Billy held up open hands to the black man in peace, stepped back, made his eyes ask for an end to this. He followed his father. Ten strides down the sidewalk, his father turned, the gun in the waistband of his trousers. His entire body trembled. Tears rolled from his eyes. “Let’s go, Billy.”
Billy walked past him, heading toward his car. “We’re not going anywhere. Not anymore.” He didn’t know why he said it. Didn’t know if it was right.
When he got to his car, he saw his father standing where he had left him, halfway between the empty front porch and his car. His father watched him get into the Ford. The expression on his face defied Billy’s understanding. It was a look he had never seen before, made of rage, despair, resignation, and other things only grown men knew. His father lifted his face to the hazy yellow sky, drew a long breath, and breathed it out. He walked to his car and got in.
Billy tried not to look at his father’s car as he drove by, but he had to. He had the sudden feeling that he would never see his father again. As he passed, he saw a weird smile come to his father’s face, saw a hand rising, then heard a muffled pop. Red paint sprayed the window. Glass splashed red into the street. His father’s head, half gone, lolled on the windowsill.
Billy slammed the brakes. Lay his forehead against the steering wheel, thinking, Oh, God. Thinking that he would just drive away from here. That he did not dare look at his father. Alone, the voice said. You can’t leave him here alone. He wouldn’t do that to you. The Ford idling in the middle of the street, he ran to the shattered window and lightly touched his father’s head. His fingers recoiled from the burn of blood. Gray smoke rose from a hole where an ear hung as a flap. Blood ran down the car door and Billy stood in broken glass and bone and flesh. The obscenity of his father’s blood, so much blood, brought vomit to the back of his throat. He ran around the car, got in, and slid across the seat. He shoved his father’s leather satchel onto the floor and pulled his father away from the window into his arms. Eyes blind in their embrace, in the darkness, Billy saw that day in the backyard. I’m leaving. Another day, two centurions embracing. I had to convince myself I was already dead. It’s easier than you might think.
His father’s chin rested on his shoulder and blood scalded the front of Billy’s shirt. For a while Billy made them just father and son again, holding each other. The weight of his father’s chin on his shoulder was almost right, almost the weight of life. But then his father’s head slipped and hung at Billy’s chest and the balance of hope was broken. Billy laid his father gently down on the car seat. He looked up, looked around. People stood in undershirts and slips on porches. A black man held a newspaper to the side of his head as though it were a bandage. A toothless old woman hugged her breasts and rocked herself on bare feet. Billy stared at the porch where his father had fought the black man. It was empty. His back against the door, he rested his hand on his father’s head again, covering what was gone, sending his own heart to make it whole. “My father,” he whispered. He touched his own face, mixing blood with tears. “Don’t let him be alone.”
You can’t run from the people you love, son. I’ve learned that much.
Billy tore off his bloody shirt and covered his father’s face. He backed out of the car, stumbled on the curb, held red hands up to his eyes, wiped them on his pants.
Get out of here!
But Billy returned to his father’s car. Leaning to lift the old leather satchel from the floor, he felt the last warmth of his father’s shoulder.
And he ran.
THIRTY
In the house on the oil road, Billy locked the doors and turned out the lights. He threw away his bloody clothes, washed himself, then lay on the sofa trying to sleep. He ignored the ringing phone and, once, a knock at the door. He thought it was his mother knocking. The sound was hers somehow, but he did not want to see her. She had left his father, and so the death of Sir was Billy’s to manage as best he could.
In the morning, he showered and dressed as usual, pretending that his father’s bedroom door would open soon and he would emerge as always, a little late, a little haggard, but managing a jaunty smile as he headed for the bathroom in his pajamas. Pretending worked for a while, and it kept away the bloody mind that wanted in, wanted Billy’s whole attention, but finally, sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of oatmeal in front of him and staring at his father’s empty chair, Billy could pretend no longer. He was alone. His father would not emerge from the back of the house harried and hurrying, frayed collar unbuttoned and knotted tie askew, to drink a cup of coffee before ruffling Billy’s hair and sending him to school with an, Off you go, sir, to the citadel of knowledge. From whence to climb the mountain of commerce or stalk the noble halls of law or medicine. Billy closed his eyes and saw in the dark behind them the weird smile on his father’s face before the gun had popped, saw the red glass spray into the street. He got up, threw his oatmeal into the sink, and vomited on it.
