by Roger Market
up to face us. "We are starved for meat—this is true—but how can we eat this man when he’s the first we’ve seen? I think there’s something here we might need more than sustenance. Look in his eyes. There is something wonderful there."
She looked down again, and we followed suit. There was indeed something there, but whatever it was, it existed beyond us entirely.
"Is this what the elder ladies call—do you think this is love, sisters?" The elders were napping, so we had no one to ask. We were silent.
As the fire raged behind us, we regarded his gentle eyes, his paper covering, his beard. His manliness. And our appetites rumbled. For the first time, though, we didn’t quite know what it was that we hungered for. It wasn’t a simple thing like food. Instead, there was something in the man’s eyes that said "home" to us in a way that we had never encountered. We had the last man in our clutches, and although we had never even seen one before, we knew that he was what we needed to carry on as a people.
Walking to Vietnam
In September 1968, a family in rural Alabama was preparing for war. Soon the father would be shipped overseas to wear a uniform and save the world while sleeping under the moon and the stars, and the mother and son would be left behind to carry on, proud but alone. The concerns of each family member at this time were quite different.
Victor, the father, had a particular stake in the safety of his interracial family. There had been whispers in the town when he had married Calpurnia, but so far, they had never become threatening. Now he would be leaving the country, and God only knew when he would return. Meanwhile, Calpurnia worried about heartbreak and what the lack of a constant man would do to their son’s development. Six-year-old Jacob was often in another world entirely, concerned with the intricacies of his own imagination. He was a builder, a dreamer, and with each new world he created for himself, the distractions involved would become a potential coping mechanism. Indeed, Victor believed his son would be okay, that Jacob’s concerns would be relegated to the superpowers he might have on the moon or the science of teleportation, not the number of years spent without a father. Calpurnia was unconvinced.
The day before Victor was to deploy, young Jacob was playing by the creek after school. On the adjacent bank, he saw a black dog sprinting toward him, panting heavily. It jumped in the water and swam across, and when it reached him, he put his hand out to pet it.
"I’ll keep you," he said, and the dog licked his face.
Jacob laughed and fell to the ground. He wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck and squeezed, and he breathed in the cold smell of wet dog. Feeling it struggle against his hug, he released it. The dog scratched at a bald spot on its ear. Jacob expected it to run off, so he watched it carefully. No dog would escape him without a fight. He grabbed it by the collar and pulled it around the yard, looking for some way to contain it. He found a rope next to the garage. He tied the dog to a nearby tree, using one of the knots his father had taught him the previous summer.
That night after dinner, when Victor and Calpurnia caught their son trying to feed the dog table scraps, there was a difference of opinion. They stood outside by the tree where the dog was tied, and they argued. Jacob, of course, saw the utmost value in the dog, while his mother was adamant: it had to go.
"I don’t see what’s so wrong with him having a dog," Victor said, joining Jacob’s side, although he was thinking more about Calpurnia’s protection than anything else.
"No," Calpurnia said. "You won’t have to clean up the crap. You know that job would just fall to me, and I won’t do it. Besides, look at him scratch; this dog’s got fleas."
Victor sighed. She had him. He was leaving the next day and did not know when he would be back; no one did.
"Okay," he said. "You’re right."
"But dad!" Jacob said.
"No, you get rid of it. Untie him right now and let him run off. Don’t you try to bring him back, either. No tricks."
Jacob untied the dog and shooed it away. The dog hesitated, lifted a paw as if to shake. But Jacob turned his back until, finally, the dog ran into the woods. Jacob threw the rope on the ground. He ran to the house, through the door, and up the stairs to his room. He cried into his pillow that night. Occasionally he heard the faint clatter of objects colliding or doors opening and then closing as Victor and Calpurnia went about the home and made their final preparations for war.
When Victor knocked on Jacob’s door for a goodbye the next morning, Jacob did not answer. Victor opened the door and walked up to Jacob’s bed. He looked at his son, and though he felt the boy’s pain, he knew that Calpurnia’s instinct had been right. Jacob could not have a dog. He was simply too young for that kind of responsibility, at least with only one parent around to help out.
