Right by My Side

by David Haynes

  I do, and he crunches some down

  After the news Sam gets up to help me with the dishes. I wash, he scrubs the sink and counters and puts the dishes away.

  “I got a letter from my mother,” I tell him. “A couple actually.” I’d never told him about any of the others. I’m not looking at him but I hear him stop what he’s doing, if only for a second.

  “Good girl,” he says. “Glad she doing right by you.” He doesn’t ask what the letter says or anything. Never once has he said anything about her at all. We finish the dishes in silence.

  Back at the TV Sam sets the VCR. He’s taping a show on PBS—one of those opera deals, this one with a big fat black lady just singing her lungs out.

  “Gayle asked me to get this for her,” he says. “We can watch something else if you want. Damn if I’m gonna sit through this here twice.”

  We watch basketball on cable. “What do you think of Gayle?” he asks me.

  I tell him she seems like a good person—real friendly.

  Sam says, “Sho nuff is.” Says he could get used to having her around full time.

  *

  In my room that night I listen to the radio in the dark.

  Sam and Rose.

  Sam and Gayle.

  It’s easy as changing bags in the garbage can.

  I think about what Sam says about Rose doing right by me.

  So there: as easily rid as Sam is, me, I’ll have Rose the rest of my life, doing the right thing.

  On the radio Tina Turner sings “Let’s Stay Together.”

  I’m so in love with you …”

  Into my head comes another voice. There’s a duet going on.

  “… whether times are good or bad, happy or sad.”

  I know that other voice. It’s Rose.

  Who’d guess she’d be as good as Tina?

  13

  APRIL FIRST.

  As we gather on the back field close to the railroad right-of-way, the Pinheads are in high spirits. It is almost the perfect spring day, sunny and warm, everything shimmering and yellow-green.

  I’ll be damn:

  Todd and Ohairy have pulled it off, somehow gotten the Pinheads interested, even excited about something. I’d expected they’d be here only out of curiosity, that there’d be a lot of standing around with arms crossed, watching. But everyone has gotten off into this, wearing their brightest day-glo colors, tossing frisbees, footballs … Some girls are jumping ropes and singing, pretending they are little girls. There’s Connie Jo wearing what looks like a witch’s dress, all black, shredded and flowing. A mob of kids—rockers and punks—are dancing out in the middle of the field, ten boxes turned to ten different stations.

  Artie and his little friend Susan are right in the middle of that dancing mob out there. They’re always together, those two. Miss Ida and probably Betty Lou, too, would die—their Baby Boy with a white girl. People here at Eisenhower figure it’s okay as long as they’re both … of limited abilities, special. Or, at least pretend like they don’t care.

  You see black boys and white girls together sometimes out at the mall, but hardly ever white boys with black girls. Most of us—black or white—wouldn’t do it anyway. But especially the boys. I think that’s because if you are a boy you always have to worry about what your dad thinks, how he’s gonna act around her. Dad’s are always telling you about looking out for yourself. For your future. If I brought a white girl to the crackerbox, old Sam wouldn’t say nothing to her face. He’d look her up and down real good, though, and then, afterwards he’d say, “You must got the white girl fever. What you want with a skinny butt little gal like that anyway?” Old Sam is always talking about how white folks ain’t got no behinds. And, as much as I hate to say it, and not that I go around looking at a lot of white people’s behinds, Sam may be right.

  Personally, if Arthur Warner wants to run around with this Susan, hey, it’s fine with me. Though I have to ask myself how it is someone like him could find a girlfriend. What, do I have a giant cooties sign around my neck? I just hope they don’t have a houseful of retarded kids.

  Pretend I never said that.

  Half the school must be out here for the demonstration. The other half we can see watching out the south windows.

  There are even news cameras—little box-like jobs with station decals pasted all over. These deals are carried on the shoulders of a couple of guys with power packs strapped to their backs. I can see one of the cameras pointed up at us and I give them a big wave. Todd tells me to grow up.

