The Summer We Got Saved

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Favorably compared to both Harper Lee and Mark Twain, Pat Cunningham Devoto brings her knowledge of the South to The Summer We Got Saved. Tab and Tina, relatives of a founder of Ku Klux Klan, are whisked away to an interracial Civil Rights school one summer. There, they befriend both a black polio patient and the biracial daughter of a Yankee and a Civil Rights leader. Can the girls be saved from the racist traditions of their Alabama family?

Release date: October 15, 2007

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 341

Sample

CHAPTER 1

Their Father

SO INEVITABLE were its comings and goings that the Ford Ranchero seemed to steer itself off Highway 72 and onto the red clay roads of the Rutland place. As soon as it stopped, Charles Junior jumped out to play on the split-rail fencing that edged the pasture. Charles propped the morning paper against the steering wheel and read the article on the upcoming governor’s race, not because he was interested, but because he was loath to go inside to what his foreman had said he would find. The paper predicted Wallace the winner. He glanced up at Charles Junior, then lazed over to an article about Ike playing golf at Augusta. He had a notion that right here and now he might be able to take himself out of time—let the sun, beating down against the top of the cab, pressure-cook his little cubicle and ease him into a gentle, lasting sleep. Instead, he skimmed the movie section, folded the paper and placed it on the seat beside him, got out of the truck, and went inside.

Clyde, his foreman, stood off in a corner, watching. Charles raised the lid on the stainless-steel vat that was the receptacle for milk taken from the dairy cows. The heavy aroma of wild onions wafted up out of the vat. He let the metal top bang back down into place. “Four damn days’ worth of milking gone to waste—the second time this month.” A few of the dairy cows had broken through a fence and grazed on a field with wild onions.

“Ain’t nothing to do but pitch it,” Clyde said. “This rate, you ain’t never gonna get Will that new house.” Rather than sympathy, Charles thought he detected a note of satisfaction in Clyde’s voice.

He left the barn and walked down the road to Will’s. Mary had said something about new clothes for the girls. The boys didn’t matter—blue jeans and a T-shirt—but the older girls, Tab and Tina, were coming to an age when that sort of thing did matter. Will’s new house would have to wait.

Out on the sagging front porch, which was a good part of his living space, the old man was sitting in a straight-back cane-bottomed chair. Charles could hear the sounds of a hymn drifting through the old screen door, which had long ago lost its usefulness—poked with holes and bowed out at its bottom from the banging of grandchildren, the scratching of dogs. Will’s daughter, inside fixing the noon meal, was stuck on the same verse: “Oooh—sometimes it causes me to wonder . . . to wonderrrr.” It began to blend with the other sounds of the day: a tractor motor in the distance, chickens out in the yard fighting over the last bits of corn, the house dog chased by the yard rooster. Charles took a seat on the wooden swing that hung at the end of the porch. He got out a cigarette and struck a match on the back of the oak ribs.

“You got plenty of firewood? I’ll have Tot come up here and cut you some if you need it.”

“Nawsir, got plenty of wood.”

They had known each other since Charles was a boy. Will had worked for his father, had gone to fetch the doctor the day Charles was born. “Did he get by here with your check yesterday?”

“Yessir, sho did.”

Charles looked out to the rectangle of concrete, way past curing, that was to be the foundation for the new house.

Will whittled. His knife disappeared into a calloused hand, churning away at a piece of white oak that would eventually reappear as a whistle for the grandchildren.

“Some bad news with the milk just now. The cows . . .” His voice trailed off because it didn’t matter why. “We’ll have to hold up on starting the walls.” He threw what was left of his cigarette out in the yard, watching the chickens come up to inspect the smoldering butt before they backed off in search of real sustenance.

He left and went back to the farm store to check on Charles Junior and to tell Clyde, “Be back. I’m going to check the springhouse,” and he was—in a way.

The natural spring sat in a draw, down in deep woods near the river. Tall birch trees and oaks towered over the old springhouse. Nurtured for over a hundred years by the spring, the trees were giants now. They must have already been big when his great-grandfather first came here and carved his name—Jonathan McDavid Rutland, 1820.

