Stella by Starlight Page 10

The horses were nearly upon her, but more terrifying were the horsemen. Each wore a white full-length robe. And a pointed white hood. And each carried a flaming torch in his left hand. The Klan.

  Stella scrambled to the side of the road just as they reached her. They reined back to an abrupt halt, the horses snorting and whinnying. Stella could smell the sharp sweat of the heaving animals, the acrid kerosene that kept the flames bright. Even the horses were covered with white sheets, from head to rump.

  The tallest rider pointed his torch directly at her. “Tell your daddy and the rest of those boys they were told to expect trouble,” he spat out. “The Grand Dragon is watching.” Then he added ominously, “Everything will burn.” Despite her fear, and despite the fact that the man’s voice was muffled through the fabric of the hood, Stella was sure she’d heard it before. And that saddle . . . the saddle was shiny and silver-studded, not worn and brown like the other riders’.

  Stella scuttled farther away, stones cutting into her palms. But she never took her eyes from the eyeholes in the face cloth that hung from the man’s pointed hood. The man who spoke to her had green eyes—emerald like a summer leaf, but cold as a winter snow. Black saddle. Green eyes. She knew who he was!

  The man signaled to his cohorts, and in unison, all three horses reared. Stella curled into a tight ball, waiting for the hooves to pummel her, wondering if it would hurt very much when she died. But oh, thank the Lord, thank the Lord, she felt their thunder on the earth beside her. She dared not even peek until she was certain they were far down the road.

  Stella wanted to run for help, wanted to run to the Spencers’, wanted to run home to her mother. But she couldn’t get her body to do any of those things. Her arms pressed against her head, she couldn’t move a muscle.

  “Stella!” a familiar voice cried. “Stella! Are you hurt? I’ll go get my father!”

  It was Tony Hawkins, running toward her. A moment later he and Randy were standing over her, their faces strained. Stella couldn’t hold it back any longer—she burst into tears, not caring a whit who saw her.

  “Is anything broken?” Tony asked.

  “No. I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said, trying to pull herself together. She pressed her hands against her eyes to stop the tears. Be a stone! Be a stone!

  She checked to ensure that the men were gone. “It was the Klan. They torched the Spencer house!”

  “We saw them! They rode lickety-split right past us,” Randy exclaimed, helping her up. “They would have mowed us over if we hadn’t gotten out of the way!”

  “The Spencers!” Stella cried out. “Their house! It’s on fire! We gotta help them!”

  A few neighbors were already racing out of their homes, grasping buckets and rushing toward the Spencers’.

  “Randy, go to Mrs. Malone’s and tell her to use that telephone of hers to call the fire brigade! Hurry!” Tony said. “I’ll go get the rest of the families in town to come help.”

  “You say you could run like the wind, Tony,” Stella reminded him. “So run!”

  The two boys dashed off away from the fire, and Stella turned on her heel and raced toward it. Even in her panic she couldn’t help noticing that Mrs. Odom, who never seemed to walk farther than her own mailbox, dashed right past her, a bucket under each arm. And Randy’s dad was hobbling along at a surprising speed, also bearing a bucket. But when she got to the Spencers’ house, the entire house was already engulfed. Flames seemed to be bursting out of every window.

  Still, without planning or discussion, as more and more neighbors arrived, a bucket brigade had begun. Two lines of people stretched far down the road, all the way to the river, each person from the first line passing a bucket of water to the next, the last person tossing the water onto the blaze. The second line passed the empty buckets back to be refilled from the river. Even children helped, filling buckets from wells and troughs in the nearby yards.

  “Did the family get out?” Mrs. Winston asked Mrs. Hawkins, both still wearing their kitchen aprons. “All them children! Are they safe?”

  “My husband ran to make sure, but I think that’s them gathered down the road there,” Mrs. Hawkins replied, pointing to a huddled cluster in the distance.

  Stella could see Mrs. Spencer, a frenzied look on her face, with Hannah and at least half of her siblings, huddled together, staring at the inferno. Stella couldn’t begin to imagine what they were going through.

  “They gonna have some mighty big needs come morning,” Mrs. Winston said, glancing at the women in line beside her. They nodded with understanding. She passed a bucket to Stella. Stella’s eyes went wide—she was being included with the women! She wedged herself into the line and passed the bucket on.

