Free Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas Page A

talk. "Don't we need to call Jackson? You need to see a doctor.
What if you have a concussion or something?"
    He said nothing.
    Way off to their right, a train sped over the baking red earth, a toy to
dream on. Was it going to New Orleans? The City of New Orleans, Ltd.
Her train. Name like a lure. Music, dancing, freedom, water. That woman
in the station had said to her, "Don't want to miss my train." Celeste was
sad to see it go past, knowing that whatever sanity was left in the world
went with it. She wished Matt could speed up, catch the train, throw her
suitcase and book-bag up and help her get on board. So long, Mississippi,
see you later.
    They passed through Collins. Hattiesburg was thirty miles ahead and
from the looks of things, there wasn't going to be anything much in between. Celeste scoped each side road, each driveway, looking for patrol cars,
cars with white men in groups, panel trucks with loaded gun racks. The
pain in the little cuts on her arms quieted to a dull prickle.
    Matt's eyes shot back and forth from the rearview mirror to the highway. He steadied his hands on the steering wheel, his jaw dropping, his
lower lip slack, his body braced.
    Celeste sank in her seat. "What now?"
    Matt kept his eyes dead forward, slowing as a car pulled around to pass
them. A white sheet flung across its front seat-back lifted in the draft of
the car's acceleration as it went by. It billowed gently, like Momma Bessie's
bed sheets on the backyard clothesline. Then, like a crumpling parachute, airless, quiet, the sheet relaxed. A stretch of red satiny fabric lay next to the
snowy sheet. Four white men, two in front, two in back, glanced at Matt
and Celeste. They wore short-sleeved shirts, relaxed ties, narrow-brimmed
straw hats. Their eyes were flat. They went by, a blurry glare of recognition
passing between them.

    "Klan meeting in Hattiesburg tonight." Matt smiled a creak of a smile.
"You hear about them Negroes in Louisiana?"
    "What about 'em?" Celeste was so happy he was talking, she didn't much
care what he said.
    "They arming themselves. The Deacons for Defense and Justice. Don't
want to hear another word about nonviolence." Matt stared ahead, watching the car that had passed them disappear on down the highway, driving
a good deal faster than they were with no fear of being harassed.
    After what had just happened to Matt, she had her own new questions
about the payoff for nonviolence. Matt had gone limp, never spoke a provocative word, and they beat him anyway. You might as well have a gun.
This waiting for the spiritual power of nonviolence to tame the opponent
was already running short. So many people had already been beaten and
jailed and the summer was just beginning. And now those three volunteers
were completely missing, just gone, disappeared like vapors. Two Jewish
students from New York and a Negro kid from Meridian.
    Celeste had a sudden overwhelming feeling that she'd never get back
home, never sit in Momma Bessie's kitchen again or picnic on Belle Isle
or walk along the shore of the river, looking across and seeing Canada as a
benign restful place across the way. She'd never sit at the bar with Shuck and
pretend she was more grown up than she really was, sipping the alcohol-free
concoction that Posey used to make for her and for Billy. Now she could
drink real drinks at the bar, drop quarters in the party girl, swap stories
with the regulars and tap her feet to Shuck's jazz favorites. It seemed so far
away. That wallpaper Shuck had ordered especially for his bar with all those
fine Negro people who seemed to have the world in their hands, bigger than
life up there on the walls of the Royal Gardens, smiling and reminding
everyone that they were real. It was all on another planet. She had dropped
into a foreign country, an alien place filled with death and pain. She felt
the scratches on her arms, the tiny nicks in the skin on her face, pressing
them, feeling the