With a gun like that, and some practice, he’d—he could see the deer, pronged antlers held up, see it poise for just those crucial seconds listening, see its legs crumple in mid-stride, see it fall while the echoes of that one clean shot still echoed through the trees.
Bullet shook his head to clear the image out of it. He’d learned not to make dreams up for himself, that was part of growing up. Growing up meant you knew what you wanted and you worked for it, and you didn’t let yourself get in your own way. Not dreams, not memories—he knew he could allow no weakness in himself if he was going to win free. He could feel the danger of his father’s will closing in around him, and he could feel his own strength too. It would cost him, but what didn’t cost something? Nothing, that was what. It would cost him this farm that ran acres wide under his feet, that ran acres deep and fertile underneath him. It had already cost him whatever it cost to be different. Nobody knew him anymore—which was funny because all he had done was let his real self out. But everybody saw only the difference. Nobody knew what Bullet was like. Except Patrice. And maybe nobody ever had except Patrice, who didn’t mind him as he was, who didn’t try to make him into somebody else. Or his mother—she could read him still, he knew, and he could read her too for that matter. But they never talked about that, not in any way. Because it didn’t make any difference.
CHAPTER 2
The waves slapped up against the dock and Johnny’s boat. More stars appeared. The wind was strong enough to blow the mosquitoes away, so he could stay outside as long as he felt like it. His parents went to bed early. He’d be damned if he’d get his hair cut. He lay back, down on his back on the hard wooden dock, looking up at the star-studded sky, and eased up on himself. It was okay, he was alone.
Maybe he’d grow his hair really long, long as Liza’s, and wear it in a braid, or two braids. Bullet grinned—that would give the old man something to chew over.
He didn’t blame Liza for just going off with Frank—four years ago now. He almost had to respect her for doing it. About the only smart thing she’d done in her life. Or Johnny either, packing and going off to college and just never coming back; he didn’t much blame him anymore. Trust Johnny to do the smart thing, get a scholarship. Johnny got the brains and Liza got the looks.
It was funny though, and not as if he missed her, but he could always feel how Liza wasn’t there. Once Johnny was surely gone, it stopped bothering him, like a board nailed into place. But Liza . . . sometimes, like now, when he was alone with nothing to get done and the sky filled up with stars, he could almost hear her, the way she sang. Bullet couldn’t sing a note on tune, but he could hear songs inside his head, just the way they sounded. Now he heard Liza’s voice: “Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown,” that voice sang, “when at evening the sun goeth down? When I stand with the blest in God’s mansions of rest, will there be any stars in my crown?” Well, he didn’t know about that, Liza, running off with Frank Verricker like that. He almost hoped they were having a merry old time of it, wherever they were. He liked Frank okay, Frank never let anything get through to him, especially not the old man’s hostility. Frank just kept on coming back whenever his ship got into Baltimore. You never knew when he’d turn up, in some rattletrap he’d bought. You never knew when you’d see him slouching against the doorframe, about to bust out laughing. “Tell Liza I’ve come courting. You’re welcome this time too, kid, it’s a movie. A couple of hamburgers. Get you out from under, if you want to.” Bullet never wanted to, not badly enough to give in to the wanting; and that puzzled Frank, he could tell. The light eyes would study him, curious about what made Bullet tick. After a while, Bullet said no just to keep Frank puzzled. Liza never kept Frank puzzled, she had her heart out there in her eyes for him. She’d hang around waiting for him to show up, out of the blue, whenever. She was surprised every time when she finally figured out that he’d gone off again, back to whatever ship he was on, without a word to her. You’d think she’d have learned, but Liza never did learn much. Or she learned so slow she was long gone before Bullet would have known about it.
Maybe he’d get his hair trimmed a bare quarter of an inch. Then, when his father said, the way he inevitably would, “I instructed you to have your hair cut,” Bullet would give him a receipt, or the clippings in an envelope. Billy-O, the barber, would give him a receipt. He’d shove the receipt at the old man, and then what could he say?
