Yard War

by Taylor Kitchings

“It’s not a restaurant, it’s a club.”

  “What kind of club?”

  “The kind that has the best cheeseburgers in town. Come on.”

  We rode past the shopping center and the big church and blocks of houses with shingles that all look alike and then it was fields and we started going uphill. I knew we were getting close. After a while, my lungs were burning like they do on the last lap in gym class when it would feel so good to stop. But I never do stop, no matter how much it hurts. If I’m going to play split end next year, I have to show Coach I can run all day. I’d rather be last than stop. But it was a lot of uphill, and I had to stand up on the bike to keep going. I looked back at Dee and he was standing up, too.

  “We’re almost there!” I shouted over the cars. I was breathing so hard it was hard to talk at all. “It’s…gonna be up on the right.”

  “Well, it needs to hurry up and be there,” shouted Dee.

  Finally, there it was, the big country club sign. We had to lay our bikes down and rest. My legs were killing me, but what hurt worse was how wrong I had been about this ride being easy. It had been too far, too full of cars, too uphill. How could the real ride turn out so different from the one in my head? I knew I should tell Dee I was sorry for being that wrong, but I could barely admit it to myself.

  Luckily, the road that curves around to the main entrance was all downhill. We took the left side of the entrance drive and leaned our bikes against the front of the Teen Wing. I walked Dee to the main entrance. He was looking around at the marble sidewalks, picture windows, fountains, and flowers.

  “Looks like some kind of king lives here,” he said. “I can’t go in this place.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.”

  I knew, all right. But I pretended I didn’t, because I wanted to prove that nothing terrible would happen and every redneck who didn’t like it could go jump in a water hazard. If I could find Papaw, everything would be all right.

  “You are hungry, aren’t you?”

  “I’m starvin’.”

  “Well, my family belongs to this club, my papaw was one of the people who started it, and I say you can go in there.”

  He still didn’t want to.

  “Dee, we rode all this way. You know you want a cheeseburger.”

  He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

  I pushed open the big door and pulled him in after me. We walked down the long entrance hall into the giant lobby, and there were a bunch of ladies playing cards. Everything was loud and flowery. A sign said it was a bridge tournament. They looked up one at a time and stopped talking and kept looking.

  I waved to Mama’s friend Mrs. Weatherly and smiled and said “Hey.” She made a face like her chair was uncomfortable and kind of raised her hand, but it must have been too heavy for her to wave it. I was hoping some of those ladies were the ones who had called Mama and complained about Dee. “Take a look at how much I care what you think!”—that’s what I wanted to say to all of them.

  Their voices started up behind us when we cut down the stairs: “What in the world is Trip Westbrook doin’, walkin’ around in the lobby with that boy?” “Is he the child of somebody who works here?” “Unacceptable.” “I’m going to call Virginia the minute I get home.”

  Kids’ voices were pouring out of the Golliwog into the hall. I told Dee to wait there while I checked around for Papaw.

  “Trip, I don’t need to be standing here by myself. You heard those women. We need to get outta here.” He looked pretty nervous.

  I told him I would be right back and not to worry. Papaw wasn’t in the locker room, so I stuck my head into the 19th Hole. I didn’t really expect to see him there because they serve liquor. He was probably out on the golf course.

  I told Dee to wait just one more second while I went into the Golliwog to see what was going on. A bunch of little kids wearing cone hats were jumping around, laughing and hollering, blowing noisemakers. There was a three-layer chocolate cake I could smell from the door on the center table and a giant HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign strung across the ceiling. I didn’t know any of the moms, but I’d seen them around. They were screaming louder than the kids, trying to get them to calm down because it was time for cake and ice cream. The Dentons were having lunch by the picture window.

  Shelby came out with a tray full of ice cream and started setting bowls down for all the kids. I was glad to see him. He would take care of us.

  “Hey, Shelby!”

  “Hey there, Mr. Trip.”

  “Looks like they got you pretty busy today.”

