Call Me by My Name

by John Ed Bradley

  Tater didn’t do any better. He popped up to the first baseman and struck out, his first strikeout of the year, and now he was coming up again in the bottom of the last inning with two outs and the Steers leading 4–3. With the win so close at hand, Curly was throwing even harder than he had to start the game, and his junk pitches were working better than ever too. Tater swung and missed at two curveballs, and then Curly followed up with three errant fastballs, all of them high and away, making the count full. The next pitch was identical to the first two, and Tater did a surprising thing. Just as the ball was leaving Curly’s hand, he stepped up to the front of the batter’s box and squared off to bunt. The ball met his bat and dribbled toward third, and he outran the throw to first.

  I was next. I walked out to booing and stood outside the batter’s box and looked over to where Mama and Pops and Angie were sitting.

  “You can do it, Rodney,” I heard Tater call out, his voice clear to me even though hundreds of other people were yelling for me to fail.

  I set up deep in the box, choked up high on the bat’s handle, and shifted my weight to my back foot. I’d decided to forgo any titanic roundhouse swings this time and to simply try to make contact with the ball. Tater took a three-step lead, and Curly looked him back one, and now the ball was coming toward me. As soon as it left Curly’s hand, I picked up the rotation, or lack of one. It was a knuckleball, widely advertised as the toughest pitch there was to hit. But this one didn’t move or bounce around much, and the reason was probably because it was the first knuckler Curly had thrown all day. From where I stood, the ball looked as big as a dinner plate, and without being conscious of what I was doing I strode forward and met the pitch the moment it crossed the plate. It didn’t feel like I’d hit it hard, and I thought I’d just lost the game with a pop-up to the infield.

  But then I saw Tater leap in the air as he broke for second, and I looked up and located the ball in flight. It had already climbed higher than all the other blasts I’d hit that summer, and it was still climbing when it connected with a light tower on the other side of the fence. I heard a report like a rifle shot, and then the ball ricocheted back into the field.

  All Tater and I had to do now was touch each base and home plate and the game was over, but as he cleared third I saw something flying toward him from the direction of the pitcher’s mound. It was Curly’s glove. Tater stopped to avoid being hit, but then Curly charged and knocked him to the ground. The two of them tumbled in the grass between the field and our dugout. I left the base path and ran over to help, even though by now Coach Doucet had grabbed Curly and pulled him away.

  Curly was kicking his legs and swinging his arms and making sounds like an animal in a fight with another animal when it understands that to lose is to die. I helped Tater to his feet and saw a trail of blood at his nose. Then Curly’s father moved past us in a blur of ear hoops and jailhouse tattoos. I thought he’d come to defend his son, but instead he reared back with one of his biker boots and nailed Curly in the stomach, knocking him on his back. Until now I’d always thought I had it bad with Pops. He’d beaten me before with belts from his closet and switches from the ligustrum hedge, but I couldn’t recall ever taking a boot in the gut.

  “Can Rodney and me cross home plate now?” Tater asked.

  “Go on,” Coach Doucet said, then waved us on like a traffic cop.

  We made it across, but the thrill of what we’d done was gone. Most of our teammates, afraid to get close to Curly’s father, had already returned to the dugout, and a different excitement had come over the field. The umpires were meeting on the mound with parents of some of the Steers, and then Coach Doucet joined them. If I was hearing right, he was arguing for justice, a word I’d never heard mentioned at a baseball game before. Finally the ump broke from the group and walked over to where Tater was sitting.

  “You’re suspended for the rest of the summer for fighting,” he said.

  “That was Curly fighting,” Tater said.

  “You’re telling me you weren’t fighting?”

  “That wasn’t fighting. I was trying to get him off of me.”

  “You also showboated on your way to second. They might abide that kind of behavior on the north end but not here. Get your things together and go home. That’s an order.”

  Tater turned to Coach Doucet. “But I just jumped a little when Rodney hit it.”

