Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands by Susan Carol McCarthy Page A

loudly from the top of it.
    That bird sure wants somebody’s attention
, I think.
Whip-Poor-Will
, he cries again and my eyes fly open. Somewhere, off in the direction of Lake Opalakee, another sound seems to answer him, low, rolling like thunder but more alive, the bellowing of the lake’s notoriously big bull ’gator.
    It’s officially spring
, I remember.
Oh, Marvin, I heard it! I
listened and I heard. Can you hear it, too, wherever you are?
    The house is uncommonly still. This late, Mother and Daddy are long gone to the packinghouse. The boys are off, too, on a field trip with Doto to the plane show at Orlando’s airport.
    In the kitchen I see Mother’s left a place mat, napkin and bowl in front of the Shredded Wheat. I eat my breakfast in the sunny kitchen, listening again for the whippoorwill, wondering who taught Marvin all the things that he taught me.
Maybe I’ll ask Armetta
, I think as I head out the door. She’ll be at the packinghouse today.
Maybe not
, I reason, remembering Luther’s visit. Apparently, unless they bring it up directly, care for a grieving person is best done sideways.
    Outside, under a bright bowl of spring blue, the world seems soaked with color. Green grass laps like a river around Mother’s island of rosebushes. Pink, coral and scarlet blooms cast a net of fragrance over bright orange butterflies that dip and bob as if tied by an invisible tether.
    Across the street, a pair of redbirds hop along the pitched roofline of the Turnbulls’ old house, the crested male singing bravely to his mate. That house is rented to the Carmichaels: Miz Evelyn Carmichael sings alto in Daddy’s choir and, a lot of folks say, is a dead ringer for Ava Gardner. But her husband, poor pale-faced Mr. Frank Carmichael, they say, doesn’t look a thing like Frank Sinatra. Their teenaged son Robert works for us part-time at the packinghouse. He calls my parents Mr. and Miz Mac, and me Macarooni. Robert wears white, rolled-sleeve T-shirts, like Marlon Brando on the movie posters for
Streetcar Named Desire
. He has a motorcycle which he’s forever riding or working on in the Carmichaels’ garage.
    Next door, in front of the Turnbulls’ new house, modern concrete block with shiny terrazzo, a pair of scrub jays complain bitterly to Miz Sooky Turnbull and I don’t blame them. Miz Sooky stands with her back to me surveying the all-white Easter garden that’s been the talk of the town for weeks. White azalea bushes, in full flower, flank the sides of a giant magnolia tree serving up milky blooms the size of soup bowls. In front, a stand of pearly Easter lilies trumpet behind the row of white-starred bushes Miz Sooky calls cape jasmine. Mother calls them gardenias.
    On Easter Sunday, Mother and I were standing in a circle of ladies outside the church when Miz Esther Hall raved, “Sooky, your Easter garden is to die for! Whatever made you think of an all-white display?”
    “You’ll probably laugh,” Miz Sooky trilled, “but I was at the station, taking Fred his lunch, when a carload of Nigras pulled in for gas. It was hot, so they piled out of the car thirsty, but, of course, none of them had enough money for Coke-Cola so they headed for the water fountain. Fred pointed out the sign, and of course, you never know if they can read, so he told them ‘Whites Only, No Coloreds!’ Well, that’s when it came to me . . . a white-only garden without a
stitch
of color!”
    As the rest of them tittered on about how lovely the whole thing looked and smelled, Mother and I left in search of Daddy. Truth is, I was mad at Miss Sooky, at all of them, for shoveling out their comments like a bunch of garbage on Marvin’s grave.
    In her new henna rinse and green gardening smock, Miz Sooky looks like an overgrown stamen in the heart of a fat white swamp flower, its scent impossibly concocted. To me, the whole white garden thing’s unnatural and that’s what the squawking blue jays are trying to tell her.
    Fortunately, she