The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had

by Kristin Levine

  Big Foot stood in the doorway. Mrs. Pooley hovered just behind him.

  “Mrs. Seay,” he said in his slow drawl, “this here’s a white school.” The click of his boots echoed in the silent room as he approached Mrs. Seay.

  “I know that, Sheriff.”

  “Then what the heck is that nigger girl doing up onstage?” He leaned against a desk, real casual, but the muscles in his neck were tense. Mrs. Pooley stepped inside the school and shut the door. I jumped.

  “Emma was the only one who learned the lines,” Mrs. Seay said quietly.

  Big Foot shook his head and turned to stare at Emma. Her dress, which had seemed so bright and pretty, suddenly looked all wrong. Emma picked at a red stripe on the fabric. Her hand trembled.

  “You, girl,” Big Foot said, “get down from that platform and go on home.”

  “But she ain’t done with her part yet,” said Pearl.

  Big Foot glared at my little sister.

  “It’s the last rehearsal,” Pearl explained.

  Emma didn’t move.

  Big Foot took a step closer to Emma. “Girl, I ain’t gonna tell you again. Go on home.”

  But Emma didn’t move.

  I stepped into the aisle in front of Big Foot. “Leave her alone!” I yelled.

  I thought he might hit me, but Big Foot only laughed. “You defending your nigger girl? Ought to have better sense than that, Dit.” He pushed me out of the way. I could smell the beer on his breath and see the creases from the iron on his shirt. He walked right up to where Emma was still standing on the stage.

  “Big Foot, please,” Mrs. Seay said. “The children are just—”

  “Be quiet, ma’am. You’re the teacher, but I’m the sheriff.”

  Mrs. Seay was quiet.

  Big Foot put his face right up next to Emma and hissed, “Get out of here, nigger!”

  Emma blinked and stared at the floor.

  Big Foot grabbed her arm and pulled her off the stage. Her dress caught on a desk, causing her to fall. Emma didn’t make a sound as she hit the ground, but Pearl began to cry.

  The front door squeaked open and Doc Haley stepped inside, standing next to Mrs. Pooley.

  Big Foot picked Emma up and threw her over his shoulder like I’d seen my pa do with a sack of potatoes. Her face was strangely blank, like she wasn’t even there no more. I wanted her to cry or scream or something. What was Big Foot gonna do to her?

  Doc Haley stood in front of the doorway. “Get out of my way,” barked Big Foot.

  “Put her down,” said Doc Haley. “She can walk out on her own.”

  “I gave her the chance. She didn’t move.”

  “She’s too terrified; any fool can see that.”

  Big Foot dropped her then. Just let go of Emma’s feet and she slid right down his back. Her head made a loud thwack as it hit the floor. I ran over to her. Blood was pouring out of a gash on her forehead. I pulled off my vest and pressed it against the cut.

  Big Foot didn’t seem to notice. He walked up to Doc Haley.

  “Mrs. Pooley, do something!” cried Mrs. Seay.

  “Big Foot,” Mrs. Pooley mumbled, grabbing her son’s shirt-sleeve. “This is not what I—”

  “Hush, Mama.”

  He shook her off, then leaned over and hissed in Doc’s face, just like he had done to Emma, “Get out of here, boy.”

  “No.” His voice trembled, but he held his head up. “Not till you leave these kids alone.”

  “I said move.”

  Doc stood so still, I wasn’t sure he was even breathing. Then he shook his head.

  Big Foot punched him in the jaw.

  Doc staggered but remained upright.

  Big Foot slugged him again.

  Doc fell to the ground this time. Blood flowed from his lip to his chin. He covered his face with his arms. “Get up!” Big Foot screamed.

  Doc didn’t move. For a minute, I thought he was dead, but then I saw his chest moving up and down. Slowly, he uncovered his face and pushed himself up from the ground like an old man. He stood there, blood running down his face, and even though he was a good four inches shorter than Big Foot, he suddenly looked like the bigger man.

  The front door was still open, but Doc didn’t even glance at it. Just stood still and looked Big Foot straight in the eye. Outside, the sun was shining, and I didn’t understand how that could be when everything was so dark inside.

