Breakheart Hill Read online

  “Why did he treat Raymond that way?” Noreen asked. “Mary, too. Was it the drinking that made him do things like that?”

  Todd had asked the same question, and I’d stared at his ravaged face, recalled how adoringly he’d once gazed on Kelli Troy, and thought, No, Todd, it is lost love.

  “Todd being the way he was,” Noreen said, “I guess not much could be expected of Raymond.” Her mind seemed to return to the funeral, to Raymond’s sullen figure slumped in a metal chair beside his father’s grave, monstrously overweight in a rumpled black suit, his wife beside him, a silent, shrunken figure, and two listless, melancholy sons. “I guess Todd wanted a different son,” she said.

  I did not reply. But I knew the “different son” he’d wanted. A dark boy with black curly hair and shining eyes. Gifted. Passionate. The son he might have had with Kelli Troy.

  Noreen shook her head at the mystery of parents and children, husbands and wives, the devastations they exact upon one another. “I guess you can never know why a relationship goes bad,” she said.

  She was right, of course. And yet, I might have pointed out that if you looked at it in a certain, very narrow way, concentrating on one small cog in a monstrously grinding machine, you might be able to conclude that at least part of it began with Noreen herself, or at least that the accident of her coming to Choctaw late in March of 1962 provided the hinge upon which opened an enormous door.

  Although I’d seen Noreen in the hallway several times in the days following Todd’s mention of her arrival, it had never occurred to me to approach her.

  It had occurred to Kelli, however.

  “I think maybe we should talk to that girl from Gadsden,” she said one afternoon as we sat, doing layout, in the basement office.

  “What about?”

  “About what’s going on in Gadsden,” Kelli said. “She probably knows a lot about it.”

  “Why would you want to talk to her about that?” I asked.

  “For a story,” Kelli said.

  I shook my head. “Gadsden’s over thirty miles from here. It’s way out of range for the Wildcat.”

  “But what’s happening there is happening all over the South,” Kelli insisted. “It could happen here in Choctaw, too.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s all being stirred up by outsiders. Besides, the colored people in Choctaw have it pretty good.”

  For the first time since I’d known her, Kelli looked disappointed in me. “You think they’re satisfied with the way things are in Choctaw?” she asked sharply, her eyes blazing suddenly. “You think it’s different for them here?”

  I shrugged. “Well, not exactly satisfied,” I answered cautiously.

  “Well, what, then?” Kelli demanded. “They’re either satisfied or they’re not.”

  I raced for an answer that would soothe the irritation I could see building in her. “I mean, they have it better in Choctaw than they do in a lot of places down here,” I told her. “Better than in the Black Belt, for example. Or in Mississippi.”

  Kelli’s glance was piercing. “You really believe that, Ben?”

  But before I could answer, she’d leaped to her feet. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  “Where to?”

  “Just across town,” Kelli answered, already halfway out the door. “I want to show you something.”

  We walked directly to my car, Kelli speeding up with each step.

  “Okay, where are we going?” I asked once we were both inside.

  “The cemetery.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “The town cemetery,” Kelli repeated.

  The town was nearly deserted, though it was only around five in the afternoon, and a winter twilight had already begun to descend upon us. Still, it was light enough by the time we got to the cemetery for us to see its rolling hills clearly. A single roadway snaked its way among the gray and white stones, and I drove up it slowly, staring at the short brown grass that covered the graves on either side.

  “What am I looking for exactly?” I asked as we neared the cul-de-sac that would circle us back to the main road.

  “You can stop here,” Kelli said.

  I pressed the brake pedal, and the old Chevy came to a halt.

  “I’ll keep the engine going so we can stay warm,” I said, anticipating that Kelli was about to tell me a story, perhaps similar to the one she’d told me weeks before near Lewis Creek.

  “We’re getting out,” Kelli said.

