The Last House on the Street(9)

“Brenda Kane, but I’m just here for…” She glanced at me, clearly at a loss for words, but Reverend Filburn helped her out.

“Moral support,” he suggested with a hint of a smile. I was relieved to finally see some lightness in his expression.

“Yeah.” She smiled back at him. “Moral support.”

He returned his attention to me. “Well, Miss Hockley,” he said, “I admire you for wanting to help, if that’s truly why you’re here, but SCOPE isn’t looking for Southern students. Just from the North. And some from out west.”

I’d expected him to say that, given the information in the newspaper article, but it made no sense to me. “But why not, if I’m willing to help?” I asked.

He knitted his eyebrows together. “Why do you want to do this?”

“Because I think everyone should have the right to vote.”

“Do you now?”

He didn’t trust me. It was disconcerting. “Yes,” I said. “Sincerely.”

“Are you working?” he asked.

“No, I’m in school,” I said. “Finishing up my sophomore year. I’m studying pharmacology at Carolina. At UNC.”

His brows finally unknit and he nodded. I thought I’d impressed him.

He turned to Brenda. “You a student too?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes.”

He studied her another moment before returning his attention to me. “Where do you live?” he asked.

“In Round Hill.” I motioned north of where we sat. “So, you see, I know the area well, and—”

“You may know Round Hill well, but I’d bet my church you don’t know the parts of Derby County where SCOPE’ll be working.”

“Well … what I mean is, I know it better than any Northerners would. And you wouldn’t have to put me up anywhere. I could just go home at the end of the day and—”

“No.” He cut me off again, this time sharply. “You’d be treated the same as all the other students. No runnin’ home when things got hard. You’d be put up in local homes like everyone else.”

That stopped me. I actually felt the muscles of my chest contract with the shock of his words, and next to me, I thought Brenda caught her breath. I remembered the dilapidated little houses we’d passed by on the drive to the church. “You mean … to sleep?”

“To sleep. To eat. To get to know the folks you’d be aimin’ to help.”

Living with strangers was not what I’d imagined and it was a moment before I nodded. “I understand.” I thought of backing out right then. I didn’t need to do this. Put myself through this. Yet I stayed seated. “I’d want to be treated like everyone else,” I said.

He shook his head as if he knew perfectly well how he’d just stunned me. “Tell me about your people,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

I shifted on the hard pew. “Well, we go back a few generations in Derby County,” I said. “I live on Hockley Street in Round Hill in the same house my father and grandfather were born in. My father’s a pharmacist and he owns—”

“Hockley?” He interrupted me. “Your daddy owns Hockley Pharmacy?”

“Yes.”

His whole countenance softened. He unfolded his arms, stretching his left arm along the back of the pew and turning more fully toward us. I hadn’t realized how tightly wound he’d been until he relaxed, and for the first time I thought his smile was genuine.

“Your daddy’s a good man,” he said. “Sometimes our own pharmacy can’t get what we need and Doc Hockley comes through for us. A real good man.”

“He is,” I said. My father wasn’t a doctor, but I knew a lot of people referred to him as “Doc Hockley.” I hadn’t known, though, that he helped out the folks in Turner’s Bend. Maybe Daddy might understand why I wanted to work for SCOPE.

“He helped my own little daughter one time when she came down with something,” Reverend Filburn continued. “Carried a special cough syrup all the way down here for her.”

“That sounds like him,” I said, touched and proud.

“You have to understand something … Eleanor, is it?” Reverend Filburn asked.

“Ellie. Yes.”

“I’ll tell you plain,” he said. “I didn’t trust you when you walked in here. Not sure I trust you even now. White girl, walking into a Negro church asking to help folk vote? Not an everyday occurrence.”

I nodded.

“We’ve already had threats and SCOPE hasn’t even started,” he said. “My church has had threats. I’ve had threats. My wife and children have had threats. I saw you walk in and I wondered if you’re here to plant a bomb in a pew. Understand?”

“Wow,” I said.

“For all I knew when you walked in here, you could have been part of the Klan, or—”

“The Klan!” I laughed.

“Not as improbable as it sounds,” he said. “The Civil Rights Act brought them out of the woodwork last year, and a Voting Rights Act is only going to make them double their efforts. Right now, North Carolina has more Klan members than all the other states put together.”