"Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands" by Susan Carol McCarthy, Prologue–Chapter 11

Most of the Southern Belle states chose their widest, wildest rivers and seduced them into hardworking husbandry.

The Orange Blossom Trail, also called Route 441, snake-charmed poor Florida, from her redheaded Georgia border through the skinny, sink-holed waist of the state to the wild abandon of her southern tip.

Then, in a high-speed chase down the Trail to the Orlando airport, they attempted to abduct N.A.A.C.P. Attorney Thurgood Marshall (future Supreme Court Justice Marshall).

The horror seemed endless until finally the brutal double murder, by dynamite, on Christmas night got the attention of President Harry Truman, vacationing in Key West.

Ren claims it started when the men in white robes took the unprecedented step of shooting at two white children.

In their minds, the real beginning was much earlier when, as brash young newlyweds on a Florida honeymoon, they let a fast-talking agent entice them into twenty-seven acres of “prime grove land in the charming town of Mayflower.”

It was afterwards that our family, the only Northerners left by then, and our circle of secret friends contrived the showdown between Mr. Hoover’s F.B.I. and the central Florida K.K.K.

In our house, where the only thing worse than an “arrogant son of a bitch” is an “ignorant damn Cracker,” Emmett Casselton is both.

Southerners set great store by their ancestry, but it’s a rare Rebel who can go toe-to-toe with my Yankee grandmother and win.

Doto dotes on her lineage the way other old ladies delight in dahlias or Staffordshire teacups.

Bright red, dark brown, dried black blood is everywhere: congealing in cuts on his jaw and neck, seeping through rips in his shirt and pantlegs, oozing out of scrapes on the tops of his bare feet.

Strangeness has descended on our house like a winter fog bank, blurring the lines between the last few days: Marvin’s dead, gone forever, the words singsong in my head trying to convince my heart they’re true; Doto here, finding everything in an uproar; Doc Johnny unable, or unwilling, to state the cause of death; Constable Watts shrugging it off as a jook-joint fight, stopping just short of calling Daddy a liar about Round Lake Road.

The man I know is more circumspect, with a temper that veers toward geological.

The Klan’s been around here for years—stupid stuff mostly, burning crosses, pestering couples parking in the dark, picking on Negroes they thought were getting uppity, whatever that means.

Eight-year-old Ren, on the other hand, is lean and lanky, with Mother’s curls and easygoing disposition except, Doto says, for the streak of the daredevil that’s pure Daddy.

It’s rumored she opens such letters to verify their claim to space in her postal slots.

Doto and her family are self-described Lukewarm Methodists and Mother’s from a long line of Congregationalists, which is practically Episcopalian.

Of course, the major prerequisite is baptism.

Although we attend every Sunday, my parents take “the long view” on a number of church tenets, the most notable being the ban on alcohol.

To their credit, our parents have spent considerable time discussing the difference between Faith—the abiding belief in a Divine Creator that’s as plain a part of a hundred-year-old oak tree, or a fiery red sunset, as the nose on your face—and Religion—which is the rigamarole that makes some folks figure they’ve got a leg up on everybody else.

All the white men in Groveland got riled up about that and Sheriff Willis McCall deputized the whole bunch into a posse.

When the N-double A-C-P got wind of it, their New York attorney, Mr. Thurgood Marshall, said the trial was unfair and filed an appeal.

Deacon Brass leans against the big oak tree like a scrawny stork, jacked up one-legged, perched on his heel.

“Double-wide Hoover dam,” Doto tosses the compliment to what she calls his mettle.

Miz Sooky Turnbull, sitting in the pew behind us, reached up and patted me encouragingly, heartened, I’m sure, by the hope that I’d somehow blundered my way into salvation.

Daddy nods, ceremoniously yielding the piano bench to his old friend.

Eventually my parents surrendered to Luther’s logic, yet, in his way, Luther rebelled against it, pruning the customary Mistuh down to Mist’ for Daddy, grafting Miz and Lizbeth into a single word.

We know MizLizbeth likes to tend her own.

Pink, coral and scarlet blooms cast a net of fragrance over bright orange butterflies that dip and bob as if tied by an invisible tether.

“In the meantime ...” she says, dropping her chin like Marvin used to, “Ah brought you some snicker doodles, and, since those boys done traipsed off to O’landah, Ah ’spect you get the whole plate to your own self.”

He had Daddy’s permission, of course, because Daddy can’t play—the polio withered the muscles required for an overhand throw.

Marvin would taunt, his throw finding Ren’s glove with a firm Thwap!

Under Mother’s patient tutelage, we’ve worked our way up from Go Fish and Old Maid through Crazy Eights, Rummy, Hearts, and Canasta, to Pinochle, her prerequisite for instruction in Bridge.

Mr. Moore hangs back, slim, dark, dignified.

“Harry’s being modest,” Mr. Marshall booms.

I’d asked to see the notes—after Daddy finally finagled them out of Doc Johnny’s nurse—but Mother said no.

The old man’s a loudmouthed bigot, worked for Emmett Casselton for years.

Has a grove of his own, but since most of the local pickers won’t work for him, Bowman hires migrant labor instead.