  Todd and I are at the top of the visiting team bleachers. We are watching down the tracks for the train. Todd will signal with a homemade air-raid siren when the train is near, signaling the Pinheads to put the fun in high gear, and also signaling the cameras to get ready for when everybody falls-out.

  “Just look at those people down there,” Todd says. “I didn’t think it was possible, but I guess you can do anything. You just have to try.” His eyes are practically brimmed over with tears. To their credit he and Miss O’Hare planned this down to the last detail. They kept all the talking stuff to a minimum. Todd made one little presentation. People actually showed up for it. He wrote one article for the newspaper. He talked mostly about what we don’t know about this nuclear stuff and, also, how citizen involvement makes important people take notice. What Todd and Ohairy did most and best was to emphasize the fun. Just like I told them to. I mean, one thing a Pinhead likes is to have a good time.

  Down there looks like we’d won a state championship or canceled school forever.

  *

  High noon finds Todd staring down the tracks.

  “Come on,” he says, clutching tight at the binoculars. Down on the field the Pinheads are running out of steam. Here and there clusters of kids have sat down to enjoy the sun. Artie and Susan and some of their friends are still working out, though. Todd looks around. He’s so nervous he’s rubbed a spot raw on his elbow from clutching it with the opposite hand.

  I tell him to relax. “Trains are always a little late,” I say. “We’ll have time to get them up and going as soon as you see it.”

  Across the way on the rise by the parking lot I can see Mr. Shannon checking his watch. Fourth period begins in less than ten minutes. Already some kids are wandering back to the building.

  Some guy we’ve never seen before is hanging out up there next to O’Hare. She’s been standing up with the faculty. Here she comes strutting across the field to the bottom of the bleachers, calling Todd down. “Take over,” he says. He hands me the binoculars and goes down to see what she wants.

  About a dozen or so of their hard core supporters come over and join them. Like Todd, they are real serious. They all scowl a lot and wear the same buttons. If you could save the ozone layer wearing buttons we’d be in good shape with this crowd alone. Some of the boys down there have even taken the Lawrence fashion cue—old vests, buttoned-down shirts, jeans and all. Strange to me, though, they don’t try to hang around with Todd and Artie and me, and though I might as well be invisible, they treat Todd as if he were the president and Jesus all rolled into one skinny package—real deferential, almost as if they thought he had super powers.

  O’Hare finishes with Todd and and pats him on the arm. Then I see him turn to his troops. He is, I can tell, giving them new orders of some kind.

  “What’s the story?” I ask when he returns.

  “Everything’s under control,” he says.

  At 12:10 Mr. Shannon raises a bullhorn. He says, “Let’s go, people.” Through the bullhorn his voice sounds especially twangy and nasal.

  In clusters the Pinheads wander back across the field. I pick up the rigged-up siren and say, “I guess that’s that.”

  Todd grabs my arm. “We’re staying.” he says. He keeps the binoculars stuck to his eyes, staring down the tracks. Down on the field all but about twenty kids have gone. The hard core recruits line up along the right-of-way.

  Artie and Susan run over to the bottom
of the bleachers. “Come on you guys,” Artie yells. “Everybody’s already gone.”

  “You go on in,” Todd says, all sure of himself and smooth. You’d think he were giving somebody permission to do something.

  Artie and Susan wave these big smiley waves and run in. They are the last two who will leave. Ohairy turns and follows them into the building.

  “So it’s okay for Artie to go, but I get to stay,” I say.

  Todd lowers the binoculars from his eyes and gives me about the hardest look I’ve ever seen on him. He doesn’t say anything but I know he’s daring me to go, daring me to chicken-out and not stand with him.

  What I don’t know just then is that O’Hare has struck some sort of a deal with Shannon so that Todd and company can stay. They—we—are to suffer only the minimum consequence, and the school will still have gone on record making a statement.

