Home Fires (7 page)

A.K. straightened indignantly. “Me? You asking if I did it? You think I’d do a thing like that?”

“Didn’t think you’d tear up a graveyard neither,” Daddy said mildly.

“There!” said Andrew. “Now you see what I mean? Once you lose your good name, you don’t get it back just because you say you’re sorry.”

April nudged him with the toe of her sneaker and he subsided.

“Who did most of the spray-painting at the graveyard?” I asked A.K. “Raymond or Charles?”

“They was both about equal.” (“Were both,” April murmured.) “Why?”

“Because there was writing at the church, too, and it looks like the same sort of printing as was on the Crocker grave-stones,” I said.

“Well, it won’t me,” he said huffily. “Wasn’t me,” he added before April could correct him.

A man’s heart deviseth the way,
But the Lord directeth his steps.

—Riverview Methodist

The fire—now called the “burning”—made the late news that night. It also led the seven o’clock news the next morning as I was stoically resisting Aunt Zell’s hot buttered biscuits and breakfasting on an unbuttered English muffin and black coffee. (If they don’t hurry up and finish my house, I’m not going to fit through the door frame.)

Not surprisingly, every channel carried a call for federal investigators by a certain leading black activist, North Carolina’s answer to Jesse Jackson. Wallace Adderly had put himself in the news so much that most people were familiar with the sketchy outlines of his history.

Born on the wrong side of the river in Wilmington, Wallace Adderly joined NOISE (the National Organization In Search of Equality) in the late sixties when membership was both politically effective and majorly cool. NOISE was a splinter group of the Student Non-Violent Coordination Committee and was less violent than the Black Panthers, but more confrontational than CORE (Congress for Racial Equality). He and his cohorts crisscrossed the South, popping up in odd places to encourage voter registration drives, to protest unsafe working conditions, to harass segregated hotels and restaurants. Early on, he was charged with leading an unsanctioned protest march that turned into a riot. The judge offered to dismiss the case if he’d resign from NOISE.

“I’ll quit NOISE the day you quit Willow Lodge,” Adderly said defiantly, naming the segregated country club that was the stronghold of white male privilege in Wilmington.

The judge slapped him with contempt of court.

Sometime in the mid-seventies though, Adderly grew disillusioned with the NOISE leadership. On his own, he abruptly dropped out and, in his words, turned bourgeois, graduating cum laude from UNC-Wilmington. He ranked first in his law class at NC Central and aced the state bar exam on his first try.

Not that he automatically got his license to practice right away.

In view of his clashes with the law during his activist days, the board of examiners felt duty bound to conduct a hearing on his moral fitness. I’ve heard that certain Republican attorneys tried to influence the board to withhold his license because of his prison record, but the board ruled that most of his jail time stemmed from sassing judges and that the rest had been imposed for his attempts to eradicate racial discrimination. Two days after gaining his license, he opened a practice down in Wilmington.

Only he doesn’t always stay in Wilmington.

Turning “bourgeois” has made him comfortably middle class but it hasn’t banked his fires. He still does a lot of pro bonos and whenever a high-profile case with racist implications rears its head anywhere in the state, a call goes out for Wallace Adderly. At forty-something, he’s telegenic, quick-witted and politically savvy, and there are many who thought he should be running against Jesse Helms this time instead of Harvey Gantt.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see his face on every news channel that morning. The burning of a black church made it more than a local crime and the larger issues it symbolized would move it out of our local jurisdiction. I knew I’d soon be seeing some of my ATF pals on TV as well.

DA Douglas Woodall was shown on the scene and his voice was serious as he assured Channel 11’s Greg Barnes, “Our office is going to look very closely at all surrounding circumstances.”

Doug never overlooks any circumstances—or angles either, for that matter. The assistant he’d chosen to accompany him out to Balm of Gilead this morning was Cyl DeGraffenried, very photogenic and very black.

Sheriff Bo Poole was out there, too, with both black deputies, and he promised his department’s full cooperation, “But, Greg, I’d like to caution everybody about jumping to conclusions. We should remember that the preliminary findings of the president’s task force on church arsons indicate that most of these fires are set by individuals acting alone and not by members of hate groups.”

