IT WAS SOMETHING HAVING TO do with the radiator. But it could just as well have been that the alternator was bad, having corroded through, old as it was. In any case, the fan belt had worn clean through in two places. So that was the obvious place to start. Nestor told us that he’d do his best to fix it, but couldn’t make any promises.
The next four days were the longest of my life. Having come to believe that Nestor had taken our truck hostage, I marked the fridge calendar for every day that we went without it. Then, on a Thursday unremarkable in every way except for the fact that the truck was finally ready, Dad and I hoofed it into town. We could have taken the tractor, but Dad had convinced himself that he liked to walk—claimed that it felt nostalgic. On the way, he talked about the long treks he used to make into town as a teenager, back when Cordele Road was packed dirt and he spent lazy afternoons sitting atop rail fencing, babysitting field hands hoeing dirt, but mostly watching planes overhead going to and from Turner, with dreams of flying himself someday.
Wait—you wanted to be a pilot?
Who wouldn’t?
Why didn’t you?
Who says I won’t?
I laughed. That was pretty funny. Anyway, his knee locked up by the time we hit the pyramid of pumpkins sitting in a flatbed parked at the top of Mister Buford’s drive. Dad slipped on some loose gravel and fell on his behind. I helped him up and brushed him off, and we continued on. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the old guy. Not Dad—Mister Buford. It wasn’t even September yet, and here he was at it again with his pumpkins.
Dad pulled out Mom’s shopping list.
Let’s see here. A tin of bergamot. Eggs. What else?
Off in the distance, a field hand was walking through an expansive allée, smacking at the lower limbs of a pecan tree with a long pole. I tugged on Dad’s hand.
Did you and Mama meet at school?
You know that I’m older than her. She went to a different school anyway.
What was it called?
Dad shrugged and said Eatonton, probably. But he couldn’t be sure. Been so long.
Whaddya wanna know for?
I shrugged. Just curious.
There was a billboard for the Camelot on either end of town. One of them pictured two geese flying toward a setting sun. It was leaning out from Mister Brumeier’s pecan orchard: Y’ALL COME BACK NOW!
I threw a rock at it. Dad smacked the back of my head—asked what in the hell was the matter with me, vandalizing public property like that. Those geese hadn’t done anything to me.
• • •
WE’D BEEN WALKING since late morning and arrived at Nestor’s, sun-battered and sweaty, at the appointed time. Aside from the grocery store, Nestor had a filling station and a full-service garage all in the same one-level sandstone-brick building. He hollered out from his garage for us to come back in an hour. It wasn’t ready yet.
Mom had jotted down her shopping list on the back of a Georgia Power envelope. Dad handed it to me. Remember when you asked what it’s like to be thirty-nine?
That had been a few months back. I’d been grilling him about the process of growing old. You know—what it felt like and when it started exactly and what steps you could take to prevent it. Anyway, there wasn’t a single thing on that list for him. Dad joked that it was a thankless job.
Entire families filled the stores and cluttered the sidewalk with bags chock-full of school supplies and new clothes. Farther up the street, Mister Waters was signing for a delivery. Dad saluted him with two fingers and nodded to Missus Myers as we strolled past, then tapped me on the head with a rolled-up circular, and we turned into the Rexall.
Grampa Frank!
What in the world happened to your arm, boy? Last I knew, you had two!
Dad’s mother emerged from the Rexall holding a stapled prescription bag. She walked up beside Dad, glanced down at my cast, then continued to their truck without a word.
Grampa Frank mussed up my hair and told me not to take it personally. I didn’t bother telling him that there wasn’t any risk of that, me and Dad having hashed that one out every time a holiday came and went and I never saw her. Grampa Frank always made a point to drop by for my birthday, but not her. Dad warned me that his mother wasn’t a very nice person pretty much every chance he got—called her a human icicle. The human icicle. The upshot was that she never gave herself the chance to be anything to me but a question mark who I only ever knew as Connie.
Dad brought me in close and positioned me between his legs and asked Grampa Frank what was going on down the street. Albeit worse for wear, that bus was parked in the same spot that it had been the morning I’d run into the sheriff’s squad car—the Morning of Infamy, otherwise known as the Battle of Broken Arm.
There was lots more activity going on around it now than there was then. Grampa Frank cautioned us not to pay it any mind, then changed the subject, only to have Dad hem and haw his way through an explanation of all that had happened to my arm and how we were getting along without Toby, then work his way around to asking for money.
What for?
Peola says Irma’s as big as a watermelon.
You haven’t paid Toby yet?
Paid him? Damn it, I haven’t paid myself.
Good Lord! Go to the bank!
Dad nodded like he understood and wouldn’t press. I studied Connie in the truck, the way she took off that fancy cream-colored pillbox-style hat of hers and delicately scratched at the crease in her hair. I couldn’t figure out what she had against Dad. It was no secret that they didn’t like each other, Akersburg being as small as it is and we still somehow managed to hardly ever see her. All I knew was that you had to be one hell of a stick-in-the-mud for your own son to call you by your first name.
