by David Haynes
“I caught the six o’clock news,” Lucille says. “Y’all catch the news? Or were you too busy?”
“Get your hands off my boy,” Sam says. He says it mildly, at least for him. He says, “And good evening to you, too, Miss Robinson.”
Lucille drops the collar. I start laughing because I can see Gayle biting her lip. That causes Lucille to grab the collar again.
“I’m disappointed, Sam Finney. Awful disappointed.”
“This is my wife’s aunt. Gayle, Lucille. Lucille, Gayle.”
Lucille has obviously left her house in a hurry. She’s pulled on some sort of red, black, and green knit cap over her hair—one that does not quite hide the mass of curlers. She’s got on a house dress with big red and yellow flowers on it. And that purse—the gigantic, day-glo blue purse—she’s got that hung on the hinge of her elbow. If she hits me with that monster I’ll be crippled for life.
“I’m having my dinner,” she says. “On the TV I see one of my own flesh and blood. Bigger than life. Waving and grinning like a Chessy cat. I thought the Lord Jesus would take me home right then and there.”
Hot damn—one of those cameras actually caught us. And here we are having so much fun we forget to watch.
“Do you want something, Lucille?” Sam asks.
I laugh and she squeezes tighter at the collar. I’m standing on tiptoes because she’s pulling up it too.
“I want this foolishness stopped. This family don’t go in for no public carrying on. Your people neither, Sam Finney. I want you to do something about this.”
“What am I gonna do if some mostly grown nigger wants to get himself in a little trouble? You got a hold of him—you talk to him.”
Lucille drops me. She points a finger right at Sam, tilts her head in Gayle’s direction. “I see you’re at it again. You old dog. Ain’t nothing but a dog, and I’m warning you. I don’t like what’s going on here one bit. I won’t stand for it.” She turns on Gayle who is still biting her lip. “What are you looking at, girl?”
Gayle purses her lips and shakes her head.
“Tell me and we’ll both know,” she says.
Sam laughs right out loud.
“I’ll take care of you,” Lucille says to Sam. Then to me she says, “You know better than to mess with me.” She turns and slams the door behind her.
“That is related to you?” Gayle asks me.
“Flesh and blood,” I say. “What do you think she’s gonna do?” I ask Sam.
“Not much she can do,” he says. “She’ll call Rose.”
“That doesn’t bother you?” I ask
“I’ll tell Rose myself. Next time I talk to her.” Sam says this as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
“You talk to ma?”
“Every so often, sure.”
No reaction from Gayle, so I guess I’m the only one surprised by this.
*
Staring at the ceiling that night, I find the hole and let myself be taken in. It’s like I have X-ray vision and I can dissolve through, right through the gravel, right through the roof, out above the house, out into space. I stare and let my mind go out there where it can wander free.
But it won’t go anywhere. It stays right here in the middle of all this. Hashing it over, working it out.
It goes back and forth from how sweet Sam had treated Gayle, to the fact that Rose has been in touch with him.
Which means she won’t leave him alone either.
I decide what she is doing is keeping her options open. Maybe nothing better’ll come along. She’s like a giant shadow over all our lives, Rose is. And I get some comfort, strangely enough, knowing Sam has to deal with that just as much as I do.
*
In the morning I find out the shadow over Sam and me might not be the worst thing in the world. Todd shows up at Miss Ida’s with a black eye. A swollen handprint on his left cheek glows brighter than the morning sun.
14
“WHAT HAPPENED TO you?” I ask. Artie and I are waiting for him in the store. Miss Ida puts down the puzzle page and her coffee mug. She comes around the counter.
“Let me see,” she says. She moves his head around taking a good look at the evidence by gripping his chin and doing what she wants with it. Just like the dentist does.
“I ran into a door,” Todd says. His tone is bitter, and even a bit evil. He looks Miss Ida right in the eye when he says this.
She turns loose the chin. Her eyes meet mine briefly as she turns back to the counter. Her face is almost blank, but her eyes show how she feels: angry and helpless.
“Pretty big hand on that door. You want something to put on that?” she offers.
“No,” Todd says. “Thanks for asking.”
“I got some sunglasses you can use,” says Artie.
“If I wanted sunglasses I’d be wearing sunglasses.”
*
All the way to school no one says anything more.
“Hang on a second,” I say. We are walking from the parking lot to the building. “You look pretty bad. You sure you’re up to this?”
“What I look like is, I look like someone beat the shit out of me.”
“People will stare at you,” I tell him.
“I got nothing to hide,” he says. “I didn’t do anything.”
He strolls into Eisenhower High School bigger than life, staring down the stares, wearing those bruises as if they were badges.
*
I get out of study hall and go knock on Miss O’Hare’s door during study hall. It is standing slightly open. As I knock I push the door just a bit, expecting to see Todd. Instead I see Ohairy with her arms around the waist of Blondie, the dude from the demonstration. He’s got his hands on her shoulders.