Although, when it came to a showdown, the old man wouldn’t say anything; he’d make Bullet’s mother do the saying. To pay her back for standing behind Johnny, maybe. She wanted Johnny to go to college; she stood up for that the way she hadn’t stood up for anything before or since, against the old man. And Johnny just walked away, never a letter, never a phone call, all that long year. That long year—who knew what she was thinking?—she never said. The old man never said. One long, quiet year that was, not even an explosion when Bullet flunked fifth grade and had to repeat it. All year long, nobody said a thing. That was one good thing about Johnny’s leaving. Another good thing was having him gone, with his orders and his right answers, “Cool it, kid,” “Hands off.” Johnny was always building something, like that boat—working off his temper on wood. Or the tree house for Liza. Talking at Bullet when he caught him messing with his precious tools, because Bullet was supposed to wait until he was old enough to learn how to use them. “Face facts, kid,” Johnny told him. Well, Johnny knew how to face facts, and he taught Bullet how, and Bullet had to be grateful for that. “Face facts, you’re a breaker. You better learn the truth about yourself.” “So what,” Bullet answered him, “sew buttons.” But Johnny would stand up to the old man, when he wanted, like about Liza keeping OD, and sometimes Johnny could argue him down. After Johnny left, Bullet figured out that he’d also done some standing between his father and Bullet—but Johnny taught Bullet how to stand up for himself before he walked out.
Bullet guessed he didn’t fault Johnny, and he didn’t fault Liza either. His eyes roamed around, watching the stars. He guessed his mother didn’t either, although he knew that she, at least, missed them. Not that she said so, not that she tried to stop Liza from going—but he could read her. And, if he remembered, he remembered how different things used to be, how different she was . . . He could remember seeing her run, her skirt tangling at her legs and himself running to try to catch her and her laughter when she pretended he had—but that was all gone, long gone, faded away, closed off. As far as he could tell, his mother didn’t miss it.
Maybe he’d grow braids and wind them up around his head and see how many synonyms his father could think of for effeminate.
Bullet rolled over, sat up, stood up, stretched. Tired. He went back down the dock to the grass. OD was waiting for him on shore. She never would go out onto the dock. Johnny said it was because she had been traumatized by nearly drowning, then explained to Bullet what trauma was. Once, when Liza wasn’t around, one long summer day—the first summer Johnny was gone—Bullet had hoisted OD up under his arm and taken her out onto the dock. The water wasn’t even deep where he dropped her in, just halfway out the dock. He’d leaned over and dropped her straight down, while her legs scrabbled for a grip on his arms and chest. She didn’t howl or anything, just froze stiff and looked at him. Bullet figured, trauma or no, all animals could swim, it was an instinct. But not OD. She sank like a stone, right to the bottom, and he could just barely see her open eyes looking up at him through six inches of murky water. She didn’t even move her legs, just like a stone statue. He gave her a while, but she never surfaced. So he jumped in and grabbed her. The scratches he’d had—she was out of her mind with fear he guessed. When he dumped her on the beach she just lay there, shivering. He watched for a while. Johnny was always right about things, Johnny always knew the answers. It was just that the way he told you made you want to prove he was wrong.
“Isn’t that right, OD?” Bullet asked the dog. She wagged her tail and hesitated, wondering if she should come closer. He i
gnored her.
Maybe he’d have it cut in a Mohican cut. He’d seen pictures of those. They shaved away all the hair except for a broad band down the center of your head. It looked pretty terrible. Maybe he’d do that.
If it hadn’t been so muggy, he’d have jogged back up to the house, for the pleasure of the run. But he walked, unrelaxing himself: tomorrow he’d get up at five to take the tractor out and get started on the front cornfield, which would give him a couple of hours at the job before the school bus came.
