“Hey,” he said.
“What?”
“You know you low on gas?”
I looked down at the gas meter. I was less than low, more like about to run out. It hadn’t even occurred to me to put gas in the car, I was so used to Daddy doing it. A 76 station appeared up ahead. As I slowed the car, a man in blue overalls sitting on a chair watched us.
“I’ll fill it up for you,” Mace said.
I dug in my purse for the money. Mace paid the man, then returned and flipped the lever on the pump.
I watched Mace in the mirror. He kept his eyes on the ticking numbers. I wondered about his late wife, if they had been teenage sweethearts.
“You ever been outside of Alabama?” he asked me when he was back in the car and we were on the road again.
“Of course.”
“Like where?” he said in a tone as if he thought I was lying.
“Well, I . . .” I started to tell him what I usually told people when they asked me about my travels: that my daddy had taken me to New Orleans for my sixteenth birthday. That my aunt Ros lived in Memphis and we sometimes visited her at Christmas. That I’d driven with my daddy to Nashville for a conference once and visited Fisk, my mama’s alma mater. But as soon as the words started to come out of my mouth, I stopped. Maybe it was the look on his face. Suspicious-like.
“I’ve been to Memphis,” I said. “My aunt lives there.”
“What’s Memphis like?” he asked, as if it were some faraway country.
“It’s on a river, just like Montgomery. Except the Mississippi is a whole lot wider than the Alabama River.”
“One day I want to take my girls to the ocean. They need to lay eyes on it.”
“That’s easy. You drive?” Most men in Alabama learned to drive at an early age, whether it was a pickup truck or a tractor. What I was really asking was whether he had a car. I knew it was unusual for a family to have three cars, like mine did, but I was a little unsure of whether a man in his position would own even one car.
“Course I drive. My truck ain’t working right now. Friend of mine working on it.”
“Oh.” I decided to switch back to the travel topic. “You were born here?”
He nodded. “Not too far from the Adair farm. Fact is, my daddy worked the farm of a man named Philips for years. After he passed, Mama and me couldn’t stay on in that house without working and I was too young to take care of things the way my daddy had. Soon as I was old enough, I got work on another farm. I met my wife and we lived alright for a while. We had a house that we paid rent on. But seem like after she died, nothing went right. Crops dead. Chickens dead. Everything turned to shit.”
The death of his wife hung over the family like a shroud; I could tell by the way they all talked about her. I tried to change the subject again. “I hear the pickle factory out on Whitfield Road is hiring.”
“I went for one of them jobs one time. They ain’t hire me.”
“You have to keep trying.”
“How many jobs you done had?”
Well, this is my first, I wanted to say, but what did it matter? I did not get his grim pessimism. The man acted like the entire world was actively working against him. With him, it was hard to know where the system ended and the man began.
“Look, I think we’re getting close. Look at that sign.” There was a billboard for Dixie Court. On the sign, there was a picture of a Black woman and two young children in front of a one-story brick building. No father in the picture. I exited the highway and turned left on a street. Some of the buildings were still under construction, but there were no workers in sight. The street curved around in a U, and I followed it until I saw the sign for the rental office. I parked and we got out of the car. Mace looked around, his eyes skeptical.
A handwritten sign hanging from the rental door read: Back in 5.
“You say this is free?”
“Yes, until you get a job. Once you get a job, you will have to pay some rent. Not much.”
“I hope you ain’t got my mama’s hopes up for nothing.”
“May I help you?” a white lady called out to us from the sidewalk. She wore a belted yellow dress that screamed springtime even though it was chilly out. Anybody in a dress that bright had to be doing some good in the world, I decided.
“Yes, ma’am.” I held out the letter. “We’re here to apply for the apartment for the Williams family.”
“Are you the social worker?” she asked as she took the paper from me. It struck me that the possibility had not occurred to her that Mace and I could be married.
I hesitated. “Well, not exactly. I’m their nurse, and this man’s daughters are my patients.”
The lady nodded and smiled. “Ah, I see. I hope they let you know we don’t have any first-floor apartments available right now.”
“Ma’am?”
“Is your patient in a wheelchair, dear?”
“A wheelchair?” Mace interrupted.
I shook my head. “No, ma’am. We won’t be needing a first-floor apartment. I’m not that kind of nurse. But we do need the three-bedroom mentioned in this letter. Unless you have a four-bedroom available.”
“No four-bedrooms, dear. I’ll just get the key from inside and walk you over.”
“Thank you.”
As we waited, he stepped closer to me and whispered, “What that letter say?”
“The government will help you if you can’t make the rent. Don’t worry.”
“That’s easy for you to say. That shack on that farm may not look like much to you, but it’s a roof.”
“Mr. Williams, can I call you Mace?”
“Can I call you Sybil?”
“It’s not Sybil. It’s—”
“It’s just a few minutes this way,” the rental lady was saying as she locked the office door behind her. She walked ahead of us, her spring dress glowing in the sunlight. “My name’s Mrs. Lacey. Anything y’all need, just holler. My husband marched with Dr. King in 1966. He got beat up real good one night. Didn’t stop him. Didn’t stop me, neither. Those Negro ministers made both of us want to do something better with our lives. That’s why I work here now.”
Many of the white protesters had come from out of town, but there had been some locals. Evidently she was one of them. We followed her until we reached a two-story building with cinder blocks out front. On the second floor, she unlocked the door to the apartment. The front room smelled of fresh latex paint. They had not finished installing the lighting fixtures, so stray wires hung from the ceiling. The vinyl on the floors was so new you could smell the glue. The windows still had the stickers on them from the manufacturer. The outlets did not have plates.
“I don’t know when you planned to move in, but, as you can see, there are a few things to attend to.”
Mace left us and walked through the apartment, moving more swiftly than I’d seen him move yet. I peeked in the kitchen. A narrow galley. Yellow appliances and more of the same linoleum floor. A kitchen window overlooked the courtyard. I imagined yellow curtains, something like the shade of Mrs. Lacey’s dress.
“Are utilities included with the rent?” I asked.