The Oleander Grower said that police officers called to Carver Heights did not believe a gunshot wound was self-inflicted. They found cash in the car, rent money collected by Attorney David Dyer. They assumed the gunman’s motive was robbery and that he had panicked after shooting Mr. Dyer, leaving cash at the scene. The officers interviewed neighbors who spoke of an altercation at the home of James Clokes. They arrested Clokes, even though a search revealed no stolen money and a neighbor said she had seen Clokes enter his house after exchanging words with Mr. Dyer. Clokes was being held without bail pending further investigation. Strangely, the article did not mention a white boy driving an old Ford away from the scene.
The Grower placed David Dyer’s death on the second page of the city section. The front page headline was: Football Fever: Spartans Prepare for Big Game.
Billy took the satchel from the trunk of his car and hid it in the firebox of an old space heater. The hallway at the back of the house smelled faintly of oil, but the heater had not been lit in years. It was the last place anyone would look. Then he drove to the police station.
In a small room with a barred window, he told the story of Carver Heights to a weary, balding man with tobacco-stained teeth and fingers. Detective Sturgis wrote it all down. When Billy asked what would happen to James Clokes, Sturgis took his time lighting a Camel. “We did a paraffin test on your friend, Clokes. It was negative.” Sturgis said the word friend with an insinuating emphasis. Billy knew why. In Oleander, white boys did not visit the police station on missions to free black men. They let justice take it course.
Billy asked what a paraffin test was.
“It tells us if a person has discharged a firearm.” The detective blew smoke into Billy’s face.
“It was negative?”
“That’s what I said, kid.” Sturgis pushed back in his chair, drew smoke into his lungs, and this time exhaled into the blades of an oscillating fan that moved stale air from one side of the room to the other. “You’re the football player. Caught that touchdown pass against Orlando. I was there. Hell of a game.”
“Yes, sir,” Billy said. “Are you gonna let Mr. Clokes go?”
Sturgis chuckled. “Mr. Clokes? You don’t seem all that upset about Mr. Dyer. Said in the paper he was a lawyer. Worked for Cameron Sizemore. Hell of a thing, you ask me. A lawyer crawling Carver Heights with a fistful of cash and a gun. And his kid don’t seem too cut up about him dying.”
Billy had awakened last night from a dream of his father in a coffin clawing to get out. Clawing until his fingers bled. He had sat on the side of his bed pounding his forehead with the heel of his hand to rid his mind of the horror in his father’s eyes. He had cried for a while. He had not been able to sleep again until nearly dawn and only after promising himself he would never dream again. Billy wiped sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve and said, “I haven’t had time to think about it.”
Sturgis got up and opened the door. He took a drag and this time seemed to swallow the smoke. In the gray hallway that smelled of Lysol, tobacco, and sweat, J
ames Clokes sat handcuffed on a bench. Sturgis lifted Clokes to his feet by the chain that linked the cuffs. Clokes was bigger than Billy remembered, at least six-two and made of hard things. Even under the rumpled clothing of a night in jail, Billy could see the muscles jump and flow when he moved. His face was the color of cordovan leather, his eyes were large and dark, and his teeth were brilliant white as he smiled at his freedom.
Sturgis pulled a key from the fob at his belt and unlocked the cuffs. He didn’t look at Clokes, only at Billy. “Mr. Clokes is free to go.”
Billy was sitting in the Fairlane in front of the police station when Clokes emerged at the top of a flight of white granite steps and raised a hand to shade his eyes. Billy’s father had said that country people sometimes called prison “time in the shade.”
Billy got out of the car. Two cops in tan and black uniforms, carrying their caps under their arms, walked down the steps, their voices lowering as they passed. Billy met Clokes on the sidewalk.
“Hey… uh, hello, Mr. Clokes. Can I give you a ride home?”
Clokes rubbed his eyes, then looked Billy over. “Mr. Clokes? Two white folks in one morning calling me that? It’s a red-letter day.”