  Big Foot charged Doc Haley then, ran at him liked a crazed bull. They both fell out the open door. We could hear punches being thrown, and then there was the crack of something like a broken bone. Hearing the fight was even worse than seeing it, ’cause we didn’t know exactly what was going on.

  But with them out of the building, Mrs. Seay seemed to suddenly remember that she was the teacher. “Earl, Raymond, out the window,” she ordered. “Go get Dr. Griffith.”

  My brothers opened the window, jumped out and took off at a run.

  I removed the vest from Emma’s forehead. It seemed like the bleeding had slowed, but it was hard to tell. There was blood all over my pants and matted in Emma’s hair. My lion tamer vest was ruined. Emma’s eyes were still blank, and that scared me more than all the blood.

  Me, Mrs. Seay and Pearl led Emma out onto the front porch of the school. Doc Haley and Big Foot were still fighting in the middle of the street. Doc was curled up into a ball. Big Foot was pounding him with his fists.

  Pa and Earl came running down the street. Pa grabbed Big Foot and pulled him away from Doc Haley. “I’m gonna kill you!” Big Foot snarled. For a minute, I thought he meant my pa.

  “I ain’t done nothing!” Blood streamed from Doc Haley’s face, and his arm was twisted at an odd angle.

  Big Foot’s clean shirt was now covered in blood. “Just you wait,” Big Foot hissed as he shook himself loose from Pa and stormed away.

  Mrs. Pooley was very pale as she stumbled out of the schoolhouse. “I—I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble,” she stammered. No one answered her. She shook her head and hobbled off after her son.

  Pa turned to Doc. He was lying in the gravel in the middle of the road, propped up on his one good arm. One eye looked bigger than the other and his lip was so swollen, he couldn’t close his mouth. “You all right?” Pa asked.

  “I ain’t hit him, Mr. Sims,” Doc said, “not even once.”

  “I know,” said Pa.

  Then Doc Haley collapsed, unmoving, on the ground.

  39

  DOC HALEY TAKES A STAND

  I’D SEEN A PERSON KNOCKED OUT BEFORE—Ulman was thrown off a horse a couple of summers ago—but he woke up right away. Doc just moaned a little as Dr. Griffith, Pa and Raymond carried him back to the Walkers’ cabin. Me and Earl helped Emma home. I expected her mama to start hollering when she saw us, but I guess someone’d run ahead to warn her because she just pursed her lips and hurried us inside.

  Pa and Raymond lay Doc Haley down on the couch in the parlor. Mrs. Walker didn’t say nothing, not even when they got blood on her good sofa.

  Dr. Griffith sat Emma down on a chair in the kitchen. He had to put in five stitches to close the gash in her forehead, and she didn’t make a sound. But when Dr. Griffith finished sewing and went into the parlor to tend to Doc Haley, Emma finally started bawling. “Oh, Mama,” she sobbed. “I’m not going to be in the play.” Mrs. Walker put her arms around her and let her cry.

  Doc Haley was hurt bad. His left arm was broken; he had two black eyes, a split lip, a twisted ankle, a couple of bruised ribs and a lump on his head the size of an old twine baseball. Dr. Griffith set the arm, bandaged the ankle, stitched the lip and put a raw steak over his eyes.

  “There’s not much else I can do,” Dr. Griffith told Mrs. Walker. “Those ribs’ll hurt like hell when he wakes up.”

  “I have a poultice,” Mrs. Walker said.

  Dr. Griffith nodded. He glanced at me and Emma, then silently went out the door.

  That night there was a meeting on the Walkers’
front porch. Dr. Griffith and Pa were there, as well as Reverend Cannon from the Negra church and a couple of Mr. Walker’s friends. They even let Elbert sit in, but me and Emma were told to stay in the kitchen.

  Course as soon as they closed the door, we slid off our chairs and put our ears to the door. Didn’t really need to sit that close ’cause Dr. Griffith was practically yelling.

  “Absolutely not! He’s in no condition to be moved.”

  “Big Foot find him again, he’ll be a whole lot worse,” said one of Mr. Walker’s friends.

