Whitney would have been full of energy and curiosity, like that boy.
Persy left her Keds at the bottom of the dunes, headed for the rocky groin, seeking purchase with her knee on one stone, her hand on another. The rough flatness on top invited her to walk, her arms out for balance on the slippery, guano-splattered rocks. At the end, the gulls departed in a flurry. She felt triumphant, embraced by the wind. Briny fishy me.
The woman on the beach yelled, “Hawk! No!”
Persy turned, saw the boy as he climbed onto the rocky wall, stood. Fast, sure-footed, he headed her way. “Hey, lady.” He neared her, swaying, his arms splayed, imitating her stance to balance himself. His mother ran along the base of the groin, shedding her sandals and stepping into the water. “Hawk, get back here!”
The boy came on unsteadily, reached for Persy and slipped, his fingers brushing hers. His head bounced off a rock as he tumbled into the billowing waves. The woman shrieked. Persy saw bubbles where the boy disappeared and jumped into the churning eddy, cutting off the woman’s scream. She went down, down, blinded in the turmoil, groping. Exploded back to the surface for a gasping lungful of air and under again, arms spread, seeking. She brushed a piece of shirt, an arm, pulled him to her. Surfaced, spitting salt water. With both feet she pushed away from the groin, her arm around the limp boy, holding him close.
“I’ve got you,” she told him, “I’ve got you now.” He lay against her, arms hanging.
She kicked, kicked. Her free arm propelled them toward shore. Her left foot brushed the bottom before a wave lifted them. They rose and dipped. The wake of a breaker sucked them back out. She thrust her feet down, felt the bottom again. Dug her toes into firm sand, took a step, two, carried him into the shallows, fell to her knees, coughing. Feeble swells brushed her thighs. The woman reached them, pulled the boy from Persy, gulped with sobs that distorted her face. “Hawk, you okay? Hawk?”
He gagged, vomited water, groaned.
The woman thumped the boy’s back with the heel of her hand. “Hawk, speak to me,” she screamed. “Hawk!”
He spit another mouthful of water, opened his eyes. “Hurts, Mama.”
Mama.
The woman sat on the wet sand, held her son close, rocked back and forth. His tight curls leaked rivulets of ruddy water.
“Look.” Persy pointed at his head.
The woman’s hand found the gash. “You cut yourself,” she told him.
The boy cried out.
“He needs a doctor.” The woman must know this.
Blood seeped through her fingers, down his neck. “I got no car.”
“Is that your place?” Persy pointed to a duplex.
“Yes, where we staying.” The boy buried his face in her chest, his shoulders shaking.
“Carry him to the road. I’ll drive around.” She stumbled toward the house, pulled on her shoes, snatched towels from the clothesline, keys and pocketbook from inside the front door. In the car, her hand shook so badly she could not get the key in the ignition. She could still feel his small limp body against hers. Nausea overcame her. She opened the car door and threw up. Ocean water drained salty and clear from her stomach, her sinuses. Trembling, she eased the car onto the empty road.
Persy pulled into the driveway as the woman crossed the patchy lawn, holding her son, calling out, “He needs to lie down.” Persy helped her into the back seat, handed her a towel. “Press this on his cut.”
She got back in, started the car. “We’ll go to the clinic in Myrtle Beach. I’m Persy Marshall. Our house is on the other side of the groin, where your son fell.”
The boy moaned.
“He’s bleeding bad.”
“Press on the cut. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” She smiled at the anguished face in the rearview mirror. “Last year my husband got stitches in his foot. I know right where to go.”
“Is my boy gon need stitches?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
The woman talked to her son in a murmur as they headed south on Highway 17, the car quiet except for the low voice from the back seat.
A woman in a white uniform and nurse’s hat was unlocking the front door of the clinic when they pulled into the parking lot. She looked at Hawk in his mother’s arms, at the bloody towel, at Persy. “The doctor will be here soon, but he doesn’t usually—oh, well, come on in. I’ll look at the wound and we’ll see.” She took them inside, flipped on lights, showed them to an examining room.
