THE ORBACHS, KRASINSKIS, AND SCHAEFERS shared Miss Della. She might have worked for others, but those were the three I knew about. Later that week, I was on my way out to clean the henhouse when she came running up the road, waving her hands like it was about to rain and our laundry was still up. She called out for me to get Mom. I tossed a handful of dirt and feathers into a garbage can and told her that she was inside. Mom poked her head around the front door. Miss Della labored up the stoop. Next thing I knew, Mom disappeared inside Miss Della’s arms.
Are you sure you heard right?
I’m sure, baby doll. I’m sure.
I went about my business of scrubbing the slimy black-and-white chicken shit from the walls, frustrated with how long it was taking with just one arm. The henhouse was dimly lit, and there was crap everywhere: on the side of the water jug, in their food, even on their eggs. Loose feathers shifted at the slightest movement so that I practically had to corner each one.
When I stepped out for air, the two of them were still standing in the sliver of shade beneath the rusty metal awning, rocking back and forth. Miss Della was holding Mom still, and tears were streaming down Mom’s face. I had never seen her cry like that. Miss Della let go and rushed past me and hollered out from the road, saying how she wished she could stay, but she couldn’t afford to be late. And to turn on the news—that was the main thing. She kept repeating herself on her way up the road, urging Mom to check the news. Telling her that it was on TV and everything.
Mom called me inside. As curious as I was, I also kinda didn’t really want to know what was going on. I hollered out that I was busy and demanded to know how I was ever gonna finish up, what with her calling me in every other minute. Mom stormed down the steps and snatched the scrubber and hose out of my hand, tossed them aside, and marched me inside.
She disappeared into the next room. She and Dad huddled in front of the TV and clicked through the channels. They settled on one and just stood there. No sooner had I shoved past them than Mom turned the TV off and left the room. Dad followed after her. I went up to it and was standing with the power knob in my fingertips when Mom reentered the den. I was covered in loose feathers, cobwebs, and chicken shit. She sat me down in Dad’s easy chair and knelt down in front of me. She told me that there had been a tragic accident in the peach grove adjacent to the Camelot.
Toby fell from a ladder.
Is he okay?
No. Mom didn’t say this so much as squeak it.
Well, how’d it happen?
He was fixing Mister Buford’s weather vane, and he slipped.
Is he dead?
Mom wiped at her eyes and nodded. Yes.
I fiddled with the button dimpling the section of seat cushion between my thighs, then looked up. I felt like an idiot for not knowing how to react. Mom’s chest collapsed.
Listen, baby. People are going to talk. And they’re going to say all kinds of stuff. But I want you to remember that it was an accident, okay? Just a silly old accident that could have happened to anybody.
The button was fastened to the seat cushion by a single loop of stretched-out thread. I tugged on it and fell back in the chair, having decided that she was lying. Mom stroked the top of my head and got up.
I’m going to make some collard greens and corn bread. Do you want some?
I shook my head at the TV. A wordless moment passed before I realized that she was still standing there, staring down at me.
Well, we’re going to take some over to Irma. Okay?
Who’s that?
Missus Muncie.
Toby had mentioned her once or twice, but only in passing. Our TV was the shape of a peach crate, with three big knobs that clicked like a ratchet when I turned them. I looked back at it and nodded. I continued staring at it amid the sound of pots and pans clanging around in the kitchen, then got up to see what Mom was doing. She was wiping spilled batter from the counter. Dad was pacing behind her, going on about how her principal defect was that she always just settled for any old pot within reach, and when was it going to occur to her that if she just dug around in the back of the cupboard a little more she’d find something better suited to her purpose. I turned back to the TV, but didn’t dare touch it.
• • •
MOM HAD DUG out a notebook for me earlier that morning. She wanted me to write my feelings down in it. Actually, she was trying to get me to express pretty much any feeling. I dunno. I guess maybe I just felt a little numb by then and had clammed up. Anyway, I was sitting in the den writing in it when Dad poked his head in the door. He lifted it out of my hand and said that my Ts looked like Fs and my Ss looked like twos, then asked if I wanted to go for a little drive. Said getting out some might do me good.
When I asked where to, Dad explained that Mister Orbach was short-staffed and could use some help. Our phone had been ringing off the hook all morning. Mom was standing in the doorway behind him with the steaming iron in her hand, demanding to know how he could think of work at a time like this. Dad said he was as sorry as anyone, but that life still went on for the rest of us. Mom said she knew. Which was why he should drop us off at Irma’s and not stay himself. It wouldn’t take her but a half hour to finish with her hair and get the food ready, if that.
I put my notebook down and followed Mom to her room. I leaned against the doorjamb and watched her change into a dress, wondering what I’d have done if I’d stumbled upon a dead body instead of that can of Mister Nelson’s moonshine. I pictured the investigators taking me to the precinct downtown and sitting me down in a smoke-filled room and offering me a cigarette while grilling me about where I had been just before having found the body and where I had been headed and all sorts of other questions. Then I imagined Toby’s eyes open as he lay there and knew that I’d have pissed myself and fled.
• • •
ATLANTA GAS LIGHT Company was replacing old gas pipes around town, and the mile-long trench running alongside Oglethorpe looked like an open wound of red dirt. Mister Barnsdale was bicycling down the road with his fishing pole dangling from one hand. Dad tapped the horn, and I waved.
It was nice to be just me and Dad together in the truck. Mom was a bundle of nerves and had been driving both of us crazy. For once in her life, she’d been all ready to go, dressed up and everything, but Dad refused her—said it wasn’t safe. Everybody in town was hunkering down with the curtains pulled and the doors locked, waiting for the storm to pass. He told her to do the same.
