* * *
• • •
IN THE BACK room after closing, listening to Gaines talk, Tacker saw the kaleidoscope of the past weeks turn and shift and he puzzled out that the man had come to the store for more reasons than extra money for his mother. A grocery had meeting space. An owner might be willing to give away a few cans of ravioli to folks working for a cause—if he was sympathetic.
“Students from Wake Forest College are joining us tomorrow at Woolworth’s. We’re walking in together,” Gaines said.
“You’re not afraid?”
“Are you?”
Tacker felt a wave of vertigo, as he did when he took mountain curves fast on the Indian. You had to know the exact angle and when to let up on the gas and allow the momentum to carry you. Something in his life was connecting. He better pay attention.
“Going to jail seems like a bad career move,” he said.
“I feel for you,” Gaines said sarcastically, but he smiled.
It was hard to know whether fear or excitement trundled up from Tacker’s center.
Tangled up in the culture. Fray’s accusation.
“Okay. Hold on. One thing at a time. I can go for an hour tomorrow. That’s it. We’re leaving before anyone gets arrested.”
Gaines just kept smiling.
Tacker’s vague discontent with his homeland suddenly snapped into sharper focus.
* * *
• • •
HE LEFT CONNIE in charge of the store. Midday it was cold and clear, the sky a thin white. Tacker had never done anything political that he could think of. The frigid air and the roiling in his belly made him think of a story he’d once heard about an army air corpsman in World War II who’d plugged in the top of his flight suit but not the bottom, so half of him was freezing and the other half roasting. They took off on the Indian, Tacker figuring to go by way of Old Salem. A white fellow and a black one sharing a motorcycle wasn’t an everyday sight in this town. He hooked through alleys and side roads, aiming for Academy Street. Tall, uncut swirls of wintered rosebushes fell across fences. Within the lanes, the bike’s sound was muffled and soothing. Obliquely Tacker sensed a country in which streets were throughways and not borders. From Academy he went left onto Main, then left onto Fifth. He’d forgotten the stiff upgrade at Fifth and Liberty and he had to gun the cycle to keep it from rolling back. Just a block and he took a left onto Liberty and there was Woolworth’s. Tacker brought the bike to an idle. Gaines leapt off; Tacker cut the engine and kicked the bike back onto the stand.
“Follow me,” Gaines said.
“Hold on,” Tacker said, tipping the bike’s front wheel against the sidewalk.
“Hurry up, man. We’re late.”
Gaines walked on the right side of the road, a sign for MARY JANE SHOES looming above him.
“We’re meeting the others up this way,” Gaines said. “Filing in together.”
They walked four blocks, cars slowing to observe them. They didn’t find the convocation of protestors Gaines was expecting. “We were supposed to meet them here,” he said. “We were going to pair up, a white student and a Negro student. We must have missed them.” They turned in unison and hurried back to Woolworth’s. Tacker shouldered his way into the store, giddy with expectation. Yet everything appeared normal as day, the usual noon crowd, the store smelling of popcorn and the grill. A woman working the candy counter looked up. Tacker smiled at her. She smiled back. Then her face seemed to contort, and Tacker knew she had seen Gaines come in behind him.
In a corner, a few high school boys, cutting class no doubt, huddled together like outcasts from the drama club. Dozens of regular customers filled the long line of vinyl counter stools. With the avenue of overhead lights and the red-and-white Pepsi-Cola sign, the scene appeared like a stage set, familiar and odd.
“I don’t get it,” Gaines said in half whisper. “They’re not here.”
“What do we do?” Tacker said.
“I’m here; you’re here. What do you think?”
How do you know what’s below the surface? His question to Samuel at the Osun. I don’t. Samuel’s reply. “Let’s do it,” Tacker said, the urge to act irrepressible.
There were two seats down at the far end. Before he knew it, Gaines was in front of him, heading toward the lunch counter.
