anticipation until she realized exactly how she was behaving. She was twenty-three, and she was still thrilled by a few minutes of Ferris Gerritsen’s attention.
At the last moment, she grabbed her camera. Capturing some people’s souls on film took studios of equipment, elaborate backdrops and countless heart-to-heart talks. Others could be frozen for all time with the care less snap of a Polaroid. She didn’t have studios full of equipment to draw from here at the beach. But she wanted some photographs of her father at this critical juncture in his life. She could hope for a miracle.
They were on the beach before he uttered more than a few idle words. “Last night was a strain.”
“For everybody.” She walked on Ferris’s right, away from the waves. She was terrified of deep water, and had been as long as she could remember. Self-help books hadn’t lessened her fears. She took showers instead of baths, and conveniently got her period when she was forced to visit a beach. The phobia was an odd one for the heiress to a shipping company.
Ferris had never understood her fear, but he pandered to it now. “I imagine you don’t think well of me for the way I behaved with the Reynolds family.”
Dawn loved her father’s voice. Rich, slurred and art fully southern, his accent was more North Louisiana than New Orleans. It was bourbon and branch water on a summer night, a voice that could round the edges of the sharpest conflict. She thought of her hitchhiker and understood why she had initially found him appealing.
“No, I didn’t,” she agreed. “You were pompous and high-handed. Did you think well of yourself?”
“There’s more here than you know.”
“More than not liking the Reynoldses and Phillip be cause of the color of their skin?”
“I’ve always had colored friends. I’ve eaten with colored people, slept under the same roof, kissed their babies and their grandmothers.”
She lifted her camera and wished she could record his voice on film, the sincerity, the arrogance. He paused for her, but didn’t smile, as if having his photograph taken were natural.
“You won’t go down in history as a friend to the civil-rights movement,” she said when she had finished.
“That’s right. I won’t go down in history as a man who supported what he didn’t believe in.”
She gave him credit for honesty. His values had al ways been conservative. He believed in states’ rights. He represented thousands of people who believed just as he did, and he was a better, fairer representative than many of his colleagues.
But was he a racist? In his anger at being trapped by the wishes of a dead woman, he had acted like one last night. But Dawn believed her father lacked the passion for true racism. He was sloppy-sentimental about the Negro servants who had tended him as a child. Even now, he paid for a nursing home for one of them, al though the family debt to her had ended long ago. And he felt obligations to his Negro constituents. He wanted their schools to be good ones, their businesses to thrive. And now that integration was sweeping the state, despite his belief that separate but equal was fair enough, he was encouraging citizens to abide by the law.
The moment seemed too important to spoil. And for what purpose? How could Dawn change a mind made up by years of experiences and propaganda she would never understand?
“What do you mean, there’s more than I know?” she said.
He stooped to retrieve a piece of driftwood. She snapped another photograph of him with his arm extended, reaching for something outside the camera’s range. If the photograph turned out well, she would save it, not give it to him to use in his campaign.
He rubbed his thumbs along the driftwood’s surface as they continued walking. “I’ve never told you this, but I met Nicky Valentine years ago, during the war. Phillip was a little boy then, and she was singing at a club in Casablanca. She’d gone there to escape the
At the last moment, she grabbed her camera. Capturing some people’s souls on film took studios of equipment, elaborate backdrops and countless heart-to-heart talks. Others could be frozen for all time with the care less snap of a Polaroid. She didn’t have studios full of equipment to draw from here at the beach. But she wanted some photographs of her father at this critical juncture in his life. She could hope for a miracle.
They were on the beach before he uttered more than a few idle words. “Last night was a strain.”
“For everybody.” She walked on Ferris’s right, away from the waves. She was terrified of deep water, and had been as long as she could remember. Self-help books hadn’t lessened her fears. She took showers instead of baths, and conveniently got her period when she was forced to visit a beach. The phobia was an odd one for the heiress to a shipping company.
Ferris had never understood her fear, but he pandered to it now. “I imagine you don’t think well of me for the way I behaved with the Reynolds family.”
Dawn loved her father’s voice. Rich, slurred and art fully southern, his accent was more North Louisiana than New Orleans. It was bourbon and branch water on a summer night, a voice that could round the edges of the sharpest conflict. She thought of her hitchhiker and understood why she had initially found him appealing.
“No, I didn’t,” she agreed. “You were pompous and high-handed. Did you think well of yourself?”
“There’s more here than you know.”
“More than not liking the Reynoldses and Phillip be cause of the color of their skin?”
“I’ve always had colored friends. I’ve eaten with colored people, slept under the same roof, kissed their babies and their grandmothers.”
She lifted her camera and wished she could record his voice on film, the sincerity, the arrogance. He paused for her, but didn’t smile, as if having his photograph taken were natural.
“You won’t go down in history as a friend to the civil-rights movement,” she said when she had finished.
“That’s right. I won’t go down in history as a man who supported what he didn’t believe in.”
She gave him credit for honesty. His values had al ways been conservative. He believed in states’ rights. He represented thousands of people who believed just as he did, and he was a better, fairer representative than many of his colleagues.
But was he a racist? In his anger at being trapped by the wishes of a dead woman, he had acted like one last night. But Dawn believed her father lacked the passion for true racism. He was sloppy-sentimental about the Negro servants who had tended him as a child. Even now, he paid for a nursing home for one of them, al though the family debt to her had ended long ago. And he felt obligations to his Negro constituents. He wanted their schools to be good ones, their businesses to thrive. And now that integration was sweeping the state, despite his belief that separate but equal was fair enough, he was encouraging citizens to abide by the law.
The moment seemed too important to spoil. And for what purpose? How could Dawn change a mind made up by years of experiences and propaganda she would never understand?
“What do you mean, there’s more than I know?” she said.
He stooped to retrieve a piece of driftwood. She snapped another photograph of him with his arm extended, reaching for something outside the camera’s range. If the photograph turned out well, she would save it, not give it to him to use in his campaign.
He rubbed his thumbs along the driftwood’s surface as they continued walking. “I’ve never told you this, but I met Nicky Valentine years ago, during the war. Phillip was a little boy then, and she was singing at a club in Casablanca. She’d gone there to escape the
Similar Books