The sun was out and the sky was crystal clear. I didn’t know what storm Dad was talking about. I didn’t understand why he’d been so nervous about dropping off Mom at the Muncies’—until we hit Cordele Road. Coloreds were pouring down the roadside in numbers I’d never seen. Field hands were a common sight on this stretch of Cordele, especially on weekends, when they headed into town. But never like this. Especially not on a weekday.
Dad put on the brakes. The flood of field hands, stock clerks, and service women taking up half the road weren’t paying attention to where they were walking. Dad slowed down some more, careful not to bump Mister Goolsbee, hobbling along with his boy at his side. We passed Aurelia. And Mister Swanson, too. He didn’t even bother to look at me, which was unusual—he was one of the nicest men I knew. I leaned out the window and waved at him, but it was impossible to get his attention.
The further we got down Cordele Road, the more there were. I wanted to say something to Dad but wasn’t sure what. They were filing in from every side road, access road, footpath, and walking bridge in sight. Some were crossing over from the surrounding fields, past stacks of peanuts drying under the morning sun. Some were alone or in pairs. Others were in small groups. Women filed out of rundown shacks with babies in their arms and small children at their sides. They turned in from Jackson Street. Others appeared from within Mister Brumeier’s pecan orchard. Another group was turning at Front, being the final turnoff before the covered bridge. All of them looked grim as they boiled over the sides of the road, with peanut stacks spread out over the fields on either side of them.
I struggled to take it all in. Dad zigzagged around them slowly, offering them as wide a berth as he could. We shared a quiet moment as we made our way through the throng of people. We continued past a procession of dusty side roads interspersed with Pentecostal churches and still more peanut fields. Dad nodded, but didn’t explain what they were doing or why they were there or where they were going. He didn’t have to. It was all right there in front of me, just as plain as day. I knew without having to ask. That road only went to one place. It was in the trample of their feet—this was for Toby.
We forked off at a side road, and Dad picked up speed. The very last of the coloreds disappeared in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t shake the picture in my head of Toby sprawled out on his back next to Mister Buford’s barn, dead. I pulled my head in from the window and wiped the dust from my eyes.
Did he die right away?
Who?
Toby.
I have no idea.
I wonder if he suffered.
Dad shook his head. I doubt it.
Well, who found him?
Probably Lance, I imagine. It’s his orchard, right?
Last night or this morning?
Jesus, Huey. What difference does it make?
Remember the time he was climbing up the ladder with an armful of shingles we’d picked up for him in town? Remember that? And when he got to the very top of it, how he leaned against the side of our house and set the stack of shingles atop the roof with only one foot still touching the topmost rung of the ladder? And how you went out and warned him to be careful—said it was still slippery and you couldn’t afford to have him break his neck? And how he laughed and told you to go back to your TV show, because he’d worked atop that ladder since before he could walk? And how you came back inside and assured Mom that he knew his way around a ladder better than any monkey?
What in the hell are you trying to say?
How could someone as good at climbing a ladder as Toby fall from one?
It was probably dark out.
That’s what I thought. But—
But nothing. Even monkeys slip and fall.
We clattered up to a fingerpost leaning in a tuft of crabgrass on the side of the road. It was an unfamiliar stretch of road to me. I asked Dad what the GA in HWY GA 331 stood for. He stared at me like I was dumb as bricks. Off in the distance a dust cloud–enshrouded combine was moving slowly over the horizon. Dad sighed and said that Toby was a good man, but that even good men lose their footing and make mistakes, then pulled forward.
Half a mile up, Mister Daley’s field ended and the Orbachs’ field began. Dad eased right at the first turnoff and continued along a stretch that ran parallel with another of their fields. A little further up, a squat house came into view. It was set back from the road and appeared lonely for the absence of any other houses around it. Its rickety front porch seemed to be propping it up. A yellow curtain slid back. A very old colored woman peered out from behind a busted-out window.
Mister Orbach had fields all over. He had all kinds of equipment, fancy irrigation systems, and lots of people working for him. The only thing we had had over Mister Orbach was Toby. Anyway, the little ripples in the road rocked me as I gazed out at the rows of peanut vines fanning out as far as I could see. I wanted to ask Dad why he was so eager to help someone who never did anything for us. I turned from the window and stared at him.
What’s the matter now?
Derrick called me a half-breed once.
Derrick said that?
Called me a scraggly-haired muffin-top half-breed.
Your hair ain’t curly.
That’s what I said.
Nothing a haircut can’t fix.
Toby said I could straighten it if I didn’t like it. Said it just burns a little. Said a spoonful of mom’s bergamot would do the trick.
A haircut’s better. We’ll get you a haircut.
Said that’s all Mom does all day, is burn colored people’s hair straight. Said that’s all her life has amounted to—trying to get colored people’s hair as straight as yours. But Mama says mine doesn’t even need bergamot. She thinks it’s perfect just the way it is.
You want it as short as mine? Nice and flat on top. Here, feel mine. Flat and stiff as a horse brush is how I like it. You like that? We can do the same for you.
Day and night. Burn, burn, burn. Toby said that’s all she does.
You’ve got a lot more to be proud of than you think.
I turned back to the fields. They looked burnt, too.
Other than my hair, you mean?
Like your great grampa, that’s what. That should mean something to you. It does to everyone else.
That’s your grampa.