Billy said, “Sorry,” not sure why. He knew the local racial customs only approximately. He couldn’t tell Clokes’s age but guessed it early twenties.
“Yeah, sorry.” Clokes repeated the word as though he intended every one of its meanings. He walked past Billy and opened the car door. Across the roof he said, “All right, take me home.”
Billy got in. “I’m Billy.”
“People call me Jimmy.”
Billy awoke near dawn on a floor that moved when he did. Somewhere back in the night, he had crawled under a rug. His eyes were balls of jellied agony. A thin young woman sat in a rocking chair across the room. Billy adjusted his dizzy vision enough to see that she wore a white robe and held a baby in her arms. She did not seem to care that he lay on her floor covered by a rug. She gazed at the bald crown of the baby’s head, just coming into a chocolate-colored being in the faint dawn light. Her half-closed eyes were peaceful. She moved the rocker with bare toes in time to the lullaby she hummed.
Billy remembered only vaguely the drive from the police station, the awkward moment when the Fairlane had slid to Clokes’s curb. Clokes sitting in the Ford staring straight ahead for a space, then slowly shaking his head. “Ah, hell, boy. Might as well come in. I guess we got things to talk about.”
Clokes sat Billy down in a small, neat kitchen where it was just as awkward as it had been out in the car. They stared at each other for a few seconds before Clokes sighed, shoved up, and rummaged in a high cabinet, pulling out a mason jar of clear liquid. He screwed off the top, poured two portions into glasses, and called to the other room: “Annie, you take the boy and go on to you mama’s for a while.” There was no answer from the other room, only footsteps, a rustle of clothing, then the back door quietly closing.
Sitting across from each other in the small room that smelled of flour, bacon grease, and lye soap, Billy and Jimmy Clokes drank the scalding white whiskey wordlessly for an hour, until Billy saw Clokes’s face as only approximately a face. The black face with the big, dark eyes swung before him like a mask signifying friend then foe, question then answer. The mask was always sorry. After he lost track of the number of glasses he had drained, Billy figured Clokes’s quest was easier than his. Clokes was trying to wash death and jail out of his throat. Death had come near to Clokes, but it belonged to Billy now.
Somewhere… hours into the land of whiskey and forgetfulness, Billy understood that he could never drink away death. But alcohol was a doorway out of his mind, and he wanted to pass through it for a while.
Through thick, slow lips, Jimmy Clokes had said, “First time I been in jail. At first I was just… mean and mad as hell. Then I started thinking about you more than me. So, first thing I want to say, I’m sorry about your dad.”
Billy had wanted to forgive, but he couldn’t say, It’s all right or Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t all right. It was wrong in a lot of ways, some he didn’t yet know. And there was plenty to worry about. But Billy could say this: “He didn’t… do it because of you. A lot of things happened to him before that day. I don’t know why he did it, but I know it wasn’t you.”
I know it was partly me.
Clokes said, “Thank you, man. I ’preciate that.”
The room grew lighter. The young woman held the baby. The thin floor moved. Footsteps. Heavy, halting, then starting again, somewhere in the back of the house. A yawn, hoarse, bearlike, then the loud drumming of urine into toilet water. The woman rose and carried the baby into a bedroom, ignoring Billy as she passed. Those hands that held the baby had raked his father’s face.
Jimmy Clokes appeared in the bedroom doorway, his hand scratching below the waistband of his underwear. He saw Billy on the floor and gave a low, hoarse laugh. He turned to the dark behind him. “Annie, we got any them headache powders? M’man Billy needs one.” His tone was amiable but firm.
The woman said only, “Nnn.” A note of domestic music in a passage of quiet. After a few minutes, she came out still barefooted but wearing a pink housecoat. Billy was up, sitting in the rocker, holding his head in both hands. He tried to smile. Annie, thin and pretty, regarded the white boy in the rocker as she might a mess she had to clean up, then she passed, lifting a hand to the black hair above her ear. Her eyelids fluttered, and her lips drew tight, and Billy knew that under the chocolate skin was a blush. And he thought, Here we are in the eternal, awful morning, the long-suffering wife, the unexpected guest, and the roaring boy-husband.
