The Last House on the Street(63)

“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.”

“Ellie,” I said, “and I’m happy to meet you. Your house is so pretty. It looked like a painting when we were driving up.”

Georgia Hunt laughed. “Did it, now,” she said. She tilted her head as if examining me. “Well, how’re you feelin’, Miss Ellie? I saw Mr. Win this morning and he told me you fell in a ditch and hurt your head.”

I was one hundred percent certain “Mr. Win” hadn’t told her I’d been running from the Klan when I fell.

“I did,” I said, gingerly touching the lump at my hairline. “But I feel much better now. Ready to get back to work.”

“Not before I feed you somethin’,” she said.

Two children, a boy and a girl, suddenly appeared around the corner of the house and raced onto the porch.

“Is this her?” the boy asked, looking up at me. “I’m Benny!” He was about seven years old with reddish-brown hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose.

“Don’t be rude,” Mrs. Hunt said to the boy. She said something else, but I barely heard her. My gaze was riveted on the girl. She was a couple of years older than her brother. Her hair was straightened, like her mama’s, and she wore a pink bow just above her temple. She was, at least to my mind, the spitting image of Mattie Jenkins, right down to that pink bow. Her name, though, was DeeDee and she leaned against her mother’s hip, staring up at me with big dark Mattie eyes.