Dad and Grampa Frank appeared to have a lot of catching up to do. I wandered over to the curb and looked down the street. A small crowd was gathered under S&W’s awning, seven blocks down. Directly in front of them was the bus. It appeared to be leaning off-kilter.
Grampa Frank headed off in his truck, and I tugged Dad down the street, toward the crowd of onlookers. He tried to ward me off, but it was no use. The air was absolutely electric. Something big was about to happen. I just knew it.
Dad warned me to stay on the far curb, said he didn’t want trouble. I led him through the gawking crowd, just close enough to the bus to get a good look at the gash in the left front tire and three busted-out windows just behind where the driver sits. White people were gathered on our side of the street, coloreds were gathered on the other.
I clasped Dad’s hand tight. I had so many questions. I didn’t know where to start.
What the heck are they doing?
Protesting.
What’s that?
Same thing you do all the time. Especially come bedtime.
What are they protesting?
Everything, son. Chevrolets, baseball, apple pie. You name it. I wouldn’t mind it so much if it wasn’t so damned un-American.
They weren’t doing anything besides hanging out on the sidewalk. But seeing colored people gathered in a coordinated fashion in town like that fascinated me. Even if—truth be told—their khakis, button-downs, and loafers weren’t all that different from the kinds we wore, there was still something exotic about them. They weren’t just from out of town. They were from the North—that other world. It almost seemed like another universe to me. Actual flesh and blood northerners! They were, to me at least, the stuff of a great and often exasperating folklore. Hell, Dad cherished his Margaret Mitchell just as much as the next person.
All the people I knew either were born in Akersburg, dreamed of getting out of Akersburg, or were passing through Akersburg. The farthest me or anyone I knew ever went was to Blakely, which sounded like another country but was just up the road twenty miles. I’d never heard of anyone coming to Akersburg except maybe for the open-tent revival meeting, the annual Seed and Feed Expo, or Mister Buford’s haunted house, which, small though it was, was practically world famous. Rumor had it that someone from Rowena had gotten scared so bad he’d crapped himself. Word spread like wildfire after that, so that by the time the last week of October rolled around, the line of people waiting to get in spanned half a mile down Bancroft Road. It’s been that way ever since.
On top of that, those coloreds were doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. Dad had whispered in my ear that they were persona non grata. When I asked what the heck that was, he said unwelcome visitors who were up to no good—which held its own special kind of allure. So yes, I was riveted.
Look!
Christ almighty.
Christ almighty was right. Long live the Republic, and sweet terra incognita. Toby was like some kind of circus-grade Whac-a-Mole. You got rid of him in one place, and he just popped up somewhere else. He stuck out like a sore thumb, standing as he was in overalls and rain boots in the middle of that well-heeled crowd, barking out orders to the other troublemakers, who seemed to be hanging on his every word. A newspaper man shoved his way up close and pressed a microphone into his handsome face. My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. How’d he get famous so quick? What was I, chopped liver? Hell, I’d practically been his boss. If anybody deserved to be listened to, it was me.
I picked at my wedgie and ran my tongue over the soft, gummy spot where my eyetooth had been. All I could think to myself as I stood there admiring the ease with which he dealt with all those people vying for his attention was that he was gone and was never coming back. So envious was I of his natural charisma that I plum forgot how mad I was at him for having left us in the first place. I’d even go so far as to say that I admired him—albeit for only a brief moment. And only in direct proportion to my want of courage to walk up to him in the midst of all that commotion and say, Hey, Toby. It’s me.
What’s he doing?
Organizing.
Organizing what?
Dad was suddenly in a hurry to get somewhere. Where, I don’t know. Oh yeah—the truck. What we’d come for. I almost forgot. He jerked at my arm like a leash and dragged me down the sidewalk back toward Nestor’s, weaving me through the crowd of upset white people still gawking at the circus across the street. Halfway down the block, I rubbernecked just enough to glimpse Toby mount a milk crate. His words boomed out: BOSS IS NOT YOUR CREATOR! HE IS NOT EVEN YOUR FACILITATOR! Dad stopped as if in a panic.
• • •
THAT SON OF a bitch Nestor had ordered the wrong year’s voltage regulator. When Dad asked how that was even possible, Nestor gave his suspenders a tug and explained that his service manual was missing a page. He’d had no choice but to take the part number from a ’54 Ford, which was supposed to be pretty much the same as our ’53 except for the exhaust system and the lever on the tailgate latch. There might have been a few other differences, but those supposedly related to the drivetrain.
Nestor pulled out the service manual, spread it out over the front fender of our truck, and showed us all the pages that were missing. He then pulled a cup of water from his cooler, handed it to Dad, and explained that on top of that, postal service to Akersburg was suspended until further notice. It usually arrived on the twelve o’clock Trailways, which was being rerouted to Albany via Rowena. The bus company feared for their fleet. After all that had been done to the one up the street, who could blame them? I stood there tugging on Dad’s sleeve, wondering what this all meant for Mister Abrams’s replacement filter. I tried to ask him, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
I left Nestor’s that afternoon with the distinct impression that Akersburg was, ipso facto, under siege. In my mind, we were only one canister of tear gas away from martial law, armed checkpoints, curfews, full-body searches, air raids, and who knew what else. Maybe even bread lines. Make no mistake—we were at war, albeit with ourselves.