“The Cherokees weren’t good and gone before he was here, claiming the land for us,” his father had told him. There were all manner of things cut into the trees: initials of young lovers, Indian symbols, or what he thought were Indian symbols. Maybe the slaves had carved messages in the trees when they had come down to fetch water up to the main house, which was over a mile away. The main house had always had its own water, but this spring was supposed to have the best-tasting water in the county.

Carved into the tree nearest the spring was what appeared to be a Confederate battle flag and, carved beside it, “Franklin Blues.” Perhaps young boys had come for a drink in the sweltering midsummer heat, shedding their wool uniforms, squatting down, ducking their heads into the cool water, filling canteens for the long march. He liked to think of them sitting there, momentarily refreshed before they took to the hot, dusty roads again—great numbers of them to be killed.

When he was a boy, he had carved “Charles Lane Westmoreland Rutland.” He had been named in the English fashion—bestowing multiple middle names—partly because his father wanted to show ties to his British heritage, and as a practical matter because there were so many relatives to be placated and there would be only one firstborn son.

There had been a sister, Eugenia, born before him and received pleasantly enough. She was healthy, would be a wonderful companion to her mother and perhaps marry well, but she had not been afforded extra names. It would have been pretentious. When she was young, she had been immediately precocious, talking early, reading by the time she was five. Her father had been very proud, but she was not a boy, would not be there to ensure his step off into eternity.

Charles stooped down by the springhouse and listened for the hum of the motor that pumped water back over the hill to the south field’s watering troughs. He splashed his face and took a drink. It might be the best-drinking water in the county, but nobody seemed to care about that anymore. Too many other choices now—tea and Coca-Cola and Kool-Aid. People didn’t appreciate good water anymore.

From here, he always walked up the hill to the family graveyard, sat down on one of the raised markers, and pulled out a cigarette. It was pleasant, always a breeze and a good view of the river. This routine—going to the spring, looking at the river from the graves—always made him feel better; or if not better, then more secure in what he was doing—in what he was meant to do.

CHAPTER 2

The Seduction

CHARLES HAD BEGUN WORK on the farm as a young boy, on weekends and during the summers. By the time he was ten, he had been made responsible for one of the most important, if menial, jobs on the Rutland place—weighing the cotton during picking season. His sister, Eugenia, would watch from under the shade of the big oaks in the front yard of the main house, begging to be allowed to go to the fields and work, too. Mr. Ben would pat her on the head. “Too much sun isn’t good for a lady’s skin, Eugenia.”

Charles would stand by the cotton wagons situated in the middle of the field in the heat of the late summer, responsible for weighing the cotton sacks that were brought back to the wagon by the pickers. It was a job of huge importance. Some farms were known to adjust the scales to give the owner advantage. Some pickers were known to add rocks to their sacks. He had been proud that he checked the adjusting screw periodically, that he felt each sack and watched as it was dumped in the wagon, to make sure no rocks rolled out in among the bolls. He never gave a short weight to anyone who had been hours in the sun. The pickers, black and white, had timed their picking to end at Charles’s wagon so he could do the weighing. From the time he was a child, he had felt his place—and liked it. Eugenia had never felt her place and never liked it.

Later, there would be another sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Arland. They had never questioned the way of things. Eugenia had always questioned everything.

Charles had been given his own horse, with a roll-top saddle like his father’s, and would ride behind him out into the fields to inspect the crops. One afternoon, he was sitting on the steps of the log cabin that served as the farm office. His father had been called away to another part of the property. Charles was eating his sack lunch and waiting for Mr. Ben’s return when he noticed one of the tenants running up the road toward him. She had been quite a distance away and had come close before Charles had seen the distress in her eyes. Sue Ann was breathless by the time she reached him.

“Waylon done turned the wagon over on hisself, Little Boss. You gotta come.” He was up and running with her back along the dirt road, wondering why she thought that he, at twelve years old, could do anything about it. As it happened, he saw that he could do something. He immediately began unloading the sacks of corn off the heavy wagon, Waylon moaning underneath.

“Go ring the bell, Sue Ann. Go, run,” he had shouted. He could hear the big plantation bell echoing all over the fields as he dragged sack after sack off the fallen wagon. By the time he had lightened the load enough, other workers had come in response to the bell and could help right the wagon. The man under, suffering a broken leg, had stopped the men who were carrying him off long enough to call him “Mr. Charles” when he thanked him. His father, upon hearing the story, had reached in his pocket and given him his penknife. He couldn’t imagine ever being any happier. He had gone to the springhouse that very afternoon and carved his name.