You want to know about your mother’s, is that it? Well, you know that her grampa used to work for us.
You mean, for you.
What?
He didn’t work for Mama. He worked for you.
And you know that her mother did, too.
What was she like?
For crying out loud—I was your age, son. You can’t honestly expect me to remember. Seemed nice enough, though.
What about her dad?
She never got to meet him. Because—well, damn it, he pissed off with someone else. Say, what is this?
Dad looked over, frustrated. We clattered up to a line of cars and trucks and wagons and tractors parked alongside Mister Orbach’s field. Mister Bigelow, Mister Daley, and several others stood out in the field in coveralls, smoking cigarettes and chatting.
Dad slapped the shifter.
Listen, Huey. Your mother’s proud as hell of her grampa. She really is. But she still thanks the Lord that you’re a Fairchild. You know that, right? So whenever I talk about “Grampa” or “Great Grampa” or anyone like that, it’s my folks I’m talking about. Okay?
A thresher sat in the middle of the field. It was like a giant wooden jalopy humping along full-bore, rattling and shimmying and wobbling like it was about to go off the rails. Dad got out and headed over to it. He shook hands and cracked jokes. He had to shout over the thresher’s loud rattling.
Mister Orbach had been out since first light. He wanted to know if we’d seen any of his hands on the way.
I wriggled up front.
I saw ’em. Hundreds of ’em.
A thick cloud of diesel exhaust hung in the air. The thresher was engulfed in a haze of gauzy light. Mister Bigelow emerged from the side of it, dragging a sack of peanuts behind him. He pulled it up to my side and, having placed it into my care, slapped straw and dirt from his coveralls. He shook his head and asked what I was doing with a soldering mask on.
It wasn’t a soldering mask. But I kept quiet and didn’t say anything—it was easier that way. Bits of peanut hay hung suspended in the air, and the ground was covered with the stuff. I stood there struggling to keep that hundred-pound gunnysack from falling over, all the while scratching the crud out from under my cast. I raked my fingernails over the skin just above my cast so hard red streaks covered the entire top half of my arm.
Dad came over and helped me get some of the grime out from under it, cursing Mom for not having put me in long sleeves. Mister Bigelow stood there shoveling dried peanut vines into the mouth of the thresher with a pitchfork, harping on to anyone who’d listen about how Toby was to blame for everything from the sticky heat to lousy contract prices.
Lord knows how you put up with that boy for so long.
Dad pulled me aside, looked me up and down gravely, and asked me how I was doing. I looked over his shoulder at the men working the thresher, then said that I was doing fine. Dad nodded, pleased. He asked if I knew the way home. The broken-down farm equipment scattered along the rutted road and collected in the drainage ditches seemed to point the way.
Dad dug into his pocket and pulled out some money. He stuffed a dollar bill into my hand. I stared down at it, then peeked up, wondering what it all meant. I didn’t ask because I was overcome with the spooky suspicion that I already knew. It was more money than he’d ever given me at one time. I unfolded it and held it in both hands. George Washington’s mouth was pressed closed tight, like he was hiding those grim-looking teeth of his from me. I suppose everybody’s got something they’re ashamed of. I put the bill up to my nose. It smelled like kerosene. Dad reminded me that whatever I’d heard any of the others say, they were still our closest neighbors and friends, then patted my ass and told me to run along.
Straight as an arrow. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Is that clear?
Dad didn’t want me hearing the sort of language Mister Orbach and the others were using. Mom had asked him a gazillion times not to use it around me. Called it poison. It was more than a pet peeve with her—it was the one wish of hers that she demanded he respect. I’d stood by his side watching as she made him promise, wondering what the big deal was. He wasn’t the only one. There was just something about it that seemed a little like trying to mop up the Mississippi.
It’s because of what Mister Orbach said, isn’t it? All that “nigger” talk—nigger this and nigger that; nigger, nigger, nigger—isn’t it?
Dad knelt down and held me in his eyes. Yes.
I ain’t gonna rat you out, Pop! I promise! I ain’t a snitch. Don’t you believe me? You gotta believe me. I swear I won’t tell! Please! Don’t make me go! I don’t wanna go! I wanna stay with you!
The fucker just looked at me, then returned to the others. He didn’t have anything else to say. The thresher was shaking and creaking like a popcorn popper. Mister Bigelow was standing beside the chute, filling the sack in both his hands, holding it under a whir of peanuts spraying out. He powered it down and joined Dad, who was sitting beside Mister Orbach on the rusty rear bumper of our sun-faded mustard-yellow truck.
I stormed off toward the thresher and kicked over a peanut-filled sack, then another and another, until eight were lying on their side with heaps of peanuts spilled out everywhere. I expected Dad to come over and whup my ass. But he didn’t. No one even noticed. Dad was sitting there with Mister Bigelow, Mister Orbach, and several others gathered around him, going on about all we’d seen on the drive there. He asked Mister Orbach when was the last time that anyone had done a census count of all the niggers living out in the shady back wood outside town? Because all of a sudden it seemed like there were more niggers than white people in Akersburg. There had been more than he could shake a stick at on our way there. They’d seemed to come out of the goddamned woodwork. And frankly, he didn’t know we had that many.
I kicked over the last standing sack of peanuts and headed off. Dad had intended for me to take the bus. He didn’t say it—the dollar did. I preferred to save the money and walk. When I got to the main road, several colored boys were walking up ahead in the direction of town, carrying armfuls of placards and pickets. I hollered out for them to wait up, figuring that if we were going in the same direction, I’d walk with them. They didn’t seem to hear me. So I held back and let them continue on by themselves.