  “Where’s that blasted fire company?” Mrs. Bates asked in exasperation, heaving a sloshing bucket to Mr. Malone, who had just run up to join them.

  He wiped his forehead. “They’re not coming,” he told them. “Y’all know them firemen are volunteers, and y’all know they’re all white. When Gloria called, they just laughed at her and said they were too busy.” He spat angrily in the dirt.

  The bucket being passed to Mrs. Bates nearly slid out of her hands. “That can’t be!” she cried, catching the bucket at the last minute.

  How can anybody be so mean? Stella thought in fury as she swung the heavy pail to the next person.

  Stella’s parents came rushing up with Jojo, his eyes so huge Stella caught the reflection of the fire in them. She left the line for a moment to run to her mother.

  “Are you all right?” Mama asked, her voice cracking, reaching for Stella. As her father assessed the scene, Stella could almost read his thoughts.

  “It was the Ku Klux Klan, Papa!” Stella whispered hard.

  “I know, baby. Tony told us,” he said tightly. His face steamed with anger. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  “No, but they . . . they told me to warn you. One of them said something about a dragon. Papa, I’m so scared!”

  “My sweet girl,” her mother whispered over and over, hugging her so close that Stella could hardly breathe.

  She broke away from her mother’s embrace. “Papa, Dr. Packard was one of the riders. I’m for sure.”

  “Not surprised,” Papa said gruffly.

  “That fancy saddle. I’m sure I saw it that night,” Stella added.

  “Me and the men—we got a list of those we suspect are Klan—Packard’s name is on top.” Her father glared at the burning house.

  “We could be next,” Stella’s mother said, grasping his arm. “It’s the Klan, Jonah!”

  “Give me one of them buckets,” Papa cried out, shaking her arm loose, heading for the part of the line closest to the flames. Stella and her mother joined in farther back.

  Though it was increasingly clear that the fire was winning the fight, Pastor Patton, his face smeared with soot, kept calling out, “Keep the water flowing, brothers and sisters!”

  There wasn’t any way to save that house, Stella knew, and wondered why they kept up their efforts. But then she realized that the fire was inching beyond the house onto the lawn. Several men with shovels had begun another line, heaving dirt from the Spencers’ front yard onto the flames that were creeping into the grass.

  “Over here!” Mr. Winston yelled. “It’s spreading!”

  Mr. Spencer darted in and out, thanking everyone, giving them dripping-wet rags to cool their faces, bringing dippers of water, weeping all the while. “God bless you all,” he murmured over and over again. “God bless.”

  “All your children, they’re safe, Hobart?” Stella’s mother asked.

  Mr. Spencer paused and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He blinked, his face a mask of disbelief. “We’d just finished supper. Butter beans and bacon. The children were scattered—doin’ chores, homework, playin’. Just an ordinary evenin’, you know. Then everything went black and red and smoke and screams.” He covered his face with his hands.

  Stella had never seen a grown man
cry.

  “But you gathered all your babes, right?” her mother prodded gently.

  “Yes,” he replied with a deep sigh of assurance. “The older children helped. We left everything, grabbed younguns, and ran.”

  “Where’s your family now?” Stella’s mother asked.

  “My wife’s just brought half of ’em to the Malones’ kitchen, praise the Lord. And Mrs. Grayson’s got the rest at her house, doin’ her best to keep the little ones calm. Bless that woman,” he declared before breaking away to help with the shoveling.

  Shoulders aching, Stella kept her hands tight on each bucket passed to her until the next set of hands took it away. A huge roof beam groaned and collapsed. Those closest to the fire jumped back as a spray of sparks rose up like demonic fireflies, but the bucket brigade pressed forward again as soon as the embers settled. It seemed to Stella that every single person from her side of Bumblebee was trying to save the Spencers’ house.

  Randy and Tony stood together, pouring sweat, keeping perfect pace with the adults shoveling dirt. There was a welcome cry of success—they’d just stopped the spread on the left side of the house! But that one spark of triumph faded when Mr. Bates, his voice cracking with anger, bellowed, “So we just gonna let them do this to us, burn our homes, scare our babies?”