“That’s the way—come right on in Marshall,” Ohairy says, neither embarassed nor even angry. She introduces me as one of her “advisees,” and old Mark Randall gives me one of these old-fashioned soul handshakes that some white folks are always trying to do. As if it made them something special because they were in on a big secret. I turn my hand every which way pretending like I don’t have the slightest idea what he’s doing.
“I saw you at the demonstration,” Mark says to me. “Great job.”
“Mark and I are old friends,” Ohairy tells me.
That’s obvious.
“From our college radical days—the good old days.”
Who cares?
“Can I help you with something?” she asks me.
I say “Yes.” I give old straw head the evil eye. Randall takes the cue, and Ohairy promises to call him later. When he leaves I close the door behind him.
I ask her if she’d seen Todd today.
“We talked after second hour,” she says. “Yesterday was such a success. We’re planning something new already. Such momentum.”
“What about Todd’s face?”
“What’s the story there? It looks awful. I hope he put something on it.”
“Todd got the hell beat out of him.”
“I’m surprised to hear about our Todd in a fight,” she says. “He’s certainly not the fighting type.”
“His dad did it.”
“Oh.” She covers her mouth and starts chewing her finger. “Did he tell you that?”
“Todd says he walked into a door,” I say. “Does it look like he walked into a door to you? I think his dad beat him up after you made him be in the demonstration.”
“Well, first of all, I never made Todd do anything.” Ohairy, who’s been leaning on her desk, sits down in her chair. She raises a hand as if to stop me from speaking. She snickers and shakes her head. “There’s one thing I’m starting to figure out finally. You give me too much power. You don’t give enough credit to Todd.”
“What I know is that Todd is really gullible. And now he’s hurt. How are you going to help him?”
“I’m not sure what I can do. Oh, Marshall, this is so awful. Poor Todd.”
“What about those people w
ho did this to him?”
“Abuse is a very serious charge, Marshall.”
“You didn’t even look at him. He walks in here with a black eye and you don’t even see it.” I’m yelling this at her. “You don’t care about Todd at all.”
“I care very, very, much. People like Todd are rare. You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. We were so excited.”
I roll my eyes at her.
“You know, I saw that eye right away. I really did. But we started carrying on about yesterday. And I guess I just … slipped. Can you forgive me?”
I get up and head for the door.
“Please, sit down and listen to me.”
I refuse.
“Then just listen,” she says.
Ohairy tells me that if it’s true, she should report it, but she’s worried. That could make it worse for Todd. If it’s not true and she reports it, it could ruin his family. She says she could call just on the suspicion. She’s doing all this thinking out loud. She decides maybe it’s best to let it be for now. She says she’s going to keep a close eye on Todd.
I don’t buy any of it. I start out the door.
“Beaten is beaten,” I say. Whatever is supposed to happen to that trash should happen to them.
“This is very personal stuff, Marshall,” Ohairy says. “We have to trust him. He’ll let us know if and when he needs us.”
I give her a dirty look and leave.
Ohairy is not to be trusted. I’ve known that all along. She’s too good at turning stuff around, at making apples sound like oranges. People like her need to be fixed, and fixed good. But, she’s the teacher. The adult. She holds all the cards. Somebody get me a gun. I am not totally helpless. I got my mouth, and I can save Todd. I can save him from those people and from Ohairy, too. I’ll worry about getting him away from her later. For now, I go to the pay phone in the main hall by the office and ask who to talk to about child abuse. I tell them I want something done about it. Now.
*
After school Gayle asks me to go walking with her. We walk up Dorset toward the landfill. There is a big sign on Dorset by the entrance that says “Desperate for clean dirt.”
Just like Saint Louis in the spring, today is cool, almost cold because the wind blows just a little. The sky is full of raggedy gray and white clouds. Here and there a bright patch of blue flashes through.
Gayle’s got on a bulky white sweater with big wooden buttons. It looks much too big for her. I have to stick my hands in the kangaroo pockets of my sweatshirt to keep them warm. We see Sam but don’t go bother him. He’s directing some men who have dumptrucks full of black earth. Since last summer the dump is mostly filled. Sam spends his days salvaging whatever is left here that might be worth anything. Who knows what the dirt is for.
We wave at Sam and he does this real obnoxious thing where he waves, grins, and sticks up two thumbs.
“What’s his problem?” I ask.
“Loves life,” Gayle says. “Come on up here.”
We walk over to one of the high places—an old pile of gravel that never got sold and is now mixed with dirt. The boys and I called that hill the Matterhorn. Now the land has filled in around the old mountain. It’s hardly even a good hill anymore, though you can still see most of Washington Park from here.
Up there, this is the question I ask Gayle:
I ask her what would you do if your parents beat you up—abused you and all of that.
“Did they do that to you?” she asks.
I walked right into that one.
I deny it up and down, hoping she’s convinced. I tell her it’s one of those just supposing questions.
She says they call them hypothetical questions—which I knew, but didn’t feel like using a fancy word. She says she doesn’t believe in hypothetical questions.
“I love people. All of their what if this and what if that bullshit. As if life were some kind of a fairy tale and you could make up endings to suit you. People might really want to talk about stuff too, but either they shamed or else they really don’t want to hear what you have to say. I don’t have time in my life for either of those. Which is it with you?”