A car sped past, so close I’d had to step down into the sheer slope of the road’s narrow shoulder to avoid getting hit. Twenty yards down, its brake lights flared, and it pulled over. I didn’t recognize it, but I ran up to the window anyway. It was an old Dodge. It had a black-and-white handshake painted on the door—which gave me pause. That was not something I saw every day. The driver talked like the president.
What?
Town, boy. The way to town.
I pointed. He asked if I needed a lift. The front passenger’s seat was empty, but three coloreds were crouched down in the backseat, so low I almost didn’t see them. I stepped back. No, thank you.
The car pulled back onto the road. Why those coloreds were hiding in the backseat was beyond me. Besides, town was so close I could walk there blindfolded.
There were Pentecostal churches up and down this stretch of Cordele Road. Along the far edge of a field sat a row of bungalows connected like barracks. They sat sort of lopsided and were boarded up and empty. Two old colored men were sitting on the front stoop of one, beside the posts from which livestock and slaves had once washed. Everything out this way was beaten down, half dead. Two toddlers were running around naked, chasing each other in play. The droopy-eyed old men watched as I passed by.
A street sign down the road was pocked with bullet holes. I stopped and marveled at how the sun glinted off the peeled-back metal where the bullets had torn through. Some colored boys walked up. They said that I looked to be a few feet shy of the deep end and laughed.
I snatched off my dive mask. I didn’t realize that I still had it on. Dad had warned me against bringing it—said it made me look like a goofball. I told him I couldn’t see a thing without it because the thresher spewed so much crap everywhere I had to cover my eyes just to get within ten feet of the thing. All that grime and soot floating in the air made me tear up. That’s what clinched it. Dad had practically put it on me himself—couldn’t stand the sight of tears. Still, I felt like an idiot.
The boys continued down the road without me. I wondered, as if for the first time, if being a loner was such a bad thing. I gave the faceplate a spit shine and put it back on. I decided that it wasn’t.
A narrow band of road stretched out in front of me for as far as I could see. Telephone poles lined the roadside, and drooping wire hung from pole to pole. I headed down the road and thought about how the one picture I had of me and Mom had been taken by Toby when he was a teenager. Mom would always tell me about how she had set me atop the roof of our truck in nothing but diapers and told me to hold still. I’d banged my heels on the windshield, crying my eyes out, because it was hot. Mom told Toby to snap it anyway. It didn’t matter that the truck didn’t have an engine or that I was pouty. She was proud of us both.
I followed Donner Road all the way up to Frontage Road, past my school. Crows were feeding in the adjacent field. Mister Daley rumbled past on one of Mister Orbach’s tractors, with two trailers in tow piled high with peanut pods sifting down in thin drifts. Mister Daley didn’t see me, so I chased after him and shouted, hoping to catch a lift. He disappeared around the bend going so fast his left side lifted. I tossed a clump of the dirt he’d trailed at the crows and wondered what the heck he was in such a hurry for.
The muddy brown water of the Thronateeska threaded in and out of view behind each slowly passing alfalfa crop. After I’d walked half an hour along Oglethorpe, a cathedral of pine trees converged high overhead. Inside, gauzy bands of light shone through the branches and between the papery trunks of the birch trees lining the side of the road. I hesitated at the sight of a fingerpost leaning out.
It had been fashioned from an oar. Much of the paint had faded, but most of the letters were legible. It fell over on my way past. Fifty yards in, I pulled down a slumping fence and cut through tall stalks of grass. Exposed cinder blocks and tattered beige shingles peeked out from the thinning foliage up ahead. I headed around a derelict clapboard building, not at all convinced that it was the school that the sign had indicated.
I brushed back cobwebs and peeked into a dark window. The interior was completely gutted. I clapped the dirt and flakes of paint from my hands. The building opened onto a glade around back. Two colored boys were stooped over in the middle of a grassy field, with their backs to me. They caught me off guard—I thought I was alone. They looked no different than any of the other hundred or so colored boys who lived in Akersburg—or was it a thousand? I couldn’t really say. All I knew was that I didn’t have much to do with any of them. Neither did Dad. But Mom was different.
Around them a sea of lush grass and clover bent gently under the breeze. They were combing through the grass, looking for something. I walked up to them and just stood there. They raked their fingers through the grass, and every now and again, one of them plucked a little purple flower hidden under the clover or between thin blades of grass and laid it gently into the ball cap sitting between them.
Whatcha doing?
Neither answered.
Hey, you’re Goolsbee’s boy—Evan, right?
The boy shook his head no and continued raking his fingers through the grass.
Yes, you are. I saw you walking with him just this morning. Dontcha remember me? I was at Goolsbee’s shop when those men came.
He ignored me. I stood up, exasperated. I knew it was him.
Fine. But there’s a flower shop in town, you know—Missus Henniger’s. She’s got much nicer ones than these. I knocked my sneaker against the ball cap. Evan picked out another flower from the grass and gently laid it inside. When he didn’t look up, I pulled out my dollar bill and held it out to him.
You can buy a lot of tulips and roses with one of these. What’s wrong? Dontcha want something bigger and brighter than these? I got plenty more where this came from. I don’t even want it. Honestly, I prefer the crisp, new ones. Go on. Take it. Listen, goddamnit. I’m only trying to save you the trouble of having to dig around on your hands and knees in the dirt for some little piece-of-shit flowers. Hell, I know old Goolsbee ain’t paying you nothing anymore. So you may as well take it, because it’ll probably be a while before you see another. You’d better take it before I change my mind. Lord knows I’m only doing it out of the goodness of my heart—
Evan stood up and took a swing at me.