• • •
A BRIDGE HOUSE, having appeared up the road, stood lookout to a covered bridge. For those who have never been to Akersburg—the great majority of you, I am sure—a covered bridge is just a run-of-the-mill wooden bridge with a roof overhead. It’s basically a rectangular tunnel structure that spans a body of water—in this case, the Thronateeska River. It had a fancy name, but I can’t remember it at the moment. Walter F. George Memorial Bridge—something like that. Anyway, a pair of granaries loomed high over both, bridge house and bridge, from across the river. Dad and I walked across. We didn’t talk about all we’d seen in town. There was no reason to. I’d been there, and he’d been there, and we’d both seen it. What was there to talk about? Then, as we exited the covered bridge, Dad muttered something to himself about hoping to dear God, if there was a God, that they’d clear out by sunup.
From the outskirts of town to our house is little more than a forty-minute walk down Cordele Road, across that covered bridge, past several dozen colored people’s homes, and on through a corridor of farmland, mostly orchards. The homes that we passed along the way were ramshackle clapboard houses, what Dad called shotgun houses, sharecropper shacks, or just plain shacks. He called them shotgun houses because they were so small I could fire a pea shooter clear through an open front door and reach the backyard. We plied our way past one after the next of these shacks, their sagging front stoops and balding patches of grass. The sky crackled, then opened up.
Mister Goolsbee’s shop was so close I could smell the freshly cut rock dust pouring out of his open front door. The rain was coming down hard, and Goolsbee’s boy was standing under the eaves, wearing an oversized black brick cutter’s apron draped from his neck. He was sticking his hand out to catch the long needles of rain coming down.
I ran ahead and joined him. Goolsbee’s boy pulled his hand in and put some distance between us. He kept to one side of the overhang, and I kept to the other—which was fine with me. I put my hands over my ears because of the shrieking noise of an electric saw coming from inside. Dad joined us a minute later. He came over and stood by me, and the three of us just stood there atop the shrunken floor boards, happy to be out of the rain. I had my head angled skyward, anxious for the dark clouds to pass.
It was the happiest I’d seen Dad since the morning Toby had fixed a backed-up sewage pipe that wasn’t draining properly. Our house had smelled like a cesspool for weeks until he did. Anyway, I must have said something about hoping that the rain would let up soon because I was hungry and wanted to get home while supper was still warm. Dad looked at me like he didn’t know who I was.
Stop? Goddamnit, boy, have I not taught you anything? You better hope for our sake that it rains so much pigs drown.
A truck splashed through the long puddles out front and pulled up beside a stack of cut granite and a wheelbarrow half-filled with bricks. Two men got out of it and ran through the rain toward us. They were drenched by the time they reached the top of the steps. They banged the storm door open and disappeared inside. A minute later, the electric saw stopped buzzing, and another truck pulled up. Dad always said that when it rained, it poured, so I figured they were customers, too.
Someone called out for an Evan! I figured it was Mister Goolsbee calling out for his boy to fetch something for one of the customers. When I looked around for the boy, he was gone.
A man appeared in the doorway. He looked both ways and asked, Where’s Evan?
That was only the second time I’d ever heard that boy’s name spoken in my life. He’d never been anything to me but Goolsbee’s boy, on account of having been a fixture around that place for as long as I could remember. I had my sneaker off, and my sock was in my hand. I squeezed it, trying to get the water out. Experience told me that Mister Goolsbee only serviced the colored cemetery down the road. That was the only place I’d ever seen his boy hauling stone slabs along with a shovel in that wheelbarrow out front. Why a white man would be buying a headstone from a colored man was beyond me.
I shrugged. When the man disappeared back inside, Dad dragged me down from the porch and ran off with me in tow. It was the second time that day that Dad had dragged me off like that, without the least bit of explanation, and I didn’t appreciate it. I was screaming and hollering out, demanding to know what I’d done now.
I hated it when he used his size against me willy-nilly like that. Drove me crazy. It was bad enough being four and a half feet tall and weighing sixty-five pounds without the Jolly Green Giant making me feel more feeble and helpless than I already was. He was running just as fast as he could, dragging me along with him through the mud puddles and into the wood—twice as fast as he had at the Battle of Broken Arm. And me hobbling along after him barefoot through grass and mud puddles just as fast as I could, struggling to keep up, with my shoes and socks in hand. I hollered at him to at least let me get my shoes all the way back on. But he wasn’t having it—wasn’t even listening to me. I tripped through mud and over stumps and branches and twigs, convinced he’d finally gone off the deep end.
We covered half a football field in the time it’d take Ernie Davis with one point down, two seconds on the clock, and three defensive ends hot on his tail. It wasn’t until we were hidden deep inside the wood’s thick underbrush that Dad stopped. He was doubled over, clutching his gut, wheezing. His hair was soaked, and water was dripping down his chin, and his shirt was stuck to his chest. I was out of breath, too. My cast felt like it weighed a good twenty pounds. Dad pressed his hand over my mouth. His face was red and munched and he was peering back the way we’d just come.