Tacker caught a glimpse of a bespectacled man with the look of a professor, standing under the Pepsi-Cola sign, rolling up and down on the balls of his feet. He stepped back as Gaines passed, as if he had expected him and was making way. As Gaines took a seat, Tacker strode down and took the one beside him. Nothing happened. It was as if the game hadn’t started. Tacker had been here a hundred times. The place was his, like the practice field at Hanes Park. He could walk onto it and wait for the snap and run with casual confidence toward the uprights. He would turn and see the ball at the apex of its flight and it would come to him like a trained bird. When he scored it would be as if he hadn’t really meant to.
He was intoxicated, filled with a mad hilarity that such an astonishing thing was happening. Sliced apple pie filled a glass dome so close he could reach out and touch it. The man beside him pulled out his wallet and left two dollars at his plate though he hadn’t finished his sandwich. Tacker avoided looking down the line at the other customers. He surveyed the staff behind the counter: two women and one man, the grill cook, and the waitresses, one of them a Negro. The white waitress was closest and she met his gaze. Tacker swiveled side to side, catching a glimpse of Gaines. There seemed an inevitable quality in the air. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’d love a piece of that pie.”
She didn’t speak as she lifted the glass dome, selected a plated piece of pie, and set it before Tacker. She brought him a fork.
“Thank you.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes. Black is fine.” He was astonished by how easy it was. Amazed by his intelligence. Black is fine.
The woman’s eyes moved to Gaines. “We don’t serve coloreds,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll sit here anyway.”
Suddenly all the seats to Tacker’s left were emptying.
“There’s a nigger down there,” someone said.
In a single motion of delicious precision, Tacker slid the pie and coffee mug in front of Gaines.
“Get that nigger out of here.”
“Have some pie,” Tacker said.
Gaines picked up the fork as if it were a serpent. He raised a small piece of pie to his lips, his shoulders dipping as he leaned forward.
“You with him?” the waitress said to Tacker, her face waxy.
“I am.” Tacker felt his chest expand.
“We don’t serve coloreds,” the woman said, her lips tight.
She whisked the pie away before Gaines had a chance at another bite, throwing the dish into the trash can with the pie. She poured the coffee into a sink before throwing out the cup.
Do as you like, Tacker thought; we’re not moving. All he might have said to Fray came to him now. What’s the point of coming here if you’re not going to live with people and eat the food and figure out what makes folks tick and learn something from them? You’re the one who should be sorry. You never really made it into this country.
“Ever feel like you’d die for a cigarette?” Gaines said.
“Right this minute.”
“Monkey see, monkey do.” A voice spoke behind them. “Get on back to nigger town and you can smoke all you like.”
Tacker turned around but Gaines did not.
One of the high school slackers he had seen earlier stood a foot from their counter stools, two others behind him. His hair was dirty blond, eyes slightly protuberant.
“Don’t worry with them,” Gaines said. “Face forward.”
Tacker didn’t like the feeling of turning his back.
“Hey, nigger
,” the boy said. “I’m talking to you.”
Gaines didn’t respond. His face was a mask.
“Hey, nigger.”
Tacker turned again. The boy pulsed up and down. Behind him, customers who had now risen from their seats stood in a semicircle like Romans gathered for a gladiator contest. The front door seemed miles away.
“Ignore him,” Gaines said, looking straight ahead.
“What?” How did you ignore a mob?
“We don’t fight.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tacker saw the boy lean forward and spit on Gaines’s neck. His partners squealed with delight.
Tacker leaned over the counter and grabbed a bunch of paper napkins. Gaines wiped his neck.
“A fag and his nigger,” the boy said.
Tacker looked down at the counter before him and saw reflected in the polished Formica the silhouette of his head, a form both absent and present. Anger, simple and hard, rose in him, and his arms shook in the swaddling of his coat.
“Don’t,” Gaines said, placing a cautionary two fingers at Tacker’s wrist.
“What’d I tell you? A fag and his nigger,” the boy repeated gleefully.
