The Last House on the Street(8)

Brenda went quiet. “You’d have weekends off, right?” she asked after a moment. “You’d still get to go to the beach with me and Reed and Garner?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know how the program is set up, exactly.”

I drove for about a mile and a half to where the road made a right-hand turn, then dropped down a short slope landing us in Turner’s Bend, and Main Street became Zion Road, the street no white person ever had a reason to travel. We might as well have landed on another planet. Nobody who looked like us—two blue-eyed blonds—ever went to Turner’s Bend. I knew our long-ago maid, Louise Jenkins, lived down here somewhere. My parents would have known where, because they sometimes visited Louise, bringing her our old teapot or toaster, blankets and towels, things we didn’t need anymore that Louise could put to good use. Daddy brought her medicine when she had the flu last year, but I’d never had a reason to visit Louise myself.

We drove past houses on the tree-lined street and Brenda rolled her window up and pressed down the lock of her door, surreptitiously, as if she didn’t want me to notice. The houses were much smaller than those we’d passed in Round Hill, but they looked well cared for, and I wondered if the people living in them were registered to vote. They had to have jobs to keep their houses up so well. I saw women and children on the porches. Men mowing their lawns. We came to a string of shops—the little downtown area. Then, suddenly, the pavement ended and we were on a dirt road. There were more houses, not as nice as those at the west end of the road. Ahead of us on the right stood a brick church with a tall steeple.

“I bet that’s the AME church,” I said, but as we neared it, I saw that the sign out front read ZION BAPTIST, and I kept on driving.

“Don’t you have an address?” Brenda looked at her watch.

I shook my head. I knew the church was on Zion Road somewhere and I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to find, but we were soon in farmland, the houses far apart now, more ramshackle, and the dirt road was rutted and dusty. Dogs and chickens roamed the yards, and men and women were hunched over in every field.

“I think we should go back,” Brenda said. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

She was right and I was losing heart. I should have checked the address, but even so, none of the houses we passed had street numbers on them. A voice in my head told me to turn around. But the stronger part of me kept my foot on the gas. And then, finally, I saw a small, low-slung, one-story white building, its windows clear rather than stained glass. The slender white steeple was topped by a cross no taller than my car’s antenna. On the building itself, next to the door, a hand-painted sign read TURNER’S BEND A.M.E. CHURCH.

There was one car in the parking lot, an older-model black Plymouth. Its tires were coated with a fine tan dust, but the rest of the car sparkled in the April sunlight. I pulled into the lot and turned off my car, wiping my sweaty hands on my skirt.

“I’ll stay here,” Brenda said.

“No, you won’t,” I said, opening my door. “Come on.”

“You’re not roping me in to spending the summer out here in…”

I got out and shut my door, not wanting to hear what Brenda was going to say. But I waited for her at the side of my car, and when she realized I wasn’t going in without her, she slowly opened her door and circled the car to join me. Together we walked across the packed earth toward the church.

The front door was unlocked and we stepped inside. Although the interior of the church was filled with dark wooden pews, much like the Baptist church I’d grown up in, that was the only similarity. The clear windows spread stark white light over the space, unlike the muted colors of the stained glass in Round Hill Baptist. And there was no choir loft, although there were risers in the front of the church behind the pulpit. The pulpit itself was spectacular, the only ostentatious thing in the building. Carved from a beautiful blond wood, it seemed to dwarf everything else in the building.

A man suddenly appeared from a doorway near the end of the risers. I saw the surprise on his face, most likely from finding two blonds in his church. His eyes widened behind dark-rimmed glasses and he stopped walking.

“You lost?” he asked. He was fairly young, no more than thirty or thirty-five, but his voice had the deeper tone of an older man.

Brenda and I hung back by the door. “I don’t think so … sir.” I licked my lips, which had gone very dry. “Are you the minister they quoted in that article about the students coming to register voters?” I asked. “SCOPE?”

“Yes, I’m Reverend Filburn.” He made no move toward us and we made no move toward him. The sea of dark pews stretched out between us. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“I read that article and I’d like to help,” I said.

The minister studied me for what seemed like a full minute, unsmiling. “Come forward and have a seat,” he said finally, motioning to the pews nearest him. Our footsteps made little sound on the old bare wood as we walked toward the front of the church. After we sat down in the second pew, he took a seat in the first, turning to face us.

“What are your names?” he asked.

“I’m Ellie,” I said. “Eleanor Hockley.”

Reverend Filburn turned his attention to Brenda. “And you are?”