“I’m Mrs. Marshall. We have a place at Windy Hill, and this is—” Persy stopped, looking at the boy’s mother.
“Loraylee Hawkins. My boy is Hawk.” The woman’s shorts and sleeveless blouse were blood-splattered, but she had a calm dignity. Persy felt disheveled in her wet clothes, her squishy Keds.
“Put him there,” the nurse pointed to a table. “I’m Nurse Hastings.”
Hawk kept his hand on his mother’s arm after she put him down. He cried out when she removed the bloody towel from his wound. “You gon be okay, baby. It’s not too bad.” She touched his fingers to her mouth while the nurse inspected his head.
“No, it isn’t bad,” the nurse said. “Dr. Rivers may want to take a few stitches. His decision, of course, but in my experience. . .” With metal pincers she took cotton balls from a glass container. “Hawk, I’m going to clean where you got hurt, might sting a bit, all right?”
He looked at her, his eyes large. “Okay.” She moistened the cotton with clear fluid from a brown bottle, dabbed it on the wound, talking to the boy all the while. She covered the wound with a gauze pad. “You’ll be fine, Hawk.” She looked at Persy. “What happened?”
“He fell off the groin, hit his head.”
The nurse turned to his mother. “When was Hawk’s last tetanus shot?”
“Got all his shots when he was born. He’s eight now.” She smiled at her son, then spoke to the nurse again. “I got insurance.”
“That’s good. Eight years? He’ll need a booster.”
A door opened and closed in the outer office. A man called, “Nancy, I’m here.”
“Hey, Doc. We’re in Room One.”
A short, fat man came in, wearing a business suit, starched blue shirt, tie. Persy caught a whiff of aftershave. He took off his straw fedora, ran a hand over his bald head, peered through round glasses. “What have we got here?”
“Dr. Rivers, this is Mrs. Marshall from Windy Hill. She brought this boy in. A scalp laceration.”
The doctor frowned at Loraylee and Hawk.
“They have insurance,” the nurse said, “so I could send them over to the hospital. Stallings would be happy to—”
He cut her off. “When’s my first appointment?”
“Nine-thirty, the Ramsey woman, eight-month checkup.”
“Hmmm.” The doctor rubbed his chin. “Tell you what, let’s not involve Stallings in this. If it’s only a couple of sutures. . . I’ll be right back.” He left the room.
Nurse Hastings said, “He’s going to change his coat.”
He returned in a white coat with HEWITT RIVERS, MD, stitched in green script on the breast pocket. “Your name?” he said to Hawk’s mother.
“I’m Loraylee Hawkins and this my boy, Hawk. He’s eight.”
Dr. Rivers touched Hawk’s shoulder. “You’re eight, are you?”
“Be nine in October.”
“Would you let me see where you hurt your head?”
Hawk looked at his mother. “Okay.”
The doctor gently lifted the bloody gauze. The nurse cut open another bandage, held it out at the ready. After inspecting the wound, the doctor put the clean gauze over it. “Loraylee, I think four stitches will do.” He asked Hawk, “Do you know your numbers?”
“I’m almost in third grade.” He sounded indignant.
Dr. Rivers held up his hand, thumb and pinkie folded. “How many fingers?”
“Three.”
“I’m going to look in your eyes, okay?” Dr. Rivers held out his hand and
the nurse put a penlight in it. He examined Hawk’s eyes. “Loraylee, has he been asleep since he fell?”
“No, sir.”
“There’s no sign of a concussion, which would be like a bruise on your son’s brain. Let’s get him stitched up and I’ll tell you what to watch for, but I believe he’s going to be all right.”
“We supposed to go home on the bus Sunday, six or seven hours’ trip. That okay?”
“If he has no problems before you leave, it’s all right for him to travel. Your own doctor can remove the stitches in a week or so.” He said to Hawk, “Nurse Hastings will shave your head a bit, give you a bald spot.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll do something so you won’t feel it when I sew up the cut.”