“Hate is hate, whether expressed by a group or an individual acting alone,” said Wallace Adderly, “and whatever the motive, it’s a black congregation hurting out here this morning.”

Channel 5 had obtained a copy of the amateur videotape I saw being filmed last night. It was fuzzy and the bright flames washed out a lot of details. You could make out a swastika and two K’s, but the letters looked black against the fire, not the green I knew them to be.

This morning, there was only the stump of the utility pole, smoldering ashes and twisted tin. Up above in the background, you could see the cars on I-40 slow down to rubberneck at the two news vans parked down by the dead end. Channel 11’s cameras panned around the grounds, lingering on some of the black faces fixed in pain and anger, then stopped on the Reverend Ralph Freeman.

When asked to speculate about the mindset of the arsonist, he shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m too new to this community to know who the haters are. What lifts my spirits are the offers of help that are already pouring in, the support of the good people in this area.”

The camera caught Cyl DeGraffenried off guard with one eyebrow skeptically raised.

“Oh, look,” said Aunt Zell. “Isn’t that Frances Turner’s boy Donny?”

I know the Turners only by name, but as the camera panned across the official faces, I caught a glimpse of a stocky young white man and recognized him from last night.

“He’s the one who carried out the pulpit on his shoulder,” I said, pouring myself another cup of coffee as the station went to a commercial for orange juice.

“Oh, he’s strong all right.” Aunt Zell held out her own cup and I topped it for her. “They used to call him Tank when he was a little boy.”

“He’s still a tank,” I said. “He hoisted that pulpit as if it was a chair.”

“Frances says he works out with weights down at the fire station. It’s really good of so many young men to give up their free time like that, don’t you think? It just goes to show you, doesn’t it?”

“Doesn’t what?” I asked, not following her.

“The Turner boy. When you think of how prejudiced he is.”

“Is he?”

“Frances says ever since high school when he lost a wrestling championship because the black boy he was wrestling with cheated. Or so he told Frances. Of course, Frances—she’s a little prejudiced, too, though she claims not to be. But prejudiced or not, Donny did do what he could last night to save a black church, didn’t he?”

I nodded.

“Just goes to prove how bigotry can fly out the window when people need help. Shows real dedication to a higher ideal, don’t you think? But Frances, she worries he’s so dedicated he doesn’t have time for girlfriends.”

This from my aunt who’s active in at least a half-dozen volunteer organizations and still manages to find lots of time to keep Uncle Ash happy.

As the news moved on to other stories around the area, Aunt Zell clicked her tongue. “You don’t suppose those Shop-Mark people had anything to do with it, do you?”

“ShopMark?” I was clueless as to why she’d link the South’s biggest chain of upscale discount stores to a poor country church on the backside of nowhere.

“But it’s not nowhere anymore,” said Aunt Zell. “Haven’t you heard? They’re going to build a new exit ramp off I-40 to accommodate all the growth over there. Ash’s sister Agnes? Her son’s on the Highway Commission. That whole corridor between I-40 and New Forty-eight’s going to be developed. And Shop-Mark’s buying up land there at Starling’s Crossroads. Agnes says it’s going to be the biggest Shop-Mark between Washington and Atlanta.”

“So that’s what Maidie meant,” I said.

Aunt Zell gave me an inquiring look.

“Last night when we were washing dishes, she said that Balm of Gilead had called Mr. Freeman to their pulpit because he’d seen his last church through a big building program. Even if the land jumps in price though, how much can they get for that little bit of ground?”

“But it’s not just the churchyard,” Aunt Zell said. “I heard it was more like eight or nine acres.”

Eight or nine acres in the middle of an area slated for heavy development? That would certainly be enough for a hefty down payment on a new church building.

I wondered if the old building was insured.

Are you helping men to heaven or hell?

—Highland Baptist Church

The edginess that hung over the courthouse that morning had less to do with June’s smothering heat and humidity than with Channel 5’s news van parked out front.
News and Observer
and
Ledger
reporters roamed the halls and sidewalks, too, looking for man-in-the-street reactions to the destruction of a black church. Although it’s glossed over now and goes pretty much unmentioned when people talk about the good old days, Dobbs is still the town that used to greet its visitors with a huge billboard that pictured nightriders, a burning cross and big letters that said, “Welcome to Klan Kuntry!”