  She was already heading toward the eastern corner of the cemetery by the time I caught up with her. She was walking swiftly, her hands sunk deep in her pockets, an icy wind slapping her checked scarf against her shoulder.

  “Are we looking for a particular grave?” I asked.

  “No,” Kelli said brusquely. She kept walking, past row after row of names carved in stone, but otherwise anonymous and unknowable lives.

  After a few hundred yards, we came to the border of the cemetery, a place where its neat lines of clipped grass disappeared into an indistinct and untended field of weeds and briar.

  Kelli stood in place, her eyes trained on the littered ground that stretched before her. It was ragged and desolate, and nothing save a chaotic scattering of upended rocks, flat and brown, marked it as anything but a field of bramble.

  “This is the Negro cemetery,” Kelli said. “You’ve seen it before, haven’t you, Ben?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen it,” I admitted.

  Which was true. But I had seen it only from a great distance, as a scraggly line of weeds at the far end of the impeccably pruned white cemetery, never close up, or, in the context of that afternoon, never minutes after having stated so flatly and with such certainty that the Negroes of Choctaw lived “better” than in other places.

  Kelli’s eyes challenged me. “It’s not right, something like this,” she said. “And the Negroes won’t stand for it forever. Not even here in Choctaw. That’s why I think we should talk to Noreen Donovan.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I guess we should,” I told her, my eyes sweeping over the old Negro cemetery with a sudden and strangely urgent discontent with the way things had always been.

  NOREEN APPEARED AT THE END OF THE CORRIDOR THE NEXT afternoon, a tall girl with a long, slender neck. Her clothes were neat but not particularly fashionable, chosen for comfort rather than for style, a form of dress that has not changed over the years. She wore her hair long in those days, well below her shoulders, not cut short and frosted as she wears it now. She had light, nearly flawless skin and bright blue eyes that seemed more open then, less veiled in unspoken thoughts.

  “I’m Noreen Donovan,” she said.

  “Hi, I’m Kelli Troy,” Kelli said as she stretched out her hand.

  Noreen fumbled with her books for a moment, then managed to free her hand. “Hi,” she said.

  “My name’s Ben Wade. I’m glad Miss Carver gave you our message.”

  Noreen nodded quickly, with that same “Let’s get on with it” briskness that has not slowed down much in thirty years.

  “Kelli and I work on the Wildcat,” I told her.

  Another quick, no-nonsense nod. “What’s that?”

  “The school paper,” Kelli said.

  “Oh.”

  “We understand you moved here from Gadsden,” I said. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about.”

  Noreen looked puzzled. “You want to talk to me about Gadsden?” She gave a short, faintly amused laugh. “There’s nothing to say about Gadsden.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly about Gadsden itself,” Kelli explained. “It’s more about what’s going on there.”

  Noreen stared at her blankly.

  “The demonstrations,” Kelli said.

  “Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” Noreen said.

  “But the demonstrations are going on near where you lived, right?” I asked. “At that shopping center outside of town.”

/>   “Yeah, that’s where they are,” Noreen answered, “but once that all started, I didn’t go to the shopping center anymore.”

  “Why not?” Kelli was leaning forward, her eyes trained intensely on Noreen.

  “ ’Cause my daddy said not to,” Noreen answered. “He said there might be trouble. But as far as I ever saw, the colored people were just marching back and forth.” She thought a moment, then added, “Sometimes a few white people would show up and hang around. You know, just looking at them.”

  “When do they march?” Kelli asked.

  “Pretty much all the time, I guess,” Noreen answered. “Just marching back and forth until the shopping center closes.”

  “When is that?”

  “At nine, I think,” Noreen said. Her eyes narrowed questioningly. “Ya’ll going to write about it?”

  “We’re thinking about it,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  “Because we think we should,” Kelli said bluntly.

  Noreen seemed satisfied by the answer. “Well, if you want me to, I’ll go down there with you,” she told us, “but don’t expect much.”