Christ! Whaddya think you’re doin’? Can’t you see I’m only trying to help? Besides, I got a cast on, you idiot! You come one step closer and I’m knocking you to smithereens! I’m warning you! One blow from this and you’re out like a light!
Evan yanked me to the ground. I was swinging my cast wildly, trying to knock him in the head with it, but he somehow managed to wrestle himself on top of me. His friend was pulling on him from behind.
Get off him, Evan! Goddamnit, he knows your face! Now he’s gonna tell his daddy, and everyone in town is gonna come after us, just like they did your daddy! You hear me? You let go of him right now!
You know how many times I seen him and that goofy white boy with the glasses walking past old man Goolsbee’s on their way back from swimming? You know how many years I’ve wanted to catch this here little fucker alone? And now I got him! And I ain’t letting go, so help me God, until I’ve broken his arm in two!
Evan slammed my cast against the ground.
You’re a crazy fool, Evan! A crazy fool! He ain’t moving anymore. Check his pulse! I think you killed him! Christ, Evan! He’s dead! Cantcha see the boy’s dead? I ain’t gonna be here when they come for you, Evan!
I must have passed out from the pain and then come to. I was vaguely aware of Evan’s friend’s voice. He hollered something, then turned tail and ran. I could hear the padding sound of his sneakers over the grass. Evan let go of my arm and squeezed my neck just above my Adam’s apple. My eyes popped open. I was choking.
Say mercy!
It’s hard to talk when you can’t breathe.
Mmmmmrie!
I had only been able to say the first letter; the rest had come out as a wheezing sound. He rolled off me, then got up and stood there looking down at me, heaving. He leaned over and picked up the ball cap, then stepped on my dive mask as he walked off.
• • •
I LIMPED ALONG the train tracks running alongside east Oglethorpe, feeling around for my teeth. My cast had split at the elbow, and the plaster was unraveling around my thumb. The skin around it was pink, and my arm was completely numb. I tried to imagine myself crawling through a tangle of crabgrass with a broken neck on the slim chance that if I made it to the roadside someone might see me lying there. That must have been what it was like for Toby. It wasn’t until I was standing in the middle of the railroad bridge that it hit me who all those purple flowers were for. Mister Barnsdale was farther down toward the Baker County side, sitting in the sun with his feet propped up on the iron railing, jiggling his fishing pole. I leaned over one of the crossbeams and gazed down at the slow-moving river below. I sat down, pooped.
I shook the dirt out of my hair and slipped my dive mask back on. I didn’t give a damn that it was completely busted and now lacked a faceplate. It helped me think. Besides, it was fixable. Everything was fixable. That was the first tenet of my life—right alongside its companion tenets, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” and “Try harder.” My thoughts were as muddy as the Thronateeska, thinking about Evan: how all these years we hadn’t spoken two words between us and still he hated me to bits. How I’d always seen him standing in Goolsbee’s doorway wearing that crummy old Dodgers cap low over his eyes, with that heavy black stone cutter’s apron draped from his neck and all that putrid dust from the cut stones settling on him like a layer of silt. God only knows how he put up with it.
And then the fear that his friend had of me telling on them. Tell on them? Christ, I was still trying to figure out how I was gonna explain my messed-up arm to Dad. I wondered if maybe Evan had broke it again because my fingers were fat and blue. I tried to wiggle them, but they just sort of hung there, limp and lifeless. They hurt too much for me to even scrape out the dirt crammed under my fingernails. I knew that if I said the slightest thing about that to Dad, he’d probably just think that I was trying to get out of doing work and say, Of course it hurts. It’s broke. It’s supposed to hurt. Not to mention that no one that I knew had ever got his ass whupped by a colored boy. It just didn’t happen.
Then there was that bit Evan tossed out about me and Derrick strolling past on our way back from Mister Abrams’s pool with our towels slung over our necks and our hair still wet, taunting him. Which, of course, was true. Except that it was always Derrick who laughed and yelled out that there was plenty of water for him to cool himself by under the river bridge. I was the one flipping him the bird—at which point Evan’s eyes would darken, and he’d disappear inside the doorway amid the shriek of Mister Goolsbee’s power saw.
A fire engine bellowed down Cordele Road behind me. It must have come all the way from Blakely because we didn’t have our own. Wherever it was going, it was in an awful hurry to get there. I checked the sky for any sign of smoke, wondering what had burnt down now. There was none. Mister Barnsdale had a bottle propped between his legs, and he was reeling something in. He looked at me blankly, as if he didn’t know what to make of the wailing siren trailing off in the direction of town, either. He propped up his fishing rod and left that poor little fish dangling there on the end of the line as he stood up, unzipped his fly, and pissed in a long arc. He hiccuped and said, Captain Nemo, am I right?
Mister Barnsdale had a big grin on his face. He shook his head, shrugged off the noise echoing out from the fire engine, and sat back down. Not me. I ran after it—or at least I attempted to. My legs were so stiff I slipped between the railroad ties and damn near fell into the river. Mister Barnsdale seemed to enjoy that immensely. He laughed, held his bottle out to me, and declared that it was a little early for Halloween.
I limped past and told him that if Mama ever saw him pissing in that spot it’d be the last time he pissed in anything. I headed up the slippery embankment and hobbled down the adjacent road just as fast as my legs could carry me. A hundred yards down my arm started to throb so bad my eyes teared up. A bus whooshed past. I stopped. Another one just like it was barreling down the road behind it. I jumped up and down and waved, trying to flag it down, but it blew past me, too.