  “Elbert,” the reverend said quietly. “You have any kin up north?”

  “A cousin in Chicago.” Elbert sounded scared, and that scared me.

  Didn’t hear what the reverend said then, because Doc Haley came out of the parlor. He was no longer bloody, but he looked awful, with dark bruises springing up all over his face. “Are they talking about me?” he asked in a whisper, clutching the door frame with his good arm.

  I nodded.

  Doc took a deep breath, then started limping toward the front door. Emma jumped up to help him. “Open it,” he said to me.

  I threw the front door wide open.

  Everyone turned to look at Doc Haley, standing in the doorway. “I ain’t going nowhere,” he said finally.

  “But Pa,” Elbert started to argue.

  “I own the shop free and clear and the field behind it too. It’s my land and my home.” He looked tired then. Almost lost his balance and had to lean on me and Emma for support. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

  The reverend shook his head. “You’re risking your life every moment you stay in Moundville.”

  Doc Haley looked at Mr. Walker then, and the two men exchanged a glance that was almost a smile. “I thank you kindly, Reverend Cannon, for your concern. But I’ve made up my mind. And I think it’s time for all of you to get on home.”

  Tired as I was, when I got into bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. Finally got up and went downstairs to get some water and found Pa sitting on the front porch with the shotgun. An oil lamp was still burning in the Walkers’ cabin, but everything was silent. I slipped into Mama’s chair. The squeak of the rocker sounded loud in the night.

  Pa jumped. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Thought I’d sit up with you,” I said.

  “No.”

  “But . . .”

  Pa shook his head. “Go get some sleep, Raymond.”

  “Pa, it’s me.”

  Pa rubbed his forehead but said nothing.

  “Dit!”

  “Go to bed, Dit.”

  “Would you really shoot Big Foot if he came round tonight?”

  “Big Foot’s not coming,” he snapped.

  “Then why’re you sitting out here?” I asked.

  Pa’s face was pinched, as if he had a stomachache. “’Cause if he did come round, he wouldn’t be alone.”

  “What you talking about?”

  Pa rocked a couple of times in his chair before answering. “Dit, sometimes a group of people comes up with a stupid idea. An idea so stupid, none of them would be fool enough to act on it alone, but together they . . .”

  Pa didn’t finish his sentence. I thought of Chip and Buster locking me in jail and knew what he meant. The thought made me shiver, and it wasn’t even that cold.

  “I can’t explain this now,” Pa said, rubbing his head again. “Just go to bed.”

  “But I . . .”

  “You talking back to your pa?”

  “No, but . . .”

  There was a sound in the bushes.

  Pa jumped to his feet, clutching the shotgun.

  A man was standing in the shadow of the big oak tree in our front yard. It looked like he was carrying a gun.

  My hands suddenly felt very cold.

  “Who’s there?” Pa cried out. He sounded scared.

  “It’s just me,” we heard Dr. Griffith say. “Didn’t think you should be sitting up alone.” Dr. Griffith stepped into a patch of moonlight, and we could see his face. Pa finally lowered his gun.

  “He’s not alone; I’m here with him,” I called out.

  “Dit?” Dr. Griffith sounded surprised, almost angry. “What the heck is he doing out here?”

  “He’s going to bed,” Pa growled.

  “But . . .”

  “Harry Otis, get back inside the house,” Pa hissed, and I knew if I talked back again, there’d be a whipping for sure.

  So I went. But I stopped when I got inside the door and looked out the front window. Dr. Griffith was on the porch now. He put a hand on my pa’s shoulder and said a few words I couldn’t hear. Then he sat down in Mama’s rocker, his gun across his lap. Both men sat quietly, looking out into the night.

  I went upstairs to bed. But I didn’t sleep. Instead, I kept watch out my window too.

  40

  THE PLAY

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, ME AND EMMA SAT on the top of our mound, just looking at the sky. I was awful tired, but I guess I must have slept some ’cause I remember seeing the starry sky one moment and Raymond shaking me awake for chores the next. On top of the mound, the February wind was cold, but the clouds it brought with it were amazing. I just wanted to stare at them and think about nothing.

