by David Haynes
“I need to talk to you now,” I say.
Sam points me up to the shed. “Wait for me back there,” he says to me. As if I was another one of his flunkies.
I give him a look meaner than one of his own.
I walk back to the car and tell Artie to get me the hell out of here. He does.
*
Artie stops the car in a space on Chestnut at the corner of Broad-way. The three of us get out and lean on Dentyne’s rusty rump.
“There they are,” I say.
Todd doesn’t say anything. Now that we’ve rushed halfway across North America, he’s not so eager.
The demonstrators—Todd’s good buddies—are gathered on the steps of the Old Courthouse. There are only about thirty or so. They are in something of a huddle. From here, it looks like they are praying. I spot Blondie in the center of the crowd. Around him I see some of Todd’s recruits from Eisenhower. They look young, eager, and scared.
A small group of supporters stands on the walkway with signs say-ing things like “Free Aaron Young” and “Justice Must Be Served.” They sing “We Shall Not Be Moved” in loud, earnest voices. In that little group is Miss O’Hare.
“This is an illegal gathering,” calls a policeman through his bullhorn. “Clear the area at once.” A company of his men stands in a line at the fence, helmeted and at attention.
“Pretty intense,” I say.
Artie wants to know where the TV cameras are. Todd just stands there. Swallowing. Fidgeting.
A group of three from the steps comes to the fence. Cheers of encouragement fill the air. As they attempt to handcuff and chain themselves to the wrought iron, two or three officers get on each one and pull them away. There is a fight. Three fights. The demonstrators are dragged away kicking and screaming. The officers stay cool, but defend themselves. They drag the men and women away. It takes two or three of them to carry the hands and feet.
The next three go to the fence.
“I didn’t expect anything like this,” Todd says. He’s rubbing his hands together, rubbing them on his jeans.
“Police brutality,” chants Ohairy’s group.
“This area will be cleared,” the officer announces.
One of the women screams loudly. Somehow she’s been kicked in the head. We can see all of this. Todd flinches. His whole body tenses.
“I don’t know about this,” he says. “What should I do, Marshall?”
Three by three the demonstrators attempt the fence. Just that way they are stopped, they fight, and are hauled away. The young recruits fight wildly. They curl up quick and tight like centipedes.
Artie wants to go home. He is afraid of trouble from Miss Ida.
I am riveted. It feels strange to be so excited. Here is something happening that you could be a part of. Here are some people making something happen. Putting it on the line. For just a minute I am ready to go over there myself.
Then Artie whines my name. I see a woman tossed into the back of the police van like a sack of potatoes. Ouch. I reach for the door.
Just as Artie is fishing for his keys, Blondie sees Todd and then Ohairy does, too. They beckon him with their hands. They are calling him over as if to a party, calling him to join the fun.
Todd straightens his back. He slowly makes ready to go.
“Wish me luck,” he says.
He’s going. I can’t believe he’s found the courage to go.
From somewhere it comes over me. Some sort of resolve, some way of deciding things.
“No,” I say.
I grab Todd’s arm. Tight. First one hand on one arm, then the other on his other. I hold him from behind.
With their hands Ohairy and Blondie call. Insisting.
“Let me go,” he says. He’s pulling against me. “I’m going. I’m going with them.”
I tell Artie to get in the car.
“You’re staying with us,” I tell Todd.
He struggles. He reaches the peak of his determination.
But I am as strong as I’ve ever been. Maybe as strong as Sam himself. Across the way it continues: the chanting, the charging, the fighting, some blood. Ohairy faces us now—her arms crossed. She’s willing me to free Todd.
“I mean it, Marshall. You let me go.’”
I hold on tight. And even though I can feel him weakening, know he’s running out of courage, know I’ve won, even as they haul away the last of the demonstrators, I hold on. I’m still holding on as we watch them go. Holding on even though Todd has collapsed against me. Defeated. As if someone’s let all the air out of him.
“Sometimes I hate you, Marshall,” he says.
I tell him that that’s okay.