  “Lord, yes.”

  He was too busy to stop, so I walked with him as far as the door the waiters come out of.

  “Y’all aren’t closed for this birthday party, are ya?”

  “We open.”

  “So I can get a cheeseburger?”

  “Go sit down over there, I’ll be over directly.”

  “Can my friend have one, too?”

  Shelby smiled and frowned at the same time, like he didn’t know why I would ask such a question.

  “Course he can!”

  They were singing “Happy Birthday” when I pulled Dee into the room. Their voices kind of trailed off when we walked in and sat down. The mom at the table next to us made everybody get up and herded them to the other side of the room. She looked over her shoulder at us like we had a contagious rash. The Dentons got up and left. I didn’t care. Shelby would be on our side. He would be glad to see a colored boy eating in the Golliwog for a change. I might ask him to join us when he was through working.

  It was a lot quieter now. The little kids looked at us a second and went back to their cake. But the moms kept looking and whispering to each other.

  “This isn’t such a good idea,” Dee said.

  “Just ignore them,” I told him. “They don’t know anything.”

  Shelby came out with more ice cream, and all the kids started trying to grab it off the tray and the moms had to forget about us and yell at the kids. When Shelby saw who my friend was, his head jerked back. He finished with the ice cream, set down his tray, and straightened up his tall back and came to our table.

  I thought he might say it was high time his people ate there, or at least smile and ask what we wanted to drink. But he wasn’t smiling. He was looking concerned. Very concerned.

  “This is my friend Dee,” I said.

  “Hello, Dee,” Shelby said.

  “Hey, Mr. Shelby,” said Dee, looking at the carpet.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “y’all know each other? This is great!”

  “Dee, does your mama know about this?”

  “No, sir.”

  Shelby leaned down to Dee and said, in a voice as gentle as a doctor’s, “Son, you know you can’t be in here.”

  Dee looked down and didn’t say anything.

  “We’d like two cheeseburgers and log fries, please,” I said. “What do you want to drink, Dee?”

  Shelby acted like he hadn’t heard me.

  “Y’all need to run on, Mr. Trip.”

  “What? Why?”

  He just looked at me. Then he said, “I’m gonna have to get Mr. Lonnie,” and turned around and left.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I told Dee.

  “No it’s not. Mr. Shelby is an elder in my church. Mama’s gonna kill me.”

  Mr. Lonnie hustled out to our table like a fat baseball player trying to get onto the field. I knew what he was about to say, and I had not pedaled a bike all the way to the Golliwog to hear it. If I could find Papaw, he’d tell Mr. Lonnie to hustle right back to the kitchen.

  “Boys, the dining room is closed for a private party. Y’all are gonna have to eat lunch someplace else today.” His voice was sharp and proud of itself.

  “Come on.” Dee was standing up.

  “Sit down, Dee. Shelby said y’all were open.” I said it pretty loud. The moms and cone hats stopped talking and stared at us.

  “Well, Shelby was
wrong. Let’s go.”

  Mr. Lonnie tried to pull my chair away from the table, but I grabbed the seat and wouldn’t budge. I felt that monster getting into me. I was mad enough to do something crazy, something like make a scene at the club. Dee was shaking his head at me. I looked at him and Mr. Lonnie and turned to everybody and said,

  “This is my guest. His name is Dee. And we would like some cheeseburgers!”

  One of the moms I didn’t know said, “Let the boys have lunch, Lonnie. What’s the big deal?” The other moms frowned at her.

  Mr. Lonnie leaned over me and said in a voice only I was supposed to hear, “Son, if you and your little colored friend don’t get outta here right now, you’re gonna be in big trouble, you hear me?”

  I’ve been taught all my life to be respectful to grown-ups, and I knew I was not being respectful now. I stood up and stretched my face to where I could look him real good in the eye.

  “Just tell me why,” I said.

  “Out!”

  “Tell me why!”

  He turned red and started yelling.

