by CATHY L. CLAMP; FRANCIS RAY; BEVERLY JENKINS; MONICA JACKSON; GERI GUILLAUME
“That’s very perceptive of you.”
“Perceptive,” Mayron repeated the word experimentally. “Is that anything like smart, Mr. Barrett? As long as I’ve been workin’ here, I keep hopin’ that some of that book knowledge will work its way into this thick skull of mine. Did you know that I only made it to sixth grade?”
“No, I didn’t know,” I replied. “And you’re right, Mayron. Perceptive means smart. Very smart. So smart that it’s got us folks who did manage somehow to get past the sixth grade to come to you for answers.”
Mayron grinned at me—a wide, crooked, yellow smile. “I reckon you’re here about them rumors.”
“If I said, ‘What rumors?’ that would be a dead giveaway that I didn’t know what was going on around here, wouldn’t it?”
“Dead giveaway,” Mayron echoed. He threw his head back suddenly, sniffing deeply. His thin, purple-veined nostrils flared. “Smell that, Mr. Barrett?”
“Kind of hard not to,” I said, frowning. With each gust of wind, the smell of garbage from the bins wafted back. I’d thought that by now Mayron would be immune to it. As he had spent the years mixing cleaning chemicals to keep the school spotless, I often wondered what that did to his senses.
“It ain’t the garbage stink that I’m talkin’ ’bout, Mr. Barrett.” He stepped up to me, folded his arms across his chest, and leaned forward at the waist. That was his usual stance for when he was about to let me in on a juicy bit of gossip. He was about to let me in on a secret. Only trouble was that it wasn’t such a big secret. Half the school was in on it.
“Then what is it, Mayron?” I prompted, needing him to get to the point. The area behind the school, in between the garbage bins, wasn’t sheltered; it seemed more like a wind tunnel. I gritted my teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Rumors mostly. You know how fast word travels around here.”
“Rumors about what?”
“Why . . . the race riot, of course,” he said calmly. Too calmly. I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly, so I asked him to repeat it.
“A race riot?” I said tightly. “Mayron, what are you talking about?”
“Not me, Mr. Barrett. I’m not the one doin’ the talkin’. No siree. It’s them kids. As soon as them boys you suspended get back from that three-day suspension, it’s supposed to be on. Them that don’t wanna take sides is staying on neutral territory. That is, they’re staying at home.”
“Big surprise. All the kids calling in sick,” I muttered.
“Yupper.” Mayron reached into his overalls, pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper, and held it out to me. I scanned it quickly, not believing my eyes.
“Where did this come from?” I asked, shaking the paper at him.
“Heaven only knows, Mr. Barrett.”
“Heaven’s got nothing to do with this.”
A single sheet announced an off-campus rally. I’d seen similar flyers floating around the school advertising a party at someone’s house or a pep rally before a big game. Generally harmless. The flyers usually had a contact name, an E-mail address, or a phone number where you could get particulars. Circumventing problems at those types of events was easy. A few calls to the parents of the student having the party and the parents of friends were usually enough to alert anyone who needed to know to keep on the watch.
But this . . . this was something different. There was no contact person. It was an organization. Some group calling itself the Association of Southern Students called for any interested person to show up at an appointed place, at an appointed time, with enough conviction to protect the honor and sanctity of their Southern heritage. What that meant exactly, I couldn’t say for certain. But I didn’t like the tone.
“A flyer from the A.S.S. Looks like some of the students from Calhoun High want to make asses out of themselves,” Mayron said, then cackled at his own wit.
“You think this is funny?” I snapped.
He quickly recomposed his face. But I could tell he would be giggling at his own pun for a while yet. “No, sir. I don’t.”
“This is serious. I’m not going to let this happen.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not? You think I’m going to let a bunch of knot-heads who can’t seem to get it through their thick skulls that the South lost to come up in here and disrupt my school?”
“Says nothing about disrupting the school, Mr. Barrett,” Mayron pointed out.
