Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas Read Free Book Online Page A

sighed. "Plantation country."
    Wasn't Mississippi all plantation country? And what was Pineyville? A
lot more than the Piney Woods, evidently. Leroy Boyd James. A new wrench
of fear cranked her stomach, sent the acids churning and the ghost of that
ham sandwich flying.
    "You running your project by yourself?"
    "Unless some more volunteers show up. They've got a pretty active
bunch of black folks in the town." Ramona got into her squat-walk position. "Oh, the lady across the way brings biscuits and jelly in the morning.
We've got coffee. The phone in the hall is for emergencies. They said we can
call collect anywhere. The FBI numbers are right next to the phone there."
Ramona disappeared around the corner. "I hope you can sleep. I sure can't.
Don't forget to stay low."
    "Goodnight." Celeste shriveled down the wall, legs spread out on the
mattress. She felt like she'd been awake for days. Too many thoughts
swirled in her head.
    Sporadic dog barks, crickets, the creaking of trees. No low music in the
background. No laughing voices with conversation riffs in between. It had
to be three in the morning by now. A thickness in the air that made you
think you were hearing things, but when you really pressed your ears to it,
there was nothing there.
    Celeste squat-walked to the open front windows, sat down on the hardwood floor, and pushed on the screens. They were locked in place. Lightcolored curtains waited for a breeze, any slight shuffle of air. The car across
the street glimmered in a sliver of moonlight. Ghosts with guns. Sweat
bubbled out on her forehead, under her arms, between her legs. She smelled
her own body, the dampness curdling into a pungent aroma.
    She crawled back to the mattress. The heavy air weighted her down on
the thin bed, the hardness of the floor rising into her spine. What had Leroy
Boyd James really done? Was it like Emmett Till? A whistle, a nothing
whistle? She knew there were white girls in Ann Arbor who loved the easy
grace of long dark arms and lips that felt like pillows in heaven. But this
wasn't Ann Arbor. Margo standing at the mimeo machine with that guy? What was that about? Maybe nothing. Margo was from New York. No big
deal. But where was he from? He's the one who'd pay the price. Down here,
death came hunting when you reached across the lines of demarcation.
In Ann Arbor, maybe just a hateful look, a bad name slung across some
busy street. She and J.D. turned heads. Here, crossed love got dropped in
the cracks of old storm shelters, locked away with warning signs marked
Danger. People died for flirting. She'd read enough to know this was the
real deal. Mary Evans's voice in her head, You be careful, girl, you hear?
Miss sippi ain't nothing to play with.

     

4

    Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and their blue Ford
station wagon disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi, on the night of
June 21, gone like a moonlight rainbow after a summer evening storm. The
news flew through the trees, over the creeks, and down the mud-brown
rivers on the rhythm of a talking drum. By afternoon of the first day, the
news was on the dinner table in Jackson. By evening, it was in the fingers
of the lady pressing hair in Canton and on the lips of the waitress in Greenwood. On Tuesday, the second day, their station wagon was pulled from
the swampy waters of Bogue Chitto Creek near Philadelphia. The car had
been burned to a crisp.
    Wilamena's admonition about Negro people-they'll never return the
favor-darted through Celeste's mind as she stood on the baking midmorning pavement in front of a local shoe store in downtown Jackson.
She'd brought no wristwatch to Mississippi, had no idea of how fast time
passed or if it passed at all. Judging by the displays in the shop windows, the
out-of-date dresses and rigid hairstyles on the women walking by, Celeste
had a feeling that time was going backwards. Confederate flags adorned
the fronts of every store for as far