  “Let’s go,” the ump said.

  “For the rest of the summer?”

  “One other thing. You never brought a release from your parents when you signed up to play. Without that release you don’t qualify.” The ump worked himself out of his chest protector and removed his shin guards. Clouds of sweat soaked his black shirt, and you could smell his body odor from ten feet away. “We got rules on this side of town, and if you expect to participate, you have got to respect them,” he said. “I should’ve sent you packing weeks ago.” And now he pointed to what must’ve been an imaginary door out of the park.

  “What about Curly Trussell?” came a voice from the other side of the backstop. I didn’t have to look to know it was Mama.

  “Curly was provoked,” the ump said.

  “He was not provoked. He started it.”

  “He’s suspended for one game, and if he curses or throws his glove again, he’s done, just like this one.”

  “Well, you should be ashamed,” Angie said in the loudest voice yet.

  “I didn’t make the rules,” the ump said, “I just enforce them.” And with that he gathered up his equipment and left the field.

  The ump’s other job was working the register at a convenience store called the Fill-A-Sack, and I told myself it would be a long time before I ever went there again.

  “She Loves You” wasn’t playing over the park speakers, but you might’ve thought it was to see Tater on his way out. I figured he was trying to give the appearance that everything was fine. Still, I was sick for him. I thought about running after him, but then Angie jumped down from the bleachers and took off in his direction. I waited with Mama and Pops until she came back.

  “I invited him to my swim meet Friday,” she said.

  “You did what, Angela?” Pops said.

  Angie didn’t answer. She knew he’d heard her the first time.

  “They won’t let a colored boy anywhere near that pool,” Mama said. “Rodney, ride your bike on up ahead and tell him politely that your sister made a mistake.”

  “Why me, Mama? Make Angie do it.”

  “Just go tell him, please. That poor young man doesn’t need another situation, and I certainly don’t need the whole town talking about the colored boy who watched my daughter gallivant around half-naked at the pool.”

  “I don’t do that,” Angie said. “It’s a swim meet, Mama. I swim.”

  “Rodney, go on, boy,” Pops said.

  I rode through trees and past the picnic grounds crowded with barbecue pits to where Tater was crossing the pedestrian bridge over the bayou. I tried to figure out what to say to him, and I didn’t know what that might be until I finally said it. “Hey, Tater, they don’t have swim meets on the north end?”

  His expression let me know the question wasn’t one he’d expected, especially from me. “What are you trying to say, Rodney?”

  “They’ll just treat you bad again. It’ll be worse than today.”

  “If I let things like that worry me, I’d never leave the house.” He was standing in the middle of the bridge, and he leaned against the railing now and spat at the water below. “Was it Angie who sent you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Your mama’s a nice person, Rodney. I heard her yelling at that ump. But it was Angie who asked me to come see her swim, and unless Angie takes the invitation back, I plan on being there.”

  He spat one more time before leaving.

  A tall hurricane fence surrounded
the pool yard, with three strands of barbed wire running along the top. About ten feet from the fence were two stands of bleachers that were close enough to some oak trees to get shade, which made it tolerable for Mama, even on the worst summer days. Whenever Angie had a meet, we tried to arrive about an hour early to claim seats up on the top bench for the best shade and the best view. We arrived earlier than usual today, with more than an hour to spare, and Tater was already there waiting.

  He was wearing a white button-down shirt with long sleeves, navy dress pants, and penny loafers with soles barely scuffed. He also had on a new cowboy belt, carved with his name, TATER HENRY, in the brown leather.

  “I wish I could get you to dress like that,” Mama said, and cut me a look. It was July and hot, and I had on cutoffs, a T-shirt, and flip-flops—what I always wore on days like this one.

  Pops was quiet. He couldn’t have been happy seeing Tater, and he’d had only about three hours of sleep all day. His feet banged against the board planks as he led us up to our spot. To protect against splinters, he’d brought a pair of foam seat cushions, and he set one down for Mama, then used the other for himself.