  When I turned back around, Dee was gone. I ran after him so fast, I accidentally knocked Mr. Lonnie against the wall. The moms gasped and chattered. Mr. Lonnie was still yelling when I cleared the top of the stairs.

  Dee was already sitting on his bike.

  “I’m really sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t know it would be like that.”

  “Why didn’t you know?” He said the words in slow motion.

  He walked his wheels over the curb and took off. Riding single file with all that traffic made it hard to talk, and he didn’t want to talk anyway. It was a long trip back.

  I figured everything would be okay between us as soon as we got something to eat and he felt better and would listen to me. He would understand that I was trying to do something good. He got way ahead of me toward the end. When I turned onto Oak Lane Drive, he was already dropping the bike. When I got to the kitchen, he was sitting at the table with a big bowl of macaroni and cheese and didn’t look up when I came in. I didn’t want to talk about it with Willie Jane around. We couldn’t talk much anyway; we about had our faces in the bowls. When we were through with that bowlful, we ate another one. Dee had three.

  He didn’t have to leave for another couple of hours, so I said we oughta go out back and throw the football. I was holding my breath and hoping he wouldn’t say, “Why don’t we throw it out front?” He just said okay.

  After we had tossed it back and forth a couple of times, I said, “Look, Dee, like I said, I’m sorry. I didn’t expect it to be like that.”

  “How did you expect it to be?” He threw it back harder than usual.

  “I don’t know….My papaw said if I brought a Negro to the Golliwog, he would buy him lunch.”

  “And you needed a Negro to help you prove it.”

  “I wanted you to be able to get something to eat. If you’re my guest, you have a right to eat in there as much as anybody else. If I could’ve found Papaw, I bet—”

  “Things are the way they are! When Mr. Shelby tells my mama about this, I’m gonna be in all kinds of trouble—thanks to you!”

  He threw the ball so hard, it hurt to catch it. I slung it back just as hard.

  “I’ll explain it to your mama. You want me to go explain it to her right now?”

  “No, I’m gonna explain something to you. You can’t mess with me like that! I am not your pet nigger to show off to the white people!”

  He threw the ball at me like you would throw a rock at somebody and started walking up to the house. Then he turned around and yelled, “I’m not even your friend!” and kept walking.

  When I asked Willie Jane where Dee had gone, she said he was sitting in the car. I asked her if he was okay, and she said she didn’t know. She looked like she wanted to ask why he was sitting in the car, but then she looked like she knew that something bad was bound to happen and went back to ironing, like she was angry at the shirt. I had let her down. She had trusted me to take care of her boy.

  I looked out the front window and saw Dee sitting there. I was sorry about everything, and almost went out there to apologize, but I was mad, too. I had been trying to do something nice for him—he didn’t have any right to act like that. I went back to my room and lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling, still feeling shaky. My “pet nigger”? I had never thought of Dee that way. That wasn’t why I took him to the club. I didn’t do it for me. It wasn’t like I was trying to show off.

  Was I?

  Well, it was done now, and maybe I was the stupidest kid in the world. Maybe that was the problem. How many people had gotten mad at me today? It had to be some kind of record.

  Mama tromped back to my room in those high-heeled shoes that make such a racket, and stood there with her hands on her hips and her eyes flashing black. The dread came up in my throat. I had been trying to figure out how to tell her, but the ladies at the bridge tournament beat me to it.

  Daddy wouldn’t have been so mad, and I could have thought straight and explained it better. Mama says Daddy is such a smart man, and that he’s taught her to have a more “open-minded” way of looking at things. Well, I didn’t see how she could be all open-minded and still get so mad.

  “Is it true?” she asked.

  “Is what true?”

  “Don’t you play games with me, young man. Did you take Dee to the Golliwog? Did you push Mr. Lonnie against a wall?”

  “That was an accident. Listen, Mama, Papaw said if I brought an upstanding Negro to the Golliwog, he would buy him lunch, and I just wanted to show everybody that—that—”

  “That what? That you enjoy disgracing your family?”

