Miss Julia Hits the Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

’round town, too. But, Miss Julia, that deacon fixin’ to put us out.” She leaned her head on her hand and covered her eyes.
    I leaned closer, not fully understanding what she was telling me. “Put who out? And from where?”
    “Our whole street, that’s who. He own all the houses on it, an’ now he say he need that proppity, an’ he not renewin’ any rents, an’ we all got to move.”
    “You mean,” I said, leaning back in my chair, “he just all of a sudden told everybody they have to move without giving any reason whatsoever?”
    “Well, he say the town council done voted us out ’cause them houses too far gone for anybody to be livin’ in ’em, which can’t be no news to any of us. An’ the sheriff, he say the same thing ’cause the Reverend Mr. Abernathy, he went down an’ talk to him for us. An’ the sheriff say he sorry but he got a ’viction order he got to carry out.”
    “Well, I say,” I said, stunned that Clarence Gibbs had been able to get the town council to condemn those houses, and not a word in the newspaper about it that I’d seen. He was fairly tight with a couple of the councilmen, so he could pretty much push through anything he wanted. “How long have you lived there?”
    “All us been livin’ there a long time,” she said, wiping her face with her hand. “Some of our people livin’ there ’fore even the courthouse got built, but they all dead now. An’ used to be all them houses was owned by whoever lived in ’em. But Mr. Gibbs, he always knowed when folks havin’ troubles, an’ he come ’round offerin’ to take them houses offa folkses’ hands. He handin’ out money to buy ’em, then he rent ’em back to whoever owned ’em.” She reached for a napkin to do a better job of drying her face. “So now he own ’em all, ’cept maybe one or two, an’ he want them, too. He say they all have to sell or they be settin’ in the middle of something they don’t like.”
    “Like what?” I asked. “What’s he planning to do with that land?”
    “We don’t know. Don’t nobody tell us nothin’ but get up and move.” Tears welled up in her eyes again and she covered them with the napkin. “Miss Julia, we got a graveyard back up there by that ridge. Nobody use it now, but they’s folks buried there a hundred years ago.”
    “Well, he certainly can’t put anything on that spot,” I said. “There are laws protecting cemeteries.” At least I thought there were.
    I couldn’t stand the thought of Lillian being taken advantage of, and the idea of the likes of stoop-shouldered, hooded-eyed Clarence Gibbs being the one to do it just tore me up.
    “Seems to me,” I said, throwing out a few terms that I didn’t know the meaning of, “that you and your neighbors would have eminent domain or squatters’ rights or something. How can he just move everybody out, lock, stock and barrel?”
    “I don’ know, but look like he can. That ’viction notice come a few weeks ago, an’ we s’posed to be out this week.”
    “This week! Lillian! Why didn’t you tell me? I might’ve done something, at least I’d have tried to.”
    She bowed her head, mumbling, “We was hopin’ Mr. Gibbs have a change of heart, but don’t look like it gonna happen.”
    I frowned, trying to think what Clarence Gibbs might have in mind. With his reputation for slick business practices, there’d be money to be made somewhere.
    “What about your leases?” I asked. “Surely, as permanent as that street is, you all have long-term leases.”
    “No’m, it always been week to week. He send somebody ever’ Friday to pick up the rent money.”
    I thought for a minute, picturing in my mind the street where Lillian lived. It was an unpaved offshoot of a road right outside the town limits, no more than a lane where a few grandchildren played hopscotch and jumped rope in the thick dust of summer. As I recalled, there was an empty field, what might have been a pasture at one time, where the