A loud voice came from Goolsbee’s place. Goddamned if I didn’t get the heebie-jeebies. I recognized it. The cloud cover was thick, and it was going on dusk. The light was low and there were too many trees in the way for me to see much. Dad pulled back a handful of branches, and a backlit silhouette appeared in the distance. Someone was being dragged out onto the back porch. I murmured under my breath, Oh Christ. It was Mister Goolsbee.
Mister Goolsbee was pleading in the open doorway. He went down on his knees, and his hands were tied behind his back. It looked to me like one of the men was holding a pistol to his head. Rain was pummeling the ground and eaves and soaking the backyard, and it took several seconds of Mister Goolsbee going on in a desperate way before it occurred to me that he wasn’t pleading for his own life but for someone else’s—his boy’s. He was begging for the men not to hurt him. He was explaining that he was just a boy, and that he had no idea where he’d run off to, but that if he’d done something wrong or something he wasn’t supposed to have done it was only because he didn’t know better.
I looked up at Dad for answers. He cupped a rain-soaked hand over my eyes and said, Hush. When the pitch of Mister Goolsbee’s pleading increased, Dad grabbed my hand, and we continued farther into the wood, splashing through long puddles, and didn’t stop until those horrific sounds were gone.
• • •
DAD DIDN’T MENTION anything to Mom about what we’d seen at Mister Goolsbee’s that afternoon. When I asked, he just said that it was important to pay your bills on time. Of course, everyone was in debt up to his ears, not just Mister Goolsbee. I knew that. Debt was practically all Dad talked about. He had so much of it I just figured he loved the stuff. Anyway, he said it was probably just some unscrupulous loan shark. Who knew what gambling debts the old coot had. When I brought it up again at bedtime, Dad told me to hush and explained that it was best kept between us.
I had an unsettling dream that night, so I sneaked in and climbed into Mom and Dad’s bed. I couldn’t have been lying there for more than an hour, trying to fall back asleep to the sounds of water dripping from the eaves and an owl hooting outside, when the telephone rang. Dad picked it up and asked who in the hell was calling so late. It was Nestor. Dad whispered his surprise that the truck was ready so soon.
I rolled over. I could hear Nestor’s voice coming from the handset. He sounded panicky. He was explaining that he’d had no choice but to get the voltage regulator from Lesley, who apparently kept a mountain of spare parts in his backyard. Said it was important that Dad pick the truck up as soon as possible. Dad sat up in bed with the telephone droning in his hand. His face was an outline in the moonlight. He looked more concerned than he had been after he’d run into Mister Orbach and Mister Schaefer at Buskin Brothers back in May and they’d laughed him out of the store for having planted so doggone late. Mom appeared in the doorway. She’d come in from the living room, where she’d been sleeping. She took the phone from him and hung it up.
Dad told me to go back to my room. When I refused, he told me to at least go back to sleep. When I told him that I couldn’t sleep, he told me to count sheep. I put my head down on the pillow and imagined Nestor as a covert operative driving his tow truck through a land mine–riddled countryside, with our voltage regulator shimmying around on the passenger’s seat. I told Dad that it wasn’t all bad. Even if we lacked Toby, we had gotten plenty of rain and would soon have our truck, too. With any luck, we’d have our peanuts all dug up and up on stack poles in no time. Dad got out of bed and left to put on a pot of coffee. Mom draped her bathrobe over her shoulders and followed after him, complaining about Nestor doing a rush job just to get our truck out of his garage when it had been sitting there for almost a week now.
• • •
MY CAST HURT in a strange new way in the morning. I must have slept funny. I got up to check the thermometer out back just to confirm what my body already knew: it was swim weather. Dad was in the kitchen, scarfing down his breakfast. He told me to hurry up, said that he wanted to get in town early, before things got out of hand. I took one bite of toast, and he pulled out my chair. Told me not to worry about finishing my breakfast. He grabbed me by the hand and led me out the door.
We headed into town early enough that I could see my footprints in dewy patches of grass. There was a particular joy I felt in walking down an empty road in the early morning after a heavy rain. After several weeks of dry weather, the surrounding fields were soaked. Life dripped from the trees, clung to cobwebs, and beaded up on tall stalks of grass. Birds dipped and disappeared in stands of sassafras. Pill bugs and centipedes scuttled at the edge of the road. Earthworms emerged from tiny holes and washed up onto the middle of the road. I carried them off in my cupped hands down a narrow road walled off on both sides with trees.
I was shocked to discover that Mister Goolsbee’s shop was gone. In its place, a black wood-burning stove stood in the center of a heap of smoldering embers. A wheelbarrow sat with its handle and tire burnt off. Beside it, a row of cinder blocks were vaguely recognizable as part of its foundation. Shingles were spread over the ground, and nails and saw blades poked out from smoldering ashes. Dad pulled me back and said that it looked like it was still hot.
I kicked at a charred patch of grass where thick tufts of little bluestem and prairie dropseed had been and looked up at Dad. I had no idea what had happened and was too afraid to ask. I waited for him to say something. Dad said that he remembered when Mister Goolsbee had first built his shop. He’d walked past it practically every day as a boy. As small and unremarkable as it had looked structurally, it had stood as a kind of monument. It was not customary, in Akersburg, for a colored man to own and operate a business. It had taken Mister Goolsbee the better part of his life to put that shop together, by which time he was well into his fifties.