  “What we got to fight back with?” his wife asked helplessly.

  “It’s been like this since my granddaddy was a boy,” Mr. Winston said.

  “Then maybe it’s time to make some changes,” Pastor Patton suggested in a measured voice.

  “Changes! This is all ’cause you and Hobart Spencer and Jonah Mills went to register to vote,” Mrs. Odom fumed, thrusting a finger at the preacher.

  “So Hobart and Harriet get their house burned down? Is that right? What’s next—a lynching?” Mrs. Bates jerked the bucket from the woman next to her.

  “I’ve seen a body swingin’. Three times in my life,” her husband said, his voice low.

  For a moment, except for the roaring of the smoky flames, everyone went quiet. Stella wondered how silence could be so loud.

  28

  The Hidey-Hole

  Blisters were coming up on Stella’s hands. She focused her concentration on not dropping a bucket. How could water weigh so much? So she didn’t notice how many more people had joined their ranks, not until one of them held out a ladleful of water. She jerked her head up and nearly did a double take. The person offering her the ladle was white. Stella looked around. There were at least eight, ten white folks here! And jogging up with a pair of shovels was Mr. Jamison, the owner of the lumber mill. Merrill Bobbs, the man who sold fishing bait by the river, had somehow rolled a huge barrel of drinking water all the way from his house and was struggling to right it. “We ain’t all Klan,” he was saying to Dr. Hawkins, who rushed over to help him heave the barrel up.

  “We know that,” Dr. Hawkins assured him. “We know.” The doctor darted in and out of groups of people, checking to see that no one was inhaling too much smoke, insisting that others rest or drink some water before letting them go back to fight the flames.

  Stella blinked in the smoky darkness. For a moment she was sure she saw Dr. Packard’s daughter Paulette standing behind the water barrel, but she couldn’t be sure.

  For certain she saw Mr. Stinson and his wife Fannie, lugging over a big pot. Mr. Stinson drove the postal RFD wagon that delivered the mail, so he knew and talked to everybody in the entire town, regardless of their race.

  “Oh, my heavens, what a terrible thing!” his wife said, hands on her cheeks, gaping at the fire. “We brought soup, but oh Lordy, Lordy.”

  “Have a sip of this soup, Mrs. Hawkins,” Mr. Stinson called out to Tony’s mother. “We don’t want that pretty singing voice of yours messed up with all this smoke!” She took it gratefully.

  Patrick O’Brian, owner of the general store, hustled up next, arms laden with jars of thick green pickles and bottles of Pepsi-Cola. Mr. Spencer twisted the lids off the pickle jars, while Mr. O’Brian passed out the colas. Just as they had with the buckets, folks took a sip of the soda and handed the bottle to the next person in line. Stella couldn’t help but hope there’d still be some left by the time the bottle made it way down to her.

  So when it did, still icy cold, she had a moment of happiness—two inches left! Pepsi-Cola was a treat Stella rarely got to try. Mama didn’t see the sense in buying a drink when you could get it free from the well or a cow. But oh! The fizz. The crisp, clean frostiness. She desperately wanted to guzzle down those entire two inches, but she thought of her mother sweating beside her and took only the smallest of sips.

  “Here, Mama, finish it up. I’m not that thirsty. I just had some water,” she declared, handing her the bottle.

  “You sure now?” Mama said.

  Stella nodded, and her mother raised the bottle until the last drop was gone. A moment later she gave her head a shake. “Glory be—this Pepsi-Cola must be liquid sugar. Why, I do feel better!” She laid the empty bottle on the ground and reached for the next bucket of water with renewed gusto.

  Mrs. Cooper from the candy store and her daughter, Thelma, arrived next, stepping into the bucket line and asking how to help. “Pass water and pray,” Stella’s mother replied.

  Stella made room for Thelma, who took the bucket from Stella’s now throbbing fingers and passed it along. Quietly they worked. There was nothing much to say. It was now fully apparent that nothing could be saved. The fire had been successfully doused on the left side of the house, but what remained was charred and smoking—the rafters glowing like skeletons in the night sky. Yet nobody seemed to want to put down the buckets.

