by Diane Munier
“And clean shave. And…we’ll get you lined out…I pay cash…four dollars an hour.”
“Yeah, Paul said.”
“That’s good then. Yeah you can start in the morning. None of this late shit. You’re late you’re out.”
“Seven Paul said?”
“That’s right,” Daddy said, less friendly now. “And you’re starting at the bottom. I know you’re used to being the big deal…but around here you will do the dirty stuff. It’ll get you ready for the army,” Daddy grinned.
No. No. Danny had to go to college. What about college? He couldn’t hang around and work a job. That was the rumor with Tahlila…that her dad would get him in the pipe fitters union. It was all set. And that would mean the army because he had a low number. I feared she was setting him up for Vietnam. But her dad was working on getting him in the reserves. That’s what they said. And that was nearly impossible cause everyone who could had already filled the reserves to bursting, anything to delay going to Vietnam. So I was worried for him, even if he did belong to the prom queen.
Daddy was looking at Danny’s feet. He wore those scuffed up boots. Daddy said they’d do and he would wear jeans, those jeans cause they looked on their last leg, Daddy said, and a shirt with long sleeves to keep the burn off his arms.
So Danny listened and they shook again and he looked from Daddy to me, and I know my eyes were burning into him cause I was worried about Vietnam and he looked like he wanted to say something but he nodded at me and out he went.
Daddy went back to work, not a word to me. And I hurried after Danny, but Daddy’s other unfortunate employee, Robert, was coming in and I crashed into him and he put his hand out to steady me, the other hand holding his lunch and he laughed and said, “Damn girl,” and he squeezed too hard cause he always let me know…and I pushed off of him and saw Danny further down the street already and I took off.
“Danny,” I called, not believing I had a right. But he stopped and turned toward me. He had on a white T-shirt with a neck made a V. I stopped a few feet away. “I…,” I was trying to catch my breath. “Why with Lonnie? Do you know him?”
I didn’t want to drive him away. Lord I didn’t. But to allow him into the middle of my family’s shame….
He shrugged. “I need a job.”
“But…,” I didn’t have a right to speak about his life. “He can be….”
He grinned. “It’s okay, Grunier.” He winked at me and laughed a little. Then he looked down to my shoes and he laughed again and shook his head. “You’re all grown up, ain’t you,” he said.
And before I could answer he turned away and went down the street and I watched him…so many words following…his beauty pulling from me like the tail of a comet stretching between us.
“Danny,” I whispered.
Finding My Thunder 3
Once I went back in the shop I knew I had to take a stand there. I had been at the mercy of…Lonnie, and I would always call him that now, but I been at his mercy for too long. We couldn’t all go down with this ship. I felt so mad and present I couldn’t believe it. It was like I’d been asleep and suddenly I was jarred right out of my shoes.
I couldn’t let Danny know how it was. Bad enough Robert did though he was out of high school long time ago, but he had a high draft number and seemed too old for me to even think about. It was creepy the way he tried to stand too close and I couldn’t imagine what he’d want with me anyway. He was not bad to look at and got lots of older girls and believed in free love he’d told me, but he made me want to run cause he was way down a road I had never been on.
And he didn’t work all the time and he didn’t care so much about money cause he lived with a dozen people out in the country and it was a come and go and there was parties all the time so he worked out great here cause this was a going nowhere place for sure, but not a place for Danny, not nearly.
So I went back in the shop and Robert was sitting on a chair near the desk eating his lunch. It was a fried chicken dinner from Mac’s down the street, sitting in a nest of aluminum foil. He balanced it on his knees and he smoked while he ate.
“Want some?” he asked licking his fingers.
“No thank-you,” I said, but I had to admit it looked kind of good, but thinking of those roaches…no way I was eating in this place.
Then I walked to the desk, but Robert was closer than I liked and he was watching me. I didn’t know where to start on Lonnie’s piles and I only picked up one piece of paper before Lonnie was there.
“What do you think you are doing?” Lonnie said.
