Freshwater Road Read Free Page B

pavement and walked
inside, the late afternoon sun warming the back of his head.
    In the cool uneven bar light, Shuck nodded to his soft-talking regulars
already curled around their first drinks of the day. The blown-up figures in
his custom-made "best-of-Negro-life" wallpaper stepped out of hard-glossed
cars in tuxedos and draped white dresses; Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson,
Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong were there. Shuck
clanked change into the jukebox, punched in Gloria Lynne, the Modern
Jazz Quartet, and Coleman Hawkins. Posey, his bartender, nicknamed the
big Wurlitzer the "party girl" because it lit up the alcove where it stood like
a hooker caught in a police car's siren light on a corner in Paradise Valley.
He took his usual seat at the back end of the bar with Gloria Lynne singing
"I Wish You Love." He stacked his mail to the side and skimmed the front
page of his Detroit News. The Tigers left for St. Louis. The mayor huddled
with business leaders on Mackinac Island. Lenny Bruce's trial convened in
New York City.

    "Kids from all over the country going to Mississippi to register Negroes
to vote. Negro and white kids. Volunteering." Shuck realized he'd said it
out loud after he said it, then checked to see if anyone had heard him over
the music. He'd been following the news about the happenings in the
south. Rosa Parks had left Alabama to live in Detroit. Martin Luther King
had come through there, too. But the newspaper specifically said "Negro
and white kids volunteering to go to Mississippi," and that was a whole
different thing.
    Millicent sat on a stool at the other end of the bar fingering her pearlplated cigarette lighter. "I'd kill my children myself before I'd let them go to
Mississippi." She punctuated this with a good swallow of her drink before
thudding the glass down on the bar top. Millicent was a supervisor at the
main post office, dressed well, nursed her drinks, and went home early.
    Celeste had been so impressed by the speakers coming up from the
south, full of talk about the new, nonviolent revolution. She told Shuck
about the organizing on campus. He shuddered as a tremor of dread moved
through his body. He remembered her awe, her naive view of the south
apparent in every word she spoke. He stared at the newspaper and ducked
his head, sorry they'd heard him before he finished the article. They chimed
in just like they did when anyone brought up some tidbit of news in the bar.
You could barely get a thought out before they jumped all over it.
    "They won't treat those white kids the way they treat us." Iris sipped gin
and tonic from a tall glass, eyeing the opulent Negroes on Shuck's wallpaper.
Her hair sat in the neat rolled curls left by the curling iron. She more than
likely had plans for the night and didn't want to comb it out too soon in the
summer humidity. Iris, with three boys and a teenaged daughter, didn't have
a steady man and wasn't going to get one. No matter. Going out and having
a good time after working all week long precluded the need for a man.
    Posey, his waist wrapped in his bar apron, brought Shuck's orange juice.
"In Mississippi, a nigger lover and a nigger's the same damn thing."
    "Notjust in Mississippi." Chink sat with Rodney at a small bar table near
the juke box, smoking his filter tipped cigarettes, taking shallow inhales
because the doctor told him he wasn't supposed to be smoking at all.
    "That's the truth." Millicent's lips pursed in finality or dare.
    Iris looked out the front windows of the Royal Gardens. "You wrong."
    Shuck lowered the paper a bit, then turned to the continuation of the
article. "Says here they added one hundred new police officers, bought a truckload of new rifles, and they're using the fairgrounds as a prison
in Jackson. The governor's hired seven hundred more highway patrolmen. Damn." Shuck's butter-cream, short-sleeved shirt flared against his
dark brown arms like a lantern burning