He had been such a child, pretending, like children do, that people were growing to care about him, when they never were; pretending that he might even fit in enough to be . . . to be adopted, a word he had never dared to form in his mind before, but now he could think it, knowing it was not a possibility.
It was so childish to pretend that he would never have to go back to the fields, would never get another beating from Uncle Luther, when, of course, he would if he stayed on.
In the late afternoon, he turned left onto Highway 80 to begin the long walk home and to make preparations.
CHAPTER 37
WHEN John got home, Uncle Luther had bought a bottle. He was sitting on the porch, leaning back in his chair, watching John walk toward him. “Where them fancy clothes you was wearin’?” He took a drink. “We ain’t good enough to see you in’m?” The bottle dangled down between sweat-soaked jeans. “Been stayin’ with the Judge more than you stayin’ here. Too bad you ain’t got no home to go to. We’d send you back where you come from for sure.”
He had gotten used to the words. Words didn’t bother him anymore. John handed the mail to Uncle Luther. A bill from the hardware store, a notice of a cattle auction over in Selma. Uncle Luther took it and let it hang loose in the fingers of his free hand.
John looked carefully at Uncle Luther before he spoke. Like the others in the family, he had become expert in gauging the stages of Uncle Luther’s drunkenness. All the signs were there—the half-closed eyes, the slack jaw. Uncle Luther was past the rage he felt when he first started drinking. By this time, he was fast approaching a stupor. John could speak without fear of anything physical happening. “My friend up in Bainbridge, where I came from, is going to ask me to visit soon.” He said this with his head down. He meant this not as confrontation but just as information for Uncle Luther to absorb. “She sent me a postcard saying so.”
Uncle Luther said nothing, so he ventured further. “Her mother, she’ll probably write Aunt Nelda soon, to invite me formally.”
“Invite you formal,” Uncle Luther mimicked. He took a swig.
“She said she would send me a train ticket, too.”
He snickered. “Hear that, Little Luther? John here is gonna ride on the train.” He turned to Little Luther, who was standing perfectly still, leery of his father’s mood. “Ain’t that dandy?”
Little Luther came to and gave a halfhearted laugh. “Yeah, Pa, dandy.” Then he stood still again, looking out at the fields.
Just then, Aunt Nelda came to the porch and said supper was ready.
The next week at the bank, he stole some blank pieces of stationery and a pen from Miss Maroon’s desk. All afternoon, as he emptied wastebaskets and ashtrays and polished the brass tellers’ bars, words were whirling around in his head. When the bank closed, he didn’t wait around to see if the Judge needed him. He went straight to the house, changed his clothes, and left for home.
That night, he sat in his room and flipped through a history book he had stolen from the school library the day school closed. He was looking for what might be appropriate wording.
Dear Mrs. Spraig,
I hope you will remember that we lived next door to your dearly departed sister in the town of Bainbridge. I also hope it will be agreeable with you to let your nephew, John, come visit us this summer.
We will be sending him a ticket. I hope it’s okay. He will be leaving on the Saturday-night train out of Lower Peach Tree.
Sincerely yours, Mrs. Mary Rutland.
P.S. I will be giving him some extra silverware of his mother’s that I had borrowed and forgotten to return. He can bring it back with him when he returns. It is a beautiful silver tea set that is worth so much, I couldn’t take the chance of sending it through the mail.
He folded the letter and put it in the history book. He would wait a week to give it to Uncle Luther, but every night he got it out right before he went to bed and read it, changing a word here, a sentence there. After several revisions, it was ready.
The day he decided to show Uncle Luther the letter, he waited until right after supper. He was sitting alone on the porch, smoking and drinking a small glass of whiskey. It had to be him, not Aunt Nelda. She might want to read the letter. John knew Uncle Luther couldn’t read well enough to know what it said. He waited until she was washing dishes.
“I got my letter from my friend’s mother today. The one who’s inviting me to come for a visit.”
Uncle Luther said nothing, just looked at the boy.