“With me it’s that I don’t think I should be spreading other people’s business around.”
“Then don’t,” she says. She turns toward the dump trucks which are roaring around at one edge of the landfill.
“But I do want to know what you think.”
Gayle gives me an annoyed look, frowning out from under these drawn-on eyebrows.
“Todd’s parent’s slapped him around last night. He was beat up pretty good. Probably cause of the demonstration.”
She parts her lips, makes a clicking sound. She touches me on the arm. That’s all.
“What do you think?” I ask her.
“It’s a pretty cold thing to do. I’m sorry it happened.”
I’m getting the feeling that this is something folks don’t want to know about. I doubt they’d be so cool if they had the shit beat out of them. She and OHairy both: sighing, shaking their heads. That makes me sick. People like them pretend to be open and honest. And maybe they are. But they’ve got their closed parts, too. Every once in awhile you come up against those closed doors, and then just watch ’em flinch. It’s always stuff like this that gets em: people who are two-faced, people who hit their kids. They’re afraid of that stuff. Afraid that if they talk about it maybe, somehow, it’ll get them, too.
“Aren’t there laws?” I ask her. “Shouldn’t somebody do something?”
“Do what?” she asks. “Your friend’s what … sixteen? Not exactly what I call helpless.”
From the rise we can see the trucks emptying out their loads of soil. A man in red coveralls walks behind a truck, spreading the dirt with a rake. In the cool air the dirt smells rich, like summer. Sam stands on a hill across the dump. His legs are spread and his arms are crossed like an ancient chieftain.
“I can’t get it out of my head,” I say. “I don’t understand how you could do that to your own child.”
“Life do get tough,” Gayle says. “Everyday at the clinic I see kids coming in that are beaten. There are a lot of sick people out there. When I get to be queen …” She lets out a little laugh. But, for now …” she shrugs her shoulders. “It’s just another one of those things.”
“But if you loved someone …”
“Love,” Gayle laughs. “Well, now, little brother, you have really stirred things up. Tell me all about this love. Go on.”
I just shake my head.
“I’ll tell you, then. First, just because you got a child don’t mean you have to love it. Even if you do,” she’s moving her hands a lot, walking me down by the fence that separates the park from the dump. “Even if you do, sometimes when you love somebody you have to do something that hurts them.”
I tell her that that sounds stupid. That people who love should only do good things to each other.
“Well, aren’t you sweet,” she says, batting her eyes. “Let’s say we’re walking in this dump and you step on a shard of glass. Let’s say it got in your foot. Though it might hurt you, I’d sure pull it out. I’d put some of that good stinging disinfectant on it also.”
“That’s not the same thing,” I say.
She rubs her chin as if she were searching hard for another, better example. “Okay—your mama. Just listen.” She grabs my arm as I walk away from her, repelling her with my hands. “I think she left,” she says, pulling me back around to her, “because she was messed up and she was afraid of what she might do. She hurt you in one way to keep from hurting you in another way. That’s just my opinion from all that Sam tells me about her. Just think about it.”
Not that I would say anything more about Rose to her anyway.
*
Just as we are about to leave Sam yells at us, tells us to come back. He says he’s got great news. He is standing by the shed with his thumbs hitched up in his overalls, rocking on his heels, looking for all the world l
ike a big black country bumpkin.
“Step into my office,” he says, as if he were really the mayor of Washington Park. Inside the lean-to Sam has nailed up the license plates from every junked car that ever had one. There is a desk—it’s really an old flat door set on top of two file cabinets—and it is now clean (or at least not real messy like it was getting for a while there). Above the desk there is a picture of a black woman with big boobs and a small bikini. Apparently she is Miss April at the Icehouse Lounge. Her name is Dawnette. I can’t help staring.
“What are you looking at?” Sam says. He hands me a Dixie cup with some grape juice in it. It looks as if we’re about to have some sort of a toast.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins.
Yes, definitely a toast.
“Thanks to a certain Miss Gayle Moore, myself, Mr. Samuel Finney, Jr., has taken this here contract to one of them fancy lawyers over in Clayton for a little reviewing.”
“I was right,” Gayle shouts. “I knew I was right.”
“Hush and just hang on—big old horsey girl. Don’t spill none of that juice here in my fancy suite.”
Sam drinks his juice, so Gayle and I do the same. He refills us from the Hi-C can.
“Save it for the toast,” he says. “As I was saying, upon consultation with my attorneys, it appears those old county boys done my daddy a bit of a favor some time back.”
Sam keeps looking at me and I think his eyes are about to pop out of his head.
“Let me back up,” he says. “My daddy … was a good man. A giant. A saint. Don’t nobody say nothing against that man. That clear?”
We agree, toast, and drink down some more juice. Sam fills us up again.
“Hold off on my drink. We gonna have us a toast. A giant of a man, but ignorant …” Sam emphasizes each syllable of ignorant. “Daddy must not have had one day of education. He could read, but if the paper said the price of milk went up, daddy’d say there was a shortage of eggs.”