Games We Play

by Ruthie Robinson

  Twenty

  First week in July, Wednesday

  “So, Myra, the Klan used to be big here?” Kendall asked from the driver’s seat of her SUV; she and Myra were heading back from the home of a student, a male one this time, Ricky, who was readying himself for nursing school in the fall. He’d gotten accepted to a local junior-college nursing program.

  “I don’t know if I’d say big, since this town has never been that big,” she said, looking over at Kendall expectantly.

  “I’m curious, that’s all. I’m still trying to learn as much as I can about Coopersville, and it’s been a bit different at the pub since Hank’s return. I’ve seen some not-so-friendly faces. I also met Jeremiah the other night, and he’s so different from Cooper, but they know each other, very well from what I overhead of their conversation, that’s all,” she said, chuckling at her long, meandering explanation.

  “Have you spoken to Cooper?” Myra said.

  “I tried. Mentioned it after I met Jeremiah. He wasn’t very forthcoming,” she said, and grew quiet for a minute. “I just wondered if there was something about Cooper that I might need to know.”

  “Cooper knows most of the townsfolk, either from having grown up here or from the pub. Are you two getting serious?” Myra asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought, or hoped, you two might eventually…” Myra said, trailing off.

  “Might eventually what?”

  “Get married?” Myra said. It was quiet on Kendall’s end. “I thought you enjoyed being here.”

  “I do. I like this town and its residents.”

  “But not seriously,” Myra said.

  “I seriously like this town and its residents,” Kendall said, smiling.

  “Oh, Kendall,” Myra said, laughing. She grew serious a moment later. “Cooper is a very private person. Do you think it wise for a person to share something deeply personal about themselves with someone who is just passing through?”

  “No, I guess not,” Kendall said, dropping the subject, not that she’d expected her aunt to talk about Cooper’s past.

  #

  Wednesday evening

  Cooper pulled into his driveway. He was home to change into his golf gear, and then it would be off to the driving range to meet Kendall. He’d knocked off early, wanting to get in a shower before heading to the course. He’d better get a move on—it would be dark in the next thirty minutes, although darkness at the course with Kendall held interesting possibilities. Hugo and Stanley were sitting on his front porch waiting for him, which wasn’t an unusual occurrence. They stopped by often, usually to talk their home brew trials and tribulations, but mostly it was to drink his home brew.

  He sensed that today’s talk would be different. In fact, he knew it would be. The Colonel had not been the only person who’d stopped by to inform him of Hugo and Stanley’s activities. He had a pretty good idea of what the Proctor boys were up to.

  “What’s up?” Cooper asked as he made his way up to his front porch.

  “What do you have cooked out back?” Hugo asked.

  “The usual. I’m a little bit busy, though. I’m about to head over to the course,” Cooper said as he unlocked his front door. “Want to come on in, though?”

  “Nah, we’ll head on back to the little house and meet you there,” Hugo said.

  “Fine. Give me a few minutes,” Cooper said, surprised, but not really. Hugo and Stanley had worked for Senior, and he’d treated them like the help, which had meant they weren’t welcome in the big Cooper mansion—and that must have figured into Hugo and Stanley’s vision of the world order, ’cause they never wanted to come inside of his home.

  They had figured largely into the secrets of Coopersville and its long history of not treating people of a certain hue very well. He knew most of what these two had done with his father. He’d even participated in more than he’d liked to remember. He’d been a kid, and that was how he tried to console himself when the guilt of who he’d been became too overwhelming. He’d gone along to get along, up until his fork-in-the-road moment, which is how he referred to the night he’d finally stood up to his father…and paid for it. Apparently it had been his father’s fork-in-the-road moment too.

  He’d been shut out of his family afterwards, when he’d come to and found himself living with George and Myra Miller. He and his father hadn’t spoken again until his father’s illness. He was still surprised that his father had left him anything. A matter of blood being thicker than water, he guessed.

  He walked through his back door and over to his brewing house, antsy to get a move on, to get to Kendall. Hugo and Stanley had made themselves at home. They’d used the key he kept above the door’s ledge, the existence of which most of his fellow home brewers knew about. Hugo and Stanley were seated at the table when he walked in.

  Cooper walked to the refrigerator, snagged a bottle for himself. He twisted the top off with his hand, and took a seat at the table.

  “You know how we felt about Senior,” Hugo began.

  “I do.”

  “It’s out of respect for him that we started supporting you when got into the beer business, in spite of you working with that old colored man and woman and that queer,” Hugo said.

  “They took care of me. None of you did, but yeah, I know,” Cooper said.

  “It’s out of respect for him that we haven’t sold that piece of land he gave us,” Hugo said.

  “I know that too,” Cooper said, taking a pull from his beer.

  “Hank Ryder wants to purchase it, and I won’t lie to you. We could use the money,” Hugo said.

  “I could buy it from you. I’ve offered before,” Coop said.

  Hugo shook his head. “It ain’t just about money.”

  “What is it about then?” Coop said.

