As soon as I got to work the next day, I saw Abigail. And to my surprise, she was talking to Lucas, who, for some reason, was still hanging around. By the time I’d finished pumping gas and washing a car’s windows, Lucas was driving off and Abigail was heading to the bathroom.
I was anxious to know what they’d been talking about, so I waited for her outside. Before long, she opened the door. I didn’t even say hello, just began with a question. “What were you talkin’ to Lucas about?”
“We weren’t exactly talkin’. He was askin’, I was answerin’.”
“Askin’ what?”
“What my name is. So I told him. Said he never knew anyone named Abigail b’fore. Then I told him it means ‘a father’s delight.’ And I dunno why, but that made him laugh.”
“Did you say anything to him about the bicycle?”
“No . . . not my place.”
“Don’t talk to him again,” I commanded. “He ain’t nice about colored people.”
“Wasn’t talkin’ . . . like I told you,” she said.
The questions I’d stored up from the previous day were begging to be answered, so I asked one. “Why doesn’t your daddy want white folks to know ’bout him bein’ in the army?”
She glanced toward the garage, where Meriwether was busy at work, before replying in a low voice, “Colored pastors all over been warnin’ colored men who were in the service not to talk about it or show off in their uniforms.”
“Why?”
“’Less they wanna wind up lynched from a tree or like that colored soldier over in Batesburg who got his eyes poked out and now he’s forever blind. Would you want your daddy to be killed or forever blind?”
The thought made me shiver. “No.”
“Neither do I. That’s why you can’t tell anyone. My daddy and mama claim some white men don’t take to the idea of a colored man bein’ a war soldier equal to them.”
When I’d gotten to work that day, I’d been determined to find out more about Mr. Hunter being a tanker. But Abigail had quickly turned my curiosity away from that and aimed it at the man she’d said had had his eyes poked out. Was she exaggerating the way kids sometimes do? Batesburg wasn’t far off, and I hadn’t heard anything about that. Then again, Mama and Daddy do their best to keep particularly gruesome news away from my ears. But I was twelve now, and like Meriwether said, practically a man in some places. I suppose I’d known for a while that the world, including Birdsong, USA, isn’t always pretty, but recently my understanding of that was growing.
A car horn honking let me know a customer was waiting at the gas pumps, and since Matt was home sick with tonsillitis, I needed to skedaddle.
Daddy was there waiting, and he made it crystal clear that I had to stay up front so that when customers drove up, they didn’t have to wait. “Not good for business,” he instructed.
And that’s exactly what I was doing the rest of the afternoon until a ruckus near the garage caught my attention. Meriwether was whooping and hollering.
“Lucas!” I proclaimed loudly, and ran like heck. But when I got to the garage, no one was there. Then I heard Meriwether shouting out back. I was awfully scared—until I laid eyes on them. Meriwether and Abigail were happy as could be, laughing out loud, jumping up and down. And soon I knew why. The hood of the ’36 Chevy—the car that nobody could fix—was popped and the engine was purring like a kitten. Meriwether climbed inside the car and revved the motor. “Abigail, we own us an automobile!”
“I can’t believe it,” I told him. “No one else—”
Before I could finish, he cut me off. “What’d I tell you ’bout me, son?”
“That you’re mighty good at fixin’ things.”
Abigail cracked a smile at me and ran her hand along the car from the front fender to the back. “My daddy is truly amazin’, isn’t he?”
“He sure is,” I agreed. “Truly amazin’.”