Right by My Side

by David Haynes

  “Get to the point,” Gayle says. She’s jumping up and down, pulling at Sam’s sleeve.

  “Come and read,” he says. He gathers us at his side as if he were the mother hen and we were his baby chicks.

  “Read it,” he orders me, his arm across my shoulder. “Start right here.”

  I read where he points. “It says: ‘said use shall last into perpetuity or until capacity, at which time deed shall revert to original ownership or duly appointed heirs thereof.’”

  “You understand?” he asks. “It is ours—the landfill is. Yours and mine, son.”

  “That lawyer was absolutely sure?” Gayle asks.

  “Not one doubt. Ours. As soon as the land is back the way it was—that’s what the dirt is for.”

  Sam raises his cup. “This grape juice’ll have to do. But we’ll have us a big celebration soon. For now, one big glass all around. To all of us,” he says. We drink up.

  Then he puts his big hands on Gayle’s shoulders. “My thanks to you,” he says. “I never would have thought to look at that contract. I about gave up on everything. Now me and this boy right here, we got something to look forward to.”

  Sam gives Gayle one of those long kisses just like in the movies. She lays her head contentedly on his chest. Sam looks at me as if I were made out of gold.

  *

  I leave Gayle at the shed with Sam.

  Walking back home I give all of this some thought.

  I’d asked Sam did this mean we were rich now or something. He acted as if that were the least important thing on earth.

  But, after all, what has really gone on here, anyway? He finally read the damn contract. That’s all. He found out about something he ought to have known all along. And where was he anyway? Just not paying attention as usual. It’s like Dorothy in the movie who finds out she only has to click her heels to go home, that happiness is right in her own back yard. Me, I’d have gone upside that witch’s head for putting me through all that broomstick crap. Still, somehow, for Sam, this bit about his deed is bigger. Which means something else is going on here, too. I mean, what sort of a moral is “remember to read the fine print.”

  The other thing I think about is what Gayle says about love. Like a lot of what all of them say, it sounds like garbage when you play it back in your head. Then I remember the stuff about having to hurt somebody because you love them. She said she’d do it for me. I believe that. I believe she loves me the same way I love her. She may be Sams age and Sam’s gal. But she loves me too. I know it.

  If that grape juice were wine I wouldn’t have felt any better.

  *

  Sam feels so good he springs for carry-out Chinese. Very nutritious Gayle says. The egg rolls are soggy but the fried rice is full of shrimp and sweet onions. We eat right out of the cartons, passing them around the circle from one person to the next. You have to do that stuff sometimes: eat right out of the cartons. It’s more fun and it gives you something else to think about besides dishes and table manners. Sam and Gayle poke pieces of shrimp into each other’s mouths and giggle. Gayle spears her food with chopsticks. It almost looks like she is shoveling it in, but somehow she makes it look graceful. Sam takes careful plastic-forkfulls, always offering more to her and me. He pours the last few grains of rice in his mouth.

  “Pig,” Gayle teases.

  There isn’t one crumb left, so we crush the boxes and stuff them in the trash.

  Sam decides to make a list of what he can do with his piece of land. He says everybody has to give him suggestions.

  I suggest he sell it and make millions of dollars. Gayle says he should give it away to needy persons. Such as herself.

  “Maybe I’ll build a roller coaster,” Sam says.

  I get up to answer the knock at the door. I recognize it is Todd only because of the red hair. His other eye is blackened and blood trickles from both nostrils. A lot of blood has dripped to his white shirt. It also comes from the corner of his mouth.

  Sam walks right over to him. He practically pushes me out of the way.

  “Sit him down over here,” Gayle says. She orders me to get her a washrag with some ice.

  I do it.

  I don’t know what else to do.

  Sam stands there rigid, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Who did this to you?” he asks.

  Todd doesn’t say anything. He moans a little as Gayle wipes around his face with the cloth. He is swollen. Some places on his face are purple.