  “Hank met with us and Tom Baker. Talked to us about this proposition that he made to the town. It could bring in a lot of money for a lot of people, not just us. The people that made this town what it was, what it used to be,” Hugo said, taking another drink of his beer. He set it on the table, leaned forward in his chair, and placed his forearms on the table. “We’ve known you since you were a little boy, watched you grow up. I watched as you did one thing after another to throw your dislike for our fine heritage into your daddy’s face,” he said.

  “We don’t like seeing you with that nigger girl sitting at the bar,” Stanley said. He’d been bursting at the seams to get that out, Cooper could tell. Hugo looked at his brother. Whatever his look conveyed caused Stanley to sit back in his chair and shut up.

  “We haven’t always been happy with the way you’ve chosen to live your life. We didn’t say anything to you about it. Figured it was your right—you were born a Cooper, after all, and you’ve paid your dues, so fine,” Hugo added.

  Cooper sat back in his chair, silent as he continued to listen to them.

  “But what you’re doing to this town has got to stop,” Hugo said.

  “It’s got to stop,” Stanley said, echoing his brother’s words before taking a long pull from his bottle, his hard eyes trained on Cooper.

  Cooper was taken aback by the look on Stanley’s face, which he hadn’t seen since his childhood days.

  “And just as my brother said, you’re taking up with one of them now. You don’t even bother to hide it, such blatant disrespect. I see her sitting at the bar sometimes, waiting for you to finish talking to everybody, like she’s in charge, like she has a right to be there,” he said.

  “But that’s not why we’re here. We’ve decided to sell our land to Hank. We wanted to tell you that face-to-face, like men do. I want something too, Cooper,” Hugo said.

  “Yeah, like what?” Cooper asked, biting back his anger.

  “I want this town to go back to the way it was. Back to when I knew all my neighbors and men went out with women and none of this race-mixing stuff was allowed,” Hugo said.

  “A bunch of mongrels is what we’re turning into.
We’ll all be latte colored, or yellow colored, any color other than white,” Stanley said, smiling now. “Your daddy knew what was what.”

  “Those were the good old days,” Hugo said, smiling at Cooper.

  “For who?” Cooper asked.

  “For us, the people that matter, the people that founded this country, the people that count,” Stanley said, leaning back in his seat. “I’ve been watching you. Just like I said. I thank the good lord that Senior passed before he could see what you’ve become.”

  Cooper stood up. “I’ve got to go, boys,” he said, derision in his words, tired of listening to them. He walked over to the door, waited until they stood up and crossed the threshold, making their way back to the front, where their trucks were parked.

  “You think that colored girl would be interested in you if she knew all that you used to be?”

  “No, probably not,” Cooper said, his eyes on them.

  “You remember that and don’t push me. You think about what we said, and consider Hank’s offer. There are more people where we come from, more people who have been sitting on the sidelines, watching as you give all your ancestors’ money away to one minority group after other, anything to push us out of Coopersville, and we’re tired of it. It’s time you helped out your true friends. Remember where you came from, or else we’ll have to help you remember,” Hugo said.

  “Is that a threat? Is that what’s next after you’ve finished telling stories about me all around town?” he asked.

  “Them ain’t stories. I say it was more a case of finally telling the truth, and it’s about damn time too,” Stanley said, standing toe-to-toe with Cooper.

  “Whatever it is. It’s not working.”

  “You don’t know people if you believe that,” Hugo said, reaching for his brother to pull him away from Coop. “They won’t remain your friends.”

  “You better watch yourself, boy. There was a time…” Stanley said, and let his words die. “Well, I don’t want you to end up again the way your daddy left you that night. Thought you’d learned from that whooping, but I guess not. You’re a Cooper, stubborn to the bone, just like your daddy.” In a twisted way, there was admiration in his words.

  They started moving toward their trucks. Cooper watched them back out of his drive. He was angry, but not as angry as he’d gotten back in the early days of his fighting-back campaign. He’d been ready to draw his fists swinging at every ugly word they’d uttered. He’d followed that up with attempts to win them over, thinking that over time he could convince them that it would be good for the town for things to be different. Change didn’t mean bad. Nope. It had taken him a while, but eventually he’d accepted that some people would never change, and trying to make them different was a waste of his time, one that would leave him in this perpetual state of anger.

  He knew that the part of the town they represented still lived on, probably always would. He’d wasn’t going to sell anything to Hank, no way was he going to allow the town to be defined by those people again, no way would he let them destroy what he and Myra were trying to build. And what is that again? he asked himself. He needed reminding sometimes, and lately, he needed reminding a bunch.

  A city that was welcoming to everyone, that’s what he wanted. He and Myra had helped those who’d asked for it without discrimination, helping others irrespective of their race or gender. Fuck, in the early days, they’d helped some of the Proctor brothers’ friends, and it pissed him off that they wouldn’t give him some credit for that at least.

  He went inside to shower quickly—he’d wasted thirty minutes listening to them, and he wouldn’t get it back. He ran his hand over his forehead, letting go of his more negative thoughts, letting them flow down the drain with the water from his shower. If only it could all be that easy.

  #

  Kendall sat in her SUV outside the golf course. She’d agreed to meet Cooper at the driving range for practice, and she’d arrived early.