Later that same summer, on one of their rides, his father had looked out over the fields and said to Charles that someday he would be responsible for all of this, and Charles, at that moment, had felt there could be no better job, that there could be no finer place to live than in a world in which he was the hero.

He had not noticed the large gullies that had formed as a result of years of planting the same thing over and over, had not known that the end result of fields of healthy green bushes sprouting white puffs was brought about by large loans that had to be paid off at the end of each growing season, or—if not paid off—they would sink the farm into deeper and deeper debt. By then, he was twelve and king of the hill. He had not observed that the hill seemed to be shrinking as small parts of what had once been a huge tract of land were sold off each season to satisfy unpaid debt. It had not entered his mind, at that young age, that even then his debt to the system which was breeding him had become insurmountable.

Early on, the family had moved to town so that Charles and his siblings could attend public school. After graduation, his best friend, Reuben, had gone up east to college. Charles had gone to a state university, nearby and inexpensive, the University of Tennessee. He worked part-time to make room and board, and he met Mary, the daughter of the president of the university.

It was not until he came home to settle in with his new bride that the enormity of what he had committed to began to sink in. It was not until his father let him take a look at the farm ledgers, let him take them home and study them, that he began to comprehend.

Thoughts of the Great Depression still lingered somewhere out there, pushed back out of sight by each turn of the sixteen-disk harrow in red clay, by backbreaking summers on the hay baler, hot, sweaty bodies coated like flypaper with the swirling chaff. From a distance, the word plantation sounded dim, diffused, even romantic; up close, it was hot, grueling, worn-out.

He and Mary had spent the first five years of their marriage scrimping and saving, living in the run-down old plantation house out in the country. At the end of those five years, when they were four—two girls, Tina and Tab, had arrived—Mary had insisted they be allowed to attend a town school. They moved into Bainbridge and Charles began driving out to the farm every day.

Now he had been farming for over nineteen years and, in that time, three more children had arrived. His first two, Tab and Tina, were on the verge of becoming young women. He was beginning to notice specks of gray. It was a life he had settled into, much like chocolate poured into a mold fills up every nook and cranny to gain the perfect likeness.

This was the way of men of his generation. The job of nurturing had been left up to the women. For men, the assigned measure of love took the form of provider and protector. A man’s love was not weighed in any outward expression, but in a lifetime of being there, and that was not fully indemnified until the whole lifetime had played out. Though a man might feel the pressure of such responsibility and take to the bottle, and though he might squander what money he was able to earn on gambling or enjoy extra time with worldly women, all was forgiven, or overlooked, if he could be counted on to be there. If he did not stay the course, he became like so many tinkling ice cubes melting away in an afternoon’s glass of tea.

CHAPTER 3

The Girls

OUT OF MEMPHIS, headed east, Highway 72 crosses the Tennessee River near the Natchez Trace and pulls the hill into the village of Bainbridge. Blowing over the solid black tarmac—a chilled wind from the west.

Tina loved her coming. Tab loathed it. Stir things up was what she did, get people agitated, and Tab was not of an age to need agitation, having enough put upon her already—it being the first afternoon of her life that she had gotten up the nerve, along with Mary Leigh and Harriett, to come in and take a booth at Trowbridge’s. High school people were welcome. Adults were endured. Junior high persons were not tolerated. Whereas derogatory looks, or no looks at all, could have shamed them into leaving had they gone in and waited at the cashier’s stand, they stood outside, the three of them, anxiously glancing in the front window, hoping for a booth to clear and then pouncing on it when it did, settling in and disregarding the odd looks.

It was a predictable place for Tina, a rising senior. She was sitting in a window booth, talking to three boys, pretending not to notice any other comings and goings. The senior booth could be looked upon by others and admired, but not sat in.

