JUST ABOUT THE MOMENT I’D DECIDED TO RUN AWAY FROM HOME AND change my name so no one would ever find me, there was a knock on my door.
“Gabe,” Pop said, “we’re going for a walk.”
Pop didn’t wait for me to say yes or no. He just turned and headed toward the door. We live in the smallest trailer in the Hollowell Trailer Park, so he didn’t have to go far. The inside is tight, but Momma decorated it nice with orange curtains and thick brown carpet. The outside paint is flaking off the shutters, and Pop always says he’s going to fix that someday, but he never does. When I got outside, Pop was chipping away some dirty brown paint with his finger, but he stopped when I walked out.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Georgia is mighty hot in the summer when the sun is high and there ain’t no clouds, so Pop and I walked real slow. I knew we were headed toward the catfish pond because that’s the only place anyone headed when it was hot like this. But first you had to walk to the far end of the trailer park, and that meant going past the Evans trailer.
I might live in the smallest trailer in the Hollowell Trailer Park, but Duke Evans lived in the scariest. It was all torn apart, with boards hanging off the windows and parts of cars all over the front yard. Plus, no one knew for certain if Duke’s momma was alive or not. Erin Morgan said she was perfectly fine and mean as a whip, but Duane Patterson said you could smell her corpse when the wind was right.
I sniffed at the air as we got closer and sure enough, I thought I caught a whiff.
“Let’s cut through over here,” I said to Pop. He gave me a look, but he didn’t say nothing, so we took the secret path me and Frita had cut out behind one of the other trailers. I kept looking back over my shoulder though, and picked up the pace.
Me and Pop crossed the old dirt road and walked through the tall pine trees toward the cotton field. We stepped across the line where the stretched-out shadows of the pine trees reached over the cotton field. Pop’s big old work boots snapped the brown stalks and the white cotton balls before we crossed into the woods.
Pop put one rough hand on my head.
“I suspect it wasn’t entirely your fault that you missed Moving-Up Day,” he said. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt your momma’s feelings.” He paused. “The thing is, you haven’t got much choice about the fifth grade. Sometimes we’ve got to do things whether we like them or not. Understand?”
I nodded, but I was still thinking about Duke and his pop.
“Mmm?”
“How come Mr. Evans called Frita that name?”
I was used to kids at school calling Frita names when she wasn’t around to punch their lights out, but they called me names too—like Shrimp and Shorty. I’d always figured that was just about the same thing. Only there sure weren’t any adults calling me Shrimp.
Pop thought things over.
“Well,” he said at last, “some folks don’t care for black people.”
“How come?” I asked.
Pop frowned. “Don’t know for certain. I suspect they see the world as having only so much of the good things in life, and they’re afraid of sharing because then there will be less for them. That other person might get something they want.”
“Is that true?” I asked.
“No,” said Pop. “That’s not how I see it. I suspect there’s enough good to go around.”
We walked real quiet again until we reached the pond. It was deserted today and I was glad there weren’t any sixth-graders hanging out by the rope swing to yell things at me when my pop was around. Since the coast was clear, I sat right under the big old cypress tree, where the edge dropped down, and slipped off my sneakers so I could dunk in my feet. The water was muddy and warm.
Pop didn’t take off his work boots, but he knelt down and stuck one hand in. He stared for a long time, like he was thinking what to say next.
“Gabe,” he said after a little while, “you and Frita have to watch yourselves. You know that, right?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what Pop meant, but I had an idea—like when Frita used big words. Made my stomach feel funny. Pop studied me careful.
“I’m not telling you to fight, but sometimes a person has to stand up for himself. You can’t live your life being afraid of boys like Duke.”
I didn’t say anything—just swished my feet around.
“Your momma was some disappointed not to see you walk across that stage today. Now you’ll never have another chance. I know there were reasons you didn’t make it, but you got to think to yourself…Do I want to let someone take something from me that I can never get back again?”
I stopped swishing.
“Like Moving-Up Day?”
Pop nodded.
“And the fifth grade?”
He nodded again. “You think things over,” he told me, “and I’ll go back and talk with your momma. When you’re ready, you come home and tell her you’re sorry. All right?”
I looked around the empty pond. What if the sixth-graders showed up? What if Duke was with them?
“I’ll go home with you, Pop,” I said, but Pop shook his head.
“You’re fine,” he told me, but what he meant was, You’re staying put until you figure some things out.
“Yes, sir,” I said, but I said it extra miserable so he might change his mind.
Pop reached over and ruffled my hair. He stood up, then headed back the way we’d come. I watched him get smaller and smaller. Long as he was in sight, things felt okay, but the minute he disappeared, the world shrank in. All the trees got closer and the cypress roots looked like giant tentacles reaching up to grab me. The rope swing hung like a gallows, and without meaning to, my mind pictured what it would feel like to swing through the air, then plunge far below, turning over and over in the muddy water.
Everything I’d eaten churned in my stomach until I thought I might be sick. I heard a snap and thought for sure it was either an alligator or a sixth-grader sneaking up on me, and I sure as heck wanted to light out of there.
But then I thought over what Pop had said about not letting people take stuff from me. Maybe he meant something like this, a summer afternoon when I had the whole catfish pond to myself. But how could I just decide not to let other people take things? Seemed to me I was too chicken to stop ’em.
Now how was I going to change that?