Tacker looked at the Negro waitress, who had not moved since they sat down. More than the Atlantic Ocean separated her from the Nigerian women he had seen who sent taxi drivers packing when they pulled too close to their market stalls. Nigerian women took up the entire avenue with their dancing, traffic control be damned.
Gaines began to whistle “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” The Negro waitress shifted her stance.
“Shut that nigger up,” someone yelled.
Over the hills and everywhere, Tacker imagined the words. Many a time he’d heard Gaines singing in the back room as he unpacked merchandise, the tune relieving the tedium of the day. At the moment in Woolworth’s, the crowd quieted and Tacker had again the eerie feeling he’d had that morning at the store when everything was tidied up—that he had passed to the other side of some mystical boundary.
And as if the play had reached its climax, someone called, “Police.” Tacker looked toward the entrance of the store. In came a dozen officers. His heart flapped as the walls of the store leaned in.
“Over there,” a woman said, pointing toward Tacker and Gaines.
The officer glanced in their direction. He turned toward another officer and conferred. No one moved toward them.
“What’s going on?” Tacker said.
“I have no idea,” Gaines said.
The crowd buzzed, everyone moving toward the front windows.
“They’re here,” Gaines said.
“What do you mean?”
“The students from Winston-Salem State and Wake Forest College. They’re just now getting here. They must have gotten held up.”
The doors opened and in they came, two by two, black and white, women and men, a black girl who couldn’t be out of high school yet. The crowd separated. And then like a lasso dropped from the sky, the police surrounded the students before they could make it to the lunch counter.
Gaines was grinning ear to ear. “Man, we’re the hottest show in town.” He spoke like a jive man, full of street poetry, a musician playing for change who had hit the jackpot. “This is the point. This is the whole point. See now. We’re making them hustle.”
Tacker watched, slack-jawed.
“My name is Chief Waller,” one of the officers said, his voice like a chainsaw. “You are trespassing. You have one minute to leave this store or you will be arrested.”
Another of the police officers pointed back to Gaines and Tacker in their seats. Waller cut them a glance before turning back to the students.
“Let’s go,” Tacker said.
But Gaines was whistling again under his breath.
“The side entrance is right over there.” Tacker gestured with a head tilt. “We can slip out.” Ordering pie and passing it over to Gaines was one thing. Resisting the urge to torpedo the blond kid was hard but doable. Getting arrested was inviting dark water to close over his head. He looked at the clock behind the counter. It seemed they had been here an hour. It had been less than fifteen minutes. “Hey. We’ve got to go,” he said. But Gaines wasn’t moving.
No one was moving. The students stood like a tableau. Chief Waller gripped his nightstick. Tacker caught the eye of a beautiful chestnut-haired girl from Wake Forest College. She looked like Joan of Arc.
“Men. Arrest these people,” Chief Waller said. Tacker heard clicking. Every one of them was being handcuffed.
Again the second officer motioned toward Tacker and Gaines. Waller started in their direction, the soles of his shoes complaining against the floor. It seemed to take forever for him to reach them. He stopped three feet from Tacker. “You part of this group?”
“No, sir,” Tacker said.
“Yes, sir,” Gaines said.
“This some game with you?” he said to Tacker.
“No, sir. We got here first,” Tacker said.
Waller looked back at the students thirty feet away, then back at Tacker. He gazed at him a minute. “I seem to remember you,” he said.
“May be,” Tacker said.
“I believe I do know you, and I know your father. I don’t think he would be proud of you pulling a stunt like this. Get on out of here,” Waller said.
Tacker felt Gaines’s hand at his elbow.
They sidled toward the small secondary entrance, a handprint on the wall near the door that Tacker would never forget, like the sign of some forlorn prisoner long ago. The door seemed stuck. Tacker pushed hard and it leapt open and they tumbled out. He thought of the whale spitting out Jonah. Fourth Street was full of people, but everyone was looking at the paddy wagons as the students were loaded up, blacks in one, whites in another, to go to their separate but equal jails. The Pepper Building wheeled in front of them.
