Raymond threw the ball.
Buster hissed, “Nigger lover,” but this time, I hit the ball. Might even have been a triple, but instead of running, I threw down my bat.
“Say it again,” I yelled. “Say it to my face!”
“Say what?” said Buster with a smirk.
I slugged him. Hit him right in his nose. He staggered but didn’t fall over, so I punched him in the stomach. He jumped me then, and even though we were the same size, he was stronger from working all summer. It might have gone pretty bad for me, ’cept the one good thing about having so many brothers and sisters is there’s always someone to pull you out of a fight.
Before I knew what was happening, Raymond and Elman were holding me and Chip had Buster. Blood was running down Buster’s nose, and I knew I’d have a black eye. Emma had disappeared and Pearl was crying and I didn’t know if I was mad at Buster or Chip or Mitch or Emma or even myself. I only knew that even though I had hit the ball, I had most definitely struck out.
21
THE SECRET
THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL CHIP ASKED Mrs. Seay if he could switch desks and go sit with Buster. Mrs. Seay gave me a funny look, but I didn’t say nothing and Buster didn’t have a desk partner, so finally she nodded. Chip didn’t look at me as he walked back to our desk and collected his things. We’d sat together since third grade.
The rest of the day, I could see Mrs. Seay talking, but I couldn’t hear nothing. The empty space beside me was like a whirlpool, sucking away all my thoughts, getting louder and louder, till all I could hear was its roar.
After school, I rushed through my chores. I didn’t dare show my face at the baseball game, and I wasn’t ready to face Emma, so I decided to pay Elbert a visit. I was gonna put my problems at school out of my mind and focus on the Fourth hunt. Since my plan with the rabbits hadn’t worked out too well, I was gonna collect me some scrap metal. With the war going on, Ulman said if you were willing to put in the time collecting old bottle caps and wire, you could be rich. Maybe I could convince Elbert to ditch the store for an afternoon and help me out.
But Elbert wasn’t too enthusiastic when I ran the idea by him. “Haven’t seen you around much, Dit,” he said as he swept off the porch outside of the barbershop.
“I’ve been busy.” Felt a little bad about that. Even if Elbert couldn’t go fishing as much as he’d used to, I could’ve stopped by just to say hello. Afraid I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that.
“Busy with that Emma girl?” He didn’t look up from his sweeping.
“She’s all right, Elbert.”
“What happened to your eye?”
I was annoyed ’cause I knew he’d heard about it. “Got in a fight. Why weren’t you at the game anyway?”
“Don’t have time for games. You know I’ve been helping out my pa. Getting pretty good at cutting hair too.”
Took a long look at Elbert then. He was only fifteen, but suddenly he seemed a lot older. He was taller, his shoulders were broader and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if there wasn’t fuzz on his upper lip and chin. Elbert had gone and grown himself a beard!
“You aren’t sweet on her, are you?” he asked.
“What?” Elbert had been talking, but I guess the whirlpool was still roaring in my head, ’cause I hadn’t heard a word.
“Emma,” he repeated. “You ain’t sweet on her?”
“No.”
“Good. Whites and Negras shouldn’t be sweet on each other,” Elbert said firmly.
“I thought your grandpa was a white man?” I asked.
Elbert froze like he’d just spied a copperhead, about to strike. “Who told you that?” he whispered.
“My pa.”
Elbert took a step closer. His mouth screwed up like he’d bit into an old lemon. “I ain’t supposed to talk about it.”
“Come on, Elbert.”
He rolled the broom handle back and forth in his hands. “My grandpa was a white man, a big plantation owner. Took my grandma out in the woods and nine months later she had my pa.”
“Without being married or nothing?” I said. My voice sounded too loud.
Elbert shook his head. “And guess who the man was.”
“Who?”
“You can’t tell no one.”
“I won’t.”
Elbert took a deep breath, then lowered his voice till I could barely hear him. “Big Foot’s daddy.”
