Swimming Between Worlds

by Elaine Neil Orr

  Tacker heard nothing but a dull roar as he was led from the Jeep to a prop plane at the Ibadan Airport. He was surprised to see he had shoes on his feet. In Lagos he was transferred to the international airport and put on a Nigeria Airways flight for London. After takeoff a Nigerian stewardess shook his shoulder to wake him but he couldn’t hear her voice. In a while she came back with water in a glass and held it for him to drink. Twice she did this and Tacker remembered the question. “Do you have a Nigerian girlfriend?”

  When the plane landed in London, he was allowed out of the straitjacket but not before he was told he would be given a tranquilizer if he tried anything. He was accompanied to his next flight. In the air he slept, and always he was running but he had lost his arms and he fell over and over off of the bridge, out of the sky, into the dark water below.

  He had not been able to tell the story to his parents and it would never be possible to explain the injustice. He still didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. But he was labeled: a stumblebum, a wacko, a queer. It pissed him off and flattened him all at once. You aren’t a respectable American. You haven’t got the backbone. Which really meant: You’re not a man.

  He never asked his parents if they got the postcard.

  Billy’s puffy pink face reassembled itself.

  “That game happened years ago.” Tacker got back to mopping. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Billy pick something up from a shelf and set it back down. Finally he heard the flump of the man’s shoes as he headed in the other direction, out of the store. Tacker emptied the bucket and rinsed out the mop, washed his hands and put on a clean shirt. He’s not worth your time, he said to himself, farabale, “calm down” in Yoruba. He headed up to the registers. “You want a Coke?” he said to Connie.

  “A Nehi grape,” she said. “Thanks, boss.”

  The Coca-Cola machine stood in a corner between an old onion crate and the ice-cream freezer. Though Tacker had a key, he dropped the coins in and purchased Connie’s Nehi and a root beer for himself. He glanced at the calendar his father kept on the wall above the machine: October 24, dedication day for the Nigerian high school he had gone to build and left unfinished. A cool hand seemed to brush against the back of his neck. He wheeled around, suspecting Billy, but no one was there.

  * * *

  • • •

  ON HIS EARLY-MORNING runs, Tacker kept an eye on the new construction at the south end of Hanes Park. It was enclosed by temporary fencing and a sign announced a pool opening the following summer. Work was stalled. Reynolds High already had an indoor pool and there was Crystal Lake four miles out of town, where he’d gone to swim growing up. Tacker wondered who had cooked this up and wasn’t sure he liked it. If he were a kid, sure. But he liked the grassy southern field the way it always had been, without a pool.

  Heading back from the park one morning, he caught sight of a motorcycle for sale on Jersey Avenue. It sat back against the owner’s yellow-brick porch like an animal in its latent power, the machine cocked in the middle so the headlamp pointed toward the street like a face. A piece of cardboard painted with a FOR SALE legend tilted against the front wheel. Tacker gazed at it. Had to be ten years old but it was a stunner: ocean blue, oversize fenders, brown leather seat tacked neatly around the edges, an Indian Chief. A friend from high school had owned a Chief and it seemed to Tacker at the time the smoothest thing going. He climbed the yard to get a closer look and placed his hand on the seat, then examined the front tire, white-rimmed, the spikes glittering silver, a flat chrome luggage rack that could nicely hold a box of groceries. He could almost hear the cat purr of the machine, remembering that other world, the excitement of it that this bike might bring back.

  In Nigeria he’d ridden with Samuel, whose pastor owned two Mustang Ponies purchased from an American missionary going on leave. They were slender, thin-wheeled machines, perfect for African pathways. Samuel borrowed them for evangelical runs to villages on Wednesday afternoons, just as the sun began its downward tilt. When Tacker first arrived, Joshua, the teetotaler, was riding with Samuel on these trips, but then Samuel asked Tacker to go and they’d ride out every week. He and Samuel mounted the cycles. Joshua watched them take off, wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief. And Tacker felt bad about it, but not bad enough to give up the ride.

  Grasses slapped against their arms; flocks of guinea fowl lifted as they approached and cataracted off en masse. The Ponies had a tendency to backfire, and long before Samuel and Tacker were within view of walkers, they had taken to safety on the side of the path, women with firewood on their heads, their necks rotating in perfect synchronicity as the bikes passed, faces inscrutable. Nearing a creek, Tacker felt the sudden rush of cool air. Then they were back to the afternoon heat, the smell of fire somewhere. The brown path sped past just inches from his sandaled feet. Curtains of bamboo slid away. Their motion stirred white strips of cloth hanging from limbs of baobabs. Onward they ranged past large cultivated fields until they were back in forest. Finally the path ended in a brown yard. Samuel brought his bike to an idle. Tacker stopped alongside, the bikes making little nickering noises as they cut the engines. Within seconds waves of children came running to form a single broad line five feet from where the bikes stopped, even toddlers. Elders sat in the shade of trees or a pergola roofed in blooming red hibiscus. Here and there were those who did not farm or trade: heavily pregnant women, a potter, a tailor with his sewing machine on an elevated veranda under the eave of his house, or a drum maker who would show Tacker a thing or two about how to hold the roped sides of the talking drum in order to change the sound and the message. For the next few hours Tacker was blessed by the floating hands of children: on his blond hair, against his pale legs.