  “Do you remember the Wild West show at the circus?” Emma asked suddenly.

  “Yeah.” The one cloud did look kind of like a bronco. I wanted to ask her if she thought so too, but it just seemed like too much trouble.

  “Do you think the cowboys killed the Indians that built these mounds?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Emma began to cry. I wanted to put my arm around her but wasn’t sure if she’d like it. “If I had just left when Big Foot told me to,” she said.

  I couldn’t think of nothing to say.

  “I thought I was smarter than all those white kids. That’s why I learned those lines.”

  “You are smarter.”

  “Shut up, Dit.” But she stopped crying, sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “You going to the play tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Aren’t you the ringmaster?”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t do it. Pearl and Raymond dropped out too.”

  “Aw, Dit,” she said softly. “They didn’t have to do that. Pearl was so excited about being the ballerina.”

  “I told Mrs. Seay if you weren’t in it, there shouldn’t be no play.”

  Emma smiled, but she still looked sad.

  That night I did go to the play, just for a minute. The school-room was packed. I guess most everyone in town had heard about the scuffle. Don’t know why that made them come. Did they think there was gonna be another fight? Doc Haley was still at the Walkers’, and Big Foot was nowhere to be seen. Anyway, Buster stood on the stage as the ringmaster, reading from a script.

  “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the most fantastical circus of the cemetery, I mean cent-ury.” Big Foot’s eagle sat in its cage on a table behind Buster. He pointed awkwardly to it. “Here is the eagle, symbol of my adopted country, the great us-a. I mean U-S-A.”

  I couldn’t watch any more and went out to sit on the front stoop. Pearl was already there.

  “Don’t you want to go in?” I asked her.

  “No.”

  “Buster’s doing a bad job.”

  Pearl sniffed. “Don’t expect me to feel better just ’cause Buster can’t read.”

  I smiled and sat down next to my sister. Sometimes, she was okay. A moment later, Mrs. Seay came out of the schoolhouse and sat down next to us.

  “You were right, Dit,” she said softly. “We should’ve canceled the whole thing.” The three of us sat quietly in the darkness. Mrs. Seay sniffed a couple of times, like she was trying not to cry.

  Finally, Mrs. Seay blew her nose and said, “You know, not everyone in town thinks Big Foot is a good lawman.”

  “You said he was. In class, when Uncle Wiggens was there.” It was a rude thing to say, and I knew it.r />
  “Well”—she took a deep breath—“I’ve been known to be wrong before.”

  41

  FISH AND BANANAS

  PA AND DR. GRIFFITH KEPT WATCH FOR two more nights on our front porch, then they put their guns away. Guess they thought the whole thing was just about ready to blow over. Doc Haley stayed in the Walkers’ parlor for another week, till his ankle had healed enough for him to hobble around without help.

  Big Foot didn’t leave his front porch for that whole week, just sat there and drank beer. The bottles lined up all along the porch. Finally, someone stole the bottles for the deposit money. I had wanted to but hadn’t dared.

  Elbert quit going to school and started working in the barbershop full time. Doc couldn’t cut hair or give shaves with his arm broke, so Elbert took all that over. Me and Emma brought Doc and Elbert biscuits from Mrs. Walker and half a ham from my mama. We shucked some corn too and left it all in a basket behind the barbershop.

  I made another trip to Selma with Dr. Griffith the first weekend in March. He didn’t mention that night on my front porch, and I didn’t say nothing about it either. On that trip, I finally earned the last of my Fourth hunt money. The next morning, I took all my pennies, nickels and quarters to Mrs. Pooley’s store and had her change them into two new, crisp dollar bills. I folded them carefully and stuffed them into my pocket. I was gonna carry them with me everywhere till the day of the Fourth hunt finally came.

  It was a fine sunny day with no clouds and just a touch of wind. I went by Emma’s to see if she’d come fishing with me to celebrate.

  “I’m not celebrating you entering the Fourth hunt,” Emma said, “’cause I still don’t think that’s such a good idea. But earning a whole two dollars”—she smiled—“that’s really something.”