MAYVILLE—Hundreds are flocking to Mayville for the event, which state authorities say they are powerless to prevent.
John Hartfield, a Negro from the South arrested last Sunday and held in Mayville County Jail, will be released later today. Local officers have agreed to turn him over to the people of the town. Hartfield was charged with “dishonesty and felonious insult to white persons.”
Printed invitations to the event were sent out yesterday by a group called the White Christian Patriots, giving the location and reminding spectators to bring a dish to pass.
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James has made his decision to go fight. And I understand. But it fills me with desperation. I told him I would come with him, asked him to help me cut my hair and dress as a man and go with him, and he looked so sad.
He said, Fidelia, when you were younger it would have been possible, but you have turned into such a woman. There is no way anyone would mistake you. Maybe there is some way for you to stay here and take over the parish until I get home.
This shocked me. I had never heard of a woman pastor.
Think of it, he said. It’s you who has encouraged me, it’s you who is so passionate about these issues. If you must remain here it should be in a place that’s fitting, a place away from your family where you can continue our work. And when I come home we can be together.
It was a better idea than living at home. But we both knew it was an impossibility, the church and our families would never allow it. We sat in silence.
I remembered that moment when I first came along with him, to help lead people from the woods. How we were hunkered down, terrified. Any noise could mean our capture—and our friends who had worked so hard for their freedom being sent back to a life of slavery and abuse. He had taken my hand there in the complete darkness—and with his finger had written on my skin, drawing invisible letter after invisible letter.
I love you, he wrote. I love you. I love you. I love you.
NINETEEN
OUT IN THE LOOPING DRIVEWAY HOPE LOOKED URGENTLY at Gretchen and Hawk, motioning for them to throw the box of photographs in the back. Hawk jumped in the car with the box and Gretchen leaped into the front seat just as Hope peeled out.
Once in the safety of the car speeding away, Hawk reached forward to touch her shoulder and Gretchen reached back to squeeze his hand. Dust kicked up around the windows as Hope drove down the dirt road. She flipped the sun visor down.
“Why are we heading away from our house?” Hawk asked.
“We’re going into town,” she said matter-of-factly. “The funeral home called. Esther’s ashes are ready to pick up.”
Suddenly the mood turned grave.
“It’s all so crazy,” Gretchen whispered.
Hope said, “I don’t know what the two of you saw in that house. But you’re not crazy. People all over the world think they’re crazy when something bad goes down. Think how people felt when strangers with different skin and odd language came and threw them onto a ship and took them far away. They felt like they were going crazy. One day eating lunch with their family—the next being beaten and sold and then beaten again. There was crazy shit going on—but it wasn’t in their heads. That crazy lasted so long we’re still feeling the ripples of it.”
“You sound like Mom,” Hawk said.
“I am like Mom,” she said. “We learn history so we can break with the past, not repeat it.”
Gretchen had never heard a kid talk like this in her life. Besides Janine, Hope was the most level-headed person she’d ever known.
“Amen to that,” Hawk said.
Hope looked back at the house through the rearview mirror. “Let’s just hope we get the chance,” she said.
They drove on in silence. Forest gave way to town via a poorly paved country road, which in turn widened into the smooth black asphalt of Main Street. There were large, pastel-painted mansions on both sides. Bric-a-brac and wind chimes dangled from porches; leafy potted ferns hanging from eaves troughs. A Saint Bernard lay sprawled in a patch of sun on a neatly mowed front lawn. American flags flapped gently from flagpoles. After where they had been, it was a blank, strange shock, a postcard of peace and prettiness and prosperity: brick storefronts and slickly painted green benches, a bright-red fire truck parked in the driveway of the Mayville fire station, looking so clean that Gretchen wondered if it had ever been used. There was a gazebo, and in it, a mother reading a storybook to four blond children. Even the funeral home looked pleasant. The hearse outside somber but perfectly polished.