  Suddenly Mrs. Spencer came sprinting toward them, waving her arms wildly. “Stop!” she screamed. “Everybody stop! I can’t find my Hazel! Has anybody seen Hazel?”

  Mr. Spencer dropped the last of the pickle jars. “She’s not with the schoolteacher?”

  “NO!” his wife wailed, clutching his arm. “I was bringing the older ones over to Mrs. Grayson’s house so they could help watch the little ones, and Hazel wasn’t there! Mrs. Grayson said she thought Hazel was with me! But I don’t have her!”

  Mr. Spencer spun around. “Hazel?” he bellowed. “Anybody got Hazel?”

  “Hazel? Hazel!” Mrs. Spencer shrieked desperately.

  Mr. Spencer slammed the lid on the water barrel and leaped on top of it. “Does somebody have Hazel?” he bellowed.

  No one answered. No one had seen Hazel.

  “Hazel! Come to your daddy, Hazel. Hazel!” her father yelled. “Hazel? Where are you?”

  He leaped off the barrel and ran through the crowd, checking every child he saw. Others dropped buckets and shovels to join his search, dread and panic thickening. Suddenly the back timbers of the house caved, letting loose a wall of heat that seemed like it would smother them all. But Stella felt the opposite of hot—she felt icy cold with fear. She envisioned Hazel running terrified, seeing her house on fire, running. . . .

  She thought of all the secret passageways, of the halls and closets, of the tiny, added-on rooms in the Spencer house, of all the spots a small, frightened little girl could hide. Oh Lord, no! What if Hazel had chosen to hide in one of those? Why, Hazel had been talking, just the other day, about how she liked to hide.

  Hide . . .

  Hide! Hidey-hole!

  Stella grasped Thelma’s arm. “I gotta go do something. Distract my mama, just for a minute, okay?” she begged.

  Thelma looked at her quizzically but recognized the urgency in Stella’s request and agreed.

  Stella turned to her mother. “I’ll be right back. I gotta pee!” She broke from the line just as Thelma began asking Stella’s mother a question. Stella ran as fast as she could around the flaming house to the backyard. “A hidey-hole!” she kept whispering.

  The picture Hazel wanted to draw—what was it exactly? Think, Stella think! A huge brown tree, some blue water, and a sun with little red rays coming out of the c
orner. With a hidey-hole for a little girl. Where could it be? The picture wasn’t much different from what most first graders drew, except the tree the child had drawn had a hidey-hole in it.

  Stella headed for the woods, trying to think like a six-year-old. A girl that young wouldn’t go very far from home. She’d be scared of the dark forest and afraid she’d get in trouble if she didn’t hear her parents when they called.

  So Stella peered carefully into the shadows, her only light the flickering remains of the burning house. She stumbled over the roots of a massive, eighty-foot oak that towered above her and landed on her knees. She started to pick herself back up when something occurred to her. The tree’s roots, thickly twisted and fanning out like huge, grasping fingers, snaked out from its base.

  Snakes! Hazel said her hiding place had snakes!

  Stella got back down on her hands and knees. “Hazel? Are you in there, honey?”

  Silence.

  “Hazel? Hazel? It’s all right. It’s me, Stella. Don’t be scared, baby girl. I’ll take you to your mama.”

  A wee little voice called out from inside the labyrinth of roots, a tangle that had, Stella now saw, a hidey-hole in its center. “There’s red fire everywhere! I’m not coming out!”

  “I know, Hazel. But it can’t hurt you. I promise. Come on out now.”

  A tiny head, hair going every which way, poked out from the roots. Hazel. Oh Lord, thank you Jesus! Hazel! Hazel was crawling on her hands and knees toward her. Stella kept coaxing her forward, then pulled the girl into her arms. She’d never felt so relieved in all her life.

  “Let’s go find your daddy and mama,” Stella told her soothingly. “They’ve been looking for you.”

  29

  Calling Your Name

  Mr. and Mrs. Spencer couldn’t stop thanking Stella and exclaiming to her parents. “I thought I’d lost the world when my house went up in flames, but Lord have mercy, that didn’t mean anything compared to when I thought I’d lost my sweet baby girl!” Mrs. Spencer went on, Hazel still clutched in her arms.