“They’ve already disrupted my school if I have a sudden absentee rate of fifteen percent.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you, Mr. Barrett, but there’s really nothin’ you can do about the rally, sir.”
“Watch me.”
“It’s away from the school grounds, not during school hours. You gonna take away the students’ right to assemble?”
I looked oddly at Mayron. He sounded very learned for a man with supposedly only a sixth-grade education.
“Can’t do it,” he continued. “You try and the next time some of your students want to meet to hold a vigil for your Martin Luther King holiday, you’ll have just as many parents a squawkin’ at you. Claimin’ that you’re playing favorites. Do you want that stink on you?”
“That’s different, and you know it. This is hate mongering—pure and simple.”
“Can’t tell by reading the flyer. I only got a sixth-grade education. But I can read them words. And they don’t tell me to hate.”
“Come armed with your conviction?” I read aloud. “Sounds like a call to arms to me.”
“You’re readin’ between the lines,” he insisted. “Some folks might say that you’re readin’ more into it than what’s actually there.”
“You’re telling me that I should stand by and do nothing while this filth gets circulated around my school?”
“No, sir. That’s not what I’m sayin’ at all. I’m just sayin’ be careful about how you handle it. Or folks will think that you’re prejudiced.”
I snorted at that. We all had our notions and misconceptions. But if folks wanted to say that I was prejudiced against stupidity, then color me prejudiced. I took a deep, calming breath. “OK, maybe the flyer doesn’t come right out and say it, Mayron. But something has got these kids worked up.”
Mayron leaned close again, pulling out another sheet of paper. “As long as you’re bustin’ up folks’ natural right to get together, better make it fifty-fifty.”
He passed another flyer to me. I read it and rolled my eyes. “Lord have mercy. Don’t these kids know anything?”
Another flyer, supposedly circulated by the Warriors for the Motherland, called for open opposition to the Association of Southern Students. There was no mistaking the tone of this flyer. It called for students who were willing to advance the civil rights of African-Americans by any means necessary.
“Any idea what students circulated these?” I asked. “I never heard of any of these supremacist groups before.”
“Yupper,” he said, but pressed his lips tightly together.
“Well?”
“I ain’t gonna tell you that, Mr. Barrett.”
“Why not, Mayron?”
“You already know the answer to that. The kids trust me to bring their troubles to you; but if they thought that I was giving up their names, they’d dry up. And there goes your information pipeline. You’re principal now, so you had to ask me to give up the names. But I remember a time when you begged me to keep my mouth shut.”
I shook my head, grinning at him. “I’d almost forgotten about that.”
“Not me, Mr. Barrett. Old Mayron don’t forget so easy. ’Cept when it’s convenient for me to do so.”
Over twenty years ago, I blessed Mayron for his convenient memory lapses. If he’d not so conveniently remembered catching me skipping classes with Kirby, hiding under the bleachers to make out our senior year, I would have been in a heap of doo-doo.
“Tell me something, Mr. Barrett, if you would?”
“If I can.”
“Oh, she’s still around,” I said to Mayron.
“That’s not what I meant. How come she quit? How come she’s not around you anymore?”
I didn’t mind answering the personal question. He was just as responsible for getting Kirby and me together as anyone. He made it possible for Kirby and me to spend some quality time together.
“In fact, she’s supposed to be back home at the end of the week to spend the holidays.”
Mayron snorted. And I could read a world of contempt in that. He took it very hard when she left. As hard as the students. And the few times that she’d been back, she’d made it a point to see him before heading back. Good for him, but I was fiercely jealous of anyone who took time away from the scant time that she and I had.
“She shoulda never left.”
“Believe it or not, Mayron, there’s a world outside of Calhoun County. I guess Kirby wanted to see a bit of it.”
“Guess she’s never seen The Wizard of Oz” Mayron muttered, turned up his collar against the wind, and turned his back on me.