“Big Foot’s your uncle?”
“Shhh!” Elbert glanced around, though we were alone on the street. “You can’t tell no one or there’ll be trouble.”
“I promise.”
We were both quiet for a while, then Elbert asked, “So you sure you ain’t sweet on that Emma?”
“She ain’t my girlfriend,” I said firmly. Then an awful thought occurred to me. “Are you sweet on her?”
“No,” said Elbert.
“Good.” I felt more relieved than I expected. Finally I blurted out, “You gonna help me get rich or not?”
Elbert sighed. “My pa is over at the church. Really should ask him if . . .”
“Aw, shoot, Elbert. You know he’ll be busy there all afternoon.”
Elbert smiled then, the old familiar smile I remembered. “Sure,” he said. “Give me a minute to close up and then let’s go find us some scrap metal.”
22
THE BUZZARD,
PART 2
NEXT DAY AFTER SCHOOL, DOC HALEY was back at the shop and Elbert was busy giving Reverend Cannon a shave and shoe shine, so I went off to collect some scrap metal by myself. While I was pulling some wire out of a tree, I stumbled onto an old nest. In the nest were some owl pellets. I broke them apart with a stick and poked at the skeletons of mice the owl had swallowed whole, digested and then spit back up.
That got me thinking ’bout the buzzard I had killed way back in July. It was now the middle of October. The bird was probably just a skeleton and feathers, but I had avoided that path all autumn, so I hadn’t seen it. I decided to go and take a look.
But Emma wasn’t interested in coming with me. “I don’t want to see it,” she said, and put her nose back in the book she was reading. It said The Secret Garden on the front.
“You scared?” I taunted.
She rocked in her chair without answering.
I hadn’t seen Emma since I beat up Buster. “Come on,” I coaxed. “We’ll just take a quick look at the buzzard.”
“Why?”
I didn’t want to go see the buzzard alone. But I didn’t want to admit that, so I just said, “Buzzards eat dead animals. I want to see if its friends ate it up.”
“Yuck,” said Emma.
“And I can practice shooting some squirrels.”
“Why do you have to kill anything?”
“I already told you, hunting ain’t killing. And I gotta practice for the Fourth hunt.”
Emma went back to reading. I knew how she felt about the Fourth hunt. If I wanted her to come with me, I needed to come up with something else.
“That a good book?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I knew Emma loved to talk about the books she was reading, and she was a pretty good storyteller. It started when Pearl had asked her about Treasure Island in the summer. Then there was the time she’d helped me with my math and told me all about Tarzan. Maybe the garden book was more interesting than it sounded too. “Come look at the buzzard with me, I’ll let you tell me about that old secret garden on the way home.”
Emma closed her book with a snap. “Fine,” she grumbled. “Let’s go.”
I grabbed my shotgun and we started off down the path by the river. The leaves were changing color, and some even had already fallen off the trees. They crunched under our feet. The sun shone through the half-bare branches, Emma was collecting all the leaves that were red like my hair and we were having such a good time, I just about forgot where we were going. Emma was the one who stopped suddenly and pointed to the large pile of feathers on th
e ground just ahead of us.
I picked up a stick and walked toward it. It was bigger than I remembered. I poked the pile.
The buzzard jumped up.
I was so surprised I stumbled back a few feet and fell down in the dirt.
The buzzard wasn’t dead. Looked even more awful than a normal buzzard, with skin stretched tight across its skeleton. Half of its dirty, rotten feathers had fallen out. It was flapping its left wing and snapping wildly with its beak. Before I could move, it took a big chunk of leather out of my shoe and a bite of my big toe as well.
“Ahhh!” I screamed. Blood started to ooze from the hole in my shoe.
I scrambled to my feet and hobbled away. My heart was pounding. “How come it’s still alive?” I asked.
“You must have broken its wing,” said Emma. “It probably can go a while without food.”