Annie returned from the kitchen with two BC powders and a glass of water.
Jimmy was in the shower, so Billy waited to say goodbye. When Jimmy stepped out, again in underwear with a towel thrown over his shoulder, the brawn and scale of him made Billy think, Mighty.
Billy said, “Well, I better get on home.” He had been trying not to think about his father. He had been trying to remember what was good in the world. This is it. A morning, a man, a woman, and a child.
The air smelled of coffee. Annie appeared in the kitchen doorway. She rested her hip against the jamb and tilted her head. “Jimmy, you gone be late.”
Still looking at Billy, Clokes said, “Yeah, I know.” He offered his hand. “Well, all right then, man.”
Billy took it. “Thanks for… letting me spend the night.”
“Nothin’, man.” Clokes looked into Billy’s eyes. “Wait a minute.”
He walked back into the bedroom, returned wearing faded khaki work pants and carrying a brown paper bag, its top twisted. He led Billy out onto the porch, glanced back through the screen, and handed him the bag. Billy opened it, saw the mason jar full of white whiskey, pulled it out of the bag.
Clokes put his hand on the jar, pushed it back into the bag. “No, no, man. Don’t put my business in the street. That’s the best homemade shine in three counties. My uncle makes it… when he ain’t preaching on Sunday. I figured you might, you know, want to go back to that place we found last night. I don’t mean…” He pointed at the kitchen where they had sat drinking until death was banished for a while. He tapped his forehead twice. “I mean the place. Maybe once or twice go back there. Until you feel better.” He reached out and rested his big hand on Billy’s shoulder, took it away. “We all gotta go there some time. Just don’t get comfortable there, you hear. Don’t stay there.”
Billy looked at the street where he and his father had shared their last words.
Let’s go, Billy.
We’re not going anywhere. Not anymore.
He looked into Jimmy Clokes’s dark eyes. “I said something to my father. I don’t know why I did. It was just… It was just…”
Again Clokes rested his big, hard hand on Billy’s shoulder. “That’s right, man. You don’t know what it was, so don’t make it everything. You loved your dad, right?”
Billy nod
ded.
“And you know he loved you?”
Billy nodded again.
“That’s it, then. It was just… a thing. Nothin’ but a thing.”
He smiled the rack of white teeth, stared hard into Billy’s eyes again, then lifted his gaze to the street. He squinted at his disappearing piece of Carver Heights. “People leaving,” he said. “Lot of ’em gone already.”
From inside the house, Annie: “Jimmy?”
“Well, I got to get to work.”
Billy said, “How long can you stay here?”
Clokes scratched his chest. “Couple weeks. We find a place. Maybe stay with her mother a while…” He closed his eyes, pressed his fingers into them. “If we have to.” Clokes offered his hand again and Billy took it. “All right, then.”
Billy’s car waited at the curb where his father’s had been parked. Broken glass glittered from the gutter.
Billy’s father clawed at the tatters of silk above his face. His fingers dripped blood. His mouth opened, and he screamed. When he had torn the silk and cotton padding away from the coffin lid he began pounding, hammering bloody fists against the box that held him under the earth.
Billy awoke to knocking. He swung his legs wildly over the side of his bed, thinking to run from his father’s grave, from that howling mouth and those bleeding fingers, into the night. But he was no longer standing in a graveyard. A soft light bled through the venetian blinds of his bedroom. It was dusk. Someone knocked again, harder this time. Billy pulled on the Levi’s that lay on the floor and went to the door.
Moira peered in at him. “Are you all right?” She held a newspaper in her trembling hands. “It says here that—”
“I know what it says.”
It was raining, and rain changed the smell of the oil road in front of his house in a way that Billy could not describe. It was not an improvement. Moira put a hand on his chest, pushed him back into the dim living room, and closed the door.
A wave of nausea struck Billy in the face, sitting him down on the couch. He turned to the side and gagged. Moira picked up the empty mason jar from the coffee table, sniffed it. She stepped toward him and sniffed again. “You smell like a brewery.”
Fighting in the Shade Page 18