A sack of new nail polish from Woolworth’s was something for Tab to do with her hands while they waited for their drinks. After she had ordered a Cherry Coke float—Mary Leigh and Harriett had done the same—she rummaged in the bag, got out a bottle of Orange Blush, and began painting her nails, from time to time showing the color to Mary Leigh. Harriett was pretending to look through the jukebox selections, absent any money to waste on “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”—their favorite—as sung by the Platters. “Teen Angel” was playing at the time.

“It would look a lot better if you didn’t bite your fingernails down to the nub.”

“I can’t help it if I’m high-strung, Mary Leigh.”

They all made a point of not noticing as Tina got up and walked to their table, Jack Carter’s letter jacket so big on her that she had to roll the sleeves three times to find her fingers. A large gold B on the front was adorned with small silver charms—a winged shoe for track, three basketballs, two footballs. Prizes for every year he had lettered and then bestowed upon her, his personal chastity belt.

“Come on. We have to go home, remember?’

“Are you talking to me?”

“You know I’m talking to you. They spent the night in Memphis and they’re driving in from there. Mother said we all have to be home to greet Aunt Eugenia. It would be impolite if we weren’t.”

Tab tried to prolong it, taking a sip of Cherry Coke float and changing the subject. “Lately, I’ve been thinking of calling myself Tabitha,” she said, then, turning to the others, “it’s my God-given name, you know.” The others nodded in appreciation. Mary Leigh had been thinking of shortening hers to Leigh. Harriett was considering Lana. Anything to indicate a more mature self was in the offing.

“Tabitha, Smabitha, get up and let’s go.”

“I don’t need to be there. She doesn’t even like me. Besides, as you can see, we are enjoying our Coke floats.”

“You’re too young to be here anyway.” Tina turned toward the door.

“I have just as much right to be here as you.” Tab gathered up her sack, took one last suck, and followed after.

“And that nail polish is gross.” Tina let the door come close to slamming in Tab’s face. Tab reopened it and turned to give the V for victory sign to Mary Leigh and Harriett, which meant, Stay in that booth as long as you can.

They walked three blocks down River Street before turning right. Tina smiled at Mr. Clovis, who was standing outside Woolworth’s, taking a break. “Hope Tab is gonna share some of that nail paint with you, Tina. She got enough for Cox’s army.”

“I hope so, too, Mr. Clovis.” Then, out of hearing, “Fat chance I would be caught dead.”

Tab waved to two of the men sitting on benches out in front of the courthouse. “I coulda used Tangerine Twist, but it seemed too bright.”

“What you have on”—Tina tried to look bored when a carful of boys slowed to whistle—“has to be the grossest thing yet. Tangerine, whatever, couldn’t possibly be any grosser.” She ran bright red nails through long blond hair, then took off the heavy letter jacket, draping it over her shoulders—the better to see a matching pink sweater set.

Tab inspected her nails as they turned right on Dogwood, past Fuzzie’s Fine Feeds and Farm Supply, and on to the next block, which was lined with houses set back in among the dogwoods. A breeze scattered the shriveled remains of white blossoms across the sidewalk. Tab skip-stepped to come along beside. “I am not just too thrilled about this visit from Aunt Eugenia, you know. I have other things I have to do this summer. It could be a gross time.”

“That is not how you use the word gross.” Tina stopped short and looked both ways before crossing the street. “Besides, that’s what you always say, every time she comes, and then you end up tagging along with us.”

“She always asks me, and you’re just jealous.”

“She always asks you because she’s so polite and she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“I don’t see what you see in her. All the time I’m with her, I feel nervous, like something terrible might happen.”

“It’s because she’s so worldly.”

“It’s because she’s so weird. Why are we walking past our house?”

“Because, dim brain, we’re all supposed to meet up at Grandmother’s to welcome her. And another thing—I could modernize your hairstyle if you’d let me cut it.”

“Ponytails? Ponytails are very popular.”

Eyes at half-mast, the head flipping back a mane of blond hair. “On ponies.”

From a block away, they could see the cars pulled up in the drive. The twins, their youngest brother and sister, were in the front yard, playing with cousins. Charles Junior, slightly older, was taking turns riding the Radio Flyer down the front walk, careening around cracks in the concrete, dodging scattering cousins. Sunlight filtered down through the big oak trees that lined the street, dappling the front yard grass in painterly shades of green. The red Radio Flyer shot through the picture again. Delighted screams from those on the brink of annihilation. Brightly colored polo shirts and pinafores ran laughing to the four corners of the yard. Soft voices called warnings from the front porch. It was a picture so beautiful and so familiar as to be completely ignored.