So there I was, standing on the side of the road, covered in dried sweat and bits of sticky grass, with both of my pockets stuffed with shards of glass from my busted-up dive mask that I’d rescued from the dirt. My cast was covered in dirt and jangled around my arm like a bangle that I could rotate halfway around in both directions. A column of wild flowers like the ones Evan and his friend had been picking were poking out from the rock bed between railroad ties running alongside the road. I picked one and looked it over. Damned thing wasn’t even that pretty.
I limped down the middle of Cordele Road, past chunks of dried tractor mud lying on the pavement, praying for another car to come so I could hitch a ride. I passed the charred ruins of Mister Goolsbee’s—still no car. The Camelot looked abandoned. Still no car. I was so hungry I plucked a dandelion and chewed on its stem to tide me over till home, only to discover that the milky gunk inside made the inside of my cheeks raw, and no matter how much I spit, I couldn’t get the acrid taste out of my mouth. I rounded the bend where Cordele turns into Main Street and stopped. Missus Foley was a mild-mannered white woman who wore glasses and kept her hair in a tidy bob. She was a calm, pleasant woman who was always very nice to me whenever I saw her at the pool. She was running up the road at full speed, heading in my direction, with her baby carriage bobbling in front of her.
A hundred yards behind her, a patrol car sat parked with its lights flashing. It had pulled over the two buses that had passed me back at the railroad bridge. The deputy was nowhere in sight, but Mister Buford seemed to have things under control. He was manhandling a colored man who’d stepped off one of the buses. A group of white men were gathered around in a semicircle, cheering him on. The colored man was banging on the door, trying to get back on the bus, but he couldn’t. The driver had shut it and wouldn’t open it back up for him. He jerked the bus into gear and pulled away. The colored man grabbed a hold of the sideview mirror. One of Mister Buford’s cronies took him by the legs and tried to yank him down. The bus lunged forward and carried the colored man off with it; the man holding on to his legs let go. The bus stopped twenty yards down, and the door popped open. The colored man leaped in with the help of several others inside. Mister Buford and his cronies were hurling rocks and yelled out for it never to return.
I had advanced a hundred yards and was now standing very near to the northernmost edge of downtown Akersburg, the town where I was raised—the one that I knew more than any other and loved with all my heart. I must stress this point, because I feel that it deserves emphasizing. It was the last block of storefronts on Main Street before town tapered off into the quaint countryside filled with rolling hills and orchards from which I’d emerged. A crowd of townspeople were lined up along the two blocks that mark the picturesque entrance to town, not far from a sign that read:
WELCOME TO AKERSBURG
POP. 3,708
They were shouting and yelling for the second bus to turn around and go home, too. Only there was nowhere for it to go. It was stuck in the mud on the side of the road, rocking back and forth, trying to free itself from a ditch. I took an impulsive step back and bumped into Mister Pendleton. He was Darla’s dad. I think he was a lawyer or judge or something, but it could just have been that he wore bifocals and smoked a pipe. Anyway, Darla was nowhere in sight, and her dad, who had bought boiled peanuts from me once or twice, rested a hand on my shoulder and wrinkled his face at the sight of the bus. He said something that I couldn’t make out over all the shouting going on and the cry of the bus’s grinding gears. I only heard Missus Thomas, standing beside me holding a half-filled grocery bag, say Really?
Next thing I knew, ten other grown-ups were standing around me. We were all waiting to see what that bus was going to do next, because people were throwing stuff at it—anything they could find, really. Mister Pendleton was explaining to Missus Thomas that it had gotten stuck trying to make a U-turn on the narrow, two-lane road. Of course it was. Anyone could see that. It was blocking half of the road, just sitting there like a beached whale. He pointed and said that it had pulled too far forward, and the front tire had gotten stuck in the drainage ditch running alongside Cordele. The road was much too narrow for it to swing all the way around in a U-turn without backing up halfway through the maneuver. He was explaining everything to Missus Thompson like she was a complete idiot.
The bus’s gears crunched, and the engine was hissing and moaning and making all sorts of strained noises, but the driver didn’t appear to be getting anywhere. People were starting to trickle in from Main Street. They were lining up alongside the bus, and some were coaxing others into rocking it sideways, even as its engine roared and its wheels spun free. Others didn’t need convincing. They jubilantly joined in. I had the strange sensation that they weren’t going to be happy until they’d tipped that bus like it was a cow. I could tell that things weren’t going to end well for the people on the bus, and I didn’t want to be around to see it.
Having started toward Main Street, I was heading upstream, against the kind of influx of people I’d seen during Buskin Brothers’s annual limited-time-only end-of-year everything-must-go we-will-not-be-undersold closeout sale. When I got there, I was shocked to discover even more of an uproar than the one I had just fled. Cars were lined up in both directions. Some were pulling in from side streets. Others were parked at odd angles. Some sat with their doors flung open, abandoned. People were swarming among them on their way down the street. I knew I had to get out of there but wasn’t sure where to go. That’s when I saw the patrol car. It was parked in front of the Laundromat. I ran up to it, but the sheriff wasn’t inside and the radio handset was sitting on the bench seat, squawking, with a voice on the other end hollering out, Mayday! Mayday! Alpha One, do you copy?