Loraylee whispered to Persy, “I left my purse at the house, with my insurance card.”
“When we’re finished here, I’ll take you back to get it.”
For the first time, she smiled at Persy. “I thank you.”
Persy stood off to the side in a corner of the room, shivering in her damp clothes in the air-conditioning. She wanted to be out of the way, but hoped they wouldn’t ask her to leave.
Dr. Rivers explained everything to Hawk as he proceeded, letting Loraylee stay close to her son, perhaps persuaded by her effect on the boy. Even with a local anesthetic, Hawk must have felt the pull of the needle passing in and out of his scalp. With each suture he squealed and began to wiggle. His mother spoke quietly to him. “I know, I know. It’s scary, but we almost done.” A few minutes later Dr. Rivers tied off the last of four neat black sutures and dropped his instruments on a tray littered with bloody gauze. He taped a bandage over the wound.
Nurse Hastings gave him a syringe. “The tetanus.”
Dr. Rivers took Hawk’s arm and swabbed it with wet cotton. “Take a deep breath, Hawk. Hold it.”
At the moment of the injection, Hawk squealed, “Ow!” but it was over.
“We’re all done.” Dr. Rivers patted Hawk’s shoulder. “You’re a brave young man.”
Persy touched the boy’s foot. “You did great.”
“Keep him awake until his regular bedtime,” the doctor said to Loraylee. “If he seems unusually sleepy, call Nurse Hastings.” He left abruptly.
In the front room, a receptionist was at the desk, a small girl with platinum hair and bright lipstick. “Mrs. Marshall, we understand that you’ll return later with their insurance card.”
Loraylee said, “We will, and I’m grateful to Mrs. Marshall.”
Again the girl spoke to Persy. “Nurse Hastings said to give him an aspirin if his head starts hurting.”
As Loraylee turned for the door, she said over her shoulder, “I will do that.”
When they left, Hawk had two lollipops, one in his hand and one in his pocket. They all sat in the front, the boy between his mother and Persy. Hawk was warm against Persy’s side and smelled like alcohol and grape sucker. He put a finger to the edge of the bald patch that showed under the stark white bandage. “How long it gon take to get my hair back?”
“The way it grows, won’t take long,” Loraylee said.
“Good. I don’t particularly like being bald.”
“Not particularly, huh?”
“I guess it’s okay. Uncle Ray got a bald spot, too.”
Persy turned off Highway 17 onto the road to Windy Hill.
Hawk sat up straight, peered over the dashboard, shouted, “There it is, the ’Lantic Ocean!”
She felt his excitement.
“Soon as we get back home I’m telling Desmond I got stitches after falling into the ocean.”
Persy pulled into the gravel drive behind the duplex. “Who is Desmond?”
“My friend. We in school together.”
She stopped the car. “I’m going to get cleaned up. I’ll come back for y’all in an hour or so.”
“Honk when you get here.”
Persy went back to the shanty, where she stayed in the shower until the hot water turned tepid, thinking about how wonderful it felt to be around a child.
* * *
The evening gaped before her, hours until bedtime, but even so too brief for her to think about all that had happened. Moving quickly around the kitchen, she fixed a poached egg, slice of boiled ham, cantaloupe, toast, forcing herself to wash up after she ate, to leave a peaceful kitchen that wouldn’t nag her later.
At dusk she sat in one of the rockers with a beer. The sun setting behind the house was reflected on the breakers, a golden pink no one would believe if it were in a painting. She looked north to the duplex where lights were on in second-floor windows. Imagined Loraylee putting Hawk to bed in short pajamas, smelling of soap and toothpaste, fussy because his head hurt. Did she remember to give him aspirin? Did she read him to sleep? I would.
We could have drowned.
The beer was sharp in her throat. Clearly, Negro patients weren’t welcome at that clinic, evidenced by a familiar unacknowledged byplay. But on the whole, the doctor treated Hawk and Loraylee well.