"I’m leaving now. Going to a place called Vietnam. Do you know where that is?"
Jacob looked at the ceiling.
"It’s clear on the other side of the world. Look, I know you’re mad at me, but your mom’s right. A dog is too much to handle right now."
He waited again for Jacob to respond.
"I’m leaving, son, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m a little scared. Say goodbye to me."
Jacob remained silent. After a minute, Victor relented and said goodbye once more. He touched Jacob’s hair, brushed it with his fingers, and left the room.
When Calpurnia came to Jacob’s room a few minutes later, her lips closed tight, he turned on his side. She closed the door and walked away as his tears once again seeped into the pillow.
On the last day of school the following spring, Calpurnia sat in her car at the front of the parking lot, engine off, waiting for Jacob to come out of the building. Just as the bell rang and students starting pouring out, a woman knocked on Calpurnia’s window. She was pale and wore dark sunglasses with small diamonds on either side.
"Excuse me," she said when Calpurnia rolled down the window. "You’re in my spot."
"Am I? I didn’t see your name on it."
The woman pushed her sunglasses up so they sat neatly on her head. She put her hand on the top of Calpurnia’s car and leaned forward a few inches.
"Don’t be a bitch."
Calpurnia looked at the swarm of kids coming toward the parking lot. Among them, near the front, was Jacob. She looked at the woman.
"It’s no one’s spot, lady. Ain’t nobody can’t park anywhere she damn well pleases. This is a public school, that’s how it works."
"For some people, maybe."
"For all people," Calpurnia said. She started the car. "Look, my son’s coming now. If you take your hand off my car and step back, I’ll be on my way."
The woman smiled. She leaned forward several more inches, and then she spat on Calpurnia’s face. She removed her hand from the car and walked away.
Calpurnia wiped her face on her sleeve and then looked up to see Jacob standing in front of the car with wide eyes. He got inside. He put his backpack on the floor.
"Mommy, what happened?"
"Nothing much. Just a little disagreement, that’s all."
"That woman spitted on you."
"And that’s all it was, baby, don’t you worry about it none."
They drove home in silence. In the driveway, Calpurnia parked the car and turned off the engine. Jacob left his backpack on the car floor as usual and ran inside, straight to the refrigerator. He pulled out two wrapped deli packages, one containing cheese and the other containing bologna. He grabbed the loaf of bread from the counter and moved everything to the table, where he made his afternoon sandwich. He took his first bite just as Calpurnia walked in with his backpack.
"I don’t know how you can eat that stuff," she said. "Just the smell makes me sick." She wrinkled her nose.
"It’s yummy."
"If you say so. You like it, that’s all that matters."
"Daddy likes bologna too."
She laughed. "I never pretended he was perfect." She put the backpack on the floor and kissed his hair. "I’m going to
take a quick shower. Don’t open the front door for nobody."
She walked away, and Jacob took another bite of his sandwich. While he ate, he thought about the woman from that afternoon. Calpurnia had said there was a disagreement, but Jacob remembered other times when he had seen women get that close to her. Until this day, however, he had never seen one of them spit in her face. This image struck him. The woman was very upset, and Jacob could not think of one thing Calpurnia could have done to make her so.
He was thinking about this, trying to come up with a reason, when he heard a knock on the door. He finished his sandwich in one bite and went to see who was there. It was the woman. Jacob remembered that Calpurnia had told him not to let anyone in, but how else was he going to get answers? He opened the door.
The woman stood on the front porch, wearing her sunglasses, which she moved to the top of her head when she saw Jacob. She shifted her weight to one side.
"Hello there," she said. "Is your—I guess is your maid home?"
Jacob looked around.
"Mam, I don’t think we have a maid."
"You’re a polite little thing, aren’t you?" She pinched his chin and then sighed. "I must have followed the wrong car."
"Are you here to see my mommy?"
"I sincerely doubt it."
"You spitted on her today. Didn’t you come to say sorry?"
The woman looked confused. She shift her weight to her other leg.
"That black woman is your mother?" she said. "You look so…normal."
The bathroom door opened. Jacob