The Lions of Little Rock

by Kristin Levine

  I looked over at JT. “Please,” I whispered.

  JT held my gaze for a long time, then went over to his mother and touched her arm. “Mama,” he said, “Marlee is a square, but she’s not a liar.”

  Red turned as red as his name.

  Mrs. Dalton reached up and ran her fingertips across her scar.

  “Go!” said Mr. Dalton.

  Mother took my arm and started to lead me off.

  “No,” said Mrs. Dalton. She rose from her seat, clutching JT’s hand.

  “What?” snapped Mr. Dalton.

  “I’d like to see if this girl is telling the truth.”

  “Why?” asked Mr. Dalton.

  “It’s a simple matter to check.” Mrs. Dalton’s voice was growing stronger. “Let’s go look in the trunk of Red’s car. If there is a letter opener in there, I’ll believe her story. If not, you can call the police.”

  Red shrugged, and I suddenly had the awful feeling that he’d already found the letter opener and thrown it away. But maybe he had only found the handle. Maybe the blade was still there.

  Mr. Dalton sighed. “Fine, let’s go settle this once and for all. But afterwards, you have one minute to get off my property before I call the police.”

  So we marched back through the house and out to the car in the driveway. Mr. Dalton glanced at Red, and he unlocked the trunk without protest. We all crowded around to look inside.

  There was nothing there.

  Mrs. Dalton sighed in relief. Red grinned. Mr. Dalton just crossed his arms. “Satisfied?” he snapped.

  I wasn’t. I knew it had been Red. And before anyone could stop me, I jumped back into the trunk.

  “Get your crazy daughter out of my . . .”

  Daddy held the lid open so I wouldn’t get trapped. I bent down and pulled back the lining of the trunk. There, in a crack in the side, something silver flashed. I reached in and pulled out a slip of metal. Daddy helped me out of the trunk, and I held it up.

  Mr. Dalton clenched his teeth. “Red, what is the meaning of this?”

  “It’s just a piece of metal,” said Red, with a shrug. “I don’t know where it came from.”

  I turned the metal so they could all see my name, engraved in the blade, shining yellow in the setting sun.

  Red lunged at me, trying to grab it away, but his own father held him back. Red broke free and spat on the ground.

  Mr. Dalton’s face was bright red. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t know they were going to be there!” snapped Red. “I was only after the colored girl. I saw her go into that house and thought that was where she lived. You said yourself she deserved—”

  “Shut up!” roared Mr. Dalton. “Get in the house before—”

  “No,” said Red. His bangs fell into his eyes, and he pouted. It made him look about five years old.

  “I’m still bigger than you, boy,” said Mr. Dalton. “And there’s a switch in the back closet I’m not afraid to use.”

  Red’s eyes blazed with hatred, but he turned and slunk into the house. Mr. Dalton followed him without even glancing at the rest of us.

  Mother, Daddy, JT, Mrs. Dalton and I were left standing awkwardly on the sidewalk. Finally, Daddy cleared his throat. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to call the police.”

  Mrs. Dalton nodded. “I know.”

  JT was staring at the ground. I walked over to him. “You okay, JT?” He looked as shocked as I’d felt after the bombing.

  “No,” he said. “I never really thought he’d do it.”

  I took his hand and held it for a moment.

  “Come on, Marlee,” said Mother. “It’s time to go.”

  55

  THE LAST DAYS OF SCHOOL

  We were silent most of the way home. I didn’t mind. After seeing JT’s parents, his father so angry and vicious and his mother as passive as a wallflower, my family’s little spats seemed like a child’s game. Daddy was just turning onto our street when he said, “We need to talk about your punishment.”

  “I’d say she deserves to be grounded until the end of the school year,” said Mother.

  “That’s fair,” I admitted. Actually, that was more than fair. The end of the year was only two weeks away. I’d expected worse.

  “Marlee,” said Daddy, “taking the dynamite from Red was reckless and impulsive.”

  I nodded.

  “But it was awfully brave too.” He almost sounded proud of me.

  “Marlee listens to lions,” said Mother, and Daddy didn’t even ask what she meant. I guess somehow he knew.

  I tried calling Liz again the next morning, but her number had been disconnected. Even though I knew it wasn’t fair of me, I suddenly hated Liz’s mother.

  On the last day of school, JT came up to me while I was cleaning out my locker. “Red’s gone,” he said.

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “There wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with a crime,” JT explained, “but my father made him join the army. He’s only seventeen, so my dad had to sign an extra form, but he’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No,” said JT. “I’m glad. Things are a lot better at home. Mother’s not having so many headaches and—” He stopped. “But I miss him too. Isn’t that stupid?”

  I shook my head.

  “Anyway,” said JT, “I told Mr. Harding I’d been cheating in math and I should probably repeat his class next year. I didn’t want to tell him you were the one helping me and get you in trouble, but—”

  “It’s okay, JT. He already knew.”