  Kind of a shrewd deal, I guess, but what I really think when I find out is, I wonder how often it is that these deals go on. I mean, it just could be that every time you think something sort of tough is about to go on, behind it there’s some sort of a cheesy deal. Don’t you just know it’s true. When you look at those politicians on TV, can’t you just tell that half of them are running a scam. Scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. That’s how Sam says it goes. Out there in the big world. You got to give to get. Great, but what if you don’t want to give. What if the price is too high. I can hear that Sam up there in the dump, dickering and dealing. Take these aluminum cans and I’ll throw in that scrap iron for free. I’ll move your fridge if you come on a date. Is that what O’Hare and Todd did? Is that the kind of person I’m dealing with now?

  “I see you’re still here,” Todd says to me. He says it as a simple statement. Nothing nasty intended. At least I don’t think there is.

  I just sit there on the bleachers looking out in the day, thinking to myself, “Oh, shit.”

  *

  At 12:34 Todd says “here she comes” and I hit the air raid siren. We quick meet the others at the fence and join hands. The train approaches—a short train, only four cars counting an engine. As the cars pass we all die dramatic deaths. I gasp and choke and shake. Todd tells me to give it a rest. Up in the windows I can hear Pinheads screaming and cheering.

  I feel foolish and proud at the same time.

  *

  Despite pats on the back we are herded into the office for the official reading of the riot act. We are told that the demonstration was a success, and that we have managed to focus attention on an important issue in a positive way. We “are to be congratulated.” Then we are told that because, technically speaking, we have violated school rules, we have to be made to suffer the consequences. That’s just how it sounds, too—all official and off, as if old Shannon was reading it right out of the official rules book, which he was.

  The consequences: two afternoons of school service.

  Mr. Shannon adds, “We have, of course, already notified your parents.”

  Crap.

  Before I can catch Todd’s reaction to that, Mr. Shannon calls him aside. “I want you to meet one of our former Eisenhower students. Mr. Mark Randall. He’s here to get some pictures of y’all.”

  They shake hands and Todd tells him his name. This is a tall blond guy with a bushy moustache—the same guy I saw standing up on the hill by Ohairy. He tells Todd, “Good show today.” He says it was real professional. He’s wearing one of those Todd outfits, too.

  O’Hare stands back out of the scene. She’s looking back and forth between the two of them. She’s got a tight little smile on her face. Like the vampire got in the blood bank.

  Shannon says, “Todd reminds me a lot of you back in those days. Always cooking something up.” Shannon laughs a throaty laugh that sounds like he’s gulping air.

  Mark Randall and Todd sneer at him behind his back.

  I just roll my eyes.

  Randall and Todd sit down to talk about “things.” Todd is so involved I bet he forgot all about the forged note.

  *

  “Here comes the Black Panther himself,” Sam says when I come home.

  Me and one of Todd’s lieutenants have just spent two hours stapling school discipline manuals—we must have stapled thirty years’ worth. I switched pages six and eight on about half of them. This dude I worked with was—if you believe it—more serious than Todd. Kept talking about the movement this, the movement that. I asked him what movement, a bowel movement? and after that he wouldn’t talk to me at all.

  Gayle and Sam think that Marshall in the principal’s office is the funniest thing they’ve heard since television was invented.

  “Them white folks didn’t scare my little fella?” Sam asks.

  I give him a dirty look, which makes Gayle say something about the life of a black militant not leaving any time for funny business. They can hardly contain themselves, they are laughing so hard.

  If Rose were here who knows what she’d do. When I was in trouble, sometimes she would act almost like she was proud of it. Sometimes it was like she didn’t care, but that wasn’t really it. It was more like she was sorry that it wasn’t her who was in trouble instead of me.

  Sam and Gayle are enjoying this more than she ever would. They even think it’s funny that I forged Rose’s signature to the fake note.

  I put on some dark sunglasses and try to look real mean. If you can’t beat ’em join ’em. Sam and Gayle laugh even harder. The laughter continues into dinner and even after.

