Her in-laws, Bob and Doris Hunter, had also called. They live here on Amelia Island, in a new split-level over by their country club and Bob’s car dealership. They aren’t the warmest people in the world. She isn’t particularly fond of them, and vice versa, she supposes.
Still, they’d all made efforts to bond after Travis’s departure. It was evident that the awkward visits were as much a chore for the Hunters as they were for Melody, so she’d tapered off even before she’d made the awful discovery about their son. After that, she’d seen them only at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Her mother insisted on inviting them because “They’re family now,” though Honeybee doesn’t care for the Hunters, either.
“Y’all were barely married before Travis left,” she told Melody after a painfully stilted, perfunctory visit. “When he’s back home, it’ll be different, you’ll see. And my goodness, just wait until you give them a grandbaby. Those two will be doting just like your daddy and me.”
A car’s headlights swing past Melody, and then the brake lights go on. The driver leans out and drawls, “Well, if it ain’t Mrs. Hunter.”
Rodney Lee Midget had gone through school with Travis, a few years ahead of Melody. Rodney Lee has always been tall and beefy, with a florid complexion and double chins, earning recess taunts about his paradoxical last name. Rodney Lee Giant, kids called him. Children can be cruel, but Melody recalls the victim as something of a schoolyard bully himself.
“Hi, there, Rodney Lee.”
“Any word about Travis? Been thinking about him over there fighting for our country.”
“Nothing yet, and I wouldn’t say he’s fighting for our country. It’s not like we were attacked, like Pearl Harbor.”
“Attacked? Now, don’t you worry none. President Johnson says victory is within our grasp, so—”
“President Johnson doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Seeing his jaw drop, she adds, “Martin Luther King says, ‘Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace.’ That make sense to you, Rodney Lee?”
“Martin Luther King? No, he don’t make a lick of sense to me.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s—”
“Guess someone’s been putting crazy ideas into that pretty little head of yours. Unpatriotic ideas.”
“What did I say that’s unpatriotic?”
“You said the president’s a damned fool.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Yes, well . . . ʽpeople generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for,’” she mutters.
“What’s that?”
“A quote from a book.”
“Martin Luther King write it?”
“No, Harper Lee did.”
“Who’s he? Another one of those Negroes tryin’ to start trouble?”
She takes a deep breath, but thinks better of engaging. “Never mind. Forget it. I have to go. I’m heading over to have supper with my mother and daddy.”
“Did you smash up Travis’s Camaro?”
“What?” Something twitches in her gut, and this time, it isn’t a tiny karate foot.
“I could’a sworn I’ve seen you drivin’ it all over creation since he’s been gone, but now here you are, walkin’ the streets at night all by your lonesome.”
“The car’s just fine, Rodney Lee. I just like to walk when I’m here in town. It’s nice to get fresh air.”
“Is that so.” His expression and inflection are exactly the same as before, but she notes a slight shift in his tone. “Ain’t safe for a woman to be alone out here in the night.”
“In Fernandina?” She laughs and looks around at the empty streets. “Don’t be silly.”
“Ain’t safe anywhere these days, what with all the hippies and Negroes runnin’ amuck. Hop in and I’ll give you a ride.”
She stiffens, shaking her head firmly. “No, thank you. It’s just a little ways down. You have a good evening, Rodney Lee. Bye now.”
“You, too, ma’am. You be careful.” Rodney Lee guns his engine.
She walks on toward her parents’ house, uneasiness dogging her steps as she watches the turquoise Impala disappear into the night, taillights gleaming like the devil’s eyes.
Barrow Island, Georgia
Cyril knows every turn and rut in the wide sandy road that runs the length of the island. His feet scatter long pine needles and shell fragments that gleam beneath glittering stars and a fat full moon. He left Otis home tonight, but grabbed a flashlight—not in case the gleaming night sky suddenly goes pitch-dark, but because it’s heavy enough to serve as a blunt force weapon.
He isn’t worried about the island’s natural predators. Even the gators leave you alone unless you’re fool enough to wade into the surrounding swamps. But in this modern world, human predators are plentiful. A Black man never knows when or where he might run into trouble.
His friend Jimmy Davis has twin sons who spend every afternoon fishing on the bridge. Jimmy said they’ve seen a couple of mainland good ol’ boys on the island lately, cruising around in a blue sedan. Jimmy hadn’t believed them at first because they’d also told him they’d seen a beautiful blonde driving over in a sports car. Cyril hadn’t let on about Melody, but told Jimmy he thought folks should be on the lookout for trouble.
A few days later, Jimmy’s brother Tommy had seen the same blue sedan. The young men weren’t vandalizing anything or threatening anyone—yet. But a lot of local folks have been sticking close to home at night, with shotguns close at hand, just in case someone decides to stir things up.
Cyril’s not the kind of man to sleep with a gun or hide himself away behind locked doors. Nor is he the kind to go running to his mama for reassurance in troubled times. But she lives just down the road from him and tonight, that’s where he’s headed. He needs advice, and Marceline LeBlanc is the only person in the world he can trust with a secret this weighty.
His mother’s home, like his own, had once been one of the outbuildings on a large rice plantation. The main house sits a quarter mile down the road, long abandoned and boarded up, vines snaking around the stately white pillars like gnarled fingers grasping from the marshland’s murky depths. It’s haunted by old island souls, according to his mother. Of course, she says the same about her own place, though there, it’s primarily his dead father’s spirit drifting in and out, bothering her with advice and admonishment.
“Your daddy was boddun’ me all night long,” she’d told Cyril a few days ago. “That man doesn’t know the meanin’ of rest in peace.”
Cyril tends to dismiss his mother’s talk of spirits, though even before Melody had come to him with her plight, he’d had his own share of sleepless nights. Not because ghosts have been boddun’ him, but because of increasing conflict between Black and white folks.
He’s heard sketchy reports that the South Carolina Highway Patrol had opened fire on a campus where Black college kids were protesting a segregated bowling alley. Three students were killed, a couple of dozen injured.