As a child standing behind the driver’s seat when Mother and I drove over to Dobbs to visit Aunt Zell, I’d been offended by the sign. Not because of what it stood for—to a seven-year-old raised up Baptist, one cross looks pretty much like another and I had no idea what the Klan was. But I did know that “Kuntry” was bad spelling.

“How come they don’t fix it right?” I’d ask Mother.

“ ’Cause they’re dumber than dirt,” Mother would always answer.

I’m not saying these reporters were necessarily looking to find a white hood sticking out from under the bill of a man-in-the-street’s John Deere cap, but a couple of snarling, dumber-than-dirt rednecks would have goosed up the ain’t-no-racists-here protestations, which was all they were getting on tape.

Dwight Bryant, the deputy sheriff I’ve known since I was in diapers, had a sour look on his face when he stopped past the broom closet that serves as my bare-basics office when I’m sitting court in Dobbs. “Ed Gardner’s looking for you.”

I didn’t play innocent. Ed used to be part of the Friday night crowd at Miss Molly’s on South Wilmington Street when Terry Wilson and I were hanging together three or four years ago. Terry’s State Bureau of Investigation; Ed’s federal: Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. These days, “Firearms” includes any incendiary device that results in an explosion or a fire. Colleton County’s old rundown tobacco warehouses have a bad habit of catching fire in the middle of the night around here, so we get to see a little more of Ed than other folks might.

“I’m always happy to talk to him,” I said, “but don’t you and Bo want to know what I saw, too?”

He shrugged unhappily and I almost got up to pat his shoulder like one of my brothers when they were down. In age, Dwight’s somewhere between Will and the little twins and might as well have been another brother, since he hung out with them so much. Kidd Chapin may be a hair taller, but Dwight’s more muscular and solid, like my brothers by Daddy’s first wife. At times I feel as protective of him as if he really was one of my brothers.

“A little territorial infighting going on here?” I asked sympathetically.

“Aw, you know how it is. The Feds are polite, but they don’t think we know squat. And I’m stuck hanging around, waiting for Buster Cavanaugh to get here and ride out there with me,” He gave a rueful grin. “ ’Course, old Buster now, he don’t know squat.”

Fire Marshall in Colleton County’s always been more of an honorary term than a working title and Buster probably knows less about an arson investigation than I do. But he was connected to a couple of the county commissioners and he’d have his nose out of joint if he didn’t get included in the day’s festivities. He never misses a chance to slap that magnetic Fire Marshall sign onto the side of his car and turn on his flashing red light.

Absently, I touched the little blisters scattered on my forearm.

“Hurt much?” Dwight asked.

I shook my head and pulled the sleeve of my robe. “Looks worse than it is. At least my hair doesn’t still smell like singed chicken feathers.”

I hear Mr. Kezzie wasn’t real happy about you running into that church last night for a handful of cardboard fans.”

“I saved more than fans,” I said indignantly. “I brought out the pulpit Bible and—”

Dwight’s lips were twitching. Done it to me again.

I let him laugh, then said, “Be better if you’d heard who did it.”

According to my watch, court was due to convene in two minutes and, as I stood up, Dwight turned serious. “Look like arson to you?”

“ ’Fraid so. When I got inside, the worst was over in the corner where the electric wires came in, but one of the pews in the middle of the room was burning, too, and it was nowhere near a wire.”

Dwight opened the door for me and walked me down the hall. “You reckon it really was a hate burning or just kids fooling around?”

“Who knows?” I paused at the door to my courtroom. “But it sure did look a lot like what was done out at the Crocker cemetery—green paint, block printing, swastikas. I’m no handwriting expert though. You need to get Cyl DeGraffenried to show you the Polaroids.”

“You saying A.K.’s involved in this?”

“A.K. didn’t do any spray-painting at the cemetery,” I said firmly. “Andrew and April both say he was home last night and I didn’t see either of his friends. Besides, don’t arsonists usually like to hang around and watch their handiwork?”