  “Where are your glasses?” I ask.

  “I lost them,” Todd says. It comes out cracked. He is trying hard not to cry.

  “Who did it?” Sam demands.

  I tell Sam that Todd’s dad did it.

  “That the truth?” Sam asks.

  Todd nods feebly.

  Though it seems like hours, it’s just a minute before Sam decides what to do. He grabs his jacket and says, “Come on.” He reaches down and wraps a big hand around Todd’s arm. He gently helps him up.

  “You come with me,” Sam says.

  They go to the door and I follow them out. Behind us Gayle looks stricken. She sits there on the couch holding the bloody wet cloth.

  *

  Sam stops the truck in front of the house down across the tracks. “This it?” he asks.

  I tell him it is.

  “Let’s go,” he says, but Todd balks. “Nothing is gonna happen. Just come on.” Todd trembles as Sam guides him from the car.

  “Just stay by me,” Sam says.

  The woman I’d seen before answers the door. She has the same long face as Todd, with mousey-colored hair, the head set on a large body. Not fat, but like a football player. When she sees us she calls out the name “Walt.”

  Bold Big Sam pushes right past her, into the living room, the tiny room with the faded yellow walls. Just the couch and the TV. There on one side of the room is the sewing machine. Around it are boxes of cloth. Some pieces are cut into squares and ovals. Another box is full of foam rubber pillows.

  “Walt,” the woman calls again. Todd quick goes over to the TV and picks up his glasses. It’s almost as if they were set there deliberately on the TV stand, sitting next to a blue picture of Jesus.

  Walt comes in from a back room. His blondish red hair is streaked with sweat. Tall and skinny. Like Todd. He’s wiping grease off his hands with a paper towel.

  “Can I do something for you, Finney?” he says, real cool.

  “I come to find out what went on here,” Sam says.

  Walt gets a sneering smile on his face. “Last time I heard you were the county maintenance man.”

  “Did you hurt this boy?” Sam asks.

  “That ain’t none of your damn business.”

  I can tell Sam’s getting hot. His lips are moving around as if he’s trying to keep from saying something. Todd’s mother is at her sewing machine. But she’s just sitting there, just looking at it. Bright-colored pillows are scattered at her feet. They are out of place here, I think.

  “No call for doing something like this,” Sam says. “They got laws.”

  “I got laws in this house too. If he don’t like it here, he can leave.” Walt goes back to wherever again. Todd’s mother is still frozen at the sewing machine. She bends her head over her work. She is doing nothing.

  Sam sighs. He shakes his head. “You get your things,” he orders Todd.

  It doesn’t take Todd five minutes to come back with a couple of sacks and an old backpack. As if he were the National Guard, ready to go at the drop of a hat. I grab the sacks.

  Walt comes back around the corner.

  “You leave outa here with those niggers and you don’t come back.”

  Todd looks at his father for the first time since we came in—a cold, hard look. Then he walks out the door.

  *

  We set up a roll-away bed in my room and make it up for Todd.

  “This can be your home,” Sam says. “If you want.”

  Todd just lies down, clutching the backpa
ck. In a few days he’ll be just fine, but never really the same.

  I go out and tell Sam “thanks.”

  “Young man caught a tough break,” Sam says. “Okay with you that I put him in your room?”

  As if I would object.

  “You know how you are,” he says, then he and Gayle have a good laugh.

  “Marshall’s snoring may run him out of here, too,” Gayle adds.

  More laughter. I wonder sometimes if they even know what’s funny and what’s not.

  “What’s going to happen to Todd?” I ask. “Is he gonna stay here forever?”

  “See there,” Sam says to Gayle. “Maybe it do bother him.” They laugh some more, so I walk away.

  “Look here,” Sam says. “I mean what I say. Home is forever: my daddy taught me that. You don’t turn away folks in need.”

  “What if they come after him?” I ask.

  “Let em come,” Sam shrugs.

