Them

by Nathan McCall

  Barlowe sat up on his knees and took off his gardening gloves. “These people been out here toilin most a they lives. You came in on a fuggin whim. So what don’t you understand?”

  Sandy yanked off her gloves and slammed them down. She glared at him through the fence.

  “Is that what you think? You think I came here on some kind of whim? Who do you think I am?”

  “Far as I can see, you just a silly white girl lookin for somethin interestin to do.”

  Sandy’s nostrils flared. How dare he! She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.

  “Mister, I’m not here on a whim. I’m here because I happen to care. You may not believe it, but I care!” She cupped both hands over her temples and rubbed gently, like she felt a migraine coming on.

  “Why do I always feel like I have to prove myself?”

  “Calm down,” said Barlowe. He looked around. “You startin to make a scene.”

  Sandy lowered the volume, now speaking through clenched teeth. “I’ll have you know this is not something that just started for me. I’ll have you know that I’ve been wrestling with this stuff in some form or another for most of my life.”

  She sucked her teeth, wondering why she wasted her time.

  “You know, I actually feel sorry for you. You’re so wounded that you may no longer be capable of seeing the good in others.”

  That remark pissed him off. He stewed but didn’t respond—not because he had nothing to say. He kept quiet for her sake. He knew that if he spoke his mind at that moment, he’d blast her. He’d blast her with so much thunder she might not ever recover. He was tempted to do it anyway, if for no reason other than to crush the arrogance underlying her words: The nerve of her. She felt sorry for him!

  He wanted to let it rip, but he held back for the sake of the thread of a relationship trying to form.

  And there was another reason: Hers may well have been the worst case of sincere ignorance he’d ever seen, but at least she was trying. She was trying, which was more than he could say for most of them. He couldn’t bring himself to torpedo someone who was trying, however clumsy the effort.

  Finally, Barlowe held back for his own sake. For reasons that were still a riddle to him, Sandy embodied some vague glimmer of hope; she clung to a vision that reached beyond anything his life experiences had allowed him to see. He sensed his own hope, dim as it was, somehow was tethered to her stubborn optimism. So he kept quiet and peered through the fence, a tangle of feelings tugging at him from every direction, and all at once.

  Sandy stared back, wrestling with her own roiling emotions. She thought she saw a subtle smirk creep to the corners of his mouth, but she didn’t care. Why should she care what he thought? Why should she care what any of these people thought?

  Still, in spite of herself, she felt compelled to explain. “I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to stand here—”

  “You sittin.” Barlowe smiled, trying to lighten the mood before things got too far out of hand.

  “No, seriously.” Her tone was tortured. “I’m not going to stand here and try to pretend that I don’t have doubts sometimes. I’m human. I have my moments. You can bet that fire has shaken my foundation a bit.”

  She didn’t finish the idea. Her mind raced around in frantic circles. She felt so bothered she couldn’t settle down enough to bring cohesive order to her thoughts.

  She brushed a hand across her hair and spoke slowly, trying to regain control of herself.

  “I’m telling you that me moving out here has nothing to do with a whim or trying to find something interesting to do. The point is, Barlowe, Sean and I are not out here trying to take over.”

  “The point is,” snapped Barlowe, “you don’t have to try.”

  Her face turned crimson, like he’d slapped it hard. She gaped at him, processing what he’d said.

  He returned the stare. It remained that way for a long moment, them staring at each other, until finally she broke the spell.

  “I see,” she said, finally. “I see.”

  Barlowe wondered if she really did see. He wondered if she was even capable of seeing. Now he was pissed again, and so was she. They were fed up with each other and, together, mad at the world.

  They both resumed working. She yanked up crabgrass, and he snatched leaves from flowerpots.

  Then Barlowe spoke again. “What you wont here, anyway?”

  At first she thought he was being flippant. Then she searched his face and saw that he was serious. She stabbed her shears hard in the ground.

  “I’ll tell you what I want. I want people to accept my husband and me for who we are: We’re neighbors. That’s supposed to count for something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  He studied her a moment like he was trying to search her soul. For an instant his stare, the way she felt him looking through her, made Sandy uneasy. She gathered herself.

  “I know who I am. You may not know it, but I know.”

  He squinted. “You one a them liberals, ain’t ya?”

  “I don’t like labels,” said Sandy. “Let’s just say I’m me.”

  He bored in some more. “You know what they say bout liberals?”

  Sandy’s eyebrows raised. “They? Who’s they?”

  “They say liberals conduct their lynchins from shorter trees.”

  She grimaced. “You seem to be very morbid today. Do you know what they say about morbid people?”

  “No, what?”

  He waited while she tried to think up something. She wanted to respond with something snide and witty. She couldn’t think of anything, and that frustrated her more.

  “Never mind,” she said, finally. “I know who I am.”

  “Okay, then.” He looked askance. “Okay. Then that should be enough.”

  “You don’t believe me. I can tell, and I resent it. I resent your whole negative attitude. But that’s okay. I’m gonna prove you wrong. You’ll see. I’m gonna prove you wrong.”

  “You do that, Sandy. Prove me wrong.”