The car behind me was getting its windows bashed in. Someone jumped on the patrol car’s roof, directly above me. A crowbar suddenly appeared right before my eyes. It had smashed through the windshield like a pickax. I backed out and hopped atop the rear bumper of a neighboring car. It was one of those long turquoise sedans with a spacious trunk. I grabbed a hold of it by the tail fin. Main Street is as flat as a pancake and cars were lined up, bumper to bumper, as far as I could see. A man was climbing the streetlamp on the sidewalk beside me, and several others were standing on the rooftops across the street. Two men were shouting out to them from atop the Paramount theater’s marquee. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and I had no idea what they were doing, until I realized that they were all looking in the same direction. One of them was even pointing, like a barrelman who, having spotted land from high up in a galleon’s crow’s nest, leans out into the breeze, pointing at it. The red light of the patrol car swept over a crowd of people concentrated beneath the Coca-Cola sign hanging from a beam-and-cable line. I caught sight of something in the front window of S&W for a split second but quickly lost it amid all the waving placards. There were too many in the way to be sure what it was. I was sure that I hadn’t seen right. But it looked like—well, I figured it was probably just Tyler.
I scurried onto the sedan’s trunk. Dad would murder me for pulling a stunt like that, but I didn’t care. Well above the crowd now, I cupped my hand over my eyes and craned my neck to see around the raised signs and placards swaying back and forth, blocking my view. Having gotten a glimpse of what was going on, I hopped down and bolted straight for it. I shoved my way under a thick band of yellow tape and into the tightly packed crowd. I was one of hundreds of people packed into that small section of Main Street, struggling for a view of all that was going on. An uproar of catcalls erupted. I strained for another glimpse and jumped to see if I could possibly make out anything more, but buzz cuts and ball caps and ponytails blocked my view. It was no use. The only thing I could make out were the placards clapping, smacking, and knocking up against each other, and the beam-and-cable line of the sign overhead. Glass crunched underfoot as I inched closer to it. I pressed on and squeezed through jostling arms and elbows. The massive and chaotic collection of shifting people up in arms grew more dense with every step, until at last it was impenetrable. The Coca-Cola sign was directly overhead. So I got down on all fours and went for it. I hadn’t crawled five feet, zigzagging my way through a dense thicket of denim jeans, saddle shoes, bobby socks, and high-tops when my arm gave out. A purse crashed down atop my head.
What’d I tell you about creeping around, boy?!
I stood up.
Missus Orbach? Thank God!
She had on a polka-dot dress with pins up and down one side; she must’ve been in the middle of a fitting. She jerked me toward her and pinned me up against the storefront window. I assumed she was trying to shelter me from all the craziness. Mister Rinkel, the tailor, was standing beside us with a tape measure flapping wildly around his neck as he banged on the plate-glass window and yelled, Boooo! Go home!
He was shouting at the people inside, and his constant hollering was distracting me from whatever it was that Missus Orbach was trying to tell me. The neon Coca-Cola sign in the window was turned off and it was dark inside. Directly behind it, one, two, three—four coloreds were sitting at the lunch counter with their arms folded, anchored fast in front of the soda fountain, in neckties and windbreakers. Possibly a fifth, but four that I saw clearly at the counter. Except for the girl. She had on a cardigan and looked like she’d just come back from church. She looked like she’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. I didn’t recognize her, but the rest were with the group who’d been hanging out in front all these weeks. I tried to see if there were any others, but I couldn’t tell. The lights were off, as was the overhead paddle fan. It was jam-packed inside and every single stool in the place had been tipped over, except for the four stools the coloreds occupied. A crowd of whites was pressed against them, and there was so much pushing and hollering that the front window was rattling.
Mister Chambers was on the other side of the counter, in front of the coloreds, stiff-arming its beveled chrome ledge with one arm and shaking his head. Missus Orbach shouted out to him through the glass for him to kick the niggers out. They had no business there; it was time to be done with them already. Mister Rinkel volleyed that they had no respect for the law.
I was thunderstruck. This seemed to be exactly what Dad was talking about when he had said that the world going to hell in a handbasket. I pressed my face to the glass. I knew that S&W burgers were good, but I’d had no idea they were that good. I yanked at Missus Orbach’s sleeve.
You gotta be kidding me! All that for a lousy burger?
Listen, you scraggly-haired love child, I’ve got news for you! Your days here are numbered! I’ve had just about enough of you! You hear me? Numbered! You were born in sin, son. Sin! And I want you nappy-haired mongrels out! All of you! Out!
A shrill peal of laughter erupted. It was deafening. In the next instant, all I could make out was which makes you a love child. A little scraggly-haired, muffin-top, snooping, up-to-no-good love child. And I never want to see you around my house again. Do you hear me? You’ll be shot, no different than the groundhogs and prairie dogs that come sniffing around unwelcome! You hear? You are not wanted here!
Missus Orbach’s face was a yelling pink mass of outrage. She turned abruptly back to the window and pressed her face against the glass. She was worked up something terrible. It was like Mom said—people can’t think clearly when they get that mad. They say things they don’t mean. Mom called her mean-spirited, but I felt a little sorry for her. She couldn’t fool me. I knew she was just scared. That’s what happens when people think that everyone else is as nasty as they are. They get scared.
Missus Krasinski was inside, working herself up into a fit of her own. She struck at that young colored woman’s ear with an open hand, so hard the girl was cradling the side of her face. My God. I stood on my tiptoes. That was a first. I’d never seen a woman hit another woman before. I pitched forward. Missus Orbach had shoved me. Her purse was practically in my face. So shrill was her voice that it cut through the din of the crowd. But try as Missus Orbach might to get my attention, my eyes did not move from that window.