  “Now, Mr. Sam,” Gayle says. “Do you think this is any way to bring up a child. No respect for the law. An outlaw. That’s what you’re raising. A regular Jesse James.”

  We are sitting around the TV set, but the set’s not on. That never happened in the old days, either.

  “You absolutely right, Miss Gayle,” Sam says. “It ain’t fittin. It just ain’t fittin.” Then he stands over me. “Shame on you, boy. Shame on you.” He waves a finger in my direction.

  By this time I’m laughing so hard at them myself my sides start to ache.

  “I’ll be good,” I say. “I promise forever to be good.”

  “Are you gonna have to kill him?” Gayle asks.

  “He’s been a good little fella up to now. I think I’ll let him off this time.”

  “Oh thank you, thank you,” I say. I crawl over and wrap my arms around the bottoms of Sam’s legs. “I’ll be good forever and ever.”

  “Don’t let him off that easy,” Gayle says. “Make him do something. Make him get us some ice water.”

  “You heard the lady. Two ice waters and make it damn quick.” Then Sam says to her, “You one of them smart girls, ain’t you?” He nudges her arm. “We may just have to keep you around here.”

  “Aren’t you sweet,” Gayle says. “Don’t ever call me a girl again.” She hits him on the arm with a pillow. They both laugh some more at that.

  This sort of stuff’s been going on all evening. I move out to get the water, partially because Sam and Gayle are kinda sickening sometimes, and partially because Sam lightly kicks my butt and says, “Thirsty folks get tired of waiting.”

  They toast with the ice water as if it were champagne.

  “Now. You tell us about your checkered past, Mr. Sam,” Gayle orders.

  I’d hate to upset a sweet young thing like you. What are you, sixteen? seventeen?”

  “How did you guess?” Gayle asks.

  Gayle is Sam’s age—thirty-nine. She told me she was. She goes, “I think my tender ears can handle it. Marshall and I want to hear all about your militant days.”

  “My daddy didn’t allow none of that,” Sam says.

  We laugh. We think he’s still messing around.

  “No, listen, this is for real,” he says.

  So we listen.

  “Out here they was some of them old-fashioned Negroes. They didn’t take no stuff from white folks, mind you. But all that civil rights stuff …”

  “No picket lines in Washington Park,”
Gayle says.

  “My daddy would see Dr. King on television and he’d say that there was one smart Negro boy. He’d also say he thought a lot of folks was gonna end up gettin hurt.”

  “What did you think?” I ask.

  “I thought maybe I might like to join one of those demonstrations. But didn’t no demonstration come my way.”

  “And you didn’t go out looking for none,” Gayle says.

  “That’s right. Yes, ma’am,” Sam says. “I’m glad all that went on. Proud. I’m just saying it seemed like it just passed me right by.”

  Gayle says, “We had some action at my high school. We took over the guidance office. I was sick of all the bullshit—you know. How if you’re black or poor they automatically put you in the vocational track. They still on that these days?” she asks me.

  “At Eisenhower they’re too busy trying to be nice.”

  “As if you was made out of glass.”

  “Or not there at all,” I say.

  “We made sure they saw us,” Gayle goes on. “Real well-organized. We wrote up concerns, ideas, suggestions. Then we had a sit-in. They treated us like dogs. They dragged folks out of there by whatever they could grab—belts, hair. Kicked me all up in my legs. Called us niggers and bitches. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”

  Sam takes her hand and holds it between two of his. Her hand fits between those two mits almost like a cat’s paw would.

  I ask her if it was worth it. She puts her head on Sam’s shoulder.

  Sam says it was.

  *

  When the doorbell rings I get up to get it. Lucille pushes in without so much as a hello, grabs me by the collar and hauls me in front of Sam and Gayle as if before judge and jury. Getting an eyeful of how cozy they are knocks a little of the wind from her sails. She shakes the collar around a bit. Almost, but not quite rough, is how she’s acting.