Sample Chapter

I could smell faint sweet perfume wafting over the pews of First Methodist church long before I managed to turn and see an angelic vision of big brown eyes, glorious auburn hair, and a silky butter-colored dress. I couldn't look away until my mother, embarrassed by my disinterest in the reverend Wilkinson's Sunday sermon, elbowed my ribs and jerked me back to reality.

I was old enough (I had just turned 14 on April 1, 1961) to be embarrassed, but my curiosity about this visitor in the pew at the back of the church overpowered my shyness at being a pimply-faced boy beginning the slow, humiliating journey to manhood. I slumped and fidgeted as the minister droned on and the ushers passed the collection plates. I managed to twist far enough to watch the luscious visitor drop in a dollar, neatly folded. She wore white gloves, matching her shoes, and just a touch of pink lipstick, enough to say she cared about how she looked, but not enough to be scandalous. She slowly moved the church's warm air with a funeral home fan, a picture of Jesus ascending into Heaven on cardboard stapled to a wooden handle.

I guessed she was trying to be anonymous, unnoticed by the good Methodists of Georgetown, South Carolina. That, I could have assured her, was not going to happen. She was from "off" as my Uncle Jim liked to say about strangers. He loved to flavor his Southern drawl with snippets of Gullah talk from the colored folks he dealt with at his grocery store. Uncle Jim owned Lucky's West End Market and made his money selling groceries on credit during the week and cashing paychecks on Fridays, always taking a good profit but never enough to wipe the books clean or leave his customers without money for Saturday night booze. No reason to start a riot, not another one at least. Georgetown is famous for a race riot when a policeman got himself killed trying to collect a poll tax in a barbershop 60 years ago.

Uncle Jim knew just about everything that went on in Georgetown. I was hoping that he would know the woman in the back pew. She was sitting right across from him and my Aunt Lois. There's no way he missed her. The service ground to its conclusion, and the congregation stood in unison to leave. I pushed past my parents and walked quickly toward the front of the sanctuary. I figured I could go past the pulpit, out the back door and run around front to get another look at the mysterious visitor. It didn't work. She was getting into a car driven by a young colored boy — he looked to be about my age — and then she was gone.

I was crushed to have missed the chance to have accidentally bumped into her and say, "Excuse me, Miss." Only I would never have done that. I'd have just gawked at her like a dopey teenager. Maybe she would have been amused. More likely she wouldn't have known I was alive.

"Reverend," said Mrs. Claude Hampton as she took his hand outside the front door of First Methodist Church, "we don't need trash like that woman coming to Sunday services. I do not expect to see her again." The color drained from reverend Wilkinson's face. He had just invited the mystery woman to come back any time. He mumbled something to Mrs. Hampton that I could not make out and reassumed the charade of accepting praise for his sermon from people who had not been listening. I might have forgotten about the woman in the butter-colored dress, distracted by a backyard ball game or the fried chicken at Sunday dinner. There was no chance of that now.

What was wrong with her? What secret had I overheard on the front steps of First Methodist church? Uncle Jim would know, and I looked feverishly through the disbursing members until I saw him. With more time, I might have been able to come up with a subtle line of questioning. But all I could manage was, "Why is Mrs. Hampton so mad at that new girl?" Jim thought for a minute, afraid that he would reveal something to me that should only come from my own father. "She's from Sunset Lodge," he explained. "Ask your daddy about it later. But don't tell your mama I told you."