  NOREEN WAS BUNDLED UP IN A DARK GREEN COAT WHEN I picked her up that same night. She was not a pretty girl, but there was undoubtedly something about her that was attractive, a firmness of character that gave her face an undeniable strength. Because of that, even Luke sometimes passed a glance in Noreen’s direction, and I have often thought that had he not been so thoroughly connected to Betty Ann by the time Noreen moved to Choctaw, it might have been she who now goes strolling with him in the evening, the two of them making lazy middle-aged circles around the lake at Turtle Grove.

  Noreen shivered. “You know, they may not be doing anything tonight. It may be too cold for it.”

  Kelli was waiting at the window when we arrived at her house. I could see her body framed against the interior light, very still, peering toward us as we pulled into her driveway.

  She came out quickly, bounding down the wooden stairs to the car. Noreen scooted over to let her climb into the front seat.

  “It’s really cold tonight,” Kelli said, rubbing her hands together rapidly.

  “Noreen thinks they might call things off because of it,” I told her.

  “But they may not,” Noreen said. “There’s no way to tell.” Her shoulder was pressed against mine, and I was surprised that she left it there rather than pulling away slightly, as most girls would have done.

  It was around seven o’clock, and the narrow road to Gadsden was all but deserted. Darkness had fallen almost an hour before, and a thick cloud cover made it even darker than usual. Still, on either side, we could see the lights of the few rural villages that dotted the valley between Choctaw and Gadsden, and farther out, a scattering of remote farmhouses.

  I felt my fingers tighten around the steering wheel as we neared Gadsden. I knew that we were heading toward something volatile and unpredictable. Kelli and Noreen felt it, too, though neither of them mentioned it. Instead, Noreen gave her impression of Choctaw while Kelli listened silently, her eyes trained on the approaching town.

  It was just after eight when we reached the outskirts of Gadsden. It was nearly six times as large as Choctaw, a “big city” of over thirty thousand people, with large factories, a Catholic church and a smattering of people who had not been born there, even a few with other than Celtic or Anglo-Saxon names.

  The small shopping center rested nearly half a mile from the center of town, and as we approached it, Noreen leaned forward, peering at the flat line of brick buildings that came toward us in the distance.

  There were only a few cars in the parking lot, almost all of them gathered in front of Penney’s, the shopping center’s only department store, the rest of the strip taken up by small shops that sold everything from shoes to sporting goods.

  The world seemed to grow silent as we closed in on the little wall of buildings, their interior lights barely able to penetrate the thick, wintry darkness. I rounded a group of parked cars, swung to the right, and suddenly they were directly in front of me, as if they’d charged forward out of nowhere, a line of Negroes moving up and down the sidewalk in front of Penney’s, their flimsy cardboard placards flapping in the icy breeze.

  I pulled into the first available space, and stopped. No one spoke, but I could feel the tension that had suddenly heightened around us.

  Finally I leaned forward and looked at Kelli. “Now what?”

  Kelli didn’t answer me. Instead, she kept her eyes trained on the line of march. I had never seen her look more concentrated, as if she were gathering in every texture of the scene before her, using her eyes like fingertips.

  But if Kelli appeared oddly galvanized by what she saw, I felt cheated by its utter lack of drama. There were no speeches, no cheering crowds. The line of march itself was a monotonous circle. Even the marchers seemed inadequate to the occasion, their struggle made pitiable in the way they trudged wearily through the numbing cold, their crude, hand-painted placards snapping in the cruel breeze.

  “It doesn’t seem like there’s much to write about,” I said.

  Kelli continued to watch the marchers. “Yes, there is,” she said.

  “They’re just going in a circle,” I said. “It’s nothing.” I reached for the ignition. “We might as well go back to Choctaw.”

  Kelli’s eyes shot over to me. “Go back?” she snapped.

  “There’s nothing to do, Kelli,” I told her. “It’s just a bunch of people walking back and forth.”