“I’m organizing this. I got all that secretarial training at school,” well typing and shorthand and that had nothing to do with this, but he didn’t need all the details, “and if I don’t get experience somewhere I’ll never get a job come graduation,” cause he already told me to not even think he was paying for college and I had wondered that he thought I expected blood from a turnip.
“I don’t need you around here crawling up my ass like her,” he said pushing me away from the desk.
“I’m not here for her. I’m here for you.”
Well, that did throw him some. He’d never thought of me for him, I could see that. Well, I never had been. How could I choose? I was too busy taking care of Mama, and truth to tell I wouldn’t have chosen either one of them if given a vote. But I was here for one thing all of a sudden…me. And if Lonnie was the means to helping myself, finally, then I said to myself he can put his old ass up close and I’ll kiss it.
“Let me straighten this. I promise I won’t throw anything away,” I said sounding different even to me. I had not looked at Lonnie like this, up close…not ever.
“Let her do it, Lonnie,” Robert said wiping his hands. “She can’t make it worse than it is.”
“Shut your mouth,” Lonnie told Robert. “Get done with that mess and see if you can’t get some work done sometime today. I got me that boy comin’ in and we’re gonna see how it is now. He’s gonna put your ass to shame, that’s what.”
And so Lonnie went back to what he was doing and Robert winked at me and pitched his trash in the disgusting trash can and he followed Lonnie to the back.
I couldn’t believe it. Why didn’t I stand up for myself before? If Danny wouldn’t have come in here…I’d be walking home in defeat about now. But Robert…even he took the heat for me. If he could do it…stand up to Lonnie Grunier…why had I waited so long?
I was smiling as I picked up the first pile. I had underestimated myself. Worse yet, I had not even considered myself at all.
So, all that long, hot afternoon I worked and I tried to get my mind around the change. Here I was, just that morning a hopeless girl, nothing much going on, treading water, just that, and now I’d gone up against the man and I had a job…and I had spoken to Danny. He had come into my life again. Of course, it didn’t mean anything…I couldn’t afford to get my hopes up about things…but it was something and I wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t.
I was so busy going over the piles that around four o’clock I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone tapped my shoulder again, but it was Robert.
“Hilly?” he asked.
“Yeah?” I could feel the sweat rolling down my back.
“Um…I’m fixing to leave. Let me give you a ride.” He motioned to the back of the shop and a couple of Lonnie’s cronies had assembled for their nightly love-in with those long-neck bottles. Lonnie had been sipping one beer after another since morning but it was official beer sipping time now.
“Oh…no, I’m walking.”
“Come on, girl. I drive fine.” Well, his eyes were all over me like usual and me looking filthy in my baggy shirt and smelling like the iron now.
“No thanks,” I said pretending like I was reading something pretty damn fascinating.
“You’re a funny girl,” he said. “Why don’t you come over tonight and smoke some reefer with us? It’ll be all mellow and we’ll be hanging out.”
&n
bsp; This was never going to happen in a million years. Didn’t he know I was just a kid?
“Oh…no thanks.”
He wiped over his face with a big handkerchief. “Okay. Well, you ever want to hang around with someone like me you let me know.” He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it kind of smooth like he was used to smoking things. He was cute, but so old…almost twenty-five about. I wasn’t going to hang around an old man. He looked a little like a movie star I liked though. Not as good, but not bad either. He made me feel weird, repelled and drawn in the same stroke. I knew he was a sink hole, and I wasn’t going down it, but it wasn’t so bad him noticing me. Boys at school didn’t so much. Not that I wanted that. They repelled me. I don’t know why. I wondered if something was wrong with me.
Well…guess my mind had been on Danny…and maybe that was the problem. But Danny had the prom queen and I couldn’t forget that even as I was dying with excitement to suddenly have him in my life again.
“Ever I need someone like you…I’ll let you know…,” I said trying to laugh and be carefree which sounded embarrassing because I wasn’t used to such a thing.
