Free The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

her stay if she’s colored.’
    ‘Well, what was the point of the Civil Rights Act?’ I said, coming to a full stop in the middle of the road.
    ‘Doesn’t that mean people have to let you stay in their motels and eat in their restaurants if you want to?’
    ‘That’s what it means, but you gonna have to drag people kicking and screaming to do it.’
    I spent the next mile in deep worry. I had no plan, no prospects of a plan. Until now I’d mostly believed we would stumble upon a window somewhere and climb through it into a brand-new life. Rosaleen, on the other hand, was out here biding time till we got caught. Counting it as summer vacation from jail. What I needed was a sign. I needed a voice speaking to me like I’d heard yesterday in my room saying, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open. I’ll take nine steps and look up. Whatever my eyes light on, that’s my sign. When I looked up, I saw a crop duster plunging his little plane over a field of growing things, behind him a cloud of pesticides parachuting out. I couldn’t decide what part of this scene I represented: the plants about to be rescued from the bugs or the bugs about to be murdered by the spray. There was an off chance I was really the airplane zipping over the earth creating rescue and doom everywhere I went. I felt miserable. The heat had been gathering as we walked, and it now dripped down Rosaleen’s face.
    ‘Too bad there’s not a church around here where we could steal some fans,’ she said. From far away the store on the edge of town looked about a hundred years old, but when we got up to it, I saw it was actually older. A sign over the door said FROGMORE STEW GENERAL STORE AND RESTAURANT. SINCE 1854. General Sherman had probably ridden by here and decided to spare it on the basis of its name, because I’m sure it hadn’t been on looks. The whole front of it was a forgotten bulletin board: Studebaker Service, Live Bait, Buddy’s Fishing Tournament, Rayford Brothers’ Ice Plant, Deer Rifles $45, and a picture of a girl wearing a Coca-Cola bottle cap on her head. A sign announced a gospel sing at the Mount Zion Baptist Church that took place back in 1957, if anyone wanted to know. My favorite thing was the fine display of car tags nailed up from different states. I would like to have read every single one, if I’d had the time. In the side yard a colored man lifted the top of a barbecue pit made from an oil drum, and the smell of pork lathered in vinegar and pepper drew so much saliva from beneath my tongue I actually drooled onto my blouse. A few cars and trucks were parked out front, probably belonging to people who cut church and came here straight from Sunday school.
    ‘I’ll go in and see if I can buy some food,’ I said.
    ‘And snuff. I need some snuff,’ said Rosaleen. While she slumped on a bench near the barbecue drum, I stepped through the screen door into the mingled smells of pickled eggs and sawdust, beneath dozens of sugar-cured hams dangling from the ceiling. The restaurant was situated in a section at the back while the front of the store was reserved for selling everything from sugarcane stalks to turpentine.
    ‘May I help you, young lady?’
    A small man wearing a bow tie stood on the other side of a wooden counter, nearly lost behind a barricade of scuppernong jelly and Sweet Fire pickles. His voice was high-pitched, and he had a soft, delicate look to him. I could not imagine him selling deer rifles.
    ‘I don’t believe I’ve seen you before,’ he said.
    ‘I’m not from here. I’m visiting my grandmother.’
    ‘I like it when children spend time with their grandparents,’ he said.
    ‘You can learn a lot from older folks.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
    ‘I learned more from my grandmother than I did the whole eighth grade.’
    He laughed like this was the most comical thing he’d heard in years.
    ‘Are you here for lunch? We have a Sunday-plate special—barbecue pork.’
    ‘I’ll take two of them to