  They fell silent once more. After a while, Barlowe got up from the ground. “I’m done for now. I gotta go.”

  She was still angry, but not ready for him to leave just yet. The conversation felt unresolved.

  “I’ve got a little more to do,” she said.

  She hoped he would stay, at least stand and talk until she finished her work.

  He didn’t cooperate. “Later.”

  He went in the house, leaving her on her knees, pulling up grass from through the fence.

  When Barlowe got inside, he found Tyrone standing in the kitchen, munching on a green apple. He was stationed at the window, gazing curiously outside. Barlowe wondered how long he had been standing there. He got a drink of water and started toward the living room.

  “Yo, Unk.”

  Barlowe stopped and turned around. “Yeah?”

  “You bangin that white bitch next doe?”

  “No.”

  Tyrone smiled. “C’mon, Unk. You can tell me. I’m your boy!”

  Barlowe’s irritation showed. “I toldja, no.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “So what you and her be out there talkin bout, up at the fence alla time?”

  “We talk about the way things are.”

  “Thas all?”

  “Thas all.”

  Barlowe left the room.

  Tyrone looked again out the kitchen window. Sandy had gotten up from the ground. He saw her walk slowly toward her house. He studied the subtle sway of her hips. The hips were really nothing special—he’d seen much better, many times. But they were a woman’s hips just the same.

  “Shucks,” Tyrone said, thinking out loud. “I’d fuck her.”

  Chapter 28

  Sandy went into the house and headed straight to the bedroom. She sat on the floor and tried to meditate. She tried, but Barlowe’s words echoed in her head: You just a silly white girl, lookin for somethin in
terestin to do.

  He seemed to think he knew her better than she knew herself. That wasn’t possible, was it?

  No. He barely knew her at all. He barely knew her, which meant he could not possibly know her heart’s desires. In time, he would see her for who she was. He would see for himself. Then maybe he’d apologize.

  She inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly, trying to take herself to that serene place she had gone so many times before. With her legs folded and torso erect, she sat there for the better part of a half-hour, trying to go deeper inward. But she couldn’t. Her thoughts shifted from the fire to Barlowe and back again. The fire haunted her almost every night. She tried to push the sight of the flames from her mind. She focused like she had learned to do in meditation class. A few more minutes passed, and she still struggled.

  Unable to let go, she decided to submit, to give in to the memory and convert the negative energy to good vibrations.

  Fire. Fire was symbolic of so many things. It was a source of warmth and a source of healing. It also was a monster that consumed and destroyed.

  Fire. She contemplated its healing powers. The world needed healing, for sure. She inhaled again, holding her breath as long as she could. She exhaled slowly, releasing the fear and anxiety that crowded her chest.

  Later, she got a glass of wine and went to the living room to wait for Sean. He’d be coming in from work soon. They had planned to talk.

  Despite the meditation, she felt unsettled, tense. For days after the fire, Sean had not spoken a single word to her. It wasn’t like him to shut down like that. They had always communicated well until now. Now he walked around the house, silent, brooding, sometimes gazing at her with an icy stare. It troubled her not knowing what her husband was thinking. Tonight maybe she’d find out what was on his mind.

  With that thought came a new worry: Exactly what would Sean say? Would he blame her for this nightmare? Would he accuse her of being so wildly idealistic and naive that she was putting their lives at risk?

  She was clear about one thing. She would allow for some criticism, but not too much. She wouldn’t let Sean delude himself into believing this was all her fault. After all, hadn’t they agreed—together—that the move would come with challenges? Hadn’t they both decided they were up to the tests, no matter what?

  Well, here was the “what” they’d been referring to: a mailbox doused with gasoline and set aflame; a haunting message from neighbors that people their color weren’t welcome in the Old Fourth Ward.

  This was no time to lose resolve. Sitting in her living room it dawned on Sandy that that was exactly what she saw in Sean: a rapid loss of resolve. He seemed deeply troubled, not to mention punchy and unable to sleep at night.

  And now there was this new obsession with security. Since the fire, he had bought a new alarm system, with a motion detector. He’d installed blinding, megawatt floodlights around the house and yard. And then there was the matter of that hideous fence. She came home one day and there it stood, forbidding entry and exit. She hated being fenced in. She’d protested the fence, then dropped the issue as a concession to his fear. Now she wondered how far Sean would take this security thing.

  At night he constantly wandered through rooms in the house, checking the double locks on windows and doors. Just the other day, Sandy had found on the coffee table (maybe he had left it there on purpose) a book about dogs; attack dogs, to be more precise. She fully expected to come home one day and find a snarling Rottweiler guarding the door.

  Her Sean appeared gripped by fears that ran deeper than mere safety concerns. She wondered, What exactly is he afraid of? She wanted to confront Sean about his growing jumpiness, but decided to leave him be. He was a man. Most men wouldn’t tolerate a woman questioning their manliness. She had learned that from watching her father and mother.

  But things were getting crazy. Sitting there, Sandy sipped wine and shuddered at the thought that things could spiral out of control. It was a terrible feeling. She wondered again, How could this be? How could I have been so wrong about the move?