Dad didn’t say it, but something told me that he wasn’t just talking about the expense of time and materials, which were the kinds of things that normally concerned him. Dad explained that Mister Goolsbee was a source of tremendous admiration and inspiration for a great many people. For whites, he was living proof that they offered a way up, if not a way out. For coloreds, he stood out for being the only one in the entire county who’d ever gotten that far in life. Then Dad said that if it was all the same to me, he would prefer not to talk about it anymore, and continued on down the road. After a few steps, he said to no one in particular that a man like Mister Goolsbee had cheated death enough times and that of course it was eventually going to catch up with him. When I ran up to him and asked what he meant, Dad said that clumsy old nigger was just too old to be working as much as he did and had probably just left a loose wire lying around—and that frankly, he was lucky not to have lost his inventory. It was a doggone shame, but the fact remained that I must not fall into the trap of always assuming the worst, no matter how bad anything ever looked. Which was fine with me. I was perfectly happy believing that Mister Goolsbee’s shop had been washed away with the rain if Dad wanted me to.
I’d brought along some fliers I’d made, figuring to post them while we were in town. I was down to a paltry two weeks before Danny’s scheduled departure and had decided it high time that I took the law into my own hands. I had tried the 221B Baker Street approach, replete with magnifying glass, pipe, and deerstalker hat. Now I was trying the bare-knuckled approach. On our way past the Camelot, I pulled one out and asked Dad if it looked like the genuine article. Dad looked concerned. I assured him that it wasn’t so much a matter of me assuming the worst as it was just plain wanting answers. Dad took my hand and asked how I could think about that pool at a time like this. I shrugged. I dunno. It wasn’t that hard, really. I just could.
• • •
THE THREE SHELL-BACKED chairs lined up on the sidewalk in front of the Rexall were wet. Trailways, having been out of service for over a week, had little use for them. Dad pulled a hankie from his back pocket and wiped off two. He sat down and massaged his knee; he told me to put my ear up close and made it pop just by bending it—called it the sound of middle age. He said there was no preventing it. It had just sort of crept up on him. Like one day he woke up, and that’s how his knee sounded when he bent it.
I sat down and swung my legs back and forth. People were starting to gather around the battle-scarred bus across the street. I was convinced that at this rate we’d be on rations of canned meat and powdered milk in a few more days. I’d probably have to learn another way to communicate with Derrick.
Can my bedroom light be used for Morse code?
Any light source can.
What’s Morse code for cast, Pop?
Dad had to think, then asked why I wanted to know.
I shrugged. Just curious.
The bus was in much worse shape than yesterday. There was graffiti spray painted all over its metallic keel, and more of the windows had been broken. The sun was just now coming over the low-rise buildings across the street. I cupped my hands over my eyes. I couldn’t believe some of the stuff written on it.
Is that even legal?
Just be happy your mom’s not here to see it.
My cast was a mess, too. My skin was raw around both ends. My fingers were filthy and looked terrible. They were sort of shriveled up and swollen at the same time. Made my face crinkle up when I bent down to smell them—like my feet after I’d gotten home with rain-soaked sneakers the night before.
Where do you suppose they’re staying?
Probably under a bridge somewhere.
A coin-operated Laundromat sat next door to S&W. Missus Higgins emerged from it. She stood on the corner, watching the coloreds milling about in front of S&W in their usual aggrieved way, then continued curbside, where a patrol car sat like a fixture. A deputy was leaning against it, quietly reading the paper. She interrupted him, pointed with her cane, and asked if it was legal, what they were doing.
Mister Abrams’s filter fixed yet?
The question had just popped out of my mouth, and I regretted it the second it left my lips. I don’t know why I even bothered to ask. I knew what was coming. If it wasn’t going to be about the coloreds across the street, it was going to be about that damned pool, and if it wasn’t going to be about the pool, it was going to be about the fire at Goolsbee’s place, and if it wasn’t about that, it was going to be about that son of a bitch Toby, who just strolled up across the street, because the fridge had finally conked out on us and had left such a mess that morning Dad had to put on his rain boots just to get at his coffee. He’d spent the rest of the predawn hours with Toby’s tools spread all over the kitchen floor, claiming to have fixed it. All the while, Mom was feeling around inside the freezer, complaining that it couldn’t cool a cracker.
Meanwhile, I was shocked at the discovery that Toby hadn’t come back for his tool belt. Mom had made it for him as an anniversary gift sometime before when I could remember to show how grateful Dad was for his ten years of service. And sure enough, they’d spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen, squabbling about stuff that had nothing to do with refrigeration systems or Freon or whatever frayed wires Dad had been fussing with, and I was so fed up with it all I disappeared into my bedroom and slammed the door shut. All they did anymore was bicker, and it was getting so bad that I didn’t care to ask what about.