The wind rustled the grasses and night gathered around him. There were a lot of things the old man didn’t do anymore, even though he wasn’t that old, just sixty. He didn’t even put in tobacco anymore. The front fields used to be tobacco—hard work, but a cash crop. Now it was corn and tomatoes, easier to grow, easier to harvest. His father wouldn’t think about planting anything else, not even soybeans—which made no sense. Except it was new, of course. Bullet could have done the groundwork and legwork on a new crop, but you couldn’t work with the old man, you had to work for him. Bullet wasn’t having any of that.
The dirt under his feet was packed hard. Night flowed over him. OD sometimes followed behind—he could hear her—or she’d tear off into the grass to flush out something—a muskrat maybe, a possum, something she never caught. You’d think she’d learn.
Bullet didn’t know where the idea came from, like a star shooting in a white arc across the sky. But it stopped him in his tracks.
He threw back his head and laughed out loud. Boy, oh boy. He moved quickly up the path, laughing in pure pleasure.
He would have his head shaved. Absolutely bald. Boy, oh boy.
That would be worth the money.
He ran up the back steps and across the screened porch into the kitchen. His mother was still there, still wearing the white blouse she’d put on for dinner and the blue high-heeled shoes. She looked at him, and he couldn’t read her face. She wore her dark hair in a thick braid down her back, the coolest way to wear long hair.
“You’ve been swimming alone, that’s not too smart,” she said.
Bullet shrugged. He wondered if she was going to ask him not to, because he wasn’t about to not go swimming if he wanted to.
She shrugged back at him. “Are you going to have your hair cut?” she asked. Her eyes didn’t give him any messages, one way or the other.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I’ll hear a yes or a no from you,” she told him.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’ll say good night then.” She got up from her chair, slow but not relaxed. She never relaxed.
Bullet jammed his hands down into the pockets of his shorts. Then he said to her straight back, “Good night, Maw.” He heard the teasing in his own voice. There had been some big fights about calling her Maw, which the old man said was common as dirt, as well as illiterate and ill-enunciated.
She hesitated, then turned around to stare at him.
“You,” she said.
He knew what she meant; she used to say that to him, “You, boy,” when he was about to go too far. Then she’d either get after him or burst out laughing, and he never knew which to expect. He wondered if she knew what he was going to ask Billy-O to do, then realized that she couldn’t. She just knew he was going to do something. She knew it the same way he knew that she knew. He could read her and she could read him—which was the closest they came to talking. You might say it wasn’t too awful close, Bullet thought, and grinned.
CHAPTER 3
Bullet leaned his shoulder against the cinder block wall of the broad corridor leading down to the cafeteria and watched. They moved on past him like a human river, like a herd of cattle heading for the feed troughs.
If you knew how to look you could see the order within the mass. They moved in groups. Jocks announced themselves by their heavy white letter sweaters with the big red W sewn onto the back—even in this heat. He saw Ted Bayson, the football player, with his latest girl. This one was one of the eggheads, he noticed. Eggheads were marked out by their long hair, boys and girls, and the way their girls didn’t hang onto them. They were always talking, mostly arguing. Negroes—blacks they wanted to be called now, “Black is beautiful” was the slogan. Black is black and that’s about all there is to say about it, Bullet thought. They stuck together, heads like a field of black puffballs with afro haircuts, guys and girls, laughing, touching one another with arms around or with punches and slappings, calling out and heehawing. Even the wimps had their own look, rabbitty around the eyes.