  On Jersey Avenue in Winston-Salem, morning light sparkled on the Indian’s gas tank. A screen door creaked and slammed back into its frame. An older fellow ambled out from behind a stand of overgrown azaleas flanking his porch. He favored one leg as he walked.

  “She’s a good one,” the man said. “You interested?”

  “Who wouldn’t be? This bike’s a beaut.”

  “Bought her new over in Charlotte before we moved. No one’s owned that bike but me, myself, and I. Ride it out to Greensboro on occasion. Took her to Raleigh a few times. Mostly I like to ride up into Virginia in the fall. Now, that’s the thing. Leaning into those curves.”

  The man mimed the action of holding the handgrips and pitching against the turn.

  “You got a girlfriend?” he said. “Offered to put the passenger seat on for my wife, but she didn’t take to the idea. Matter of fact, I got an extra seat. Just never installed it. I could trade that luggage rack out for it.”

  Tacker avoided the girlfriend question.

  “She’ll get you there in good time and in style. Twin engine, three-speed transmission. A ’forty-eight. Good, solid machine. Real fine Stewart Warner speedometer. New battery. Headlamp replaced but all the original chrome.”

  Tacker knew a little about cars and figured he could learn how to tinker with a motorcycle. Riding an Indian said something. I may follow the rules, but I’ve got plays you never dreamed of.

  “I’d be happy to put that passenger seat on for you. Wouldn’t take much time.”

  Tacker thought of Kate showing up at Hart’s, the secret of her wrist disappearing into her sleeve, her lovely face, her resistance—she still had it—and it was why he remembered her. In high school, she’d worn earmuffs during a required assembly to honor the football team. Way back then he’d wanted to know her but he’d gotten distracted by the pretty girls who were more exciting in a different way.

  “What are you asking for it?” Tacker said, cracking his knuckles.

  “I’ve doted on this bike. That’s a fact. But it sat in the garage all summer. This bum leg isn’t getting any better. How does four hundred sound?”

  Tacker let out a low whistle and palmed his face.
“Not sure I have that kind of change.”

  “Maybe we can work something out. You’re the kind of boy I’d like to see owning it. You live close by?”

  “Just down on West End. I manage Hart’s Grocery. Belongs to my dad.”

  “You’re Hart’s boy? Why didn’t you say so? Harris here.” He held out a hand. “What can you afford a month?”

  Tacker dug a heel into the grass.

  “Tell you what. You take her for a ride. See what you can figure.”

  * * *

  • • •

  HIGHWAY 158. PALE fields spread to the horizon and the road was a dream. A pond dimpled the middle of a pasture and a blue heron sailed overhead. White cows clustered on a muddy hill. Browned fields held skeletons of tobacco stalks—he could smell the dusky hulks; barns glowed silver in the sun. But mostly it was the air, fierce as a demon, whipping up his hair, pressing his lips against his teeth. Tacker thought of Samuel and how he would love this bike. Sam had written four times. Haunted by fear, Tacker hadn’t opened a single letter. He slowed the bike and brought it to idle on the side of the road. Even out here in the broad country, he felt himself shrinking into his jacket thinking about his carelessness. What if Samuel had been sacked on Tacker’s account? Or something worse? He remembered how Samuel had come into the classroom one day with a brown package and he and the other men made Tacker open it—a Yoruba man’s gown and loose trousers. They required him to put it on right then, over his short-sleeved shirt and seersucker shorts, and everyone had clapped. A thickness gathered in his throat and he shook his head, revved the bike, and started to pull onto the road. A horn blared and a truck passed so close he felt the heat of the exhaust on his face.

  Back in Harris’s yard, he pumped the Indian onto its stand. The man was reclined on his porch. Tacker took the steps up to him. Harris pushed himself to standing.

  “I can give you three hundred. Fifteen a month until it’s paid off,” Tacker said.

  “You’re hard on an old man,” Harris said, rolling back on his heels. He laughed softly, rubbing his belly with both hands. Tacker saw half a finger was missing.

  The man dipped his head as if he had to think privately. A pair of towhees fretted around the azaleas. “All right. I’ll take your offer.” Harris hitched up his britches. “I do like knowing she’ll be close by. You want me to put that passenger seat on?”

  “Sure,” Tacker said.

  “That’s what I thought. Good-looking boy like you. Come back in the morning. She’ll be ready.”

  He held out his hand and they shook on it.

  Tacker felt the shift, down in his bones. He’d found something he needed without looking, like Gaines and Kate, something new shoring up against the ruins.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE WEEK after buying the Indian, Tacker found himself surprised by the lightness of his legs, the way they felt in his trousers, like waking animals. The whole city—the entire state—opened to him. He could pack his gear and head out for an overnight at the beach if he wanted or go west into the mountains. He worked late, preparing orders for fresh Thanksgiving turkeys. Someone—his dad?—had slipped an A&P flyer into this work stack. A&P was the worst with price wars. Tacker tossed the advertisement into the trash. Finally the next morning a shipment of apples arrived. He found Kate Monroe’s address and phone number stuck to the bulletin board behind the customer counter.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “It’s me. Tacker. From Hart’s.”