Chapter 3
I didn’t need the help of the alarm clock’s waking me up on Friday morning. I was up long before that annoying beep-beep-beep. Long before the sun, too. I can’t say for certain that I even slept. But I must have. Dreams plagued me, kept me tossing and turning. I couldn’t remember anything specific about them. I guess I was just anxious about seeing Kirby again. I needed to see her. To hold her. I’d offered to pick her up at the airport, but she’d already arranged for some colleagues who were flying in with her to take her home.
Colleagues? I didn’t even like the sound of that. A little insecurity made me wonder how many of those colleagues of hers were men. Did they sit with her on the long flight home? Keep her company? Keep her mind off of me?
It was the kind of anxiety that gnaws at you, keeps you staring at the clock into the wee hours of the morning, even when every bone in your body is dead-dog tired and you’re praying for blissful sleep.
More than once, I got up during the night, crossed the floor to the bathroom for a sip of water, then crawled back under the covers shivering for a few minutes until I warmed up again.
The weather was starting to turn colder. I could tell by the feel of the wind working its way underneath the crack between the windowsill and the ledge—a constant low whistling that gently rattled the miniblinds and my nerves.
One of these days, I was going to fix that window. Add some more weather stripping, maybe. But I wasn’t going to do it that night. That night, I just listened to the wind blow and wondered what I would say to Kirby when I saw her again. Three months didn’t seem like a long time. But when you love someone, it could seem like a lifetime. You’d think that in all of that time, with all of the reunion scenarios I’d concocted in my head, I would have thought of something witty, funny, or poignant to say by now. But I couldn’t think of a thing. Not a single, solitary thing. Maybe that was part of my nightmare—that I’d stand there, with my hands in my pockets and my mouth gaping wide open, staring speechless at her like an idiot.
That night, I’d closed my eyes, even breathed deeply. But that couldn’t be called sleeping. By no stretch of the imagination. When I got tired of pretending that I was resting, I got up, showered, and dressed for work.
No workout clothes for me today. I wasn’t going to risk being late or showing up at the school all sweaty. I wanted to give a kick-ass impression. So I took extra care in selecting my clothes. Didn’t even try to fool myself into thinking that I was doing so because I was naturally fastidious. I was doing it for her. I wanted Kirby to take one look at me and have her mouth drop open. Secretly I hoped that she’d open her eyes, see what she was really missing, and make the decision to come back.
I chose neutral, conservative colors. The ultimate professional. Still, before I walked out the door, I couldn’t help but add a certain item to catch her attention. A tie. Dark but with tiny diamond-shaped flecks of periwinkle. It was Kirby’s favorite color. That is, it had been her favorite color back in the day.
By the time I got to the school, it was only six-forty. The student flag detail wouldn’t show up for a while yet. There were only a few cars in the parking lot that early in the morning. I recognized Mayron’s ’72 Impala. Beside him was Mr. Spann’s black Dodge Durango. Mr. Enoch, the substitute, was back today, too, in his yellow VW Beetle.
As I pulled into a parking spot near the school’s side entrance, I also noted an unfamiliar vehicle. A huge Ford Excursion. The windows, tinted as dark as the law allows, were rolled up so that I couldn’t see inside. But I really didn’t need to see. Not with my eyes. Instinct told me what my eyes couldn’t. I knew who it was and grinned. I tried to imagine Kirby, my little Kirby, behind the wheel of that great big truck.
I parked a couple of spaces away. I figured the walk, even if only a few paces, would give me a chance to compose myself. As I came around the side of my truck, my heart must have pounded loud enough to wake the dead.
Sweat collected on the underside of my collar and trickled down my neck. God, I felt as foolish as I did as a seventeen-year-old kid the day I went to pick up Kirby for the homecoming dance. I stepped toward her SUV. If it weren’t all so nerve-wracking, it would be funny. This was the woman I’d considered my soul mate, and yet I was acting as if she were an auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, somewhere midway between our two vehicles my apprehension struck me as funny. Hilarious, even.
It started as a tiny quirk at the corners of my lips. The quirk tugged into a smile. And by the time I’d reached her door, I was leaning on it for support. Laughter rolled up from my stomach. As I leaned onto Kirby’s Ford Excursion, gasping for air, I banged on the roof to get her attention. As if my laughter weren’t attention enough! I don’t remember ever having laughed so long or so loud.
