by Julie Kibler
“Nothing yet.”
“What’s your pleasure?”
I searched my memory of the movies my friends and I had watched. The leading men and glamorous starlets always had cocktails in hand. “Sidecar?”
“You got it.” He snapped his fingers at a passing waiter. In no time, I held a glass of the sweetest and sourest and most delicious thing I’d ever tasted—once I overcame the shock of my first sip. This was working out fine now. Just fine. I emptied the glass quickly. Too quickly? I had no idea. Another appeared in my benefactor’s hand, as if by magic, and I accepted it, too.
“First time here?” he asked.
“Is it obvious?” I rushed ahead before he had a chance to answer. “I heard it was a swanky place.” The ash at the end of my cigarette curled and stretched like a scorched snake, undulating as though it would drop to the floor any second. I held it away from me, horrified. My companion swept a crystal dish from an alcove. I tapped the ash into the dish.
“Thanks. You might have saved my life, Mr.…”
“Name’s Louie. Short for Louis, but all my friends call me Louie.” He winked. “How’s about a dance?”
“Sure, um, Louie.” He seemed like a gentleman, his suit starched and spotless, and he certainly was Johnny-on-the-spot with the cigarette and cocktails, not to mention capturing my runaway ash. I pressed the glowing end of my cigarette into the dish and returned the holder to my bag while Louie whisked away my second glass, along with several he’d emptied.
He led me to the dance floor, where he drew me close—closer than I liked. I held my arms stiff to force a little breathing room between our shoulders and hips. My head felt swimmy, and the design of the parquet floor now seemed more detailed than my brain could absorb. I trained my eyes on Louie’s chin. When the song ended, I backed away, relieved to see Trudie had left the dance floor and was making her way back to the bar with her partner. And I needed to use the ladies’ room. But Louie grabbed my arm and steered me toward a door at the back of the room. “Let’s grab some fresh air, sweets. It’s stuffy in here.”
He pressed his fingers into my arm, and I tried to shake his hand off. He grinned and held on. “Holding you too tight? Sorry—this place is a furnace. I’m in a hurry to get outside, where I can breathe.” He loosened his grip but pressed me steadily toward the door. I craned my neck to see if Trudie saw us leaving, waved frantically in her direction, but she stood near the bar, unaware of me or my dilemma, her head thrown back in laughter at something her companion had said, a fresh drink in her hand. Louis pushed me through the door. I hoped to simply chat with him a minute, then escape back into the club and find the ladies’ lounge without being rude.
We leaned against a brick wall in the alley. It had grown dark in the short time I’d been inside the club, and the sour aroma of trash made me watch my toes carefully in case of scavengers in the shadows. A couple of fellows and one young woman stood to the side, in hysterics at a story one of the men told. When their laughter dwindled, they turned to go inside.
Louie tapped his cigarette pack on my arm. “Need another cig, doll? Hey, wait. You know my name, but I don’t know yours. Not fair.”
“Isabelle. And I’m afraid I have to go. I need to find the ladies’ room.” I turned to follow the others.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Louie grabbed my arm again. His grin widened. He must have sensed my discomfort, though, because his face changed. I no longer thought of him as handsome at all. Now his features seemed harshly drawn, not chiseled, and his smile menacing. “Don’t rush off, now. I want to have a little talk with you. Isabelle, hmm? Sweet name for a sweet gal.”
I peered over my shoulder toward the door, wishing for more patrons of the club to emerge. But the heavy door firmly ignored my silent pleas to open.
“Really, Louie, I have to go inside. My friend will be looking for me. And … I think I’m going to be sick.” I pressed my hand to my mouth. It wasn’t an excuse. My stomach churned, and I truly thought the drinks might come back up. Before, I hadn’t felt their effect, other than the buzzy, halfway pleasant feeling in my head. Now I felt positively green, and Louie’s aftershave, combined with the stink of rotting trash, overwhelmed me.