  JT shook his head. “With Red gone, I’m trying to make a fresh start. Do things the right way, you know? But admitting when you’ve done something wrong . . .” He shivered. “It makes my skin crawl. How do you stand it?”

  I shrugged. “You sleep better at night.”

  “Well, that would be nice.” JT gave me a funny look. “You don’t want to go to the movies with me sometime, do you, Marlee?”

  There it was. JT finally asking me on a real date. After all this time. “No, JT,” I said as gently as I could. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay,” he said. “No hard feelings.”

  “Good.” And I meant it.

  “Hey, do you think Sally’d say yes if I asked her?”

  I smiled. “I think she’d love it.”

  Sure enough, by lunchtime Sally was over the moon. I never knew you could talk about a two-sentence conversation (Want to go to the movies sometime? Sure!) for twenty minutes. Nora and I glanced at each other. She rolled her eyes, and I tried not to giggle. I’d never really gotten to know Nora. I’d always thought of her as Sally’s sidekick, never as being her own person too.

  Little Jimmy sat down at our table, and I thought about what Liz had said to me on the phone. About us needing other friends. Ones we were allowed to see. “Hey, Jimmy,” I said, “you going to the pool this summer?”

  “Yes.”

  My stomach gave me a funny little lurch. Never thought I’d be asking him out. “Maybe I’ll see you there?”

  “That’d be great,” he said. “We could jump off the high dive.”

  “Sure,” I said automatically. Then I wanted to kick myself. I didn’t want to jump off the high dive.

  “Great,” said Little Jimmy.

  The bell rang and he started to walk off. I was stupid and dumb and never learned and . . . and one step at a time. If I didn’t know what to do, I should factor the equation. “Jimmy!”

  He stopped and turned.

  “Actually”—I counted 2, 3, 5—“I don’t like the high dive.”

  “Oh,” he said. “How about I buy you a Coke from the snack bar instead?”

 
“That’d be nice.”

  He nodded and walked off. And it was funny, because Little Jimmy hadn’t grown a bit, but now when I looked at him, he seemed kind of cute. I wasn’t thinking about getting married or having kids or anything like that at all. Just about sharing a Coke with a friend on a hot summer day.

  Maybe Liz was right after all.

  56

  SUMMER

  A lot of things happened that summer.

  In June, new school board members were appointed, and they voted to rehire the purged teachers. Daddy received his teaching contract for the next year on June 18. He signed it and returned it to the post office the very same day.

  David changed his major yet again. He was studying politics this time and went to live with a friend in Washington, DC, for the summer.

  Mother gave Betty Jean a raise.

  And Judy came home. I expected it to be awkward, like our visit at Christmas, or tense, like over spring break when I had to watch every word. But it wasn’t. It was comfortable. Like reuniting with an old friend. After dinner, I went into her room to watch her unpack.

  “And tomorrow,” said Judy, “maybe we can go to the zoo and then the pool.”

  “Actually . . . ,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I already have plans.”

  “Oh.”

  I couldn’t read her face. Was she disappointed or surprised or something else? “I’m going to the movies with Nora. We’re going to see South Pacific downtown and out for ice cream afterward.”

  “Oh. Nora, huh?”

  “You can come too if you want.”

  “Nah, I really wanted to catch up with Margaret.” To my surprise, Judy was smiling. “I was just trying to be nice to you. But it sounds like you don’t need me to arrange your social life anymore.”

  “No,” I said. “I guess I don’t.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about that,” said Judy. “It’s a good thing, Marlee.”

  “I know, it’s just . . .” And then I told her about Liz, and our final phone call.

  “Oh,” Judy said when I was done. “Well, last time she disappeared you sent her a note, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well,” said Judy, “maybe you should try it again.”

  So I wrote Liz a note. It was really more of a letter this time. I told her about how Little Jimmy and I had had our Coke by the pool, how we’d eaten a burger at Krystal and gone skating at Troy’s on a rainy afternoon. I told her that Nora, it turned out, liked cards, and was almost as good at hearts as I was. I told her how JT and Sally were going steady, and how it had seemed to make them nicer to everyone, at least most of the time.

  Most of all, though, I told Liz about how I went to the zoo, every Tuesday afternoon, by myself, and thought about her and the past year. I told her how Red was gone, and that I still had the book of magic squares. Every time I added up a row, column or diagonal, I thought of her. I promised to be at the zoo every Tuesday afternoon that summer, just in case she ever wanted to join me by the lions.

  I was just getting ready to seal the letter and run it over to Pastor George to give to Liz at youth group, just like I’d done before, when I thought of something else. I looked through my purse and found the tattered black feather. I tucked it inside and licked the envelope shut.

  I waited week after week by the lions, but she never showed up.

  The high schools were scheduled to open early that year, on August 12, 1959, before the pools even closed. The elementary schools and junior highs wouldn’t open until the day after Labor Day, like always.

  When August 12 finally came, Daddy and I got up with Mother and Judy, in a reverse of the day last fall when Daddy and I had gone to school and they hadn’t. We all got into the car and drove Mother to Hall High School and dropped off Judy at Central.