Dad took out one of his cough drops, popped it into his mouth, and sucked on it. He started in about how much more difficult things had been since Toby had left. Telling me how important it was for me not to buckle under pressure—especially now that Miss Della, Aurelia, and Missus Swanson were no longer coming by to have their hair done, and here it was over a week and the toilet bowl still backed up to the rim every time I flushed it. Not to mention that Mom was starting to come apart at the seams, sleeping out on the sofa every night as she was.
Dad slung an arm over my shoulder and pulled me close. We’ve got to pull together, son.
I can always poo in the outhouse, Pop. I don’t mind that. Not one bit. But what about the fridge? Who’s gonna fix that? Because we need food! Christ, everybody needs food!
Toby was standing across the street. He took his place atop the milk crate and started going on like a one-man pep squad, lifting the spirits of his devotees with rallying cries and spurring on the slow-moving crowd around him. He seemed to breathe life into what looked to me like a band of devil-worshiping pagans who were single-handedly precipitating the decline of life as I knew it, otherwise known as Western civilization. Dad didn’t exactly say it, much less have to spell it out for me, but I suspected they were protesting something having to do with the government. Mom had let it slip while on the phone with Aurelia, asking her where she’d been hiding all this time. But what the government had to do with S&W was anybody’s guess.
It was one thing when those college kids had kept me from enjoying an ice cream, but what with Trailways rerouted, businesses up and down Main Street in a slump, and postal service suspended, it seemed like the beginning of the end. As I sat there listening to the foot-dragging rasp of loafers marching back and forth over the sidewalk and the lackluster chant of some uninspired two-four-six-eight number, part of me was surprised to see Toby still able to command everyone’s attention as he was. He was a natural. It was like he’d been born to do this sort of stuff. I almost got the impression that it was his calling.
Even though I hadn’t seen all that had happened, the episode on the back porch of Mister Goolsbee’s shop the night before had put me on edge so bad that I’d only slept a few hours. I still hadn’t found out from Dad what it was that we’d run from. I wished he’d just come out and told me, because I had goosebumps lying awake all night with my imagination running wild, never once having imagined that the place would be gone the next time I walked by. I don’t care if Mister Goolsbee was up to his neck in debt, how the heck was he supposed to pay anyone back with his only source of income demolished? I knew that money made the world go around, but that was ridiculous.
On top of that, I wet the bed. I didn’t blame Mister Goolsbee for that, of course. I would never do that. I put the blame square on Toby. I was mad as hell at him for having undone two years of progress in a single night. An eight-year-old isn’t supposed to wet the bed. Mom consoled me by saying, That’s just how your body works, dear. It’s not your fault. Until she realized I’d done it in what she called her bed. Then she was mad as hell. I demanded to know what she was so upset about, since she was sleeping out on the sofa. Worse still was the fact that I couldn’t even pawn off the stink on Snowflake. Then I told her it was all Toby’s fault, for all the stress his self-righteous crusade in town was causing me. It was having real-world consequences for me. I couldn’t help it. I was so desperate to be rid of Toby and all those coloreds who now seemed to be under his spell that I cast a hex on him using an old sock monkey that was lying around. I wasn’t sure who it belonged to. It was either Mom’s or Dad’s from when they were a kid.
Even if Dad was coming around to the view that Mister Goolsbee had been the victim of a hazardous work environment, it wasn’t lost on me that some people were more prone to having their places torched than others. What was even more amazing, though, was considering the rapid deterioration of the battle-scarred bus. Never mind that it was only the morning after the tragic fire afflicting Mister Goolsbee, Toby had somehow managed to drag still more people into the dispute taking place in front of S&W than he had the previous day. Judging from what I was seeing, I must have crossed my signals with my incantation and gotten my hex backward. Instead of clearing out, the coloreds seemed to be multiplying. The crowd was getting larger right before our eyes, with people constantly arriving, joining in the procession moving around and around in a circle on the sidewalk.
Most of the people yelling back to Toby in a loud and impassioned call-and-response weren’t impetuous renegades. They were pious old colored ladies with gray hair, the kind of women who went to Aurelia’s Bible study. They wore white leggings and padded walking shoes. They filled the entire street with the sound of their voices. I recognized the stock clerk from the Rexall, along with the woman who used to fold and iron clothes at the Laundromat next door. I wasn’t sure if she was working there anymore, though. Maybe not. Who knew? They were all considered the pillars of the colored community. At the sight of Missus Shapely and Missus Greeley over there with him, I leaned forward and spit.
You think he remembers us, Pop?
Of course he does.
Should I go say hi?
Can’t you see he’s busy?
I had no idea why Toby was with the people across the street. I was trying to figure it out. Aside from the obvious fact that he was colored and so were they. It felt like a betrayal—he’d known us just as long as he’d known any of them. He’d been with us for so, so long. And his father before him. Grandfather, too. After that, it got murky. Dad said people didn’t keep written accounts that far back. He made it sound like employment records were a modern invention.
I tried to imagine exactly what I’d say to Toby if I had the nerve to confront him. It wouldn’t be nice. Because it felt like he was assuming the absolute worst about me and my whole family. Why would he do such a thing, when we were just doing what people like us were supposed to do? It was what bosses did. And we were bosses. It wasn’t our fault. Heck, someone had to be. And quite honestly, I was thankful. Better us than someone else.
