In the next-to-last row, Lone DuPres sat next to Richard Misner, Anna on his other side. She leaned forward to glance at Anna and learn whether she, too, was losing her mind. Anna smiled but did not return her look, so she sat back to endure another one of old Nathan's incoherent dreams.
Nathan ran his fingers over his head, closed his eyes as if to get the details straight.
"Was an Indian come up to me in a bean row. Cheyenne, I believe. The vines were green, tender. The blossoms coming out all over. He looked at the row and shook his head, sorrowful-like. Then he told me too bad the water was bad; said there was plenty of it but it was foul. I said, But look here, look at all the flowers. Looks like a top crop to me. He said, The tallest cotton don't yield the best crop; besides, those flowers the wrong color. They's red. And I looked and sure enough they was turning pink, then red. Like blood drops. Scared me some. But when I looked back he was gone. And the petals was white again. I reckon that sighting is like this here story we going to tell again this evening. It shows the strength of our crop if we understand it. But it can break us if we don't. And bloody us too. May God bless the pure and holy and may nothing keep us apart from each other nor from the One who does the blessing. Amen."
When Nathan left the platform, amidst murmurs of kindness if not gratitude, Richard Misner took advantage of the pause to whisper something to Anna and leave his seat. He was hoping to relieve nascent waves of the claustrophobia that had not plagued him since he was jailed with thirty-eight others in a tiny cell in Alabama. He had embarrassed himself then, because the sweat and nausea signaled fear to his companions. And it was a hard lesson knowing that whatever risks he took, however eager he was for the dangerous confrontation, a crowded cell could humiliate him before teenagers without pity. Now, feeling the onslaught of suffocation in this tightly packed schoolhouse, he joined Pat Best, standing in the hall watching the play and the audience through the door. A long table of cakes, cookies and punch lined the wall behind her.
"Hello, Reverend." Pat did not look at him but adjusted her body to accommodate him in the doorway.
"Evening, Pat," he said, blotting moisture from his neck with his handkerchief. "Out here is better for me."
"Me too. See everything from here without stretching or peeping between two hats."
They looked over the heads of the audience as the curtains, made of percale sheets-laundered and carefully ironed-wavered. Children in white surplices filed through the parting, the perfection of their serious faces and flawless hair undone occasionally by a knee sock sliding down to an ankle or a bow tie twisted to the right. After a glance at Kate Golightly they took a uniform breath for O holy night, the stars are brightly shining…
At the second verse Richard Misner leaned over to Pat. "Mind if I ask you something?"
"No. Go ahead." She thought he was going to ask for a donation, because he had been having difficulty raising money (in the quantities he hoped for) to aid the legal defense of four teenagers arrested in Norman and charged with possession, resisting, arson, disorderly, inciting and whatever else the prosecution could ferret out of its statutes to level against black boys who said No or thought about it. They had been in jail, Richard Misner told his congregation, for almost two years. When arraigned, they'd been behind bars for twenty months.
The trial date was about to be set, and lawyers needed to be paid for services already rendered and more to come. So far Richard had collected only what the women had given. Women who thought more about the pain felt by the boys' mothers than of the injustice of their sons' situation. The men, however, Fleetwoods, Pulliam, Sargeant Person and the Morgans, had been adamant in their refusal. Clearly Richard had not carefully enough shaped his plea. He should have built a prodigal sons foundation rather than a political one. Then, as he stood outside Calvary, continuing his requests, he would not have had to listen to "I don't hold with violence," from men who had handled guns all their lives. Or "Little illegal niggers with guns and no home training need to be in jail." This from Steward, of course. However much Richard insisted they had no guns, that demonstrations were not illegal, the men kept their wallets closed. Pat decided, if asked directly, to donate as much as she could. It was pleasant to think of his needing her generosity, so she was annoyed to learn that that was not at all what was on Richard Misner's mind.
"I'm trying to smooth a situation out at the Pooles', and I think I'd do well to talk to Billie Delia, if you don't mind. Is she here tonight?" Pat held on to her elbows and turned to look at him. "Can't help you, Reverend."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure that whatever's going on out there has nothing to do with Billie Delia. Besides, she doesn't live here anymore. Moved to Demby." She would have liked to stop being so hostile to him, but with the mention of her daughter's relationship with those Poole boys, she couldn't control it.
"Her name's come up once or twice. But Wisdom Poole won't give me anything to go on. Something's tearing that family apart."
"They don't like prying, Reverend. It's a thing about Ruby."
"I understand that but something like this has a way of spreading, touching more than one family. When I first came here it was plain: if there was a problem brewing, a delegation was formed to see about it. Keep people from falling out with one another. Seen it with my own eyes and been a party to it too."
"I know."
"This community used to be tight as wax."
"It still is. In a crisis. But they keep to themselves otherwise."
"Don't you mean 'we'? 'We keep to ourselves'?"
"If I did, would you be asking me to explain things?"
"Pat, please. Don't take anything I say amiss. I just remembered that the young people in Bible class say 'they' too when talking about their parents."
"Bible class? More like a war class. Kind of military, from what I hear."
"Militant, maybe. Not military."
"No budding Panthers?"
"Is that what you think?"
"I don't know what to think."
"Well, let me tell you. Unlike most of the folks here, we read newspapers and different kinds of books. We keep up. And yes, we discuss strategies of defense. Not aggression. Defense."
"They know the difference?"
He didn't have to reply right away because applause began and lasted until the final member of the children's choir disappeared behind the curtain.
Someone turns off the ceiling lights. Quiet coughing domesticates the dark. Slowly, on a well-oiled pulley, the curtains part. Under lights positioned in the wings, throwing large shadows behind them, four figures in felt hats and too big suits stand at a table, counting giant dollar bills. The face of each one is hidden by a yellow and white mask featuring gleaming eyes and snarling lips, red as a fresh wound. Above a sign tacked to the table front, which reads inn, they count money, make slurping noises and do not stop when a parade of holy families dressed in torn clothes and moving in a slow two-step approaches them. Seven couples line up before the table of money. The boys carry staffs; the girls cuddle baby dolls.