Slowly, cautiously, the window rolled down. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of cinnamon-colored spiral curls—as bright and as unruly as I’d remembered them. Kirby leaned her head out of the window, peering at me from behind rose-tinted silver-rimmed sunglasses. She was shaking her head, but I could see the beginnings of a smile twitching at her lips.
“You know, that doesn’t look very dignified, Mr. Barrett.” Her voice was richer, huskier. And I think she was starting to pick up a hint of that distinct South African accent.
“I . . . I . . . I know. B-but I c-c-can’t help it!” I sputtered. Resting my hands on my knees, I leaned forward and took deep, slow breaths to regain my composure.
“I’m not crazy,” I denied, shaking my head. Except about you, I added mentally. Always was and suspect that I always would be, no matter what happened over the next few months. As long as she kept coming back to me, I would keep waiting for her. Keep loving her.
She opened the door and stepped out. Long legs, clad in sheer, silky hose, gave way to a skirt most folks around here would have considered too short. But I liked it just fine. Her royal purple hip-hugging skirt complemented a matching jacket buttoned almost up to her neck with shiny gold buttons. A periwinkle scarf with streaks of yellow, gold, and green was tied around her neck. Her hair was pulled away from her face and twisted up into a French knot, but even the constriction of bobby pins and holding spray couldn’t tame the wild corkscrew ringlets that I wanted so badly to touch.
“It’s good to see you, Kirby. You’re looking . . .” I couldn’t even finish the sentence but let the expression on my face, the eager sweep of my eyes over her, convey what words couldn’t. “Damn.” It was all I could get out. Not the most eloquent compliment. But I think she understood me.
“And you . . . look at you.” She gestured at me with a slender hand, neatly manicured with a pale gloss brushed over the nails. “You’re wearing a suit!”
She knew about my exercise routine, had seen me often in workout clothes this early in the morning. I knew she wouldn’t be expecting me to be this dr
essed up. And now I knew she liked what she saw and it made my chest swell.
“Looks good on you, Pooh Bear.” Her eyes swept over me, openly appraising.
I tried to frown and found that I couldn’t. She was still calling me by the nickname my Aunt Callie had given me when I was six months old. Something about seeing my belly poking out from under a red T-shirt that was a couple of sizes too small for me—even though the tag on the back read: THREE TO SIX MONTHS. What was it my folks used to say about me? That I was a healthy baby? As I grew older, I wasn’t fat. Just big-boned Call me picky, but a thirty-seven-year-old man should not be called Pooh Bear. And I’d worked hard to shed the pounds, as much as the image. Now, I was just a big man. Just Bear to most of my friends. Kirby and I were more than friends. That was the only reason that I let her get away with calling me Pooh Bear.
“Rule number one is no calling me Pooh Bear on school grounds,” I said firmly.
“So, are you going to stand there like a statue or are you going to come over here and hug me?” She encouraged me by throwing open her arms. Not that I needed that much encouragement. I was just waiting for her, letting her give the clues, set the pace, so I knew where I stood.
Kirby caught me in a hug so tight that my ribs squeaked. I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her and making a vow to myself. I didn’t care what it took, what I had to do or say, I wouldn’t let her out of my life again. I’d take her on whatever grounds, whatever rules she’d set. She felt so good, so soft in all the right places.
“I’m glad you’re here, Kirby,” I whispered. Sounded lame, even to my own ears. There was so much more I wanted to say. “God, I missed you.”
“Me, too, Bear.” She settled her head against my shoulder. “Me, too. I couldn’t wait until after school to see you. It’s one of the reasons why I came out this morning.”
I’m not sure how long we stood there in the parking lot, holding, hugging. We rocked from side to side, without being truly aware of why. If I had to say, I think it was a silent way of telling each other how well we fit together, how our hearts and bodies were in total synchronization, even after all the time and distance between us.