“It’s right here.” John took the letter out of his pocket. “Want me to read it?”
Still Uncle Luther said nothing, looking out at the fields. This was good so far. Uncle Luther seemed only mildly interested. John held up the envelope and hoped Uncle Luther would not notice his fingers shaking. He had glued a used stamp onto the outside to give it as much authenticity as possible, just in case Uncle Luther examined it closely. “Here it is.” He slipped the letter out of its envelope and began to read, trying not to give particular emphasis to the P.S.
Uncle Luther took a drink of whiskey and watched a red-tailed hawk circling in the orange of the sunset as John read. If John had figured it right, Uncle Luther wasn’t drunk enough to forget what he was hearing, but too drunk to pay close attention. When he finished, the boy slowly folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. His heart was pounding so hard, he was certain Uncle Luther could see it. Maybe he would call Aunt Nelda out and have her read the letter. If that happened, he was in for a whipping. Maybe Uncle Luther would see right through the whole thing and laugh at him. There was a silence that seemed to last minutes.
As if in slow motion, John began to put the letter in his pocket, head down, afraid of what Uncle Luther would see if he looked into his face.
Uncle Luther turned to look at him. “Come here,” he said.
John took one step closer. “Gimme that.” John held out the letter and Uncle Luther grabbed it and stuffed it in his pocket.
That night, John looked around his room, thinking about what he would take with him to his new life in Chicago.
Three days later, he decided to test Aunt Nelda right after supper was over and Little Luther had left the table. Shell was helping clear dishes. “I guess I’ll be going for my visit up to Bainbridge in a few weeks, soon as they send me the ticket,” he said. It was getting easier. He felt a surge of excitement, but nothing he couldn’t control. His hands rested casually on the table. He sat there waiting for her reaction.
“What’s that you’re talkin’ about, John honey?” She was half-listening, scraping dishes clean.
“What visit is he gettin’ to go on, Mama?” Shell asked.
“Didn’t Uncle Luther tell you?” He tried to act surprised. “My friend Tab, her mother wrote me and wants me to come visit her in Bainbridge this summer. She’s sending me a ticket. Didn’t Uncle Luther show you the letter?”
Everyone looked at Luther, who sat picking his teeth with a sassafras twig.
“No, he didn’t tell us.” Aunt Nelda looked at him suspiciously. “You didn’t show me no letter.”
“Done throwed it away,” he said without looking at her. “Didn’t say nothin’ ’cept they was gonna send him a ticket.” John could hardly keep from smiling. All this time, he had been so afraid of him. Now his fear was turning to something else.
“Ain’t gonna let him go anyhow,” Uncle Luther said, and John froze. “He’s got to keep up his job with the Judge. Wouldn’t seem fittin’”—he eyed John—“not to keep faith with the Judge.”
“This will be while the Judge is visiting down in Biloxi,” John said too quickly. It was the first thing that came to his mind. “Well, I think it will be anyhow.” He tried to sound matter-of-fact. “You know, Mrs. Vance has that cousin who lives down there,” he lied, counting on Aunt Nelda’s wish to seem a social equal to Mrs. Vance.
“Oh, yes, a cousin. Seems like I do recall that,” Aunt Nelda lied in return.
“Well, i
f Adell doesn’t need him, I guess we can spare him,” she said.
Luther said nothing.
John left the table feeling like he should shout out loud or do a dance, but he opened and closed the screen door in an offhanded way and slipped out of their sight before he looked up and grinned at the stars that were just coming out overhead.
He knew that when the time was right, he could disappear and everyone would think he was on a trip. The Judge would probably see through the whole thing, if he cared to think about it, but he knew the Judge didn’t care to think about it.
As he stood in the night air watching the moon rise up over the fields, he could hear her questioning Uncle Luther, trying to find out more about the letter, but he knew that was a lost cause for Aunt Nelda. He knew Uncle Luther wouldn’t let her see the letter, for fear she might read the part about the silver tea set. He would want that for himself.