Dad claimed that we were the providers of jobs. The way he figured it, Toby and the other field hands jabbing at the air with their picket signs should have been thanking us. What would Toby have done with himself if he didn’t have us to provide him with an honest day’s work? Besides, it’s not like we were getting rich off him. Didn’t he know that this was just how the world worked? When they said God made the world in seven days, well, this was the world He made. It was starting to look like we were being scapegoated for the problems of every field hand who ever walked the earth. Dad made his knee pop again. He looked up with a grimace.
I know that man better than anyone, Huey. Known him since he was six. This is nothing but one man’s grievance. What you’re witnessing is a lifetime of frustration and anger boiling over. My only regret is that I didn’t see it coming sooner. And trust me, Toby doesn’t care one iota about anyone but Toby. Here he’s dragged Missus Greeley and Missus Shapely into this mess with him, not to mention all those other innocent and unsuspecting old ladies. Only God can help them now.
Gee whiz, Pop. You hear all he’s saying? He’s making us sound like monsters. Half of it’s not even true! Christ almighty, Mom made him dinner practically every night, and I personally wrapped them in tin foil to keep them warm. Son of a bitch, I even hand delivered them to him.
Now, now. You’re getting ahead of yourself. Toby’s in way over his head. He’s got no land. No equipment—not even a damned truck. Not to mention that busted-up leg of his.
He’s not using his cane anymore.
So what? All that boy’s got are his good looks and natural God-given charm and speaking ability. He’ll be lucky if he ever gets one seed in the ground come April. I give him ten days. Ten days, you hear? As soon as these people clear out and things return to normal around here, he’s gonna be done with those high-minded ideas of his and come knocking on our door, begging for us to take him back. Mark my word.
Seems to be doing fine now, though.
Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a cough drop. He lobbed it underhand to me.
Here. They keep me from smoking so much, but they also help with dry mouth. Listen, I got it all worked out. Tobias Wetherall Muncie will come crawling back with his tail between his legs, begging for mercy, just as soon as he realizes that he needs us every bit as much as we need him. That’s the plague of the colored race. You understand? They think too much of themselves. Get all high and mighty before they’ve even troubled to think the thing through. And you wanna know why? Because even he’s got sense enough to realize when he’s beat. Because being a good field hand is one thing, but running the show is something else. That takes real smarts. Of course, it’s all fine and dandy just so long as he lays low and lets me do all the head work, what with the ledger, accounting, applications for various federal and state subsidies, payroll, etcetera etcetera. So don’t go getting all worked up over nothing. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. You’ll see.
I looked up at Dad, surprised—I thought that Mom did all that stuff. Anyway, the cough drop was cherry-flavored, and the wrapper stuck to my fingers. I had to shake my hand furiously in order to get it off.
Is my tongue red?
Dad shook his head no. He folded his arms and turned back to the crowd gathered across the street.
What color is it?
Pink.
That’s the normal color, right?
Far as I know.
The neon Coca-Cola sign flashing in the S&W window was making me thirsty. I popped the cough drop back in my mouth. Dad checked his watch and said that the truck was probably ready. He got up and limped over to Mister Brines’s shop. I’d hidden all the fliers I’d made in a newspaper. In an environment as untrusting as this, I wasn’t taking any chances. Danny only had two more weekends before he had to split for Fayetteville. It was a long shot, but I hadn’t given up on the idea of the pool reopening before he skedaddled off back to college. It would require me pounding the pavement in search of a miracle, but it was possible.
I got up, tore off a strip of masking tape, and taped one of my fliers to the seat back of the chair I’d been sitting in. I stepped back and checked to see if it was crooked.
WANTED!
For Trespassing on Private Property of . . .
The Camelot Terrace
AKA “The Pool”
2376 Cordele Road
Akersburg, GA
On the Evening of June 12
Approx 7:30 PM
Suspect last seen walking around with only one shoe.
Possibly injured during flight.
See anything suspicious?
Please call: 876-1492
REWARD: 5 lb bag of boiled peanuts.
THANK YOU!
*Reward pending arrest and conviction.
**Plus reopening of pool by 8/6.
***Reward should be ready with any luck the last week of August.
It was straight enough. I followed after Dad.
How ’bout now, Pop?
Still pink.
Dad hadn’t even looked. He stood there with one hand in his pocket and the other twirling his key ring as Mister Brines pulled down a dive mask from a shelf behind the window display inside his shop.
Wanna go in?
I shook my head no.
Aw, c’mon. I thought you said that cheap rubber gasket on your dive mask had started to crack. A boy needs a working dive mask—well, don’t he?
I shrugged. It’s okay.
Dad rested a heavy hand on my shoulder. Aw, what am I saying? You’re probably just down about your mother and me, aren’t you? It’s no wonder. The trick is to get her off the sofa and back into our bedroom. Then things have a chance of returning to normal. But what on earth will accomplish that, is the question? I’m open to suggestions.
I dunno. Maybe apologize and ask Toby to come back? Short of that, she probably just needs to get out of the house more.
