“It was a rough time for Isaac,” she said slowly, as she pushed her plate aside and laced her slender brown fingers around the red plastic drink cup on the table before her.
“I didn’t understand all that was going on. Grandma had to tell me some of it later. Basically what it boils down to is that a lot of his pigeons came home to roost that summer. He’d gotten a deacon’s daughter pregnant at the same time he was sneaking off to see a white girl with a mean brother.”
“Anybody I know?”
“I forget her name. His was Buck. Buck Ferguson.”
I vaguely remember a slatternly tenant family by that name that used to farm with Uncle Rufus before he got tired of bailing father and son out of jail. “Peggy Rose Ferguson?”
“I guess.”
“Didn’t her brother die in prison?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Isaac said he saw him shoot a man in the arm over a spilled beer. You can imagine what he’d have done if he’d caught Isaac in the backseat of a car with that flower of Southern white womanhood he called his sister.”
“Not that Isaac was any symbol of pure black manhood himself.” Regret shadowed her voice. “He had a temper and he’d punched out a white boy, broke his nose. There’s still a warrant for his arrest down at the courthouse. He had so much rage in him. He wanted to marry the girl who was carrying his baby, but her parents sent her up North. They were going to make her give the baby up for adoption.”
“Did she?”
“Who knows? She never came home again. I used to fantasize that they found each other up there and ran away together.”
“Maybe they did,” I said.
Cyl shook her head. “He would never have stayed away all these years without calling or writing. No, he and Snake went to Boston and I figure he either got into another fight or was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I tried to trace him when I got out of law school, but after twenty years? And there was so much violence in Boston that summer. I used to think—”
“Hey now!” said Ellis Glover in his heartiest voice. “What’s the two prettiest ladies at this barbecue doing sitting over here with such serious faces? I’ve been challenged to a game of horseshoes and I need a partner.”
“Not me,” Cyl said and quickly stood up. “Last time I tried, I broke three fingernails. Besides, I want to talk to Mr. Ligon before he leaves.”
I could cheerfully have used Ellis’s neck as a horseshoe stake at that moment for interrupting the first real conversation I’d ever had with Cyl. Would she retreat behind her armor again, embarrassed that she’d opened up to me? Pretend it never happened?
I didn’t get a chance to find out that day. By the time Ellis and I beat two pairs of challengers and were then sat down by a third, Cyl had rounded Stan up and left.
And yeah, I broke a thumbnail.
18
Only God is in a position to look down on anyone.
—Westwood United Methodist
On Sunday, the News and Observer carried an in-depth report on the three burned churches: their histories, their significance in the black community, and how their congregations planned to cope with the loss.
Overall, the tone was upbeat. The Reverend Ralph Freeman explained that while the circumstances of Balm of Gilead’s destruction were deplorable and much more precipitous than expected, the onetime service station was never slated to be saved once they vacated. “It has more than fulfilled its purpose and we assumed that Shop-Mark would simply bulldoze it when they began clearing the lot to build. In the meantime, we have an old-fashioned revival tent set up on our new site and we’d like to invite everyone reading this to put down their newspapers and come join us this morning to praise God for His goodness and everlasting mercy.”
The N&O thoughtfully included directions to Balm of Gilead’s new location and a schedule of services. It also re-capped how Leon Starling had once owned the old store and the land it sat on and how his grandson Charles was now charged with arson.
Like Balm of Gilead, Mount Olive was also finding mixed blessings in the fire. Previously, Reverend Anthony Ligon had been an enthusiastic, if diplomatic, advocate for expansion and he was almost ebullient when interviewed. He did his share of obligatory tongue-clicking, especially when it came to the tragic death of Arthur Hunt, whom they had buried Friday in a graveside ceremony, but his satisfaction came through more clearly than he perhaps intended.
“Our insurance policy covers replacement costs, not a set monetary value, so our fellowship hall with its Sunday School rooms will be re-sited. This gives us enough space to extend our sanctuary straight back and to double our seating capacity without damaging the basic integrity of the original sanctuary any more than the fire has already destroyed. From the outside it will look very much as it looked before the fire, except that the whole building will be somewhat longer.”
The Historical Society had pledged to help find artisans to duplicate the dentil moldings and etched-glass windows. “We appreciate that this is a functioning church with modern concerns,” said their spokeswoman, “but it is also such a historically important structure that we naturally want to do everything in our power to help preserve its architectural features. The slave gallery has been unsafe to use these last few years. We hope to raise funds to replace the old wooden supports with steel reinforcements.”
Mr. Ligon confessed himself overwhelmed by the generosity of so many. “We’ve already been blessed with enough donations that we’re hoping to begin clearing away the rubble this week. In the meantime, we’re grateful to the County Commissioners and to the County Board of Education for giving us the use of West Colleton High’s gymnasium on Sunday mornings. With God’s help, we’ll be back in our restored sanctuary before school starts again.”
By contrast, the Reverend Byantha Williams sounded like the ill-tempered fairy godmother who crashed Sleeping Beauty’s christening. While Burning Heart of God Holiness Tabernacle would be getting a pro rata share of any unrestricted donations designated to help “the three burned churches,” it was not getting much sympathetic charity from the immediate neighborhood.
Sister Williams had neither the warm humanitarianism of a Ralph Freeman nor the political tact of an Anthony Ligon. Over the years, she had taken too much delight in pointing out the motes in the eyes of her fellow Christians—their sins of the flesh and their sins of the spirit. Their reluctance to come to her aid now only confirmed her sour view of them.
“You get back what you give,” says Maidie.
There was no insurance on either the church or her small house trailer and the county had already warned her that she could not put another trailer back on the premises without a modern septic system. The old outhouse’s proximity to the nearby branch was unacceptable, they said.
“God tempers the wind to His shorn sheep,” she responded defiantly. “He will not lay on us burdens too heavy to bear. The sinner may not want to hear His message, but we will deliver it even louder. God has called me to call sinners to His holy cross and while there is breath in my body, I will not deny Him though the whole world denies me thrice before the cock crows three times.”
The reporter seemed a little confused at this point, but put quotation marks around everything as if to deny his part in the confusion.
He reported that Burning Heart of God had been given the temporary use of an empty storefront in Cotton Grove (we later learned that Grace King Avery had persuaded a former student to make the offer) and that Sister Williams and her cats were living in the rooms behind it for the time being.
The article concluded by predicting that all three churches would rise, phoenix-like, from their ashes.