Now all he had to do was wait for Tuway to send somebody else up to Chicago. Then he, too, would be headed to Chicago on the first train north, or however it was they got there.
He heard the screen door close and turned, to see Shell standing there. She looked at him and then looked back out at the darkened fields. “You’re gonna leave us here and you ain’t comin’ back, are you?” she said.
“Course not, Shell. I’ll always be back.” He sat down on the porch steps, broke off a piece of weed that was growing up between the steps, and stuck it in his mouth. Shell came to sit beside him. He looked at her and smiled. He was beginning to be amazed at how easily and sincerely he could lie.
CHAPTER 38
THE weekend had arrived and he was spending another Saturday night at the Vance house. The full moon sent streams of light into his upstairs bedroom as he eased up the window shade, then lifted the window. He had done this many times before in preparation. The old paring knife he had borrowed from the kitchen when Mrs. Vance wasn’t looking had been used to cut away the layers of house paint that glued the screen to the windowsill. Now all he had to do was swing it out on its top hinges, and directly below was the roof to the front porch. From there, it was a quick climb down the rose trellis on the far end of the porch to the ground. For the last two weekends, he had watched out the window every Saturday night, trying to stay awake, hoping for a light in the cemetery. He had packed everything in a Piggly Wiggly sack, a book of matches from the bank, stationery, and pencils. He would take along the paring knife, too. And he was right in the middle of a Nancy Drew, The Secret of the Old Clock. If it happened tonight, he would take that. They would never miss it.
He had left a note on his bed at home saying that the ticket had come and he was leaving. He had left it on many Fridays and retrieved it on many Sunday evenings. They never had occasion to look in his room.
Here on his bed at the Vances’ house, he had left a very terse note saying that Uncle Luther wanted him for some work at home and he couldn’t stay for Sunday school and Sunday dinner.
The moon rose and set before he saw the first flicker. He had looked so long, hoping for the light, that when it appeared, he thought it might be his imagination. He must leave now, because as soon as the second light came along, it would be only minutes before the two were put out and Tuway would be on his way.
This was it, what he had been waiting for. Maybe he would wait, he said to himself as he eased open the screen. Maybe the time was not right. There would always be another night. He stood suspended, and then the second light flickered, and then the memory of the Judge telling Miss Maroon he would send John to the fields again.
He eased open the screen just enough to get through. Standing on the roof of the porch, he pushed the screen frame back into place. They would think he had left early in the morning, by the back door, which they never kept locked.
He was standing in the deep shadows of the porch as they passed, talking in low whispers to each other. He let them get across the yard a good distance before he followed. Tuway might not take him along if he let him know he was following so close to home.
Even now, he could go back. Even now, he could turn around and get back in his bed and go to sleep. No one would ever know. They walked downtown past the bank, past the post office. John followed them at a distance. All was quiet. Not one person on the streets, since it was around two in the morning. The other man with Tuway was smaller than Tuway and, he thought, black, but he couldn’t tell.
The two men didn’t stop at the train station like John had thought they would. They walked past the depot, on down the tracks a good quarter of a mile. There, Tuway and the man hunched down in the bushes to wait. He could see them in the distance. He left the train station and followed the road that paralleled the train tracks for about the distance that he thought they had traveled, and then he began to edge his way through the underbrush very slowly. Presently, he could hear their voices. He inched forward.
“That’s what they all say. Now listen here. When the train start to pull out of the station, you got to hop on the car I get on. I know which one is open, so let me go first; then it’ll be you.”
“How you know which one to get on? They all locked.”
“Not the one I get on. Never mind how I know. I just know. Don’t you go questionin’ me, son. I know what I’m doin’. Done it a million times.”
After a time, the whistle of the train coming into the station sounded out into the night. It didn’t stop long. Just time enough to load the mail and off-load some freight. John rose up in the tall grass and saw that it was a freight train. No passenger cars on this one.
