“LET’S GO FISHING, DAD. PLEASE, DAD,” LITTLE BOBBY Jones begged his father.
“I promised your mom I’d stake up them tomatoes.”
Bobby saw the twelve plants sprawled over the backyard. But this afternoon provided Bobby with a rare opportunity for fishing. His dad’s service station was close to town, and they’d shut down because of the demonstrations. His little brother and sister—Tommy and Shirley—were playing in the sandbox. It was just an old truck tire that held sand. Bobby had seen cats nasty in it, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with the sandbox. His mom was pinning a sheet on the clothesline. It was the kind of clothespin he liked, not the two sticks with a spring that could snap your fingers hard as a mousetrap.
“Please, Mom?” he whined.
“Oh, Ryder, y’all go on,” she said. “It won’t hurt the tomatoes none to wait.”
“Where you want to go, son?”
“Village Creek! Village Creek! And I’ll take my galoshes and wade.”
“What’ll we use for a pole?”
“Cut a pole!”
“Son, if we was to catch anything we couldn’t eat it. That creek’s too dirty. Nobody but niggers eats out of Village Creek.”
Bobby had no reply. He’d only heard about Village Creek. He’d never seen it. He’d heard a white boy went over the Village Creek Falls in a barrel and it made him a half-wit. He asked his father about it.
“Them falls ain’t but two feet high,” Ryder answered. “And the water ain’t more than a yard deep anyplace. It’s an open sewer.”
Bobby tried to hold back his tears. He had imagined the water of the creek to be a bright blue with a fish hopping out of it, smiling, like in Shirley’s coloring book. Village Creek was the only body of water he’d ever heard of.
“Tell you what,” his father said. “We’ll go explore.”
Bobby watched his father take off his black cowboy hat and smooth back his hair. He watched his parents squint their eyes in the sunshine and smile at each other. Bobby put his hands on his hips, grinned, triumphant. He felt as though he were holding a Brownie camera and taking their picture.
“We need a emergency plan,” his father said, “case the house catches fire.”
Bobby glanced a nxiously at his house. Gray-white, it sat securely on the dirt.
“You carry out the kids and the TV,” his father said to Bobby’s mother, “and I’ll get the guns and my recliner.”
She just cracked her gum and smiled. “All right, hon.”
The house was safe and square: four rooms not counting the bathroom. It was perfect.
Bobby reached down to pick up his child-size football—a lumpy, waddy thing, stuffed with rags. His mother had made the football for his last Christmas, stitched it up on her machine out of brown oilcloth.
Bobby threw a sure, spiraling pass toward his father, who snagged the ball with one hand.