepted Buddy for who he was, they grew close. Now they were up in arms together over the idea of a bunch of Yankee kids telling us how to run things down here.
The Sunday after the wedding, Buddy and I strolled up Hockley Street to the woods.
“So how was the wedding?” Buddy asked, putting his arm around me as we walked.
I thought back to the day before and the quiet, sort of sad little wedding at the justice of the peace’s office. Garner had looked nervous, perspiring in a dark suit, and I thought Brenda was going to burst into tears at any moment. She wore a pale blue dress I’d seen her in several times before. Her best, I knew. It was a dress she wouldn’t be able to get into in another week or two. I teared up during the wedding, remembering how she’d paged through the Brides magazine with such longing. She would never wear one of those long lacy wedding gowns. She would never have a string of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Just me as her maid of honor and Reed as Garner’s best man.
“Simple,” I answered Buddy. “I felt more sad than anything else. It wasn’t exactly joyous.”
“I can’t believe she’s going back to school with you like she’s not a married girl,” Buddy said. “Married woman.”
“I know,” I agreed. “Still, it’s good she can finish out the year. Then maybe she’ll pick it up again someday.”
“She should’ve dropped Garner for me,” Buddy said. “I wouldn’t have let her get in this predicament.” He’d had a crush on Brenda since we were all in high school together, but Brenda only had eyes for Garner. “You think she’s really after him for his money?” he asked.
“Hell, no,” I said. “How could you think that? She adores him.” Garner’s father was probably the wealthiest man in Round Hill, but I’d never even heard Brenda mention the money Garner was sure to inherit.
“Well, maybe she could talk Garner into telling his daddy to stop raising my rent,” Buddy said. Randy Cleveland owned nearly half the buildings in town, including the one that housed Buddy’s car shop.
“I doubt she has that sort of clout,” I said.
“Well anyhow,” he said, “don’t you ever let what happened to Brenda happen to you.” There was a warning in his voice like he’d break my neck if I came home pregnant.
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll be a virgin on my wedding night,” I assured him. “Assuming I ever have a wedding night,” I said. “And you should have waited, too.”
“Way too late for that.” He laughed. He was ridiculously handsome, my brother. Built like a football player, he had sandy hair, our father’s dark eyes, and a lopsided smile that girls found irresistible.
The weather was warm and the kudzu vines were just beginning to green up, rising like towers on either side of the road, trapping us or sheltering us, however you wanted to look at it. I could already make out the shape of a Tyrannosaurus rex on the north side of the street and an enormous panther on the south.
“So,” Buddy said, “are you and Reed going to be next?” His voice was casual, but I could tell that the words were planned. He worried about me. Even though Buddy had only been three when I was born, he’d been my protector since that day.
“Right now I want to focus on school,” I said. “I don’t have time for men.”
We’d reached the end of Hockley Street, and the dirt road narrowed to one skinny rutted lane that cut through the thick forest. Even now, at two in the afternoon, it was dark in the woods. We fell silent as we brushed away leafy branches and stepped over familiar roots until we reached the massive oak above a round clearing, the ground thick with pine needles and decayed leaves from a hundred autumns. I walked across the clearing and around the oak, where I started climbing the wide boards Daddy’d hammered into the trunk when we were small. He was the one who’d spotted the huge triangle of the oak’s branches fifteen feet from the ground. He was the one who built the sturdy little house way up there, adding a deck where we could sit and share secrets or quietly watch the forest in the clearing down below. The plentiful deer. The occasional fox. The birds that flitted from branch to branch around our heads.
I reached the little house, walked through it, and scurried on my hands and knees out to the deck, where I dangled my legs over the edge, high above the clearing. Buddy came to sit next to me.
I’d pictured us climbing up here today. It seemed like the right place to tell him my summer plan. I was afraid, though, of how he’d react. I knew he thought the idea of “Yankee kids” coming to Derby County was wrongheaded. Even though he’d hired a young Negro guy, Ronnie, to work in his car shop and seemed to like him a lot, my brother was still undeniably a bigot. When I told him about the protests at UNC last year, he said to stay out of it. “I don’t see what the coloreds have to complain all that much about,” he’d said. “They have roofs over their heads. They have their own stores, their own schools, their own churches. It ain’t like they’re slaves. Why would they even want to come into a white restaurant where they know they’re not welcome?”
Now I looked at my loafer-clad feet high above the clearing and took in a breath. “I’m not going to work in the pharmacy this summer,” I said.
He laughed. “Good luck gettin’ out of it,” he said. I’d worked in the pharmacy every summer since I was fourteen.
“You know that SCOPE program?”
“Those Yankee kids comin’ down here to tell us how we should be runnin’ things?”
“That’s not what it’s about, Buddy,” I said. “The Voting Rights Act is coming and some of the people in poor areas will need help registering. I want to work with SCOPE to help them.”
He leaned away from me to look at my face. His blond eyebrows were nearly knitted together in the middle. “Are you messin’ with me?” he asked.
“No, I’m absolutely serious. I’ve already spoken with the minister in charge and—”
“Uh-uh, little sister,” Buddy said. “Not gonna let you do that. Think about them three boys that got themselves killed a couple of years ago.”
“It was last year,” I corrected him, “but that was in Mississippi. North Carolina isn’t like the Deep South, and you know it. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“This is stupid, Ellie.”
“I know Daddy’s going to be disappointed about the pharmacy.”
“That’s going to be the least of his objections,” he said. “And Reed ain’t gonna be thrilled about it either.”
“He’ll survive without me for one summer.”
We were quiet for a moment. Then Buddy said, out of the blue, “I treat Ronnie at the car shop the same way I treat the other guys. No better or worse. That’s how it should be.”
“I should hope so,” I said.
“I ain’t no racist,” Buddy said.
“That’s a double negative. What you just said actually means you are a racist.”
He stared at me. “What’s your problem?” he asked, but then he immediately softened. Put his arm around my shoulders again. “What did you do with my sweet sister, huh?” he asked.
I sighed. Leaned against him. He smelled like motor oil. I’d come to equate the smell with him and I liked it. “I’m just tired of seeing a wrong and doing nothing to make it right, that’s all,” I said. “I wish you’d give me some support.”
He tightened his hand on my shoulder. “How can I support you when I’m afraid you’re gonna get yourself killed?” he asked. “Or worse?”
“What’s worse than getting killed?” I asked, momentarily sidetracked by his question.
“Think about it,” he said, and then I knew. Rape. He meant rape.
“I’m not afraid,” I said. “I think I’ll be fine … if they accept me. The minister I spoke with wasn’t all that enthused about having me work with them.”
“What’s his name? I’ll call him up and tell him not to take you.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Have you really thought this through, Ellie?” he asked. “Some parts of Derby County have more colored than white. Would you really feel all right with them being the majority when it comes to votin’? They’d make laws that favor themselves. Before you know it, we’d be the minority.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a racist?”
“I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”
“I’m not going to tell Mama and Daddy until I know for sure SCOPE will take me,” I said, changing the subject. “But let me be the one to tell them. Okay?”
He laughed. “I promise you I’ll just sit back and watch,” he said. “With Aunt Carol gone, it’s been a while since we had a good fireworks show ’round here.”