When the corridor had emptied, Bullet drifted into the cafeteria. He liked the way the room was divided almost exactly in half between tables of Negroes and tables of whites. They could pass laws and more laws about integration, they could close down the Negro schools and take “White Only” signs off doors, but it didn’t change things. Bullet ran his eyes over the tables, looking for an empty seat. He didn’t care where he sat or who he sat with. He sat anywhere he wanted to. Nobody invited him, he was never unwelcome, and that was about exactly the way he wanted things. That day, he slid into the bench beside Jackson and Tommy, across from Cheryl and Lou. They looked up to greet him but went on with their conversation. Bullet pulled his sandwiches out of the paper bag. Tommy he’d known forever. Tommy was a senior now, editor of the paper, with his shoulder-length curly red hair held off his face by a bandana worn like an Indian headband, but Bullet remembered him as a plump boy, back in grade school. They’d been in the same grade until Bullet flunked back a year. Tommy had gotten tiresomely liberal during high school; they were all tiresomely liberal these days, gathering up causes like little kids picking up shells and stones at the beach, all excited and thinking how new and wonderful it was. Waiting to find the stone that was magic, Bullet suspected, the one that would make them brilliant, get their names printed in history books. But they never read the history books and figured out what happened to a lot of people just like them: nothing, at best, and getting wiped out, at worst. Tommy was still okay, he did some thinking. Jackson, Tommy’s sidekick for a couple of years now, as well as one of the assistant editors on the paper, was a tall, lean, lazy kid. Bored most of the time and looking for something to stir up; boring all of the time, Bullet thought. Jackson didn’t much care for Bullet but didn’t have the nerve to do anything about it. The girls—Lou and Cheryl—weren’t exactly their girls, weren’t exactly not their girls. Lou had a crush on Bullet that she didn’t bother to conceal. She was soft, soft wavy hair held back with barrettes, big soft blue eyes. He didn’t mind her, much. Cheryl, he respected, for all that most of the time she was around he had the impulse to punch her out. She was the loudest of them, and her opinions came right from whatever magazine she’d last read, and she wasn’t too good to look at with her squared figure and little piggly eyes, but nobody scared her, nobody could shut her up. Much as he often wanted to put her mouth out of commission, little as he enjoyed her company, she wasn’t as much of a jerk as most other people.
“I actually like a tough teacher,” Jackson was maintaining, lying through his teeth. Tommy caught Bullet’s eye and looked uncomfortable. “As long as he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Or her,” Cheryl inserted.
“Burn those bras, baby,” Jackson said.
“My bra for your draft card,” she told him.
“Lay off,” Tommy told them. “Don’t you ever get tired? I don’t know why you bother, Jackson; you’ve had McIntyre, you know he can’t be accused of knowing what he’s talking about, so this student teacher might be an improvement.”
“McIntyre’s mind got lost in 1927,” Jackson said. “He’s a prime example of a burned-out teacher. If he ever was aflame. Which I doubt seriously. How old is this student teacher, and how did he ever get stuck down here?”
“Do you have him, Bullet?” Tommy asked.
“Bullet wouldn’t know, he sleeps through class,” Cheryl reported.
“You don’t,” Lou asked him.
“Do you?” She looked as if that was something deliciously wicked.
Bullet took a big bite of his sandwich and chewed it, staring right back at her but not saying anything, until she blushed and looked away. He had looked at the student teacher about once; he was a weedy-looking long-hair with pale skin and a little blond beard about ten hairs thick hanging down from his receding chin. “I don’t expect any joy of him,” he told them. “But he can’t be worse than McIntyre.”
“Don’t you just wish,” Cheryl said.
“Come off it, Cher,” Tommy told her. “McIntyre hands out ten dittos a day and then reads them aloud. Aloud. And then you spend the three minutes left at the end of class filling in the blanks he tells you the right answers for, and you hand them in. They’re the same dittos he’s used for decades. Forty-five minutes a day of screaming boredom. That’s what hell must be like,” he concluded.
“‘Hell is other people,’” Cheryl told him. “Sartre,” she informed anyone who might not know, which was, Bullet figured, all of them, including him. Quotes for every occasion, that’s what Cheryl had.
“At least McIntyre is always good for a B,” Jackson reminded her. “He doesn’t know how to give any other grade, his little fingers can’t form any other letters. That looks all right on your record.”
“Some of us are accustomed to A’s,” Cheryl said.
“They should fire him,” Lou said. “I don’t want to have to take the US History course from him if he’s not going to teach us anything.”
“He’s got tenure,” Tommy told her. “They’d have to get him on something, to be able to fire him—if they even want to fire him, if they even know how bad he is. Of course, if we could persuade Cheryl here to seduce him . . .”
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