Buzzard don’t eat too regular, it’s true. But it hadn’t been a couple of weeks—it had been three months.
I watched the buzzard hopping around in front of me. Its right wing had healed at an odd angle; the bird would never fly again. It ran in crazed circles.
“He’s starving to death,” said Emma.
Then I knew what I had to do, but I just couldn’t make myself pick up that gun. How could I feel so sick about killing something I had thought was already dead? “What if I brought it food every couple of weeks, maybe a fish or an old chicken leg?”
“Dit,” said Emma softly, “you have to shoot it.”
And I knew she was right. I lifted the shotgun to my shoulder. My foot throbbed and it was hard to balance. The buzzard stopped running then and raised its head, like it wanted to be sure I had a clear shot. I fired and the bird stopped moving.
Finally had a chance to sit down and tend to my foot. Emma gave me her handkerchief and I pressed it against my toe to stop the bleeding.
“We should bury it,” said Emma, looking at the lump of bones and feathers.
“No,” I said quietly. “The other buzzards will be circling soon. At least they can have a decent meal.”
Emma let me lean on her shoulder as I limped back down the path, dragging the gun behind me. The leaves crunched underfoot, just like they had done before, but the color seemed to have drained out of the day. I couldn’t think of nothing to say.
“Shooting that buzzard was wrong,” Emma said finally.
“You told me to,” I protested.
“I mean the first time, not the second.”
I thought about it for a moment. If I had extra dead squirrels, I could throw them to the dogs. They had to eat too. But even our old mutt wouldn’t touch a dead buzzard, so there was no reason to kill one. “I know,” I said softly. “I won’t do it again.”
“You promise?” asked Emma.
“I promise,” I said. “I won’t kill any more animals.”
“Good,” said Emma.
“Least not for fun, anyway.”
Emma muttered something under her breath, but I didn’t quite hear her.
We stumbled on a few more yards. “I probably shouldn’t have beat up Buster either.”
“Probably not,” said Emma, helping me over an old log that lay across the path.
“But he deserved it. Way more than the buzzard!”
She smiled, then seemed to think better of it. “What did he say?” Emma asked.
“Who?”
“Buster. I saw him whisper to you, right before you hit him.”
I told her. Didn’t want to, but she had asked.
Her face got real still. I swear she didn’t even blink for over a minute. Then she shook her head. “You don’t have to defend me, Dit.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “You’re my friend.”
She was silent for a long time. Finally, she said, “I’ve never had a friend like you.”
I thought that was a compliment, but I wasn’t quite sure. We walked without talking a little bit longer. The afternoon air was warm and everything was still. It seemed like we were the only two people in the forest.
“You ain’t gonna tell no one ’bout the buzzard, are you?” I asked.
“Teach me how to hit a baseball,” she said, “and I’ll keep your secret.”
“I already taught you to throw a ball,” I grumbled.
“Throwing a ball without being able to hit it doesn’t do me much good.”
She had a point. “Then you gotta help me with my school-work,” I said.
“I already do that.”
She had a point there too. “Well, you gotta keep doing it,” I insisted.
“Sure.” And when she smiled again, I hardly felt my toe ache.
But my brain kept right on doing somersaults. I thought about how I was wrong to shoot the buzzard the first time but right to put it out of its suffering the second. Thought about wings healing crooked and longing to jump in the air and fly but being forced to scuttle about on the ground. Thought about how I suddenly wasn’t sorry for beating up Buster, even if it meant I had to sit alone at school. And I realized that when I spent time with Chip and Buster, I didn’t do much thinking at all.
23
EASY AS BREATHING
WE WENT BACK TO EMMA’S HOUSE AND told her mama that I had slipped on some rocks and stubbed my toe. Mrs. Walker had worked as a practical nurse in Boston, and she’d started giving out teas and salves in Moundville too. People said she had magic in her fingers. It was true—a cut she dressed healed twice as fast as normal. I’d have thought Dr. Griffith would’ve been jealous, but he seemed to like Mrs. Walker. Sometimes they even traded remedies for ringworm or whooping cough.