And there we are. Artie leaning against the window on his hands. Todd leaning on me. Collapsed. Me holding on to him.
Holding on still as if our lives depended on it.
*
Artie drives us home. I sit in the back with Todd. I don’t care how it looks. He is still collapsed against me.
“Do you want a hamburger?” I ask.
“Let’s just go home,” he says.
Later he asks, “Do you think they’ll hate me?”
Here is what Artie says. Real proud, he says this. Just like it was a sermon. He says:
“It doesn’t matter what they think. It only matters what we think—your family and friends. The people who love you.”
He says it just like that. Or that’s the way I write it down. Such bull, and yet so perfect. I had to write it down.
And it was then I decided, you see. I was going to write it all down, all of this. A person could spend their entire life doing something like that.
I sit up to rub Artie on the head. He may not be smart, but a lot of times he ends up being right. He wears great clothes, too.
Who else would wear a breakdance outfit to a riot?
As I lean up, Todd falls down on the seat behind me, laughing. Laughing like someone on the crazy ward at Malcolm Bliss.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Fuck em,” he says. “If they can’t take a joke, fuck everybody in the whole goddamn world.”
*
We stop into Miss Ida’s store for some sodas.
Before we can get them, Miss Ida says to me, “Sam said to tell you to hustle your butt on home and to do it quick.”
She says it with a big suspicious smile on her face. Sam must have something big on his mind.
“Let’s go,” I say to Todd.
“I’m going down the hollow for a bit. To see my mom.”
“Be careful,” I say.
“Don’t worry. My dad’s always gone this time on Saturdays. Prime drinking time. I’ll be home later.”
I pat him on the back. He is wearing his new gray-striped vest. He wears that a lot these days.
*
I go running down the hill like I’m flying. Sam’s talked Gayle into staying with us.
Forever. I know it.
I can’t wait to tell them what we did. And didn’t do. I can’t wait to tell Gayle what I decided.
“Tell me when you know what you want to do with your life,” she’d said. And now I know.
Hang on Washington Park. Your story is safe no more. I’m telling it all.
The town’s stories.
Sam’s stories.
Stories I make up.
The whole bit.
The dirt that gets done, the rotten things we do to each other, the good times, the parties, how everybody looks out for everybody else.
Must be somebody out there wants to hear all this.
I’m running down that hill like I’m flying, and I can see here comes Sam, coming out to meet me. Come on, come on, he’s waving. Waving with his hands. Waving the clipboard full of papers.
I’m running toward Sam like a kid, as fast as I can. His eyes are big, popped out of his head, and his face glowing bright as anything. He is like a kid, too.
“There you are,” he says. “We’ve been waiting for yo
u.”
“I’m here,” I say, and he reaches out with his hand and grabs my arm.
“She’s here,” he says. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“Thank God,” I say.
If you want anything bad enough you will get it.
“Come on,” Sam says, pulling me into the crackerbox. And then, “Where?” He is vibrating with excitement.
She comes in from the hallway.
“There she is,” Sam says.
And there she is indeed. The desert sun has baked her medium brown. Her fingernails are still bright red.
“What is this?” I ask.
“Baby,” she says.
“See here,” Sam says. “Back in one piece. Good as new. Don’t she look good.” He’s got his hand wrapped around my bicep. Like I’m his prisoner. I wrench free.
“What do you want?” I ask. Real quiet. I take a step toward her. “Why didn’t anybody tell me? You all don’t tell me anything.”
She looks down at her shoes. She mumbles something. Something about surprise.
“Boy …” Sam threatens.
She raises a hand to still him.
My arm starts shaking where he had me. I hold onto it with the other arm.
“What is this?” I ask again.
“I guess I’m back,” she says. “Gonna give the mama thing one more try.” She laughs as if that is a joke.
“Back where she belongs,” Sam adds.
I shake my head.
“Not fair,” I say. It comes out a squeak.
“Boy …” Sam growls. His hand pushes my back. The fool is hitting me. Or pushing me toward her.