  Myra’s comments about Cooper’s past swam around in her head, along with a few odds and ends she’d picked up about the town and its old buried history, which wasn’t quite so buried. She called her sister to talk.

  “What’s up?” Lark asked.

  “Nothing much.”

  “How are Coop and Myra?”

  “He’s good, she’s good.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “I think it bothers some of the people in this town that I’m sitting at the bar at night, waiting for Cooper. There are all these new people at the bar now, and some are not so friendly. At all.”

  “Why do you care? It’s not any of their business, now is it?”

  “No, it isn’t, but still.”

  “Still what? Is Cooper acting oddly with you or different when those people are around?”

  “No, and he acts the same toward me regardless of who happens to be present. It’s just weird,” Kendall said.

  “That’s good. He has to stand up for you, or else you’re dead in the water, and you’d have to leave him,” Lark said.

  “I know,” Kendall said, deciding to tell Lark about her fears. “It’s weird in town now,” she added, and filled Lark in on what had happened with Jeremiah. “I’ve also heard a few rumors about Cooper.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “Nothing specific. It’s mostly of the he’s-not-who-you-think-he-is variety.”

  “So who do you think he is?”

  “I don’t know,” Kendall said.

  “Ask him.”

  “I sort of did, or I thought I did. He’s not talkative about his past.”

  “Maybe it’s because you two aren’t serious.”

  “Right. You sound just like Myra. Well, I could be serious…”

  Lark was quiet for a few seconds. “That’s new,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Okay, let’s say you are serious.…What would be too bad for you to continue things with him? What would make you take a walk?”

  “I can always count on you to ask the tough questions,” she said.

  “Yes, you can, so what’s the worst he could have done? What’s unforgivable?” Lark asked.

  “If we were serious, right? Then he can’t be a current member of any group.”

  “That goes without saying,” Lark said.

  “He can’t have been associated with any killings, that kind of stuff…Shoot, there could be so many things. I did some research into Coopersville’s racial past. There were no deaths here, no hangings, and no dragging people behind trucks. Thank God. One beating, but no one was ever charged. I guess as long as it’s not anything too bad and it’s in the past, I could live with it. I know sometimes the way you start is not how you finish, right?”

  “Right. Plus he couldn’t be too bad, not with Myra supporting him. Let’s not forget that—Myra is his saving grace,” Lark said.

  “You’re right, and maybe his past is the reason why he gives his money away, although he still won’t admit to that either, but yes, I agree. He can’t be bad if he’s with Myra,” she said.

  “Or he’s changed. So there you go.”

  “And here I am,” and they started laughing at their twisted sister humor.

  “Okay, so back to whether or not you’re serious,” Lark said.

  “I don’t know, it’s been more intense than I’d expected it to be. We are together most nights. I see him daily, and I text him too. I could see myself here with him long term.”

  “So is this love?”

  “Maybe, but there’s no way in hell am I’m telling that to Mr. I’m-not-saying-you’re-a-gold-digger,” she said, reciting the lyric to the Kanye West-Jamie Foxx song collaboration. “He would have to open up first.”

  “I understand. Okay, then.”

  “Okay, then.”

  #

  It was empty at the range, except for her. She stood dressed in his favorite little skirt, and a pink polo completed her ensemble. He smiled and walked over to her. He liked her and enjoyed h
anging out with her. She was someone he was learning to talk to, maybe even confide in, trust. Who would have thought that was possible for him?

  He brushed away his earlier thoughts from the Proctor brothers’ visit and put on his happy face. It wasn’t hard; he was happy to see her, to spend his free time with her. She was slowly but surely growing on him. Not enough for him to talk to about his past? No, not yet anyway, but the fact that he was even considering it was huge. Celeste hadn’t even known about that part of him, and he was glad about that now. That kind of serious discussion should be reserved for the one.

  “Professor,” he called out when he was within hearing distance. She’d just finished a swing and was doing her signature pose at the end. He laughed. She was cute. She turned to face him when she was done watching her ball land.

  “Where are your clubs?” she asked, setting another ball on her tee.

  “I’m not playing tonight,” he said, admiring her as prepared to hit another ball. “You do that really well.”

  “Do what?”

  “Bend over,” he said.

  She shook her head, laughed, and threw her ball at him. He ducked and it sailed by. She placed another ball on the tee and swung a few seconds later.

  “How long have you played?” he asked.

  “Since I was five. My mother had a membership,” she said.

  “Of course she did,” Cooper quipped.

  “Lay off my mother,” she said, “and I can’t believe you didn’t bring any clubs with you tonight. What was the point in coming, then?”

  “I thought it was time I helped you with your swing,” he said.

  “Right,” she scoffed, preparing to swing again. “And what’s wrong with my swing?” she said, turning to look back at him. He was standing close to her, Barnabus-the-stealthy. He placed his lips to hers, and removed her club from her hand.

  “Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he said. He walked away from her then, left her standing alone. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at the picture of her standing with her hands on her hips, staring after him. He smiled and felt the last of his earlier irritation from Hugo and Stanley’s visit fade away. He’d arrived at the pole with the light switch. He moved it to its off position, plunging them into total darkness.