The house, a two-story Georgian set squarely in the center of its two acres, was one of many that lined the easy, long-settled block. Four white columns anchored the porch, which had been added years after the building. Tiny piles of sawdust at the bottom of the columns evidenced the carpenter ants that were slowly coring out the insides.

Gliders and a swing, rocking chairs, and heavy iron rock-back rockers spread out under two large overhead fans. They—Uncle Tom and Aunt Helen, their father and mother and grandparents—were gathered there talking, reminding themselves anew of what it would be like when Eugenia arrived.

Tina and Tab were the oldest of the children, somewhere in understanding between those in the front yard and those on the front porch. They sat down near the top of the six wide steps that were the entrance. Their father, Charles, pointed to them as a welcome, never slowing in his story, but including them. “Your grandfather, seeing she was so smart, decided to send her up north to a school that would challenge her. That’s how come she ended up going to college in Virginia.” He took out a cigarette and picked up a Life magazine off the wicker side table. Conversation alone was not enough to warrant the men just sitting there. “That’s about as far north as he was willing to go with it.” He winked at his wife, Mary, before he began to read.

Then Aunt Helen: “Eugenia would be fine if she just wouldn’t arrive in a whirlwind every year and upset everybody so. That’s what drives me to distraction. Doesn’t she know I have to live here after she goes? I spend a month getting the pieces back together every summer after she visits.”

Tab’s grandmother, Miss Hattie, was sitting in her wicker rocker, reading the paper. They could hear a warning rattle of pages. Tina, clasping her hands to her elbows and looking out into the yard, said it loudly enough for Tab’s ears. “Here comes the one about her giving away Aunt Eugenia when she was a baby.”

One of the twins had run up and shoved an untied shoe into Tab’s lap. She was tying it too tight. “Grandmother couldn’t help it if she got sick. Gad, Tina, what do you expect?”

“I couldn’t help that I had to let her go stay with my sister for a while when the next baby came.” Miss Hattie held the paper wide out and gave the pages an extra pop, folding them back. “It was right after Helen, and I got sick. Couldn’t handle two toddlers and a baby. She always said that had a traumatic effect on the rest of her life. She felt abandoned. That was more than forty years ago.” She looked up over her glasses to anyone who was listening. Nobody much was. “She still brings it up. To this very day, she still brings it up, for heaven sakes. Now you tell me if you can remember what happened back when you were all of three years old. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.” She picked up the paper, but wasn’t finished. “The thing about it is, Mr. Ben spoiled her, that’s all, sending her to that progressive women’s school in Virginia. She was bound to come away with strange ideas. That’s where it all started—not when she was staying with my sister till she was four and crying her eyes out because she had to use somebody else’s teddy bear.” Something on the front page caught her eye. “Says here Wallace is running again, as if we didn’t know it.” She settled down into reading. “Besides, everybody loves Eugenia. We all love Eugenia.”

“Driving all the way from California in a jeep—if you can believe that’s perfectly normal—at her age,” Aunt Helen said.

Tina sighed, looking straight down at the steps, cheeks resting in palms. “You wish you had the nerve,” she whispered.

“She’s gonna hear you.”

“She is not, and so what if she does?”

Aunt Helen was swinging a crossed leg to the rhythm of the rocking chair she was sitting in. “Can you see Tom if I decided to go out and help organize a labor union—in Alabama—a labor union? And then she has to go and marry a professor that teaches at Berkeley. In California? Lord. The only thing worse would have been if he was a Communist, only we didn’t know Communists were so evil back then.” Helen rose halfway up out of the chaise and blew smoke in the air. “Has it ever occurred to y’all he might have been a Com—” She stopped herself in midsentence and glanced around to see if anybody was looking. Everybody was. “Well, it was only a logical progression in my brain. I couldn’t help it.”

“You must admit Val is not half-bad-looking,” Mary said.

“Which is amazing. She obviously doesn’t have the same ammunition as the rest of us. Let’s face it, the girl is flat-chested as they come.”