During the drive back to the clinic with the insurance card, Loraylee had told Persy they lived in Brooklyn. The neighborhood that Blaire was working to destroy, and where Persy visited Roberta Stokes to get a christening gown for Whitney, all those years ago. Persy hadn’t told Loraylee that she was from Charlotte, too, hadn’t offered her a ride home on Sunday, though she could get them home in half the time it would take on the bus.
Sitting there, rocking, she made up her mind: This wasn’t going to be another missed opportunity. Inside the house the phone rang. Blaire. They hadn’t spoken since yesterday. She let it ring.
CHAPTER 18
Mr. Griffin’s got something special planned for our Monday off, and I’ve gone to Lamarr Beauty Shop, got my hair heat treated and styled, got a manicure and pedicure. I’m feeling shiny.
“You’re gorgeous,” he say, when I get in the car.
“Been to the beauty parlor.” I touch his leg.
He drives out of town, the sun setting behind us.
At a sign saying Matthews five miles, he turns onto a dirt road. We stop at a lake, silver in the dim evening. Mr. Griffin say, “You stay here while I set things up.”
I roll down the window, listening as he opens the trunk, walks back and forth down to the water, carrying stuff. The air is full of sounds I don’t recognize. I’ve heard night noises all my life, living near Little Sugar, but out here in the country a band of critters is playing strange music. No traffic, no radio playing next door, nobody out on the street talking. Frogs, crickets, a hooty owl and other birds settle down for the night.
Mr. Griffin call me, “Okay.”
I get out and walk to where he got a blanket spread on the ground. “Wine,” he say, “cheese, boiled shrimp, fruit . . . a sunset picnic.”
I can’t tell him how happy this makes me. I sit down on the blanket. It’s almost dark, but the sky glows with a moon rising. “You plan for the moon, too?”
“Of course.” He hands me a glass of wine, clinks against mine. “To us.” He takes a sip. “How’s Hawk doing? When are the stitches coming out?”
“He’s grumpy, can’t wait to be done with it. We see Dr. Wilkins Tuesday afternoon.”
“Have you heard anything else from the lady who brought y’all back to Charlotte?”
“Mrs. Marshall? No. We talked a lot in the car coming home, but that trip was a one-time thing and we both knew it.” The wine is cool and sweet. “She took us all the way home, I tell you that? I mean, she could have let us off anywhere in town we could catch a city bus, but she wouldn’t have it. When we pulled up in front of the house, she tell me something like, ‘You have a lovely home.’”
“Did she come in?”
“Oh, no. I grabbed our bag, got Hawk. I thanked her for saving us such a long trip. That was that.”
We sit in the dusk, in all those sounds coming through the trees, touching each other, drinking wine.
He say, “I wish we never h
ad to sleep.”
“You being silly. We got to sleep or we couldn’t work. Be too tired to do anything.”
“But what if we didn’t need to sleep and never got tired? We could work eight or ten hours, and have all the rest of the day to read or play or make love.” He kisses me good. “Think about that.”
I can’t think about anything but kissing, anything but his hand slipping down from my shoulder till I’m shivering. “Listen! I never knew critters made such commotion.” We’re in a bowl of night noises.
Mr. Griffin puts his mouth close to my ear. “Hear that bullfrog? Know what he’s saying?”
“What?”
He makes his voice real deep, his mouth against my ear. “Want some. Want some. Want some.”
I laugh out loud. Some of the night noises stop, then pick right back up.
“Listen to that lady tree frog. You know what she’s saying?” This time his voice is high. “Huh-uh, huh-uh, huh-uh.”
“She should say ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.’”
He nuzzles my neck. “I grew up out here listening to all the critters talking among themselves.”
“You never told me that.”
“My parents still live in the house my great-granddaddy built when he settled here after the Civil War.”
His parents. Hawk’s grandparents. “They don’t know they got a grandbaby.”
He’s quiet for long time. “No, they don’t,” he say, finally. He picks up a stick, tosses it toward the lake. “Mom wants me to be happy.” But he doesn’t sound happy.
“And your father wouldn’t want a colored grandson, is that it?”
“No, he would not.”
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