“Don’t walk too fast,” Gaines said.
The crowd stayed riveted on the bigger show, their taunts aimed at the students.
“You’re a disgrace to your race.”
“Kill that nigger.”
“Lock ’em up and throw away the key.”
Tacker and Gaines reached the Indian a block away.
“Man oh man,” Gaines said.
Tacker turned the bike and they headed up to Fifth, the sky opening to blue, Winston-Salem larger than Tacker had ever known it, and more dangerous. He felt Gaines’s chest expand and contract as they wove their way back to Hart’s.
* * *
• • •
THAT EVENING TACKER caught Gaines on his way out the door, after the store had closed and they’d cleaned up for the next day. “What did you mean when you said you’ve been involved?”
“At Fisk. We were planning a sit-in in Nashville. Then I had to come take care of my mom.”
“So you got involved here.”
“I couldn’t let it go. I found this fellow, Carl Matthews. He’s at the center of the action here in Winston.”
“What makes you want to risk it?”
“There are a thousand reasons, but one of them alone is enough. You ever hear of Emmett Till?”
Something about the name seemed prophetic. They sat on the floor, their backs up against the checkout counter while Gaines told the story.
* * *
• • •
TACKER’S HEAD REELED. A boy in Mississippi buying candy. Maybe he winks at a white woman. A couple of days later he’s abducted in the night, taken to a barn. An eye gouged out. An ear nipped with shears. Tacker felt sick to his stomach. Skull shattered. Gunshot to the head. Ribbons of barbed wire used to tie a cotton gin fan to his neck before his body is thrown into the river. A crucifixion. Tacker’s throat constricted. His left hand trembled involuntarily. And Gaines that first day in front of Hart’s. It was too close.
It was way too close.
* * *
• • •
SUNSET. TACKER WALKED his usual route into Hanes Park, aware of each footstep. There was no moon. Emmett Till’s fistful of candy kept interrupting his thoughts, then the eye, the ribbons of wire. Winston telephone lines were humming, the story of the arrests growing by leaps and bounds. Someone he knew besides Waller had doubtless seen him at Woolworth’s. A cotton gin fan weighing seventy pounds. He wandered from the path, blank and stunned, the metallic sound of handcuffs in his ears. His own flesh seemed too soft a thing to endure. He walked alongside Peters Creek. It had been a favorite haunt in his childhood, clear and sandy, deeply etched in the land so that the drop from bank to water was ten or twelve feet in some places. On one of the bridges that crossed the waterway he had once painted his initials. He thought he might remember which bridge, and he picked up speed, hoping to get there before dark. But either the initials were gone or he had not remembered correctly. He headed for a curve in the creek where someone long ago had stacked rock to create a pool. It was hedged by a stand of hollies. He and his friends had caught minnows here, skipped stones, even submersed themselves in summers.
Hardly thinking what he was doing, Tacker took off his jacket and laid it on the bank. He pulled off his shoes and socks, balancing on one foot at a time. In a single motion he pulled off his undershirt and sweater together, folded them, and set them on the shoes. He pulled off trousers and underwear. The night air moved against his arms and legs and he thought briefly of how, as a boy, he had imagined Indians living beside the creek, their chests painted. A dark bird flew low across the field. Tacker rubbed his hands together. It surprised him that he didn’t feel colder than he did. Descending a set of steep steps—who had fashioned these?—he wondered if he could be arrested for this. The creek was shockingly cold. Even before sitting, he felt himself shrivel. He lowered his backside and yelled, the sound swallowed by the creek’s basin. Tacker lengthened his legs in front of him. His feet were still browned from the Nigerian sun. Though he pushed against both of them, Kate and Samuel filled his mind. And then he thought of Gaines’s two fingers on his wrist. Tacker looked at his hands and closed his eyes.
Swimming Between Worlds Page 19