Home Fires

I wondered what it must have been like to grow up the darkest member of a light-skinned family. Had her step-mother made her feel like Cinderella? Had her fairer half-siblings and cousins taunted her? Colleton County must have seemed doubly lonely after her uncle left, which made me wonder all over again why she was still here. Her grandmother?

And why had she been crying in my office on Thursday? This wasn’t the first time I’d cast my mind back to that morning, but I could think of nothing in the usual lineup of minor offenses she had prosecuted that should’ve brought tears. Besides, she’d been distracted from the minute court began. Maybe something happened before she came to work? It occurred to me again that I didn’t have the slightest notion of Cyl DeGraffenried’s private life. For all I knew, she could have a live-in lover and six kids.

Well, okay, maybe not kids. Someone would have noticed if she had kids; but if she had a private lovelife...

Which brought my thoughts around to Kidd again. By now he was probably stopping in Goldsboro for a barbecue sandwich on his way back to New Bern and God alone knew when our schedules would next mesh.

The Reverend Floyd Putnam called for prayer and I automatically bowed my head and closed my eyes, but I’m afraid my prayers were more temporal than spiritual.

“Amen!” said Mr. Ligon when Mr. Putnam’s tepid prayer drew to a close. “You’ve given us a lot to think about this morning, Brother Floyd, and we thank you. But before we go any further, we want to welcome Brother Ralph Freeman and the whole congregation of Balm of Gilead here today. As most of you know, Balm of Gilead burned down Wednesday night. The Bible tells us to curse the deed, not the doer and we give thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ that no one was hurt.”

(“Yes, Lord!” came the murmurs. “Praise Jesus!”)

“Brother Ralph’s family is with him here today and I’m asking them now to stand up and be known to you. Sister Clara? Stan? Lashanda?”

An attractive, slightly plump woman of early middle age with processed hair stood up in the front row and smiled shyly as welcoming sounds washed over her from the congregation. Her son Stan was probably thirteen or fourteen and looked as embarrassed as most teenagers are when the spotlight hits them, but his younger sister beamed from ear to ear.

Another twenty or more people got to their feet when Mr. Ligon called for the members of Balm of Gilead to stand. I wondered which were the strayed sheep that Maidie was annoyed about but decided this wasn’t the time to ask her.

The choir sang again—“The Storm Is Over Now”—and again we all joined in at the end. Then Wallace Adderly was introduced and Mr. Ligon promised that we’d get to hear him speak after lunch, but now we should welcome the words of Brother Ralph Freeman.

Ralph Freeman was as dynamic as Floyd Putnam had been dull. He, too, talked of trying to live in peace and harmony and racial goodwill, but somehow his words spoke to the heart and made the spirit sing. For that twenty minutes, he made us believe that Martin Luther King’s dream really could happen, that people might quit letting their eyes stop at a person’s skin but keep on looking deeper until each saw the other’s humanity.

His face glowed, his words soared and we were caught up in it, longing to believe, aching for the communal unity that bound us together for this brief moment.

After Mr. Freeman concluded, Reverend Ligon poured benedictions down upon us and then the choir led us out into the sunshine of a perfect Sunday morning in the South.

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Back when I was a very little girl, dinner on the grounds was just that: a picnic dinner spread on long tables beneath tall oaks or pecan trees, with wooden tubs of lemonade and iced tea at either end and every food known to the congregation’s women in between.

Yes, yes, I know it’s probably healthier to eat inside in air-conditioned coolness, away from the heat and flies and the dust kicked up by unruly children playing tag around the trees. And certainly it’s more comfortable to sit at a table rather than trying to balance paper plates and cups while standing up outside. Nevertheless, dinner on the grounds loses some of its picnic charm when serving tables are set up in a fellowship hall and people sit in folding chairs at long rows of tables draped in white paper tablecloths rather than walking around to mingle with this one, exchange compliments and recipes with that one, before finding a place to perch with yet another.

Uncle Ash and I fetched the cooler from the car and Aunt Zell set out her fried chicken, potato salad and watermelon pickles next to Maidie’s chicken pastry and huge bowl of butter beans while the men stood around outside, smoked, talked about the fire, and waited to be called in to eat.

With so many picnic boxes and coolers already stowed under the table, there was no more room for Aunt Zell’s and I slipped out a side door to carry it back to the car. As I rounded a dump of boxwood shrubs, I almost bumped into a skinny black man of indeterminate middle age.

Clouds of alcoholic fumes enveloped me and I registered his soiled white shirt half tucked into his pants and a wrinkled tie that hung limply over the collar, its knot halfway down his thin chest.

“Lemme help you with that,” he said, grabbing woozily for the bulky cooler.

“That’s okay,” I said, trying to sidestep.

“Naw, I’m ’sposed to help,” he insisted.

Before it could turn into a full-fledged tug of war, Mr. Ligon suddenly appeared.

“Arthur!” he said sternly and the man let go so abruptly, I would have fallen backwards if Mr. Ligon hadn’t caught me.

“I apologize for our sexton’s behavior, Judge.” He glared at the other man, who seemed to shrink back into the bushes.

“That’s okay,” I said. “It was nice of him to offer to carry this, but it’s really very light.”

I swung the cooler by one handle to demonstrate, nodded pleasantly and kept on walking. Behind me, I could hear Mr. Ligon speaking with controlled fury, then the sound of a door closing.

I looked back. They were nowhere in sight. I took a closer look and realized that the boxwoods screened a door that I hadn’t noticed till then. It was covered in the same white clapboard as the fellowship hall and the break was