“You’re fine. Come on. I just want a little something. You know, in exchange for the cigarette and drinks. A little kiss…” He pulled me close and pressed his mouth against mine. If I’d thought I might vomit before, now I felt almost certain. His lips, fleshy and clammy, stank of alcohol and tobacco, and his teeth ground against mine when he forced his tongue inside my mouth.
I gagged and tried to shove him away. “Hey! Stop! I’m not like that. I’m not even old enough to be here. Let me go!”
“The only kind of girl who comes here without a date is that kind, dollface. Age don’t matter. Don’t play games with me, now. Makes me impatient.”
He held me even tighter, pressing one hand against my rear and sliding his fingers through the thin silk of my dress toward places I knew he shouldn’t be touching. With his other hand, he cupped my bosom and squeezed—hard. I yelped, and now I fought back, scratching whatever I could reach. “Leave me alone! You can’t—” He laughed and kept on. I struggled harder, but the alcohol made me clumsy and slow, like a bad dream where I couldn’t move fast enough to save myself.
The club was the last building on the block, and a figure in the shadows caught my eye, emerging from around the corner at the end of the alley. “You heard the lady, sir. Let her go.” The voice—familiar, low, and full of character—startled me. I tried to place it. I strained to see the man’s face as he drew closer. Louie turned his head, relaxing his hold long enough for me to slip from his grasp. I scrambled away, still holding my breath and trying not to vomit. Near the door, I hesitated, thinking that maybe I should run as far away from the place as fast as I could. I owed Trudie nothing at this point—not after how she’d abandoned me the minute we’d gone in the place.
“Hey, who do you think you are, fella? She’s my date. You niggers should mind your own business anyway.” Louie lurched toward the other man, and I recognized him then—not really a man at all. Close to my age.
“Robert?” I said, and Nell’s brother looked over his shoulder at me, giving Louie a clear opportunity to land a punch square on his jaw. Robert staggered backward, and he ended up nearly in my lap as we both fell. He sprang back up, his hands held out in front of him.
“Please. I don’t want trouble, sir. I just want to escort Miss Isabelle home. Her daddy’s highly respected around here—you don’t want trouble, either.”
“Aw, go chase yourself. She was asking for it. Besides, why would I listen to a nigger?” Louie drew his fist back again, then glanced at me.
Robert cringed at the insult Louie had thrown so casually, but he squared his shoulders. “She’s only a girl, sir. Don’t even know what she’s doing. Not to mention, Doc McAllister wouldn’t be happy to hear about nobody messing with his daughter. And her brothers…” Robert shook his head. I was sure Louie had no idea who my father was, but Robert spoke the words with conviction. And my brothers didn’t go easy on anyone who offended them. They probably did have a reputation around Newport.
Louie finally relaxed his stance. “Doc McAllister … and the brothers … should keep a closer eye on little Isabelle, then, not let her go tramping around places she don’t belong. Newport girls have a reputation—public school by day, public service by night. They come around juice joints for their paychecks.” He spit, landing a gleaming wad of phlegm on the toe of Robert’s shoe, and stumbled toward the club. I realized now that he was probably drunk. I’d been too naïve to know the difference—or too affected by drink myself. “I’ll be on the lookout for you,” he called back to Robert. “If I see you again, you’ll regret the day you crossed my path.” He slammed inside.
I buried my face in my knees, sobbing now that I no longer believed my virtue—or my life—was in danger. “I’m so stupid,” I cried. “What was I thinking, coming here
… staying here?… I should have turned right around when Trudie pulled me inside that place.”
Robert pulled his cap from his head and threaded it through one hand with the other. Obviously, he agreed with my self-assessment, but of course he wouldn’t say so out loud. I reached toward him. “Help me up, Robert, please.”
The thought of touching my hand must have made him nervous. Now he twisted his cap as though he might wring water from it.
“Oh, come on. There’s nobody else here. Help me!”
He tugged me to my feet, then dropped my hand like a hot coal. I slapped my palms down my skirt, knocking off the debris of countless fights and drunken assaults that had probably happened in this very spot. I grew more ashamed as I realized how silly I’d been. I’d thought myself so grown-up. Louie had surely recognized me for the inexperienced little girl I was, playing dress up, playing like I knew what to do with a cigarette and a cocktail and a man. Playing right into his trap.
