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

doesn’t see me. I stick to my side of the street until I’m past her—I do not want to talk to her, I do not trust what I might say—then sprint into the Turnbull orange grove. There’s a dirt road running across it that we call “Fred’s shortcut” because it connects the Turnbull house on Old Dixie Highway to the Turnbull station next to our business on the Trail. I’ve used it forever to walk between home and the packinghouse.
    Like most of the groves around here, the Turnbulls’ navel trees are trailing late bloom from treetop to grove floor, like a bride’s veil. Gratefully, I slip away from Miz Sooky into the close, sweetly scented passageway.
    “Ah heard our preacher waxing on poetical ’bout ‘the lilies of the field,’ ” Marvin said once. “Personally, Ah hain’t never seen no field full of lilies but Ah shore do love a grove in Blossom Time. Ol’ King Solomon hisself wudn’t ’rayed such as these!”
    The leaves on the trees are full and richly green, lighter and finer than they’ll be later, in the high heat of summer. Soon, I think, sniffing blossoms, the last of the bright white petals will fall, taking their heavenly scent with them. The little green vases inside will swell in Green Time, from pea-sized globes to full-size fruit, golden and juicy at Orange Time. That won’t happen until November. And it wouldn’t happen at all, I remember, if Mistuh Bee and Miss Angel Blossom didn’t do their part.
    At the end of Fred’s shortcut, the scent of orange blossoms gives way to the reek of high octane and hot asphalt at Turnbull’s Standard Oil. Just inside the work bay, next to the Coke cooler, I see the cold-water fountain and notice, for the first time in my life, the sign Miz Sooky talked about. It hangs, fat black letters on white cardboard, a good head higher than me, at adult eye level.
    Is it new? I wonder. The curling edges of the cardboard, a diagonal smear of old grease give me my answer. Without stopping, as I always have before, I wave politely to old Mr. Fred, who nods above his newspaper, feet up on his desk, in front of the electric fan. Seeing that sign, realizing it’s been there forever, I feel suddenly embarrassed. Like I’ve been an ignorant player in an awful game.
Shame on you
, I tell myself, resolving never to drink from that fountain again. And I feel it, the bee sting of shame on me.
    At the highway, I quicken my pace. In the fall and winter, when our navel trees are heavy with fruit, the big billboards invite the snowbirds to “Pick An Orange Free!” and “Send Some Florida Sunshine To The Folks Back Home!” Earlier this month, Daddy and Robert changed the panels to pull in the warm weather folks with “Ice-cold Orange Juice, Fresh-squeezed,” “All-You-Can-Drink For A Dime! (Limit 3).” Nobody in their right mind has any business drinking more than three glasses of orange juice. If the bulk of it doesn’t make you sick, the acid will.
    Across from me, the tall gray tanks and buildings of Mayflower Citrus climb like turrets of some medieval castle, quiet this time of year, after winter’s roar of fruit juice processing. At its highest peak, like an eagle’s nest, is the room with windows all around and a clear view of every operation: the private office of Mr. Emmett Casselton. You can’t see him from here, but everyone knows he’s there—pulling all the strings in town. Emmett Casselton is head of Mayflower Citrus, king of Casbah Groves, and, no doubt, chief of the Klan that murdered Marvin.
    My thoughts, like arrows, fly at Casselton’s wide-open windows:
A truckload of shame on you, too.

Chapter 9
    There you are!” Mother dimples as I enter our showroom. She sits on her stool behind the register, paperwork piled neatly in front of her. “Find your breakfast?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
    “Armetta brought you something today,” she tells me in a voice that says
mind
your manners
.
    I follow her gaze to the back of the showroom where