  Her being so mad made me mad, and I just came out with the whole thing.

  “I did not disgrace my family! Do you know what the word ‘golliwog’ means? Why’d they name it that? It’s ugly. I’m never going back. I’m never goin’ to that country club again!” I said it louder than I meant to.

  Mama held out her hands and took a deep breath to show how we both needed to calm down. Then she smiled the “you know so well that I am right” smile and talked extra quiet to show me how I, especially, needed to calm down.

  “Black people don’t eat lunch or play golf or go swimming at the club because that’s the way it has been since before you or I were born, and you need to honor the wisdom of your elders. There’s such a thing as tradition, Trip. I just pray your grandparents don’t hear about this.”

  “What if it’s a bad tradition?”

  “You can decide about what’s a bad tradition when you’re grown. Things are a lot more complicated than you are able to realize at your age. Until then, you will follow the rules of civilized society.”

  She started to walk out and turned around.

  “Really, Trip! I can’t imagine what you were thinking, riding your bike all that way in Old Canton Road traffic—”

  “Actually, Dee rode my bike, and I rode—”

  “I don’t care which bike you rode!”

  “Willie Jane said it was okay.”

  “Willie Jane should have known better. You’ve gotten her in trouble, too. We’ll decide on your punishment when your father gets home.”

  When Daddy came home, they went back and talked about me in their bedroom, but she was the only one who came into my room later and told me my punishment: Grounded for three weeks with no TV—and Dee could not come over anymore. I didn’t tell her the real punishment was that Dee didn’t want to come over anymore.

  —

  Mama was still mad the next morning, all through the cheese grits. I showed her how shiny my shoes were for church, and she didn’t care one bit. Farish saw something was wrong and wouldn’t leave me alone about it, so I finally told her what happened.

  “You rode my bike without my permission?” She loves a reason to fuss.

  “You weren’t here for me to ask permission. I didn’t have a choice anyway. We only have two bikes. You better
not tell anybody about this either.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Tim and Tom and their friends were sitting across the aisle and down a row at church, looking back at me and whispering—probably about all the ways they were going to beat me up. I just paid real good attention to Dr. Mercer’s sermon on the poor widow and her mite and acted like I didn’t even know they were there. After the service, I didn’t look around for them on the way down the long front steps. I just looked straight ahead and walked slow and calm, like I wasn’t worried about anything. Then I heard Mr. Bethune’s voice and turned around.

  “I wish I knew what y’all are thinking, letting your son invite colored boys to play football. You start lettin’ ’em act like they belong in white society, and where’s it gonna end? I didn’t fight the Nazis and watch men die so we could have—”

  Daddy went off like a bomb.

  “That boy is not hurting anybody! The problem is that so many people around here are so ignorant and mean!”

  I had never seen him get mad that fast. Not at another grown-up. His cheeks were bright red.

  “And I’m saying you’re the problem,” said Mr. Bethune with his teeth together. He stood there while we kept going down the steps.

  It was good to get to the bottom of those long steps and be on the way to dinner at Meemaw and Papaw’s. Pretty soon, our plates were piled up with country-fried steak and gravy; biscuits; green beans and field peas cooked together with bacon, Meemaw-style; tomato casserole; and blackberry cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream on top.

  The Rebels had tied Vanderbilt 7–7, so there was that to talk about. I didn’t care what we talked about, as long as it wasn’t about me. Mama smiled and said what a sunshiny day it was, but she was worried under her smile.

  Meemaw started in about the terrible things she had heard about Kansas City and how she could not imagine why anybody would want to move to a big Yankee city like that. Papaw said he had heard about Southern children getting fussed at by their teachers there for saying “yes, ma’am.” Meemaw said the people there had funny accents and were not nearly as good-looking as Southerners. Did they want their son to marry some Yankee girl and give them ugly grandchildren?