“Mm.” I’m not convinced.
“I’d say someone’s trying to scare you, not hurt you,” she says. “But you might want to get that big dog, for your own peace of mind.”
Chapter 38
ELLIE
1965
Jocelyn and I were released from jail late the next afternoon, the Fourth of July, without fanfare or discussion of any charges against us. We didn’t ask questions or protest our treatment. We just wanted to get out of there. When we left the building, blinking against the blinding sunlight, Curry was waiting in the van, smoking a cigarette, as though nothing had happened. We climbed in and the first thing he said to me was “Win made it back to his house.” He knew that was all I cared about. Jocelyn squeezed my hand.
“What happened to everyone else?” I asked.
“We all spent the night in lovely accommodations at the expense of the state,” he said. “This mornin’， I hitched a ride to get the van. I picked up the boys in front of the jailhouse and carried them to the school, then drove to the house Win’s stayin’ at and found him there eatin’ breakfast like he’d never been gone. Don’t know how he got there, but don’t care either. Now I’m here to carry y’all to the school and I can tell you, the Rev ain’t happy. I told him it’s all my doin’， so go along with that.”
It was all his doing, but we didn’t argue with him. I was just so happy that Win was all right and that Jocelyn and I were out of that miserable jail cell.
Curry took us to the school, where Jocelyn slipped quietly into her desk chair and began typing as though she’d been there all along, but Greg called me into the storage room. He shut the door and pointed to one of the chairs.
“How’d you like jail?” he asked as I lowered myself to the chair. He didn’t bother to sit, but stood opposite me, arms folded across his chest.
“I didn’t. And I’m really sorry,” I said. “We shouldn’t have gone out last night, but it seemed harmless at the time, and I still don’t really understand why the police—”
“I’m aware you have a close relationship with Win,” he interrupted me. “I blame myself. My plan was to alternate you and Rosemary with him, but you and Win were working well together, getting a lot of folks committed to register and showing up at the protests, and I didn’t see—I didn’t want to see—the warning signs. I’m tempted to send you to another SCOPE site, Ellie. I want you—”
“No!” I felt panicky at the thought of leaving. My friends were here. My work was here. My heart was here. “I belong here,” I said. “I love what I’m doing.”
“If you think it’s important work, then you need to treat it as such,” he said. “No horsing around. For both your sakes—and SCOPE’s sake—I’m splitting the two of you up. You’ll be canvassing with Rosemary from now on and Win with Chip.”
The emotion that ran through me felt almost like panic. I wouldn’t be able to see Win until our weekly protest on Friday night, and then we’d be working, surrounded by a hundred or more people. Greg would no doubt keep an eye on us the whole time. Maybe I could see him on Saturday night, when Greg went home to be with his family? But after what happened last night, I doubted either of us would—or should—take the risk.
* * *
I spent that night in the school. Paul had figured out a way to get up on the roof and all of us—Jocelyn, Paul, Chip, and I—sat up there watching fireworks in the distance. In the morning, Curry drove me to the next house where Greg said I’d be staying for three nights. It wasn’t far from the Hunts’ house. Better yet, it wasn’t far—maybe a quarter mile—from where Win was staying. I was never the sort of person who disobeyed her parents. I never sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night or lied about where I was going. I wouldn’t do it now, at the age of twenty, either, but knowing that Win was close by gave me comfort.
Even though my new residence had some electricity—though intermittent—and running cold water and a decent shower attached to the side of the house, in some ways it was the worst of the three houses I’d stayed in. The family was painfully quiet. The Hunts, and even to a certain extent the Dawes family, had seemed to want me there. They seemed to believe in what SCOPE was trying to do. But I had the feeling that this family—the Charles family—had heard about the bad luck the other families had had because of me, and they were only taking me in because they desperately needed the few dollars they’d get from sharing their house with me. They responded to anything I said, any attempt at friendliness, with a stare or a shrug. No one smiled in this house. The two bedrooms were crammed with mattresses and people—mostly teenagers—who came and went, while Mrs. Charles cooked, struggling to make beans and salt pork and corn bread stretch far enough to feed us all. The teenagers hardly gave me more than a glance. I wasn’t introduced to them and I didn’t ask about them because I didn’t want to put anyone on the spot. There was no man in the house and I didn’t know who belonged to whom. I simply tried my best to blend into the woodwork, eating barely enough to stay alive, thinking they all needed that food more than I did.