  “Tater, how are you, son?” Mama asked, and looked over.

  “Doing pretty good, Mrs. Boulet. How are you?”

  “Will you tell your auntie something for me? Will you tell her I said you shine like a brand-new copper penny today?”

  “I appreciate that, Mrs. Boulet. She’s the one that bought me this outfit. I hope it isn’t too much.”

  “Of course it isn’t. Would you like to come sit with us?”

  Pops started gnashing his teeth, the muscles in his jaw working. Then he pulled at the crotch of his pants, as if he’d just now noticed how tight they were.

  “Come sit,” Mama said to Tater.

  “Yes, ma’am,” and he tried to suppress a smile. I could smell him—equal parts hair oil and Aqua Velva—even before he slid over.

  For a few minutes all you could hear was the noise from the pool. Then Tater said, “Why aren’t you on the swim team with Angie, Rodney?”

  “I have baseball. I couldn’t do both.”

  “You can swim, though, right?”

  “Yeah, I can swim. Can’t you?”

  “No. I’ve never even been in a pool.”

  “Not ever?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not even a baby pool?”

  “I tried to take lessons. I heard somebody talking about it at Redbirds’ practice, then I saw a paper on the pool-house door when I was walking home one day. I came and got in line with my dollar fifty—that’s what it cost to take them for the summer—and when I got to the desk, that old lady, Miss Daigle, said I needed to leave because they didn’t want any darkies in the water.”

  “She called you that?”

  “Not exactly. She said they didn’t want darkies, then she said she was going to call the police if I didn’t leave that minute.”

  It was hard to hear, and I was relieved when Angie and her teammates came out to loosen up and swim practice laps. I gave a sharp whistle to let her know where we were sitting, and she answered with a wave.

  The sun had combined with chlorine to streak her hair with gold strands. Bands of muscle and sinew stood out on her long limbs. Every time she came out of the pool dripping with water, I wondered how we could be related, let alone twins.

  “Is he with you?” I heard somebody say. It was a park employee, standing behind the bleachers.

  “Yes, he is,” my mother said.

  “That colored person there?”

  “That’s right, George,” Mama answered when Pops wouldn’t. “This is Tater Henry, my son’s teammate on the Redbirds.”

  George Fontenot was older, maybe sixty. Dressed all in khaki, he usually handled maintenance at the park. “Yeah, all right,” he said. “He’s the one got kicked out for picking a fight with the Trussell boy.”

  Tater had come wearing all new clothes and a belt with his name on it, and even they weren’t going to be enough to spare him today.

  “George, your pool looks lovely,” Mama said.

  “Kind of you, thanks. Every morning at seven o’clock sharp, when I skim the surface, I wish they’d built it somewhere else on account of them trees. You can get the leaves easy enough, but it’s the moss that gives you fits. Who builds a pool next to trees?”

  “Only somebody with a man like you, George,” Mama said.

  You could see what her words did to him. He no longer was worried about Tater. Instead he hitched up his pants and went back to spearing trash with a nail at the end of a stick.

  The meet featured only three teams, ours and two others from nearby towns. Angie easily ranked as her team’s strongest individual female competitor, and she also anchored the girls’ relays. There was no limit to the number of events a single swimmer could participate in, and by the last race Angie had already won four medals, three of them gold and one silver. Tater and I stood tall and cheered like crazy people without a thought to how it might be taken by the visitors from out of town.

  As Angie was stretching before her last event, a man looked back at us from his seat at the bottom of the bleachers and spoke to my father. “Is all that really necessary?” he asked.

  Pops didn’t answer, and the man got up and walked over to the fence. He stood leaning against it, but I could tell he wasn’t done yet. Right before the swimmers stepped on their starting blocks, he returned to the bleachers and sat in his old place.