  Gayle makes a suggestion, “Todd ought to get himself freed from his parents—emancipated they call it.”

  “Whatever,” Sam says. “It’s that boy’s life. We’ll do what we can. You,” he points to me, his voice almost fierce. “You go in there and make that boy welcome. I expect you to do right by me.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, and I decide at that very moment to do everything I can to be sure Todd is safe.

  15

  GAYLE HAS DECIDED it’s time for driving lessons. Todd is off planning the revolution, and she says this is the perfect time to begin. She says two boys is more than even she can handle.

  These days Todd has lost all interest in educating the Pinheads. Though he still runs class meetings, his heart’s not in it.

  Mark Randall and Todd are the team now. Where it used to be Kathy this and Kathy that, now I also have to hear what Blondie has to say about the world condition. Randall has convinced Todd that he’s done all he can do at Eisenhower. Say’s it’s time for Todd to go on to other challenges.

  “It means,” Todd told me, “A bunch of apathetic suburban high school preppies are only going to do so much. It means getting in on the big action.”

  I told Todd that I didn’t think there was a lot of big action going on out there these days, but he just said that I don’t know everything. Evidently Randall does, and he tells Todd about all kinds of radical stuff going down—a lot of stuff that doesn’t get into the papers cause “they” don’t want people to know about it.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Todd says that “Big Stuff’ is going down soon and he wants to be right in the middle of the action. He says I’d better decide whether I’m in or out.

  And off he goes to another meeting in the city. He says he’ll fill me in when he gets back.

  Gayle and I go driving.

  I expect driving’ll be easy because of having watched Artie do it. Of course, Artie would never allow anyone to touch Dentyne, and recently he’s too busy sneaking around with Susan to bother teaching us. For just a minute it occurs to me that driving lessons are really Sam’s job, and I tell Gayle that.

  “Do you really want Sam Finney next to you while you’re learning to drive?”

  She’s right: I might not live through lesson one.

  Furthermore: she wants my new skill to be a big surprise for Sam.

  Gayle drives a Toyota—an old one, a Tercel, but she keeps it clean.

  She says to me, “The first thing is: if you’re the driver you need to get in on the other side of the car.”

  Oh.

  “Don’t be nervous,” she says. “This is the easiest, most natural thing you’ll ever do. Turn the ignition.”

  Gayle’s car fires right up. So far so good. This is one of those cheap manual cars—like Artie’s—so Gayle starts giving me all these instructions, such as push this in and let this out and shift this here. I figure how hard can this be, especially if Artie—a person who thinks Beverly Hills is the capital of a state named L.A.—can drive one.

  I pull the car away from the curb. The car dies. I give Gayle a pathetic smile.

  She nods to indicate “go again.”

  I get started up again, and this time we actually go down the streets. But it’s rather like riding a bucking bull, spurting and jerking. Gayle is shifting back and forth in her seat a lot more than I think is really necessary. She certainly weighs much less than me, and she’s bouncing back and forth as if her head is about to go through the windshield. She fastens her seatbelt.

  “Look out,” she says, grabbing the wheel. Although we are nowhere near it, a beat up old hog blows its horn loud and long. Our car dies and Gayle starts laughing.

  “If you laugh at me,” I say, I’m getting out right here and walking.”

  She keeps laughing, so I open the door to get out.

  “Get back here,” she says. I’m not laughing at you. I’m remembering my first time. Relax. And, please, look where you’re going.”

  It gets better pretty fast.

  A couple weeks later, after we have driven up and down all the short streets of the park, taking special care to avoid any place Sam might be, Gayle decides that I’m good enough to try a big street. As brave as anything, I start the car and drive up by the store to pick up Colerain Road. I pull out onto the wide four-laner and start to drive down to the 7-Eleven.

