DAD LOST THE ELECTION.

Some kids at school said it was because Dad liked colored people too much. Connolly Voss went on and on about that at lunch one day until Wayne pointed his fork and said the next guy to get stabbed at Sand Mountain High School was going to be Connolly if he didn’t shut up — and it wasn’t going to just be in the hand, either. But later on even Wayne said he guessed the colored-people issue was the main reason for how the election turned out. “Just look at the tire fire,” he said.

David Tremblay said it wasn’t about the colored people; it was about the annexation and Dad wanting to close down The Springs. I guess everybody had their own theory. I’d been so sad about Darla that at first it was kind of a relief to have the election to talk about, even though it did turn out bad. But then the more I thought about it, the more I figured the reason Dad lost was because of me. If I hadn’t stabbed Moe, Moe wouldn’t have beat up Wayne, and David wouldn’t have poisoned the roll, and I wouldn’t have got blamed for doing it, and Dad wouldn’t have got blamed for me.

One day after Dad came home from work, I followed him out to the shed and told him that. He listened real careful and nodded — not like he agreed with me, but just to let me know he heard what I was saying. He had a couple of pairs of old roller skates of mine and Wayne’s on his worktable, which he was taking apart, and he held one of them and spun the wheel while I talked. I guess I thought he would tell me I was wrong to blame myself and that it wasn’t my fault at all. That’s what I wanted to hear, but at the same time I wouldn’t have believed him but just known he was saying what dads are supposed to say.

When I finished, though, he stopped spinning the skate wheel but kept nodding for a second, then said he understood how I could feel that way, and that some people probably did hold that Moe business against us, but there were a lot of factors in how the election turned out and it wouldn’t be fair to point to just one and say that was the reason.

“So I guess you don’t get to take all the blame on this one,” he said. “Sorry to have to tell you.”

I kind of laughed when he said that, and him, too. Then he told me it was a lot closer an election than people thought it would be, and they even got out some of the colored vote, which was encouraging. After a while I asked Dad what he was doing with the roller skates and he said he was making us skateboards like he’d seen some kids riding on up in Bartow. He said I could help him if I wanted, and I said sure, and he let me do some sawing and sanding on the boards we needed before he attached the wheels.

Reverend Dunn came over to our house a couple of nights after the election to tell Dad that they didn’t want him on the board of trustees of the Methodist Church anymore. Reverend Dunn and Mom and Dad sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and we couldn’t hear what they were saying after that, but I did see them all three holding hands and bowing their heads while Reverend Dunn said a prayer. After Reverend Dunn left, me and Wayne followed Dad out to his shed again. We caught up with him right when he was unscrewing one of his nail jars, which I figured was the one where he was hiding his cigarettes again. Wayne asked Dad what happened, and Dad said they just wanted some new perspectives on the board and it was good to have that and he’d been a trustee for four years and change was good sometimes. Wayne said, “Did Reverend Dunn want you to be off of the board because of the election?”

Dad shook his head. “No, son. It wasn’t Reverend Dunn. He was just the one who had to tell me about what they decided.”

Wayne asked Dad why he hadn’t been at the meeting, since he was still on the board of trustees before they voted him off. Dad said they must have just forgot to tell him about it, was all. Later Wayne told me he didn’t think what Dad said was true — none of it. I wasn’t so sure, because I didn’t think Dad would tell us a lie about anything but maybe was just confused a little bit. The phone rang a lot the rest of that night and it was people from the church calling to talk to Mom or Dad. I heard them talking about a petition, but nothing ever came of it that I ever knew about.

When we were lying in bed, I asked Wayne if he thought anything else bad was going to happen because of the election. Wayne said no, he didn’t think so. He said people forget about stuff pretty quick, was how he saw it, whether it was good or bad. They just forget about it.

Something else bad did happen, though, which was that Mr. Ellis lost his job at the high school, the same as a couple of years before when he lost his job at the mine because of the strike. Another colored man I hadn’t ever seen before showed up at the school, doing the janitor job one day, only nobody exactly realized it right away because I guess most people just didn’t notice something like that, but I did.

Wayne told me it was because Mr. Ellis helped Dad on the campaign by trying to get out the colored vote — that that’s why they fired him from the school.