Tina, face still resting in her palms, muttered, “Gravy, that is definitely not supposed to make a difference. Aunt Helen is so, so behind the times.”

“You’re just saying that ’cause you don’t have to worry about it,” Tab whispered.

“If I was speaking to you, I would explain that it is not something we worry about. We have all talked it over in Miss Graham’s home ec class.”

“Mary Leigh says it’s of the utmost importance.”

“Mary Leigh is gross.”

“Well, the proof is in the pudding, or whatever it is they say,” Tab’s mother was saying. “Look what she got. I mean, look at Val, six four, broad shoulders, square jaw. He looks like Superman. I swear I think of Superman every time I see him.”

Aunt Helen took the last Camel out of the pack and lifted the coupon before she dropped the empty package in the big ashtray on the table beside her. “Remember that summer she came in fresh out of New York, had just spent a year up there getting analyzed? She acted like it was perfectly normal, getting analyzed. Nobody does that down here—not unless they’re crazy as a betsy bug.”

Tina almost shouted when she stood up to face them. “Well, I like it when she comes, you know.”

Everyone looked up, startled, then rushed to agreement. “Of course you do, honey. We do, too. We all love Eugenia coming—and Val, too.”

Charles put down his magazine. “We all adore Eugenia, Tina. What gave you the idea we didn’t?”

Helen looked to Mary. “Where did your daughter ever get the idea we didn’t like Eugenia coming?”

Tina’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, gravy.” She turned back around and sat down. Her mother smiled at the others and mouthed teenager, and everyone felt fine again.

A minute later Tina hopped off the steps and ran halfway down the front walk before she turned and ran back to them. “It’s her. The white jeep.”

CHAPTER 4

Maudie

THE SUN WAS ARCING WESTWARD when Reverend Earl turned his old Chevy onto Highway 72. The trip had taken longer than he’d planned. Not wanting to be noticed, Reverend Earl had decided to detour around Birmingham. They had taken the back road up to Huntsville and were now on a straight line into the sun.

Since he had picked up Maudie in Tuskegee that morning, Reverend Earl had tried intermittently to start a conversation, but they had driven mostly in silence.

Some three hours before, they had stopped for gas at a Negro-owned general store outside of Oneonta. The boy who filled their tank had begun flirting with her while he washed the windshield; at least as she looked back, she thought that’s what it must have been, flirting. She had seen the nurses and orderlies in the halls at Tuskegee.

“Now lookie here. If you ain’t something in that green dress. Where’s the party at, girl?” Maudie had smiled but said nothing, bringing her arm inside the car and fiddling with the ashtray on the door, trying not to grin like a child. The boy had leaned down to catch another glimpse as he wiped off the outside mirror on the driver’s side. “Reverend Earl, think she might be old enough to go on down to the Royal Blue and do some dancing next time y’all down this way?”

Reverend Earl had laughed as he opened the door to get out and go inside to use the rest room and pay for the gas. “Hush up there, Jimmy. This here one’s seventeen going on forty-five. She run circles round you.”

“That’s the kind I like, Reverend, smart and sassy.” He said it loudly, to be sure she heard. She had smiled at him and then quickly looked away.

When Reverend Earl got back in the car, he had brought both of them a Coke and crackers. “Sure you don’t wanta go on in and use the facilities? We been riding for a long time and we got a long time to go ’fore we can stop again.”

“I’m just fine, thank you, Reverend Earl,” she said, and waved to Jimmy, who was watching her while he checked the hood of the car next to them.

“Suit yourself.”

Now, hours later, she was furious with herself for having been so vain and for having drunk the Coca-Cola. She had wanted to go to the rest room when they stopped in Oneonta. Now she was dying to go.

Finally, Reverend Earl pulled the car onto a dirt road that led down to a little stream with large limestone rocks along one side. It was owned, he said, by a colored man, who wouldn’t mind if they used it. “This was gonna be a picnic lunch, but since we so late, it’ll have to be a early picnic supper.” He turned off the car. “Well now, miss, time to get out and stretch our legs, and I could use me a trip to the gentlemen’s room also.” He got out of the car and closed his door. “Be back in a minute to get out that picnic the folks down in Tuskegee made up for us,” and he disappeared into the bushes beside the stream.

He had left