  Then something occurred to her. Other than the family maid, Ethel, she had never really interacted much with them before. Sandy knew Ethel before she’d gone to college and studied history and social issues. As a young girl she was too naive to grasp the complexities that surely must have colored Ethel’s interactions with her family. Beyond that, she had dealt with them only in passing, in controlled settings where they were in the minority.

  As an adult, Sandy had never had concrete dealings with black people. She had looked upon them as ideas, as abstract social causes. This new experience was altogether different: living among so many dark, hostile strangers, seemingly opposed to her being alive. She realized now that even after all her study and thinking, she had grossly underestimated the breadth of these people’s fear and rage.

  She shuddered.

  Suddenly, she heard a car door slam. She got up and peeked through the curtain. It was Sean. His back was turned. He leaned over inside the car and stuffed a shiny object into the glove compartment. She rushed back to her seat and waited for him to come through the door.

  Sean came in and nodded a silent hello, then headed to the bedroom to change clothes. As had been the case in the past week, his manner was frigid, aloof. In a moment of near-panic Sandy wondered if he was falling out of love with her.

  She was anxious about the impending talk. What could she say to put him at ease? How could she apologize without compromising her sense of who she was? And how could she persuade him of the need to hold firm when she wasn’t sure she was still fully convinced?

  Sometimes when she drove through the neighborhood she got an eerie sensation, an intuition, that something bad was about to happen, something worse even than a fire. That sensation passed over her now.

  Sean reappeared from the bedroom and went into the kitchen. He returned with a glass of iced tea and sat down on the couch, across from her. He seemed so distant now, so formal.

  “How was your day, honey?”

  “My day was fine, Sandy. Let’s get to the point of why we’re sitting here.”

  She crossed her legs and took another sip of wine. Her throat was dry.

  “Okay, Sean. Let’s get to the point.”

  He spoke in a somber tone, like a sheriff who has come to tell a family that a loved one has been killed.

  “Look, Sandy, I hope you see now what I see.”

  “I hope so, too, Sean.” She shifted, nervous. “So let’s talk about what it is that we each think we see.”

  “I don’t think anything,” he snapped. “For me it’s fairly obvious. We’re in a war zone. We’ve pretty much served our tour of duty here.”

  She released a pained sigh. “Too much water, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.” She sighed again. “So what are you saying, Sean?”

  “I’m saying this is not turning out like we thought it would. This is not ‘The Beloved Community’ you envisioned. It’s time to pull out, move. We can’t keep going to sleep at night not knowing whether we’ll see another day. That’s no way to live. It doesn’t make sense, Sandy. We’re outnumbered here, about a hundred to one.”

  “Sean, don’t you think you’re taking this to the extreme? I mean, you don’t think these people intend to kill us, do you?”

  He shot her a look that actually bordered on disgust.

  “C’mon, Sean. That fire was just a childish prank. It was a bluff from people who are suspicious. These people are afraid. The neighborhood is changing, Sean. Look around. It’s changing every day.”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, “but I need it to be changed a bit more than it is right now. And I surely don’t need to be living next door to somebody I think might attack me or firebomb my house.” He pointed toward Barlowe’s place. “Just my luck. Fucking thugs, right next door.”

  She aimed an index finger at him. “Be careful, Sean. You don’t know that the man who attacked you was inv
olved in that fire.”

  “The only way I don’t know it is that I didn’t see the bastard pour the gasoline or strike a match!” He was shouting now. “But I can guarantee you this: I can guarantee you that he was in on it; at the very least he was a lookout! I’ll bet you a month’s pay he was a lookout for them!”

  “Who’s them, Sean? Who’s them?”

  “Whoever set that fire! And I guarantee you that it was more than one person. Cowards seldom act alone.”

  Sandy spoke softly, trying to reassure herself and calm him down. “Be patient, Sean. The policemen told you they would investigate. Why don’t we wait and see what they find.”

  “Why should I be patient? Why should we wait around for something worse to happen? Uh-uh. You may be still full of peace and love and light, but not me. My light burned out when they extinguished that fire.”

  Sandy said nothing. Maybe it was best to let him vent.

  “Don’t give me that look! You know I’m right! You saw what happened! Those people actually booed and jeered the firemen! Fucking thugs! The whole neighborhood’s full of thugs and thieves and drunks and…I say we cut our losses, Sandy, and get the hell out of here. I say we call that real estate agent of ours, stick a for-sale sign in the ground and see what we can get for our troubles.”

  Sandy folded her arms and shook her head. She had actually entertained that same idea before Sean came home. Now, hearing him talk this way, hearing the ugliness expressed out loud, produced the effect of cold water splashed in the face.

  “We can’t do that, Sean. We can’t move.”

  He leaned forward and gawked, incredulous. “Why are you telling me what we can’t do?”

  “Because. If we move it will be an indication of defeat.”

  Sean leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Sandy, you don’t understand. I don’t care about public appearances. I just don’t care.”

  “Neither do I, Sean. But I do care about how we view ourselves. If we move it would be like acknowledging that we’re not who we thought we were; we would be admitting that we have given up.”