“Miss Isabelle. Why you here? Who’s this Trudie you met up with?” Robert slipped awkwardly between the speech patterns I’d heard my whole life from his mother and Nell and the more refined language he’d been learning across the Licking River at Covington’s Grant High—the only one in his family to go that far in school. Nell had quit after the seventh grade to work full time for my family, and Cora, wise as anyone I knew, had never even attended.
“I told you. It was dumb. I thought I’d be smart and find something more exciting than the silly parties my parents send me to every Saturday. The way my brothers talked about this place, it seemed like a good idea. Trudie’s my friend from school.” I almost choked now on the word friend, angry at myself for my own naïveté. “She ditched me. And the rest was more than I could handle.” Robert snorted, and I pictured my brothers, too, my foolishness clear now that I wasn’t kidding myself. Jack and Patrick were lazy, and they could be rough. I’d be wise to disregard 90 percent of everything they said. And now I wondered about Trudie, and the things Louie had said about Newport girls. Her mother had sent her away for a reason—maybe the reason he’d named. I shuddered at my gullibility.
“I’m going to have to walk you home now, Miss Isabelle. Can’t leave you here alone. Your daddy would have my hide if I did.”
I stared at him. If standing up for me here in this alley was risky, Robert’s crossing into Shalerville after dark was downright dangerous. “Oh, no. You can’t do that. If anyone saw you—”
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll think of something by the time we get there. We’d best get away from this place, though, before that idiot comes looking for you. Or me.” He shook his head and gestured down the alley. “C’mon, Miss Isabelle. Let’s go now.”
I fell into step beside him, though I sensed the instant he dropped slightly behind me when we crossed into open territory at the end of the alley. I slowed my pace to match his again, but he slowed, too, until I sighed and resigned myself to the superior position. We’d both had a lifetime of practice.
The irony of my situation struck me again—my earlier lie to my friends had come partially true. Here was Robert to escort me home, though Nell was probably snug in bed by now. “How did you find me?” I asked.
“Your momma, she sent me to Lemke’s for extra eggs for your Sunday dinner.” I pictured Danny Lemke looking down his nose at Robert. Danny’s family had been in the States only a few generations, yet Danny acted more entitled than anyone I knew. “When I left your house again to head home, I saw you walking out of town like you knew where you was going. I thought to myself, This ain’t good, so I followed after you. I was afraid you’d end up in a mess.”
“Boy, were you right.” I sighed.
“I waited there at the corner, hoping before long you’d come back out with your friend and go on home, but then I heard you fussing with that crumb, so I peeked around, and I saw you struggling.”
“Oh, Robert, I’m so glad you followed me. I’m afraid to think what might have happened.” I sighed, shaking my head at the predicament I’d brought upon both of us.
“You’re okay now, Miss Isabelle. But what will your momma say if I show back up with you? And at nighttime? Both of us’ll be in hot water for sure. And we’d best hope to God Mr. Jack and Mr. Patrick ain’t around. That Louie guy would fare better than me with those two.”
“No way I’m letting you take me all the way home.” He was right. The gates of hell would flood open if Jack and Patrick saw me alone with Robert. They were always harping about honor, about protecting the white woman—even when they treated their own girls like playthings, discarding them when they grew bored.
“We’ll see.”
I knew he wouldn’t argue with me, not out loud, but he seemed resolute in his plan to escort me all the way to my doorstep.
We waited at the streetcar stop, mainly silent, but starting and stopping conversations in awkward fits when others passed. Generally, people were going into town instead of away from it; it was still early for a Saturday evening in Newport. We had the stop to ourselves.
Robert had functioned as a vague fixture in my life, the son of the woman who’d always cared for me, the brother of my childhood playmate, until she began to work for my family, as well. Once we were beyond childhood, Robert ran errands for my mother at times, assisted my father with odd jobs around our home, or stopped in to eat with Cora or Nell in the kitchen on occasion when he wasn’t in school. He was just a boy to me—a more or less insignificant one.