“You gonna be a man, boy.” He orders it. “I told you, and you’re gonna start right now.”
She raises her head, juts out her chin.
“Marshall and I can work this out,” she says. “Can’t we, baby?”
“You always ruin things,” I say, shaking my head. “Always. It’s just … not supposed to be this way.”
She reaches for me with her red nails.
17
“GET UP,” Sam says. “Get up and come with me.”
I am lying on my back in my bedroom with my arms folded across my chest. I am staring at the white ceiling. Staring at the gravel. Not going anywhere.
This is what happens when you stick with home.
Staring. I can’t get through.
“Come with me, son. I want you right by my side.”
Sam’s voice is quiet and sweet.
Here I am: come to the end of a story I am unable to finish. If I lie here I can become solid—as hard and as rigid as a stainless steel vault. I will my muscles to freeze. I breathe only to exhale the fire that’s burning inside me.
“We come so far. Together. We just got this little bit left to go. We can make it. Come on.”
This is how the story goes. I can remember each and every blessed word. I can tell it with precision, with a razor sharp memory. I can make it seem just as if it is happening right now. For what it’s worth, because I can’t make it end any other way. I can’t make it come out with me strong, with me the hero.
I don’t look good at the end.
I didn’t know enough, you see. Try to understand. This is just the way it was.
“Look at what I have for you.”
I don’t want to see, yet I do see. Him strolling, sheepishly, across my room. Him laying the paper on my stomach.
“It’s for you.”
I stare.
He backs away out of the edge of my sight as if he were a dream. I close my eyes to make it all disappear. The stories I don’t control. The stories that aren’t my stories. I close my eyes to keep away the tears. I push out the walls with everything I’ve got.
“Took in my last load this week—of trash, dirt, of everything. Forever. That there is your deed and this one is mine. Fifty/fifty. Course we can switch halves. If you want. You can do whatever you want. I might build that roller coaster. Or take a trip to the moon. What are you gonna do, Marshall?”
I’m going to be whole and solid: I’m going to be a slab of carved marble. Not in some silly park. In a museum behind velvet ropes, where no one can touch me. I’m going to lie here on this bed forever and wish away the softening that is already starting at the edges.
“You can’t lie there forever, son. You’ll try, I bet. But you won’t. I’ll still be here anyway. When you open your eyes guess whose face you’ll see? So come on.”
He’ll be there forever—not even Houdini could make him disappear.
And they are inside my head anyway—all the Sams: the mean ones, the silly ones, the drunk ones, the silent ones. The ones with skin as thin as an onion. When I open my eyes, which Sam will I see?
I am already as soft as a cotton stuffed toy.
“Look at me.”
I turn my head. Open my eyes.
Sam is a tall man, about 6’4”. His shoulders are broad, every inch of him is solid, heavy with flesh. His head is large and square with skin the warm brown, almost red color of wet freshly turned earth. Large black glowing eyes. A mouth full of teeth that often smile without meaning to. Enormous feet—Sam has these enormous feet. And hands, huge hands. And … And there is Sam: nodding, becoming a watery blur.
“My sweet Rosey. I love her,” he shrugs. “You’re gonna have to trust me. We—all of us—we gonna live happily ever after. I just love her.”
Is that true? Did I know? Would it have made any difference?
Yes.
Because that is a different story altogether.
Instead:
this is how I am to be lost: lying on my back, pretending forever to be only myself. Dissolved, no longer ignoring the huge hands reaching out for me, like a magnet, pulling me to the end, to the end of this story. This story.
If only I’d known.
Instead:
“Come on,” Sam says.
“Come.”
DAVID HAYNES grew up in Saint Louis, and now lives in Saint Paul, where he teaches middle school and writes fiction. He has won several grants and awards, including a Loft Mentor Series Award, the Lake Superior Contemporary Writers Series, and a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant. Haynes has had writing published in Other Voices, Glimmer Train, and Stiller’s Pond: New Fiction from the Upper Midwest (New Rivers Press, 1991). Right by My Side is his first novel.