  Kelli shook her head determinedly. “I’m getting out,” she said.

  I started to argue with her, but in an instant, she was out the door and striding toward the line of march, her checked scarf flowing behind her.

  Noreen glanced at me. “You getting out, too?”

  “I guess I have to,” I answered a little irritably.

  Kelli was almost halfway to the march when I caught up with her. “What are you going to do?” I asked as I trotted along beside her.

  “I don’t know. Talk to them, maybe.”

  I took her arm and turned her toward me. “You can’t do that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not something you should get involved in.”

  She answered with a question that was absolutely firm. “Then what is, Ben?”

  I had no answer for her, and so she pulled away from me and continued toward the marchers.

  “Kelli,” I called. “Wait.”

  She slowed her pace as she neared the marchers, then stopped before reaching them, the two of us standing stiffly in the cold, the nearly deserted lot behind us, and nothing but the slowly flowing line of march in front.

  I glanced back toward the car. Noreen still sat in the front seat, but she had leaned forward to keep us in view, and I could see that she was staring at us intently, as if we might disappear at any moment.

  “Someone has to be in charge,” Kelli said, clearly improvising a plan. “That’s who I’ll talk to first.” She looked at me evenly. “Are you coming with me?”

  Even now, I’m not sure what my answer would have been. As it turned out, I had no time to think about it.

  I first noticed the car as it turned into the shopping center lot from some distance away, the yellow beams of its headlights sweeping over the dark pavement like twin searchlights.

  Six months later I described that moment to Mr. Bailey when he put the question directly to me in Judge Thompson’s packed courtroom.

  And you say you saw a car pull into the shopping center, is that right, Ben?

  Yes, sir.

  Did that car come toward you and Miss Troy?

  Yes, it did.

  Could you see who was driving it?

  When it came closer, I could.

  Who was driving that car, Ben?

  Lyle Gates.

  I had seen his face even before the car came to a halt a few yards away, and when I think of it now, I see it as disembodied, a
pale, ghostly face balanced on the rim of a dark green steering wheel, his eyes strangely dead and lightless, like two blue marbles.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  Kelli glanced at me hurriedly, then back to the line of marchers. “Who is it?”

  “Lyle Gates,” I said grimly. “He’s probably down here to start trouble.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He talks about ‘the niggers.’ I heard him once at Cuffy’s.”

  But Lyle was not alone. Eddie Smathers was sitting in the passenger seat, the short black stub of a cigar held firmly in his mouth, his eyes wide with surprise at seeing Kelli and me before him.

  “What do you think they’re going to do?” Kelli asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  And so we simply stood in place and watched as the two of them got out of the car and began to come toward us.

  Eddie was empty-handed, but Lyle had a baseball bat dangling from his right hand.

  Kelli glanced at me silently, apprehensively, and for an instant I felt her fingers clutch my hand with unmistakable urgency. A few yards away, the marchers continued in their frigid rounds, but at that moment, they vanished from my mind. I saw only Lyle, and he suddenly seemed immensely tall and threatening, a figure capable of unimaginable destruction.

  “Just don’t say anything about what we’re doing down here,” I whispered frantically to Kelli.

  She nodded coolly as she released my hand, but I know she was afraid, and that everything about Eddie and Lyle heightened that fear. Their loose-limbed swaggers, the smoke that trailed behind Eddie, the physical power sheathed within their jeans and denim jackets, the unthinkable violence behind their boyish grins.

  I heard her whisper, “Ben?”

  I had no time to answer, for by then Lyle and Eddie had closed in on us.

  “How ya’ll doing,” Eddie said. He flipped the cigar into the parking lot and smiled at Kelli. “Stinky old things. Right, Lyle?”

  Lyle didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes swept over to Kelli, lingered there, then returned to me. “What ya’ll doing way down here?” he asked.

  I gave Kelli a quick warning glance. “We just decided to take a ride.”