So after he left I took off for home. I left everything careful where I could pick it up next morning because I planned on coming back. My mind was already spinning from what I’d found so far. Lonnie had bills due he hadn’t even opened, just like at home, and receipts for things and jobs he’d done scribbled on little pieces of paper and I had no way of knowing yet if he’d billed those jobs or even been paid.
So I had plenty to think about on the walk home, that’s for sure. I waited until I was off Main to light a smoke. It felt so good to draw it in and it was my damn last. I had to dole them out cause I was so broke. Well broke was a way of life for us but I was going to do something about that now.
The closer to home I got the more my thoughts shifted to worry for Mama. She had been alone all day, even longer than when I went to school and it was always a crap shoot coming home. I finished my cigarette and got closer and my sooner was there waiting and I patted her on the head and ran up the stairs to find her something to eat. Mama scared me sitting in the living room, just sitting in a chair, her hair undone wild, but she was dressed in a sleeveless shirt buttoned wrong and a skirt. “Hey Mama.”
She looked at me but she did not speak. I hurried to the Coldspot and got a wedge of baloney and took that out to Sooner. Then I went back inside.
“You bring us something?” she said like I was Mother Goose and I could just pick and gather all the way home.
“Not yet…but you won’t believe. I been at Lonnie’s shop all day.”
“Lonnie?” she said. “He ain’t no good.”
“I been helping him and…well maybe I can do something…something good for us.”
Her eyes were dull and she didn’t look happy at all. She picked on the arm of the chair and it so threadbare she was pulling at the cotton.
“What about me?” she said. “I got to be all alone. But it don’t matter. None of it….”
“Well, you got your stories on,” I said. “Did you watch today?”
Her bottom lip jutted out and the skin was dry. She shook her head no and she wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t want to turn it on…they gonna shoot us in our beds…the Negroes. They gonna rise up all over sounds like. I…I heard him…that one I saved…that dark one. But…she tells ‘em they gonna come for me.” And her hand went to her breast, always there and she rubbed.
Not today and not now. “Mama please,” I said.
“Eugene…Eugene Blue,” she said.
“What you saying?”
“The Cannas…every year he would put them in so fine….those Cannas…when they come up….”
“Mama…I’m gonna…I’ll be back and make you some soup.” I went in Lonnie’s room. It was dark and had that smell, but I went to his chest of drawers and pulled the last one wide and moved the papers, his marriage license and the papers from the army. What a solid member of the establishment Lonnie was. How President Johnson would love him.
There was a carton of Pall Mall’s and they were harsh, but they were better than nothing and I stole a pack and put them under my shirt. Then I reached in the back corner and grabbed those two silver dollars from 1921. That would get us food for tomorrow. When I came out I walked quick past Mama and went to the backyard.
“He’ll kill you he sees you in there!” she yelled. “He’ll kill you like the Negroes! Like the Communists!” she yelled. “You goin’ with him now. You’ll get yours. You’ll see.”
It was relief to get outside. “Crazy,” I whispered fumbling to get the pack open.
Naomi wouldn’t be home yet cause this was calling night, so I sat on the back porch steps and leaned on the backdoor so Mama couldn’t sneak up on me. I lit up one of those lung shrivelers and took a deep draught and I was hooked on nicotine for sure, cause it tasted pretty much like shit but it was relief. I noticed that circular garden then, the one gone to ruin in the middle of the yard, halfway between our house and Naomi’s.
Eugene Blue used to put the Cannas in there, that’s what I knew, Naomi said it when she talked about him in short sentences, broken off like dreams gone you’re trying to call back and put together.
And I could see him there…I tried to. First time I brought him out of that picture frame Naomi kept over the fireplace, him grinning, holding a stringer of fish, young and handsome, shirt off, jeans hanging around his hips, standing straight, eyes alive…he’d live forever. He’d live….
He died in Memphis, in the street run over and they got the call…and William, Naomi’s husband died soon after…his heart…his breath…he died in his chair.
And I saw him there, that Eugene, six foot two and the sun coming out of his smile…and the garden was empty, just debris, just empty and his hands…and his hope…and in the earth the bulbs gone dry…gone.