Dad sighed. There’s no sugarcoating it, is there? Hell, who am I kidding? You probably miss him, too. It’s not your fault. Known him your whole life. Probably can’t help but feel some affection for the man. After all, he was like a big brother to you.
No, he wasn’t.
Well, all I’m saying is that it’s not your fault. So don’t feel bad if you do.
I don’t.
Only stands to reason. Hell. I probably would, too—if I were you, I mean. He was always nice to you.
Never let me ride on the tractor.
That was because of me.
I looked up, surprised.
Nothing for you to hold on to.
Missus Orbach appeared in front of Ivey’s—which was unexpected. We’d been sitting there, squinting in the sun coming over the buildings across the street, for a good half hour, and I hadn’t seen her go in. She set her shopping bag down and took a moment to straighten her dress and put on her sunglasses. I leaped into the air at the sight of Derrick emerging from the double doors behind her. No sooner did I have the D sound shaped in my mouth than Missus Orbach picked back up her shopping bag and said, Come along, boys. We don’t want to keep Danny waiting. Vincent, you’ve got your shorts? Don’t swing your goggles like that, Cal. You’ll break them.
Derrick walked off without a word. I was stunned. I wanted to show off my cast. It had been two weeks, and he still hadn’t seen it. I stood there smiling ear to ear, waving my cast overhead, but he just looked straight through me. It was as if he hadn’t recognized me. Half a block down, Missus Orbach and Derrick and Vincent and Calvin all piled into her wagon. I pressed one nostril with my thumb and blew snot from the other, then wandered over to the cool shade of Mister Brines’s awning and wondered if I’d seen right.
Theodore Krasinski had curly blond locks, plump pink cheeks, and candy-apple red lips that framed a constant smile. He was a dead ringer for those plump, cherub-like renderings of the Christ child you see all over the place. No matter the nonstop ribbing he suffered for being such an insufferable little suck-up, he stoutly remained the happiest, most pleasantly disposed and good-natured kid in town. Everyone loved him. Anyway, Theo appeared behind Mister Brines’s plate-glass door sporting a brand-new dive mask. He hopped down from the front stoop and waved.
Danny made nationals! He’s gotta head back to campus tomorrow for time trials. We’re all getting one last swim in today! See ya there!
I’d been nursing that cough drop for the last half hour, and then, just like that, it slipped down my throat. Missus Orbach drove past. I stood still as a statue. I struggled to find it in me to wave. I just couldn’t. Danny was gone? Already? One look at Dad and I knew it was true. Open or not, there was no way that he was going to let me swim in that pool as long as they hadn’t caught the trespassers. I’d only gotten to visit Mister Abrams’s pool three times that summer—so few times it hardly seemed to register as a genuine experience. So few times I could almost trick myself into believing that I’d only imagined it. More than the actual visits to the pool, what stuck out was the depth of my yearning for more. I was a boy of words. Many, many, words. And they all, every last one of them, felt dead in my mouth. It was my last chance to visit Mister Abrams’s pool for another year.
And to top it off, Theodore was twirling his dive mask by its strap on his way down the sidewalk. As that black snorkel skipped off merrily down the street beside his mom’s shifting skirt, tears burst from my eyes, and I hurled my bundle of fliers at Dad. Why on earth do you care who broke into that damned pool so much? No one else does!
Tell you what—how about after harvest, whaddya say you and me, we take a little drive up to the old reservoir out by the county line. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
He was talking about Lake Offal. That was where the colored kids learned to swim. Toby’d bragged once about how when he was my age, he just dove in and swam clear across it his first time out. Which gave me goosebumps just thinking about it. Every September, after weeks of heavy rain, its tributaries rose by more than three feet, and at least one person got sucked into its undertow, never to be seen or heard from again.
Phooey. Stop with your damned sulking. It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be. Some swim in pools, others swim in rivers and lakes and inlets and such. What the hell difference does it make? I tell ya, you gotta be open-minded these days, son. Because the world’s a-changing. Every day it’s a-changing. Changing. Changing. Changing. Now, I know what you’re thinking. But I’m telling you, what was not acceptable yesterday may be perfectly reasonable today. That’s the way of the world. Someone’s gotta take the first step. We’ll just take an inner tube along and it oughta be fine.
A truck skidded past and veered wildly in the middle of the street. Dad jerked me back from the curb as Mister Bradford’s eldest son, Kyle, leaned out of the window and hollered something at me, then raced off down the street. The episode had lasted all of ten seconds, but somehow I’d experienced the wild-eyed look on Kyle’s face in slow motion. Along with the smoke spewing from his tires. And hands covering my ears. The pavement was scarred with black streaks, and a fog of exhaust fumes hung in the air. The crowd gathered across the street was still and quiet. Their collective gaze seemed to be on me. Dad lifted his hands from my ears and the distant grunt of a flathead V8 echoed from a mile away. Dad stepped into the street and checked to make sure that Kyle wasn’t coming back, then stepped back onto the sidewalk and started picking up sheets of yellow construction paper.
Kyle’s just pissed that he got a 4-F classification. The army won’t even let him stamp envelopes. But that’s not your fault, okay? Kyle’s an asshole. Always has been. I don’t care what he says. Your daddy’s white, which makes you white. You know that, right?