  It’s pretty awful. I mean, you’ve got all this stuff—turn signals, mirrors everywhere, people on all sides. I don’t even notice the usual clutter along the way: the useless iron and brick gates announcing the fancy subdivisions, the thrown-up homely block of stores that last week used to be woods. I don’t see any of it. I’m busy hanging-on, hoping I don’t get us killed. Gayle tries to help, but she’s too busy clutching the sides of the bucket seat. I bet her eyes are closed too.

  When I pull into the 7-Eleven lot I am shaking and covered with sweat. I let out the breath I’ve been holding, turn off the ignition and say, “There.”

  “Are you getting something here?” Gayle asks.

  “I was gonna let you drive back.”

  She says “no.”

  “I don’t think I can do anymore today. That wore me out.”

  “I think you better,” she says.

  I ask her why.

  “Because you’re scared. And because if you give up on stuff when you’re scared, sometimes you give up on it for good.”

  Though I am ashamed to be doing it, I am trembling and breathing too hard, and even trying not to cry. All the while I know that this driving stuff isn’t even that hard.

  “I’ll wreck your car,” I say.

  Gayle puts her hand on my shoulder. “You calm down, Marshall. Right now. You take some deep breaths.”

  I do that.

  “Start the car and go,” she says. “Now.”

  I do that.

  All the way back to the Park I can feel the muscles in my arm and legs forming knots. Though its warm, I am shivering. Gayle keeps her hand on my shoulder the whole time, gently whispering instructions. Somehow we make it back to the crackerbox.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it. You’re glad I made you do it, right?”

  I agree.

  “Let’s do one more thing. Let’s do a backup. You’ll have to do one on the test. Might as well practice everything.”

  I back up the car up and knock over old man Darcy’s trash cans.

  “You’re supposed to look over your shoulder,” Gayle says.

  *

  Back in the crackerbox Gayle decides that all the hard work deserves refreshment. She pours two tall glasses of iced tea. She’s got us drinking it without sugar these days, which isn’t so bad. Still, you wouldn’t want to do it all the time, and I usually sneak a couple of spoonfuls when she’s not looking.

  “I guess our man Todd really thinks he’s going to save the world,” she says.

  I tell Gayle that I don’t know what to think about Todd these days. “Todd’s always been serious about everything: his baseball phase, watching TV, eating. All he does now is thin
k about saving the world. He talks like if you don’t actually do something, you’re worthless.”

  I ask Gayle what does she think about that.

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” she says. “You know my militant days are long in the past.”

  “So you don’t think a person has to prove they really care?”

  “Care about what, Marshall? Bombs? Some Central American peasants? Why, if they could drop all those bombs on Washington Park and get rid of us—and get away with it—don’t think they wouldn’t. They’d just as soon be shooting black folks in Saint Louis as communists in Nicaragua.”

  “So you just do nothing.”

  “Today I patched up six or seven young men cut up because of drugs. A sister came in to me with two tiny babies. Said the babies were hungry, and that they had no place to go. Couldn’t we please get some food for her children.

  “That was just part of one day and I go to this job every damn day. Somedays I come home and am unable to move. Marshall, I don’t need to justify myself to some armchair radicals.”

  Gayle gets up and goes to Sam’s room. She says she wants to lie down for a while. I lay myself down on the green plaid sofa. I remember back to April, to lying on the football field: the air-raid siren, the bright sun, the poisoned train.

  Did I feel foolish because I lay there just for show, pretending to be dead, or did I feel foolish because Marshall Finney belonged someplace else, taking care of some other business of his own? And how is one to find out what that other business is?

  Maybe I just felt foolish.

  Gayle says Todd means well.

  Always.

  She says people like Todd are always thinking, says that Todd has probably been slapped around since birth and that thinking about some nuclear war is better anyway than thinking about what goes on at home.

  “So, what should I do?” I ask her later. “What kind of action should I take?”

  “My advice, little brother, is to stick with home. Right here. You can never go wrong at home.”

  That sounds like a good piece of advice to me. I decide to make that Todd’s philosophy, too.