Now it was coming toward them very slowly. John’s heart was in his throat, beating so hard, he could barely breathe. He could still turn back, leave this place and climb back up the rose trellis to his bedroom. Get back in his bed. The train was getting closer. The big engines, two of them, passed by, then a long series of freight cars.
“Get ready,” he heard Tuway tell the man. John took a deep breath and ran forward, through the tall grass, to stand right in front of Tuway.
“I’m going,” he said, looking him straight in the eye. “I’m going with you to Chicago,” he shouted.
“What the hell . . .” Tuway looked down at the boy uncomprehendingly. “What in the hell are you doin’, boy? What are you doin’ here?” The sound of the train was getting louder as it picked up speed.
“I’m going with you to Chicago. I’m not stayin’ in this town,” he yelled.
“You crazy, boy.” Tuway looked down at him and then up at the train passing, car by car. “Get out of here and go home, right now. Ain’t nobody goin’ to Chicago.”
“What’s he doin’ here?” The other man looked at John and then at Tuway. “I thought you said this here was top secret?”
“It is.” Tuway looked desperate. “Here comes the car.”
“I’m not going back, and if I do, I’ll tell,” John yelled above the roar, and stood directly in Tuway’s path. Tuway was trying to move forward, trying to get to the train.
“What’s goin’ on here, Tuway? You told me—”
Tuway grabbed John like a sack of potatoes under his arm and began running for the train.
“Come on,” he called back over his shoulder. John dropped his bag of clothes, trying to hold on, as Tuway ran alongside and pulled back the car door with his free hand. He threw John in like he was pitching hay bales, then grabbed on and jumped in himself. “Come on,” he yelled to the man running alongside. The man threw in his suitcase and jumped in.
They all lay there on the floor, breathing hard, watching the night rush by outside the boxcar. The smell of cow manure mixed in with the swirling bits of straw.
When he caught his breath, Tuway turned on John. “What the hell you mean interferin’ in my business, boy?” Tuway was half-crawling, half-walking toward the boy as the moving car jerked along, gaining speed.
John began to back up into the corner of the car. Even if he got beat up, he didn’t care. That had happened before and he had survived. N
ow, fear was second to the elation he felt. He was leaving. He could hear the sound of the wheels on the tracks clicking faster and faster. He was out of Lower Peach Tree. He was headed away. He had not gone back at the last minute, as he had feared he might do the whole time he pried up the screen, slipped out of the house, and followed them to the station. He had done it like he had imagined so many times, but this . . . this was real. He could feel the train, smell the manure. The hot night air in his face was thrilling. He screamed out his freedom. “I don’t care what you say, Tuway,” he yelled. “I don’t care what you say.”
Tuway grabbed John’s shirt with one hand and pulled him up to spit the words in his face. “You smart-ass white boy, meddlin’ in my business. I’m gonna teach you a lesson you ain’t gonna forget.” He raised his free hand. John closed his eyes, waiting for the first of Uncle Luther’s blows, but they didn’t come. Instead, Tuway lurched over to the open car door and held John out over the passing ground, one hand holding on to the door, the other on to John. John grabbed his big muscled arm, too scared to do anything but stare into Tuway’s eyes. His legs dangled down into darkness, his hair whipped around his glasses. Tuway held the boy suspended there, swaying back and forth as the night air rushed past, the clicking of the rails sounding faster and faster. Then Tuway squeezed his eyes shut and pulled John back in, heaving him across the car, close to where the other man was sitting, watching. He landed in cow manure and wet straw.
“You ain’t worth killin’, boy,” Tuway snarled.
“I don’t care what you say,” John yelled back again, digging wet straw out of his mouth. “I’m never going back. Never. He hates me.”
Even there, as the wind swirled around his face and the straw blew past him and out the open door, even with only two other people and the night to hear him, he felt the agony of having said out loud what had been knotted in his stomach since he had closed the conference room door that day in the bank.
Out of the Night That Covers Me Page 20