And I thought of Danny…and the escalation of troops in Vietnam. Five hundred and twenty-five thousand human beings they wanted in the next two years. They wanted Danny to step into the great long line…that big green machine for the red, white and blue.
And the death toll running up like a wheel spinning, climbing. Seventeen thousand Americans…dead…like Eugene…all the young men…and all the fathers broken…and all the mothers carrying on with sad, sad eyes.
And one hundred cities with black folks protesting for civil rights…in the street…cutting into Mama’s stories…and her own sins…whatever they were…screaming in her soul.
And I set that tip aglow as I sucked down that smoke and blew it back and the breeze took it, and I thought of all of it passing like grass in the oven so quick…so quick…and leaving its mark upon the hearts…upon the lives of those who waited for news.
Then I thought of Lonnie saying that to Danny, “…until the army gets you.” He’d been in himself but he wasn’t going to help. He’d made it home after World War II. A miracle, he said. They’d put him in the hospital for nearly a year, longer, before they shipped him home. And she never went to see him, never did.
But what I knew now that I’d woken up, what I knew as I stood and put out that smoke, as I gasped and put my hand over my mouth…it was coming together if I’d listen…a story…all of them walking toward one another…in me.
Mama…I wasn’t crazy and I wouldn’t let crazy in. Naomi…hard to look in her eyes. Eugene…traveling the gray between two houses. Lonnie…I’d stood up to him. Robert…waking up the girl in me. Danny…blind to what was meant. And me…blind to myself…until now.
This was my Vietnam. They were the frontline for my civil rights. And I was demanding. They just didn’t know it yet. They didn’t know me. I’d only met her myself.
Finding My Thunder 4
After my time smoking in the backyard I fixed Mama some tomato soup and a cheese sandwich. Naomi hadn’t come home which meant she was at a sick bed somewhere in Snyder Town where her flock resided.
So when Mama was quiet in her
room I escaped to mine and played my records. I could do this for hours. I listened to the beautiful voices of Richie Havens, and Etta James, and Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. And I floated to the ceiling and out the window and I soared in the summer night sky and reached my hand to the lightening bugs and watched the stars spin psychedelic patterns all over heaven. My drug was hope and it was the newest most powerful drug in the world. That and Pall Malls.
I was suspended, lying in my room on my floor, my black light on, my poster of the big neon peace sign lit in the dark, and I was mesmerized.
I almost didn’t hear the gravel on my window…if that’s what it was. But I was soon there unhooking the screen, pushing it out and looking down and for the second time that day…there he was. “Danny,” I said softly.
He was looking up at me, still the white T-shirt, the jeans, the boots. “Hey…cut my hair,” he said.
I did not want him to wake Mama. I did not want that. But it was hard to think with this big thing happening in me. “Stay there,” I said.
I made a circle on the carpet like Sooner would. Then I found my scissors and I started to go downstairs, then I remembered me. I wore a yellow T-shirt with a smiley face on it, and my cut off shorts. Dressed naked, Naomi would call it. But I didn’t care now. I was small up top and my hair covered it, I didn’t need a bra. Not so much and it was dark. My feet were bare, and I was quiet on the stairs and I slipped out the door and he was there now, on the porch and he was petting Sooner, but he stood straight when he saw me, and I felt like he did see me, even in the dark he looked, and he was quiet, and his dark eyes ink, and his face shaved clean like Lonnie said.
“I…don’t know what I’m doing,” I said.
“That’s makes two of us,” he said.
“Oh. Okay. Sit on the porch stairs I guess.”
“Where’d you get this old dog? She’s gonna have pups.”
“No she isn’t.”
“Then she ate a bag of rocks. And they’re moving.”
Was I blind? I bent over with him and we felt Sooner all over and she was waiting for us to quit groping and start scratching, but I had scissors in my hand, and pretty soon not even the thought of pups I didn’t want or need could block out the closeness of Danny and I had to straighten up and step away and him too and his eyes went right there and I guess my hair wasn’t as much of a covering as I thought.