Two, four, six, eight! We don’t wanna integrate!
I was mesmerized. I could see them all now, directly beyond the unlit neon Coca-Cola sign in the window. I was pinned up against the glass. I tried to get that purse out of my face, desperately trying to hold onto the little bit of space I had. Missus Orbach reached over my head and continued banging on the window, shouting in my ear. Go back to Africa!
And as I stood there, mouth open, face not but three inches from the plate-glass window, the darkness inside transposed my reflection over the sign leaning on the sill inside. And as I pulled back from the window and stood there contemplating my reflection amid the chaos swirling around me, I knew that everything that Dad had ever said to me was a lie. Just like I knew that those colored people inside didn’t want to eat with us any more than we wanted to eat with them. Just like I knew that the law was the law and that two wrongs did not make a right. Missus Orbach was right there, telling me to my face. I was a phony.
I wanted to be different from those four colored people. I was sure that I felt different from them. And I sure didn’t look like them. The thing is, no matter what Missus Orbach shouted at me, I wanted to be different from everybody there but her. But that stupid fat old bitch just didn’t realize how similar she and I really were. So I had to prove it. I pressed my face back up against the glass and started banging on the window with my cast so hard sharp pangs shot all the way up to my teeth. I shouted at the top of my lungs. I banged and banged and banged and yelled and banged myself hysterical, until little glistening bubbles of spit spewed from the corners of my mouth.
I got a second look from Missus Orbach. She took me by the shoulder and shoved me in front of herself, up front and center, so all could behold my indignation at the obscene villainy taking place before us.
Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!
Where you belong, you goddamned orangutan! No apes allowed!
Missus Orbach pushed me forward. Lookit here! Do you see this? Even this little scraggly-haired mongrel wants you out! Go on, Huey! Let them know what you really think! Say it loud and say it proud! Say what you were saying just a minute ago! Nice and loud, so all can hear!
Missus Orbach slammed me against the window. Louder, Huey! That’s not loud enough! I want them to hear you all the way up in New York!
Missus Orbach wasn’t going to be happy until I went straight through the glass. My arm was hanging limp at my side now. Every time I smacked it against the window, an electric shock shot through my entire body. Inside, Missus Krasinski was upending a sugar jar over the colored girl’s hair. She was shaking it out furiously, like it couldn’t come out fast enough. The colored girl’s hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She bowed her head and shielded her eyes, and all that sugar just cascaded down onto the counter and floor. I banged on the glass and yelled and banged and yelled and banged so hard that even my good arm started to hurt. The colored men seated on either side of that colored girl weren’t doing anything to help her. They were just sitting there, looking straight at the pastry case, stoic. Cowards!
She was getting the brunt of it, like the wounded antelope of the herd, the one the crowd had singled out. Which was alarming. I could see the reflection of the two colored men seated beside her in the wall mirror mounted behind the counter. Missus Krasinski clenched her teeth and snapped up the mayonnaise dispenser, gripped it in both hands, and unraveled a long, spiraling yarn over each of their heads. Jigaboos!
I banged on the window hard and shouted at the top of my lungs, but no matter how loud or how much I shouted or what I said, the four colored men and that girl remained seated, eyes forward, arms folded, just sitting there, silent, still, and passive. I couldn’t hold back Missus Orbach. She was shoving me against the window. It was about to break. I hollered to Missus Orbach that I needed some breathing room.
Inside, Missus Krasinski angled herself between two of the coloreds and tugged at the backs of their shirt collars amid a flurry of hands lashing out. People were swinging and punching at everything in sight. They tugged, ripped, clawed, and tore at their clothes. One of the colored men was wrenched from his stool. He struggled to hold on. Someone blindsided another one. He winced, checked for blood, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His eyes were filled with panic. He pulled his jacket over his head, but it did little to shield him from the onslaught of punches showering down on him. Someone wrenched him from his stool, and he teetered over onto the floor. I lost sight of him as a gang of teenagers swarmed over him and seemed to swallowed him up like in a feeding frenzy.
I cheered. The celebration among those of us gathered around the window and in the doorway and on the sidewalk echoed down the street. It was electric. I wiped the fog from the window in disbelief. I stopped banging and just took in all the craziness. There appeared to be a fifth colored man seated at the counter. I cupped my hand over my eyes. My lips parted in disbelief. Toby?
He was sitting on the farthest stool from the window. He must have been obscured by the man who had been seated to his left, the one who was now in a tussle on the floor. Toby was covered with every variety of condiment in the place. He had one hand clamped onto the counter, holding on as if for dear life, and did not budge except to shield his face and hold on to his seat as all hell broke loose around him. He was as dirty as refuse, as abused as sin, and appeared as stiff and unbending as God’s will. I was mesmerized.
Sweet mother of God. Toby’s alive!
I jerked at Missus Orbach’s purse. That got her attention.
You’re not gonna believe this! Toby isn’t dead! They got him inside! Don’t ask me how, but they do! I tell you, that’s him! He’s inside! I see him! Look! He’s right there! C’mon! I gotta get him outta there!
I didn’t know how he’d done it, or why he’d done it. All I knew was that he’d somehow done it. There was not a doubt in my mind. For there could not be two men on this planet who shared his indomitable spirit. Missus Orbach looked at me like I was talking in tongues. On the other side of the window, the man lowered his hand from his face. It was not Toby. I backed away from Missus Orbach, turned on my heels, and ran.