This morning, there was only the stump of the utility pole, smoldering ashes and twisted tin. Up above in the background, you could see the cars on I-40 slow down to rubberneck at the two news vans parked down by the dead end. Channel 11’s cameras panned around the grounds, lingering on some of the black faces fixed in pain and anger, then stopped on the Reverend Ralph Freeman.
When asked to speculate about the mindset of the arsonist, he shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m too new to this community to know who the haters are. What lifts my spirits are the offers of help that are already pouring in, the support of the good people in this area.”
The camera caught Cyl DeGraffenried off guard with one eyebrow skeptically raised.
“Oh, look,” said Aunt Zell. “Isn’t that Frances Turner’s boy Donny?”
I know the Turners only by name, but as the camera panned across the official faces, I caught a glimpse of a stocky young white man and recognized him from last night.
“He’s the one who carried out the pulpit on his shoulder,” I said, pouring myself another cup of coffee as the station went to a commercial for orange juice.
“Oh, he’s strong all right.” Aunt Zell held out her own cup and I topped it for her. “They used to call him Tank when he was a little boy.”
“He’s still a tank,” I said. “He hoisted that pulpit as if it was a chair.”
“Frances says he works out with weights down at the fire station. It’s really good of so many young men to give up their free time like that, don’t you think? It just goes to show you, doesn’t it?”
“Doesn’t what?” I asked, not following her.
“The Turner boy. When you think of how prejudiced he is.”
“Is he?”
“Frances says ever since high school when he lost a wrestling championship because the black boy he was wrestling with cheated. Or so he told Frances. Of course, Frances—she’s a little prejudiced, too, though she claims not to be. But prejudiced or not, Donny did do what he could last night to save a black church, didn’t he?”
I nodded.
“Just goes to prove how bigotry can fly out the window when people need help. Shows real dedication to a higher ideal, don’t you think? But Frances, she worries he’s so dedicated he doesn’t have time for girlfriends.”
This from my aunt who’s active in at least a half-dozen volunteer organizations and still manages to find lots of time to keep Uncle Ash happy.
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As the news moved on to other stories around the area, Aunt Zell clicked her tongue. “You don’t suppose those Shop-Mark people had anything to do with it, do you?”
“ShopMark?” I was clueless as to why she’d link the South’s biggest chain of upscale discount stores to a poor country church on the backside of nowhere.
“But it’s not nowhere anymore,” said Aunt Zell. “Haven’t you heard? They’re going to build a new exit ramp off I-40 to accommodate all the growth over there. Ash’s sister Agnes? Her son’s on the Highway Commission. That whole corridor between I-40 and New Forty-eight’s going to be developed. And Shop-Mark’s buying up land there at Starling’s Crossroads. Agnes says it’s going to be the biggest Shop-Mark between Washington and Atlanta.”
“So that’s what Maidie meant,” I said.
Aunt Zell gave me an inquiring look.
“Last night when we were washing dishes, she said that Balm of Gilead had called Mr. Freeman to their pulpit because he’d seen his last church through a big building program. Even if the land jumps in price though, how much can they get for that little bit of ground?”
“But it’s not just the churchyard,” Aunt Zell said. “I heard it was more like eight or nine acres.”
Eight or nine acres in the middle of an area slated for heavy development? That would certainly be enough for a hefty down payment on a new church building.
I wondered if the old building was insured.
9
The edginess that hung over the courthouse that morning had less to do with June’s smothering heat and humidity than with Channel 5’s news van parked out front.
As a child standing behind the driver’s seat when Mother and I drove over to Dobbs to visit Aunt Zell, I’d been offended by the sign. Not because of what it stood for—to a seven-year-old raised up Baptist, one cross looks pretty much like another and I had no idea what the Klan was. But I did know that “Kuntry” was bad spelling.
“How come they don’t fix it right?” I’d ask Mother.
“ ’Cause they’re dumber than dirt,” Mother would always answer.
I’m not saying these reporters were necessarily looking to find a white hood sticking out from under the bill of a man-in-the-street’s John Deere cap, but a couple of snarling, dumber-than-dirt rednecks would have goosed up the
