Scrubbing the last crunchy love bug of the autumn season off the Wildcat’s windshield, I check the rest of the humongous car’s windows for smudges. For years now, it’s been my duty to keep the shine on my father’s cars in tip-top shape.
“Stalworth. You’re gonna take the paint off if you scrub any harder,” my eleven-year-old friend Greggie calls quietly from a patch of darkness in the far corner of the utility room.
I spit one last time across one of Sis’s grimy paw prints on the passenger’s side. Garrett loved his big cars. And this one was the biggest ever.
Greggie accidentally knocks something over and makes his way out of the shadows and into my sweaty field of vision just inside the garage door. “Hey.”
Wiping my forehead with the chamois, I peer over the open car door at a grinning Greggie making his way tentatively into the light, the waist of his Wranglers around his knees, his erect penis jumping like the ruby throat of a chameleon sunning itself on a lakeshore stump.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Greggie shrugs, taking another step into the late afternoon sun.
“Whoa,” I say, tossing the chamois over my shoulder. Thinking he must be in the throes of some meltdown brought on by his sorry-assed mother’s escalating whiskey intake, I jump out of the car and race toward him. Greggie pulls the foreskin over the glans of his organ and stretches it out as far as it will go, looking dead into my eyes with a raised brow, like he just pulled a rabbit out of a hat. “At least get away from the door,” I say, yanking him into the corner.
Greggie pulls at the zipper of my khakis. “Show me yours.”
I push his hand away. “I can’t. Wait.” Greggie is laughing and, oddly enough, so am I.
“What the Sam Hill’s going on out here, boys?” Garrett stands in the open doorway of the utility room, arms crossed across his chest like a comic book genie.
“Shit,” Greggie says, zipping up.
I make a sorry attempt to drop my hands nonchalantly in front of my own open zipper.
Garrett surveys the scene in silence. He finally straightens a bass net hanging haphazardly from a wooden peg on the wall next to him without looking at us. “Greggie, I think you need to get on home now.”
Greggie scoots swiftly past my father, offering up a hoarse “Yessir” over his shoulder before disappearing out the door.
I absentmindedly take the chamois off my shoulder and wipe my hands, shifting from one foot to the other. “I—”
“Make it spotless, Bo Skeet,” Garrett says, heading out, glancing once over his shoulder with a familiar look of disappointment.
Several minutes pass before I can pick up the chamois again. Standing in the same place, I wonder if Garrett could tell just how engrossed I was in the goings-on with Greggie. I replay the scene over in my head like a television sports announcer. After all, I thought, he had walked in at the moment when my focus had gone from confusion to excitement. I pray he missed the shift.
I kept going back to the business with Greggie, attempting to block my father out of the scene. However fleeting, the experience was like none other I’d ever had. Of course, I’d peed in the woods with other male friends. One would try and take the other by surprise and spray his shoe, but this felt like all that times twenty. Although I wished Greggie and I had been able to explore a bit more, I knew it would never happen again. We’d both been humiliated during a defenseless moment. Who would ever want to revisit that?
I grabbed the chamois and went back to work. I was determined to make this the cleanest the car had ever been.
* * *
Tina spreads another brand-new Batman across the bottom bunk. The bounty we’d scored from a three-hour comic-buying trip was meant to lift my spirits from the cold hard fact that we were leaving the only life we’d ever known behind. The idea that I was the cause of Garrett’s decision to uproot the whole family made this new reality unbearable. I still wasn’t aware if he’d told Tina what had transpired two weeks ago in the utility room with Greggie. And if he had, would that alone send her off for another stint at Tranquilaire?
“Now, what in the world could you have done to make you think that we’re moving because of you?” Tina says, stacking the magazines in a neat pile on the bedside table. “Did something happen?”
I keep mum, satisfied she was in the dark. “Listen,” she says, sitting on the bed, pulling me down next to her. “Here’s a news flash. Whenever your father makes a decision, it doesn’t involve anybody else but him, you understand? And this is a big promotion. He’ll have his own office instead of being out in the field, which is a good thing. And it’s only an hour away, so you can still see Greggie and Marcie and whoever else whenever you want.”
“Well, why doesn’t he just drive? It’s not that far. I mean, Farley West’s daddy works nearly all the way to Point Clear, and he drives it every day.”
Tina gives me my answer by turning her mouth into a straight line.
“But it’s Redneck Ridge,” I say, referring to the moniker Brewton’s football team had tagged the town of Jackson with on our trips to play them.
“I’ll admit, it’s not as culturally rich as Brewton. I mean, there’s no college like we have here and that makes a difference. But it’s on the river. Do you know how much fun you can have on the river? Not a puny backyard puddle like you’re used to here. And your father’s decided you’ll be going to the Academy. That’s a terrific opportunity.”
“The Academy?” I say, horrified. “That’s a military school!”
Tina laughs. “Where in the world did you get that idea? Lord, your father decides to move his entire family because of you, and then he decides to punish you by putting you in military school? Sounds like something Faulkner would have come up with. The Academy is not a military school and you well know it,” she says. “It’s just a private school. With better teachers and just—better everything.”
I knew better. From what Tom Grant, a recent transfer from the Academy told me, the entire basis of existence for the brand-new school was to keep the more affluent white kids from having to learn next to the black kids, a belated way to spit in the face of desegregation without having to come out and say it. Tom Grant knew what he was talking about. Sleek, single-story schools were popping up all over the South like toadstools after a hard, soggy rain. According to reports, the Academy was proving to be one of the most poorly administrated, with a lack of any sports or activities beyond football and honors clubs.
“Your uncle Donald knows the headmaster. He wants to take you over there this afternoon, and they’re gonna show you around.”
“This afternoon?”
Tina stares at her hands in her lap, her fingers toying with her wedding band. “Bo Skeet,” she says, “truth be told, I’m wrestling with this one, too. But I don’t know what to say to make it any better.” Tina grabs one of the springs underneath the upper bunk and pulls. “I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes I’ll pretend I’m someone else until whatever unpleasantness passes.” She looks at me, almost embarrassed. “You know, I’ll be whoever I want to—Mama Louella, Lurleen Wallace,” she says, flashing a brief, reckless smile. “Even Jane Fonda, woo-hoo.”
Through the window, I see Garrett wiping off the radio antenna of the Wildcat, a task I’d seen him do many times when preparing for a trip or excursion he was enthusiastic to begin. Glancing back at one of the comic books, I’m thinking Robin and I could take care of the whole business with a series of ZONKs and POWs.
Tina clears her throat. “You’ll make new friends, and you’ll learn so much. You’ll see. In no time at all, you’ll be thanking your father.” She spits in her hand and smooths my hair, the only person outside of the movies I’d ever known to spit on anything in hopes of making it better.
Later, when my father steers the Wildcat slowly onto Dawson Street, I can hear Tina slam the front door of the house four times hard before she goes inside.