  “Please ignore us,” my mother said. Then she brought a finger up to her lips and gestured for Tater and me to keep quiet.

  It must’ve been the man’s daughter who swam the second leg of her team’s last race, a freestyle relay. When the girl in that spot hit the water, he started yelling, “Kick, kick, kick,” but actually saying, “Keek, keek, keek.” She was a strong swimmer and built a two-stroke lead, which the next girl was able to maintain for the team’s anchor. The bleachers were shaking as people pounded their feet on the boards. I whistled again right before Angie dove into the water for her team’s last leg. By the time she reached the other side, she’d already caught up to the leader. She passed the girl after coming out of her turn.

  Both Tater and I had forgotten Mama’s warning to keep quiet, and we were making more noise than anyone else in the bleachers when Angie thrust ahead by half a dozen strokes to end the race. Next came the medal ceremony, and we might’ve escaped without incident had Tater not thought to add one final cheer.

  “Keek, keek, keek!” he shouted.

  Pushing between spectators, the man climbed the bleachers and grabbed Tater by the throat before any of us could react. Pops reached for the guy, but lost his balance and fell sideways against the boards. I landed a right to the side of the man’s face and whipped his head back, but somehow he held on to Tater. It was Mama who stopped him. She gripped his earlobe and pulled it, as if she’d lost one of hers and needed a replacement. Tater broke free and fell over coughing and spitting out ropes. Then Mama let the man go.

  “What is wrong with you?” she said.

  It was a while before the man could answer. “You know what’s wrong,” he muttered.

  It was time to leave. “You’re not walking home alone,” Mama said to Tater. “Let’s go. You and Rodney climb in back.”

  We sat on the bed with our backs against the bulkhead. The wind felt good after the moist heat under the trees, and I had a moment to think about what had just happened. I seemed to understand that for as long as we were friends and he was black and I was white, there would be apologies to be made—if not for my own words and actions against him, then for the words and actions of others.

  On Abe Lincoln, Pops pulled up to the curb, and Tater jumped out even before we’d come to a stop. It was my first good look at him, and I saw the smudges on his shirt and the rips to his pants
. His neck was red and there were four round marks, each about the size of a dime, left by the points of the man’s fingers.

  Pops had his window rolled down and his arm poking out, the elbow bleeding from a scratch he’d suffered in the melee. Splinters stood out in the meat of his forearm.

  “Please tell Angie I said it was great she won all them races,” Tater said.

  Pops seemed to be trying to decide whether it was too big a request. Eventually Mama said, “We’ll do that, Tater.”

  “Mrs. Boulet, I’m grateful to you for helping me out the way you did.”

  “Not everybody is so full of contempt for his fellow man as that fool,” she said, although by the look on her face I wondered if she believed it.

  “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble.”

  “No, baby,” Mama said. “We’re the ones who are sorry. The world has a lot of growing up to do. You go on inside now and tell Miss Nettie to call me if she has any questions about today.”

  Tater climbed up on the porch and stood at the door, straightening out his clothes. They might’ve been new, but they were also ruined. He tucked his shirttail back in and brushed dirt off his pants, and he made sure his belt was in place, with his name facing out from the rear to anybody who might be curious about who he was.

  Mama was too upset to cook supper that night, so Angie and I ate fried bologna sandwiches on TV trays in the living room. Pops left for the plant after the news, and it was midnight before we went to bed. Even then nobody slept much.

  I lay awake in the dark, trying to make sense of things I’d probably never understand. Finally I got up and moved to Angie’s room. “Poor Tater,” I heard her mumble, even though she looked to be sleeping.

  Toward dawn I sat up on the pallet on the floor and glanced over at her. Angie was a person people automatically liked just because of how she looked. But what about those who brought out hatred in others for the same reason? I wondered what it would be like to have people want to choke your neck before they even knew you, and it all made me wish that I lived in another time—not in the past when things might’ve been worse, but in the future when all the madness had been worked out.