  On the way home, one of the streets was blocked off. Daddy parked the car and we got out to see what was going on.

  There were more than two hundred people in the street, some in cars and some on foot. In the front walked a man holding a Confederate flag. Others held signs reading ARKANSAS IS FOR FAUBUS and RACE MIXING IS COMMUNISM.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “They’re protesting,” said Daddy in a monotone.

  “We’re marching to Central,” a man called out. “Stopped them last year. We will again.”

  “No,” Daddy muttered. “Not again.”

  A car was playing “Dixie” way too loud.

  “This is how it started in 1957,” whispered Daddy. “Protests that turned into mobs. And the police did nothing.” Daddy and I turned and saw police and firemen up ahead. They’d set up a small barrier. Daddy shook his head. “They’re going to let the protesters pass, just like they did two years ago.”

  But I thought I saw something different in their faces, a determination to make Little Rock a different place than it was before.

  One of the officers held up a megaphone. “Stop. You are not allowed to get any closer to the high school.”

  The protesters just kept marching on.

  I’m not sure who was more surprised, Daddy or the protesters, when the firemen turned the hoses on. In an instant, the segregationists were soaked.

  Most of the protesters left immediately, wet and soggy as they made their way home. But a few became enraged and started throwing rocks, bottles, the very signs in their hands.

  But before we could run back to the safety of our car, the police moved in and began arresting people. Daddy and I stood and watched, frozen. “It’s not going to happen again.” And when he grabbed my hand, I thought he was going to cry.

  In a few minutes, over twenty people were arrested, and the street was empty again. They’d been stopped just a block from Central High School.

  Daddy looked at me.

  “Have no fear of them,” I quoted Peter at him. “Nor be troubled.”

  He gave me a hug. “That’s my brave girl.”

  At dinner, when we asked Judy how school had gone that day, she said, “Fine. There weren’t even any protests this time.”

  Daddy and I glanced at each other, but we didn’t say a word.

  In the end, there were only three colored students at Hall—Effie Jones, Elsie Robinson and Estella Thompson—and only two at Central—Carlotta Walls and Jefferson Thomas. There were no colored students at the junior highs or elementary schools. “Only five students,” said Mother, shaking her head.

  We still had a long, long way to go.

  57

  THE HIGH DIVE, PART 2

  The next Tuesday, like always, I spent wandering around the zoo. I visited the gorillas, Ruth the elephant, the zebras and flamingos, and finally, when I was tired of walking, I stopped by the lions.

  There, on our bench, sat a tall girl with black hair and skin the same color as mine. She was clutching an old black feather in her hands.

  “Hi,” I breathed. Nothing else would come out.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” Liz said. “It took me this long to convince my mother to let me . . .”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.” She was here now.

  “I showed her my notebook. I wanted her to know about the turtles and the crawdads and the quiet lessons. After my mother read it, she said I could come see you. One last time.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “She’s actually just over there, waiting by the monkeys,” said Liz.

  I glanced up and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Fullerton. She was watching us, and if she wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t frowning either. I thought of how scared she must have been this past year, and suddenly I no longer blamed her for keeping us apart. I waved, and after a moment, she nodded in return.

 
“So,” said Liz. “The schools reopened.”

  “Yes.”

  “Integrated. Even if it is just a token number of Negroes, it’s . . .”

  “Integrated,” I finished.

  “Yeah,” said Liz.

  There was a long pause. Finally, I sat down on the bench next to her.

  “How’s Curtis?” I asked.

  “Fine,” Liz said, and blushed, which told me everything I wanted to know. “How’s Little Jimmy?”

  “I like him a lot,” I said. “Though I think just as a friend. Anyway, you were right. I did need other friends. Even if they aren’t friends as good as you.”

  “Are we still friends?” asked Liz.

  “Of course,” I said. “We’ll always be friends.”

  “Even if we don’t ever get to see each other?” said Liz.

  “I’ve thought about it a lot,” I said. “I think a friend is someone who helps you change for the better. And whether you see them once a day or once a year, if it’s a true friend, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re pretty good at saying what you think now.”

  “I learned from the best.”

  Liz smiled. “Remember when we saw The Wizard of Oz at the Gem?”

  “Of course I remember,” I said. “It was the first movie we saw together.”

  “It was the only movie we ever saw together,” Liz said.

  “There’ll be others.”

  “Someday,” said Liz.

  “Things will be different,” I agreed.

  “Somewhere,” said Liz. “Over the rainbow.” She stood up. “Until then, call me.” And then she was gone.

  On the seat where she’d been sitting was another three-by-three magic square. The first two and last two digits were the year, 1959. And the other five numbers, well, they were her new phone number.

  As soon as I got to the pool that afternoon, I knew what I had to do. I didn’t say a word to anyone, just put my towel down next to Judy and waved to Little Jimmy and walked over to the five-meter platform dive and started to climb. It was a beautiful clear day, and when I got to the top, the wind danced the ends of my hair so they tickled my neck.