  “Of course it’s you,” she said, a slender authority in her voice.

  “Your order finally came in.”

  “It’s nice of you to let me know.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t mix business with pleasure.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “I could drop the apples off and we could get supper at the Toddle House.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How do you feel about riding on the back of a motorcycle?”

  “I feel like it’s going to be awfully damaging to my hairstyle,” she said.

  “I didn’t think about that,” he said.

  “I’m kidding. I’d like to go.”

  Tacker hadn’t kissed a woman in a good while. It was a grave thought, and at the edge of it was the scent of rain.

  Chapter Five

  TACKER SHOWED UP with two boxes of apples strapped to the back of a mammoth blue motorcycle. Kate watched him leaping up the granite yard steps, with first one and then the other, and he was just as swift and sure with the second box as with the first. She felt suddenly vulnerable to the breadth of his shoulders and the breadth of his stride and searched hard for some intellectual question to stump him with over dinner at the Toddle House. Twilight descended as they headed up Glade on the Indian, she snug in wool pants and a wool coat that fell to midcalf and a pair of boots that came up past her ankles. She had to hold her cap on her head with one hand and pull herself tight against Tacker with the other. Was this why men owned motorcycles? The headlamp traced a finger of light up ahead of them. She thought of James and the way he kissed her mouth with great curiosity, and she felt she must make clear to Tacker how things stood with her even though the fact of the matter was that in spite of recommencing phone conversations, she and James still fought and the time he invited her down to Atlanta for the weekend—explaining that she could stay with one of his cousins in Decatur—she’d turned him down because she was afraid he would try to seduce her and afraid she would let him. And the thought of a strange bedroom—or, worse, a motel room—frightened her.

  The Toddle House was packed and they had to wait, choosing to stand outside under a great bare oak. She smelled the hamburgers cooking. “Why do you think it is that little boys walk up and down the street whacking at the bushes with sticks?” she said. It was a spontaneous question, only subtly intellectual.

  “Do they?” Tacker said.

  “I saw a couple of them today from my front porch. The younger one couldn’t have been three years old. His brother may have been five. They just whacked away at everything. Does someone teach them to do that?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t remember doing it.”

  “Good,” she said, restraining a smile. “I’m starving.”

  “Maybe they were hunters and gatherers. The boys.”

  “If they did that in the springtime, it would upset birds’ nests.”

  “Good point. Let me check to see where we are on the list,” Tacker said.

  “I can do it.” Kate rushed in, leaving Tacker out on the sidewalk so it wouldn’t seem so much like they were on a date.

  “Are you against chivalry?” he said when she returned.

  “On the contrary. My story about the boys indicates just how much I am for it. No tree whacking. We’re third down on the list.”

  When they were seated, Tacker ordered chili and two hot dogs and Kate ordered a burger with French fries. “So tell me again where you went and what you did,” she said.

  “I don’t think I told you the first time. Nigeria. On the west coast of Africa.” He took a napkin and drew Africa and filled in Nigeria. “I was helping design a high school. It was going to be duplicated around the country, the south primarily.”

  Kate smoothed the napkin. “They have a south like we do?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  She dipped a French fry into her ketchup. “What was your biggest surprise?”

  “In Nigeria?” Tacker rubbed his chin. “I guess I’d say how serene and self-confident people are, even kids, like every one of them is going to inherit the earth.”

  It wasn’t what she expected. “What do you mean?”

  “People just seemed sure of their place. It sounds trite. Don’t get me wrong. I was pretty shocked when I
first got there. A lot of people are poor, living in mud houses and doing their wash in the river. But even little kids act like they own the world.”

  “Were you happy being there?”

  “Maybe too happy,” Tacker said.

  He had that funny look she’d first noticed at Hart’s weeks back when they spoke for the first time, and then he seemed to recover.

  “How about you?”

  She finished the last bite of her burger and touched her napkin to her lips.

  “Long story, short version. After my mom died, I went back to Agnes Scott to finish college. I had to stay through the summer to get all my courses in. Then I came back here and ran into you. My story’s less glamorous.”

  “What do you think you’ll do now?”

  “I’m considering photography.”

  He put down his half-eaten second hot dog and looked at her. “As a hobby?”

  “As a career. What do you think?”

  His eyes were clear and bright. “I think you can do anything.”

  All through the meal, she tried to find a way to bring James up but she couldn’t, and besides, Tacker wasn’t acting a bit romantic. He was just being himself and she was a little miffed. But then they left and Tacker drove them through downtown and it was beautiful and calm and she wasn’t miffed as they passed the Carolina Theatre where Journey to the Center of the Earth was showing, and then they headed to Old Salem, clackering along a cobblestone street, and finally Tacker turned around and they headed back. His hand glanced hers as they got off the bike but he did not hold her hand or put an arm around her. They walked up the stairs and he waited for her to find her key.

  “Thanks,” she said. “That was fun.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it. So did I.”