Lytton Bank and Trust and cashed it, swearing Lavinia Calhoun, the middle-aged teller, to secrecy. She put the money in the silver duck bank that Priss Comfort had brought when she was born. She took it out and counted it so often that the crisp newness of the ten $100 bills began to soften and fade, and then she put them away for good, but she kept the duck polished bright, and looked often at it. It seemed tangible proof of her worth.
8
G RADUATION CAME AND WENT, AND THE BLACK-ROBED, CAN dlelit baccalaureate ceremonies. The capped and gowned, sweat-trickling graduation ceremonies in the stifling high school auditorium wheeled by in a blur. Mike watched and heard Bayard Sewell give the valedictory address through a sheen of tears and a high ringing of pride and love, and delivered her own salutatorian’s briefer address faultlessly, to steady, if more modest, applause. Both of them graduated with honors, he with the highest, she with a still-respectable magna. John Winship hugged her glancingly and pumped Bayard’s hand, and his mother mewled damply over both of them, and Priss gave her a long, hard, bourbon-fogged hug. DeeDee kissed her chastely and gave Bayard a giggling embrace. Her husband, Duck, gave Mike a rough, insinuating kiss on the mouth; Mike flinched in disgust at the wet lips and the seeking hardness of his groin as he ground it against her. He was always putting his hands on her, and calling her “little sis.” DeeDee glared at him. He grinned hugely back and gave Bayard a resounding thump on the back and a savage and genial knuckling on the biceps.
John Winship’s graduation present to them was aclean, seemly little two-year-old Ford coupe. He handed the keys to Bayard.
“Couldn’t I keep it?” Mike entreated. “I wanted to go into Atlanta and see if the
Journal
or
Constitution
had any summer work. You’ll be staying here at the drugstore, so I thought …”
“It’s in Bayard’s name, just to make things easier,” John Winship said. “If you want to work for a newspaper, why don’t you go see Carl Thigpen? He could use some help on the
Observer
, and you know he’d be glad to have you.”
“Well, Daddy, you know, it’s just a weekly,” Mike said. She did not know why it stung her so, to have their joint gift put in Bayard’s name. In three months they would be a legal unit anyway. “I’d really like to get some experience on a daily. It would help me a lot after college, when I look for a full-time job.”
“Maybe by that time you’ll be starting a full-time family, and it won’t amount to a hill of beans whether you work for a daily or a weekly this summer,” her father said. He almost twinkled it, a near-grotesque spasm.
She smiled. But often in those heat-jellied days of early summer, she remembered what Priss Comfort had said.
“Micah Winship. They’re going to hear that name outside Lytton one day.” And, “Put your muscle where your mouth is, Mike.”
In the first week of that July 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began a three-day sit-in at Jojo’s Restaurant in downtown Atlanta, and on the second morning Mike astounded herself by recruiting a willing and nearly ebullient J.W. Cromie, catching the 9:40 A.M . Greyhound bus to Atlanta, and joining them.
* * *
She could not have said, at the time, why she chose to upset the frail equilibrium that her engagement to Bayard Sewell had achieved at the Pomeroy Street house. Priss Comfort could have said why, but did not get the chance; much later Annie Cochran could say why, and did. By that time, Mike did not care about her reasons. Or so she said. She had taken the action and walked the road on which it set her, and pronounced herself glad that she had done so.
“Because otherwise I’d have no life of my own, and no career,” she told Annie.
“True enough,” Annie Cochran said. “But don’t give me that crap about being glad. You did it because you were forced to, not because you
8
G RADUATION CAME AND WENT, AND THE BLACK-ROBED, CAN dlelit baccalaureate ceremonies. The capped and gowned, sweat-trickling graduation ceremonies in the stifling high school auditorium wheeled by in a blur. Mike watched and heard Bayard Sewell give the valedictory address through a sheen of tears and a high ringing of pride and love, and delivered her own salutatorian’s briefer address faultlessly, to steady, if more modest, applause. Both of them graduated with honors, he with the highest, she with a still-respectable magna. John Winship hugged her glancingly and pumped Bayard’s hand, and his mother mewled damply over both of them, and Priss gave her a long, hard, bourbon-fogged hug. DeeDee kissed her chastely and gave Bayard a giggling embrace. Her husband, Duck, gave Mike a rough, insinuating kiss on the mouth; Mike flinched in disgust at the wet lips and the seeking hardness of his groin as he ground it against her. He was always putting his hands on her, and calling her “little sis.” DeeDee glared at him. He grinned hugely back and gave Bayard a resounding thump on the back and a savage and genial knuckling on the biceps.
John Winship’s graduation present to them was aclean, seemly little two-year-old Ford coupe. He handed the keys to Bayard.
“Couldn’t I keep it?” Mike entreated. “I wanted to go into Atlanta and see if the
Journal
or
Constitution
had any summer work. You’ll be staying here at the drugstore, so I thought …”
“It’s in Bayard’s name, just to make things easier,” John Winship said. “If you want to work for a newspaper, why don’t you go see Carl Thigpen? He could use some help on the
Observer
, and you know he’d be glad to have you.”
“Well, Daddy, you know, it’s just a weekly,” Mike said. She did not know why it stung her so, to have their joint gift put in Bayard’s name. In three months they would be a legal unit anyway. “I’d really like to get some experience on a daily. It would help me a lot after college, when I look for a full-time job.”
“Maybe by that time you’ll be starting a full-time family, and it won’t amount to a hill of beans whether you work for a daily or a weekly this summer,” her father said. He almost twinkled it, a near-grotesque spasm.
She smiled. But often in those heat-jellied days of early summer, she remembered what Priss Comfort had said.
“Micah Winship. They’re going to hear that name outside Lytton one day.” And, “Put your muscle where your mouth is, Mike.”
In the first week of that July 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began a three-day sit-in at Jojo’s Restaurant in downtown Atlanta, and on the second morning Mike astounded herself by recruiting a willing and nearly ebullient J.W. Cromie, catching the 9:40 A.M . Greyhound bus to Atlanta, and joining them.
* * *
She could not have said, at the time, why she chose to upset the frail equilibrium that her engagement to Bayard Sewell had achieved at the Pomeroy Street house. Priss Comfort could have said why, but did not get the chance; much later Annie Cochran could say why, and did. By that time, Mike did not care about her reasons. Or so she said. She had taken the action and walked the road on which it set her, and pronounced herself glad that she had done so.
“Because otherwise I’d have no life of my own, and no career,” she told Annie.
“True enough,” Annie Cochran said. “But don’t give me that crap about being glad. You did it because you were forced to, not because you
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