Dad made me and Wayne go with him in the car to Mr. Ellis’s house one night, which we were glad at least wasn’t in the Boogerbottom but turned out to be one of the houses I saw that day of the colored soldier’s funeral, down the long dirt road on the other side of the Peace River at the same place as the colored church. A couple of low dogs with long bodies and short legs circled the car as soon as we stopped. In the dark they looked liked sharks but Dad made us get out anyway. It wasn’t too cold. Mr. Ellis was sitting on his front porch with his wife.

Dad walked right up to the porch and stuck out his hand to shake, and Mr. Ellis got up and shook Dad’s hand but he didn’t come down to the yard. Dad said he was so sorry for what happened, and it wasn’t right, and he said he was sorry again and he wanted to help. . . .

Mr. Ellis waited until Dad finished, then he just said, “What’s done is done, Mr. Turner. No used a man to cry over spilt milk.”

Those low dogs swam around me and Wayne’s legs and I wanted to get back in the car. Dad seemed to remember we were standing there just then and said, “Boys, you can introduce yourselves to Mr. Ellis.” Wayne went first. He walked over to the porch and shook Mr. Ellis’s hand, which I wasn’t sure you were supposed to do with a colored person, even though your dad had done it.

Mrs. Ellis stood up at about that minute and frowned and walked inside the house without saying anything. The screen door slammed behind her and the dogs started howling until Mr. Ellis yelled at them to quit. We were all quiet then, and Mr. Ellis looked at the porch and kicked a loose board with his shoe. Nobody said anything for a real long time, even Dad. I stuck my hands in my pockets. Finally Dad pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Mr. Ellis. “I thought this might help a little, and I’ll let you know if I hear of anything workwise I can pass along,” he said.

Mr. Ellis took the envelope and stuffed it in his pocket like he wished he could make it disappear, which in a way it did. He nodded like he appreciated it, but also like maybe nodding was just something he did when he didn’t have anything else to say. I remembered that night of the Rotary Club Minstrel Show when Walter Wratchford’s dad called him “Mistuh Chollie” and how he nodded and nodded then, too. It was obvious he wanted us to leave.

Dad said good-bye, then him and Wayne went ahead and got in the car. But I held back for a second since I still hadn’t shook Mr. Ellis’s hand. I walked over to the porch and did that then. I don’t know why exactly. I said I was sorry about everything. Once I got started telling him how sorry I was, I couldn’t seem to quit right away and I said, “I’m sorry for doing my business in your grass at the high school, too. I just wanted to tell you that.”

He didn’t smile, but he nodded some. Then he said, “It’s no need to speak about it.”

I said, “Yes, sir,” and he said, “Plenty of worse things than that,” and I said, “Yes, sir,” again.

“You love your mama?” he asked me.

I said, “Yes, sir.”

“Love your daddy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Love Jesus?”

“Yes, sir. I try to.”

“Well then,” he said, “you going to be all right.”

And he turned and went inside.

“Is he your friend, Dad?” I said after we’d been driving a little while.

“I like to think he is,” Dad said.

Wayne said he was glad Dad was friends with Mr. Ellis. That kind of surprised me. Except for that story about Darla and the colored boy, I hadn’t thought I knew anybody that was friends with anybody colored. But then I got thinking about what all Mr. Ellis had done for Dad’s campaign, and how he lost two jobs from trying to help people, and how he never even mentioned to Dad about me peeing in the bushes at school, and I said I was glad Dad and Mr. Ellis were friends, too.

Then I said, “I don’t think Mrs. Ellis liked us, though.”

Dad was hunched over the steering wheel like he needed to get closer to what he was looking at to help him drive up the dirt road. It was so dark I could hardly see Wayne in the front seat ahead of me, even when I leaned way forward.

“Mrs. Ellis is upset about the situation,” Dad said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us directly. Just the situation.”

“It’s a lousy situation, then,” Wayne said.

Dad said that yes, it was. I wanted to say something, too, something like they were saying, but didn’t know what.

I got lonely sitting there in the back by myself, so I asked Dad if I could climb over the seat to be with him and Wayne in the front. He said OK, but just be careful when I did. Wayne scooted way over so I wouldn’t fall onto him, and once I got settled in the seat, he didn’t even seem to care that our shoulders and arms were touching. We rode the rest of the way home like that all together — Dad driving, Wayne shotgun, me in the middle.