A MAN CAN DO A LOT OF THINKING AND STILL COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION. Best to stay put where life is decent. Of course, Frita still hadn’t offered to stay behind with me, but I guessed she’d come around once she discovered how serious I was about staying back. I figured I’d ask her again eventually, but eventually snuck up on me real quick.
It was a Tuesday morning, and me and Frita were making a track and field course outside my trailer.
“Let’s pretend we’re in the Olympics,” Frita said. The Olympics were coming up and Frita had been reading all about them.
“This part of the road can be the track and then we can bring out stuff to be the hurdles and the high jump.”
We looked around the trailer until we found what we needed. There was a lamp with a broken switch, Momma’s old blender that wouldn’t blend, the pillows from the couch with the stuffing falling out, the stool with the cracked seat cover, and three buckets.
“Someone’s got to count,” Frita said, “so we know if we set any world records.”
I said I’d count first, so Frita lined up beside the lamp.
“On your mark, get set…”
The mailman walked right into our course and tripped over the blender. “Crazy kids,” he said, shaking his head. He took out a yellow slip and handed it to me. “This one’s for you, Gabe. Guess you’ve got a package down at the post office.”
The mailman put the rest of the mail in the box, then headed next door. Frita ran up to see my package slip, but she jumped over all the obstacles first, ending with a flying leap onto the pillows. I counted and she made it in record time. Record for Hollowell, Georgia, anyway.
She stood up and hopped over to me. “Did you order something?” she asked when she reached me.
“Nope,” I said. “Maybe it’s for Pop.”
“But it says it’s for you,” Frita pointed out. “Ask your momma if we can walk into town and get it.”
Frita reached down and scooped up a huge daddy longlegs that was crawling over the finish line. She dangled him between her thumb and forefinger and I jumped a mile even though that spider wasn’t anywhere near me. I ran right quick to the trailer and poked my head inside the front door.
“Momma,” I yelled, “can me and Frita walk into town?”
All I heard was a muffled sound from the back, but that was yes enough for me.
“Okay, we’re going!” I hollered.
I went back out to the yard where Frita was setting that spider down on the pillows real careful.
“Ready?” I asked, keeping my distance.
The daddy longlegs scampered away. Good riddance.
“Yup,” Frita said. “Let’s take the old dirt road. It’s quicker.”
I felt my gooseflesh rising.
The old dirt road was a narrow stretch between the peanut mill and the town of Hollowell, and nobody used it except the eighteen-wheelers that came to pick up the peanuts. They came barreling down out of nowhere. Momma always said a man could get run over and killed on a stretch of road like this and no one would know it for days. Me and Frita talked about it once and we guessed you’d get eaten by buzzards. They’d pick at you with their huge beaks until you were nothing but a pile of bones.
“Who’s in a rush?” I asked.
Frita said, “Don’t be a chicken, Gabriel King.”
Then she took off, so I didn’t have any choice but to follow.
We left the obstacle course set up and ran through the trailer park, then cut through the secret path. Soon as we stepped onto the old dirt road, I looked up and down for eighteen-wheelers. Then I looked in the sky for buzzards, just in case, but there weren’t any. There was only dry dust chokin’ up my tongue and making it hard to breathe. Everything was pressing in again, even with Frita right there beside me.
“Race ya,” I said, so we could get to town faster. I took off three seconds early and ran full out, but Frita still beat me by a mile. By the time I turned onto Main Street, she was already sitting in front of the post office. I could see her perfectly clear because there are only seven buildings in the town of Hollowell, so you can see just about everything at once. There’s the post office, the town hall with its big green lawn and gazebo, Mae’s Pit Stop Restaurant, the general store, the Baptist church, and the gas station. Then a little farther down there’s the Hollowell Elementary School.
Frita stood up when she saw me coming.
“What took you so long?” she asked, but she didn’t say it mean, only teasing. I was all winded, so I handed Frita my yellow slip and she marched up the steps into the post office and gave it to Mr. Alfred. I walked in real slow behind her, taking in big gulps of air.
“Morning, Frita. Morning, Gabe,” Mr. Al said. He looked at me and shook his head, chuckling. “What are you two up to today?” he asked.
“Nothin’,” Frita said.
Mr. Al went in the back and brought out a big manila envelope and handed it to me. I tore it open.
This certifies that
GABRIEL ALLEN KING
completed the Fourth Grade
at Hollowell Elementary School
Hollowell, Georgia, May 1976.
There was a class picture inside the envelope too. I frowned and stuffed everything back in.
“Something good?” Mr. Al asked.
“No,” I said.
Me and Frita went outside and sat down on the lawn in front of the town hall. I picked a pebble out of the grass and threw it at one of the election posters hanging up on the community board. I aimed for the one of Gerald Ford and pretended he was Duke Evans. Then I pretended I was Jimmy Carter and everyone was going to vote over which one of us went to the West Wing next year because there sure wasn’t room for both of us.
Me and Frita were quiet for a long time.
“At least you got a class picture,” she said at last.
I pulled it out of the envelope and there I was, front and center, looking like a first-grader. My hair was all messed up, like a rat’s nest. I’d forgotten it was picture day, so I’d worn my oldest tattered overalls. Frita was two rows above me and her hair looked perfect, all done up in a neat bun on top of her head. She was smiling real huge. There were only ten kids in our class, but even so, Frita stood out. She was the only black person in the picture and the only girl on the top row.
I remembered how Frita’s class picture got all crushed in the dust, so I yawned like I was bored instead of grumpy.
“Who wants a stupid old picture anyway,” I said. “Maybe I’ll throw it away.”
“Throw it away?” Frita said, opening her eyes wide. “You can’t waste a good picture like this. Look, there’s Ms. Murray—the best teacher we ever had. You want a picture of Ms. Murray, don’t you?”
“Nah,” I said. “You can have it. I’ll get another one next year.”
Frita took the picture out of my hands.
“Well, I’ll keep it if you’re going to throw it away,” she said, “but you know you’re not staying behind. You got a certificate to prove it, right there.”
I picked up another pebble and aimed for Gerald Ford again, but this time I hit Jimmy Carter right on the nose. Frita shook her head.
“Gabe,” she said, “we got to do something about you.”
“You mean so I don’t get pounded?”
“I mean so you’ll move up with me next year.”
“Why can’t you stay behind?”
Frita wrinkled her nose.
“Then how would we ever get out of elementary school? Nope,” she said. “We got to think of a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yup,” said Frita. “Something to help you stop being chicken.”
I scowled. Didn’t seem to be anything that could do that, but I thought it over.
“Frita,” I said at last.
“Yeah?”
“If we can’t make me brave, then will you stay behind with me?”
Frita frowned, but finally she shrugged.
“I guess,” she said. “But I’m going to come up with something, and when I do, you better try it. No halfsies. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said, sticking out my pinky.
Frita linked hers with mine and we shook on it.