I knew he was patient and kind—even when we were small and Nell snubbed him, told him he couldn’t join in as we played in the gardens behind the house, he shrugged good-naturedly and returned to his own quiet games of creating entire worlds, drawing borders in the dirt, then populating his countries with pebbles and twigs. I knew he was responsible and respectful—he followed his mother’s directives without complaining, carried out the tasks set him with little need for correction. I knew he was intelligent—Daddy often tutored him in math or science at his desk in his office on Shalerville’s Main Street, sometimes alongside me, whereas he’d thrown up his hands in frustration over my brothers’ inattention to their schoolwork and seeming inability to make more than average marks in school.
And somehow, even in my indifference, I knew Robert was special. He had an aura that set him apart—not just from the few colored boys I’d encountered here and there but from the white boys, too. An intensity smoldered in his eyes, contradicting the steadiness that, in any other young man, might have been a sign of a lack of complexity.
Yet I had never once intentionally contemplated his dreams and goals.
That night, I did. I wanted to know them in detail. But before I could ask, the trolley arrived, its squealing brakes interrupting our conversation.
I sat alone at the front of the car, scrubbing away rouge and eye kohl—which seemed more childish than grown-up now—with a handkerchief damp from my tears, while Robert sat at the rear, watching me like a hawk guarding its nest from a distance. We descended separately, one stop early, not quite to Shalerville, then fell into step again outside. The driver hesitated, eyed me with concern when only Robert and I alighted from the trolley, but I smiled reassuringly and he released the brake. I could have taken the streetcar all the way back into Shalerville, but, of course, being with Robert changed everything. The driver wouldn’t let him off the car there.
In a valley between the Licking River and the bluff we walked along toward town, South Newport’s steel mills worked around the clock. From this height, the bright lights, belching smoke, and machinery’s rhythmic clamor appeared independent of human manipulation. I hadn’t viewed their eerie, almost fantastical nighttime facade so close in years. I hesitated, my previous desire to return home as quickly as possible taking a new shape—a desire to suspend the moment. Robert’s mood seemed to match mine, and we gazed at that distant, alien world together; our attempts at conversation now seemed extraneous.
At the edge of town, I slowed eve
n more. This, I’d seen my whole life, every time we’d crossed in or out of Shalerville. It was more or less wallpaper, no different from the trees by the side of the road. But tonight, my chest tightened with a painful sense of shame. Robert had saved me from something I could scarcely imagine, yet he was forbidden from seeing me home by virtue of this rule I’d never questioned before. I read the sign as if for the first time: NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU HERE IN SHALERVILLE.
4
Dorrie, Present Day
WE WERE OFFICIALLY away from Dallas traffic, and before long, pine trees bordered the sides of the road, taller and thicker and closer together with each mile. I began to feel crowded, trapped in my own body, like I always had growing up in East Texas.
Miss Isabelle’s inevitable sadness, however—I’d been expecting it, waiting for it—seemed strangely soothed by her memories of her Newport adventure. And I won’t lie. The story of Robert, her unlikely savior, surprised me, and the thought of this sequestered little town both angered and intrigued me. I wanted to know more. But wouldn’t you know, the exit for my hometown rose from the pavement, and damn, if that wasn’t right when Miss Isabelle decided it was time to stop for lunch.
“Here?” I gawked at her.
“What’s wrong with here? It’s your hometown. And look, there’s a Pitt Grill on the other side of the overpass. I always wanted to eat in a Pitt Grill.”
I groaned, with a sneaking suspicion that stopping here had been her plan all along. I’d lived in this three-light and a Wal-Mart bump in the road my whole life until Steve and I moved to Arlington to make a fresh start—that is, so I could work somewhere that paid more than minimum wage and build my clientele until I could set up my own shop while Steve continued his shining career of not having a career. But I’d never once considered eating at the Pitt, not even when I lived nearby. And after all the time I’d been away, I suspected not much had changed in East Texas. I’d had no reason to visit for years, and wasn’t sure I wanted to experience that part of my life again. Unfortunately, the Pitt was the only restaurant near the highway.