Mrs. Walker clucked over me for a while and made me wash my foot with soap and water. “That’s the strangest-looking stubbed toe I’ve ever seen,” she said, but I guess she bought our story, ’cause she didn’t ask any more questions. Just put some iodine on my wound, gave us some milk and biscuits and left us alone.
I collected my mitt, an old bat and my twine baseball and led Emma back into the woods. We picked a small clearing in the shadow of a mound and I handed her the bat.
To me, baseball was as easy as breathing, but Emma didn’t even know how to hold the bat. I had to think real hard before I could explain it to her. “Hold your hands closer together,” I told her finally. “And bend your knees.”
When Emma was holding the bat in a way that didn’t look too awful, I took a couple of steps back, picked up the twine ball and threw it toward her. She panicked, swung way too soon and stepped right into the path of the ball. It hit her in the side with a loud thump. Tears welled up in her eyes and she sat down on the ground.
Our lesson was over.
The next day after school, we tried again. Emma flinched and ran anytime I threw the ball anywhere near her. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you scared of the ball?”
“Yes,” Emma answered, and pulled up her shirt. She had a huge bruise on her ribs from the day before.
“You can’t play baseball if you’re scared,” I pointed out. “Guess I’m gonna have to teach you how to watch the ball.”
“I know how to watch the ball,” Emma said.
“No, you don’t. You got to be able to sense where the ball is,” I explained. “And if you can do that, you won’t get hit.”
“How are you going to teach me that?” asked Emma.
I thought for a moment. “All you have to do is stand still. I’m gonna throw the ball to one side of you or the other. You yell ‘left’ or ‘right’ depending on which side the ball passes.”
“I don’t need any more bruises.”
“I ain’t gonna hit you, Emma.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. Don’t you trust me?”
Emma nodded.
“All right, then. Let’s play ball.”
At first, Emma just stood there looking confused. I kept throwing. Right, left, left, left, right. Then, when she finally started believing I wasn’t gonna hit her, she guessed, calling out “right” and �
��left” more or less at random. Pretty soon, she was getting more right than wrong. A couple of days later, we moved on to picking up the bat.
About the time Emma’s bruise began to fade, Mrs. Seay decided we should learn the capitals of all forty-eight states. Instead of half paying attention, I forced myself to copy them carefully into my notebook. Then I asked Emma for help. She suggested we combine our projects.
I’d step up to the mound and Emma would ask, “Pennsylvania?”
“Harrisburg,” I’d answer, then throw the ball. She’d swing and miss.
“New York?” she asked.
“Albany,” I answered. I pitched. She swung and missed.
“Massachusetts?”
“Boston.”
Emma smiled. And ’cause she was smiling, she forgot to think. I pitched, she swung and we both jumped at the crack when the bat connected with the ball.
24
I MAKE DOC HALEY
REAL, REAL MAD
THE NEXT AFTERNOON WE TOOK A BREAK from baseball so I could get my hair cut by Doc Haley. I was supposed to sing in the church choir on Sunday and Mama wanted me to look nice. Elbert came out of the back room and asked me if I wanted to go fishing when I was done. “Sure,” I said. “Why don’t you swing by Emma’s and see if she wants to go too?”
“Never mind,” he said. “Got some chores I should take care of.” He let the door slam on his way out.
Doc Haley looked up when the bells jangled, but he didn’t say nothing.
“You think it’s a bad thing I’m friends with Emma?” I asked.
Doc snipped at a piece of my hair. “It ain’t bad,” he said slowly.
“Elbert don’t like her much,” I said. “I don’t think you do neither.”
He shook his head. “I like Emma just fine. It’s just . . .” Doc shrugged. “No good’s ever come of a white boy hanging around a Negra girl.”
“You talking about Elbert’s grandpa?” I asked.
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