“Do you own a gun?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t want a gun.”
“How about a dog? Maybe time to get one. A big one.”
I shake my head again. I’d love to have a dog, but how would I fit one into my life right now?
The woman surveys my yard again. “Let me help you clean up the mess,” she says.
“Oh no!” I say. “I’m sure you have a lot more important—”
“If I get a call, I’ll have to leave,” she admits. “Until then, I have gloves. Do you have a pair for yourself? And a rake?”
We each take a trash bag and work our way through the yard, raking up paper towels and wrappers and bits of food already crawling with ants. I keep choking back tears over her kindness. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that from anyone: genuine kindness. By the time we have every scrap of trash back in the can, though, I’m smiling. We pull off our gloves and toss them in the can. Shut the lid.
“I seriously can’t thank you enough…” I say, reaching out to shake her hand. I see the name plate on her shirt: S. JOHNS. “… Officer Johns.”
“Sam,” she says.
“What?”
“My name’s Samantha Johns.” Putting her hands on her hips again, she looks over the lawn, clean now, though ragged from our work. The stench of garbage is still in the air. “This was probably just kids messin’ around,” she says. “Maybe you built your house where they used to play ball.” She reaches in her pocket and pulls out her card. “But you call me if anything else happens,” she says. She looks past me toward the house. “It’s one of the coolest houses I’ve ever seen,” she says. “Try to enjoy it.”
* * *
That night, I find a printout of a newspaper article in one of the boxes in Jackson’s office. It’s a poor-quality photograph of several children, bundled up in heavy coats, standing in strange positions on what appears to be white sand. Beneath the photograph, this caption: Children enjoy pretending to skate on Little Heaven Lake on their way to Lingman Elementary School. The date of the paper is January 23, 1956. I remember Ellie telling me that when she was young, a path ran next to the lake, leading to an elementary school. I look harder at the photograph. I suppose what I think is sand is actually ice, and the children are trying to keep their balance.
Little Heaven Lake.
More like “Little Hell Lake,” I think.
That will be my new name for it.
Chapter 29
ELLIE
1965
Win drove me from the hospital to the school in Paul’s car. I sat in the passenger seat, ready to duck if we saw any cars or trucks with whites in them. I wanted to talk to him about what he’d said about Dr. King back at the hospital, but I knew that would be a long conversation, one not to have in a hot car with a throbbing head and uncertain stomach. Instead, I kept my head very still, not even turning to look at Win when he spoke.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You seem pretty out of it.”
“I feel like I’m either going to fall asleep or throw up,” I said.
“I vote for the former,” he said. “And I think this isn’t the day for you to canvass or move to a new house.”
I shut my eyes again. Much as I enjoyed meeting new people and walking the countryside with him, he was right. I didn’t have it in me today.
“I’ll ask Greg if I can stay at the school another night.” I glanced over at him, wincing when I turned my head. “I’m sorry to desert you one more time. I’m sure you can canvass with Rosemary again.”
“Oh no!” he said. “That girl is too intense.”
“What do you mean?” It was pretty clear that whatever he meant, he wasn’t crazy about Rosemary, and that pleased me. I didn’t like it when she looked at him with those hungry eyes of hers.
“She thinks she knows all the answers,” he said. “People don’t like that. They don’t like some know-it-all coming in and telling them what they should think and how they should feel.” He glanced at me. “You do it right, Ellie,” he said. “The way you get to know people, who they are, what their story is. You take the time to do that before you get into the important stuff.”
I felt my cheeks heat up. “Well, she knows a whole lot more than I do,” I said, defending Rosemary against my will. “Maybe you’re just seeing my ignorance coming out.”
“Why’re you putting yourself down?” He frowned. “I see your humanness coming out. That’s what people respond to, whether they’re white, black, or green. You’ve got the gift. You get people to trust you.”
I was so moved by his words that for a moment, I forgot the throbbing in my head. “Thank you,” I said. I admired him. That he thought I was skilled at canvassing really moved me, and I carried that feeling inside me for the rest of the drive.
* * *
Inside the school, Greg chewed me out for going to the rally, but he wasn’t as harsh as I’d expected. Paul, Chip, and Jocelyn had probably gotten the brunt of his lecture and he’d run out of steam by the time he got to me. Or maybe he felt sorry for me. I was sure I looked pretty bad with my bruised head and heavy eyelids.
I went to the little art room, where my sleeping bag was still stretched out on the floor next to Jocelyn’s. I lay down, feeling the medication catch up to me, and I slept straight through the night.
In the morning, I felt one thousand percent better. My bruised head was tender to the touch but had lost the debilitating achiness, and I decided not to risk taking a pain pill and ending up sick and groggy again. I ate breakfast, then loaded my things in the van, and Curry drove me deep into the countryside to find my next temporary home.
We were in the middle of nowhere when I spotted a small, neat whitewashed house and I was happy when Curry came to a stop in front of it. A woman sat on the porch and it looked like she was shelling peas. Behind the house was a barn and a small pasture where two brown cows grazed. I already wished I could stay in that house for the rest of the summer instead of a couple of nights.
“This looks positively luxurious,” I said.
“Don’t get too comfortable.” Curry tossed his cigarette butt out the window. “You know Greg’s gonna move you sooner than later. And see that house down there?” He pointed a short distance down the road to a small, unpainted house with a patched roof.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“That’s where Win’s stayin’. You’re next-door neighbors, practically.”
I smiled. I liked that idea.
“He said he’d come by after lunch so y’all can do your canvassing,” Curry said. He offered to carry my things up to the house, but I told him I was fine. I pulled my suitcase, book bag, and sleeping bag from the rear of the van and headed across the dirt yard to the house.
The woman was already on her feet and smiling by the time I climbed the three steps to the porch. She wore a pink apron over a pink-and-white-checked dress. “I’m Georgia Hunt,” she said, taking my book bag from me and setting it on the painted porch floor. “And you must be Eleanor Hockley.”